Indeed black Friday should be avoided not out of protest as much as out of 1) A way to avoid ridiculous holiday crowds 2) To avoid false extreme discount sales most of which are nothing more than regular sales prices if that 3) A way to prevent unnecessary purchases that shove your credit card debt up even more 4) To oppose absurd consumerism that is not focused on need or even long term wants as much as disposable garbage that you don't need. To that end, everyone should avoid this ridiculous ficticous event.

Insightful.

Oil weakness is a godsend for the Federal Reserve which will keep inflation at bay for a while enabling continued easy money policies. However, their actions have destroyed any hope of a solid recovery this upturn which is rapidly coming to an end. This will hit home when the end of the business cycle concludes and we are roughly in the same place that we were when they started this mess. That's what happens when you try replacing capitalism distinctly socialistic actions like QE, effective government takeover of the housing market and nationalized companies, state sanctioned and protected banking, and massive increases in costs to businesses which Obamacare is whether the government wants to call is something else or not.

Lower prices are not the terror people who don't understand capitalism say it is. In fact, deflation in moderation is just a fact of life for restarting and reforming economic systems to adapt to change and grow again. Why listen to the Fed and central bankers today rather than look at the decades of capitalism in the past. The reason capitalism is not fixing things today is due to the perversions they have introduced into the mix. Don't blame the patient for the disease, blame the germs that are multiplying in their system. Socialism isn't the answer, it's the disease.

The economic reality anyone can see who understands what's really going on is that the enrichment game of pumping virtually free money to banks is dependent on a economy that doesn't recover in order to keep rates low. In essence, the current QE and rest of the extraordinary anti-capitalist actions taken have created a class of beneficiaries who's interest lies in continued socialistic acts that further weakens the economy and destroys capitalism. This must stop. It is upsetting because those same forces use the failure of capitalism and market forces to justify more poison to keep their system which destroys any hope of a capitalistic solution from arising.

If Japan is so bad off why is the US copying it? I tend to agree, giving money/liquidity to those who don't earn it encourages bad behavior, pushes up asset prices, and increases their debt load. One can't simply do anything magical with the economy without repercussions. Sadly Japan and now the US, have fostered even bigger TBTF banks dependent on a flat economy and low interest rates on top of free QE money.

This is nothing but socialism for the banks and it leads to bad behavior and eventual ruin just like always.

I also agree that the bull is getting very long in the tail and is probably set to drop early next year. Of course, it depends on whether governments do something to prolong the upturn at the cost of an even worse downturn later. For the long term viability of the market, I hope they don't. As it stands, the next downturn will likely be bad as asset prices seem way out of balance from the economy already.

Yay, coordination probably means that their economies will all pop spectacularly at the same time. In general we all know why this is dumb, dumb, dumb. It's because such global economic asset based pops are much worse than regional downturns.

I agree that fundamentals and stock prices seem out of whack. They have been like this for several years thanks to the central bank pumping up assets and not the economy. How long they will do this before another downturn will determine how bad off we are when the downturn comes. Of course, once again like under Greenspan the central bank keeps on believing it can prevent a downturn. Really? Do they even read economics books?

Abenomics is just the end game for the QE games they have been playing for decades. It is the beginning of failure because the QE is too big and unsustainable. Also, it only temporarily affects the economy with long term problems. As for lower birth rates etc. this is also partially caused by QE's long desolation of Japan's economy which has stuck it in a zombie mode for decades.

Regarding peacefulness, this is one of Japan's saving graces.