By almost all measures, US asset prices are in a bubble. Based on Cyclically Adjusted P/E ratios, the S&P 500 has been this high only one time in history — at the height of the Dot.com bubble.
Bill has stressed he is a provider of financial analysis, not a political analyst. And yet, comments over the last several years by readers are noticing the political connections to Bill's comments. Perhaps the reason is that the political class no longer represents American citizens, but the financial powers of the international community. The loss of personal integrity has been surrendered by an increasing number of citizens, some in political positions and some in areas of commerce and finance. Once compromised, their ability to act on behalf of the citizens is lost. The collapse of Empire is caused by the internal enemy and taken advantage of by the external enemy.
Bill presupposes integrity as the corner stone of leadership. It appears to me that the foundation of integrity is compromised across multiple levels of our national institutions. What has maintained the country is the honesty of millions to do what they know to be the right thing. It is not supported by those in power.
So true and when combined with Langdon's comments today. It seems likely that a soft default is the plan or if not THE plan may just become THE plan. The stock market goes up but the value of those gains are actually a loss in purchasing power now and in the future. It appears the those living in the EU and entrenched in European Values, wokism, immigration destroying their cultures, climate change and lying elite rulers, but voted out of office, with a failing narrative and subsequent failing economy runs out of other people's money.
yes those in power and especially those "in the share market" usually those who think they are exempt from working by the sweat of their brow and want something for nothing which happened right about the time (1956) when the great generation were told to invest in shares as the "coming thing" but my folks just laughed and kept on working hard and made their fortunes by working hard rather than shrewd/cunning investing .. total different concept of life involved .. now we have an entire subclass of 'investors' who are to smart to work and to stupid to stop playing the pokkies oops stock casino!
I don't think any of our "dear readers" understand our bubble economy. But as Bill has frequently said, inflate or die i.e., inflate the dollar or default. The the latter is not going to happen, as the former, a soft default, may already be happening. So the ongoing bubble may be a misnomer, it may be what a soft default looks like.
I also noticed in this missive that Bill is quoting the Chinese People mouth piece as well as CNN and an Asian news outlet and Fortune, no mention of non ideological news sources; interesting.
Inflation is, by definition, a soft default. Therefore, we've been "soft defaulting" for 50 years. So, to me, it's not default in the sense of, say, declaring bankruptcy, the debts are written off, and a clean slate gives us a chance to pull ourselves together, get off the drug of debt, and live soberly ever after. Instead of default, this is POLICY, the policy of adding zeroes. And since it's all electronic, and the computers just "see" figures, it can go on forever, until someone, somewhere says, "NO!" and everything collapses. Nobody wants to see or experience that, and it takes on a life of its own. Best always. PM
Good commentary this morning. I sure don’t get this crazy market, either. Just not worth the risk. A Big Loss sure seems to me more likely than a Big Gain, or even a mediocre one. I’m only trusting Tom’s calls now.
Imagine if the USSA was managed as the Constitution proscribes: hard money, no foreign entanglements, no welfare, no illegal immigration and carefully controlled legal immigration.
My, how truly great (in a good way) this country would be.
Instead it is rotten to the core, just like our fake USD.
Good luck out there, eventually we're all gonna end up getting what we deserve, good and hard.
Actually, it's the other way around. You're dancing in the dark, and then the lights come up, and you see what you've been doing: you're not actually dancing with Cyd Charisse at all, but it sure as heckfire seemed like it. The mind cannot distinguish between something actually experienced and something vividly imagined, Best always. PM
This is a BRUTAL takedown of the UK and NATO, it is a must read:
“No British government ever imagined an American president might finally tell the truth about the “special relationship.”
Until now.
Spare me the pearl-clutching obituary from The Economist, that decaying salon of transatlantic nostalgia where the ghost of Churchill is still being pimped out like a rent-boy for Davos subscriptions.
Your precious bunting of flags in the bin isn’t some tragic metaphor for Trump’s “betrayal.”
