I would hate to see a great company, Baker Hughes, swallowed up by a company once run by Richard Cheney. I hope the merger fails. I know business is business, but...

If we only knew how to expand the money supply without toxic lending. Seems like a shortage of bonds could impact the expansion of the money supply.

The Fed will only give us mild growth. If anything, the low long interest rates keep a cap on lending.

Pretty common for the tail wagging the dog these days. Now that we know that the Fed manipulates risk, and price of assets, according to BAC, we can see a whole lot of tails emerging.

Probably depends on the price of oil, since many of these junk bonds are used for collateral in oil exploration.

Good point about the service economy.

I never heard the US voicing disapproval of ally support of ISIS. We Americans have sold out to globalist support of ISIS.

Good question and an awesome article. Consider that wealth is created, not by savings, but by debt turned into gold. You don't need real gold if debt is gold. While it has always been done, it has never been done to the extent that it is now. Now, the clearing houses for the massive derivatives market needs gold, so debt being turned into gold is simply more valuable than ever. So, people are getting fabulously rich off of debt. That could mean the system can go on longer than we thought. If debt was just, well, debt, it would crumble. But it isn't just debt, it is gold.

So, the stock market is the focus of the article, but we know MBSs were mispriced as well, and the Gaussian Copula accepted by the central banks was flawed and I believe flawed on purpose. The idea that all mortgages could not go bad at the same time was a deliberate, premeditated lie. JMO.

I kind of disagree. I think the banks would lend more if payments to banks in the form of IOR were not made by the Fed. Standards would have had to be loosened. Clearly the banks are taking the money in order not to lend.