It works until it doesn’t. Now all eyes are on housing. (You can also download the WOLF STREET REPORT wherever you get your podcasts).
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I knew the bust was coming for Cryptos when Family and Friends recently started asking me about or had just already invested in Bitcoin etc. Am Former Stockbroker of 17 years plus CFP so they sometimes ask my advice. One had to be blind or simply FOMO not to see this coming, include those Hype stocks as well.
This time it’s unironically different.
Federal Reserve is still giving out cheap money.
Many crypto projects are actually bringing products to market.
It’s easy to laugh at Elon, but this consolidation is about to rip the face off of doubters.
That’s some good jack that you’re on.
But dontcha know, The Muskmelon, er, uhh … ‘truck’ … now has orders for a unfolding, um … RV attachment. A sucker born daily!
“I’ll buy That for some crypto, NOT!”
I kinda like the styling on the truck……reminds me of the Delorean…is it all stainless, too?……but then I have always loved squarish stuff….maybe came from loving Can Am days?
To me, much of the post 60-70s stuff has what I call “bathtub” styling which disgusts me…think the Ford idiots started it.
Meaning; the stylist fills an old time bathtub with modeling clay, flips it over and out, and then just carefully scoops out things a bit here and there, but not too much….egg-city…..
NBay-Taurus, et al.-all subsonic ‘teardrop’ aeros to meet CAFE with lower horsepower…
(i like your batting avg. this year-keep swinging…).
may we all find a better day.
91B20-
Thanks, takes one to know one. We aren’t the “normal” here, but so far Wolf tolerates us. BTW, checked out an ad here for house “in Gualala”. Was way up Fish Rock at the Ridge, could easily tell. Big, nice, and (I think) fairly cheap for what/where the house was. Lived maybe 3-4 miles from there, and can say water was a big problem (at least on the far N Ridge edge spot). Many mornings I had to walk down 200 steep vert feet to our pump carrying water to prime it, just to get enough for the day. And sorry for mentioning the territory, again.
Speaking of the territory, does the term “Banana Belt” mean anything to ya? Perfect weather and ON the Coast, too, best of both worlds. Went to hell N & S of there.
Buy some tulips, too.
Black ones most valuable.
At least in a tulip mania if market value goes to zero you still have some lovely flowers left.
Cryptos going down only leave some ghost electrons behind.
You guys are clearly boomers. Lucky you – you were able to buy up all sorts of assets and deprive the younger generation from owning any unless they pay extortionate prices.
We’ve decided to move to a new money, since your dollars don’t work for us anymore. Someday you’ll get it.
Andrew, be careful kid, the nastiest boomers are probably behind crypto, in some devious way.
I’m a boomer, and pretty much ashamed of what the rest of us did to YOUR planet in this stupid quest for bigger and better stuff. If I were a kid, I’d be all for taking ALL our money, plus Mc and regular Mansions, grinding us up, and using us as fertilizer for growing food on all golf courses.
Then starting a massive Green New Industry and Conservation Program.
Pass the dutchie!
You know the term “dodgy”?
It will be “dogy” in the future, if not already.
My motto: “if in doubt, stay out.”
It’s not a real position until you can’t sleep at night ;)
… jk, but maybe the best rule I know is “when in doubt, do half”.
If you look at the charts, they are still up YTD. If bitcoin drops down to 20k, I’ll sell any of my underperforming junk exploration stocks and just toss it into BTC for the next exponential move to 100k
I’m 100% certain this is just a normal correct after an exponential move up. I also don’t buy all the fud about governments banning it, etc…..
Boom!
Mike,
If you are 100% certain, you should throw everything you own at it.
Unfortunately you can say the same thing about commodity markets. It was essentially the same situation in 2011.
99% of gold and silver stocks are just cyclical and speculation. 99% of the penny stocks are the equivalent to the sh*t coins and will go to zero too. So from that perspective I can’t see the difference.
I would feel comfortable taking all my SPECULATION money and put it towards bitcoin.
At the end of the day crypto is a speculation like explorers and other non investment grade equities.
If I remember correctly, they say buy low, sell high. Like all financial things, only time will tell.
“I’m 100% certain …”
Stopped reading right there.
Kind of like what I did when Andrew went into “OK Boomer” mode.
“Kind of like what I did when Andrew went into “OK Boomer” mode.”
^ This
OK Boomer!
High treason…..so shoot me….
Yes, my dinky crypto portfolio is still up for the year but not near like it was. I think I would ride out bitcoin instead of stocks but doesn’t matter, I don’t have much in each.
Trading crypto is kinda fun if you don’t have much invested. Chill people.
Nortel
$100 per share to $1 in one year.
You believers are buying Hopium, nothing more, nothing less. Enjoy the ride, every roller coaster has it’s peak.
I think this is a glass half-full/half-empty observation.
One year ago BTC, May 24th 2020: 8,700
3 weeks ago BTC May 3, 2021: 57,000
Today BTC, May 24th: 38,000
If you are a glass half full sort of person, your ROI for a year is 600%
Better than a CD paying 1.5%.
If you are a glass half empty sort of person, your ROI for 3 weeks is -33%.
Should have put it all in a CD. Or on the roulette wheel
Luck and crystal balls are helpful.
In my opinion, I think the Fed will sacrifice BTC before any other asset.
Those aren’t good odds.
Sorry, typo. Only up 400% in a year.
it will find the huge gap that everyone can see at 23500, volume hole that needs filling…..and its going to happen pretty fast….expect a good down move tomorrow
Max Keisser says that Bitcoin will be US$210,000 some time during 2021 so you can multiply your capital by seven times if you invest now.
I won’t be investing in Bitcoin, maybe speculate if it goes sub US$20,000 with money I can afford to lose.
Looking pretty shaky at the moment, Mike. I’ve been buying every dip and selling every rip for some time now, but after the latest drop didn’t get a good bounce I just sold all my crypto and have allocated that capital elsewhere. If the trend changes and the macro environment also remains speculative I might get in again. And I’m not 100% certain of anything except my eventual death…
Bitcoin and ethereum are still up by multiples in the past year. Weaker players are getting shaken out. I expect crypto to be fine long term.
You think it’s a good investment because it’s up multiples in the past year?
You expect crypto to be fine long term? Based on what?
It is a made up, useless construct that can be copied. Is the current bitcoin system any better than the identical copies that are sure to follow? Those coins will also be limited to 21,000,000.
The networks, ecosystems and brand power can’t be copied.
Crypto is:
1. Decentralized (no one entity controls it)
2. Has utility as a long term store of value as it’s programmatically limited
3. For the first time in history people can transact directly with one another without needing any intermediary regardless of where either of the 2 parties are. This was not possible before the advent of crypto
Also, Bitcoin and Eth are not just up this past year… They’ve been trending up ever since they were first introduced.
When everyone and their dog is investing in something is usually when it crashes. It happened in the Big Crash of 1929 and it has been happening even before then, see Tulips. Is that sometimes the crash takes a long time to come, like Bernie Madoff and Tesla.
I’m certain a few cryptocurrencies are going to transform the financial markets long-term the same way the Internet transformed how we shop, interact, and even learn new things. The operative word here is long-term, as in 10 to 20 years. However, in the short-term (meaning now through maybe the next year), we’re seeing a bubble being pricked with the appropriate crash that will follow. It was inevitable once the mainstream media started picking up on tweets by Elon Musk and Mark Cuban about cryptocurrency, and once SNL started making funny skits about NFT’s and dogecoin and news about cryptocurrency started appearing on the Today show and Good Morning America that we were at the top of a massive bubble. The question now is whether the big cryptocurrency bubble and bust is a leading indicator of where the stock market and real estate are going to be in the next six to 12 months.
Good Points IMHO, 17H,,,
Please continue to post your comments/thoughts on here, as this site is approaching the only one I read regularly and consistently.
I started on here to learn ”modern” thinking re RE and stock markets, as I have been OUT of the SM for the last few decades after real I zing that I had only made serious money in stocks with what is now called ”insider trading” now limited to only the rich and richer and their obvious paid puppet politicians.
SO FAR, between the Wisdom of the Wolf,,, and the really great comments on here, I am sitting on the sidelines with cash that I had ”hoped” to invest for some real returns.
(( And should add,,, NO debt,,, NO mortgage,,, limited property tax increases,,, )
it will find the gap at 23500 for sure, huge volume hole that will be filled……stick saves are good until one slips into the net….
Think the cost of electricity will be higher in 10-20 years?
Last I heard it takes a lot of amps to “print” that electronic coin, at least the way it’s done now.
i am still up few hundred %…..
So are some of my stocks. What’s your point?
81- Just ignore that stuff and comment. He doesn’t own this website.
I agree with you 100%. If shoeshine boys still existed they would be buying bitcoin.
Yes, it’s true, the dollar is being debased, but in the meantime it is a currency protected by a powerful sovereign, it can’t be duplicated by another entity.
