The thing about the naysayers and doomsday predictors is that their narratives always change. Every time their dire forecasts don't pan out, they change their story as if to say, "just wait a little longer" or, "this was what we were waiting for, the missing piece of the picture, NOW it's really going to happen." Of course it never does, so the narrative changes again and their large contingent of "sheeple" follow obediently behind.
The most recent narrative involves the dollar. You may recall going back to 2008 and 2009, when the Fed started to engage in all those extraordinary monetary measures and the Federal Government did that $787 billion stimulus (which was really quite small), there were the warnings of inflation and hyperinflation and how the dollar was going to crash, which would send stocks and the economy tumbling into the abyss as foreigners dumped dollar assets.
Never happened.
So they turned their attention instead to the credit rating of the U.S. and oh, if that ever got lowered, watch out, it would be the end of the Treasury market. Yields would soar as investors "demanded" higher interest in exchange for "financing" a much riskier U.S. government. The U.S. credit rating was cut, and yields plummeted to record lows.
Even before that one, we got this: The world was running out of oil; it would only be a matter of time before the price spikes to $200 per barrel or beyond, and industrial economies would come grinding to a halt. Instead, oil is at $50 and it's so damn abundant that we're at the point now where there's not even any place to put it.
Let's not forget, all along, how we must buy gold. Gold is the only real currency, we were told. We gotta buy gold to hedge against inflation. (But there's no inflation.) We gotta buy gold to hedge against deflation. (There's no gold price rally.) Buy gold because it rises with a strong dollar. (I kid you not.)
Speaking of the dollar, there's the current narrative about how the dollar is going to lose its reserve status and that will be the end of America's "lucky and privileged" situation of having a "captured" Rest of the World "forced" to finance our profligate ways (so much wrong here that it's not even funny).
Huh...what's that? Global accumulation of dollar reserves at record levels? Yup.
You'd think they'd be running out of narratives by now, but no...here's another one that has popped up recently:
The strong dollar will hit earnings, and that will cause a huge correction in the stock market. The rally's unsustainable and about to fall off a cliff, said the naysayers as Nasdaq climbed to a new, all-time record high. (Weren't they all worried about a dollar collapse? So you mean to tell me that when the dollar rallies they're worried about that, too? Is it just me or is something seriously wrong here?)
Today I am actually seeing a new, flip-flop on this dollar meme. Some are now saying that the strong dollar is the sole reason that the global economy has not crashed (wait...what?) and if the dollar's strength subsides, everything will come crashing down. My head is spinning.
You see what I am getting at?
Step back for a second. Listen to these quacks and their changing story lines. They all have two things in common: massive contradictions and a burning desire to scare you. Not to be right, but to scare you. There is nothing rational or factual or intelligent about anything they say; it's all just fear mongering.
Maybe one day the fear mongers will just go away, crawl under a rock somewhere. Maybe they'll stop with their nonsense. I guess I'm dreaming of course, because that will never happen; there's just too much money involved for them to stop peddling their junk.
The good news is, you don't have to be their customer.
