Juggling Dynamite

When big banks recklessly ignore the rules of the road, we all pay the price. Here is a direct video link.

The Canadian dollar has always traded in close correlation with the Canadian stock market.  The below chart since 2oo5, plots the TSX Composite (in blue), the loonie (in red) and the resource centric Venture Exchange (in green).

As the global rebound out of the 2009 recession peaked in 2011, commodity prices, manufacturing, exports and the Canadian dollar all began to roll over once more. Stocks followed lower into 2012, before QE mania convinced some participants that central banks and levered traders had rendered the real economy and consumption superfluous to financial market performance.

Such misguided beliefs certainly bought some time for the broad market which was buoyed heavily by financials and REITS into late 2014.  Since then the broad market too has wobbled, and is now negative over the last year.

If historical patterns hold though, the still diving loonie and Venture Exchange show the broader TSX where it needs to retrace.  The answer so far suggests somewhere in the 8000 range, some 45% below current levels.

More angst and discord in Europe this weekend as the latest round of talks failed to broker solutions once more  (Monday morning update: apparently a new deal is on the table that brutalizes Greece to a new extreme).  Hopefully the Greek people will understand that the deal is impossible for them and revolt against their government.  Greece is broke and bad debts cannot be repaid.  The bankers that orchestrated the bad loans and harvested mind-boggling commissions in the process have already swapped much of their under-priced risk and over-priced assets off on to unsuspecting governments and taxpayers around the world. See:  Greek Debt was a two-way-deal, for greater understanding.

Goldman Sachs was particularly instrumental in creating the debt bomb that is now pounding Europe.  See  Revealed:  Goldman Sachs’ mega-deal for Greece for more repugnant details.

Bankers made off like the bandits they are.  Governments left holding the resulting junk assets, now don’t want to admit to they have been foiled and the public defrauded.  But write-offs are coming, like it or not.  And Greece is a test case that other hopelessly indebted countries will more or less have to follow.   A Grexit from the Euro is a necessary step towards the country’s much needed recovery from economic depression.  See:  The upside of Grexit, for some of the rewards in admitting bankruptcy and returning to an independent currency.  Time to get on with it and let the credit default dominoes fall on those who have mispriced asset risks.  Finally.