Anyone can make duplicate copies of the bitcoin algorithm, making identical bitcoin systems. It’s not protected by copyright, governments or any regulatory jurisdiction, it’s just imaginary play money.
This is the biggest irrational mania in history and CNBC and some corporations are feeding the mania – it’s shameful.
For god’s sake, invest your hard earned wages into tangible assets that can produce a dividend or be used as a commodity. Run from crypto.
I predict that sooner or later the cryptos will go bust. The key problems for cryptos are the following:
1) it is uncertain whether the development of quantum computers and AI technology will enable the cracking of their private keys and the taking of such, now gigantic sums in US dollar held in crypto coins from “investors” in crypto;
2) fads have been common, e.g., the tulip mania, and the “value” of cryptos hangs on an ephemeral belief in their future prospects, which may rapidly be destroyed if those prospects are revealed to actually be nonexistent;
3) the main benefit of crypto is to enable the more effective hiding of assets and the transfer of funds, often for illegal purposes, which will eventually make most governments outlaw them or restrict them to restrict such illegal actions and render cryptos useless as a practical matter (like the “hoarding” of gold after FDR confiscated it was in the 1930s made trading it a black market transaction), e.g., by more monitoring of internet and phone communications;
4) if not created by them, as some doubtless secretly are, the cryptos are stepping all over the toes of the banksters, who have profited from their deep ties to organized crime, whose funds they have been laundering, so the banksters will either seek to somehow get a cut or to prevent/hinder the use of such cryptos (“The Bank Secrecy Act: Five Decades Of Fighting Financial Crime” in Forbes; “The top 50 global banks allegedly involved in a $21 billion Russian money-laundering scheme” in Quartz, etc.);
5) given the rise in value of the cryptos, the banksters, foreign states like North Korea, Iran, and China, and motivated hackers have the joint goal of cracking the security of each crypto and ALL programmers have created back doors in their software/algorithms, so I predict that the cryptos have some back doors that will eventually be discovered (like the Spectre CPU “flaws”) even if their cryptographic protections were to survive the efforts of those using AIs and quantum computers to crack them;
6) as to cryptos not created by organized criminals, banksters are losing too much money from cryptos, if organized crime were to switch more and more to cryptos for the transfer and laundering of their funds, which they will do more as cryptos become more widespread, so physical threats, kidnappings, or other mechanisms to get the vast fortunes of the holders of crypto will be coming (I bet your ISPs know exactly whether and when you are trading cryptos and will sell/render such information);
7) the security of the blockchains presumes that most “miners” will not be acting in concert and that it will be individuals who will be handling it. However, even those cryptos not created by organized criminals may be subverted as state or organized crime actors act as “miners” and exchanges to grab others’ funds, if they are not already doing so.
8) there will be mechanisms by which the “investors” in digital coins will lose their investments or most of the value of such investments. For example, the vast, bitcoin hoard of “Satoshi Nakamoto” will eventually be traded as well as the vast hoard of the initial “miners” or “investors” of bitcoin and drive the price down. I noticed that the Russian government is very defensive and protective of bitcoin in its media programs, so I predict it has a vast hoard which it will liquidate in some future time, e.g., if it faces more sanctions.
8) Cryptos are as subject to the laws of supply and demand as any other good. They are NOT money. The stealing of Americans’ funds by the “Federal” Reserve through creation of US legal tender to gift to its banksters (e.g., as it is purchasing over $40 billion a month in 2021 and purchased $2 TRILLION in 2019 to the present) merely means that people are “fleeing” to cryptos. It does not mean that cryptos are a good, long term investment. In fact, value stocks and other investments will rise with inflation and pay a return, so they are far better investments. Your buying cryptos is more akin to gambling in Las Vegas. You may win or you may lose.
Agree. It’s over when your barber is giving you bitcoin advise.
Good podcast and great information. Always nice to listen to a podcast while cleaning the house on a Sunday.
+1
Brilliant analysis Wolf.
Sounded more like WTF than an analysis to me…..I just wonder who the winners and losers will be when this one crashes, and degrees of both…..maybe all the “policy makers” are too afraid to let it?……if that’s even possible?…..WTF, indeed….and why everyone here seems focused on bitcoin is also a bit weird.
Should have said “crypto currencies” instead of naming one.
Dominoes,they just keep falling.
RedFin CEO just came out to say that “Air’s coming out of the baloon”. Clearly he didn’t read Lawrence Yun’s latest memo.
An interesting tidbit I just found out about Bitcoin. Apparently a lot of inflows into Bitcon are from this coin called Tether. The later however appears to be a hotbed of fraud, and is possibly a global money laundering operation. Heck, the Office of the Attorney General for the Southern District of New York opened an investigation into Tether Inc sometime back in 2019. When this whole thing unravels later, the fireworks should be epic.
Tether is a complete scam and most likely a ponzi type scheme.
It always helps an argument if you say *why* or *how* rather than just asserting something.
Who do you think you are…DC?
(“Vote for us and everyone will get a unicorn that poops diamonds!”
How?
“Well, errrr, ummm, shaddup domestic terrorist…”)
That is funny Cas
The investigation has concluded and Tether got off very lightly.
Should have said that I wasn’t counting on the investigation to bring down this house of cards. Remember Wirecard? For a while the German regulators were protecting that company. Obviously this is not what’s happening here. Anyway, as part of the settlement, Tether is supposed to provide more information about their reserves to the world, and what they’ve provided so far is garbage.
It doesn’t matter what the AG did or did not do, this thing will go down in flames.
I remember seeing that story early in March or something like that.
Who knows what will happen, increasingly it looks like the way is shut, and we are goin all in with the asylum. Fiat is getting eroded by the government, stocks are being pumped, cryptos are an alternative asset likely to be targeted by the government, as for precious metals, good luck holding on to it as the world starts devolving into chaos. And heaven help you if you own land.
Our store of value are essentially trapped and there is nowhere to go.
Only ‘shure’ things are tangible assets. If you can hold it, rent it (out), or use it yourself, it will always find a buyer like you. You might not get out what you put in, but you will preserve something.
@CRV
I would sell my car to someone for BTC or ETH, and some other cryptos. I would also buy a car from someone with crypto. Suddenly the intangible coin becomes tangible in the form of my vehicle asset.
Xrp ledger technology seems to be an absolute game changer in cross border settlements. That seems like an immediately benefit worldwide. Does noone see the blockchains future?!
Yes, right now it’s a spec pyramid scheme but 3-5 years from now the technology will be widespread. So much cheaper and faster than the Swift system. Clarity should come after this SEC case for US Crypto market.
Yun didn’t see 2008 coming either.
He did but he was too busy telling everyone there’s a short supply even back then. He truly is master of his craft, wonder if he gaslight his own friends and family the same way too.
I recall Robert Reich sheepishly admitting on TV that he had failed to see the approaching 2008 housing price collapse and managed to buy at the top. Funny as hell.
But scary as hell to know that the people in charge are complete nitwits. Studying economics in university seems to do that to people. They really need to leave the ivory tower once in a while.
“…scary as hell to know that the people in charge are complete nitwits.”
These ivory tower hacks have absolutely no clue what the working man goes through. Prices mean nothing to them, so they are no affected by swings. It’s like when G. Bush II was astounded when a reporter asked him if he was concerned about the $5 per gallon gas. It took him by surprise. These people don’t fill their tanks or buy their groceries, they have servants for that.
Google “The Bit Short: Inside Crypto’s Doomsday Machine” – a profound analysis of the Tether scam. Must read
awesome. absolute must read. But I guess it reflects the whole us financial system these days. It reminds me of a tower made of wood, that slowly rots away. the tower is still standing. but finally there comes a point where the whole thing just comes down so fast that there is nothing left.
Technically detailed explanation about why this is true:
Digital ‘Currencies’ Are ALL A Scam
19 Jun 2017
As for the clueless dream that cryptos will take control of monetary transactions from a rigged fiat currency monetary system controlled by central banks, if and when cryptos pose an actual threat to the existing order the business sectors which all governments regulate will simply be forbidden from accepting cryptos as payment, relegating imaginary cryptocurrency “wealth” to purchases on the dark web which will also be illegal. Their utility as a pump and dump scam to bilk the ignorant will then end as will the con game depending upon greed overcoming judgement just like all con games do.
And fools think the following adds legitimacy to the cryptocurrency scam when all it proves is that the scam is now large enough for outfits like this to get involved. They’ll be more that happy taking a commission for managing your tulip bulb trades and assisting you in bilking greater fools.
“Goldman Announces Formation Of New Crypto Trading Desk”
Wolf if you get a chance take a look at Tether, Alku’s google is a good place to start. The NY AG showed misreported 850M in loses, and fined the 18.5M. Part of the settlement was that Tether needed to release financial information. What they did was put out a 1 page PDF, showing that they actually had about only 10% of the stable coin back by liquid assets. That was probably a farce as well because the statement was not audited.
