This is a difficult essay for an American of this generation to read, because we have grown up with the assumption that the security of the United States is intimately tied to massive amounts of spending for military preparedness. The first response to any essay such as this is often an emotional one: "What about the troops?"

It requires an effort to realize that the vast majority of this spending has absolutely nothing to do with what the troops want or need. The recent examples of the lack of adequate armor on vehicles carrying troops, to the abysmal conditions in the military hospital system, are more than just anomalies. The military industrial complex, of which we had been warned in the farewell address of Dwight Eisenhower, does not value the troops, the US citizen army, highly in its equations.

The United States has reached its limit. It can no longer aspire to be ‘the world’s policeman.’ We are not able to do this and maintain a viable and healthy democracy at home. We are not protecting ourselves and our liberties; we are promoting the interests of pseudo-american global corporations around the world. As Mussolini observed, corporatism is fascism.

The global corporate complex, though nominally based in part in the US, exists for its own purposes, serves its own purposes, and consumes everything which we the American people hold most valuable: our lives, our liberties, and our pursuit of peace and happiness with justice for all.

"Some of the damage can never be rectified. There are, however, some steps that the U.S. urgently needs to take. These include reversing Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthy, beginning to liquidate our global empire of over 800 military bases, cutting from the defense budget all projects that bear no relationship to national security and ceasing to use the defense budget as a Keynesian jobs program. If we do these things we have a chance of squeaking by. If we don’t, we face probable national insolvency and a long depression."

Why the U.S. Has Really Gone Broke
Chalmers Johnson
Le Monde Diplomatique
February, 2008

Global confidence in the US economy has reached zero, as was proved by last month’s stock market meltdown. But there is an enormous anomaly in the US economy above and beyond the subprime mortgage crisis, the housing bubble…

The bars remain blue going into next week. But the False Bar Stochastic, channels and wave count are all warning that the end of a multi-month corrective Wave 4 is upon us. Still unconfirmed, but running out of room and running on fumes.

240 minute SPX

Not all charts help the analysis, as is the case with the above 240 minute chart. But it does define our dilemma; Which way, which way?

30 minute SPX

So we drill down to a chart that does add tactical perspective. At first glance, this looks eerily close to the Weekly chart. But it’s a 30 minute SPX. The portrait here is of a definitive end to a Wave 4 correction and the first red bar of Wave 5 down. On the shortest tactical time frame we see what could be the beginning of a massive bearish formation that will infect all of the above charts and bring into the play a significant decline, or more accurately, the significant decline.

Bottom line is that the resumption of the Bear Market in a big, big way is upon us. If it hasn’t started yet, it will soon enough. Significant weakness next week will seal the deal. Absent that, another week, maybe two will be needed for an almost perfect set-up for an almost perfect storm.
 

I am posting this at your request to do…

With an almost ~40% equity markets rally behind us, this bull market may still have some upside left. The bears sure got caught flat footed on this one. It’s always interesting to collate responses from different strategists. I find that recurrent themes makes it easier to filter out the noise. (Consider this to be similar to the "most widely held" consensus stock portfolio. Only in this case we’re trying to divine the "most widely held" very-smart money strategy. )

I’ve written two other recent commentaries which can be found here and here. Together, they represent a nice summary of current very-smart money opinion.

Well, the consensus seems to:

• Favor gold. We already knew that several prominent funds like Paulson Funds and Greenlight Capital have recently taken huge positions in gold.
• Bearish strategists still point to the suspect technical nature of this rally, and sound as adamant as ever. Probably a little too wedded to their ideas.
• A currency crisis with dollar devaluation looks imminent
• Even the bears think the highs in this rally may be ahead of us
• 930-950 on the S&P500 represents overhead resistance. If we clear it, this bull has a lot further to go. If we don’t, it’s a bear market rally.
• One common thread running through a few commentaries focuses on a three cycle picture: a correction in May, another big rally into June-July, and then another really deep correction, possibly taking us to new lows (depending on how bearish the strategist is).
• Some well respected economists have chimed in on how the current rally on green shoots euphoria sounds suspect.

So it definitely looks like the rally is long in the tooth. Let’s see what the very-smart money has to say:

• Jim Rogers : The stock market may hit new lows this year or the next as the current rally has been largely caused by the money printed by central banks and fundamental problems remain unsolved

  I’m not buying shares if that’s what you mean. Not at all. The bottom will probably come later this year, next year, who knows when. Governments have not solved the essential problems that caused the crisis but instead they "flooded the world with money". Trying to solve the…