Torches And Pitch Forks

...coming soon to a gated community near you.

Wall Street On Parade (10-23-13):

Yesterday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a very weak jobs number: just 148,000 new nonfarm jobs had been added by employers in September. To the rational mind, an appropriate reaction in the stock market would have been to sell off on the basis that the economy remains weak. Instead, the Standard and Poor’s 500 hit a new record, closing at an all time high of 1,754.67.

The general thesis to explain this reaction is that today’s Wall Street is running a racket similar to Lance Armstrong. It’s on a heavy doping regimen in the form of the $85 billion a month that the Federal Reserve is funneling into the markets through the purchase from Wall Street of U.S. Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities. When the Fed buys those instruments, it forces $85 billion of cash each month into the hands of traders to deploy into higher risk assets – stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), stock futures and what have you, artificially forcing the market higher.

--and--

The 401(k) is the mechanism that created the subliminal mindset that what’s good for Wall Street is good for Main Street. The hard reality is that the top 5 percent of the wealthiest Americans own 60 percent of stocks.

More and more people being left with less and less, will eventually understand they have nothing to lose by storming the barricades and taking whatever they want.