01.27.15- US Gov't Stockpiling Oil to Withstand Complete Systemic Collapse
in Fall 2015?
Marshall Swing

Something's gotta give!

Just when you thought things could not get any worse, suddenly, there are daily articles of planes in the United States getting bomb threats from unknown attackers and planes are diverted, Air Force fighters are scrambled and business as usual has become very suspicious, to say the least.

Can we start preparing for a new round of government controls and billions of dollars of orders for bomb detection machinery to ensure flights cannot possibly have bombs or other weapons of mass destruction on them? Read More

01.26.15- Despite What You Don't Hear In The Media, It's All Out (Currency) WAR! Pt. 1
Reggie Middleton

Currency war, also known as competitive devaluation, is a condition in international affairs where countries compete against each other to achieve a relatively low exchange rate for their own currency. As the price to buy a particular currency falls so too does the real price of exports from the country. Imports become more expensive. So domestic industry, and thus employment, receives a boost in demand from both domestic and foreign markets. However, the price increase for imports can harm citizens' purchasing power. Read More

01.24.15- 2015 Black Swans abounding – Safe Haven gold to benefit
Lawrence Williams

January 2015 has already been remarkable for the number of Black Swan (unanticipated) events which have hit the markets in such a short space of time. Some of these have been totally unheralded like the Swiss National Bank's decision to unpeg the Swiss Franc from the Euro and the Charlie Hebdo massacre – which really did take the markets by surprise – while others may, in hindsight have been a little more predictable. These include the escalation of fighting in Eastern Ukraine as both sides appear to have used a recent ceasefire to boost their military arsenals and prepare for more fighting; the death yesterday of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia – perhaps predictable in that he was 90 years old and in poor health – but nonetheless promoting new uncertainties in what is a particularly volatile part of the world. Read More

01.23.15- Francs, Bonds, Barrels, and Bail-Ins
Andy Sutton

As recently as a few weeks ago, the European Union directed its member nations to draft their own independent legislation for dealing with the resolution of a failed G-SIFI (Globally Significant Financial Institution). At the same time, we have all sorts of seams opening in the currency, bond, and commodity markets. The Swiss Franc is now un-pegged from the Euro, there have been wild swings in the bond markets in Europe due to the aforementioned action, and oil is in an absolute free-fall. There are many geopolitical (and likely criminal) maneuverings behind all of these phenomena, however the chaos in the financial world thus far has been remarkable in that there hasn't been much given everything going on. Read More

01.22.15- Rocky Horror Picture Show
Jeffrey D Saut

"Do you think I made a mistake splitting his brain between the two of them?" — ... Frank from Rocky Horror Picture Show

"Rocky Horror Picture Show" was a satirical film production done as a tribute to the science and horror "B" movies of the late 1930s through the 1970s. I was reminded of the flick last week when one portfolio manager I saw in Fort Lauderdale said to me, "The first few weeks of the New Year have been an absolute horror show!" Horror indeed, for in those weeks the D-J industrial Average (INDU/17511.57) has traveled nearly 3100 points as measured by its movement between the intraday highs and lows. Read More

01.21.15- Global Shockwaves To Come From Swiss Currency Bombshell
Mike Maloney

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01.20.15- The Swiss Release the Kraken!
John Mauldin

“Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee….

“There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.”

– Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Kraken” Read More

01.19.15- Market volatility in 2015 will go wild
Egon von Greyerz

On January 15, the Euro lost 30% against the Swiss Franc and the Dollar lost 25% in a few seconds. All stops in the market will have been triggered at the maximum loss level. At the end of the day the decline settled at around 15% for both the Euro and the Dollar.

Many hedge funds will have made considerable losses and also several banks. One Forex broker at least went under and several will have suffered irreparable losses. Read More

01.17.15- The Euro – Here We Go
Martin Armstrong

The whole idea of creating the Euro without consolidating the debts was the BRAIN-DEAD idea of academics with ZERO trading experience and lawyers. We really cannot afford these types of people making financial decisions about how the run the world. Whatever Brussels could have done wrong, they did.

The EU politicians have assumed that they can dictate to the free markets by decree and suppress the right to freedom of choice, vote, and to just live un-harassed. The EU politicians have disregarded the people with the arrogance that they know what is best. The EU politicians are helping to destroy the world economy because they have tied the bank reserves to their own folly and then exempted them from mark-to-market to hide their track record. These politicians can hide their head in the sand to pretend they have not yet failed. However, the free markets ALWAYS win. Read More

01.16.15- Insider Reveals Collapse Timeline
TheAlexJonesChannel

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01.15.15- Russia Just Pulled Itself Out Of The Petrodollar
Tyler Durden

Back in November, before most grasped just how serious the collapse in crude was (and would become, as well as its massive implications), we wrote “How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed“, because for the first time in almost two decades, energy-exporting countries would pull their “petrodollars” out of world markets in 2015.

This empirical death of Petrodollar followed years of windfalls for oil exporters such as Russia, Angola, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Much of that money found its way into financial markets, helping to boost asset prices and keep the cost of borrowing down, through so-called petrodollar recycling. Read More

01.14.15- The American Dream Goes Bust, KB Home Wrecked, Other Homebuilders Follow
Wolf Richter

So what the heck is going on in this glorious housing market of ours?

Since the implosion of the housing bubble, we the people bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We had home-buyer tax credits from state and federal governments. We got HAMP, HARP, mortgage write-downs, and banks that were delaying foreclosures to pump up prices. We got the Fed’s ZIRP, QE-1, QE-2, “Operation Twist,” and QE-3, during which the Fed purchased mortgage-backed securities, in addition to Treasuries,  to repress long-term interest rates, including mortgage rates, to goose home prices. Read More

01.13.15- The Crashing Price Of Oil Is Going To Rip The Global Economy To Shreds
Michael Snyder

If you were waiting for a “black swan event” to come along and devastate the global economy, you don’t have to wait any longer.  As I write this, the price of U.S. oil is sitting at $45.76 a barrel. It has fallen by more than 60 dollars a barrel since June.  There is only one other time in history when we have seen anything like this happen before. That was in 2008, just prior to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. But following the financial crisis of 2008, the price of oil rebounded fairly rapidly.  As you will see below, there are very strong reasons to believe that it will not happen this time. Read More

01.12.15- The Hidden Perils of Low Interest Rates
John Browne

Late last year, with the U.S. economy experiencing falling unemployment and seemingly low inflation, observers were extremely confident that the Federal Reserve would move judiciously in 2015 to restore 'normal' interest rates sooner rather than later. However, in light of the recent fall in both stocks and oil, that conviction has softened considerably.

Many, such as the very influential Bill Gross, now believe that our current Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP), which has been in place for six years, will remain in place throughout the year. While this likelihood is a disappointment to many, who would have preferred to see the economy move along without Fed-supplied training wheels, few really understand the pernicious effects these policies are inflicting on the economy the longer they are held in place. Read More

01.10.15- Europe's Monetary Madhouse
David Stockman

If you want to know where the global experiment in massive money printing is heading—-just take a look at the monetary madhouse in Europe. And that particular phrase has full resonance once again as it becomes more apparent by the hour that Europe and the Euro were not fixed at all. Indeed, beneath the surface of Draghi’s “whatever it takes” time out, the crisis has been metastasizing into ever more virulent deformations.

The coming European monetary crack-up is rooted in the fact that the ECB’s financial repression and ZIRP policies have—like everywhere else—-destroyed honest price discovery in Europe’s massive sovereign debt market.There is no other way to explain the preposterously low 10-year bond yields prevailing this morning for the various and sundry fiscal cripples that comprise the EU-19. Read More

01.09.15- Profit from the Panic: Golden Opportunities Emerge
Brittany Stepniak

Oil and Gold Prices in 2015

We told you 2015 was going to be a big year — a big year with a lot of blunders and bottoms.

As every action has an equal and opposite reaction, this year is also ripe with opportunity.

This week the price of oil fell below $50 for the first time since April 2009. The euro plummeted to nine-year lows and markets at large in Europe experienced major declines as well. Read More

01.08.15- Devastating Worldwide Derivatives Implosion Imminent
C Serpa

Globally there are over $9 trillion worth of borrowed US Dollars in the financial system. When you borrow in US Dollars, you are effectively SHORTING the US Dollar, reports Pheonix Capital on ZeroHedge.

Which means that when the US Dollar rallies, your returns implode regardless of where you invested the borrowed money (another currency, stocks, oil, infrastructure projects, derivatives).

Take a look at commodities. Globally, there are over $22 TRILLION worth of derivatives trades involving commodities. ALL of these were at risk of blowing up if the US Dollar rallied. Read More

01.07.15- Russia's "Startling" Proposal To Europe: Dump The US, Join The Eurasian Economic Union
Tyler Durden

Slowly but surely Europe is figuring out that as a result of the western economic and financial blockade of Russian, it is Europe itself that is suffering the most. And while Germany was first to acknowledge this late in 2014 when its economy swooned and is now on the verge of a recession, now others are catching on. Case in point: the former head of the European Commission, and Italy's former Prime Minister, Romano Prodi who told Messaggero newspaper that the "weaker Russian economy is extremely unprofitable for Italy." Read More

01.06.15- Sayonara Global Rconomy
Jim Quinn

The surreal nature of this world as we enter 2015 feels like being trapped in a Fellini movie. The .1% party like it's 1999, central bankers not only don't take away the punch bowl – they spike it with 200 proof grain alcohol, the purveyors of propaganda in the mainstream media encourage the party to reach Caligula orgy levels, the captured political class and their government apparatchiks propagate manipulated and massaged economic data to convince the masses their standard of living isn't really deteriorating, and the entire façade is supposedly validated by all-time highs in the stock market. It's nothing but mass delusion perpetuated by the issuance of prodigious amounts of debt by central bankers around the globe. Read More

01.05.15- 11 Predictions Of Economic Disaster In 2015 From Top Experts All Over The Globe
Michael Snyder

Will 2015 be a year of financial crashes, economic chaos and the start of the next great worldwide depression?  Over the past couple of years, we have all watched as global financial bubbles have gotten larger and larger.  Despite predictions that they could burst at any time, they have just continued to expand.  But just like we witnessed in 2001 and 2008, all financial bubbles come to an end at some point, and when they do implode the pain can be extreme. Read More

01.03.15- Why The Stock Market Casino Is Dangerous: The Case Of Looney Tunes In the Sand Dunes
David Stockman

On August 4th the Wall Street Journal carried a breathless tale of how a handful of obscure oilfield suppliers were striking immense riches in the sand dunes of Wisconsin. Owing to the “shale revolution”, the stock price of an outfit that had originated in the  stagnating business of supplying sand traps to golf courses, and which had been at death’s door as recently as 2011, had gone parabolic. Read More

01.02.15- Banks Are Holding Trillions In Commodity Derivatives That Could Blow Up On The Oil Price Crash
Michael Snyder

The American people are feeling really good right about now.  For example, Gallup's economic confidence index has hit the highest level that we have seen since the last recession.  In addition, nearly half of all Americans believe that 2015 will be a better year than 2014 was, and only about 10 percent believe that it will be a worse year.  And a lot of people are generally feeling quite good about the people that have been leading our nation.  According to Gallup, once again this year Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman in America and Barack Obama is the most admired man in America.  I don't know what that says about our nation, but it can't be good. Read More

01.01.15- Keep Your Eyes On The Prize
Chris martenson

At the essential center of the framework of the Crash Course is the almost insultingly simple idea that endless growth on a finite planet is an impossibility.

It is so simple it could be worked out by a clever 4 year-old. And yet it must not be so simple because the main narrative of every economy in every corner of the globe rests on the idea of endless, infinite growth.

Various rationalizations and mental dodges are made in people’s minds to accommodate the principle of endless growth.  Some avoid thinking of it all together.  Some think that perhaps we will escape into space, and continue our growthful ways on some other yet-to-be named planet(s).  Most simply assume that some new wondrous technology will arise that can allow us to avoid pesky limits. Read More

12.31.14- Commodity Prices Are Cliff-Diving Due To The Fracturing Monetary Supernova -
The Case Of Iron Ore
David Stockman

Crude oil is not the only commodity that is crashing. Iron ore is on a similar trajectory and for a common reason. Namely, the two-decade-long economic boom fueled by the money printing rampage of the world’s central banks is beginning to cool rapidly. What the old-time Austrians called “malinvestment” and what Warren Buffet once referred to as the “naked swimmers” exposed by a receding tide is now becoming all too apparent. Read More

12.30.14- Rick's Picks Stock Predictions for 2015 and Beyond
Rick Ackerman

In the past, Rick's Picks has shunned year-end predictions because there are far too many variables to handicap accurately. I've decided to take a crack at it anyway this year because I was curious to see what conclusions purely technical analysis would yield for some widely followed issues.

I'm no seer, just a chartist, and I'll say up front that the question of whether the Dow Industrials are trading at 23,000 at the end of 2015, or at 14,000, is probably no better than a coin-toss bet. Also, because the stock market is a house of cards and only distantly connected to economic reality, only a fool would try to predict the timing of The Big One that we all know is coming. Read More

12.29.14- The Keynesian End Game Crystalizes In Japan's Monetary Madness
David Stockman

If the BOJ’s mad money printers were treated as monetary pariahs by the rest of the world, it would at least imply that a modicum of sanity remains on the planet. But just the opposite is the case. Establishment institutions like the IMF, the US treasury and the other major central banks urge them on, while the Keynesian arson squad led by Professor Krugman actually faults Japan for being too tepid with its “stimulus”. Now comes several new data points that absolutely confirm Japan is a financial mad house - even as its policy model is embraced by mainstream officials and analysts peering from a distance. Front and center is the newly reported fact from the Cabinet Office that Japan’s household savings rate plunged to minus 1.3% in the most recent fiscal year, thereby entering negative territory for the first time since records were started in 1955. Read More

'Green Energy' a Casualty of Low Oil Prices? – Interview with Author Alex Epstein
Henry Bonner

Reports on the biggest losers from the oil price drop have become commonplace, with Russia topping the list. But there's one big loser that few people are talking about.

