I agree, the Fed has been playing the stock market and encouraging banks and others to buy it. Sadly, something takes precedence to this metric, inflation. Although they said they want inflation, it is just a lie to give an excuse as to why there is no growth. Inflationary growth is not growth, it's just monetary games. As inflation now gets underway with little growth, the Federal Reserve must turn to shut it down before people realize how much worse no growth with inflation is and how the Federal Reserve is enriching banks. It becomes all to clear the monetary transfer when growth is near zero, inflation is at 2% or higher, and banks are munching on zirp money until the middle class and elderly go broke.

The Fed says there is no cost to free liquidity, bull puckey. It's bad enough that it has denied people decent returns on capital. With inflation, it steals value from your pocket daily.

Sadly sanity is coming too late and even most safety stocks are now in the bubbly side of the crowded trade thanks to Fed bubble blowing. If you don't believe me, ask yourself, what does any given stock look like at 3% rather than zirp rates. That is not much given the Federal Reserve says they want at least 2% inflation. Do they want zirp rates at that inflation rate? If so, why would anyone want to own US dollar assets?

Elon Musk himself dissed Tesla when he was trying to nurture his new business of getting California to finance his new hyperloop bullet train in an earthquake state. Sadly Musk's new businesses are always premised on taxpayer money and subsidies. He should focus on making his companies actually profitable without government dole outs. Or even make them profitable with them. If Tesla can't be cash flow positive with the government subsidies they now get, it doesn't look too good for them later on.

That said, Tesla's cars are good. Hopefully they will be bought out someday by a car company that will know how to make making them produced in high volume and done profitably without asking for government subsidies to do so.

LOL India will be home to an even bigger crisis as antibiotic resistant disease increases as the population continues to grow out of control and water get's scarcer. At its rate of growth India is expected to exceed the population of the rest of the world with no resources to support it. It's much better for everyone that growth rates are slowing everywhere except India and a few 3rd world countries. Quality of life and GNP per capita means a lot more than GNP alone which gets augmented by growth to create the image that things are better when they are actually getting worse.

As for housing overbuilding disasters and artificially overpriced housing, one can see it not just in China but Japan, the US, and Europe. Everywhere there is undue central bank manipulation of interest rates and QE equals inflated asset prices, misaligned capital, inflated debt, and insane economic policies. Indeed, population growth or shrinkage has an effect over time, but central bank policy is much more to blame and explains the current rapid and dramatic problems better.

Inevitably you and I will end up paying for this. Bankers want to support domestic oil companies not just because they own lots of the debt, but because to admit failure will lead to their big bet which is in oil collapsing more and economic growth contracting. This is why TBTF banks and arguably all banks should not be allowed to gamble save in gold and silver under Glass-Stegal which saved us from another great depression for decades.

Expect bad downturns now that Glass-Stegal is gone and the politicians are bought by TBTF banks along with the Federal Reserve's funny money.

With negative rates in Europe this doesn't surprise me. Negative rates are about as capitalistic as the old USSR. Naturally capital will run from such a policy. I don't know how central bankers think this is will help their economy, because it won't although it will make the one collecting the negative rate funds for free very well off indeed. Apparently, state controlled theft pays.

Berkshire bought it and Buffet already disclosed he did not make the purchase. Value stock is not something to be placed on consumer tech companies as Buffet has alluded to many times in the past. The moneys run Berkshire now. No need to follow their moves any more besides the name recognition pump and dump.

Sadly the financial market constantly tells people they can earn higher returns than they can without taking risks they can't afford. The simple fact is the risk is set in to the market now by a zirpish rate and QE making a decent return at low risk almost impossible.

The best people can do is invest in quality dividend generating stocks, however even these are very rich in value and risk a severe downturn. Furthermore, many high interest stocks generate unsustainable dividends and stock buyback programs through debt which makes them more risky, not less. Sadly, people aren't well informed of risk for the express purpose of getting them to buy what they should not be buying given their risk profile.

Thanks for the insightful article. Sadly many poorly run companies are buying back shares to cover their loss in marketshare, lack of vision, and to please bankers promoting their stocks by borrowing from them to fund unsustainable policies. Thus, many companies engaging in high stock buybacks should be sold for that reason, not acquired, especially if their cash flow looks horrific due to this.

As many will point out, cash flow is king in businesses. Stock buybacks often make a bad situation worse as the company looses its assets to deal with business doing it and gets nothing but more shares of a bad company for it.

Those who value tech companies purely on past history are doomed to failure. Tech is always evolving and when a tech company is in decline it's best to get out no matter how big it is. Apple is hardly in major decline, but the discount is on the fact that it certainly isn't rising anymore.

My real question about Apple is after Jobs infusing Next OS into Apple, is there anyone left in Apple who knows how to improve the OS when it needs evolving next. Sadly Jobs never learned how to do an OS after getting rich off of another's work and Microsoft has been forced to add shell after shell on the original kernel. Likewise, no one in Apple could have saved the old Apple save jobs who took the time after leaving Apple to develop his own. Now Apple is outsourcing lots of its software development, so expect problems and viruses. Cost cutting doesn't go far on premium products.

The current CEO has done great making Apple run efficiently. Now the only cutting Apple can do will hurt the product or ruin the bankers destructive uses of capital including dividends, stock buybacks, and getting Apple to borrow and spend US$ to build a giant monolith to Jobs that further hurts Apple's ability to deal with a downturn. Bankers almost bankrupted Apple before and they aren't beyond doing it to Apple again, especially as they push for Apple to owe debt in dollars and not repatriate their assets overseas to pay it off. We can see how this can end very badly as 3rd world countries currencies erode and the dollar strengthens in a market downturn exacerbating the ill effects of this decision designed not just to avoid paying taxes, but to force Apple to give money to the bankers wanting this to pocket the shareholders money.