It’s the autopsy photo of a one-way parasitic bargain that America has carried on its back like a drunk uncle for eighty goddamn years.
And the drunk finally woke up, looked around, and said: Fuck this.
This isn’t “turning his back.”
This is a sovereign nation refusing to keep subsidizing a continent of strategic eunuchs who have spent decades castrating their own militaries, hollowing out their industrial bases, and importing the very pathologies that make them security liabilities rather than allies.
You want the special relationship?
Earn it. Reciprocate it. Stop treating the United States like an ATM with nuclear weapons.
Geopolitically and militarily, the numbers don’t lie and they never have.
The United States still shoulders roughly sixty percent of total NATO defense spending...$845 billion out of a collective $1.4 trillion last year.
Most of your European “partners” couldn’t hit the 2% GDP target even after Russia parked tanks on Ukraine’s border and started lobbing missiles at civilian infrastructure.
Britain under Starmer talks a big game about “global Britain” while quietly slashing capability, courting CCP-linked cash, and letting its own streets burn under the weight of demographic transformation and speech codes that make the old East German Stasi look libertarian.
You lecture us about values while your own government criminalizes tweets and turns Rotherham into a cautionary tale the media still refuses to fully autopsy.
Historically, the ledger is even more damning. We bled for you in 1917 and 1941 when your empires were on the ropes.
We bankrolled your reconstruction, anchored your defense for the entire Cold War, and let you punch above your weight on the world stage because sentimental Anglosphere nostalgia still meant something.
In return? Suez 1956, where you expected us to back imperial nostalgia while we were trying to contain Soviet expansion.
Vietnam, where you sat it out. Iraq, where you half-assed it and then spent the next twenty years sneering at us in your broadsheets. And every single time an American president dared put America First, your commentariat wailed like Victorian widows about the death of the alliance...as if the alliance was ever meant to be a suicide pact.
You’ve internalized a victimhood narrative so profound it borders on the clinical...projecting your own national decline, your own loss of agency, your own self-inflicted castration onto the one country that still possesses the will to act like a great power.
Trump doesn’t “deprioritize” the relationship; he simply refuses to indulge the delusion any longer.
He sees what you refuse to admit:
the United Kingdom of 2026 is no longer the reliable offshore balancer of 1945.
It’s a mid-tier European power wrestling with internal entropy, elite disconnect, and a demographic trajectory that makes long-term strategic partnership… let’s just say, complicated.
We are sick of it. Sick of the free ride. Sick of the lectures from people whose capitals are turning into no-go zones while their defense ministers beg Washington for more F-35s and more carrier groups to patrol waters they can no longer secure themselves.
Sick of the pomp, the pageantry, the royal visits, and the hand-wringing editorials that treat American self-interest as some kind of moral failing.
The special relationship isn’t dead. It’s being stress-tested by reality.
And reality, Mr. Economist, is a vicious bitch with a ledger in one hand and a mirror in the other.
Thanks you for going to the trouble of getting AI to write that.
Reality check...
Accusing NATO allies of deserting you misses what the US actually gets out of the deal.
In exchange for providing security, the US gets global reach, military primacy, influence over standards, and a system that largely runs on its terms.
That position reinforces everything else, from defence markets to the role of the dollar at the centre of the global economy.
That’s not being taken advantage of, that’s shaping the environment so you don’t have to fight on equal terms.
And those benefits aren’t symmetrical.
The US gains reach and influence. Others gain security and stability. They alsongain a ready market for the bonds they issue to pay for it.
And allies don’t stop acting in their own interests just because they’re on the same side.
The Suez Crisis is the clearest example. Britain and France acted, the US stepped in, not to support them, but to stop them, because it didn’t suit American interests for old empires to reassert themselves. The US spent decades undermining the old empires so it could sit at the top of the pile and then acts surprised when the old countries don't keep spending on defence.
Is that betrayal, or just interests diverging under pressure?
NATO works precisely because it tolerates that tension. Even when members clash, accommodations are made.
