Are these to be the good old days?

"And stay right here, 'cause these are the good old days"

 

Anticipation

Carly Simon

 

I had some strange thoughts as of late. Is it possible that things are going to get so bad many will look back at this time as "the good old days". As I have aged, I have tried not to become too nostalgic. It is hard though. I had some good times living in the 80's and 90's. Not always a bowl of cherries - just interesting times - very interesting. I have lived though the drunken orgy of the dot com run up and then suffered the hangover from the dot com bust. When it was good, it was very good. The party was on. There was money to be made.

I know. If more of us had done homework, we would have seen the bust coming. I was working at Big Blue at the time, and we were knee deep in the party. Many business partners and clients were internet companies. I did wonder at times where all the money was coming from. How in the world did these internet companies make money? Born and raised in the "brick and mortar" world, I would feel like Alice in Wonderland in this fast and crazy new world of IT. I went along with the crowd, invested in some dot com start ups, and then waited for my ship to come in. Heck, many said the NASDAQ would soon hit 10,000. I ignored my instincts and the training I received in business school. I followed the Pied Piper, and when the bust came, I lost big.

Today reminds me of the dot com days. The Dow is ready to hit and exceed 14,000. Record highs! Only one minor problem. The metrics are all wrong to support these numbers. Our economy is still anemic, Europe is on life support, China is slowing down, and our debt is becoming Greece. Not to mention the fact the war on terror goes on and the Middle East is ready to erupt. As the old saying goes, "The ship is about to hit the sand". Life could become very tough, very quickly. Our life style could be forced into a change which could last for years, maybe forever. Many could be looking back to January 2013, thinking these really were the good old days.

Today, we found out that the economy is in contraction. We have gone from anemic growth to negative growth. A normal, sane economy would react to this news by a huge drop in the market - for days. Not today. Thanks to our up is down, black is white economy, with a bit of QE forever thrown in for good measure, the party is on! We are going for Dow 14,000 baby! Meanwhile companies like Boston Scientific just announced another 1,000 pink slips, and our debt is still growing by $4B/day.

It has been said the hippies of the sixties are now running the show in Washington. That may or may not be true. I will say this however - the crew we have steering the ship of state often times appear clueless. Some feel they are not clueless - they are malevolent. They are trying to wreck the economy. In any case, if our economy tanks due to either omission or commission, the result will be the same - a catastrophic financial future. So if these are the good old days, party on! We will worry about the hangover tomorrow.