Here's my January 2018 blog post, "Larry Kudlow's Wishful Thinking," (unedited, of course) where I predicted the recession the bond market is now predicting. Sorry I predicted it 17 months ago, I tend to be early on these things.
"We're the hottest economy in the world."
-Larry Kudlow, President Trump's Economic Advisor, and former CNBC host
Here's the March 8th, 2019 CNBC news clip that quote above came from. Two weeks ago. Hmmmm... maybe Larry Kudlow is wrong. You know, like he was in 2008 when he said the economy was fine.
By the way, in May of 2018, I had a bunch of guys, in the city I lived in then, come out into the woods, stomp around the tent I lived in, and tell me they were going to beat the fuck out of me with baseball bats. Why? Partly because I was a homeless guy blogging about the idea that there was a serious recession coming. Ultimately, they left and didn't beat me up, as a storm was rolling in. Now the U.S. Bond Market agrees with me.
Oh yeah, if I happened to own rental properties in a college town or city right now, I'd sell the sucker QUICK. But that's just me, and should not be construed as financial advice.
You read that right, December 2018 is shaping up (or maybe slimming down?) to be the worst December for the stock market since 1931. You know1931, back during The Great Depression, when your grandpa used to walk four miles to school each day, barefoot, on his hands in knee deep snow, up hill... both ways. The major stock indexes, (Dow Jones Industrial, Nasdaq, S&P 500, and Russell 2000) have all dropped considerably since this video was shot.... three days ago. This guy in the hoodie is young, I'm not familiar with him, but he's a serious stock trader judging by his talk, and his YouTube channel has nearly a quarter million subscribers. So he's not just another yahoo talking smack, a lot of people listen to him. The point is, the stock market is getting pummeled right now, at a historic level.
I wrote a blog post on January 2nd, 2018, a day after the 2017 tax cut bill went into effect. The tax cut was a huge windfall for major corporations and ultra rich individuals. That windfall, according to President Trump's economic advisor Larry Kudlow, was supposed to create a great investment boom in the U.S. in 2018. Instead, it mostly led to large corporations buying back a whole bunch of their own stock.
Here's a paragraph I wrote in that post on January 2nd, 2018, when every official person in economic and big business circles seemed ready for stocks and the economy to soar, even higher, for many years to come:
"I see the stock market going a bit higher, while most of the mid-sized cities, small towns, and rural areas, most of America, continues to struggle. We may even see the stock market go up as most of the country slides into a recession in a few months. Something, maybe Trump's looming impeachment and leaving office (and Pence might get the boot, too), will trigger a collapse like 2008. Except this time it's $1.4 trillion in student loan debt that will turn into an anchor on global markets."
Now, President Trump is still in office, but several of his closest advisors have plead guilty to serious crimes, and the president himself currently has 17 investigations looking into him and his affairs. In January, a Democratic led House takes over, which makes impeachment a serious possibility. Also the student debt has not imploded. Yet. It was the tariffs and potential trade war with China that seemed to tip the financial house of cards. There have been more articles and talk about student debt recently in the financial media it seems. The complete mentality of the financial markets has changed in the last 2-2 1/2 months. Everything I mentioned is being discussed now. Time will tell how it all plays out. Most important, the serious stock market drop has opened up the conversation about whether we're heading into a recession. I say we are. Again, time will tell.
Here's another post I wrote on September 22, 2017. It goes into some of the big, underlying issues with jobs, as we continue to transition from the Industrial Age into the Information Age. These issues, brought up in th e2013 TED Talk in the post, are still largely unaddressed by our society. That's not good. "The crazy future of the work world"
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DIJA) was at 24,824 on January 2, 2018. It got up to 26,828 on October 3, 2018. As I write this post, about 2:25 pm on December 20, 2018, the DIJA is at 22,791. It's down more than 500 points today alone, down more than 2,000 points from January 2, 2018 and down more than 4,000 points ( over 15% down) from it's peak in October. The Russell 2000 average is down about 20% since its peak. The Nasdaq hit the "down 20%" point today. The S&P 500 is down over 16%. In Wall Street speak, the Russell and the Nasdaq are now in "Bear Market territory" (-20% or more) and the Dow and the S&P are well into "Correction territory,"(-10% or more).
If you listen to the clip of presidential economic advisor Larry Kudlow in that Jan 2 post, you'll hear him say that he expects President Trump to win on the DACA issue, to have major economic growth in 2018, to get his Mexican border wall construction going soon, to start a TRILLION DOLLAR infrastructure rebuilding plan, and then Larry says he expects the Republicans to do well in the 2018 midterm elections. So, the esteemed Larry Kudlow was basically completely wrong on his predictions at the beginning of 2018. To be clear, I don't think Larry is stupid. I think he was just lying. That's his job. Sell the public on ideas that help the ultra-rich get ultra richer. He was doing his job. If we realize he's doing his job, and that job is not to help YOUR best interests, then you know to take what he says with a grain of salt. Or maybe the whole salt shaker.
Meanwhile, I was the homeless artist/blogger that was living in a tent in the woods of Winston-Salem, North Carolina at the time I wrote that post. I expected stocks to rise for a while, but then the underlying issues would drag things down and we'd head into a serious recession. We are in a MAJOR stock market correction, and I believe this is the lead into the recession I expected.