'Green energy' is predicated on providing an alternative to fossil fuels, says Mr. Epstein, author of a recent top-selling book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. The Wall Street Journal called the book "a full-throated defense […] of the American way of life."

Green energy is much more expensive than fossil fuel energy. It relies on the expectation of higher and higher prices for oil and other fossil fuels. Read More

12.26.14- Kaboom?
Editorial of The New York Sun

"Kaboom! Dow 18K" is the headline atop the Drudge Report. It links to a story on the Bloomberg wire reporting that the Dow Jones Industrial Average "rallied past 18,000 for the first time, after data showed the world's largest economy grew at the fastest pace since 2003 last quarter." By 4 p.m. the Dow had gained 64.73 points and hit 18,024, while Standard and Poor's 500 Index hit a record 2,082.17 and the American economy was expanding at an annualized 5% in the third quarter as, the Bloomberg noted, "consumers and businesses spent more than was previously estimated." Read More

12.24.14- Bankers See $1 Trillion of Zombie Investments Stranded in the Oil Fields
Tom Randall

There are zombies in the oil fields.

After crude prices dropped 49 percent in six months, oil projects planned for next year are the undead -- still standing upright, but with little hope of a productive future. These zombie projects proliferate in expensive Arctic oil, deepwater-drilling regions and tar sands from Canada to Venezuela.

In a stunning analysis this week, Goldman Sachs found almost $1 trillion in investments in future oil projects at risk. They looked at 400 of the world's largest new oil and gas fields -- excluding U.S. shale -- and found projects representing $930 billion of future investment that are no longer profitable with Brent crude at $70. In the U.S., the shale-oil party isn't over yet, but zombies are beginning to crash it. Read More

12.23.14- Nicaragua starts China-led canal to rival Panama
Eric Haun

Nicaragua on Monday announced the start of work on a $50 billion shipping canal, an infrastructure project backed by China that aims to rival Panama's waterway and revitalize the economy of the second-poorest country in the Americas.

The groundbreaking was largely symbolic, as work began on a road designed to accommodate machinery needed to build a port for the canal on the Central American country's Pacific coast.

Nicaragua's government says the proposed 172-mile (278-km) canal, due to be operational by around 2020, would raise annual economic growth more than 10 percent. Read More

12.22.14- Russian Roulette: Taxpayers Could Be on the Hook for Trillions in Oil Derivatives
Ellen Brown

The sudden dramatic collapse in the price of oil appears to be an act of geopolitical warfare against Russia. The result could be trillions of dollars in oil derivative losses; and the FDIC could be liable, following repeal of key portions of the Dodd-Frank Act last weekend.

Senator Elizabeth Warren charged Citigroup last week with "holding government funding hostage to ram through its government bailout provision." At issue was a section in the omnibus budget bill repealing the Lincoln Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act, which protected depositor funds by requiring the largest banks to push out a portion of their derivatives business into non-FDIC-insured subsidiaries. Read More

12.20.14- May the Fourth
Jared Dillian

I recently watched the movie Interstellar in the theater. I liked it so much, I watched it again… and again. Three times in 10 days. Next, I’ll get the DVD and see it dozens of more times. It’s my new all-time favorite movie.

I’m something of an astrophysics geek. I think in another life I might have been one of these nerds working for the SETI project like Ellie Arroway in Contact. For my fifth-grade science project, I constructed a planetarium show. When my schoolmates were playing Contra on Nintendo, I was reading about quasars.

Interstellar fascinates me because I don’t understand how someone gets $150 million of financing to make a movie that no one who doesn’t understand Einstein’s theory of relativity can fully appreciate. Christopher Nolan is a stud. There is no other explanation. Read More

12.19.14- Financial Market Manipulation Is The New Trend: Can It Continue?
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

A dangerous new trend is the successful manipulation of the financial markets by the Federal Reserve, other central banks, private banks, and the US Treasury. The Federal Reserve reduced real interest rates on US government debt obligations first to zero and then pushed real interest rates into negative territory. Today the government charges you for the privilege of purchasing its bonds.

People pay to park their money in Treasury debt obligations, because they do not trust the banks and they know that the government can print the money to pay off the bonds. Read More

12.18.14- The Russian Enigma Unravels
Mark Chandler

Winston Churchill famously said of Russian foreign policy that it was "...a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." What people leave out is what followed. Churchill offered an answer: "... perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest." And so it is.

Like most crises, the crisis Russia is experiencing is over-determined, in the sense there are several causes. The actions in Ukraine, and particularly the annexation of Crimea, and the continued destabilization of East Ukraine spurred sanctions from the US and Europe. Read More

12.17.14- Crash-O-Matic Finance
James Howard Kunstler

"Oil prices have dropped $50 a barrel. That may not sound like much. But when you take $107 and you take $57, that's almost a 47 percent decline…!"
–James Puplava, The Financial Sense News Network

May not sound like much? I guess when you hunker down in the lab with the old slide rule and do the math, wow! Those numbers really pop!

This, of course, is the representative thinking out there. But then, these are the very same people who have carried pompoms and megaphones for "the shale revolution" the past couple of years. Being finance professionals they apparently failed to notice the financial side of the business, for instance the fact that so much of the day-to-day shale operation was being run on junk bond financing. Read More

12.16.14- Welcome to the Recovery – McKinsey Survey Shows 40% of Americans Living Paycheck to Paycheck, Up From 31% in 2012
Michael Krieger

Nothing screams economic recovery like 2 out of every 5 Americans living paycheck to paycheck. Especially when that number has reportedly increased by 33% since 2012.

Perhaps someone should inform these destitute plebs that the stock market is up nearly 45% over the past two years, and after all, nothing says economic success like the 0.01% enriching themselves via fraud and financial engineering. Read More

12.15.14- One Foot On A Banana Peel…The Other In A Grave
Bill Holter

Never before have I seen so many pieces of information to be put together in the span of just one week. This past week we were bombarded with connectable dot after connectable dot, nearly each and every one of them on their own would have caused a panic 30 years ago. I say "30 years ago" because this was before the 1987 crash, this was before anything and everything, nailed down or not ...was levered many times over in what eventually became an inflation orgy. 30 years ago, black was not white, wrong was not right and "debt" was still in its infancy of being money. Fast forward to present day and we now have a monetary system with one foot on a banana peel and the other in a grave! Read More

12.13.14- Peak Prosperity News Update - Deflation Is Winning
Chris martenson

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12.12.14- Duck And Cover - The Lull Is Breaking, The Storm Is Nigh
David Stockman

September 15, 2008 is the day that Lehman died and the moment that the world’s central banks led by the Fed went all-in. As it has turned out, that was an epochal leap into the most dangerous monetary deformation that the world has ever known.

It needn’t have been. What was really happening at this pregnant moment was that the remnants of honest capital markets were begging for a purge and liquidation of the speculative rot that had built up during the Greenspan era. But the phony depression scholar running the Fed, Ben Bernanke, would have none of it. So he falsely whooped-up a warning that Great Depression 2.0 was at hand—-sending Washington, Wall Street and the rest of the world into an all-out panic. Read More

12.11.14- America Sets Six Record Lows This Year
Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Just as a business succeeds or fails on the basis of trust by its customers, it can also be said that a nation succeeds, over the long term, through the trust and confidence of its citizens. There are now ample warning signs that America is dangerously heading in the wrong direction.

As income and wealth inequality in the United States have set records, Americans' are acknowledging their awareness that this could not have happened without the willful participation of key institutions and leaders. Read More

12.10.14- Not Just Oil: Guess What Happened The Last Time Commodity Prices Crashed Like This?…
Michael Snyder

It isn’t just the price of oil that is collapsing.  The last time commodity prices were this low was during the immediate aftermath of the last financial crisis.  The Bloomberg Commodity Index fell to 110.4571 on Monday – the lowest that it has been since April 2009.  Just like junk bonds, industrial commodities are a very reliable leading indicator.  In other words, prices for industrial commodities usually start to move in a particular direction before the overall economy does.  We witnessed this in the summer of 2008 when a crash in commodity prices preceded the financial crisis in the fall by a couple of months.  Read More

12.09.14- Say goodbye to the nation state, this is how the new system will look like
Simon Black

In the moment after the musicians finished their last song, the silence was broken by the faint tune of someone singing "Mu isamaa on minu arm".

The singers on stage quickly looked at each other nervously, but seeing strength in each other's eyes they began to join in.

The year was 1969, and the Soviet leadership that held control over Estonia had banned this patriotic song. Singing it was a crime. Read More

12.08.14- The $9 TRILLION CRASH That is At Our Doorstep
Graham Summers

The financial world focuses far too much on stocks. The stock market, despite being at record highs (meaning record market capitalizations) remains one of the smallest, and least sophisticated markets on the planet.

Consider that stocks, even at current lofty levels, have a global market capitalization of slightly over $60 trillion.

In contrast, the global bond market is well over $100 trillion. And the global currency market trades OVER $5.3 trillion per day.Read More

12.06.14- An Endless Fiscal Crisis Looms
David Stockman

Back then, there was really no choice.

You couldn't have found a single dyed-in-the wool Keynesian or even Marxist economist who would have embraced the path of massive, permanent government borrowing and debt monetization by the central bank which actually ensued over the next three decades.

So Washington stumbled forward at the $1 trillion mark. By October 1981, with the U.S. economy sliding back into a double-dip recession, the fiscal math of Reaganomics was already beginning to burst at all the budgetary seams. The "Reagan tax cut" had triggered a monumental bidding war on Capitol Hill among special interest lobbies, and had ended up reducing the permanent out-year revenue base by about 6.2% of GDP — compared to the original pure supply side rate cut of less than 3% of GDP. Read More

12.05.14- Only Yesterday - How The Federal Debt Went From $1 Trillion To $18 Trillion in 33 Years
David Stockman

In the great fiscal scheme of things, October 22, 1981 seems like only yesterday. That's the day the US public debt crossed the $1 trillion mark for the first time. It had taken the nation 74,984 days to get there (205 years). What prompts this reflection is that just a few days ago the national debt breached the $18 trillion mark; and the last trillion was added in hardly 365 days.

I remember October 1981 perhaps better than most because as the nation’s budget director at the time I had some splain’ to do. Ronald Reagan had waged the most stridently anti-deficit campaign since 1932 when, ironically, FDR promised a balanced budget while denouncing Herbert Hoover as a “spendthrift”. Likewise, Gov. Reagan had denounced Jimmy Carter’s red ink and promised a balanced budget by 1983. Read More

12.04.14- Plummeting Oil Prices Could Destroy The Banks That Are Holding Trillions In Commodity Derivatives
Michael Snyder

Could rapidly falling oil prices trigger a nightmare scenario for the commodity derivatives market?  The big Wall Street banks did not expect plunging home prices to cause a mortgage-backed securities implosion back in 2008, and their models did not anticipate a decline in the price of oil by more than 40 dollars in less than six months this time either.  If the price of oil stays at this level or goes down even more, someone out there is going to have to absorb some absolutely massive losses.  In some cases, the losses will be absorbed by oil producers, but many of the big players in the industry have already locked in high prices for their oil next year through derivatives contracts. Read More

12.03.14- The Rise of the 'Petro-yuan' and the Slow Erosion of Dollar Hegemony
Tyler Durden

For seventy years, one of the critical foundations of American power has been the dollar's standing as the world's most important currency. For the last forty years, a pillar of dollar primacy has been the greenback's dominant role in international energy markets.

Today, China is leveraging its rise as an economic power, and as the most important incremental market for hydrocarbon exporters in the Persian Gulf and the former Soviet Union to circumscribe dollar dominance in global energy — with potentially profound ramifications for America's strategic position. Read More

12.02.14- Economic Cycles Are Far Bigger than Presidents
Rick Ackerman

I've never had a good word to say about Barack Obama, and I'm not going to start now. But it would be disingenuous to blame him for the Great Recession that has persisted for most Americans since the downturn ended officially in 2009. Politically speaking, there is nothing Obama or any other president could have done to alter the course of economic events after real estate prices collapsed in 2007-08. This happened on George W. Bush's watch, but he can't be blamed either, since the factors leading up to the crash had been gathering strength for more than a generation. Read More

12.01.14- Guess What Happened The Last Time The Price Of Oil Crashed Like This?…
Michael Snyder

There has only been one other time in history when the price of oil has crashed by more than 40 dollars in less than 6 months.  The last time this happened was during the second half of 2008, and the beginning of that oil price crash preceded the great financial collapse that happened later that year by several months.  Well, now it is happening again, but this time the stakes are even higher.  When the price of oil falls dramatically, that is a sign that economic activity is slowing down.  It can also have a tremendously destabilizing affect on financial markets. Read More

11.29.14- The Price Of Oil Exposes The True State Of The Economy
Raúl Ilargi Meijer

We should be glad the price of oil has fallen the way it has (losing another 6% today as I write this). Not because it makes the gas in our cars a bit cheaper, that’s nothing compared to the other service the price slump provides. That is, it allows us to see how the economy is really doing, without the multilayered veil of propaganda, spin, fixed data and bailouts and handouts for the banking system.

It shows us the huge extent to which consumer spending is falling, how much poorer people have become as stock markets set records. Read More

11.28.14- Building Blocks of World Government
James Corbett

It walks and talks like a government; It quacks like a government; it has a flag and an anthem and all the other trappings of a state. It even dresses like a government... But it isn't really a government.

Back in 1986 Ronald Reagan delivered a memorable line, declaring that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.”

As true as this phrase is, I'd like to propose an amendment for the sake of clarity. The most terrifying words are actually: “I'm from the government, and we need more money.” Read More

11.27.14- It's All Good, Right?
Jim Quinn

It really isn’t hard to connect the dots and see the real economy in the real world, outside Wall Street, is a disaster and getting worse by the hour. Below are a bunch of dots that have been issued in the last 24 hours. Here are the facts.