Seems to me the interweaving of stable coins and other cryptocurrencies means that there is probably a lot of systemic counterparty risk going on. If the market crashes enough stable coins like Tether will not be able to handle redemptions and the whole house of cards could implode.
So what is Bitcoin backed with?
I don’t understand the mining of crypto currency.
It just takes longer and longer to mine the next crypto.
I look at it like finding what the next large prime number is.
I ask myself, how can that have value?
I almost succumbed to the call of the crypto siren – it was like housing – people kept dooming and glooming but prices kept going up. People were getting rich!
Unfortunately you can say the same thing about commodity markets. It was essentially the same situation in 2011.
99% of gold and silver stocks are just cyclical and speculation. 99% of the penny stocks are the equivalent to the sh*t coins and will go to zero too. So from that perspective I can’t see the difference.
A not-very-impressive-home down the street allegedly sold for 3.3 MSEK, I have the real-estate person round friday to see what he can do with mine.
When running in the forest here, I see houses and building sites and more building going on all over, in every nook and cranny there is!
The way I see it, the pin has been pulled on the property market grenade and the only questions are how long the fuse is and who will be holding it in their front pocket when it cooks off.
Therefore, I think that dumping the gaff Now, moving into the vacation home, renovating that while “working from home” and maybe having a long-term hotel room rental for those “important” in-person meetings will be a winning plan!
1) Just shut up and buy the FANG, because it’s another opportunity to buy.
2) Just shut up and do what Dr. Faust order.
3) Just shut up and clog the sewer canal ( the thoractic canal) by toxic material — and all the metabolic waste material and other harmful materials will backwash to the body, leads to chronic toxicity : cancer, heart attacks…
4) Just shut up when bank’s NPL grow, the non performing mortgages jump, the rent, student loans, cc, car loans and small businesses debris… all this waste will backwash into other parts of the economy, causing chronic disease.
5) Just shut up and trust and trust the experts when we are getting
sicker and sicker.
They’re all just conjuring pert$! Real Experts know stuff.
Just shut up because the easy pick silver coin days are gone, forever. Just before the Covid the stuff was laying around in piles available at $15-$17 oz, take your pick. Many knew, few bought.
Having seen the experts on the Corona Virus;
I concluded that an Expert was an “Ex” being “a has been” and a “spurt” being a drip under pressure.
(6) get rich Rich RICH!!!!!!
Just shut up, because Bill’s friend own a dangerous bio lab.
Ha-Ha. One of your best!
Buy The F’ing Dip…Dip$shit
I can stay quiet but I can’t buy stocks because I have no fiat money!
The air is definitely leaking out of the housing bubble. On Saturday we stopped by the “model home village” for the largest ongoing housing development in the PDX metro area with my son who is looking. In February the streets were crowded, people were circling looking for spaces, and people were lined up 6 deep in the home builder sales offices. 2 weeks ago no lines, half the parking spaces taken, and then yesterday the streets were empty with nary a home shopper to be seen. Sure things may still be bubbling in the So Cal beach towns, but folks down there believe in flying unicorns and Elon Musk. Here in the land of semiconductor engineers and chip plant workers RE has hit the wall.
SocalJim was away that day!!!
SC & MB
If you listen to the podcast on Bloomberg, not the reruns on other sites you will notice Redfin boss said he expects gains to home prices to slow down, seems that Bloomberg went with the misleading title for more clicks…. Plus robert shiller on cnbc says that he expect home prices to be lower in 3 to 5 years unfortunately.
Unicorns are the best, my daughter loves them, now if you can combine Pegasus and Unicorns now that would be the best of both world.
SoCal is still getting the hype, search in Youtube for a channel call The Modern Lending Institute, the guy has been in the industry for 16yrs, and his combination of yelling at me in one of his video titled “Housing Market Crash 2021- Here comes the BOOM!” maybe it’s his yelling in combination of his tight pants sure made me rethink about why this housing market is not in a bubble…such compelling points he made in the video. People like that will tell you why SoCal market is not crashing at all.
It’s not like that (yet) were I am in Massachusetts – quite the opposite – but we may be out of step because we have so many biotech and pharma corporations hiring like crazy.
My sister and and brother in law mentioned they are doing their first in person open house in well to do LA burbs. Will be interesting to find out what they experience.
I’ve been waiting patiently for all these much-touted bubble houses meet a pin. Poof!
Boise is slowing as well. Nothing left that is of quality.
Speaking only for my neighborhood in this beach town, a factor in sales slowdown might just be that as of today there are zero homes for sale. Everything sold.
The biggest bubble of them all is the Fed’s power expansion. It’s been able to do crazy things like printing money, without check, for 10 to 20 years, while people wonder why wealth is concentrating and wages aren’t rising along with inflation. This likely won’t last. People are resentful, and they are wising up. After the next Fed-induced crash, the Fed will have a hard time justifying its very existence.
After this next next one, we’ll have had three mind-blowing market crashes in 25 years, which are a direct result of the Fed’s interest rate pumping. Gee, do you think there is a correlation between the Fed’s interventions and huge market crashes? WTF !!!
Real wages have been flat for 50 years or my entire life.
You say people are “wising up”…..well, I sure as hell hope you’re right.
Has anybody ever gone broke betting against the intelligence of the US public?
If the FB/TeeVee is on, draft beer is flowing and McDonalds is open…
…and making sure to send out for pizza before WWE comes on.
Unfortunately past crashes seem to indicate the policy response will be to give the Fed more not less “tools” and power, which it will use to further benefit asset holders at the expense of everyone else.
This bubble can carry on being inflated a lot longer.
The Central Banks will keep printing and have to to hand out UBI (Universal Basic Income).
They have to implement UBI otherwise there will be civil unrest.
Hence the bubble can and will continue.
After analysis of the chart and the 200 day and 50 day moving averages, I see BC support at the intrinsic value level.
Re: the Ponzi idea. There is a resemblance in that all increases in BC depend on subsequent purchases. The ONLY reason to buy BC at X is the belief that someone will buy at X plus. Although similar spec is PART of the housing bubble you can actually buy a house to live in or rent out. There is a P/E ratio, now rather crappy but there.
The wild moves up and down have hopefully accomplished one thing even for the BC believer who is not delusional: it is not and can never be a currency.
Root word is ‘current’, generally and normally acceptable by both parties in a transaction. For buyer and seller to agree on BC, they would need identical views on its future. There is lots of talk about the US$ losing value, but not 40% in a week.
Re: that ‘gold and silver prices are just like BC’. If you go into even a medium- end electronics outlet (stereo, etc.) it will have cables with gold- plated contacts. Go into aero-space, they are everywhere. No one is using it for its deep, seductive shine/ glow. They hate buying it, but for some apps there is no alternative.
There are also uses of silver, for which there is no substitution.
Trivia: it has happened that silver has been substituted for lowly copper, purely for its electrical conductivity.
The WWII, A- bomb project needed vast quantities of copper, but it was in short supply, being in everything electrical. So US Gov silver was lent to the project, I think from Knox. The assurance was simple: we know where it is, so it never left the reserve.
nick kelly…
An important point, re: “If you go into even a medium- end electronics outlet (stereo, etc.) it will have cables with gold- plated contacts. Go into aero-space, they are everywhere.”
Exactly, and further to that I will say cryptos require gold, however gold does not require cryptos.
Gold is a vital high-tech metal because of its unique properties as a superior electrical conductor that does not corrode or tarnish (unlike copper or silver). So, for important, reliable and quick electrical connections that cannot fail gold is used in communication devices, computer networks, cell phones, ABS brakes, air bags, car keys, lab and medical equipment, smoke detectors, pacemakers, satellite dishes, TVs, jet engines, fuel cells, military devices and other applications.
Quite ironic that the vast and growing amount of electrical use and connections required for the digital, crypto and internet worlds require an ever-increasing amount of gold! I can embrace that fact and it essentially means that high-tech and cryptos are dependent on gold.
Over a ten-year average, 2008 – 2017, the technology sector used an average of 9% or 384 tonnes (~12.3 million troy ounces) of annual gold supply. (source: World Gold Council)
PS: and I might add, what if Elon was to say ‘gold sucks and I’m selling mine’. Does anyone imagine gold would react more than maybe 1 % for a day or so? If your asset depends on the opinion of a single individual who has no effect on law or regulation, you know all should need to know about its underlying resilience.
Indeed!
Which is the “Barbarous Relic?”
The golden stuff that is essential to modern high tech or the virtual version snake oil peddling preacher.
Silver is actually the very best electrical conductor, but has the unfortunate habit of combining with other elements at more common earthly temperatures. So yeah, gold is the best we have for connectors.
But who knows, if one science is really advancing it’s Materials Science along with Surface Physics….(damn sure ain’t Pharma.)
