Toxic wife and Toxic Assets: When the Money Goes get Ready for Divorce.
Leave it to the sense and sensibility of the United Kingdom to talk about the gold-digging wives that are now leaving their high income husbands for greener pastures. This isn’t an uncommon thing. We have witnessed high profile celebrities and athletes fall from grace only to see their “loved one” depart once things got bad. That for better or for worse simply reflected the better aspect of life. At the same time, many of these high powered men knew exactly what they were getting into when they married. Let us take a look at a wonderful article in the Telegraph discussing this new emerging phenomenon:
$50 Trillion in Global Wealth Gone in 1 Year: Examining the Financial Markets of the World.
Even after the historic stock market rally, global markets have lost $50 trillion in wealth over one year. I think people still haven’t come to terms or grasp the magnitude of wealth destruction we have just lived through. Sure, we can flip out about the $200 billion the U.S. Treasury injected into consumer debt markets so people can go out and jump on the consumption treadmill on Black Friday but that is a drop in the bucket compared to the wealth destruction we just went through. And future indicators point to further market distress.
Citigroup Analyst Predicts $2,000 an Ounce Gold in next 2 Years: Another Stupid Move by U.S. Government Where we Should Have Invested the Bailout Money in Gold Bars.
So what do we get for our massive bailout of Citigroup?  How about an ominous warning that global markets will collapse or we will face massive inflation.  Either way, the suggestion from one analyst at Citi is gold will go to $2,000 in the next 2 years. We just backstopped $306 billion in toxic mortgages from Citi and this is what we get?
Dow up 1,174 Points in 4 Days: A Gain of 15.5%. Last Time we Had a 4 Day Gain this Big? August of 1932.
We have seen an unprecedented 4-day rally in the stock market.  This is rather astounding given the parade of bad news. New home sales hit half century lows. Consumer spending has fallen to lows not seen since 2001.  Unemployment claims are running at multi-decade lows.