/ world today news/ In connection with the current conflict in the USA between supporters and opponents of Donald Trump after the presidential elections in 2020, questions are increasingly being heard as to why the American economy is not responding in any way to these turbulent political events and the risks, associated with these events, as if he did not notice them.
I must say that stock market indices, which are often considered the most important indicator of the economic situation in the US and other countries of the world, have long lived their own life and have nothing to do with the real economy, being an indicator of some completely different processes and phenomena. Once upon a time, by the level of capitalization of a certain company, it was really possible to more or less accurately judge how efficient and successful it was. Now these indicators are practically not related to each other.
Thus, due to the so-called 2020 coronavirus pandemic, according to various estimates, the US economy has lost 5 to 6% of its gross domestic product (GDP). But this did not affect the stock markets in any way. For example, from October 2019 to October 2020, the market capitalization of the NASDAQ – that is, the shares of high-tech companies – increased from 16 to 21 trillion dollars. In other stock markets, the picture is almost the same. But the International Monetary Fund confirms that in the vast majority of countries in the world – with the possible exception of China and a few other smaller national economies – there has been a decline in GDP. And in China, the growth is small – 1.52%. But even there capitalization is growing rapidly. According to preliminary data, the capitalization of Chinese companies – meaning those companies whose shares are listed on the world’s leading stock exchanges – increased by 41% in 2020, to $16.7 trillion. Compare these two figures: economic growth of 2% and capitalization growth of 41%, that is more than 20 times more!
And in the US, capitalization growth in 2020 amounted to 21%, to the level of 41.6 trillion dollars – with, I repeat, more than a 5% decrease in GDP. The entire global stock market is estimated at 104 trillion at the beginning of 2021. It is clear that the lion’s share of this market, 40%, belongs to American corporations, but these corporations themselves are not experiencing the best of times. Many of these giants have wild capitalizations, but at the same time they are making zero profits at all or are at a loss, especially the IT companies. This has never happened. It used to be a rule that the capitalization value of any company should not exceed the value of its total profit for the previous ten years. That is, if your company receives 100 million in profit per year, it can have a maximum capitalization of 1 billion.
But today, all those formulas that economics students had to know by heart in the last century don’t work at all. Today, the level of capitalization of a company is in the order of things when it exceeds its profitability not by 10, but by 20, 50, 100 and more times. There are even companies that have wild capitalizations amid continuous losses. How so? They just convince people to be patient – today or tomorrow there will be a technological breakthrough, so all their investments will pay off many times over…
This is called “ballooning”. The story is not new at all. I recently wrote a series of articles about the Great Depression, which began with a panic on the New York Stock Exchange in October 1929 and then grew into a financial and economic crisis: first in America, then in Europe and around the world, which continued until World War II war. But it was a lesson that no one tried to learn. Already in 1927-1928, the American economy began to collapse. But before that, during the whole 20 years, which are called the “Roaring Twenties”, there is simply frantic investment activity, all economic indices are growing. And only the most cautious analysts warn that it makes no sense to bet on growth when the economy stops: as the profit indicators fall, so do the employment indicators, that is, the increase in unemployment, more and more bankruptcies … But for some reason gamblers do not respond to these warnings, continuing to inflate the “bubble”. In fact, it leads to collapse. Moreover, such collapses do not happen spontaneously – there are special people who “make the market”. They always win, it’s a cynical game that has nothing to do with the real economy.
Or take the “dot-com crisis” of 2000, when there was a collapse of the market for high-tech Internet companies, where there had previously been a boom for several years after the advent of the Internet, and everyone said that this was the basis of the “new economy’ behind which lies the future of humanity. But then everything collapsed, and only three years later, confidence in Internet companies began to recover. So today we are witnessing essentially the same story.
