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Your Future Is At Stake…Get Informed, Focused, and Prepared. The Time of Reckoning Has Commenced!
Dear Reader,
The ballgame is changing. And fast!
Both Wall Street and Washington went off the deep end during the 2020-2021 pandemic period—spending, borrowing, printing, and speculating like never before in history.
But the nation’s financial bacchanalia is now over. The time of reckoning has commenced.
That we are now reaping the whirlwind should not be surprising. Just recall the staggering magnitudes of the fiscal and monetary madness that erupted during the 12 months after March 2020.
On the fiscal front, Congress enacted $6 trillion of Covid-Lockdown bailouts and stimmies virtually sight unseen. That figure was 7.5X the actual $800 billion loss of GDP during the same period. It was also equivalent to $49,000 for every single household in America.
Likewise, the Fed’s balance sheet soared from an already bloated $3.8 trillion in the fall of 2019 to a peak of $9.0 trillion a few months ago.
Yet, how do you even comprehend that $5.2 trillion of central bank balance sheet expansion? After all, what it actually measures is the cumulative gobs of new fiat credits being printed day-in-and-day-out.
106 Years of Money-Printing Replicated In Mere Months…
Still, here’s one powerful metric that our mad-money pumpers in Washington surely didn’t notice as they ran the Fed’s printing presses red hot. To wit, the Fed’s balance sheet crossed the $5.2 trillion mark for the very first time in history on March 25, 2020.
That’s right. It took the Fed 106 years from the day it opened its doors for business in 1914 to reach the $5.2 trillion mark. And then it nearly replicated that figure in a matter of months.
Inflation should be no shock to anyone!
Is it any wonder, then, that we have had rampant inflation? That is massive bubbles in the stock, bond, real estate, crypto, and other risk asset markets, followed by the highest consumer inflation rates in 40 years.
And that these inflationary forces have now become deeply embedded in the economy, with unit labor costs up nearly 16% in the last four years. That’s the highest rate of gain since the early 1980s.
Needless to say, this is what happens when you monetize nearly 100% of Washington’s explosion of borrowing and spending. But the laws of sound money, fiscal rectitude, and economic gravity can’t be defied indefinitely.
50 years of experience is ready to guide you through this mess…
Inside the Contra Corner newsletter, we dissect the headlines and hot spots of the day from a fiercely independent vantage point based on 50 years of experience on both ends of the Acela Corridor: As a US Congressman, President Reagan’s budget director, Wall Street investment banker, original partner of the Blackstone Group, private equity investor and best-selling author.
1/30/1981 President Reagan and David Stockman meeting on the economy in the Oval Office
It was always ordained, therefore, that there would be a time of painful reckoning. And that time has now arrived.
Accordingly, it is more urgent than ever before to get informed, focused, and prepared.
That’s the mission of David Stockman’s Contra Corner.
Introducing David Stockman’s Contra Corner
Five days per week, we provide facts, charts, history, analysis, assessments, and warnings about the madness at loose on both ends of the Acela Corridor connecting Washington and New York.
We don’t buy the mainstream narrative about almost everything. We think the US economy is weak and debt-ridden, not awesome, and that the Fed is destructive, not beneficent.
As Low As $1 Per Day To Maintain Your Sanity
Likewise, we put little credence in the related stories about stocks that never go down or correct. We also dispute the COVID lockdowns & Mandates, the Forever Wars, the Climate Crisis, the Woke Awakening, and the rest of the Fake Narrative promulgated by the liberal elites.
Stockman’s vision in creating David Stockman’s Contra Corner was that it would be “the place where mainstream delusions and cant about the Warfare State, the Bailout State, Bubble Finance and Beltway Banditry are ripped, refuted and rebuked.”
Toward that aim, Stockman also assembles other contrarian thinkers on politics, the economy, and the financial markets in the Recommended Reads section, in addition to featuring his own analysis and musings about the current state of the world in Stockman’s Corner.
Here’s how the new and improved Contra Corner will work…
David will post his best take on salient developments five days per week (save for occasional travel or brief vacations). Each missive will aim to rip, refute, and rebuke the false mainstream narratives about a whole range of topics.
These topics will include the Wall Street Casino, Bubble Stocks like Tesla, the Global Central Bankers’ cartel, the worldwide credit bubble and its deflationary aftermath, Imperial Washington’s foreign policy follies and the rip-offs, bailouts, and racketeering escapades of the nation’s beltway politicians, apparatchiks and plain old bandits.
And most especially, the nation’s soaring public debt,, which is now at $34 trillion but heading to $50 trillion by the end of the decade and $100 trillion well before mid-century.
Similarly, we take with a grain of salt the phony bickering among the bipartisan duopoly on Capitol Hill. Both sides are overwhelmingly in the business of perpetuating their tenure in office and assiduously milking the Washington gravy train of lobbies, PACs, and organized racketeering to do so.
Protecting personal liberty is our top priority…
Instead, we dissect the headlines and hot spots of the day from a fiercely independent vantage point based on 50 years of experience on both ends of the Acela Corridor: As a US Congressman, President Reagan’s budget director, Wall Street investment banker, original partner of the Blackstone Group, private equity investor and best-selling author.
Unlike the MSM megaphones and groupthink transmitters, we have a filter.