Real disposable income has risen at a 1.8% annual rate over the last four months. Meanwhile, real consumer spending has increased at a 2.4% annual rate over the last four months. I thought all those jobs Obama talks about should result in wages. Why is disposable personal income so pitiful if the unemployment rate is really 5.9%? And of course, these figures are based upon a fake inflation rate of less than 2%. We all know it is 5% or higher. Read More

11.26.14- The Tail of the Dragon
JC Collins

How and Why China Delayed IMF Reforms Through Republican Party Donations

In March of 2009 the People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan called for a reform of the international monetary system.  Among the initiatives called for by Zhou was the creation of an international reserve currency which would be disconnected from any individual nations currency, and would remain stable by removing the deficiencies inherit in using credit based national currencies. Read More

11.25.14- The Swiss Referendum On Gold: What's Missing From The Debate
Eric Schreiber

This article is written by Eric Schreiber, independent asset manager, former head of commodities UBP, former head of precious metals Credit Suisse Zurich. All views expressed are his and may not reflect those of his former employers.

The Swiss will vote on a referendum on November 30th that would ban the Swiss National Bank (SNB) from selling current and future gold reserves, repatriate foreign stored gold holdings to Switzerland, and mandate that gold must comprise a minimum of 20% of central bank assets. The SNB does not usually comment on political referendums. However, in this case it has done so quite vocally. Read More

11.24.14- USD - Only Girl at an All Boy Dance
Lance Roberts

I have been suggesting that the U.S. economy would likely be unable to meet current estimates of sustained and robust economic growth of 3% or more due to the global slowdown. Despite ongoing Central Bank interventions, the deflationary pressures in the Eurozone and Japan are likely to flow back to the U.S. sooner rather than later. Read More

11.22.14- Is the Value of your Money About to Change?
THRIVE Movement

View Video

11.21.14- Swiss Gold Vote Could Mark the End of Fiat Money
Jeff D. Opdyke

Gold sits at the center of what is arguably a vote more important to the world than which party — Asses or Elephants — runs (ruins?) the U.S. Congress.

On November 30, Swiss voters will be asked whether they want 20% of their currency, the Swiss franc, backed by physical gold. Read More

11.20.14- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Global Warming Strikes Again
Pater Tenebrarum

It really doesn’t happen very often at this time of the year (this is to say, so early in the cold season): in all 50US States, temperatures below freezing have been recorded overnight on Monday. Yes, even in Hawaii.

The coloring may be a bit confusing, but what this chart of US continental temperatures is saying is: it is as cold as hell, way too early in the year. Read More

3 Of The 10 Largest Economies In The World Have Already Fallen Into Recession – Is The U.S. Next?
Michael Snyder

Are you waiting for the next major wave of the global economic collapse to strike?  Well, you might want to start paying attention again.  Three of the ten largest economies on the planet have already fallen into recession, and there are very serious warning signs coming from several other global economic powerhouses.  Things are already so bad that British Prime Minister David Cameron is comparing the current state of affairs to the horrific financial crisis of 2008.  In an article for the Guardian that was published on Monday, he delivered the following sobering warning: Read More

11.18.14- Liar
Karl Denninger

This is pure comedy -- and a gross insult to the American public.

As an anchor at CNBC, I questioned the president’s claim that adding millions of people to the health insurance rolls would be free. How was that mathematically possible? If people with pre-existing conditions didn’t pay more, someone else would have to bear that cost. Healthcare isn’t free. The math didn’t add up. Read More

11.17.14- 2 Simple Ways to Spot Hidden, Undervalued Biotech Stocks
Thompson Clark

Last week, I attended a fairly exclusive investing conference. And while there, I had a fascinating one-on-one conversation with a whip-smart CEO of a biotech company. He has his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. So you know this guy knows what he's talking about.

He gave me two ideas that might generate some big biotech profit opportunities in the coming months. What he said really kicked my brain into gear. Let me explain why…

See, the crazy thing is this CEO considers himself a value investor. Now, if you know much about biotech investors, that sounds ridiculous. Read More

11.15.14- A Global House Of Cards
Paul Craig Roberts

As most Americans, if not the financial media, are aware, Quantitative Easing (a euphemism for printing money) has failed to bring back the US economy.

So why has Japan adopted the policy? Since the heavy duty money printing began in 2013, the Japanese yen has fallen 35% against the US dollar, a big cost for a country dependent on energy imports. Moreover, the Japanese economy has shown no growth in response to the QE stimulus to justify the rising price of imports. Read More

11.14.14- Contemplating Stocks without QE
Peter Schiff

Some influences on the stock market are casual, subtle or open to interpretation, but the catalyst behind the current stock market rally really shouldn’t be controversial. As far as stocks go, we have lived by QE. The only question now is, whether we will die without it. A larger version of this article appears in the fall edition of Euro Pacific Capital’s Global Investor newsletter.

Since the financial crisis of 2008 stock prices have only risen when the Fed is either expanding its balance sheet, hinting that it is about to do so, or actively recycling assets to hold down long term interest rates. Absent any of these aggressive moves, stocks have shown a clear tendency to fall. Curiously, while most investors now believe that QE is in the past, few would argue that the bull market is in danger. Read More

11.13.14- Why the Dollar's Reserve Currency Status is America's "Achilles Heel"
Marc Faber

[Ed. Note: While most pundits and self-proclaimed experts herald modern central bankers as "saviors of the economy," there are a few dissenting voices who know better. We've featured many of them in the pages of the Daily Reckoning before. But below, Marc Faber quotes a rare member the mainstream financial sector who -- rather than being a cheerleader for the establishment -- isn't afraid to call out the Fed for its hazardous monetary policy. Read on...]

Ned Goodman (born in 1937) is a successful entrepreneur (by background a geologist) and a philanthropist who also happens to be a billionaire, thanks to his Dundee Group of Financial, Resource and Real Estate Investments, which he founded in 1991. Read More

11.12.14- Deflation's Worst Nightmare: A Short-Squeeze on the Dollar
Rick Ackerman

11.12.14- "Following every great bubble the senior currency eventually became 'chronically' strong relative to most asset classes, including commodities, and other currencies for most of the time." - Bob Hoye, chief strategist of Institutional Advisors

With the U.S. dollar in the throes of a rally that has been rampaging since June, it's time to revisit an idea that I first wrote about nearly twenty years ago – that a short-squeeze on the dollar could eventually cause a meltdown of the global financial system. Although doomsdayers have put forth many theories about how economic Armageddon might play out, it was always a given that the dollar would be at the very center of the crisis. Read More

11.11.14- If Everything Is Just Fine, Why Are So Many Really Smart People Forecasting Economic Disaster?
Michael Snyder

The parallels between the false prosperity of 2007 and the false prosperity of 2014 are rather striking.  If we go back and look at the numbers in the fall of 2007, we find that the Dow set an all-time high in October, margin debt on Wall Street had spiked to record levels, the unemployment rate was below 5 percent and Americans were getting ready to spend a record amount of money that Christmas season.  But then the very next year the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression shook the entire planet and everyone wondered why most people never saw it coming. Read More

11.10.14- Stock Market Overvaluation — 100%
Monty Pelerin

The stock market overvaluation is feared by many. Is it an accident waiting to happen or have we entered a new era? “This time is different” is usually heard right before a major catastrophe.

John Hussman and Chris Martenson discuss the stock market valuations below.  According to them, equity markets are currently overvalued by at least 100%. A correction to norms then implies at least a 50% drop from current valuations. Regardless of what you may believe, their discussion is worthwhile. Read More

11.08.14- The Only Four Things You Should Trust In The Months Ahead
Tom Chatham

It seems like there is less and less that people can hold any trust in these days. The government lies about everything, more so than usual, the FED lies, the market is a lie, the economic numbers are a lie and we cannot even get protection from outside threats because of open boarders and political correctness.

When one looks around for something they can hold to provide security and comfort in times of imminent peril and chaos there are very few things the average person can count on with any certainty. In the coming days of propaganda and political spin there are but four things you should trust with any certainty. Read More

11.07.14- Bank 'Data-Sharing': Big Brother Goes Corporate
Jeff Nielson

Regular readers are familiar with the reality that most of the world's major financial institutions (and all of the West's Big Banks) are, in fact, a single entity: the One Bank. This has been established in two, totally separate ways.

First there is the empirical evidence. There is the collective and systematic manner in which these Big Banks have rigged/corrupted all of the world's markets, causing them to rise and fall in unison, in an extreme manner which should be mathematically impossible. There is the collective and systematic manner in which these same Big Banks swindled investors around the world for $trillions in "interest rate swaps". Read More

11.06.14- We Have Just Witnessed The Last Gasp Of The Global Economy
Brandon Smith

It is difficult to find the motivation to write about the state of the global economy these days, if only because there is not much left to say. I feel like I am composing multiple obituaries for the same long dead corpse. Most of the Liberty Movement and I suspect a small portion of the mainstream market understand that there is no tangible or legitimate recovery, let alone a stable fiscal ladder to rest our feet upon. There is literally nothing left to the financial system but rigged statistics, false promises, and ever expanding debt. In fact, the concept of debt creation is the only thing holding our facade of an economy together. Read More

11.05.14- The Economy Is So "Strong" It Just Cost Obama The Senate
Tyler Durden

Based on the ridiculous, seasonally-adjusted data released day after day by the various US "Departments of Truth", also known as the BLS, the Census, the Dept of Commerce, UMichigan, ADP, the Conference Board and so on, the US economy is so strong and consumer confidence is so resurgent, America is on the verge of a second golden age. Sadly, for Obama, and last night's epic rout for Democrats, it was all a lie - a lie perpetuated by a manipulated S&P500 which now hits daily record highs on unprecedented central bank liquidity injections which have now terminally disconnected the "markets" from the economy, and the welfare of the vast majority of the common "folk" - and said "folk" saw right through it. Read More

11.04.14- The Zombie System: How Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails
Michael Sauga

Six years after the Lehman disaster, the industrialized world is suffering from Japan Syndrome. Growth is minimal, another crash may be brewing and the gulf between rich and poor continues to widen. Can the global economy reinvent itself?

A new buzzword is circulating in the world's convention centers and auditoriums. It can be heard at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund. Bankers sprinkle it into the presentations; politicians use it leave an impression on discussion panels. Read More

11.03.14- Kamikaze Attack and the End of Mining
Andrew Hoffman

The trials of Job indeed!

To that end, I do not recall taking a day off from writing in the past two years – and given the horrific immolation the world's Central banks are foisting on the world's population, I don't anticipate slowing down any time soon.  Following the past two days' violent, post-FOMC precious metals attacks, my principal thought is not if, but when this "Cartel Suicide" yields an utter explosion of global physical buying.  That is above and beyond this year's current pace of equaling last year's record level – inevitably, catalyzing dramatic product shortages (especially silver), as we experienced in 2008, 2011 and 2013. Read More

11.01.14- The Experiment that Will Blow Up the World
Pater Tenebrarum

The BoJ Goes Even Crazier

It has been clear for a while now that the lunatics are running the asylum in Japan, so perhaps one shouldn’t be too surprised by what happened overnight. Bloomberg informs us that "Kuroda Jolts Markets With Assault on Deflation Mindset".

The policy hasn’t worked so far, in fact, it demonstrably hasn’t worked in Japan in a quarter of a century. Therefore, according to the Keynesian mindset, we need more of it. Mr. Kuroda therefore delivered a surprise spiking of the punchbowl that immediately impoverished Japan’s consumers further by causing a sharp decline in the yen: Read More

10.31.14- You Little People
Bob Rinear

In essence, despite a zero interest rate policy that mainly helps the wealthy; struggling families with falling incomes ought to take steps to accumulate "considerable assets," as retirees take part-time jobs to make ends meet. Let them eat cake, indeed.

It is utterly disgusting what the “Elite’s” think about the average person. Many of you might remember Leona Helmsley who will always be remembered for one of the most arrogant statements ever uttered: "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes." That’s the attitude of the super-wealthy towards the humble masses. We’re the little people and they’re the kings and Queens of the kingdom. Read More

10.30.14- A Tale of Two Metrics
JC Collins

Deflation and Why QE Didn't Cause Hyper-Inflation

In previous posts I have postulated that QE was used to facilitate the framework construction of the MFS, or multilateral financial system, which will be emerging between now and 2018.  This concept is not an easy one to understand.  The first step is to fully understand what QE, or Quantitative Easing really is and how it works. Read More

10.29.14- Markets show jitters ahead of Swiss gold vote
Chiara Albanese

Gold and currencies markets are starting to show their first nerves ahead of a referendum in Switzerland that could potentially force the country's central bank to buy thousands of metric tons of gold and never sell it, complicating its so far credible policies to hold down the franc.

A 'yes' result in the so-called "Save Our Swiss Gold" vote Nov. 30 wouldn't be the end of the matter, with the controversial measure facing several hurdles before it could ever be passed into law. Read More

10.28.14- The Bear's Lair: Silicon Valley is now a short
Martin Hutchinson

All bubbles burst eventually. Google has become a bigger political donor than Goldman Sachs. The tech sector is no longer the naïve capitalist entity that was startled by the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit in 1998. Venture capital money has flowed profusely into it for half a decade and valuations have reached to the sky. Some of its manifestations seem to have reached their natural limits, while others are running up against increasing legal and ethical concerns. In summary, even more than in 1999, for savvy investors the sector is now a short. Read More

10.27.14- Watch: Billionaire Investor: "The Best Opportunities Of Any Bear Market I Have Ever Seen"
Mac Slavo

Over the last three years, as stock markets have risen to new all time highs, other asset classes have been absolutely pummeled. Precious metals investments, for example, have in some cases seen declines of up to 75%.

