Did you know that infrastructure spending as a percentage of the economy is at the highest level in 30 years?  From The New York Times via Cafe Hayek

From The Financial Times, via Paul Kedrosky

From Bloomberg via The Big Picture

Margin debt has fallen significantly.  From TraderFeed

Take a look at what happened to the yen today.

So now that it appears that as long as Bank of America and Citigroup remain alive, the two house of cards banks are going to act as a giant anchor on the stock market, taking all stocks down on their journey towards zero.

Since we've seen this movie before, so much so that deep down, we all know the end game, there is no point prolonging the inevitable.

Therefore, I ask you, how long before BoA and/or Citi go toes up?

I want to make a clarification.

The tone of my posts over the past six weeks has become decidedly more bullish.  After being worried about the economy and the stock market for most of my authorship of this blog, I have become more bullish on risky assets, i.e. stocks, corporate bonds, etc., than I have been in a very long time.

A sure sign of economic competence is when your central bank issues trillion dollar notes.

Via Greg Mankiw.

Many in the West see sweatshops as an evil that need to be eradicated.  They are wrong.  Sweatshops increase the standards of living for the people that work in them.  To eliminate sweatshops is to eliminate the prospects for many of the very poorest on earth, for the alternatives are often worse.

From The New York Times