It doesn't take much thinking to see that the International stage is going to hell in a hand basket as Iran builds nukes, terrorist cells take over portions of countries, Russia cedes portions of other countries without any meaningful restriction or response, N. Korea blissfully threatens to nuke the US and launches cyber war on us without response, and no one can sell the oil on their fleet of boats trawling the Atlantic looking for a port.

As the Democrats should put it, thank goodness the Federal Reserve is funding TBTF banks to keep the stock market up by buying up just about everything and putting the risk of gambling on the American public if anything should go wrong. As the wicked witch stated... What a world. What a world.

What's there to worry about, at this rate all stocks and bonds will be synthetically priced and owned by the Federal Reserve and TBTF banks who are the only ones who can buy more and more of it for virtually free money and take no risk because they get bailouts by taxpayers if their bets go wrong. It gives them not just a clearly unfair advantage buying anything, but makes it equitable to make everything they buy incur too much risk for anyone else to buy it. Sadly when it collapses they will get bailed out so they will be the only ones to buy up those dumb enough to compete with them on the price.

This is not a capitalist model and benefits those buying assets for the time being. Inevitably it reduces most everyone to socialist paupers dependent on the state and unable to advance themselves in a vary biased, unfair, socialist system.

Funny how things work. As long as the Federal Reserve keeps pumping pretty much free money into banks and getting them to gamble with it, there will be little they don't invest in until they own just about everything. Already they have increased their size in the market and are pretty much pushing real investors out, not that its a bad thing for investors who see the hyper inflated bubble in stocks that earnings can't support.

When you introduce loads of virtually free money and tell people you must invest in the market to keep getting it, you have replaced the market and capitalism with a command control model that inevitably ruins everything. The Federal Reserve should start reading Carl Marx because capitalism can't help them with their ridiculous system.

It's nice to see that people are finally realizing the health risks of drinking diet sodas (all diet sodas not just diet coke). Recent reports are indicating diet drinks actually add girth to fat people and also cause hypertension and a host of health problems. Sugary sodas are bad enough. I look forward to seeing the diet soda market crash on its overhyped pseudoscience laurels. Drinking this concoction of chemicals is pure badness.

As for Coke vs. Pepsi, Coke is a pure play yet Pepsi has grown in other areas eclipsing Coke in valuation growth. Both have distinct values, but I would tend to rank Pepsi as riskier given its exposure to the whole foods sector, especially the discretionary snack sector.

Sadly, even the growth in balance sheet leverage and stock buybacks can't justify stock price rises anymore. The sad simple explanation for the rise is due to TBTF banks and financial institutions plunging more and more cheap Federal Reserve funding into the market at the central banks direction thereby artificially raising prices and driving out investors. Sadly, rather than the Federal Reserve discouraging gambling and taking risk that endangers the financial market, they are encouraging TBTF banks to do the opposite and knows this puts citizens money at risk.

Sadly the central bank must think it benefits from ruining the economy since this is the way it gets more QE and power, which it seems to use to make more catastrophic collapses. We will see their work come to fruition in the next cataclysmic downturn they are fabricating now.

Good article and quite correct. Strangely enough there is more gold under the ocean than was ever mined and the only reason it isn't mined is because there is still enough to mine cheaply on the surface. And sadly, demand for gold as investment has been subsumed by the desire for paper gold that has grows well in excess of real gold production. As paper gold continues to replace real gold investment demand, gold itself will continue to languish simply because no one wants to call the bluff that those writing contracts never intend or have capability to deliver gold and those holding the paper are holding fools gold at best and only are praying those writing the contracts have money to cover the contracts because they'll never deliver the gold in such contracts.

As for real uses of gold, demand will likely increase as we advance to space and make the environment more toxic where gold can be used to prevent corrosion. However, this is a discussion for future generations.

It is funny for people to call the last downturn a black swan. It was more like an orchestrated implosion after purposeful deceit at hiding market indicators by the Federal Reserve and through socialist housing policies that blindsided investors and saddled people with huge debt for assets at artificial prices.

The final blast by not defending financial institutions that were encouraged to gamble was as obvious as blowing a hole in a ship's hull and expecting the ship to go down.

The future big implosion will be more of the same. One can't call the result of concerted and obvious market manipulation that is designed to distort the market and encourage mass gambling and asset bubbles a black swan. It is merely the result of evil policies purposely designed to eventually destroy the market in order for the few to benefit from abnormal government or federal reserve policies or monetary transactions that distort the proper functioning of capitalism. One should call them black heart events and do away with the magical mystery surrounding the obvious results of failed policies.

Corporations aren't the only ones meddling in politics, much bigger is the meddling of unions and banks, both which give monetary wealth to Democrats. Why not be honest and admit your bias against business is due to your dislike of Republicans. If you want to make a statement about those that want ill of the union in order to gain for themselves these seem a much better vindication of ire than big business. And even worse are those who work for government and will action that enrich themselves at the direct cost of American's pocketbook. Indeed, I think most would be happy if organized labor, big business, banks, and bureaucrats could not donate or influence elections or government politics at all.

Of course the likelihood of this happening are 0, so proposing the abolition of one without dealing with the others because their aims are not in the whole public's interest, is to bolster the position of those who will shift profit and power to the remaining interests who can thrive off of the people. The simple fact is, none of these would have sway if people themselves aren't easily corrupted by self interest. Thus the issue of politicians themselves being corrupted can also be discussed. There is plenty of blame everywhere for corrupt government, much of which is worse than your claimed corporate greed. Look at Russia, Putin is against corporations because it is so much easier to control a socialist system based on government money creation, government bureaucrats, and communist leaders. Is this what you want in America? Destroy American business and capitalism and you might as well move to the USSR, because democracy and freedom will follow it into the grave.

A hallmark of a nasty crash is slow International trade.

Tyler is right that the issue on oil is the lack of growing demand to keep up with the production. It will get worse.

Good article. Economic moats are often talked about but seldom exist to the degree people put on them. Still, they are an important factor to consider if you can find one that isn't already priced into the stock.