I don't think we've seen the end to easy money yet.
The deficit for the month of November was $249 billion, and every penny of deficit spending is, by definition, stimulus, you have the Fed taking (sort of) with one hand, while on the other hand the Administration and Congress continue to spend like drunken sailors on shore leave with nary a care for tomorrow. $249 billion for one 'effin month, after all the my little crony spending of 2020 and 2021.
The U.S. economy is a façade, a shared hallucination that would immediately crash should the deficit spending stop. And crash it will, at some point the powers-that-be will decide it is in their interest to whack it and then pick up the wreckage on the cheap.
From Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance:
Gone are the days of easy lending, cheap money and zero-interest deals. Here to stay: shifting rates, currencies, and inflation that will define the new age in capital markets, according to Bank of America Corp.’s Elif Bilgi Zapparoli.
“We have entered into an era that is more normal compared to what we’ve seen in the past decade. The cost of risk will no longer be zero,” Bilgi Zapparoli, co-head of global capital markets at BofA, said in an interview. The impacts of interest rates, foreign exchange and inflation in balance-sheet management will become focal points going forward, she said.
This year, capital market deals hit the doldrums with companies and investors remaining on the sidelines. The recent bouts of market turmoil sapped appetite for traditional initial public offerings and SPAC transactions that would otherwise bring new companies to public markets. There were 1,721 IPOs generating $199.6 billion this year, down from 3,369 deals worth $668.5 billion a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Years of near-zero borrowing costs from the Federal Reserve and its peers helped drive markets. Then central banks jacked up interest rates in response to inflation risks, causing activity to dry up.
“It’s been difficult to see volumes go down so much, but it’s also encouraging to see we’re entering an environment where some will benefit and some won’t,” said Bilgi Zapparoli, who runs a team of nearly 1,000 bankers. “We were in a decade where everything went up and most benefited. Now is different.”....
....MUCH MORE
As the philosopher said:
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
This ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey
I ain't got time for that now