It’s why we are all using 5wt engine oil instead of 30 and one reason why car engines last so long, the other is probably near perfect combustion due to electronic controls.
If we can run no radiator ceramic ICE engines (especially on hydrogen) they will give batteries and fuel cells a run for their money.
I am amazed to read government (Fed) studies about “hidden leverage” and other known systemic risks, yet regulators & legislators mostly do nothing about it.
Regulators shouldn’t exist to facilitate funds like Bill Hwang’s dumpy family office Archegos (Hwang was banned from trading in Hong Kong and settled SEC insider trading charges for $44M). Technically, regulators exist to protect market integrity and minimize risk to the economic system.
All that’s lacking is political will.
Jellys have no spine, only tendrils that sting the wrong type of fish!
Political will might be an oxymoron when it comes to Western democracies. Best government money can buy. Why would Congress be incentivized to stop the party? They are benefiting massively from all these money printing and … INSIDER TRADING. Yes, our beloved Nancy P from California has been making money over fist trading all sorts of stocks and she is not the only one.
This country is near collapse.
The country already collapsed.
In a sense it’s true. Collapse is a process after all.
“How did you go bankrupt?”
“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” – Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Collapse is already here. It’s just unevenly distributed.
I suppose, you are familiar with the term regulatory capture.
I’m a genius or a fortune teller or at least can read the future.
All of these cryptos are still at eye-watering levels.
Impressive statistics and numbers. I sounds like there’s a serious correction going on with the tech, crypto, and hedge funds.
It’s all gambling, isn’t it? This business of “buying the dip” has a desperation about it, and this broadcast is performing a public service,
I’m a simple guy. I see the dip, I buy …
…more canned food.
I don’t think any housing burst coming
Redfin ceo simply said that the rate of home price appreciation would slow but didn’t say about home prices going down
It’s “plateauing.”
:-]
Wolf, I know you think more supply will start to come available and things will ease up there, but what will prevent institutional investors from going even further in and snatching up the new inventory also to build fiefdoms?
beatnikpicnic,
As long as investors buy homes to convert to rentals, those homes remain available as housing stock. So that is not the primary issue. It just shifts it from ownership to rental. And people arbitrage those two.
The primary issue is when investors buy homes to keep them, or their old home, vacant to ride up the price movement (similar to owning stocks). This removes housing stock from the market.
But the carrying costs of a house (interest, taxes, insurance, maintenance) are huge, and that bet only works with soaring home prices. At some point, this becomes clear, and then those homes appear on the market in a New York minute.
Being a landlord, especially for high cost single family homes is messy. Lots more upkeep and difficulty and carrying costs. An apartment is one big unit earning tens of thousands monthly and is built for efficiency for landlords.
It’s just simple economy of scale. Being a landlord is usually miserable and takes a lot of knowledge and trustworthy people.
SoftBank has entered the chat!!!
Why would anybody give a crap what the Redfin CEO says?
When people tell me what their “Realtor” told them, I ask for the realtor’s name/address/email. Then I look up their RE License.
Then I call my friend back and say “You’re about to make the biggest financial decision of your life based on the opinion of a guy who has been doing this for 2 yrs and his FB page says he “decided to try RE” because being a “chef and photographer” wasn’t working out.
Hahaha, I think you hit the mail on the head here. In truth, if you had a time machine and could go back and remove one person from history, it would probably be the guy who invented in internet. Far from bringing freedom and liberation, it’s becoming just another tool for control. And far more effective than any of the old methods.
LOL! Funny, but I think that guy is a troll. Oops! I meant to say that he is the CEO of Redfin! It’s so difficult to tell the difference these days.
The best and most accurate comment I’ve ever read on Wolf Street.
RE Brokers get paid a commission just like a car salesman. They are in the business of Selling Homes. They are suppose to be your fiduciary but in reality they never want to lose a customer or a sale. An honest RE person is a poor one. They are just like everyone else when it comes to manias. And when it busts, they never saw it coming. Never will.
Well 2 reasons
1) CEOs have a fiduciary obligation to tell investors the truth (NOT customers, only investors)
2) CEOs often know exactly the game they’re playing and accidentally tell the truth from time to time. Like when the Dollar General CEO said “the modern economy is great at producing more of our customers!” (I.e. dead broke folks)
Caveat Emptor still rules.
Ha-Ha- Yeah, wonder who makes all the RE Agent signs? And I bet garages and storage sheds everywhere are full of them.
Yup, things always plateau or just move sideway, like they did in after 1929, after 2000, 2008..etc.
Oh wait, darn those pesky graphs, I guess if you stretch the value high enough to say 1000 yrs interval then the line for the last 100 yrs do look pretty flat after all..
Real Estate is rarely static….it’s like a very long train….it takes time building forward speed, looking as if it will go on indefinitely, until it hits the crest, pauses for a bit and then begins rolling downhill slowly at first, then gravity takes over…the train isn’t good at backing up the hill…
Time for me to bust out that movie The Big Short so I can watch and make myself feel better about being on the other side of this “Just Shut Up and Buy,” frenzy with the all markets.
On a separate note, every time I read “Just Shut Up and Buy,” I can’t help but conjure up this image of Homer Simpson in this one episode and that’s how I picture all these house humpers bidding up houses paying over list or people buying certain stock with crazy P/E back only by hype and hopium. IMHO the whole country is turning more Homer Simpson by the day and not the good Homer Simpson in earlier seasons either but the idiotic oaf that you have no sympathy for and no redeeming quality found in the later and recent seasons..
Poor Omer, leave him alone, he looks pretty much like a genius compared to the “I just shut up and buy”.
Thanks Mr Wolf, wonderful start of the week for a sit and wait house buyer like me, I loved it!
Btw, if you think USA is bad you should try where I live, the brightful UK!
Homer was a genius. He bought at the bottom of the biggest dip in th history of Springfield’s RE market. It was after the release of the first report of massive levels of radiation leaking from the Springfield nuclear power plant.
Actually it’s not true that the entire country is turning more Homer Simpson by the day. Please read The Atlantic’s “The Life in the Simpsons Is No Longer Attainable”. Here’s a quote: “The most famous dysfunctional family of 1990s television enjoyed, by today’s standards, an almost dreamily secure existence that now seems out of reach for all too many Americans.”
I am not referring to Homer Simpson’s standard of living, if I were then you would be absolutely correct. I am pointing at the Homer like mindset for most Americans, a dangerous combination of hopium, willful ignorance, arrogance and herd mentality, this is being reflected on the current market dynamics and that never ending buy the dip mindset.
I see. Well I would argue that we have not gotten worse. It just appears to be worse because of the amount of money printing over the last 10 years. Remember the Dot Com Boom/Collapse?
It doesn’t matter what the AG did or did not do, this thing will go down in flames.
Some try to buy the uptrend. Inevitably the trend reverses. Long term hold works for some stocks. It did not work with Sears or Lehman Bros. Eventually one gets old and may not expect as much long term. In 2000 the Nasdaq reached 5000. In the summer of 2016 the Nasdaq reached 5000 again.
And the FED bailed out the market both times allowing it to reach new heights.. Do you actually think with all the leverage in the system today that can happen a third time? At what point does the system clear and all the *leaders* of those Unicorns and Zombies just get removed and what ever was real, bought up by some stable entity?
Unfortunately, waiting for all the bad actors in economic system (from Fed critters on down) to get their comeuppance is like watching paint dry.
Enron is gone. JC Penny is an empty storefront in a mall. Bank offices closed in the S&L crisis. More closed in the Great Recession as house flippers walked away from non recourse mortgages. Chesapeake Energy hoarded shale gas leases in low grade natural gas formations. Their CEO drove his car into a concrete abutment killing himself. Years later Chesapeake posted a profit after exiting bankruptcy. Many oil and gas drillers declared bankruptcy. Restaurants have been going in and out of business along Highway 1 – Maine to Florida.
Blockchain technology is transforming how transactions are settled, but the most hyped crypto currencies like BTC and ETH are outdated technology and not suitable for their stated job: too slow, too expensive, not scalable and a disaster for the environment.
BTC is Worldcom and Dogecoin is pets.com during the dotcom bubble.
Blockchain is here to stay and will find many great applications. But most of the crypto currencies that are around right now will die a slow and painful death because they are simply not very good at their stated purpose, so they will get abandoned for better alternatives.
Blockchain is not here to stay because once it is widely accepted it will become too big to be useful. Everything cannot go into the blockchain because it will take too long to search through and too big to store. Size really does matter in search, ask google.
blockchain is inefficient and doesn’t scale. The smart contact has other cheaper alternatives for a long time. Blockchain can’t prevent fraud so it still need some authority to authenticate the input. Otherwise garbage in garbage out.
All the cryptos are just tokens in the casino. The tokens have usage thus have some value. The casino will go on as long as there is inflow.
