Time to Abandon the Bubble System and Embrace the Infrastructure Development Paradigm

The Greatest Bubble Ever: Why You Better Believe It – Part 1 –Stockman/Zero Hedge
“During the 40 months after Alan Greenspan’s infamous ‘irrational exuberance’ speech in December 1996, the NASDAQ 100 index rose from 830 to 4585 or by 450%. But the perma-bulls said not to worry: This time is different — it’s a new age of technology miracles that will change the laws of finance forever. It wasn’t. The market cracked in April 2000 and did not stop plunging until the NASDAQ 100 index hit 815 in early October 2002. During those heart-stopping 30 months of free-fall, all the gains of the tech boom were wiped out in an 84% collapse of the index. Likewise, the second Greenspan housing and credit boom generated a similar round trip of bubble inflation and collapse….And this time was also held to be different because, purportedly, the art of central banking had been perfected in what Bernanke was pleased to call the ‘Great Moderation’….Wrong again! Now has come the greatest central bank fueled bubble ever. During nine years of radical monetary experimentation under ZIRP and QE, the value of equities owned by US households exploded still higher — this time by $12.5 trillion….Nevertheless, this time is, actually, very different. This time the central banks are out of dry powder and belatedly recognize that they have stranded themselves on or near the zero bound where they are saddled with massively bloated balance sheets. This time is also very different because there will be no instant financial market reflation by the central banks. And that means, in turn, that there will be no fourth great bubble, either. Here’s why. In the first instance, the market is not merely complacent; it is insouciant (indifferent) — indulging in an eye-wide-shut orgy of recklessness that truly has no parallel, not even the mania of 1927-1929….In all, we’d say Wall Street is calling the sheep to the final slaughter. At the moment, in fact, the bleating is so loud that the gamblers are seriously debating whether the 50X gain in bitcoin in just 22 months is sustainable. But that’s surely derangement at Tulip Mania scale, as we will further consider in Part 2.”