when things are based on smoke and mirrors and geared toward maximum profit it's like building a house on wet sand at the beach.

For years we've watched companies outsource, downsize, cut corners and kill employment without any cares except maximizing shareholder profit. What did they think would happen.

And isn't China buying 2% of its own market each day to prop up the mirrors?

. To put the heat on external factors and divert attention? "news" is almost completely narrative based. We have crossed very serious thresholds in information manipulation particularly in recent years: it has moved far past being simply "bias" and much of the population is unaware of how far it has gone.

Eventually the music stops. History is instructive.

Did you not see this coming? Did you not understand that what goes up MUST come down? Did you not understand that growth is not infinite?

If you failed to understand any of these non-negotiable realities then you are incompetent. If you did underdstand these realities yet took no action to ameliorate the eventuality you are incompetent.

In 2008, the economy had been built on loose lending for houses
while our nuts and bolts manufacturing was sold and shipped to Asia.
Capitalists made a profit on it.

Workers lost good jobs and lifetime support, money was passed up the
income scale, and soon there was not enough spending to support the
economy. Money was at the top of the income scale.

The Fed acted to save the banks and prevent deflation. It would have
been a financial collapse that reverberated in the real economy.

Now we have service sector jobs, loose lending for autos, and money
is at the top of the income scale.

Fed QE prevented deflation, but 0% interest rates created a capital
investment boom because everything seems profitable when money
is free or almost so. So that created overcapacity, we have a glut,
worldwide, of goods, especially oil from fracking and drilling. So with
an overabundance of goods and weak earnings growth, we face
deflation again, this time in the real economy, not in the financial
economy. China makes the situation larger, and worldwide.

It's going to be a soaker. Be prepared.

That's about my limits of knowledge. Sadly.

Gamblers will be gambling.

Wall Street is just an ultra-high stakes casino.

It is all insider trading. Practiced legally but unethically. Notice the brokers make money both ways, selling and buying, they recommend mutual funds which give them the biggest commission regardless of profit potential to the consumer.
Prices are set up high to maximize profits, as they said in the Civil War the year of the shoddy. That's what we get from Wal Mart and other resellers. Shoddy merchandise for high prices.

And we ain't the house.