When this thread started on 4/25/2010, the hottest financial book out was Michael Lewis' "The Big Short". The sub-prime bond market collapsed in 2007 and 2008, taking out the rest of the economy. The aftermath was 10% unemployment and unprecedented US Government spending and risk guarantees to prop up Wall Street firms that would have otherwise ceased to exist. All the perpetrators of this disaster walked away multi-millionaires and billionaires, leaving the rest of us holding the bag. No criminal suits were brought against the bankster execs, except for a few small fry scapegoats. The SEC suit of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan were a sham puppet's court and the Dodd-Frank financial reform didn't come close to addressing the underlying problems, and it has since been gutted. All of it was window dressing for an American public that isn't sophisticated enough to even begin to understand the nature or scope of the greatest public Treasury/Fed/Wall Street heist in US history that is still underway.
As of 2018, the bottom line is that the US debt continues to soar on the back of 8 years of unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus. The end of deficits is nowhere in sight. Even though the Fed is now raising interest rates and shrinking their balance sheet, INFLATION is finally showing its ugly head with recent CPI figures clocking in at 2.4%. This thread was started with the idea that these monetary policies would inevitably result in inflation, especially now with Trump's deregulation of banks. The only questions left to ask are as follows:
* When will we start to see inflation get out of control?
* How far will it go?
* Who will benefit and how will they benefit? Who will lose and how?
* How can we position our portfolios for this eventuality?
* What publicly traded companies, sectors, or instruments will benefit and which will lose in a rapid inflationary environment?
* When will the Fed lose the stomach for raising rates and stop quantitative tightening?
* What will be the immediate consequences in the market and how can we get ahead of that trade?
Latest Inflation Readings:
usinflationcalculator.com
The only rule on this thread is that we're not interested in politics, except insofar as it relates to our topic of making money or preserving wealth off of the coming inflationary period. If the talk turns to out of bounds political chatter with demonstrable vitriol, I'll give one warning and then ban the instigator. |
