It has in the past been “the financial crisis”, “the Euro crisis”, “Greek debt”, “Italian banks”, “the fiscal cliff”, “Brexit” and so on. Every one of those events an extension of Keynesianism and its debt-leveraged monetary magic tricks. But now the buzz phrase is “trade war”, a different kind of animal.

The brewing trade war with China is different. With every damn one of the events noted above we here in the anti-hype environs of nftrh.com (and before it, biiwii.com) have tried to maintain perspective about why it was occurring (Thing 1, which we had anticipated in essence if not in the exact way it played out) or why they would not prove long-term bearish or bring on the end of the world (Things 2-6).  [Editor’s Note: at first glance, I thought this was a Biblical citation, until I realized there was not a book of Things, at least not in the King James Version to which I am accustomed. – Tim]

Indeed, we often note that inflammatory market events prove most often to be sentiment resets and buying opportunities as the herd pukes up its asset holdings. Keynesianism after all, has an elasticity to it despite its obvious and one day terminal faults. The elastic keeps stretching to this day. (more…)