You cannot drink yourself sober.

VERBATIM POST
The Market Ticker ®
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Are you prepared yet?

No?

Well I'm sorry, because it's too late now.

I mean really, honestly too late.

The market figured it out and it didn't take very long - in fact, it took less than an hour.

This latest distortion by The Fed has just destroyed the last bit of earnings power the banks had. It's gone. All to preserve the ponzi scheme in the Federal Government - the same Federal Government that just sent a bleat to Bernanke about tampering with the economy.

The very same legislators that will now do nothing about what was just done.

You got that? They will do nothing.

What did Bernanke's act tell us?

He burned the furniture for warmth today. He and the rest of the Fed cabal are done; this was the card that was known to do much more damage than it could ever help anyone - or anything. He burned the furniture to allow the Federal Government Ponzi to continue for one more year while utterly screwing the private lending industry of all sorts from banks on down.

There is no shortage of lendable money. There hasn't been since this entire mess began. The problem was that money was too easy, not too tight, and people ran into the wall on their ability to pay.

You cannot drink yourself sober.

The game is over folks. Europe is now the lynchpin between here and the SPX at 500, and that's a short-term stop between here and an entirely-possible outcome of where it began in 1980.

That's S&P 100, not 500, and Dow 800.

I know what the comments are going to be on this statement already: That can't happen because of divisors.

Oh really? It sure can happen as companies go bankrupt and get replaced, then the replacements collapse too.

Those "high fliers" that held up reasonably well today? My advice is to sell them while they're still way up, before they wind up way down. $100 in S&P 500 earnings next year? You're on drugs gentlemen.

To those who say it can't happen I will point out that there were lots of 50% gap-down opens in the 2000-2003 time frame. Fortunately I wasn't long any of them when they happened but I assure you that just as they've happened many times before they will again.

I will also point out that in 2007 and early 2008 the same people who made these very same claims kept you long and in the market as you watched 60% of your portfolio vanish.

We still refuse to fact the fact that we have twice as much debt in the system as a whole as we can sustain and four times as much in political promises on top of that and neither private enterprise (read: Banks) or government, on either side of the aisle, will cut the crap out.

I'll go ahead and make the prediction now: This time will be worse than 2008 and we'll measure from SPX 1370, which makes the minimum downside target under 600. And no, this time it won't recover with more "hopium" and fraud - that card has already been played which means the pension funds and annuities across this nation are going to get smoked, exactly as I warned about four years ago.