In this candid interview billionaire investment guru and founder of Sprott Asset Management’s Global Companies Rick Rule shares his analysis and insights on a variety of key topics including his outlook on precious metals, passive investing, spotting opportunities, and his views on one of the most important things parents can teach their kids about growing up in a world where the government’s sole purpose is to create masses of indentured servants. Read More

10.25.14- Respect The Trend But Prepare For A Reversal
Michael Noonan

When events “happen,” they happen in a directed way by the elite's mainstream media outlets.  News is presented in a way that is designed to appeal to mass emotions so as to discount reasoned thinking.  You get government pimps, be they congressmen, heads of agencies, even presidents who add their fiat 2 cents in order to give some weight to an otherwise weightless argument.  While the "news event" is largely untrue, there is a sufficient amount of plausibility added to disguise the misleading [never verified] facts. In other words, psychological manipulation is the main menu of options for the elites to keep the masses "informed," while still very much uninformed. Read More

10.24.14- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: In the Year 2024
Jim Rickards

As I awoke this morning, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, from restless dreams, I found the insect-sized sensor implanted in my arm was already awake. We call it a "bug." U.S. citizens have been required to have them since 2022 to access government health care.

The bug knew from its biometric monitoring of my brain wave frequencies and rapid eye movement that I would awake momentarily. It was already at work launching systems, including the coffee maker. I could smell the coffee brewing in the kitchen. The information screens on the inside of my panopticon goggles were already flashing before my eyes. Read More

10.24.14- Bond funds stock up on Treasuries in prep for market shock
Tim McLaughlin

(Reuters) - U.S. corporate bond funds this year are adding Treasuries to their holdings at more than twice the rate of corporate debt amid concern that the struggling European economy and potential changes in Federal Reserve policy will drag down profits at U.S. corporations.

Through September, corporate bond portfolios boosted their holdings of U.S. government debt by 15 percent, compared with a 6.5 percent increase in corporate bonds during the same period, according to Lipper Inc data. The funds now hold about $13 billion in Treasuries, 15 percent more than the $11.3 billion they held at the end of 2013.Read More

10.23.14- Daimler Closes Tesla Hedge, Dumps Shares, Grabs Cash, Runs
Wolf Richter

Daimler, maker of Mercedes-Benz and Smart cars, trucks – including Freightliner in the US – buses, vans, and other utility vehicles has the industry's "biggest portfolio of electric vehicles," as it says, with numerous models of cars, vans, buses, and light trucks. Electric vehicles aren't new to Daimler. And it was logical that, in May 2009, it would acquire a 9.1% stake in Tesla. As Tesla raised capital over the years, Daimler's share was diluted to around 4%. And now it has exited from that investment with near impeccable timing, turning it into a glorious pile of sweet cash.

But why the heck did it do that? Read More

10.22.14- Benefit Of The Doubt
Bill Holter

The argument of "stock versus flow" has been debated from many angles and across many asset classes. The most heated may be in the gold and silver bullion categories. I've written on this topic before and I'm sure I will again but for this exercise I want to talk about U.S. stocks.

Zero Hedge put out a piece on Monday reporting that JP Morgan says liquidity has dropped 40% in the S+P E mini contract.  The study looks at “depth” of both bids and offers, this is now drying up, in fact, the ramp upwards was performed on continually lower volume. Read More

10.21.14- The Death Rattle of Europe's Statist Dream
Rick Ackerman

Europe's all-too-predictable relapse into recession is gathering force, threatening not only the pipe dream of economic and political unity, but eroding grandiose illusions that have helped prop up the world's financial house of cards. The unwillingness of France in particular to play by the EU's — i.e.,  Germany's — rules appears to have doomed the EU dream. The idea of a borderless Europe bound by a common currency and a shared desire to forever banish war from the Continent was a lofty one, but it was mired from the start in deeply rooted political animosities, grass-roots skepticism and bureaucratic overreach. Read More

10.20.14- Why Stock Prices Will Continue to Fall
Michael Lombardi, MBA

Now that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen 1,035 points (six percent) from its mid-September peak, the question investors are asking is "how far will she go?" For small-cap investors, the drama is greater, as the Russell 2000 Index has fallen 12.5% from its July peak.

Since 2009, every market pullback presented investors with an opportunity to get back into stocks at discounted prices. Even some editors here at Lombardi Publishing Corporation see the recent pullback in stocks as an opportunity. Read More

10.18.14- Silicon Valley Hype-Machine Gets Dented
Wolf Richter

Market driven by psychology and momentum "works really painfully on the way down"

Google too is showing that expenses-be-damned attitude prevalent in parts of Silicon Valley. Afterhours on Thursday, it reported that revenues grew 20% to $16.5 billion. But its operating expenses soared 28% to $12.8 billion. Operating income declined 1%. And net income dropped 5.3% to $2.8 billion. Expenses do matter. Read More

10.17.14- Robo-Investing
Pater Tenebrarum

Dear Investors, the Time to Leave your Brains at the Door has Come …

This is really too funny. The latest investment fad – which strikes us as a typical "late bubble" idea, we might add – is letting machines do your "investing" for you. And statistically speaking, it actually seems to be a good idea. Of course, it presumably only works as long as no grueling long term bear market intervenes, such as has happened in Japan. Or even worse, something like the 68 year long bear market in Europe following the peak of the South Seas and Mississippi bubbles in Britain and France. Read More

10.16.14- Is The Money Printing Facade Cracking?
Dave Kranzler

Yesterday I sent an email around to some colleagues in which I suggested that something nasty is going on behind the scenes in the financial system that is not yet apparent.   The bond market was closed yesterday but Treasury futures opened in th early evening and the 10-yr traded down to 2.25%.   This time last year the yield was 2.75%.  Despite the jump in the SPX today, which always happens on POMO Tuesday, the 10-yr is now down to 2.23%.

The “improving economy/housing market” does not hold up when the yield on the 10yr is collapsing like this.  This is not a short-squeeze. Read More

10.15.14- Suddenly, We Have Problems
John Rubino

A rising stock market, like a rising tide, can cover a multitude of interesting and/or scary things. If the finance guys who really know what’s going on are buying, then the disturbing stories that lead each evening’s news must be manageable. And we, in general, must be okay.

But let the market fall a bit and those headlines suddenly begin to seem both oppressive and really, really numerous. And maybe we’re not okay after all.

To take just a few of the issues that, in the wake of the recent equity correction, now loom large: Read More

10.14.14- Inflation, Deflation, and Our Very Confident Bet in T-Bonds
Rick Ackerman

I've been touting the ongoing bull market in T-Bonds as one of the best investment opportunities of our lifetime – a no-brainer, as far as I can recommend.  About the only way this bet can lose is if inflation returns with a vengeance. This has never been much of a worry for me, since, on the inspiration of C.V. Myers' prescient 1976 book, I've been writing about the threat of deflation for more than 20 years.  As Myers noted, every penny of very debt must eventually be paid – if not by the borrower, then by the lender. Read More

10.13.14- A Market Reset Due
Alasdair Macleod

Parts of the Eurozone are in great difficulty, and only last weekend S&P the rating agency warned that Greece will default on its debts "at some point in the next fifteen months". Japan is collapsing under the wealth-destruction of Abenomics. China is juggling with a debt bubble that threatens to implode. The US tells us through government statistics that their outlook is promising, but the reality is very different with one-third of employable adults not working; furthermore the GDP deflator is significantly greater than officially admitted. And the UK is financially over-geared and over-dependent on a failing Eurozone. Read More

10.11.14- Weekend Rant: Top Cyclical Forecaster: "Yes, A Mad Max Event Is Possible"
Mac Slavo

His computer forecasts are so accurate that in 1987 he took out a full page ad weeks in advance warning Americans of the coming Savings & Loan scandal and subsequent stock market crash. He pegged the crash to the very day it happened. A couple of years later in 1989 his “intelligent” computer models screamed warning signals about the coming collapse of the Japanese stock market, which he said would drop at least 20,000 points over a ten month period. He was, once again, dead on. Read More

10.10.14- And Now for Something Entirely Different: Monstrous supertyphoon on course to hit Japan this weekend
Energy News

Japan Times: Monstrous supertyphoon on course to hit Japan this weekend — CNN: This could be a hypothetical Category 6… Cloud field would cross entire US… Among strongest we've ever seen — Astronaut on Space Station: I've never seen anything like it — NBC: Waves already up to 50 ft.

UPDATE: Gov't models show typhoon making direct hit on Fukushima — Center of Vongfong expected over nuclear plant Tuesday (MAPS) Read More

10.09.14- Serious Financial Trouble Is Erupting In Germany And Japan
Michael Snyder

10.08.14- A Dangerous Market
Pater Tenebrarum

In his most recent commentary on the stock market, John Hussman makes a few important observations. Very often, bubble-like advances in financial asset prices can become far more extended than rational, sober observers think possible. One result of this is that those who are warning that the situation is inherently unsustainable are often dismissed as "perma-bears" not worth heeding anymore. It is certainly a label Hussman has been stuck with, although it is simply not true (he is known for taking constructive stances on the market when valuations and /or constructive market internals suggest they are appropriate). Read More

10.07.14- The Winter of Awakening
JC Collins

Much of what has been happening throughout the year will continue throughout the winter.  The global institutions and organizations will further progress on the path towards the multilateral financial system.  The patterns have been relatively easy to discern and discover, with a similar pattern continuing into the spring.

It is interesting that all G20 countries except for the United States are facilitating the process of internationalizing the Chinese renminbi.  This process involves increasing currency swap arrangements and trading hubs.  The news over the last year has been full of such stories and one is hard press not to fine dozens of stories with the most basic of searches. Read More

10.06.14- The Buffalo Wind
Fred Reed

I've talked more than once in these essays about the challenge of discussing the fall of civilizations when the current example is picking up speed right outside the window. 

10.04.14- Albert Edwards Says Watch Japanese Yen and Be Very Afraid
Jason Clenfield and Kevin Buckland

Japanese yen goes into freefall. China's fragile economy tips over the edge. A wave of profit-crushing deflation comes washing over the U.S. and Europe. Investors panic.

That's the view of perennial pessimist Albert Edwards. The London-based analyst and his team at investment bank Societe Generale SA have been ranked No. 1 for global strategy in surveys by Thomson Reuters Extel every year since 2007, even with a history of saying unpleasant things that few want to hear. Read More

10.03.14- How the Swiss Could Set Off a Financial Avalanche
Dave Gonigam

Hmmm… Looks as if the "safety trade" is on today. As we write, the Dow is down 1.5%, falling below 17,000… whoops, 16,900… uh, make that 16,800.

Hot money is flooding into Treasuries, raising prices and lowering rates. The yield on a 10-year note, near 2.5% at the close yesterday, sits near 2.4% now.

Gold is catching a bit of a bid — up about eight bucks, to $1,216. Crude? Not so much — down to $90.74, near an 18-month low. Read More

10.02.14- "But Analysts Say There's No Reason to Panic"
Wolf Richter

According to the media, it seems Wednesday was a terrible day for stocks. The Nasdaq was down 1.6%. The Dow closed below the 50-day moving average, for some folks a key line of support. The Russell 2000 waded into correction territory by being down more than 10% from its July peak. Unlike before, it got stuck in it. The first major index to make that journey in a while.

Small caps have had a hard time. Many of them have gotten destroyed. But they're small caps. They're not in the Dow, and they're not in the S&P 500. They're too small to move the Nasdaq which is dominated by tech mastodons. Read More

10.01.14- Where the U.S. Dollar Is Headed and What It Means to You
Michael Lombardi

For the U.S. federal government's fiscal year, which ends this Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts a budget deficit of $506 billion. (Source: Congressional Budget Office web site, September 26, 2014.)

But just because our annual deficit is declining, that doesn't mean our national debt is rising by an equal amount.

In fact, between September 20, 2013 and September 20, 2014, the U.S. national debt increased by $1.0 trillion. (Source: Treasury Direct, last accessed September 23, 2014.) Read More

10.01.14- The Coming SDR Gold Standard
JC Collins

How Gold Will Be Added to the SDR Basket Valuation

Sometimes what at first appears to be conflicting information is anything but, and what was originally considered to be opposing forces or ideals can quickly become unified for the greater good.

There has been much discussion and division over whether the world was moving towards a multilateral super-sovereign reserve currency by way of the Special Drawing Right of the International Monetary Fund or towards a new gold standard by which all currencies would be valued once again on gold. Read More

09.30.14- It's No Laughing Matter
Bill Holter

I read an article penned by Michael Snyder and posted on Zero Hedge last week and could only shake my head. In fact, the more I thought about it the more I started laughing. Yes, I laughed until tears came to my eyes. This is really not normal for me to break up laughing so hard at anything and certainly when it's not even close to a laughing matter. Why did I laugh? Because it struck me as so funny that the "side bets" are so much larger than the system itself yet people expect the system to survive?

Snyder dug into the OCC's latest quarterly report to find that the U.S. now has a 5th bank with derivatives held surpassing the $40 trillion mark, yes, TRILLION! JP Morgan of course has the largest U.S. position with $68 trillion while DeutschBank leads globally with $75 trillion. Read More

09.29.14- A Perfect Storm for TOL
Ramsey Su

The home building model is flawed.  Endless urban sprawl with little rectangular lots is simply not meeting the demands of the changes in demographics, job locations and life styles of a different generation of users.

Among the public builders, Toll Borthers (TOL) imo stands out as the worst of the lot.

1. TOL’s so-called luxury homes are likely the wrong product for the future.  There are too many of those on the market already and as baby boomers scale down, there will be even more. Read More

09.27.14- The Death Of The Derivatives Monster & It's Impact On The Precious Metals
Steve St. Angelo

The values of gold and silver would be substantially higher if it wasn’t for the massive derivatives market.  Americans have no idea that the Derivatives Monster destroyed the ability for the market to properly value physical assets, commodities and the precious metals.

I would imagine very few people could state the total value of derivatives in the U.S. Banking Industry in 1990.  Actually, I had no idea until I did the research.  Of course, I knew it was much lower than hundreds of trillions in Dollars held by the banks today. Read More

09.26.14- The Business Deal of the World
JC Collins

Was Europe Traded for the Middle East?

The geopolitical strategy at play in the proxy resource wars between the east and west has shifted once again with the US strikes on Syria.  The response by Russia and China over this unilateral move by America will likely be very telling of the larger strategy at play here.