As the famous crypto heavy-weight once said: “the consensus from idiots is still a consensus”.
Keynes would have loved to have the credit for that line.
30 yr mortgages in 1999 and 2006 when inflation was near these levels (actually below), were 6%. Now 3% thanks to Jerome Powell knowing better than the free market.
Have 30yr mortgages ever been below the CPI rate of increase?
Have Fed Funds ever been 4% below the CPI rate of increase?
People look at their homes and look at the lumber, labor, copper, shingles, etc….and wonder what the replacement cost would be. It likely has jumped about 35% in the past five months.
The Fed has skewed this market, and others, with irresponsible monetary easiness.
Inflation is THEFT. It is a confiscatory TAX on the working and saving people of this country. And to have the Federal Reserve declare they are promoting this THEFT is beyond the pale.
They have no right to lay taxes (inflation) on the American People.
And it is direct violation of their stable prices mandate.
So we have a Fed Chairman plotting the THEFT and laying the TAX all in violation of Constitutional powers and the agreements/instructions/mandates under which the Fed is allowed to exist.
inflation is theft…….. so very accurate. It really pisses me off too.
All this extra money being printed means MORE dollars chasing the same amount of goods=inflation.
So regular people start having to pay more for everything while the wealthy well connected buy all the commodities (as investment vehicles) with the easy free cheap FED money they have access to. They then sell these commodities at inflated prices which regular people (whose wages have been stagnant for decades) have to pony up for from an ever shrinking budget……
State sponsored theft is probably more accurate….. not to quibble.
It’s the fault of vaccines. If you could just get rid of vaccines, everything would go back to normal and mortgages would be 6% again and asset bubble would go away.
Powell himself said so. Don’t dump on him for him for doing his job by creating “millions” of jobs.
Fed’s Brainard says central bank stepping up exploration of digital dollar
If that means everyone is stuck with using a CCard or cell phone, I hope I’m dead by then. Total control over 325 M “contract workers” by whoever is at the top when it happens.
Theft and barter city for those at the bottom….nasty lifestyle.
For most of 2000, the 30/10 was inverted.
term limits and no fed would solve a lot of our problems. Maybe we’ll get there someday. One can hope.Attention all of you old folks out there. Teach your grand kids about the fed. Keep harping on it until they says ” shut up Grand pa”. You will have planted a seed.
term limits didn’t fix Oregon’s politics.. what is needed it a multiparty system and open primaries… Yet we are going in the opposite direction.
I heard that some investors with rentals are sprucing them up to put on the market and take advantage of these high prices. Smart.
These cryptos are off to the races with another moonshot again, in some instances up almost 50%. Crash? No, the real crash is not here yet.
Yep, just like stocks in March of 2020. People didn’t see it as a correction or a deleveraging, but an opportunity to buy “cheap” stocks, even though they were still at historically high P/Es.
The real crash is yet to come.
It’s going to be BTFD until the FED stops pumping. There’s way too much money sloshing around.
23500 will be seen again….
so let it be written so let it be said….
sooner than expected…
30 years ago houses were considered the old, boring, and slow way to build wealth while stocks would get you rich quick.
Now it feels like my social circle thinks houses and cryptos are how you get rich and stocks are just some slow boring asset for old people’s retirement accounts.
This could be the first bubble that blows up housing but spares the stock market. That would blow the minds of people on CNBC.
If the housing market crashes, so will the stock market.
What you just said is the popular opinion and it feels the mania.
After all if everyone thinks that stocks will go down if real estate goes down then they must both be equally risky.
And if both are equally risky then why not invest with 90% leverage over 30 years to buy a house at any price? If you buy a $500k house with 10% down and that house goes up by 10% then you just made $50k or a 100% profit on your down payment. Meanwhile if you buy a stock for $50k and it goes up 10% you made $55k. And if the stocks will go down if housing goes down then you’re just being stupid to invest in stocks!
This is the logic I hear when I’m having whisky with friends after dinner. And it sounds attached to “conventional wisdom” but unteathered from the actual fundamrntals of markets and capitalism.
Go long housing and short the stock market and you should be good right???
Good logic but real estate is illiquid unlike stocks.
Also, you need to spend a
lot of $$ just to maintain real estate ( taxes, maintenance etc ). When you sell real estate, you are paying 5-6% as commission to agents unlike stocks.
I guess Shiller recently said housing is the most expensive it has ever been in real terms. So we have stocks, bonds and housing at all time bubble highs and Fed still has pedal to the metal.
Wolf, you hit the nail on the head. Years ago, crypto was the big payment system disruptor, until people thought about it and realized it was totally inefficient to wait hours for a payment to process. Today, its billed as the safe haven for wealth.
I find there are two types of crypto buyers. Those that are talking up their own books, and those whose brains are scrambled by the promoter’s advertising machine. But really, is that different from any other mania?
Look at the positive in all this: so long as their attention is directed at garbage, you have time to pick up productive assets.
Move over DogeCoin, here comes the WolfCoin!
If you own the company which conducts the crypto transaction you should be good, but if you own the coin, or the transaction itself, you have a worthless moment in cyberspace, like an NFT, which is just a cyber receipt for one of these transactions. If you own the cost of the transaction then you own something at least. Crypto aims to end money as a store of value. Crypto investors are confusing the wiring fee with the money being transferred, and there is no more money, just assets. This is why the market isn’t going to crash [without some alt scenario]. Sell your CASH before it’s too late.
This makes absolutely no sense. What value do “assets” have without an economic system (based on money) behind it?
I don’t get it either.
then why do gold bugs hold their asset against the collapse of the financial system? they imagine gold will have value when money does not. cash as a store of value is finished. the original economic system is barter, and we are entering a 21st century barter economy. barter failed because it is too slow, while computers aim to fix that. the physical transfer of cash is just a small remainder of the old money economy. the Fed has discovered that you can manipulate prices by controlling the market for cash money, which accounts for only a fraction of all the economic activity, like manipulating gold on comex. Central bankers are swapping 10x the amount between themselves, that trades everyday in futures contracts. or why investment firms make block trades to avoid shoving a huge volume of stock through a low volume market. it was formerly an irreconcilable problem, which digital currency will fix. their sound money gods have one word left, swoosh. eventually all liquidity is mopped up..
Which one came first? Gold or money/fiat financial system? The fiat system only came to existence when the Chinese introduced paper money centuries ago. Fiat money is just a lubricant. Can you do business with just gold/silver? Absolutely, and yeah for MANY years that’s exactly what happened for most of human history. Now is Gold/Silver perfect? Absolutely not, just like everything else, there’s pros and cons with ANY AND EVERY system.
Re: “then why do gold bugs hold their asset against the collapse of the financial system? they imagine gold will have value when money does not. cash as a store of value is finished.”
It’s not just gold bugs that may be ‘imagining’ this. Central banks also seem to be doing their fair share of ‘imagining’ (and I note their timing on this)!
“Central Banks sold 7,853 tonnes of gold between 1987 and 2009; between 2010 and 2016 they bought 3,297 tonnes.”
(source: World Gold Council)
How QE-incidental!
There has never in recorded history been a “barter economy” in the civilized world and this goes back at least 5,000 years. Its a myth to simplify “economic theory”. If you think there has been one then provide an example.
Gold historically tends to work fine as an insurance policy, Ambrose. For my part, I accumulate it based on a percentage of what my disposable income is, and I hope never to need to sell an ounce of it. Not every allocation of capital has to be something designed to get you ahead in the rat race.
And I also think it’s pretty likely that we’ll see a transition to another monetary system in my lifetime, with all the reallocations and turmoil that entails, and gold has in the past proven pretty much a reliable transfer mechanism.
And I wouldn’t get altogether too tied up in all the techy stuff. Recall that the more large scale and complex the technology the more unsustainable it becomes. A credit blow-up ending our current monetary regime will likely entail a big drop-off in our energy output. As I see it this will likely bring about measures like rationing of electricity and limitations to the scope of the www to critical supply chain needs etc. It’s just thermodynamics in the end.
It’s .22 bricks in the end.
You reminded me of an observation I gave to a friend recently. I collected comic books as a 12-15 yr old kid back in 1981-1984. Comic book collecting was deep underground (no Marvel comic book hero movies, cosplay wasn’t part of pop culture, etc.).
Finding a comic book (cheap paper product for children) in mint condition from the late 1930s was incredibly difficult (scarcity). So finding ANY copy of say Detective Comics #27 (1st appearance of Batman) would be hard but finding a pristine one was nearly impossible.
Hence the values exploded. I quit collecting when the most expensive comic book cost $100K. Now they can sell for millions. A comic book I once paid $200 for sold for $330K recently.
My friend asked about collecting new comics. I said you can collect them to read/own them. It’s children’s literature and art, which is great. But not really for monetary value.
