First, we look at the Chicago Feds national economic activity indicator which reveals a shocking decline, in fact we have never experienced a worse collapse in economic activity in US history.

There’s also the fact that economic policy seems to be stock market policy and a look at the consumer confidence index reveals that current business conditions have fallen to the lowest level in history yet the expectations for future business conditions have begun to rise so at least there’s hope.

The heart of the matter is there is a fine line between hope and lies and sometimes hope in something that is unrealistic can lead to huge disappointments and critical investing errors.  Kudlow was saying the US could produce the largest GDP growth in history in Q3 and His boss was explaining the big push has already begun.  It’s promises like these that convince 44,000 retail investors to buy into Hertz weeks before they file for bankruptcy and the stock plummets.

We covered how the stock had fallen to $1.83 yesterday in a stunning collapse well it continued and the stock fell to $0.60 yesterday plunging over 80%.  It’s unclear what the future holds for this company but the message is the story that we would see a V-shaped recovery was so captivating to many it leads to risky investments and many people have lost everything.

The top 5 stocks total market cap has reached the highest level in history comprising of more than 20% which is truly unprecedented and we find while they are up 10% the other 495 stocks in the S&P are still down over 13%.  To me it seems clear these people are willing to do and say anything it takes to pumps stock prices higher and the truth is the things they have been bragging about are not far off the usual path toward the end of a business cycle as unemployment typically trends down until it meets a trough or a low point then a slight tick up before the next recession, the tax cuts were funneled into the stock market rather than on increasing production and this means the things they were explaining were symptoms of the greatest economy ever were not much more than parlor tricks and natural occurrences and not the result of astute policy.  We will never have a real recovery if we devote all policy decisions around pretending we had one.