Thursday, July 7, 2011

The Sarcasm Report v.111

July 7, 2011
Why the bulls still have room to run

"Really, the recovery that's now 3 years old is just too young to die," Mirhaydari says.



Now you'll want to be one of the first to have your own flying superman so listen carefully 'cause here's all you do to get yours.

8 comments:

mab said...

Do you think Ben "honest Iago" Bernanke is being sarcastic when he takes "credit" for juicing the stock market but then denies any responsibility for soaring commodity prices?

EconomicDisconnect said...

Mark, any take on yet another CPI change?

Mr Slippery said...

Get ready for the unstoppable boom!

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/unstoppable-boom-coming-2012-james-altucher-says-154736773.html

Stagflationary Mark said...

mab,

Is he sarcastic? Hard to say.

Ben "There Is No Housing Bubble to Go Bust" Bernanke certainly generates plenty of sarcasm. That's something I guess, lol. Sigh.

GYSC,

Are you talking about switching the index used for Social Security? We know benefits will probably be trimmed one way or another. Sigh.

Mr Slippery,

Don't even get me started on James Altucher. That guy couldn't see a disaster coming even if it presented itself as a scary chart. (Note the date of that link.)

Stagflationary Mark said...

One more thought on Social Security. It isn't like we haven't been warned. I refer to my Social Security Statement.

Your estimated benefits are based on current law. Congress has made changes to the law in the past and can do so at any time. The law governing benefit amounts may change because, by 2037, the payroll taxes collected will be enough to pay only about 76 percent of scheduled benefits.

I did not add bold for emphasis. The government did.

We've been on an unsustainable path and it is slowly catching up to us. (Mixed paradox metaphor alert!)

Stagflationary Mark said...

One more thought.

I love the 76% precision. Not 75%. Not 77%.

I'd love to know all the assumptions that were made to get to that 76%. I fear one of them was based on faulty employment trend extrapolations.

MaxedOutMama said...

Mark - I sat down with this morning's employment report and ran a few numbers for the progression. It moves back the date for disability exhaustion (this decade) by half a year.

The nasty about the current reality check is that it makes our fiscal problems far worse.

But hell, I suppose we'll cope by giving GS another big loan so that they never, ever have to take a loss on commodity speculation. Because this is the government by, for and of Goldman Sachs.

And Goldman, despite having been allowed to turn itself into a bank holding company to get banking bennies, is not and never has been a bank. But it gets treated as a bank without all that snotty bank supervision when it suits GS purposes.

Stagflationary Mark said...

MaxedOutMama,

What an awful jobs report!

And as for Goldman...

Here Come the Hatchets for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley

The culprits are familiar: a phenomenally weak stretch of client trading on everything from stocks to derivatives.

How is Goldman supposed to sustain nourishment as a tapeworm if their clients refuse to eat! Oh the humanity!

On CNBC they said that if only the big investment banks trade, then as a group they can't make money.

More clients! More tapeworm nourishment!

(And one wonders why I buy TIPS and I-Bonds directly from the government thereby avoiding the middlemen entirely.)