Because these days, many people are collecting comics and they go into mylar bags from day #1. So the scarcity of the old, hard to find comics (Golden and Silver Age) won’t happen w/new ones.
Scarcity an interesting thing to consider when looking at ‘value’.
I was a kid when Marvel comics were first coming on the market.
I had all those early editions. In my early teens we moved. My mom wasn’t about pay for shipping them and made me sell them all… it breaks my heart thinking how wealthy I would be now if I still had them. I must have character… I still love my mom :-)
Haha, I actually made the EXACT same observation to a friend regarding the Honus Wagner rookie card. Back then, no one ever thought things like that would become valuable, so very few were preserved. But once the 60s and 70s came around and people saw the potential value in old things, they started collecting them WITH THE INTENT on preserving value, and thus, things like that will never be that rare again.
NoDecent-would venture that ANY ‘collectables’ market walks a generational/national culture consumption/economy tightrope. Fads are fads, market mileage may highly vary (not much interest in fine, fin-de-siecle horse-drawn carriages, for instance. Can’t be optimistic about a ‘classic’ ICE auto market as gasoline usage declines in the face of increasing alternative powers-heck, don’t see nearly the number of restored ‘T’-model Fords around that i did when i was a youngster in the ’50’s, which always drew affectionate crowds at the time…).
may we all find a better day.
Re: What value do “assets” have without an economic system (based on money) behind it?
Assets have value relative to one another.
What difference does it make if you swap asset for asset or asset for money first and then money for asset. When you buy food for dollars that is only the last half the process. The first half is swapping your labor for money. What you’re really doing is swapping your labor for food. Money becomes a transitory intermediate phase of the total process.
I prefer money systems because it decouples the labor from the food. That way the two can take place at different times and places. Without money you would probably have to work at a grocery store at least part time to feed yourself. This would essentially be a barter exchange system.
Well…….I’d like an update from Wolf concerning whether the feds are continuing to run down the check book. If they are, considering the deficit spending in the summer upcoming……the amount needed to be raised is going to swamp the bond market. Pretty please!
lol so many fudders here just sad that they missed out on the biggest bull run in cryptos. as u speak it rebounded 30% yesterday. keep crying losers
Your post is a great example of why I’d like a “mute” function.
I take that to mean “ignore” function?
Yep, same idea.
Right now, it looks like crypto is locked into a trading range, which is quite profitable if you figure out the limits. Sell when it hits the top of its range, and buy when it hits the bottom. Rinse, repeat.
Great fun while it lasts. I missed the top about a week ago, but called the bottom yesterday and bought some more.
Granted, it’s only a minuscule part of my portfolio, for amusement purposes only. Don’t try this at home.
And tomorrow it could be down 40%. What’s your point? Everyone knows it’s volatile.
As an investor for the past 35 years or so I have learned that just because something goes up after you buy it that doesn’t mean your rationale was correct.
I remember buying Qualcomm many years ago because of their truck tracking technology. Qualcomm stock went through the roof, not for the reason I had, but because they owned the patents related to this little thingy called CDMA.
Very few people believed in CDMA. The dominant technology was TDMA. In my mind CDMA was a side show with no future. Qualcomm persisted in pushing CDMA and eventually proved its superiority.
After that came the cell phone deluge and the standard protocol was CDMA. Wow, what a smart investor I was!
All investing involves gambles on an unknown future. For most of us, better to be lucky than good.
You talked me into it, john.
I’m putting my Beanie Baby collection on the market right now….going all in on cryptos.
In the distant future people will think Beanie Babies were money, because a long time ago people used them as a store of value.
Hey, what about my collection of Olympic pins we gathered during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. People were going nutty over them back then. And my Disney pins……
Just go all in, lever yourself up, and you’ll be the next Cuban, or Zuck in no time flat. JUST DO IT. John. Show the rest of the plebs here how it’s done the right way.
Leverage everything you can.
Your car.
All your tangible belongings.
Your parent’s house.
You parents.
You siblings, if any.
The apartment you’re renting, just tell the bank you own it or something.
And that loan shark on the corner, tell him you give him 300% of what he lends you.
No guts, no glory. GO ALL IN. DO IT.
I took your advice. My parents are deceased so that was off the table. However I do have a sister that I was able to trade on an exchange in Dubai for a camel.
Just like my sister the camel spits at me, but it does smell better. I just hope the HOA doesn’t find out I have camel in the back yard.
Uh, hello, why would your deceased parents be off the table, they have eternal access to a plot of land they bought mortgage that off. Or may be rent out the urns.
The camel is a really good asset here. You can sell that for a lot of money, you know, give camel rides to children. But you get the idea, everything so that you can buy more cryptos. Dogecoin FOREVER.
I have 1984 Olympic pins…… (Beanie Babies can’t match that)
Sorry MCH. There’s this thing called cremation. My parents don’t have a plot of land, just a hideously overpriced jar that I could have bought for pennies on the dollar at Pottery Barn.
Looks like we’ve got a cryptoboi here, with his $673 Coinbase account.
Hey, john, you seem like a real charmer, so I thought I’d remind you that you forgot to add the always endearing ‘Good luck staying poor, nocoiners’ line…
Looks like Shiller finally said something that’s not so beat around the bush and timid if a crash is imminent or not. Certainly adds some weight to the debate. Personally I vividly remember this one instance back in 2005 when I was watching him debating another Ahole housing insider economist if a housing market crash will happen or not, I think majority of the panels thought Shiller was talking out of his rear end, guess we all know how that went. IMHO for him to say something now, certainly lends more weight to the bubble debate, not that countless stats don’t show that already.
A report from CNBC. “Nobel prize-winning economist Robert Shiller is worried a bubble is forming in some of the market’s hottest trades. He’s notably concerned about housing, stocks and cryptocurrencies, where he sees a ‘wild West’ mentality among investors. According to Shiller, current home price action is also reminiscent of 2003, two years before the slide began. ‘If you go out three or five years, I could imagine they’d [prices] be substantially lower than they are now, and maybe that’s a good thing,’ he added. ‘Not from the standpoint of a homeowner, but it’s from the standpoint of a prospective homeowner. It’s a good thing. If we have more houses, we’re better off.’”
I said this in another thread, but everyone I know who can afford a house has bought one. Everyone who wanted a bigger house has bought one.
I currently don’t know anyone who’s likely to buy a new/bigger house in the next 2 years.
The ponzi scheme goes on until there’s no new people to buy into the ponzi, then it all falls apart in an instant.
Houses are still getting multiple offers, so there is demand.
My fear is we are seeing artificial demand created by corporations and organized investors taking advantage of government subsidized interest rates. When the markets shifts, however, these same investors will become bailout recipients. Those who buy today will pay twice – once with a home price drop on their personal residence, second time with a tax increase to bailout the bad corporate actors.
This ^^^^
Though I expect that secondary tax increase will be “collected” in the form of more inflation.
I wouldn’t mind one but they’re too expensive and the inventory here is bad. Everyone is trying to cash out of their weak shacks.
Rent went up $25/mo. Oh well. First rent in crease in a few years. I know landlords taxes went up a lot more than that.
Shiller is very timid when it comes to making educated prediction as he has a reputation to protect.
The fact that he is speaking up now about the bubblicious nature of everything speaks volume
He has the reputation because he knows that if you make a prediction, never give a timetable.
“Reminiscent of 2003”????
After 2003, there was four more years of crazy home appreciation. Maybe he meant to say its like 2005 or 2006.
In any case, we don’t need Robert Shiller to confirm something is a bubble. Just open your eyes and ask a few simple questions.
Digital central bank currencies are coming with the global corporate tax with the one world government and the one world army…crazy I know
“Digital central bank currencies are coming …”
Seems so likely. Fiat money authorities are unlikely to allow competing currencies like cryptos to be a viable alternative for the masses.
I expect authorities will kneecap any crypto that dares challenge their monetary hegemony, IMO.
Think confiscatory taxation, onerous regulations, or outright bans.
If we only had one world government, why does there have to be an army? Protect against aliens from outer space?
To squash anybody who opposes the one world government. Thanks for replying. Honestly someone else said that.
You make me laugh!
1. The key to national debt is who the creditors are? Is it domestic currency debt or foreign currency debt?
Japanese national debt is basically Japanese yen debt, and the creditors are basically deomestic. Therefore, no matter how high the Japanese national debt is, it is also an internal problem in Japan that can be solved by itself. Domestic United States entities hold more than 75% US debt internally.
Japanese government bonds can be sold at zero interest rate because pension funds have taken over. The same is true in the United States now, and various pension funds are the biggest buyers. This means that the interest rate risk is passed on to the older generations. When the pension funds are in deficit, the central bank can buy them. The Bank of Japan holds more than 40% of the total national debt. 90% of Japanese government bonds are purchased domestically, so there is no possibility that they can’t afford to pay back because they can print money! Foreigners buy the bulk of national debt in which country? Even the highly internationalized U.S. Treasury bonds,
2. National debt can’t overwhelm a country, as long as it can pay the interest.
The country’s credit is generally sufficient, and there is always a way to borrow new debt to pay the old one. The interest is the pressure. As long as the interest pressure is not high, no matter how high the principal is, then borrow new debts to make up for the old debts.
