Free thinker Charles Hugh Smith asks "What Is Obvious About This Market?"
He then goes on to say everything an Austrian-inspired person can be expected to say. Indeed, several other members of the Austrian "cargo cult" said much the same thing on the same day, on the same sites. Central banks are blowing bubbles that have caused a "disconnect between the real economy and the stock market [that] is widening [and] obvious."
The problem with laying everything at the feet of central banks is that doing so ignores how private actions have completely destroyed any semblance of a "market" in the so-called stock market. Between dark pools and HFT, there is no possibility of price discovery and, hence, no market. The relatively small positions of retail investors that are traded out in the open of "light pools" such as the NYSE are used as a proxy to set the prices of secret trades in dark pools, and if the retail investor gets weak-kneed, HFT can be counted on to supply the illusion of demand to prop up the proxy pricing.
Private parties are using dark pools and HFT to create and enforce the decoupling between the "market" and the "real economy," and there is little chance of a true collapse of the stock market unless and until there is a true solvency crisis of a major player.
