It showed up in your mailbox, on your TeeVee, in your political ads.

It was cute.  It looked a bit like a rodent, a viper or a dragon.

But it was cute and cuddly.  It had forlorn eyes that gazed at you oh-so-lovingly.

It snuggled with you at night.

It just wanted a bit of food, a bit of warmth, a bit of comfort.

You couldn't leave it outside to freeze to death and die in the wintertime, or to be eaten by a hawk in the summer.

So you took it in.

You nurtured it.

You fed it.

You kept it warm at night.

You even let it sleep with you.

It will be ok, you assured yourself.

But it was indeed a monster, and it did what all monsters do.

It grew.

It got bigger, and stronger.

At first the little bite off your plate was no big deal.  But a while later you realized it was consuming a decent amount of your food.  Your budget increased to support it.  After all, it was cute and cuddly, and you liked it.

It was hot when you were cold, and cold when you were hot.  More was spent on A/C or heat which you didn't want or need, but it did.  After all, it was cute and cuddly, and you liked it.

Eventually it got big enough that those formerly-forlorn eyes looked menacing.  You didn't dare kick it out of your bed, or your home.  Now you were afraid; if you did throw it out, it could get back in by force.  It might be able to kill you in your sleep.

More months and years went by.  Now it's consuming enough food and other resource that it's no longer cute at all.  You're foregoing your own nutrition.  You're only showering once a week because it's using so much water you can barely afford the bill.  Your power bill is crippling you.  Your homeowners insurance company, knowing you have a dangerous creature on your property, has made your insurance costs skyrocket.  It bites you one day, "it's an accident" you tell yourself, and the doctor hits you for $20 large to pay for stitches, rabies and other shots.  You don't have it, but you have to spend that or you might die.

It's no longer simply about the risk of killing you in your sleep.  Now it can kill you any time it wants.  It has razor-sharp teeth and demands more and more food.  When it's hungry and you have no money to buy it food, it eats your couch.  Oh, and it shits everywhere too -- all over your carpet, your nice wood floors and even in your bed.

Welcome to your own self-imposed hell.

What is this monster's genus and species?

It's debt.

Netflix is getting hammered on this.  They have an insane amount of debt that they took on which generates a forward and irrevocable obligation to pay in the form of interest for "original content."  But their subscriber growth rate, which made people think this was reasonable, was a chimera; it was a forward projection of exponential growth forever into the future, which is mathematically impossible: There are only so many humans on the planet.

Now it's caught up with them.  The monster is taking nips out of their feet while they sleep.  Soon it will consume their head.

How'd they get a $400 stock price, now just over $300?  On bullcrap you believed -- willingly, knowingly, while prodded by CNBS and others.  But let's not kid ourselves -- you hit the "buy" button, didn't you?

The same is true nationally.  It's true for the entire stock market.  Buybacks, funded with debt, are a noose around your neck you cannot get rid of.  The shares are repurchased, you bought them at a fixed price but when they're worth less on the open market you have a loss you cannot get rid of and, much worse, you have a forward obligation to pay that interest forever on your loss-making transaction!  There's only one thing worse than a loss-making transaction and that's one that never, ever stops costing you more and more money!

EPS goes up when you do this as long as earnings are increasing.  But when you have a loss the loss per share goes up by exactly the same amount.  This garbage may well double the stock market originally when the earnings are improving (and it did) but it inevitably will crash the market by twice as much when earnings turn bad since the negative number will be twice the size it would have been otherwise.  Instead of a 40% loss it'll be 80% -- or even 100% when the firms involved all go bankrupt because they simply can't pay.

The same is true for government deficit spending on things that are just flat-out gone; that is, anything that is consumed.  Like food stamps, health care and similar.  The interest expense is there forevermore unless you pay down the debt which you cannot do until and unless you stop deficit spending entirely.  That now amounts to a trillion dollars a year, or roughly one quarter of all government spending.  Do you think the government will stop feeding the monster even after it has chewed off an entire foot and half a leg?

Everyone knew this when that crap started -- both at the government and individual company level.

They knew it and did it anyway.

They lied to you.

On purpose.

They're still lying.

Kudlow, Cramer, President Trump, Nancy Pelosi, all of them.

That meets the classic definition of fraud and should be justification to hang them all except for one problem: You cheered it on, welcomed it, voted for it and in fact in the political sphere both parties were equal participants and there has not been one revolt, organized or not, by anyone in this nation demanding it stop "or else."  Quite to the contrary; everyone is demanding that the monster be fed even more and get ever larger -- forever!

So get up, stand in front of the mirror and then fuck yourself because you're looking at the responsible party.