How And Why US Equity Prices Continue To Make Record Highs

For those still wondering what, how and why US equity prices continue to make record high after record high, consider the following:

"Here in Davos, where I write a bit after midnight, I’m sorry to say that much of the American business crowd has bought into Trump’s storyline that nothing matters more than another quarter of growth, even if we enjoy it on a scorching planet."

Therefore, a little advice to the prudently skeptical investor, citizen and worker: until there is a fundamental change from the defining economic theory that drives the global economy, namely neoliberalism, one should ignore the pontifications heard in Davos and elsewhere of stakeholder over shareholder values. For investors, it is always this: The game must be played within the rules that are set. And those rules operate within the neoliberalism framework. Therefore, to paraphrase Eric Hoffer in the "True Believer", change - real and lasting change - from shareholder to stakeholder values will occur only when a person of words and people of action appear. Until then, all else is noise.
 

Counting Humanity Down To A New Abnormal
The Doomsday Clock jumped forward to 100 seconds to midnight this week.
Edward Luce January 24 2020

The second from last time the Doomsday Clock was bought forward was in 2017 shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration. “Welcome to the new abnormal,” said Rachel Bronson, head of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, as the clock inched forward to two-and-a-half minutes to midnight. Their timing was obvious. America had just elected a president who mused openly about using nuclear weapons. He was also in the vanguard of a global backlash against science and expertise. It is one thing to rail against unelected bureaucrats. It is another to campaign against knowledge itself.

This week the clock jumped forward to 100 seconds to midnight — the closest humanity has been to arranging its own extinction by the Bulletin’s measure, which has been expanded to include the threat of global warming alongside nuclear apocalypse. “The world needs to wake up,” said Mary Robinson, Ireland’s former president and chair of the Elders, a group of former world leaders. “We face two simultaneous existential threats.” So here we are. Happy new era to Swamp Notes readers. Or something.

How seriously should we take this? The short answer is very. The longer one entails this intriguing caveat; the clock was born with faulty timing. It gave itself too limited room — or, to be exact, time — for manoeuvre. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 the first year (and hopefully the last) in which nuclear weapons were used. This year is the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1947, the Doomsday clock was launched at three minutes to midnight. It jumped to two minutes to midnight in 1953 after the Soviets and the Americans had tested thermonuclear weapons. It bounced up and down over the following decades.

Continue reading on the Financial Times.