The blistering asset rally of 2012 has run ahead of economic realities in Europe, America and China. It is exhibiting symptoms of a schizophrenic market, with technical indicators flashing signs of exhaustion.

Graham Secker from Morgan Stanley said it is rare for global stocks, oil prices and government bonds to rise in lockstep, and such exuberance becomes a "very reliable sell signal for stocks" once speculators join the party.

Equity long positions on NASDAQ have reached 1.5 standard deviations and long bets on oil are at an extreme of 1.9, according to data from the Commodity Futures Exchange Commission. This is occurring at a time when yields on 10-year US Treasuries are still at 1.96%, signaling depression, deflation, or both.

The historical relationship between bonds and equities has completely broken down over the past six months. "You can't have a sustained period where equities are going up, while bond yields are flat or trending down," said Mr Secker.

One or the other must give, and bears have no doubt which it will be.

The current crisis du jour over the debt ceiling makes me think of Errol Flynn (1909-1959). 

Flynn's best friend was David Niven, with whom he starred in a number of movies.  Flynn was the handsomest and most charming man in Hollywood.  It was impossible not to like him - or as many a Hollywood actress attested, not to love him.

Yet Flynn had a fatal character flaw - his unreliability.  As Niven once commented:  "You can depend on Errol to always let you down." 

Just like Republicans.  We can hope against hope, but in the end, you know they're going to cave.  Trump's assessment looks accurate:  they are doing "another el foldo."

Aside from begging LtCol Allen West to smack Boehner and Cantor upside their heads and ordering them to take the debt ceiling hill, what can we do?

The president is proposing that the government spend more than $3.7 trillion (his budget "cuts" also contain many spending increases). The terms reckless, irresponsible and mad are inadequate descriptions of what he is proposing. There is evidence that once a government lets its debt/GDP ratio rise more than 90 percent, the economy begins to seriously weaken and government spending starts to spiral out of control as the interest payments on the debt grow faster than the economy.
The United States will probably hit the 90 percent threshold within a year (the current level is 68 percent, up from 37 percent in 2008).

Greece has already shown the world what happens when the debt/GDP ratio reaches critical levels. Government services, employment and transfer payments are drastically cut because there is no other choice and the economy goes into the tank.

Mr. Obama has also proposed a number of tax increases in his budget. Economic growth depends on having sufficient saving, which is put into productive investment to create jobs and technologies. If government is grabbing most of the savings of private individuals and businesses through debt issuance, inflation and taxes, the result is economic stagnation and increasing unemployment.

Put on your seat belts because the situation will get worse before the political class will act.

Whenever an old alliance comes apart, our foreign-policy establishment behaves like the spouse who pretends away a partner's ever-more-flagrant infidelities-hoping that patience and indulgence will somehow bring the straying party around. But real life doesn't work that way for lovers or for states. When we look away from shameless betrayals, it only encourages further bad behavior.

And sometimes the situation requires a divorce. With no more support payments.

The worst current case of a supposed ally gone wildly, viciously wrong is, of course, Pakistan, which our government refers to as a "friend" even as the real rulers in Islamabad-the military and the security services-shield the world's most wanted terrorists; support, supply and train insurgents who kill and maim our troops; and cut off our main supply route to Afghanistan (presumably, in thanks for the billions of dollars we send the Pakistanis year after year).

But another, potentially graver case goes largely unremarked, when not willfully misinterpreted: Turkey, a NATO member and long-time ally (at least, on paper), is suffering from increased repression, the step-by-step subversion of its democratic system, and creeping, clawing Islamism.

Wildly inaccurate statements from news commentators, financial analysts, politicians and even administration officials have most people believing that if Congress does not increase the debt limit in March, the U.S. government will default on its debt obligations, thus ending the government's ability to borrow. Nonsense.

The big-government crowd claims huge hardships would result from the mandatory spending reductions. Again, nonsense. Spending would only have to be reduced to roughly the 2006 level to avoid an ongoing deficit.

Another widespread myth is that if the government reduces its spending, that will cost jobs.  The fact is that the percentage of adults in the labor force has fallen to its lowest level in three decades even as the government has grown by a quarter in relative size in the past three years.

The destructive myth persists that if only we could get the rich to cease engaging in tax avoidance, which is legal, and stop tax evasion, which is illegal, government would have adequate revenue. The fact is that rich people already pay most of the taxes.

Violent fanatical movements burn out. Some take longer to fade than others, but none endure. Inevitably, their ever-increasing excesses take the gravest toll among their own kind, alienating the population from which they demand support. 

If "revolutions devour their own," religion-driven insurgencies are the ultimate cannibals: Witness Al Qaeda's wanton butchery of its fellow Moslems, a blood-lust that, along with our successful anti-terrorist strikes, have pushed the last decade's great bogeymen to the far margins of events (al Qaeda's recent announcement of its-unwanted-support of the anti-Assad rebellion in Syria is another desperate attempt to remain relevant).

My point? It's time to shift our focus to more-serious Islamist enemies of civilization, freedom and elementary decency: the Saudis. Al Qaeda carried within it the formula for self-destruction, but the Saudis are the kind of threat that lasts: pernicious, perverted and patient.

Today (2/02), Ralph Nader wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the government had ripped off the Fannie/Freddie stockholders, of which he was one. What delicious irony that the man who has been telling us for decades to trust the government instead of private business was abused by the government. I wonder if he has learned anything.

Another no surprise last week was a report issued by the Congressional Budget Office that the budget deficit is even larger (a mere $1.5 trillion larger) than previously forecast and financial doomsday is getting closer.

Again, having learned nothing, President Obama responded in his State of the Union address by proposing more government spending. He seems to be making a real effort to have the collapse occur in his first term.

Meanwhile, more reports surfaced about the fact that many state and local governments have not been disclosing relevant information about their finances to their bondholders. Executives in private firms would be fined or sent to jail for similar lapses, but government officials are largely immune to rules that the rest of us must follow.