by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
Over the past several months, we have witnessed one of the greatest stock market rallies in American history. The S&P 500 has gone 70 days in a row without a 1 percent loss, and most weeks we have seen one daily surge after another. If stock prices were exploding because the underlying U.S. economy was performing extremely well, we would have reason to celebrate. Unfortunately, that is not the case at all. In fact, last week I shared 12 signs that the economy is actually slowing down substantially. Instead, this stock market “melt up” is being largely fueled by reckless intervention by the Federal Reserve. The Fed’s balance sheet has been ballooning once again, and investors know that stock prices tend to go up significantly when that is happening. So right now Wall Street is in the midst of a raucous party, and everything will be wonderful as long as stock prices continue to move in the right direction.