Nice piece of writing delivering good information and perspective. Also not to be missed were the informative metaphors which brought clarity to the overall discussion. Al? Who cares, as it was a good and fun read.
SADLY, I BELIEVE THE USA IS FINISHED AS WE KINOW IT! THE BIG QUESTION THAT NEEDS TO BE ANSWERED IS HOW DO WE PROTECT OURSELVES FROM THESE MANIACS IN GOVERNMENT? WHERE I LIVE (IN CA) THE ATTACKS ON ANY AND ALL ASSETS ARE NOW SO INTRUSIVE IT IS NEAR IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID.
FOR THE PAST 30 YEARS OF ONE PARY RULE, I HAVE TRIED TO FL Y UNDER THE RADAR. THIS WAS ONLY POSSIBLY BY INTENTIONALLY KEEPING MY BUSINESS SMALL, AND NOT HIRING ANY EMPLOYEES. NOW IT HAS BECOME SO BAD IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO FLY UNDER THE RADAR. THEY HAVE FOUND A MILLION WAYS TO ATTACH MY ASSETS, AND TO TAX US.
NO LONGER ANY PLACE LEFT TO HIDE AS THEY HAVE THIER HAND OUT EVERY WHICH WAY I TURN!
Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch! It’s so easy Bill. The end of Iran’s current leadership and its ability to wreak havoc all over the world is a wonderful thing and we should all be thankful.
“ the collapse of the Empire is caused by the internal enemy and taken advantage of by the external enemy”. kudos, no truer words ever written. That’s world history in a nutshell.
So Bill, what is different now than the last 50 years? Just a calculator with more digits for bigger numbers. Keep kicking the can till there’s nothing left to kick.
Bill after all these 40+ years why would you think that all the US share market/indexes are any different then all the casino's in Las Vegas ? just walk into the casino's and yell FIRE or SHOOTER and the patrons will shrug sip their drink and nod off back to their addiction .. do you really think the supposed "share markets" are clam logical hard working parts of America's past industrial greatness ? their made of people who have the same mental addictions and foibles that the rest of the populations carries, only now like All mental/physical disorders, they compounded like the value of the supposed shares have .. why would you be surprised as this degeneration of that particular section of the US economy (share markets & all associated brokers etc) are all subject to the same stupidity as the rest of the population which is why I thought you'd been telling me for the last 20 years "stay away from the stock market and buy gold/silver/uranium/energy etc ? maybe its just our age that can't delineate between such extremes where one end of the tunnel comes out and the other stars like one big circle eh?
China has its own existential threats to the regime but its persuaders are as skilled as their counterparts in Iran, the EU, USA, Russia, etc, in distracting their audiences from threats closer to home to the challenges of rival regimes. Take all of the distracting efforts with a grain of salt.
The global infrastructure is being shaken like a rat in the jaws of a hound and the lives dependent on that infrastructure are facing one hell of a ride. Some will survive the disruptions. I hope they manage to preserve enough details of what is happening to pass along some sound wisdom to their heirs to apply in their rebuilding efforts.
Sound wisdom has been passed down to us for at least 5k years and we have not learned a damn thing. That being the case I don't think our heirs will listen either. There, you have sound wisdom in a nutshell. God's rich blessings to all.
They will surely put their own spin on the fragments of wisdom that survive, but the remnant of wisdom will help the survivors last long enough to rebuild the next version of Tower of Babel.
Paragraph/headlines 9, if I could change the word Empire to 'Politicians' I could agree"...Politicians who become unpredictable and unreliable are probably headed for Regime Change of their own..."
Bill has stressed he is a provider of financial analysis, not a political analyst. And yet, comments over the last several years by readers are noticing the political connections to Bill's comments. Perhaps the reason is that the political class no longer represents American citizens, but the financial powers of the international community. The loss of personal integrity has been surrendered by an increasing number of citizens, some in political positions and some in areas of commerce and finance. Once compromised, their ability to act on behalf of the citizens is lost. The collapse of Empire is caused by the internal enemy and taken advantage of by the external enemy.