It’s rooted in a firm belief in personal liberty, free market capitalism, sound money, non-intervention abroad, and very limited-scope, constitutionally- shackled government at home.
When the current headlines, incoming data, longer-term trends, and relevant history are strained through these filters, you get an unvarnished picture of reality that the mainstream media and partisan hucksters from both sides of the aisle do their level best to bury.
…….read more below or Start Your Subscription Here
So Buckle-Up Real Tight!
Unprecedented Political and Financial Shocks, Spills, and Booby-Traps Lie Dead Ahead.
America’s Decades-Long Folly Has Reached the Breaking Point Owing To—
• Massive Fed Money-Printing;
• Reckless Borrowing by Government, Business and Households alike;
• Unhinged Wall Street Leverage, Speculation and Financial Engineering;
• Corrupt Bipartisan Racketeering and Incumbency Protection Schemes in Washington;
Covid-19 Was Just the Pin That Shattered the Financial Fantasy and Initially Sent 70 Million Americans Streaming to the Unemployment Offices.
At the Same Time, the Resulting Discombobulated “Mail-In” Election Shattered What Remained Of a Functioning Government In Washington.
The Blame Has Many Financial Authors—
•Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, Powell…. Plus legions of Wall Street Cheerleaders and Keynesian Economists. All Have Fueled The Folly Of Rampant Monetary Stimulus
•It Also Includes a Long-String of Elected Politicians Who Recklessly Courted Disaster—The Bush’s, Clinton, Obama, Trump, Pelosi, Schumer
And Now, After 47 Years On the Public Teat, Sleepy Joe Biden, Too
The Desperate Money-Pumping by the Fed and Fiscal Incontinence of the Politicians Fueled False Prosperity on Main Street and Rampant Speculation and Immense Financial Bubbles on Wall Street.
It Also Generated Hideous Windfalls to the 1.0%, 0.1%, and Billionaires Who Own Nearly 90% of the Stock—Even As Real Wages and Living Standards Stagnated In Flyover America
And we do mean stagnate. The inflation-adjusted hourly wage rate for manufacturing workers is no higher today than it was back in 1970 when Joe Biden abandoned his ballyhooed working-class roots and first got elected to the public payroll instead.
The fiscal and monetary excesses of recent years were bad enough, but then Wanna Be Medical Dictators, Hysterical Media, and Power Hungry Politicians concocted Lockdown & Mandate Nation…..Sending the US Economy into the Tank, and middle-class living standards are plummeting yet again.
Like Always, Main Street Has Been Left High & Dry, Ensnared In the Lies, Scams, and Self-Serving Mendacity of the Washington-Wall Street Axis
But Contra Corner’s Got You Covered
We give the Fools & Clowns who pretend to rule us no quarter
We Lay Out the Evidence and issue the indictments Exactly Five Days Per Week…
And For As Low As $1 Per Day!
Your framework for interpreting and assessing the flow of everything thrown at us!
Perspective, Perspective, Perspective!
That’s what Contra Corner provides. A framework for interpreting and assessing the flow of mainstream events and news, which are usually not what they are cracked up to be.
That’s because they are rooted in a poisonous foundation of easy money, cheap debt, sweeping financialization, and unbridled speculation that has been injected into the American economy by the Fed and Washington politicians over the last three decades.
This has—
Turned Wall Street into a dangerous gambling casino that has siphoned trillions of cash from corporate America to fund stock buybacks, M&A deals, and other forms of unproductive financial engineering
At the same time, it has left Main Street buried under $92 trillion of public and private debts and faltering investment in growth and productivity
The result was a society addicted to the hand-to-mouth economics of spending more than you earn
It has also left the American economy exceedingly vulnerable to external shocks like the thundering blow of Lockdown Nation and now the virtual partisan civil war brought on by a divided Congress and executive branch in thrall to its Dem interest group pay-masters.
America is dangerously fragile economically…
America’s dangerous economic fragility stems in part from the fact that—
80% of households have no appreciable liquid savings or rainy-day funds
Businesses have piled their balance sheets sky-high with debt and artificially extended their supply chains to the four corners of the earth in order to goose short-run profits and share prices—the risks be damned.
So, both a renewed financial and economic crisis and an abrupt change of course lie dead ahead.
The 30-year party of False Prosperity is over!
The 2020s will be a decade when the chickens come home to roost.
As the next two years unfold, they may occasionally oxygenate and prop up Sleepy Joe in front of the Oval Office teleprompter to talk about unity and hope. But the Kamala Harris/Progressive Left Regency will only massively exacerbate the crisis with a tsunami of new spending, borrowing, regulating, taxing, and Nanny State meddling.
And if you overlay on all that a renewed Biden-promised burst of unconstitutional assaults on personal liberty, private property, and business enterprise—then the limits of kicking the cans of delay and denial down the road to tomorrow will be reached.
Indeed, America’s economic and political fantasies will soon be overtaken and crushed by its accumulated due bills.
Bubbles will burst.
Speculators will get carried out on their shields.
Easy money and wealth will evaporate.
So that’s why you need to get prepared now. And one good way to start is with a subscription to David Stockman’s Contra Corner.
Get Started For As Low As $1 Per Day
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