Direxion Daily Gold Miners Bull 2X (NUGT)

[trunkmonk]

he does not have a clue, since Yellen, it went from bad to worse. Bernanke knew how bad it was.



Bernanke to Yellen on the phone. all true.

Ben: Hold on, Janet… Just a minute… I’ve got something figured out. It’s important…In the old system, people had to earn money before they could lend it. That imposed a natural limit on credit. You couldn’t lend it if you didn’t have it.
The scarcity of credit forced up the price of it. Interest rates never went to zero. So, savers were encouraged to save. And it forced investors and entrepreneurs to find projects that were worthy of precious capital. That’s what made the system work. It encouraged real capital formation and real wealth building. That’s how we got richer.
Now, all we’ve got is credit… unlimited credit. Banks’ cost of funds these days is so low it’s almost free. Nobody knows what anything is worth – because all prices are distorted by unlimited credit.
That’s what happened to the oil industry. Oil was $140, and then it was $30. You don’t know what it should be. So nobody wants to take the risk or trouble to fund long-term projects. We don’t build much real wealth any more. We just speculate. Short term. And the amount of credit in the system just goes up and up.
But the dark side of credit is debt. You have to pay interest on it… and eventually pay back the loan. So, as your debt increases, it takes more and more of your income to make the debt payments, leaving you less to spend. This means you have to borrow more – increasing your debt – just to maintain the same level of spending.
We know our income is not keeping up with our debt levels. Debt was about one and a half times GDP in the 1970s. Now, it’s three and a half times.
I know lower interest rates airbrush the picture… so the debt burden is not so obvious. But unless we’ve eliminated the credit cycle, we have to assume rates will one day turn up again. Then, the cost of all this debt will suddenly hit us – hard. It will take a big chunk out of current spending… leading to those “D” words that you can’t use in public.
The gloom and doomers were right all along. But they didn’t understand any better than anyone else how it really worked. They kept expecting inflation. And it never came. So, they went broke and went away.
Debt is not inflationary. It’s deflationary. You either earn your way out… or you reach a limit, and the economy melts down. And here’s the thing: The super abundance of credit reduces real growth. That’s the thing I just realized. The more credit you make available… to try to ‘stimulate’ the economy… the more you stimulate speculation and suppress real growth. Less real growth means less real income to pay your debt.
So, there’s really no way out… because the debt is slowing down the economy it depends on, like a huge leech that is killing its host. You eventually end up in a Minsky Moment… [when asset values plunge after a long period of speculation and unsustainable growth]…
What are you going to do then?
Janet: You’re asking me?
Ben: Yea… Janet. I know what I’m going to be doing – collecting more big bucks for telling Goldman how you screwed up. Heh heh. What are you going to do?
The line goes dead.