Bill presupposes integrity as the corner stone of leadership. It appears to me that the foundation of integrity is compromised across multiple levels of our national institutions. What has maintained the country is the honesty of millions to do what they know to be the right thing. It is not supported by those in power.
So true and when combined with Langdon's comments today. It seems likely that a soft default is the plan or if not THE plan may just become THE plan. The stock market goes up but the value of those gains are actually a loss in purchasing power now and in the future. It appears the those living in the EU and entrenched in European Values, wokism, immigration destroying their cultures, climate change and lying elite rulers, but voted out of office, with a failing narrative and subsequent failing economy runs out of other people's money.
yes those in power and especially those "in the share market" usually those who think they are exempt from working by the sweat of their brow and want something for nothing which happened right about the time (1956) when the great generation were told to invest in shares as the "coming thing" but my folks just laughed and kept on working hard and made their fortunes by working hard rather than shrewd/cunning investing .. total different concept of life involved .. now we have an entire subclass of 'investors' who are to smart to work and to stupid to stop playing the pokkies oops stock casino!
I don't think any of our "dear readers" understand our bubble economy. But as Bill has frequently said, inflate or die i.e., inflate the dollar or default. The the latter is not going to happen, as the former, a soft default, may already be happening. So the ongoing bubble may be a misnomer, it may be what a soft default looks like.
I also noticed in this missive that Bill is quoting the Chinese People mouth piece as well as CNN and an Asian news outlet and Fortune, no mention of non ideological news sources; interesting.
Inflation is, by definition, a soft default. Therefore, we've been "soft defaulting" for 50 years. So, to me, it's not default in the sense of, say, declaring bankruptcy, the debts are written off, and a clean slate gives us a chance to pull ourselves together, get off the drug of debt, and live soberly ever after. Instead of default, this is POLICY, the policy of adding zeroes. And since it's all electronic, and the computers just "see" figures, it can go on forever, until someone, somewhere says, "NO!" and everything collapses. Nobody wants to see or experience that, and it takes on a life of its own. Best always. PM
Good commentary this morning. I sure don’t get this crazy market, either. Just not worth the risk. A Big Loss sure seems to me more likely than a Big Gain, or even a mediocre one. I’m only trusting Tom’s calls now.
You're now where I was in the DotCom run-up. I bailed then and haven't been back since. Zero regrets. Best always. PM
Imagine if the USSA was managed as the Constitution proscribes: hard money, no foreign entanglements, no welfare, no illegal immigration and carefully controlled legal immigration.
My, how truly great (in a good way) this country would be.
Instead it is rotten to the core, just like our fake USD.
Good luck out there, eventually we're all gonna end up getting what we deserve, good and hard.
Well, as an old investment sage once told me: “If everyone at the dance is ugly, there’s still dancing going on”.
So true, but an ugly dance partner is really scary when the lights go out. And I think they are starting to dim!
Actually, it's the other way around. You're dancing in the dark, and then the lights come up, and you see what you've been doing: you're not actually dancing with Cyd Charisse at all, but it sure as heckfire seemed like it. The mind cannot distinguish between something actually experienced and something vividly imagined, Best always. PM
I think you said that backwards. 😂😂
funny
This is a BRUTAL takedown of the UK and NATO, it is a must read:
“No British government ever imagined an American president might finally tell the truth about the “special relationship.”
Until now.
Spare me the pearl-clutching obituary from The Economist, that decaying salon of transatlantic nostalgia where the ghost of Churchill is still being pimped out like a rent-boy for Davos subscriptions.
Your precious bunting of flags in the bin isn’t some tragic metaphor for Trump’s “betrayal.”
It’s the autopsy photo of a one-way parasitic bargain that America has carried on its back like a drunk uncle for eighty goddamn years.
And the drunk finally woke up, looked around, and said: Fuck this.
This isn’t “turning his back.”
This is a sovereign nation refusing to keep subsidizing a continent of strategic eunuchs who have spent decades castrating their own militaries, hollowing out their industrial bases, and importing the very pathologies that make them security liabilities rather than allies.