So far the response has been muted with only statements of slight disgruntlement, such as Russia stating that the US strikes violate Syria’s sovereignty. Read More

09.25.14- The Grotesque Face of Irreversibly Destroyed Capital Markets
Andrew Hoffman

The best part of my job is the "good, smart people" I meet both virtually and in person.  Through Miles Franklin, the great GATA organization and five years in the mining business, I have become friendly with some of the most thoughtful, intelligent people on the planet.  I truly mean that and feel privileged to actually work with them.  To wit, I was honored to participate in David Morgan's "Mastermind" conference call series yesterday, with fellow truth seekers Chris Duane (who I taped a separate podcast with last week), Turd Ferguson (who I'll be taping a separate webinar with today), and Ned Naylor-Leyland, one of Europe's finest Precious Metals analysts; who by the way, I met at GATA's fantastic London conference three years ago.Read More

09.24.14- The "Buy Signal" Insiders Don't Want You to Know About
Paul Mampilly

Today, I'm going to show you the secret way by which "insiders" make money.

Before I do that, though, you're probably wondering… what is an insider?

An insider is someone who knows what's going to happen at a company before anyone else. Most insiders are people like CEOs, CFOs, board members and those who make big decisions for the company. Obviously, to make those big decisions, you have to know all the really important information. Read More

09.23.14- This Is About As Good As Things Are Going To Get For The Middle Class – And It's Not That Good
Michael Snyder

The U.S. Census Bureau has just released some brand new numbers, and they are quite sobering.  For example, after accounting for inflation median household income in the United States has declined a total of 8 percent from where it was back in 2007.

That means that middle class families have significantly less purchasing power than they did just prior to the last major financial crisis. Read More

09.22.14- Death Knell for the Bull Market?
Rick Ackerman

When will the bull market end? With money velocity collapsing and ominous divergences developing in both the NYSE Advance/Decline line and the New Highs/New Lows summation, U.S. stocks closed at an all-time high last week. If this were not disconcerting enough, the Hindenburg Omen, which signals an increased probability of a stock market crash, flashed red on Friday.

There was also this unequivocal pronouncement from the Elliott Wave Theorist after the Dow Industrials came within a single point last week of fulfilling their long-term rally target at 17280: "Next week, the U.S. stock averages should begin their biggest decline ever." Read More

09.20.14- Beware the Witches of September!
Joseph Cafariello

A Third "Triple Witching"

It’s not quite Halloween yet, but the witches are already revving up their brooms, clad in their finest rags, and cackling their merry song of mischief. Investors beware – the Witches of September will be flying this afternoon at a stock exchange near you.

Luckily, the witches make their rounds creating havoc on the markets just once a month, on the third Friday of the month, known as “Freaky Friday”. There are at least two witchy sisters who take to the skies each month – one who molests stock markets, while the other sinister sister stalks the futures markets. Read More

09.19.14- Monetary Policy Killing the System
Jim Willie CB

The byline should read MONEY VELOCITY HITS RECORD LOW, WHILE MONEY SUPPLY CONTINUES TO GO INTO ORBIT... SYSTEMIC FAILURE IS EVIDENT AS POLICY IS NOT STIMULUS AT ALL... THE PRINCIPAL CAUSE FOR THE BREAKDOWN IS MONETARY POLICY, WHICH IS STUCK IN PLACE.

The USFed monetary policy is killing the system, simply and boldly put. They call it stimulus, when the extreme accommodation is actually just a backdoor Wall Street bailout combined with a pass on the USGovt debt discipline. No debt limit is enforced anymore, a travesty. The United States is looking more like a Third World nation with each passing month, with colossal fraud, economic decay, war and sanctions, and no leadership. Read More

09.18.14- Dancing on Tables with Lampshades on Their Heads …
Bill Bonner

The Dow rose 100 points on Tuesday. Gold was up one lousy dollar. We'll take the gold, thank you very much. Because our guess is that this stock market is living not only on borrowed money but also on borrowed time.

With the addition of Chinese Web portal Alibaba, there are now 44 start-ups preparing to enter the public markets. Each of these has a valuation of more than $1 billion.

The last time there was this kind of action in the IPO market was 2000, just before the dot-com bubble blew up. And the last time stocks were this expensive was 2007, when the sub-prime/finance bubble blew up. Read More

09.17.14- Why Money Is Worse Than Debt
Francis Schutte

Everybody has to spend energy, has to work for his living. This is true for Government as well as for the billionaires and for the ordinary employee. Nothing – except for sunshine and air – comes for free. Note that today, sometimes people even pay for sunshine (vacation) and air (airports in Venezuela).

Not hard to understand that today’s fairy tale of "Free Fiat Money" will have a bad ending…or is it? Few people seem to realize the dramatic situation we are in, and that the denial is fed by the propaganda sold by politicians through the mainstream media. The 4th generation (see Galbraith’s Age of Uncertainty) doesn’t seem to be mentally able to grasp the seriousness of the situation the world is in. Read More

09.16.14- Babson's Warning
Jeff Thomas

[A] crash is coming, and it may be terrific. .... The vicious circle will get in full swing and the result will be a serious business depression. There may be a stampede for selling which will exceed anything that the Stock Exchange has ever witnessed. Wise are those investors who now get out of debt.

The above words could easily have been stated by me or another of the (very) few others who currently predict the coming of crashes in the markets. Read More

09.15.14- Renminbi is Already A De Facto Reserve Currency
JC Collins

Approaching Rapid Internationalization of Chinese Currency

"There are signs lately of growing disaffection with the United States dollar." – Yves-Andre Istel, former vice chairman of Rothschild Inc.

Sometimes the most obvious truths are hidden right in front of our eyes.  Our inability to not see or acknowledge these realities often leads to sudden jarring moments of realization which can’t be ignored.  These rare moments leave us feeling shocked and betrayed but with no one to blame, so the human socioeconomic collective roams the wasted lands of the hinder mind in search of new reference points. Read More

09.13.14- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Leadership From A Dancing Guy
Michael Hughes

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09.12.14- Our Virtual Economy
James Corbett

This obsession with these peripheral, inconsequential non-stories is a sign of our growing detachment from the real productive economy that was once the backbone of the economies of the developed first world nations.

The mainstream news websites are teeming with hand-wringing about the state of the Hollywood box office. Did you know that this past weekend was the slowest weekend box office since the week after the 9/11 attacks? No? Well you would if you were reading the Chicago Tribune, or the Detroit Free Press, or Bloomberg, or Breitbart, or the Sydney Morning Herald, or any of a million other publications. Read More

09.11.14- 9/11 After 13 years
Paul Craig Roberts

The tragedy of September 11, 2001, goes far beyond the deaths of those who died in the towers and the deaths of firefighters and first responders who succumbed to illnesses caused by inhalation of toxic dust. For thirteen years a new generation of Americans has been born into the 9/11 myth that has been used to create the American warfare/police state.

The corrupt Bush and Obama regimes used 9/11 to kill, maim, dispossess and displace millions of Muslims in seven countries, none of whom had anything whatsoever to do with 9/11. Read More

09.10.14- In Search of Snowflakes
Jim Rickards

I always say, don’t look for snowflakes. Watch out for the avalanche.

However, let’s talk about snowflakes for a moment because you might care about them. Perhaps you read the papers every day, and wonder, “What should I look out for?

I’ll give you three. All of which are all likely, in my view. These are not farfetched…

Credit Crisis in China: China, believe it or not, is in more of a credit bubble than the United States. The United States has got lots and lots of problems. But China is actually worse - probably because they haven’t been through this as many times as we have. Read More

09.09.14- Shrinkflation: Inflation's Ugly Cousin
Katya Sandino ​

Remember when Subway got in trouble for selling “footlong” sandwhiches that were less than 12 inches long?

They're not alone.

If you feel like you're getting less for your money these days, inflation isn't the only reason why.

There's also “shrinkflation,” which is what it's called when a company shrinks the size of its product, rather than raise its price. And its a disturbing trend that was last seen in the 1970s, right before the more traditional inflationary increase in prices. Read More

09.08.14- Useful Idiots and the Something For Nothing Society
Ty Andros

The greatest man made societal and economic collapse in history is unfolding before our eyes.  This Journey to the collapse of the developed world's civilization and empire began over 100 years ago during the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson with his subversion/betrayal of the constitution of the United States and creation of a privately owned banking and currency monopoly called the Federal Reserve and the creation of the income tax to fund the beginning of the Confiscationism of the progressive socialism we see today.  In exchange for a monopoly on money to multi century banking cartels which allowed the country to be run for the benefit of the banking systems.  In exchange for unlimited funding for government.  Private property rights began its road to demise at that time. Read More

09.06.14- Fungibility
BullionStar.com

Money is one of the most important features of any civilized economy. It is the lifeblood, or the lubricant if you will, that makes an economy run smoothly without any bottlenecks that hinders capital to flow to where it creates value for the consumer. It nourishes the parts of the economic body that needs it. Without money the members of any given society, i.e. the consumers, must rely on the cumbersome and inefficient process of bartering. If we would still rely on conducting trade thru the process of barter, our society would not be nearly as highly specialized, nor have the myriad of professions and trades that we see today. Read More

09.05.14- Hope and exact change...Tales from the New World Disorder
Ol' Remus

Things rarely end the way we think they will, usually a low-probability event occurs, something it seemed safe to ignore, or at least to discount, until suddenly it wasn't. Once the stuff of novels, the unexpected is now the stuff of life. It's what makes interesting times dangerous times. We're seeing a replay of 2008 but at the next higher level, not unstable financial outfits, not even unstable markets, but unstable regions of the world. Where we had banks fail we're having nations fail, at the near periphery for now but moving toward the core like Genghis Kahn at a gallop. Read More

09.04.14- The Real Reason American Capitalism Is Failing
Bill Bonner

We’ve come to China to check on our investments. Not that we have many. But the fewer you have, the more each one is important to you. Of all the world’s major stock markets, only two are reasonably priced. China is one. Russia is the other. We are long-term bullish on both.

It is raining here in Beijing. Outside, the roads are clogged with slowly moving traffic. The scene appears normal for a big city. It could be New York, London or Paris. What is remarkable about the view from our window is that it came about so fast. Read More

09.03.14- Where To From Here?
Brian Pretti

An analysis of the good, the bad & the ugly

I know this super highway.
This bright familiar sun.
I guess that I'm the lucky one... - Steely Dan

The financial markets were certainly correct in dismissing that rather abysmal first quarter 2014 GDP print, no?  After all, the current 4.2% GDP growth snapback revision in Q2 is proof positive Q1 was just a one-off fluke. Right?

The fact is: for a good five years now, economic pundits have been both hoping for, and then repeatedly disappointed by, the US economy's inability to achieve "escape velocity”. Read More

09.02.14- This is a Financial War Going on Underneath the Surface – Dubin & Kranzler
Rory, The Daily Coin

In this segment of the conversation with Eric Dubin, Managing Editor, The News Doctors and Dave Kranzler, Chief Investment Strategist, Investment Research Dynamics, we cover three crucial topics–the economics of the new marijuana laws, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and we wrap up with Fukushima. Fukushima is a global problem that is getting zero coverage. There is so little information being transferred about this ongoing nightmare that it is appalling. Eric shed some light on the situation as he lives just inland from the upper West Coast. Read More

09.01.14- And Now for Something Entirely Different... Moral Dilemma: Should a Libertarian Who Does Not Need Food Stamps, but Qualifies for Them, Take Them?
Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Here's the moral dilemma of the day:

Suppose you are a staunch Libertarian, doing reasonably well and you don't need food stamps. Yet, under perverse rules, you qualify for them. Should you take them?

Reader Steven faces that exact question. Steven writes .. Read More

08.30.14- Prepare For Longterm Instability and Hardship
Tom Chatham

Unlike the normal business cycle that allows for a recession every few years to clear out the mal-investments and keep the system functioning properly, the current cycle has been artificially induced with money that has unseated the foundation of good financial practices and caused a series of bubbles that must pop at some point. When this happens the business cycle will be heavily damaged and will take many years to reestablish some type of normalcy. Read More

08.29.14- Huge Gains Waiting in a Forgotten Corner of the Market
Greg Guenthner

While every other investor on the planet is distracted by the S&P 500's new highs, you have the opportunity to book serious gains in one forgotten corner of the market.

Metals are setting up to deliver traders and investors impressive returns. And I'm not talking about gold and silver. Instead, you need to check out the base metals. Sure, copper and aluminum are not as glamorous as gold and silver. But I doubt you'll complain much when you see these powerful setups… Read More

08.28.14- What are the Credit Markets Telling Us?
Goldsqueeze.com

For today's post, I'm going to look at a few credit market charts and try to explain what they're telling us.  Credit markets more often than not are leading indicators for the equity markets.  In 2007, for example, credit markets peaked and rolled over in early June while the S&P continued to rally for another four months - and we all know what happened after that.

08.27.14- Dimes on Black and Dynamite on Red
John Hussman

The stock market is presently a roulette wheel with dimes on black and dynamite on red. We continue to have extreme concerns about the extent of potential market losses over the completion of the present market cycle.

At the same time, we have very little view with regard to short-term market action. If one reviews market action surrounding major pre-crash peaks such as 1929, 1972, 1987, 2000, and 2007, you’ll observe a sort of “resilience” in the major indices on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis even after market internals had already corroded. In 1987, for example, the break following the August bull market peak was largely recovered over the course of several weeks before failing rapidly in October. In 2000, the market actually experienced a series of 10-12% corrections and recoveries before a final high in September that was followed by a loss of half the market’s value. Read More

08.26.14- Is this the Big One? Central Bankers from the World Over Warn of Impending 'Perfect Storm'
John Horvat

There is a major financial storm brewing on the horizon.

Such dramatic statements have long been the staple of naysayers for decades. Usually these warnings are dismissed by the financial establishment as the ravings of fringe analysts. Yes, crashes do happen, but the naysayers are never seen as prophets, but just opportunists who happened to be right much the way a broken clock is right twice a day.

But maybe this storm is different. Read More

08.25.14- Dollar Dumping: When Actions Speak Loudest
Dr. Jeffrey Lewis

The hypocrisy is endless. Counter-intuition is the norm. Observing financial markets requires a mirror image interpretation in an economic fun house.

Take Warren Buffet, for example. The darling of modern finance in a ten thousand dollar crumpled suit, he exemplifies every traders dream of beating the markets - buying low, selling high, and at the same time all that is frugal.

He remains a legend and a fervent "non-believer" in gold, though he was once a silver investor before the government called him out. Read More

08.23.14- With Disaster Imminent, Fed Unwilling to Stop Printing Money
David Stockman

There is no reason rooted in the real world to explain this frothy stock market. In every single region of the planet, the post-crisis, central bank fueled expansion cycle - tepid as it was in the global aggregate - is faltering badly.

Japan's economy is only a hair bigger than 5 quarters ago (0.8%) before Abenomics supercharged the Bank of Japan printing presses. Meanwhile, even as real wages in Japan plummet to modern lows, the BOJ's balance sheet has now reached 55% of its GDP - a ratio that would have been unimaginable even a decade ago. Read More

08.22.14- Why The Middle Class In America Is Being Systematically Destroyed
Michael Snyder

The 30 statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed.  Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a staggering pace.  Yes, the stock market has soared to unprecedented heights this year and there are a few isolated areas of the country that are doing rather well for the moment.  But overall, the long-term trends that are eviscerating the middle class just continue to accelerate. Read More

08.21.14- The World Is Edging Closer To A Global Financial Crisis
Brian Bloom

Since the late 1960s I have understood that the gold price is the ultimate barometer of fear in the world economy. Of course, I have not had a monopoly on this understanding and, in particular, the world's central banks have also understood it. It is for this reason that the gold price has been "managed" so carefully by these organisations.

But the act of managing the gold price has been a two-edged sword: On the one hand, it has served to defer the day when it finally becomes transparent to ordinary people that wealth cannot possibly be created out of thin air by loose monetary policy and/or low interest rates. On the other hand, it will likely serve to magnify the emotional reaction (fear) when this understanding finally begins to dawn. Read More

08.20.14- The REAL Looting Is Happening On Wall Street … Not In Ferguson, Missouri
Washington's Blog

The looting in Ferguson, Missouri is inexcusable.

The hoodlums – apparently out-of-towners – are not only stealing and destroying private property for no good reason, but they are giving the peaceful protesters against the shooting of Michael Brown a bad name, and provoking an armed (and over-militarized) response by the police.

But let’s put things in perspective … Read More

08.19.14- Soros Bets $2 Billion on Stock Market Collapse
F.J. McGuire

Billionaire investor George Soros has increased his financial bet that U.S. stocks will collapse to more than $2 billion.

The legendary hedge fund manager has been raising his negative bet on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index since late last year.

The latest 13-F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that Soros Fund Management increased its position in “puts” on the SPDR S&P 500 exchange-traded fund by a staggering amount in the second quarter from the first. Read More

08.18.14- Financial meltdown threatened by bankruptcy of any Wall Street bank
Gabriel Black

The US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), in conjunction with the Federal Reserve, announced last week that the major banks had failed to demonstrate that their bankruptcy would not precipitate an all-out financial crisis.

Under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul, some 130 banks are required to submit so-called "living wills." These are supposed to document how a bank, in case of bankruptcy, would prevent financial contagion to other banks and a broader financial crisis. Read More

08.16.14- Does 'Braveheart' Ending Await Bears?
Rick Ackerman

Although the Dow Industrials finished the week with a 186-point rally, there's reason to hope that this latest, drug-addled binge will sputter out within the next two or three days if not sooner. The sleazeballs who engineered Friday's impressive levitation had to pull out quite a few stops to make it happen. To get things rolling, they precipitously withdrew their bids Thursday night on news that Asian markets were getting socked, apparently because of bad vibes from Ukraine. The air pocket in U.S Index futures produced a quick 15-point drop in the E-Mini S&Ps – equivalent to about 120 Dow points. Read More

08.15.14- 14 Reasons Why The U.S. Economy's Bubble Of False Prosperity
May Be About To Burst
Michael Snyder

Did you know that a major event just happened in the financial markets that we have not seen since the financial crisis of 2008? If you rely on the mainstream media for your news, you probably didn't even hear about it. Just prior to the last stock market crash, a massive amount of money was pulled out of junk bonds. Now it is happening again. In fact, as you will read about below, the market for high yield bonds just experienced "a 6-sigma event". Read More

08.14.14- The deflation-inflation disaster
Ol' Remus

This train wreck isn’t simply going to hit a wall out of the blue. Actually, it has been forming and accumulating and expanding for many years now, and yet it has simply been ignored, particularly by the financial markets which have ridden this bubble to these extreme and historic heights. The only issue is, when does it hit the wall? The answer to that question is it’s not very far down the road, and I can promise you that is when all hell is going to break loose

There's good evidence our current inflation is artificially induced to stave off an underlying deflation. Read More

08.13.14- Fake Economic Recovery Exposed With One Chart
Mike Maloney

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08.12.14- We Are Still In a Financial Crime Wave
Jesse's Café Américain

In his recent column The Opposite of Stagflation Paul Krugman says that:

"One of the truly amazing (and disheartening) things about the Great Recession and its aftermath has been the continuing insistence of many economists that it's somehow a supply-side slump, driven by the evils of Obamacare or something. This tends to come from people who view stagflation in the 1970s as having permanently refuted all things Keynes. Read More

08.11.14- A Glance at Today's Unstable World
Financial Armageddon

The world is going through tough times; this bit should be clear to everyone. We are living in a tempestuous environment, and geopolitically we are witnessing terrible situations of the magnitude which are unparalleled in history, with cruelty manifesting itself in several forms, all thanks to the rising number of radical terrorist organizations that have made it their business to target the civilians instead of taking on the establishments head on. As wars continue to ravage the Middle East (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Israel) with several countries overtly and covertly engulfed in it, and more preparing to get embroiled in it, we, in all probability, could be staring at World War III. Read More

08.09.14- Mindless Eurocrats Stumble Toward Disaster: "Shocked" That Sanctions Have Started A Trade War
David Stockman

After blindly doing the US’ bidding over all propaganda matters Ukraine-related, and following just as blindly into round after round of US-inspired sanctions, sanctions to whose retaliation Europe would be on the frontline Europe appears to be absolutely shocked and is apoplectic that after several rounds of sanction escalations, Russia finally unleashed its own round of sanctions and yesterday announced a 1 year ban on all European food imports, something which will further push Europe into a triple-dip recession as already hinted by Italy yesterday. Read More

08.08.14- Junk Bonds Crater, 'Prisoner Dilemma' Ensues for Investors
Wolf Richter

Suddenly there's a laundry list of what went wrong. A “more hawkish Fed stance, heightened geopolitical risks," Argentina's default, another bank collapse and panicky bailout in Europe (Banco Espirito Santo), "and concerns over stretched valuations," wrote Matthew Mish, Head of Credit Strategy at UBS Investment Bank, and Thibault Colle, Associate Credit Strategist; it triggered "a cascade of mutual fund outflows in recent weeks."

They weren't exaggerating. In the latest week, investors yanked $7.1 billion out of junk bond funds, a record amount, according to Lipper. Read More

08.07.14- Frothy Markets Ready to Pop?
Aaron Elstein

Bubbles litter the news these days. Real or imagined examples can be found in the soaring values of tech names like Airbnb, Snapchat and Uber. And who can forget Bitcoin, artisanal foods and crowdfunding? Then there are the usual suspects: real estate, small-cap stocks, fine art and just about any market in China.

Even sober-sided Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen is warning of bubbles, saying last month that prices for biotechnology and social-media stocks look "substantially stretched," and noting a broader "deterioration in lending standards," especially to less-creditworthy companies. Read More

08.06.14- This No-Brainer Could Yield 40% Returns
Rick Ackerman

The one investment opportunity I regard as an absolute no-brainer also happens to be potentially among the most lucrative. How lucrative? Gains of up to 40% over the next 12 months are possible. More on that below. But before I divulge some further details, let me mention that this particular asset class has yielded well in excess of 20% in five of the last six years. You might think that such a terrific opportunity would have been discovered by now. In fact, the opposite is true. This particular investment has either been shunned or ignored by the crowd, mainly because it disdains the popular wisdom that Fed stimulus already in the pipeline is certain to produce serious inflation somewhere down the road. Read More

08.05.14- Defining Away Economic Failure
Paul Craig Roberts

Last week's government guesstimate that second quarter 2014 real GDP growth will be 4% seems nonsensical on its face. There is no evidence of increases in real median family incomes or real consumer credit that would lift the economy from a first quarter decline to 4% growth in the second quarter. Middle class store closings (Sears, Macy's, J.C. Penney) have spread into the Dollar stores used by those with lower incomes. Family Dollar, a chain in the process of closing hundreds of stores is being bought by Dollar Tree, the only one of the three Dollar store chains that is not in trouble. Wal-Mart's sales have declined for the past 5 quarters. Declining sales and retail store closings indicate shrinking consumer purchasing power. Retail facts do not support the claim of a 4% GDP growth rate for the second quarter, and they do not support last Friday's payroll job claim of 26,700 new retail jobs in July. Read More

08.04.14- Time To Stay Out Of Harm's Way: Market Rife With Warning Signals
Lance Roberts

For weeks, complacency has ruled. Despite geopolitical uprisings, weak economic data or continued reductions in monetary policy, nothing has "ruffled" investor's feathers, well, until this past week.

On Thursday, the culmination of events occurred that sent investors scurrying for cover and stocks falling in the biggest one-day drop in months. That decline also reversed all of the gains in July, which makes it only the second negative month of the year since January. Read More

08.02.14- Surmounting Distortions & News Blackouts Threatening Investments
Deepcaster

"Booming Initial Estimate for Second-Quarter GDP Largely Was Fluff....

"With the government's estimates of GDP activity so far removed from reality, the issue here is not whether the U.S. economy is booming along or not. It is not; it never recovered from the collapse into 2008 and 2009. The issue with today's numbers is in the timing of a more-formal financial-market and political recognition of the issues and ongoing severe difficulties involved here for consumers.... Read More

08.01.14- The Scatalogical Matter Is Really Flying Now
Dave Kranzler

Now that everyone is blaming Russia - instead of the weather - for everything that is happening (Adidas blamed Russia for its poor results instead of the fact that its shoes suck) - I'm wondering when Obama is going to come out and tell us Russians killed Jesus.

Of course, ignore the Chicago PMI report today - which just posted the 2nd biggest drop on record and the biggest ever miss vs. Wall Street Einsteinian forecasts: LINK.

Conveniently skip that fact and continue to believe in a 4% GDP report and Santa Clause. Read More

07.31.14- The State Of The Union Is Shocking
Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Oh yay, US Q2 GDP supposedly rose by 4%. Aw, come on. That’s only 7% more than in Q1 (or 6.1% in the once again revised Q1 number). Wonder what made that happen? Don’t bother. It’s complete nonsense. New home sales and lending home sales went down - again - recently, wages are not going anywhere, the ADP jobs report was - again - low today. There’s nothing that adds up to a 6% or 7% difference between Q1 and Q2.

The real story of the American economy lies elsewhere. The economy is sinking away in a debt quagmire. If it were a body, the economy would be in up to its neck in debt by now, with the head tilted backwards so it can still breathe. Barely. But your government doesn’t want you to know. There are a lot of things that illustrate this. Read More

07.30.14- Last Time this happened, The Financial Crisis Broke Out
Wolf Richter

There comes a time when risk just disappears, when nothing can go wrong, when there are no dark clouds on the horizon. Stocks rise to record after record. The crappiest junk bonds are priced as if they were safe investments. Inflation is excluded from the calculus. Even the mere possibility of default has been banished from considerations. And investors no longer demand to be compensated for any of it. They close their eyes and hold their nose and grab what they can. Read More

07.28.14- Think 2008 Was Bad? You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
Bill Bonner

Deflecting Attention, Greenspan-style

Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan is back in the news. At 88 years old, his mind is still sharp as a tack. He still sees his own interests clearly. And he is still clever enough to distort the facts to suit them.

Asked in an interview what he thought of Janet Yellen’s recent IMF speech, in which she maintained that bubbles should be addressed with more regulation, he replied: Read More

07.26.14- The Coming Slump
Alasdair Macleod

Governments and central banks have made little or no progress in recovering from the Lehman crisis six years ago. The problem is not helped by dependence on statistics which are downright misleading. This is particularly true of real GDP, comprised of nominal GDP deflated by an estimate of price inflation. First, we must discuss the inflation adjustment.

The idea that there is such a thing as a valid measure of price inflation is only true in an econometrician’s imagination. An index which might be theoretically valid at a single point in time is only subsequently valid in the wholly artificial construction of an unchanging, or “evenly rotating economy”: Read More

07.25.14- This Time Is Not Different: Why The Market Is Heading For A Fall
David Stockman

The 2008 Wall Street meltdown is long forgotten, having been washed away by a tsunami of central bank liquidity. Indeed, the S&P is up nearly 200% from its March 2009 low. Yet four cardinal measures of Main Street economic health convey nothing like a 2X pick-up from the post-crisis bottom.

To wit, in June the count of  breadwinner jobs was 68.5 million or 5% below were it stood as the crisis got underway. Likewise, business investment in real plant and equipment is still 5% below its late 2007 peak. So too with the real median family income at about $53k - its still down by 6%. Read More

07.24.14- The Baltic Dry Index Collapses To 18-Month Lows; Worst July Since 1986
Tyler Durden

The bulls will ignore it, shrugging that it's merely over-supply of ships that the resurgent world economy will quickly soak up as it 'recovers'...

However, World GDP growth expectations are collapsing, trade volumes are slowing, and the Baltic Dry Index has continued to slump to its lowest since the start of January 2013 (a holiday period). For some context, this is the lowest July level for the Baltic Dry since 1986... "noise" Read More

07.23.14- Advance Notice of the Next Market Crash
Chris Mayer

Fifty years after the 1929 crash, a group of money managers and investment thinkers put together a collection of essays looking back at that experience. The result was a distillation of some pretty fine investment wisdom. Timely, I think, to review now.