India’s national debt is only 1.5 trillion dollars, which is about 60% of GDP, but the average national debt interest is about 7.5%, and the annual interest payment is about 110 billion dollars. At the same time, due to weak administrative capacity, India’s fiscal revenue is only 560 billion dollars, which is paid annually. Interest is nearly twice that of military expenditure, accounting for 20% of revenue.
Japan has a lot of trouble. The national debt interest rate is not 1% all year round, and many are not 0.5%. This can be used to borrow money. What are you afraid of? A debt of 10 trillion dollars is equivalent to nothing. Just borrow new debts to repay old debts, and the principal will never mature. I’ll talk about it when I can’t borrow it someday.
U.S. Treasury bonds of 27 trillion (as May 2021) account for 120% of GDP, but the interest rate on U.S. Treasury bonds has already fallen below 1.6% and is still falling further. Treasury bonds refer to federal debt, so the corresponding fiscal revenue should be It is also federal fiscal revenue, which is about $3.5 trillion. The total revenue of 7 trillion cannot be used to view debt repayment pressure, because the revenues of state and local governments are far from paying off their debts.
However, a large part of the 27 trillion national debt was borrowed under the ultra-low interest rate environment during Obama’s economic stimulus and this year’s epidemic. Therefore, the current annual interest expenditure is roughly $340 billion to 370 billion, which is lower than 700 billion military expenditures. The interest expense accounts for about 10% of revenue.
Before you dance on crypto’s grave I suggest you research DeFi. It has some truly amazing aspects that would allow you to engage in all kinds of transactions without banks and brokerages.
You can engage in smart contracts that automatically execute, although smart contracts are not legally binding. However you can also use smart legal contracts that are like Ricardian contracts and they are legally binding.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around this.
A smart contract is basically the same principle as a vending machine. The blockchain contract for a vending machine would be something like “If $1 is inserted, dispense 1 can of soda”.
I don’t think it’s ready for prime time because there are a lot of issues to work out including scammers and hackers but at the moment ethereum seems to be the vehicle of choice.
The market itself is exploding. While people have been nay-saying crypto, several states have already started addressing laws governing DeFi. The amount of money traded was about $700 million in 2020 and now *monthly* flows are in the billions.
You can laugh at crypto but DeFi and NFT might have the last laugh. There are 1.7 billion people in the world who are “unbanked”. In Africa where even if you have a bank account it can be hard to get to it. A movement has arisen for the unbanked that uses cell phones to transfer funds between buyers and sellers and you park your funds with the telecom company. Check out “mobile money”.
No banker or government came up with this. No law had to be passed to coerce people to use mobile money. People CHOSE to conduct business outside of the banking system. This isn’t PayPal (sorry Elon) or Zelle. There are no banks involved. You simply can’t ignore this phenomenon.
If DeFi can shake out the bugs it will be a gut punch to banks and brokerages. The most popular blockchain used for DeFi is ethereum. Even if you aren’t ready for DeFi, ETH demand should be pretty solid.
Michael with respect to “mobile money”, I checked out WorldRemit and it is interesting. Money in a bank account can be transferred to one of the mobile services, so one really needs a “bank” to start with. But after that, the transactions are quick, and with a fee attached. From the WorldRemit site:
“A mobile money transfer is a fast, easy and secure transaction whereby a sender sends money from their bank, credit/debit card or own mobile money account to another mobile money account. For a transfer to take place – a recipient needs a mobile money account and the sender requires the recipient’s mobile money account number. Funds can then be transferred in an instant.”
You don’t need a bank account to use mobile money. That’s one reason it became so popular.
Widen your search and look for “mobile money agent”. You can give them cash and they will fund your digital wallet with it.
For centuries there have been networks for cash transfers. Typically you gave the money to a local agent, who then notified his counterpart at the receiving end to pay the money to the intended recipient. No physical cash moves between locations.
I believe this began around the 8th century and is known as the Hawala system. It is still in use by both rich and poor. A Nigerian in the US might use Hawala to send money home. OTOH a rich Saudi prince can use Hawala to launder large amounts of money
Hawala does not record the identities of the parties. The Hawala dealers keep ledgers of the Hawala dealer they sent money, and who sent money to them.
The first thing that will jump out at you is you have to be crazy to conduct business this way. However, Hawala is a close-knit circle where trust is paramount. Screw someone in the Hawala system and nobody will ever do business with you ever again.
I imagine this gives MonkeyBusiness heartburn but the fact is that Hawala has survived for 13 centuries.
If you replace a bank with another trust center, mobile company or not, I don’t see that as Defi. Just look at wechat or alibaba, neither is a bank and they do billion transactions. You can further look at how individual do mobile banking in rural India.
I won’t start with privacy concerns in the whole blockchain .
DeFi is definitely more anonymous than a bank or brokerage. Mobile money is not anonymous. The point is that the average person wants to get out from under the thumb of the fat cat financial institutions who do nothing but grab the “vig” like the neighborhood bookie.
DeFi and mobile money are symptoms of dissatisfaction with Wall Street and their global collaborators.
Look up “Hawala”.
It’s not about bugs, it’s the fact that the system is open to all, even criminals. Now you can make an argument that the current monetary system is also full of holes, but what about Defi will make it harder for criminals to use it? Presumably with Defi, it will become very easy for bad guys to launder money.
The problem with the whole crypto space is that the people in it are mostly nihilists. Let’s not try to create a civil society where most people can be trusted (like Japan for example), instead let’s just assume that everyone is a scum and let tech be the solution. But then again how do you know if there are no backdoors built in to the system if you can’t trust the developers?
This is not some trite argument. Ken Thompson, who won the Turing award in the 80s, made exactly that point in his acceptance speech. To quote him “To what extent should one trust a statement that a program is free of Trojan horses? Perhaps it is more important to trust the people who wrote the software”
And there is no such thing like a program that can not be broken. It is known that once the quantum computer arrives, all current cryptography solution will be broken. No exceptions. When that day arrives, all sorts of modifications will be made on all sorts of blockchains, rendering them useless.
So where do you place your trust? A burial urn labeled “Mom”
Or maybe you prefer a counterparty like Jon Corzine or Bernie Madoff. And despite a complete lack of software you can steal paintings from an art museum.
Stooping that low can only mean you can’t see any faults with my argument.
Were you don’t place your trust is in an entity with no face. If you can’t talk to them anywhere in the process stay away, regardless of the branding.
Systems are always considered great while they work. But in reality, a system is great when it doesn’t work and you can still get recourse.
Monkeyboy, I can’t stoop low enough to address your ridiculous arguments especially things like logically fallacious appeals to authority like Thompson.
As for the traditional system, it’s been going quite a while but how many embezzlements, hacks, market manipulations, scams, money laundering,, and episodes of fraud have we had?
You have a strange concept of safety. Add it to your list of other strange concepts you believe.
In what ways is American society trending more trustworthy? I’d posit the trend is in the opposite direction, and that crypto-nihlism is more of a reaction to this than a cause of this.
The idea of crypto is to build a “trustless” system. IOW you don’t need to trust an intermediary or your counterparty.
Supposedly if I buy your stablecoins the existence of the collateral will have been verified. I don’t have to know you or trust you. However I do have to trust the collateral verification.
I don’t know if we’ll have a perfect system but if it’s going to be imperfect at least decentralize it and cut out the banks and brokers.
Crypto will never be anonymous. I think that weakness is coming to light. The takedown of Silk Road taught regulators how to unravel blockchain. At best its pseudonymous. The best privacy is probably Monera.
That may be why Melon Tusk changed his mind about accepting crypto for cars. If you buy a Tesla with cash, you pay the price plus sales tax. If you pay with crypto it needs to be converted to cash, which triggers a tax event if you sold it for more than you bought it. The $2 BTC that you bought that is now worth $50,000 is gonna have a tax bite when you buy the Tesla.
How lucky do you feel being pseudonymous?
I think it’s worth it just to break the banks and their stranglehold on our money.
I kinda doubt this “quantum computer” will arrive.
1:1 error checking to computing/data ratio problem…..if they even succeed in electronic communications with it, and then to humans.
@Michael – I am trying to learn. If a smart contract is built off of Ethereum, do you have to buy a Ethereum coin first? If so, I would prefer a blockchain that is cheap and costs less than $1.
Why not a free opensource blockchain that is free similar to how Linux grew.
I’m new to this, as in one week. The problem with crypto is primarily volatility. Would you buy or sell a house with crypto?