But here it is necessary to point out another extremely important point. What happened during the Great Depression compared to the current situation is children’s sandbox games. Because what are these “balloons” inflated with? They are inflated by the money supply, and the money supply is done by the central bank. In the US this is the Federal Reserve system. During the Roaring Twenties FR has brakes on its printing press. The role of such brakes is fulfilled by the gold standard. That is, it is impossible to print an unlimited number of dollars, since the volume of the money supply is tied to the size of the gold reserve. And although the real coverage of the money supply with physical precious metal is constantly decreasing, which is why it was possible to pump dollars into the stock market and inflate “bubbles” there, it is still a limited resource.
And now dollars can be printed uncontrollably, in any quantity and at any speed, because there are no limits – gold or otherwise – on central bank issuance. Therefore, the inflation of the “bubble” can last a very, very long time. The 2007-2009 crisis, the so-called global financial crisis, triggered quantitative easing programs: central banks said they needed to save the economy by injecting huge amounts of money into the markets. As a result, the Fed’s foreign exchange balance from a “pre-crisis” $800 billion, which roughly corresponded to the volume of the dollar money supply, increased by 2014 to over $4 trillion. dollars, or 5 times in 6 years.
When the third quantitative easing program ended in 2014, the Fed tried to somehow reduce the amount of dollars in circulation, reduce the value of its balance sheet, that is, put the genie back in the bottle. No significant reduction was achieved, but growth in the volume of money supply practically stopped. But because of the coronavirus, the Fed has returned to the policy of quantitative easing, avoiding the term itself at all costs. In fact, frenzied issuance of dollars is taking place – the balance of the Federal Reserve increased by more than 3 trillion dollars, which means that the volume of the money supply increased by the same amount.
And a natural question arises: how can they end up explaining in every economic university, in the first year, that inflation is one type of imbalance between money and the supply of goods. If the volume of the former increases much faster than the latter, then inflation begins, and if the trend continues, it turns into hyperinflation, but nothing like that happens? It’s all very simple: dollars, straight from the Fed’s printing press, bypass the real sector of the economy and pour into the stock market. Not a single dollar or cent enters the real economy. It’s like trying to treat a sick person so that the medicine he needs doesn’t get into his body. All these mechanics can be described similarly, as a result of which there is a record inflation of “bubbles” in the stock market.
Interestingly, the main beneficiaries of this process in 2020 are the technology companies of Silicon Valley, or, as they are also called, the “silicon mafia”. In general, the pandemic is surprisingly in favor of technology companies: the establishment of complete digital control over the behavior and movement of citizens, distance learning, remote work, online commerce, Internet entertainment, etc. That is, services and products from the “digital sector” of the modern economy turned out to be in high demand. If we look at the leading companies in Silicon Valley, we will see a huge growth in their capitalization. Let’s say that in August of last year there was a moment when Apple’s capitalization reached the level of 2 trillion. dollar.
I must say that in general the situation in the American economy has changed dramatically in the last ten years. In 2010, Wall Street banks were on the first lines in the capitalization rating. Today the picture is radically different. Today, the TOP-10 in terms of capitalization are mostly Silicon Valley companies. Some of them have crossed the trillion dollar mark. In addition to Apple, these are also Google, Microsoft and Amazon.
Why exactly did IT companies turn out to be the main beneficiaries of the “coronavirus crisis”? Because the forces we usually call the “backworld” are building a worldwide electronic concentration camp. And for the construction of such an electronic concentration camp and in the future for its effective functioning, products and services of technology companies are needed above all. So now the bet is on them, on the “lords of money”. Similarly, the bet was placed by the “money lords” on Wall Street banks. It is not the “monetary civilization” that I spoke about earlier that is becoming relevant, but the “digital civilization” – with all the resulting consequences.
The real sector of the American economy, despite all the statements and efforts of Trump, continues to degrade, its share in the American GDP is constantly decreasing. And all the risks associated with the scandalous presidential elections, with the division of the country and the possible civil war, will inevitably manifest themselves in 2021.
Translation: V. Sergeev
#number #beats #money #View #Info