One of the contributors was Arthur Zeikel, then with Merrill Lynch. The title of his essay summed up the motif of the whole collection: "After 50 Years, Nothing New Nor Likely." This might seem deflating. It shouldn't be, because it means there is a discernible pattern to events. A pattern we might make use of. On the '29 crash, Zeikel wrote: Read More

07.22.14- AUDIO: MH17 will usher in a completely new kind of war - one the US cannot win
Simon Black

Russians aren’t exactly known for having a great sense of humor. But the language is full of bizarre, often hilarious expressions like “perebrasyvanie kakashkami”.

Literally translated this means “throwing shit”. And it applies right about now - when a bunch of people is standing around blaming one another for something that has gone heinously wrong.

“Heinously wrong” is somewhat of an understatement. Listen to Podcast

07.21.14- Breaching the monetary Matrix: Five exercises to help you understand money
Brett Scott

Like everyone else you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch, a prison for your mind.

This is a line from The Matrix. Morpheus is explaining to Neo that he’s actually stuck in a nightmare prison-world enslaved to computers. The world is not as you think Neo, but I can set you free, provided you take the red pill.

In some ways Morpheus resembles one of those single-agenda zealots who goes around telling people that they have a certain secret truth that will liberate them, like the guy who corners you in a pub and says, “Don’t you realise we’re trapped in a corporate prison. The Bilderberg Group owns the world’s governments!” Read More

07.19.14- Apple: Now They're Cook'n With Gas
Mark St.Cyr

The latest revelation to hit the business world that I feel will be both under reported as well as under estimated is the legitimate sea change that may be taking place with the announcement that Apple® and IBM® will work together to both create and sell products.  Personally I don’t know of any other such collaboration in recent memory that has the possibility of having a truly transformative effect.

As always I’ll state right up front: I am an Apple fanboy and have been for many years. Read More

07.18.14- Dazed Global Markets Respond Wearily To Yesterday's Shocking Events
Tyler Durden

For a centrally-planned market that has long since lost the ability to discount the future, and certainly respond appropriately to geopolitical events, yesterday was a rough wake up call with a two punch stunner of not only the MH 17 crash pushing the Ukraine escalation into overdrive, but Israel's just as shocking land invasion of Gaza officially marking the start of a ground war, finally dragging global stocks out of their hypnotized slumber and pushing risk broadly lower across the globe, even if the now traditional USDJPY and AUDJPY algos have woken up in the past few minutes and will be eager to pretend as if nothing ever happened. Read More

07.17.14- BRICS give greenback the bird
macrobusiness.com.au

From the BRICS Summit overnight comes currency swap lines, deeper trade integration, non-dollar exchange mechanisms and a $100 billion dollar competitor to the International Monetary Fund. That’s 3 billion people that just exited the US dollar reserve system when dealing with one another. Probably the most serious challenge to US dollar hegemony of our lifetimes.

1. We, the leaders of the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Russian Federation, the Republic of India, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of South Africa, met in Fortaleza, Brazil, on 15 July 2014 at the Sixth BRICS Summit. To inaugurate the second cycle of BRICS Summits, the theme chosen for our discussions was "Inclusive Growth: Sustainable Solutions", in keeping with the inclusive macroeconomic and social policies carried out by our governments and the imperative to address challenges to humankind posed by the need to simultaneously achieve growth, inclusiveness, protection and preservation. Read More

07.16.14- The Immorality Of Paper Money
Bob Livingston

One of today's most common economic fallacies is that the soaring stock market is evidence of economic recovery. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Stocks have almost tripled since the 2008 collapse, but that stock growth stems from Federal Reserve money printing (inflation) and near zero interest rates. The Fed's balance sheet has grown more than fourfold since 2008 — to $4.3 trillion — and was used to prop up the "too big to fails." That money had to go somewhere. Read More

07.15.14- The Head Of ‘The Central Bank Of The World’ Warns That Another Great Financial Crisis May Be Coming
Michael Snyder

Most people have never heard of Jaime Caruana even though he is the head of an immensely powerful organization. He has been serving as the General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements since 2009, and he will continue in that role until 2017. The Bank for International Settlements is a rather boring name, and very few people realize that it is at the very core of our centrally-planned global financial system. So when Jaime Caruana speaks, people should listen. And the fact that he recently warned that the global financial system is currently "more fragile" in many ways than it was just prior to the collapse of Lehman Brothers should set off all sorts of alarm bells. Read More

07.14.14- The Only Prescription for a Real Economic Recovery
Dan Amoss

In 2012, money mandarins running the European Union chose stagnation over restructuring. Here's a consequence of that choice: expectations for a self-sustaining economic recovery keep getting crushed.

Two years ago, European Central Bank (ECB) chief Mario Draghi promised to do "whatever it takes" to hold the eurozone together. He bluffed nervous investors into believing in a promised (if needed) bond-buying program dubbed "Outright Monetary Transactions," or "OMT." Read More

07.12.14- Feeling poorer through the power of inflation
mybudget360

You have to love how the Federal Reserve downplays inflation when they are the primary source of it with other central bankers for this monetary phenomenon. They continue to play inflation down because it gives them the power to continue to use policies that seem to only aid their banking allies while making working Americans poorer by the day. Inflation has a slow eroding power that is not readily visible since it usually takes time to work through a system. Looking at a broader timeframe however it becomes readily apparent that inflation is hitting our system hard and most working families don't need an advanced degree in economics to understand this. Read More

07.11.14- Don't Go Walk Under Wall Street Windows
Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Irwin Kellner at MarketWatch phrases it in these colorful words:

... what do you think will happen to stocks when the Fed decides to take away the punch bowl and raise rates? I don't know, but if I were you, I would not walk under any open windows down on Wall Street.

In these words, he expresses what increasing numbers of writers and analysts point to: that the exuberant market confidence we’ve seen is dwindling, and nervousness takes over. And when people get nervous over the spoils of free money that nobody’s ever in their lives worked a single inch for, that could easily spread and catch on like wildfire. Read More

07.10.14- Bubbles, Bubbles Everywhere
Michael Snyder

Is there any doubt that we are living in a bubble economy? At this moment in the United States we are simultaneously experiencing a stock market bubble, a government debt bubble, a corporate bond bubble, a bubble in San Francisco real estate, a farmland bubble, a derivatives bubble and a student loan debt bubble. And of course similar things could be said about most of the rest of the planet as well. In fact, the total amount of government debt around the world has risen by about 40 percent just since the last recession. But it is never sustainable when asset prices and debt levels increase much faster than the overall level of economic growth. Read More

07.09.14- France, Brazil, India & South Korea Join Russia & China In Post-Dollar World Order
Jeff Berwick

The empire has no clothes. Debt weighs down the crony-capitalist system and flowers of alternative realities are cropping up. The middle class has been brought to the brink, practically eviscerated over the past ten years in the western world. Stock markets - high on intraveneous debt cocktails - post record nominal highs daily.

The US government has become its people's own worst enemy. It has told Americans that terrorists pose the greatest threat, while in the meantime destroying the citizens of the country, and we see this playing out now clearer than ever. It's going after foreign institutions with reckless abandon and the world doesn't appreciate it. Read More

07.08.14- The Crash of 2016 Gets Closer Every Day
Truth Out

The denial of fundamental economic principles is setting the world up for another Great Crash.

Although wages have been flat or declining since the West started following Thatchernomics and Reaganomics in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the stock market has risen to all-time highs. Billions - hundreds of billions - have been made by individuals on Wall Street.

Meanwhile over 60,000 factories have closed in United States just in the past 14 years, and over 50 million Americans are either unemployed or underemployed. Read More

07.07.14- And Now for Something Entirely Different: Michael Jackson on Beer Bottles
Bottle Boys

View Video

07.05.14- The Approaching Inevitable Market Reversal
Charles Hugh Smith

Though we’re constantly reassured by financial pundits and the Federal Reserve that the stock market is not a bubble and that valuations are fair, there is substantial evidence that suggests the contrary.

The market is dangerously stretched in terms of valuation and sentiment, and it does not accurately reflect fundamentals such as earnings and sales growth. Read More

07.04.14- Halftime
Turd Ferguson

So here we are. 2014 is half-over and where do we stand? For me, the puzzle comes together by looking at a few, simple clues.

Let's start where we began...with Ken Hoffman of Bloomberg Industries. Ole Ken unwittingly let the cat out of the bag last December when he confirmed for us what I had been telling you for two years. Namely, that the gold was gone...for good. If you need a refresher, see here: Read More

07.03.14- Optimism Bias Squared
Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Oh yeah, sure, optimism is oozing from every single one of America’s pores. Or so they'll have you believe. 281,000 new jobs says the ADP report, most since December 2012. Of which small business added 117,000 and medium sized business 115,000. And the media are just besides themselves with joy. Shame that the markets react lukewarm at best. Then again, they do better the worse the news gets, all they reflect anymore these days is the level of distortion and convolution that they obey (or is that the other way around?). Read More

07.02.14- Fatigued Stocks Flirt with the Big One
Rick Ackerman

The suspicion grows that the stock market has been carving out a broad top, by turns bringing sufficient deviousness, pain, tedium, exhilaration, temptation, and most of all false hope, to the process that even those who have been preparing for it are likely to be caught off guard when the inevitable plunge comes. Further evidence of a market suffering from terminal fatigue would have been apparent to anyone who tried to cash in on the last gasp of put and call options that were due to expire on Friday. We've been using this tactic ourselves with a weekly "Jackpot Bet" designed to take advantage of the enormous leverage in options that have shed nearly all of their time premium shortly before they die. Read More

07.01.14- BIS Bubble-Blower Warns About Bubbles
The Daily Bell

Central Bankers, Worried About Bubbles, Rebuke Markets ... An organization representing the world's main central banks warned on Sunday that dangerous new asset bubbles were forming even before the global economy has finished recovering from the last round of financial excess ... The organization also had harsh words for corporations, which it said were not taking advantage of booming stock markets to step up investment. That is one reason that gains in productivity — the foundation of sustained economic growth — have slowed in most advanced economies, the bank said. - New York Times Read More

06.30.14- If 10% Of Humanity Turn Bitcoiners, Central Banking Goes Extinct
Justin O'Connell

What might it take for bitcoin to go mainstream?

Scientists have found in recent years that when a mere 10 percent of the population holds dear a certain belief, this belief will be adopted by the lion’s share. In 2011, for instance, scientists at Rensselaer used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. Read More

06.28.14- The Keynesian End Game Is Near: No Escape Velocity This Year, Either
David Stockman

The economic releases of the past few days are putting the lie to the Keynesian escape velocity myth. The latter is not just around the corner—-and 2014 is now virtually certain to mark the fifth year running when the boom predicted by Wall Street economist at the beginning of the year fizzled as actual results unfolded.

In that context, yesterday’s punk number on personal consumption expenditures during May was the inflection point. Not only did American consumers not come bounding out of their winter ice caves as predicted by virtually every “sell side” economist, the number actually embodied a case of groundhog economics. Read More

06.27.14- This Incredible Technology Could Form the Next Great Bull Market
Dominic Frisby

In the 1970s, the big bull market was in gold. That was the place to be.

In the Eighties, it was Japan. In the Nineties, it was tech. And in the 2000s, it was commodities.

But what about the Tens? What has been the great bull market of this decade? US stocks, maybe? Biotech, perhaps? London property?

Nope, so far, in terms of the gains at least, it has been Bitcoin. There are people who have made over a million times their money. Read More

06.26.14- They're Lying To Us, Part 2: GDP
John Rubino

Today the US took its next-to-last stab at calculating First Quarter GDP, and the downward revision was impressive even by recent standards. It now appears that the economy, well, here’s how Bloomberg puts it:

U.S. Economy Shrank in First Quarter by Most in Five Years

The U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter by the most since the depths of the last recession as consumer spending cooled. Read More

06.25.14- Why You Should Believe in the Economy... Or Maybe Doubt It
Birch Gold Group

The equities markets made their best attempts at being bullish last week. The Dow is back up, flirting again with 17,000. The Nasdaq hit a 14-year high. The S&P 500 hit new all-time highs as well. After the tumult of the week before, this will be a welcome respite for some.

Let’s look at a few reasons for the optimism.

First, we have a new House Majority Leader. After Eric Cantor’s shocking primary defeat and step down from leadership, Kevin McCarthy was voted in as House Majority Leader by his fellow Republicans. Read More

06.24.14- Buying Up the Planet: Out-of-control Central Banks on a Corporate Buying Spree
Ellen Brown

Finance is the new form of warfare - without the expense of a military overhead and an occupation against unwilling hosts. It is a competition in credit creation to buy foreign resources, real estate, public and privatized infrastructure, bonds and corporate stock ownership. Who needs an army when you can obtain the usual objective (monetary wealth and asset appropriation) simply by financial means? — Dr. Michael Hudson, Counterpunch,

When the US Federal Reserve bought an 80% stake in American International Group (AIG) in September 2008, the unprecedented $85 billion outlay was justified as necessary to bail out the world's largest insurance company. Read More

06.23.14- The Pipes That Bind
James Corbett

How pipelines will determine economics and geopolitics in the next decade... Confused? Overwhelmed? Dizzy? Don't worry, you should be. In fact, if any of this makes sense to you you might want to consider becoming a consultant, because there are plenty of politicians, foreign policy analysts, geopolitical commentators and others whose radar these stories don't even appear on. Read More

06.21.14- Google - The New Bank - Rollover BitCoin & Banks - Its the Internet Revolution
Martin Armstrong

The real birth in electronic money is not Bitcoin, but Google Wallet. Standing in line at Starbucks you will see the under 25 crowd pay with their cell phones.

