Ponzi World (Over 3 Billion NOT Served)

The globalized economy is a colossal Ponzi Scheme in which the vast majority survive on the bread crumbs falling off the table. The possibility of 7 billion people achieving a consumption-oriented lifestyle is zero, so the World Bank conveniently set the poverty line at $1.25/day to legalize global slavery. As long as someone else's children are doing the suffering, it's "all good". Post-2008, this illusion was extended merely by plundering all future generations.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Velocity of Collapse

Margin Debt Hits All Time High. So What?

Barry Ritholtz and other industry apologists are out telling us that historically inflated levels of margin debt are at best a coincident indicator and not a leading indicator of a market top. I'm not even going to go there. I can't argue with that amount of denialism. Regardless of whether or not the absolute level of margin can be used to predict the precise moment of collapse, anyone with an ounce of commonsense knows that the absolute level of margin leverage contributes to the VELOCITY of collapse.

However, to get past all of this chicanery, I calculated margin debt as a surplus percentage of cash balances + margin credit aka. Relative Leverage:

Borrowing money to buy stocks. Record high leverage: