Hi Jon, you make and excellent point that I a want to amply and expand on. I have seen a few very smart, successful people on Silicon Investor and in the financial media who have been making the case this year that the % of American's who are directly invested in the stockmarket is at a 20 or 30 year low..... in some cases longer.
It has been used as a sentiment gauge to say that the US equity indices have much higher levels to go to before the Percentage of people in the US gets high enough for there to be a significant top in the stock market.
That line of thinking is a fallacy in my mind;and I have several market analysts who agree with me.
A very large percentage of the USA is living paycheck to paycheck, and the WSJ had an article in the past 2 weeks that highlighted the percentage of the population in the US that did not have even an extra thousand or $1500 in savings in the event of an unexpected emergency expense.
Let alone have money to open a brokerage account. The new GIG economy , where many millennials have 2, 3 or 4 piecemeal jobs that they do on a GIG basis, the way a musician will have a one night or one week gig at a club or venue.... those jobs have no 401, pensions or savings as a perk to them.
And that percentage is continuously rising..... that's why there is so much anger in the country and the world at large. I posted a graph where youth unemployment in Italy is 40%! in major cities in Italy it's been 33% + for the past 15 to 20 years.
As the middle class has been hollowed out... it is created a destabilized country and world.
When President Trump gave his first 1 hour interview on ABC on Wednesday January 25 that 10 PM ET, he was asked if his vetting of people coming into the US from the 7 mid east countries with the highest ISIS profile was going to make people a little angrier. Trump responded, (I believe unerringly accurately) that the world was a VERY ANGRY place right now. His initiative would not move the needle compared to the Anger that is out there both domestically and globally.
So as usual, you have very solid and logic based elucidation occurring in your post.
and to a few of my good friends on SI who have been living in some of the prosperity bubbles that are out there just be aware that the Baby Boomers are in the massive draw down phase of their life trajectory and I know so many doctors, lawyers, various professionals that are in their late 60's and 70's and are still working because the .com collapse of 2000-2002 hit them, and then the Great Financial Crises of 2008-2009 really messed with what money they had calculated out for retirement.
The 100 year war cycle should have the US in a significant global conflict within 4 to 6 months. ( after all WWI started in 1914 and the US did not enter until April 6th,1917.
Janet Yellen is going to have the hardest ride of her life when she does her annual testimony to Congress this month, and POTUS has been invited by speaker of the House Ryan to address a joint session of Congress on February 28th..... just at the time of some pretty incendiary astro alignments.
In one respect, that will be refreshing in that it will give these fascist protesters at Berkeley , adorned in their all black terror combat suit and masks and the Black lives matters and the sarah silverstone's and Madonna's who want to have military coups and blow up the white house... they shall become the fringe pariahs and a 58 year old has been like Madonna and a 3rd rate comedian, .... There little squeals of empowerment shall be subsumed and dragged down underground as tectonic plates are when subsumed when new mountains are made and the cycle of change moves forward.
JJP |
