"Are We There Yet?"
by Bill Bonner
"That which does not kill you makes you stronger."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Youghal, Ireland - "The Financial Times reports: "UK start-up seeks to reverse aging with drug aimed at blocking cell death. LinkGevity plans global trial targeting kidney damage in first step to reversing necrosis."
Now, there’s a cause we can get behind! Not since Jesus Christ has there been the promise of everlasting life. And LinkGevity is promising not just to slowthe ageing process...but to reverse it. Where do we sign up? And please stop the reversal when we get back to age 18 or so...no need to go through pimples and puberty once again. But what would it mean? If we could stop death...what couldn’t we stop?
The geniuses who run public policies have been trying to stop bear markets, crashes, unemployment and recessions for many years. Not much success so far. Like Smokey the Bear, who snuffs out forest fires, they can delay corrections by easing credit. But people use the low rates to go deeper into debt...the dry tinder piles up on the forest floor and makes the inevitable conflagrations even worse.
And today, the things the feds are trying to stop grow closer. Fortune: "America saw ‘essentially no job growth’ last month, warns Moody’s, and any roles added were in three wealthy states. And if you live in Wyoming, Montana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Kansas, Massachusetts, Washington, Georgia, New Hampshire, Maryland, Rhode Island, Illinois, Delaware, Virginia, Oregon, Connecticut, South Dakota, New Jersey, Maine, lowa, West Virginia, District of Columbia...you’re probably already in a recession."
Here’s Newsweek: "According to (Mark) Zandi’s analysis, 21 states and the District of Columbia are currently either in a recession or at high risk of entering one. Zandi categorizes 13 state economies as “treading water,” and 16 as growing.
Unnatural things, such as internal combustion engines, get no benefit from setbacks. A motor is intended to function in a certain way under certain conditions. Drain away the oil...cut the ignition cables...twist the tie rods - almost anything that is out of line with the user’s manual will cause dysfunction.
But natural things - living things - are different. They need curve balls, challenges, and corrections to grow...to learn...to triumph. Businesses learn from their Edsels and Cybertrucks. An investor who has lost money on Pets.com may be reluctant to buy Palantir. And interest rates - which the feds try to keep as low as possible - need to rise to flush out bad bets.
Even death has its purpose. How else to get rid of geezers and make room for the next generation?
Patterns. Patterns. Patterns. Patterns within patterns. Patterns coinciding with other patterns. Patterns that seem to off-set each other. Life...death. Boom...bust. Success...failure. We are all part of these patterns, not the architects or controllers of them. When a child is born, you might as well alert the funeral parlor. There is no doubt where this will lead - to lilies and the grave. It doesn’t matter what we think or what we want. We get what the pattern gives us, not what we want.
Few investors want to see their favorite bubble stocks collapse. But that is what they do. In a well-documented pattern, bubbles always deflate. Yes, of course there are always good ‘reasons’ why the bubble will not deflate. ‘AI will bring unparalleled progress.’ ‘Tariffs will pay off the national debt.’ ‘All that money on the sidelines will soon go into the stock market.’ Even bad news can give us reasons for believing in greater stock market glory. ‘Investors are going to buy stocks to protect themselves from inflation!’
All of these things are part of the pattern. A bubble draws in investors...hoping to get rich. More and more ‘reasons’ are found to believe in it. Prices go higher; Palantir sells, not just for one-times sales...but 110 times. And then...the bubble pops. Where are we now? Our guess: very near the top. We’ll see."
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