honey badger stock 1 of 2

HONEY BADGER STOCK

I think at times it can be a bit confusing just what the hell happened the last ten years.  We easily can get confused that, ultimately, no matter how bad things are, we escaped the worst of the economic collapse of 2008.  And Peak Oil.  And we are still insulated from the rest of the world.  We aren’t eating zoo animals or seeing hundreds of percent inflation yearly.  And I’ve kept telling you that all the “good enough” we are seeing could end suddenly.  I’ve mentioned the end of the PetroDollar ushering in hyperinflation here ( or, at a minimum, bare shelves of most everything-same difference, unaffordable or unavailable ).

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Charles Hugh Smith had an interesting article just out September 12th or 13^th on linear verses non-linear ( his example was a linear movement of snow makes a path, a non-linear move creates an avalanche.  And BTW, try the sample chapters on his new fiction book.  I never cared for his non-fiction, too flowery and puffy, but he seems to have hit his stride in fiction.  I even bought the book ), and you all know what he is talking about.  Everything is connected now and a small event overseas can effect you here far more than you’d think.  You know, the butterfly effect.

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But I think all that is too abstract to really get most folks worried or moving.  I want to try something that, at least for me, is more pertinent.  Well, it USED to be pertinent.  I used to actually believe that the stock market was an economic indicator.  It is all just as much of a Potemkin Village as the rest of the economy, really.  Like colleges look good pretending to educate and hospitals look good at pretending to heal you.  And that is the scary part.  Companies just put on a puppet show pretending to have a business that sells a viable product or service.

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I’ve used Amazon as an example many times.  It makes actual profit in cloud services, then sells all its physical products at or below cost ( not that I’m complaining, you understand ), and at irregular intervals Bezos dips a few more billion out from cashing in his stock.  Netflix is the same, free riding on the Internet and yet still losing money, but enriching its masters through the stock market bubble.  Companies don’t care about profit as much as they do the stock market bubble which gives the illusion they are profitable.

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If this was JUST one or two companies it wouldn’t matter, but it is MOST public companies.  Watch a YouTube video on the chain Dollar General.  I used to work for them and it is amazing how much the company has changed for the worse.  I used to be able to shop at Sav-A-Lot for incredibly cheap groceries and then get almost everything else I needed at Dollar General.  They were much cheaper than Wal-Mart.  When they expended west ( previously they stopped about the 100^th meridian ) I went into one of their stores and it was completely different.  No more selling to the working poor, now they were just a mini department store without the cheapest prices.

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It was a mini K-Mart, with just as much crap I’d never want to buy.  They used to be rather church-y and had for the longest time closed on Sundays and Christmas and such.  Now, they are selling booze and cigarettes ( I actually went to work for them after my second sting operation fining me for selling to a minor-I didn’t want there to be a third time, and they sold no vices ).  I found out they had sold out to a private equity firm, then after clearing out any old religious prudes taken it public again.  The whole business is looking sad and pathetic now.

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Why are you running fifteen thousand retail stores that are doing poorly?  I would imagine they are losing money, but someone is making a killing on the stock.  Whenever someone is losing money like Sam‘s Club, the business media always seems to hold up Family Dollar/Dollar Tree and Dollar General as the bright spots in retail ( “as ObammyCare rapes you in the ass, the discount stores see a 43% increase YOY” ).  That is always good to bring in the suckers to bid up your stock price ( has anyone seen many customers in Dollar General?  I never seem to, and this is over in more populated areas ).

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Wages can’t be much of a burden to these failing retailers.  I imagine they employ one or two people at a time.  Rent is probably kicking their ass, and I imagine from visiting them, so is inventory.  They don’t seem to build in Just In Time Inventory shortages like most do ( you have to wonder how far that goes towards ensuring popularity, being the only store in town not running out of crap all the time ).  So without enough turnover, those costs have got to be steadily draining the coffers.  Look at K-Mart.  Even a store going out of business lacks too many customers ( of course, you can’t sell Wal-Mart quality crap at +50% over Wal-Mart and expect much business.  Wal-Mart is high as it is, a long time removed from Low Price Leader )

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If Amazon is losing money, everything it does to sell MORE loses them more money, which is why I’d imagine you won’t see local drone delivery anytime soon.  If Dollar General is opening more stores and putting even more inventory in there, even as it loses customers, they are losing even more money.  Their stock mining has got to be worth it.  How many companies are run by Honey Badger ( “he don’t give a s**t” ) CEO’s and boards of directors?  Look at the appliance makers, throwing away a century of reputation over its quality for a few quarters of extra profit.  Look at Facebook trying to alienate most of its customers, cheat its advertisers, for a higher stock price.

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When everyone is making all their profits off of losing money from customers to cash in on a stock market bubble, what happens when that bubble pops?  No matter how dedicated to building retaining walls the central bank is, that avalanche eventually gets big enough to still take out the town.  Let’s talk about when the market implodes, and how it looks when that 70% of the economy ( consumer spending ) is decimated.  My guess is this is deliberate to expand the bankers profits by sucking in as much of that percentage as possible.  Obviously it isn’t sustainable, but the banks are probably as desperate as the Dollar General CEO is now.  They were propping up the retail sector to finance consumerism.  Now that this money is drying up, time to bankrupt and strip the copper from the walls.  Continued tomorrow.

( .Y. )

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