Here's my prediction today, December 20th, 2018:
We will see the Dow Jones Industrial Average near or below the 18,000 point mark, long before we see Dow 25,000 again. The other averages I expect to drop a similar percentage. This could take 6 to 8 months, but it could happen much sooner.
I wrote this post, and many others like it, because what's happening now, and will happen throughout 2019, is simply inevitable. The financial world is completely manipulated and disjointed at this point, so figuring out the timing of when things would head down was harder than in previous recessions. I was early on my prediction. I expected the markets to drop big time in the late spring, and it happened in the fall.
This will probably "officially" be called a recession next summer or early fall. We are always several months into a recession by the time the data proves it's "officially" a recession. Student loan debt will be the big debt bomb this time around. Keep an eye on that. It won't be too hard. That term will be all you hear in the media at some point.
I realize this is a huge bummer right before Christmas, or whatever holidays you celebrate. Sorry about that. Don't freak out. Have a good time, buy some presents, do your normal holiday thing. Just don't go on a crazy buying spree. Don't rack up a ton of credit card debt buying presents. Keep it reasonable. Next year is going to present a bunch of serious challenges on a bunch of levels. But there will also be a lot of opportunities, as well.
Enjoy your holidays, and then get ready to buckle down for a bit s serious work.
President Trump named former CNBC host and news anchor Larry Kudlow as his Economic Advisor about a week ago. Here's Larry Kudlow (clip above) during the 2008 crash saying that Congress forced banks to make the risky subprime loans to poor people. Those loans were then sold, bundled into big investments called Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO's) and sold to investors all over the world. Most of the investors didn't really understand what they were buying. But CDO's made a buttload of money for big banks and financiers. So those big banks needed more and more loans to keep making CDO's to sell. So they started buying sketchier and sketchier home loans. So local banks made sketchier and sketchier loans, because they, too were making tons of money selling those loans. Greed fed the whole thing, which turned into a crazy feedback loop. Larry Kudlow knew this damn well, but his job, in the height (or depth, more precisely) of the 2008 economic collapse, was to shift blame away from Wall Street and the big banks, and blame Congress and poor people who got home loans they couldn't really afford.
Over the last ten years, there have been a relatively small number of subprime mortgage loans made. That's because laws were passed to prevent this from happening again. But, what has been happening is that $1.3 to $1.5 TRILLION in student loans have been made to students, many of whom can't pay those loans back. Those student loans have been sold, bundled into investments called SLABS (Student Loan Asset Backed Securities, just like the CDO's of a decade ago), and a whole new financial house of cards has been built. And it will collapse soon. It could happen any time. Maybe tomorrow. More likely a week, a month, or maybe 3 or 4 months from now. But it's getting close to that point. And when it happens, Larry Kudlow, now Trump's Chief Economic Advisor, will blame Congress and average college students for this collapse. Just watch. He's basically got the same job to do a decade later.
Meanwhile, big banks, student loan lenders, and colleges and universities themselves have made huge fortunes from all these student loans that never should have been made. When it collapses, it will be 2008 all over again, and likely even worse. And all of us average people will get screwed again. Hard. And they're not even going to spit first. It will be tough economic times coming at a time when many parts of the U.S. have never rebuilt from the last collapse.
Confused? Good. You're supposed to be confused. So here's Margot Robbie in the bubble bath scene from The Big Short movie to help explain it. (NSFW) Just replace the word "subprime" with "student loans," and you've got the idea of what's about to happen to our economy. Except this time, there are a whole bunch of us who've seen this show before, and know what's about to happen. And now you know.
CNBC advisor, and former news hour anchor, Larry Kudlow says we're at the beginning of a huge economic boom thanks largely to the new Tax Cuts just passed. I disagree. Of course, he's a longtime financial journalist, and I'm a bum. But I'm a bum who remembers the 80's, when we tried the whole "supply side economics/trickle down" thing. Spoiler Alert: The money you're told will trickle down will actually gush up.
We also were in a completely different world technologically and financially in the 1980's. The recent Tax Bill, is really just a massive corporate welfare plan for the industries that don't have what it takes to compete in today's high tech world. It's a last ditch effort to rig the game in favor of Industrial Age companies who can't hang on a level playing field.
I see the stock market going a bit higher, while most of the mid-sized cities, small towns, and rural areas, most of America, continues to struggle. We may even see the stock market go up as most of the country slides into a recession in a few months. Something, maybe Trump's looming impeachment and leaving office (and Pence might get the boot, too), will trigger a collapse much like 2008. Except this time it's the $1.4 trillion in student loan debt that will turn into an anchor on global markets.
So who are you going to believe? The Republican financial news hero, or the bum? I'm posting this clip mostly because I know I'll be able to refer back to it in a few months when Larry is saying something quite different and the world looks even crazier than it does today.
The one point I do agree with is that the GOP will now target programs like food stamps and Social Security Disability, because killing "entitlement" programs is needed to fund their huge corporate tax cuts they just passed. "Starve the beast," as they say.
You know what's funny, though? Most of the disability scammers are in diehard Trump voting districts. Buckle up. It's going to be a bumpy (but exciting) ride this year.
