A Bitter Winter for US Stocks: By Bill Bonner - September 25, 2017 - For Markets & Money
It’s autumn already. A heavy fog covers the farm this morning, the first this year.
September can be beautiful here. Not yet cold. But no longer hot. The grass is green, and the sky is clear.
Then, in the evening, the horizontal sun filters through the golden leaves and the whole place lights up.
Giving up the fight
Yesterday, Toys ‘R’ Us went broke.
The story is being widely discussed this morning, with the usual mainstream analysts telling us that the bankruptcy was ‘expected’ and that the brick-and-mortar toy retailer was just ‘another victim of Amazon.com’.
That is not untrue. But there is an important nuance…
Artificially low interest rates allowed Wall Street hustlers — notably Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital, an investor in Toys ‘R’ Us — to borrow heavily against the company.
Apparently, Bain didn’t use this money to build a better Toys ‘R’ Us — strengthening its online presence to compete with Amazon, for example.
More likely, it used it as the Wall Street players always do: to pay themselves off.
Bonuses, fees, dividends — typically, the private-equity suits take the capital out of capitalism. They move it from the Main Street economy to the financial economy…leaving the poor retailer to struggle to survive.
Toys ‘R’ Us gave up the fight yesterday.
Read the rest of the article here..
https://www.marketsandmoney.com.au/bitter-winter-us-stocks/2017/09/25/
I've wondered what's gonna happen when they raise interest rates to more normal rates since the interest on the US $20 trillion in debt is going to cost $200 billion per year for every percentage point they raise it.
The average person in America doesn't even seem to know how much the debt is or understand why it is so bad and how it affects them and their children. I know I'm preaching to the choir here but good lord it pisses me off how stupid the politicians in DC are and how brainwashed and ignorant so many Americans are.
It's your typical greed of another CEO banking while more people become unemployed