Quote from jj90:
I ignore a lot of your shit, but I actually do want to hear why you think we are not gonna decouple.
It isn't possible to decouple. They (CNBC) had a talking head at the end of today talk about "disconnecting", rather than decoupling.
Decoupling has been the argument for pre-empting exponential US stock market growth most managers use to get their investors to ignore foreign problems.
It is not possible to decouple, because world markets are interconnected, and my opinion is that the supposed "decoupling" you're seeing is just seasonality and new money entering the market after being on the sidelines ready to invest at the beginning of the year and also at the beginning of the month. The combination of these two has been the impetus for stock market gains, but will not last because the European debt crisis are sovereign credit problems that the EFSF is not financed large enough to ever save all of the countries it will supposedly help. Now that Germany is the only AAA credit backing the fund, it is doubtful that the increased borrowing costs of nearly every Euro Zone country will ever decrease, making the EFSF a sham p-shooter compared to the US Bazooka, but our bazooka helped private companies, not finance political, fiscal malfeasance and socialism.
The analysis is easier if you realize that in terms of market timing, there was a wave of buying before the official open of 2012, and there have been stocks making new 52 week lows in all this, so it's not like the rally is that broad based, and since I don't get much credit for my analysis anyway I'm just going to say that after the first day of 2012 I immediately faded but obviously that hasn't worked out very well. The decoupling is not possible because it is not possible and won't ever be possible. It's the adage that macroeconomy is not affected by exogenous foreign difficulties when we know that we have to export to grow our economy. The argument that we don't need Europe is an especially stupid argument and since they are a large percentage of global GDP, never mind that Greece is just 3% of their National GDP, it isn't possible to avoid the effects of contagion because as the Euro crashes to parity with the dollar, this will strengthen our currency and decrease net profits from foreign translations that are most likely already hedged. We haven't seen the market price that in, but when we see the earnings from the financials I'd be interested to know what they're doing to hedge their interest rate and currency risk. Just because they are a financial institution does not mean that they can perfectly arbitrage every fluctuation in the forex markets, so with that, the multinational corporations will see their balance sheets hit by foreign currency loss translations due to a weakening Euro and strengthening dollar. If you want proof, you should notice that the Euro crashes at the same time our market declines, and this is due to that translational accounting effect on balance sheets of Foreign and Domestic Multinational Corporations doing business in the Eurozone.
The effect, or, result, I should say, will be both hyperinflation and deflation, with deflation primarily ocurring as soon as interest rates rise, the stock market collapses, Euro approaches parity, and the EFSF is inevitably almost completely used up defending sub A- credits like Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, which leaves another waft of deflation in the wake sending European markets crashing out of a combined hyperinflationary deflation disaster globally.