You want the special relationship?
Earn it. Reciprocate it. Stop treating the United States like an ATM with nuclear weapons.
Geopolitically and militarily, the numbers don’t lie and they never have.
The United States still shoulders roughly sixty percent of total NATO defense spending...$845 billion out of a collective $1.4 trillion last year.
Most of your European “partners” couldn’t hit the 2% GDP target even after Russia parked tanks on Ukraine’s border and started lobbing missiles at civilian infrastructure.
Britain under Starmer talks a big game about “global Britain” while quietly slashing capability, courting CCP-linked cash, and letting its own streets burn under the weight of demographic transformation and speech codes that make the old East German Stasi look libertarian.
You lecture us about values while your own government criminalizes tweets and turns Rotherham into a cautionary tale the media still refuses to fully autopsy.
Historically, the ledger is even more damning. We bled for you in 1917 and 1941 when your empires were on the ropes.
We bankrolled your reconstruction, anchored your defense for the entire Cold War, and let you punch above your weight on the world stage because sentimental Anglosphere nostalgia still meant something.
In return? Suez 1956, where you expected us to back imperial nostalgia while we were trying to contain Soviet expansion.
Vietnam, where you sat it out. Iraq, where you half-assed it and then spent the next twenty years sneering at us in your broadsheets. And every single time an American president dared put America First, your commentariat wailed like Victorian widows about the death of the alliance...as if the alliance was ever meant to be a suicide pact.
You’ve internalized a victimhood narrative so profound it borders on the clinical...projecting your own national decline, your own loss of agency, your own self-inflicted castration onto the one country that still possesses the will to act like a great power.
Trump doesn’t “deprioritize” the relationship; he simply refuses to indulge the delusion any longer.
He sees what you refuse to admit:
the United Kingdom of 2026 is no longer the reliable offshore balancer of 1945.
It’s a mid-tier European power wrestling with internal entropy, elite disconnect, and a demographic trajectory that makes long-term strategic partnership… let’s just say, complicated.
We are sick of it. Sick of the free ride. Sick of the lectures from people whose capitals are turning into no-go zones while their defense ministers beg Washington for more F-35s and more carrier groups to patrol waters they can no longer secure themselves.
Sick of the pomp, the pageantry, the royal visits, and the hand-wringing editorials that treat American self-interest as some kind of moral failing.
The special relationship isn’t dead. It’s being stress-tested by reality.
And reality, Mr. Economist, is a vicious bitch with a ledger in one hand and a mirror in the other.
Look into it.”
💀⚖️🗡️ from LHGray
Thanks you for going to the trouble of getting AI to write that.
Reality check...
Accusing NATO allies of deserting you misses what the US actually gets out of the deal.
In exchange for providing security, the US gets global reach, military primacy, influence over standards, and a system that largely runs on its terms.
That position reinforces everything else, from defence markets to the role of the dollar at the centre of the global economy.
That’s not being taken advantage of, that’s shaping the environment so you don’t have to fight on equal terms.
And those benefits aren’t symmetrical.
The US gains reach and influence. Others gain security and stability. They alsongain a ready market for the bonds they issue to pay for it.
And allies don’t stop acting in their own interests just because they’re on the same side.
The Suez Crisis is the clearest example. Britain and France acted, the US stepped in, not to support them, but to stop them, because it didn’t suit American interests for old empires to reassert themselves. The US spent decades undermining the old empires so it could sit at the top of the pile and then acts surprised when the old countries don't keep spending on defence.
Is that betrayal, or just interests diverging under pressure?
NATO works precisely because it tolerates that tension. Even when members clash, accommodations are made.
Expecting perfect alignment isn’t realism. It’s wishful thinking.
Alliances aren’t built on fairness, they’re built on usefulness, and NATO has been useful to America.
Perhaps that was true at one time, but I'm not so sure now...
We never needed NATO.
