CONFIRMATION

   

Call it what you will it's a schizophrenic stock market much different from 2013.

With yields on 30-Treasury bonds down more than most at the beginning of the year expected, share prices on the DJIA and S&P 500 hitting new highs while on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000 investors seem to be leaving the party before it gets out of hand.

There's an old bromide about which is the more painful of the two, plunging off a cliff or getting bitten to death by a duck. Not all bear markets are the same. Back in 1973-74 it was a steady, almost daily drubbing with little respite for air. More recently they have played the plunging off the cliff game.

In today's Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf once again took on the Dragster, ECB President Mario Draghi and his bankers for being, if they ever do something, too little and "vastly too late."

Draghi slid one by the market in 2012 with his "within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough." That was then. This is now. It's highly unlikely the market will settle for such bureaucratic jawboning this time around. Draghi's and his band of bankers' put-up moment draws nigh.
 
Confirmation is a wonderful thing, especially when one get it. But as we quoted the rolling Stones before, you don't always get what you want, but with a little luck and some hard work you might get what you need.

Instead of the Land of the Rising Sun under Abernomics it's become the House of Falling Cards looking for a convenient spot. If Japan's debt to GDP ratio were any higher it's be a street drug. Assuming anything can be dangerous. Assuming a little economic reform sprinkled with some lukewarm austerity will correct the troubles in these EU peripheries is plain dumb.

Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece all have debt to GDP ratios that would send a tee totaling vicar searching for the nearest pub. Bureaucrats and bond-buying investors are acting too much like the best is yet to come. 

And that's the confirmation to pull this whole thing off they need. But like the song says you don't always get what you want.