DeFi is like another layer built on crypto. Business on DeFi is conducted using stablecoins. Stablecoins are tokens backed by collateral. Usually it’s fiat like the USD. This combines crypto with a far less volatile entity. You could, for example, put together a pile of stablecoin where 1 stablecoin = $1. You would also have to post the collateral somewhere and have it verified.
Now maybe someone will sell you their house for 500,000 of your stablecoins, knowing that they can cash them in for $500,000.
So this system really greases the skids for crypto transactions.
You can also attach contracts to the tokens. It’s common to see lending done this way. The borrower and lender agree on the amount, interest, and due date. There are apps that will execute the contract automatically. So you might agree to lend me $1,000 of stablecoin at 5% interest, due in 6 months. We can attach a contract to that so in 6 months I pay you $1,050 in stablecoin and we can run it on autopilot.
The whole concept of DeFi is that it’s short for decentralized finance. It’s not Alibaba. It’s spread all over the world.
So you need a ledger, and that’s where blockchain comes in. Blockchain is the ledger that records everything, including the contract. Currently the blockchain ledger of choice is ETH.
But as always there are risks. The collateral verification process is concentrated in too few hands. People can make a change to the contract without your knowledge before you do the deal. There’s no way to unravel that.
I think certain segments of crypto itself are getting concentrated into too few hands as well.
But I’m absolutely willing to consider anything that prices the fingers of big banks and hedge funds off of our financial system. Anyone warning about potential for fraud and abuse need only look at the history of the traditional system. Who were the winners and losers in the GFC?
Anyway that’s what I have so far. Probably half of it is wrong.
Pries, not prices the fingers.
Thanks. So really we will not need BTC or Ether. We just need a stable coin. I am guessing the only stable coin that will be used for transactions as your examples will be one backed by the Government?
Otherwise you may have to pay taxes on the basis of the price you paid for BTC and at the time you used it to buy a house.
ru82,
Yes, you need Ethereum coins to pay for a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain. It is an entirely closed system.
See, I think the concept of DeFi is good. As long as you’re doing it with the dollar or a digital equivalent there of, any substitution for the dollar, and you are essentially going against governments to loosen their control on people.
Can I get a HELL NO on that one from the J-team?
Look at China’s reaction about reducing mining and banning cryptos except for the digital Yuan. What is that other than an attempt to ensure control. Does anyone think that the US government is going to just let the dollar be supplanted? Just ask yourself what FDR did with Executive order 6102, what would it do to crypto prices in the near term if the J-team or whoever else came up with a law or an EO to make transactions and ownership of cryptos illegal. This is likely the one item that can garner bipartisan support, because no one in Congress wants to see the end of the reserve currency status for the dollar.
And yes, I’d be terrified of DeFi and the potential scams involved around it. And does anyone expect the Fed to go quietly along with Defi?
No, you can’t destroy crypto, but you can make life for the owners miserable.
The politicians know that if you control the money, you control the people. It’s been like that a very long time in this world.
Governments will do whatever is necessary to keep control over the money.
The government is contolled by plutocrats.
“I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls the British money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.” — Mayer Rothschild
If bond interest jumps to 5%, that’s $1.5T annual interest out of $30T while revenue is only 3.5T. So interest will never grow to that level again.
With ultra-low interest in Japan, people buy 0.1% gov yen bond like crazy. This could happen to US as well.
Some may think if you pay crazy $ for the growth, you may suffer in short term but could still be better than other alternatives.
But the thing is people are not buying Japan govt bonds like crazy.
Only the bank of Japan is buying jgb’s. Their deficit is now entirely monetized. There are days that go by that there are no jgb trades at all.
Why couldn’t US gov bond become like japan bond?
Because Japan produces more than it consumes. We don’t.
To RightNYer:
Japan was implementing yield-curve control not to lower longer-maturity bond yields but to raise them.
I don’t see how 40+ year rate decline couldn’t have proved Fed can control long yield curve while US produces less and less, plus 27T debt makes it impossible to raise the rate.
1) Take five, for 3 years :
UST30Y, UST10Y, UST5Y, UST2Y and UST3M.
2) The cluster between 30Y and 3M is too obese.
3) US30Y : Mar 18 2021 @2.52 was an UT. the 30Y was higher than Nov 2019 high. The 30Y was stopped on dma200. US30Y failed on big red July 29 2019, or on the monthly bar of Aug 2019 open. Failed is bearish.
4) US10Y, US5Y, US2Y and US3M are all lower highs.
5) Since Apr 2021, US2Y is trending down in lower high and lower lows.
6) The 3M @0.013 is trending down in stepping stones since Apr 2020 > NR.
Options
7) The 3M : accumulation due to higher inflation. the 3M will popup.
8) The 3M will plunge to NR. That will drag the 5Y, 10Y and the 30Y lower, shrinking the cancer bump, in a wild volatile operation.
I remember back when I was a mere teenager with an ATI Radeon 5770 GPU and Bitcoin had just been birthed and was .11 cents a coin. I remember when it ran up to 3-4 dollars a coin circa 2011 iirc. It was the absolute end of the world in the underground internet circles. I mined 1/4 of a coin and upgraded the computer and lost the wallet. A few years later a month or two long fiasco from my teenage years and something I thought was dead was suddenly worth 16k a coin and my father was asking me to show him how to buy Bitcoin. I resurrected that old computer and cashed out for a nice free 4k.
If only I had a crystal ball I could be a billionaire right now. Oh well, you can’t time the market and you definitely can’t pick the revolutionary next big thing. Working class schlubs don’t get rich unless they are lucky. It’s foolish to worry over what if. Work your job and live your life and hope it doesn’t burn you when the flames shoot up.
When would the crystal ball have told you to sell such coins?
I’m a permabear so if I had a lot of it I’d have sold when it hit probably 20 dollars or less. I always thought Bitcoin was a joke but jokes on me.
But the joke still got me 4k free so that’s pretty nice. But if I would have held it could have been what 16k? No bother crying over it now or about what could’ve been.
My crystal ball just says “buy the dip”. I ask it how I know this is a dip. “Bitcoin to 300!”, it says. I think it was made in Nevada.
I remember a documentary on two homeless guys in Miami spending all day mining bitcoin on laptops. Pretty sure they were able to get pizza or some kind of food with it then, too.
Must have been around same time….c 2011.
1) UST30Y = 0.1% ==> the gov don’t care.
2) US gov will partner with BA, XOM, WFC…collecting dividends, dictating policies, after saving them.
3) All employees will be gov employees.
4) Job opening for party members.
5) Shut up, or be phased out.
6) US gov will not waste the fruits of the next recession.
All I know is everywhere I look on REALTOR.com it seems like everything is pending or there are virtually no listings. I even looked at Lubec ME ( a fantasy destination) and there have always been at least 10-25 houses for sale; barely anything now.
the dollar is main story….market, commodities and crypto riding the drop since powell blurted out crypto meeting….
its due for a relief rally…..or stick a fork in it….
I don’t know if anyone is paying attention to this but get out of bonds and the bond market, bond ETF’s, bond mutual funds, bond funds, individual US treasury bonds, zero coupon bonds, municipal bonds, mortgage bonds, corporate bonds, etc.
I am making a prediction here which in my opinion will be 95% correct. I am predicting that US treasury bond yields from 5 to 30 years will be between 2% to 4% by end of 2023, 3% to 5% by the end of 2024, 4% to 6% by the end of 2025, 5% to 7% by the end of 2026. The perceived safe haven of bonds, US bonds and world government and investment grade, municipal bonds, mortgage bonds is coming to an end.
We will look back and see how this looked not possible but it became reality. Time will tell.
I hope so. We deserve it.
Weren’t those bond yields that high once before?
In 1984 my mortgage rate was 13%.
Unfortunately I bought my crystal ball from a company called Trucker Guy Futuristics or I would have hocked everything to scarf up long bonds.
My crystal ball came with a SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: I AM MAKING A PREDICTION HERE WHICH IN MY OPINION WILL BE 95% CORRECT.
Old Eight Ball kid’s toys only had two correct answers…”can not tell you now” and “concentrate and ask again”.
Do you know how much interest gov need to pay if rate hit 5%? It’s close to 40% of federal revenue. It’s impossible for Fed to allow it.
When Fed buys a bond from Treasury the interest is remitted to them.
Fed just own 4.3T out of 27T.
I am thinking the same trend Dan is posting here. The central banks of the world and the big kahuna US Federal Reserve has it’s limits and time is running out sooner than later. They are going to lose control of keeping interest low in my opinion in the next 24 months at the latest.
The cryptos are doomed. The CCP just now decided to outlaw them, probably because its members are using cryptos to hide their bribes and stolen funds. If that Orwellian, hyper-surveillance, dystopian state bans them, and other countries follow suit, even the patronage of other criminals eager to hide and transfer their winnings will not save them.
That is my prediction which will come to pass sooner or later.