Despite how it’s remembered in posterity, there’s no denying that it’s been an incredible year for technological advancements and for financial markets, which have been buttressed by the Federal Reserve and other central banks.
Oddly enough, it’s the leaders of these institutions who, despite the apparent good fortune of the stock market, continue to ring the alarm bells on the economy.
Even as I write to you, Fed Chair Jerome Powell and outgoing Treasury Secretary Mnuchin are on Capital Hill urging Congress to do more to help the little guy.
Warnings from the banking sector, which ring loud that thousands of small businesses are now on the verge of collapse, are falling on seemingly deaf ears.
Yeah, it’s great that we can now foresee the end of the pandemic over the course of the next year, but that’s not extremely helpful for those who need to pay their bills, cover their overhead, and/or feed their families today.
As the chair has correctly pointed out, what’s needed here is not a loan from the Fed, it’s a grant from Uncle Sam.
Certainly enough, free money for all doesn’t sound like capitalism, but then again, neither is a government-mandated lockdown.
In either case, you can’t really have one with out the other. It just wouldn’t be fair to outlaw entire industries while not providing some level of compensation to hold them over.
Everyone knows what needs to be done, but watching Congress’s failure to come together to sign an aid package is one of the most frustrating experiences of my entire career. The election is over, who gives a damn about the optics???
It’ll be another two years before the next Congressional election, so if one side looks weaker than the other they’ll have plenty time to compensate for their position.
Literally the only thing standing in the way of doing the right thing is pride.
In the meantime, the U.S. economy has never been so close to completely collapsing.
Best month of our lives
In the last 80 years, there have only been 13 months that saw double-digit growth in the major stock indices. November is one of them, with approximately 13% gains in all three major U.S. indices. In fact…
That means, for some of our younger readers, this is actually the best stock performance of your entire life.
As amazing as the stock performance has been, bitcoin rose a total of 43% in November. That’s not a record by any stretch, but it’s still pretty awesome.
Ripple’s XRP even put that number to shame with a total gain of 180% for the month. Astonishingly, this is also not a record.
How we’ll end the year is anybody’s guess. Will the momentum continue, or will we see some sort of retracement? Your guess is literally as good as mine.
In trying to time when the stock markets will slap back to reality, I’ve ended up failing big time, so for now, I’m doubling down on a winner and going big on crypto.
