And Then the Real Trouble Showed Up
Dow 1929/30:
First drop: -48%
First bounce: +48%Nasdaq 2000:
First drop: -41%
First bounce: +41%S&P 2020:
First drop: -35%
First bounce: +35%Spooky. Dow and Nasdaq went on to drop 86% and 74% from those initial bear market rallies.
— Henry Winstanley (@OpGoldmine) May 13, 2020


- New Zealand's retail sales on plastic cards halved last month from April 2019. So did machine-tool orders in manufacturing giant Japan;
- Australia has a working-age population of 16.1 million. Over 594,000 of them lost their job in April;
- With Germany in lockdown for only the very last week of the January-March calendar quarter, it still suffered its 2nd worst drop in GDP since unification back in 1990;
- Industrial output in Italy fell by 29% year-on-year in March. That month the UK suffered its worst 1-month drop in GDP on record, even though the Johnson Government didn't shut schools until the 20th or declare lockdown until the 23rd;
- US job openings had already broken their 10-year uptrend this New Year. The jobless toll from the Covid Shutdown now continues to grow at a record pace;
- Between March and April, almost 1-in-8 people of working age in Canada lost their job.

"Like everyone agrees, 1,000,000% inflation looks a long way off right now. But no central bank ever began a hyper-inflationary policy because it feared inflation. Such disasters always come because of vanished credit and economic depression. And whether in Germany nine decades ago [now 10 of course], or in Argentina [30] years back, or in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe around the turn of this century, stuff actually gets cheaper – not more expensive – in real terms during hyperinflation."It's just that the...currency falls in value faster still, turning the 'money illusion' we're all prey to into a livid nightmare."