A major change that's gone at least partly unreported: since 2008 we have made the final steps toward a fully backstopped market. The market before was always s

A major change that's gone at least partly unreported: since 2008 we have made the final steps toward a fully backstopped market. The market before was always somewhat backstopped, but now I think it's safe to say that everything big is backstopped. That means we've moved toward a financial system with one single point of failure at the top. It's got quite a lot of mass and weight, but if it fails everything else does. This is not dissimilar from the Chinese model, which means America is now (perhaps unintentionally) copying China. This also means short sellers should beware: even if you are nominally correct, the market may defy your logic because something else is backstopping everything.