Nice piece of writing delivering good information and perspective. Also not to be missed were the informative metaphors which brought clarity to the overall discussion. Al? Who cares, as it was a good and fun read.
SADLY, I BELIEVE THE USA IS FINISHED AS WE KINOW IT! THE BIG QUESTION THAT NEEDS TO BE ANSWERED IS HOW DO WE PROTECT OURSELVES FROM THESE MANIACS IN GOVERNMENT? WHERE I LIVE (IN CA) THE ATTACKS ON ANY AND ALL ASSETS ARE NOW SO INTRUSIVE IT IS NEAR IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID.
FOR THE PAST 30 YEARS OF ONE PARY RULE, I HAVE TRIED TO FL Y UNDER THE RADAR. THIS WAS ONLY POSSIBLY BY INTENTIONALLY KEEPING MY BUSINESS SMALL, AND NOT HIRING ANY EMPLOYEES. NOW IT HAS BECOME SO BAD IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO FLY UNDER THE RADAR. THEY HAVE FOUND A MILLION WAYS TO ATTACH MY ASSETS, AND TO TAX US.
NO LONGER ANY PLACE LEFT TO HIDE AS THEY HAVE THIER HAND OUT EVERY WHICH WAY I TURN!
I FEEL TRAPPED LIKE A RAT!
Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch! It’s so easy Bill. The end of Iran’s current leadership and its ability to wreak havoc all over the world is a wonderful thing and we should all be thankful.
“ the collapse of the Empire is caused by the internal enemy and taken advantage of by the external enemy”. kudos, no truer words ever written. That’s world history in a nutshell.
So Bill, what is different now than the last 50 years? Just a calculator with more digits for bigger numbers. Keep kicking the can till there’s nothing left to kick.
The Europeans are still on a mysterious slide toward Net-Zero. They shouldn't be complaining about their airlines cutting flights to anywhere.
They should just stop flying and wander around their 15 minute cities. Maybe they aren't to happy with nothing.
They will have net zero, and be happy !
They can spend their remaining time on planet earth riding around on their electric scooters.
Bill after all these 40+ years why would you think that all the US share market/indexes are any different then all the casino's in Las Vegas ? just walk into the casino's and yell FIRE or SHOOTER and the patrons will shrug sip their drink and nod off back to their addiction .. do you really think the supposed "share markets" are clam logical hard working parts of America's past industrial greatness ? their made of people who have the same mental addictions and foibles that the rest of the populations carries, only now like All mental/physical disorders, they compounded like the value of the supposed shares have .. why would you be surprised as this degeneration of that particular section of the US economy (share markets & all associated brokers etc) are all subject to the same stupidity as the rest of the population which is why I thought you'd been telling me for the last 20 years "stay away from the stock market and buy gold/silver/uranium/energy etc ? maybe its just our age that can't delineate between such extremes where one end of the tunnel comes out and the other stars like one big circle eh?
China has its own existential threats to the regime but its persuaders are as skilled as their counterparts in Iran, the EU, USA, Russia, etc, in distracting their audiences from threats closer to home to the challenges of rival regimes. Take all of the distracting efforts with a grain of salt.
The global infrastructure is being shaken like a rat in the jaws of a hound and the lives dependent on that infrastructure are facing one hell of a ride. Some will survive the disruptions. I hope they manage to preserve enough details of what is happening to pass along some sound wisdom to their heirs to apply in their rebuilding efforts.
Sound wisdom has been passed down to us for at least 5k years and we have not learned a damn thing. That being the case I don't think our heirs will listen either. There, you have sound wisdom in a nutshell. God's rich blessings to all.
They will surely put their own spin on the fragments of wisdom that survive, but the remnant of wisdom will help the survivors last long enough to rebuild the next version of Tower of Babel.
😂”An eternal bubble!” Only from the mind of Mr Bonner. Perfect!
Paragraph/headlines 9, if I could change the word Empire to 'Politicians' I could agree"...Politicians who become unpredictable and unreliable are probably headed for Regime Change of their own..."