The remarkable success of grandiose pronouncements, money-printing programs and serial expansions of credit raises a key question: how many more “saves” can the central bank bazookas fire that will have the desired effects of maintaining perceptions of central bank omnipotence and pushing global markets ever higher?

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Few people understand the global economy and its (mis)management better than David Stockman — former director of the OMB under President Reagan, former US Representative, best-selling author of The Great Deformation, and veteran financier.

David is now loudly warning that events have entered the crack-up phase, which he predicts will be defined by the following 4 developments:

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Everything the central planners have tried has failed to bring widespread prosperity and has instead concentrated it dangerously at the top.   Whether by coincidence or conspiracy, every possible escape hatch for 99.5% of the people has been welded shut.  We are all captives in a dysfunctional system of money, run by a few for the few, and it is headed for complete disaster.

To understand why, in all its terrible and fascinating glory, we need look no further than Japan.

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If risk has been taken from where it belongs and instead shuffled onto central bank balance sheets, or allowed to be hidden by new and accommodating accounting tricks, has it really disappeared? In my world, risk is like energy: it can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed or transferred. 

If reality no longer has a place at the table — such as when policy makers act as if the all-too-temporary shale oil bonanza is now a new permanent constant — then the discussions happening around that table are only accidentally useful, if ever, and always delusional.

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The current bubble in financial assets — in both equities and bonds of all grades and quality — raging in every major market across the globe is no accident.

It's a deliberate creation. An intentional result of policy.

Therefore, when it bursts, we shouldn't regard the resulting damage as some freak act of nature or other such outcome outside of our control. To reiterate, the carnage will be the very predictable result of our terribly shortsighted decision-making and defective logic.

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Conventional thinking and reporting has it that Japan is conducting a larger version of the same monetary experiment they’ve been running for about 15 years.  The implication here is that we can safely analyze what Japan is up to through the same monetary lens as always, but with a slightly wider aperture.

By now, we are all familiar with the details.  Japan has initiated a program of monetary expansion that goes by the shorthand of 2-2-2.  In 2 years, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) will fully double the monetary base as they seek a minimum of 2% inflation.

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