Sorry, but Google is already there. Bitcoin cannot compete nor will traditional banks. Just as Amazon reduced book publishers to a subservient role at their direction, and book stores went out of business, while the internet is rendering newspapers obsolete, the trend to pay attention to is Google Wallet, which is targeting the traditional banks. Read More

06.20.14- Last Time Corporate America Did This, The Stock Market Crashed
Wolf Richter

The S&P 500 stock index bumbles to new highs no matter what. But it has been a slog: serial GDP downward revisions forward and backward, unceremonious abandonment of “escape velocity” for the fifth year in a row, wars or civil wars in Ukraine and Iraq with consequences for gas supplies to Europe and oil supplies to the world, US inflation heating up. And stocks nevertheless rise up because.... The Fed Rules, Metrics and Ratios Are Just for Decoration.

In the Business Roundtable’s second quarter CEO survey, the chiefs of the largest US corporations weren’t exactly in an ecstatic mood either. They lowered their GDP growth forecast for the year to 2.3%; among other tidbits, they also expected to spend less money on capital investments. Read More

06.19.14- The Coming Crash Of The Financial And Monetary System
Taki Tsaklanos

In an excellent video presentation, Claudio Grass, Managing Director at Global Gold Switzerland, explains why a crash of the financial and monetary system seems inevitable. The presentation covers all actual issues like currency wars, rigged markets, central bankers’ interventions, statistics manipulation, monetary mismanagement and financial repression. Claudio Grass does a great job “connecting these dots” but in a factual way. In this article, we collect several quotes and graphs. The full video presentation is 22 minutes long. Readers are highly recommended to watch the full presentation and subscribe to receive three exclusive reports for free on http://welcome.globalgold.ch. Read More

06.18.14- 'Interesting Times' Spinning Out of Control
Rick Ackerman

These all-too-interesting times are threatening to mutate into global mayhem. Because the usual 500-word commentary cannot begin to cover it all, let me list just a few of the things that we should all find troubling domestically and abroad:

• The subjugation of Iraq by jihadi madmen so deranged, cruel and violent that even al Qaeda considers them outcasts is about to radically reshape the geopolitical world. They now control territory from Aleppo in northwestern Syria to Fallujah in central Iraq and are fixing to extend their dominion - and a re-nascent Caliphate — to Baghdad. We should wish Iranian troops well in killing as many of them as possible. Read More

06.17.14- Gold, Government and Monetary Freedom
Richard Ebeling

For more than two hundred years, practically all of the leading advocates of individual liberty and free markets have assumed that money and banking were different from other types of goods and markets. From Adam Smith to Milton Friedman, the presumption has been that competitive markets and free consumer choice are far better than government control and planning - except in the realm of money and financial intermediation. They have been wrong on this important issue.

This belief in the need for political control and management of the monetary system has been taken to the extreme over the last one hundred years, during which governments have claimed virtually absolute and unlimited authority over national monetary systems through the institution of paper money. Read More

06.16.14- The Next Great American Industry
Josh Grasmick

I’d like to begin this essay by honoring those free-thinkers who have made all our lives better, despite most of us not really knowing them or how they did it.

And we'll end today's episode by learning how one tech entrepreneur just unleashed an orgy of innovation that'd headed for the energy, car and computer industries...

Reminding us what makes societies great, economies boom and that modern-day heroes are alive and well and fighting for "team earth." Read More

06.14.14- The Baltic Dry Index Is Having Its Worst Year Ever
Tyler Durden

(Editor's Note: Every working day, a panel of international shipbrokers submits their view of current freight cost on various routes to the Baltic Exchange. The routes are meant to be representative, i.e. large enough in volume to matter for the overall market.

These rate assessments are then weighted together to create both the overall BDI and the size specific Supramax, Panamax, and Capesize indices. The BDI factors in the four different sizes of oceangoing dry bulk transport vessels.

On 20 May 2008, the Baltic Dry Index reached its record high level since its introduction in 1985, reaching 11,793 points. Half a year later, on 5 December 2008, the index had dropped by 94%, to 663 points, the lowest since 1986; though by 4 February 2009 it had recovered a little lost ground, back to 1,316. These low rates moved dangerously close to the combined operating costs of vessels, fuel, and crews. Read More

06.13.14- Elon Musk Makes A Great Argument For Why Tesla Doesn't Need Patents To Be Successful
Rob Wile

Tesla is opening up its patents — even on its batteries and chargers — for fair use.

In a conference call Thursday announcing the move, CEO Elon Musk said he believes a company's relying on patents is a sign of weakness: "It means they're not innovating," he said. "They're not innovating fast enough. You should be innovating so fast that you're invalidating your prior patents."

Musk blasted the state of patent regimes in America as stifling innovation, and said he hopes other companies ditch their patent protections. "I suggested it to BMW last night," he said. Read More

06.12.14- Is Inequality Caused by Capitalism or Statism?
John Browne

The French economist Thomas Piketty has achieved worldwide fame by promoting a thesis that capitalism is the cause of growing economic inequality. Unfortunately, he is partially right. However, the important distinction missed by Piketty and all of his supporters is that state capitalism, not free market capitalism, has reigned supreme in recent decades in the world's leading democracies. It is this misguided attempt to wed the power of the state to the private ownership of capital that has led to the mushrooming of economic inequality. If the public cannot be made aware of the distinction, we risk abandoning the only system capable of creating real improvements for the vast majority of people. Read More

06.11.14- Intelligence Insider Warns of Catastrophic Collapse: "The Tempo of Events is Faster Than Expected"
Mac Slavo

As more and more information about the state of global affairs becomes available one can’t help but realize that life as we have come to know it is going to change dramatically in the very near future. The manipulation of financial markets, the fabrication of economic figures, and the mobilization of government on all levels are clear signs that something is amiss.

As has been said on many occasions, it’s not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’.

And that’s the trillion dollar question. When will the system finally come on unhinged? Further, what will be the catalyst that finally sends the system into a tailspin? Read More

06.10.14- The Bubble is Back
John Rubino

For all those analysts (including this one) who thought the debt binge of the previous decade marked end of the Age of Leverage, well, not so fast.

It turns out that memories are short and government printing presses are powerful, and this combination has turned the “Great Deleveraging” into a minor speed bump on the road to something even more extreme.

As the following chart illustrates, the growth in total US debt flattened in 2009 and 2010, with government borrowing more-or-less offsetting a decrease in consumer and business loans. But now the trend is once again onward and upward across the board. Read More

06.09.14- Retail Death Rattle Grows Louder
Rick Ackerman

[America's supposed recovery from The Great Recession is a hoax so obvious that only the mainstream news media, too lazy, cowardly and stupid to stray even an inch from the officially approved narrative, could fail to see it. And yet, here we are, so glutted with brick-and-mortar retail space that even if it were to be reduced by half there would still be an economically fatal overhang. Sales are plummeting and malls are dying - a matter of no small consequence, considering that retail business supposedly makes up two-thirds of America's GDP. In the trenchant commentary below, the intrepid Jim Quinn updates and amplifies an article he wrote four months ago on this subject. With his kind permission, I am reprinting it here because it deserves as wide an audience as possible. Read More

06.07.14- The Bear's Lair: The coming bond market meltdown
Martin Hutchinson

Extreme policies produce extreme attitudes among investors. Now, the nearly six years of zero interest rate policies—accompanied by quantitative easing—that we have seen in most Western economies are producing such an extreme attitude in the world's bond markets.

Bond investors' appetites for high yields have grown so far that they are seeking out risks far out of proportion to the additional return they may receive. In turn, borrowers both corporate and state are forgetting the discipline needed to keep debts under control. Needless to say, this will all end in tears, which will thereafter prevent worthwhile borrowers from accessing the funding they need. Read More

06.06.14- New global monetary system coming
Mike Maloney

Read More

06.05.14- Giant Sucking Sound: Russian Money Yanked From US Banks
Wolf Richter

US Banks enjoyed more or less steadily climbing, or rather soaring, deposits by Russian institutions and individuals, having tripled in just two years to $21.6 billion by February, according to the US Treasury.

It may seem a bit counterintuitive that in times of ZIRP anyone would put any money in any US banks, and it may seem even more counterintuitive that Russians who have other opportunities with their money would voluntarily subject themselves to the Fed’s financial repression. Read More

06.04.14- First Quarter GDP Was Negative: Economy Headed For Deep Recession
Dave Kranzler

It may not seem like it if you have a well-paying job which covers most of your Obamacare costs and that enables you make your mortgage payment, pay the leases on your cars and enjoy discretionary spending, but for the 76% of the country that lives paycheck to paycheck the economy never really recovered from the Great Financial Collapse and is getting worse by the day. See this article, for example: CNNMoney.

I predicted late last year that the first quarter GDP might register an economic contraction. You would know it from watching just the stock market, but the first revised estimate of Q1 GDP showed a 1% decline occurred. Read More

06.03.14- Russian Roulette - Derivative Style
Gary Christenson

Russian Roulette: Put one bullet in the cylinder of a revolver, spin the cylinder, point the gun at YOUR head, and pull the trigger. Most revolvers have 6 chambers, so your odds of surviving are 5 in 6, IF you quit after pulling the trigger once.

Press your luck, spin the cylinder, point the gun, and pull the trigger again. It might be okay. Try for a third time?

Note: I have no insider knowledge regarding derivatives, so I am merely speculating. But I think we can assume the following: Read More

06.02.14- The Velocity Of Money In The U.S. Falls To An All-Time Record Low
Michael Snyder

When an economy is healthy, there is lots of buying and selling and money tends to move around quite rapidly. Unfortunately, the U.S. economy is the exact opposite of that right now. In fact, as I will document below, the velocity of M2 has fallen to an all-time record low.

This is a very powerful indicator that we have entered a deflationary era, and the Federal Reserve has been attempting to combat this by absolutely flooding the financial system with more money. This has created some absolutely massive financial bubbles, but it has not fixed what is fundamentally wrong with our economy. Read More

05.31.14- A Global Crrency Reset
JC Collins

Changing the Architecture of the Financial World

Over the last few years an urban myth of sorts has been slowly building which speaks of an imminent reset of all the worlds currencies. It is expected that in one fell swoop the exchange rates of currencies will be adjusted with huge potential windfalls from specific currencies.

These currencies, namely the Iraqi dinar, Vietnamese dong, and a handful of other devalued currencies will reset at extreme exchange rate swings leading to riches for all who hold the currencies. Read More

05.30.14- What Will Happen When the Dollar Collapses?
Dave Hodges

Hitler initiated a false flag event and burned down the Reichstag to gain control over the German government. Could the same happen here in the United States? My initial response to that question is, does it really matter? The pattern of societal collapse and subsequent governmental enslavement of the American people will be largely the same whether the precipitating incident is a false flag attack or a currency collapse. For the purpose of simplicity, let us call the precursor event to all-out martial law, a currency collapse.

The Federal Reserve has been bleeding this country to death for a century. What the dollar bought 100 years ago, can only buy three cents of product today. This means that 97% of the value of our currency has gone into the pockets of the Federal Reserve investors for the past 100 years. Read More

05.29.14- Kleptocracy and Capital Controls
Will Lehr

It never ceases to amaze me the lengths that the psychopathic, controlling oligarchs will go to in order to strengthen their grip on humanity. Control and power are the weapons of these few. While weapons, they will also serve as their demise. You see, we are not boiling frogs, despite all the fluoride and GMOs we are force fed. We, the rational minded, can see through the scam. We are waking up and growing tired of being pushed into the corner. Awareness of the controlling power mechanism is what is driving us for a better tomorrow.

When we first wrote about the IRA LLC on SurvivalBlog, we generated quite a bit of interest from the community. As people discover the ability to take home delivery of IRA gold and silver, it changes the game. Through this process we are encountering skeptics, evangelists, and outright government tyranny. Read More

05.28.14- Some Things to Consider If Spain Leaves the Euro
Michael Pettis

It might seem almost churlish to wonder what would happen if Spain were to leave the euro. The official European position is that the battle of the euro has been pretty much won, and anyone who argues otherwise will be accused of being a euro hater, an Anglo-Saxon or, even worse, a writer for the Financial Times.

But there is more than one "battle" around the euro. While the battle of liquidity seems to have been won, the solvency and the unemployment battles (the latter of which is really a battle of unbalanced demand) have not even been addressed. Every sovereign debt crisis in modern history has been preceded by assurances that it was only a liquidity crisis, but as I see it there were three separate problems that erupted in the 2008-09 euro crisis: Read More

05.27.14- It turns out you can have BOTH inflation AND deflation
Simon Black

In 113 BC, a major scandal erupted across the Roman Republic as three sacred vestal virgins stood accused of incestum- violations of their sexual purity.

The special prosecutor brought out of retirement to try the case was Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla, a famous judge and former consul whose principle form of investigation was asking the question- cui bono? Who benefits?

It remains a great standard to apply today, especially with respect to one of the most spirited debates in modern economics. Read More

05.26.14- To the Class of 2014: Congratulations Chumps!
Bill Bonner

A Speech Prepared Just in Case

There are 4,495 colleges and universities in the US. By our count, they reckoned there were at least 4,495 commencement speakers more suitable than your editor.

Not one asked us to give the graduation address. That was probably a good decision on their part. Nevertheless, we prepared an address we would have delivered had we been asked. Today, we share with you the speech we prepared in advance Read More

05.24.14- The Robots Are Coming, And They Are Replacing Warehouse Workers And Fast Food Employees
Michael Snyder

There are already more than 101 million working age Americans that are not employed and 20 percent of the families in the entire country do not have a single member that has a job. So what in the world are we going to do when robots start taking millions upon millions more of our jobs? Thanks to technology, the balance of power between employers and workers in this country is shifting dramatically in favor of the employers. These days, many employers are wondering why they are dealing with so many human worker "headaches" when they can just use technology to get the same tasks done instead. When you replace a human worker with a robot, you solve a whole bunch of problems. Read More

05.23.14- You Can't Shoot Fish in a Barrel Without Ammunition: Why FOMO Is Every Investor's Worst Enemy
Dan Steinhart

FOMO

I heard this acronym on a podcast last week. Having no clue what it meant, I consulted Google.

Turns out it stands for “Fear of Missing Out.” Kids use it to describe their anxiety about missing a social event that all of their friends are attending.

It struck me that investors experience FOMO too. And it usually leads to bad decisions. Read More

05.22.14- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Massive Underwater Entrance has been Discovered off the California Coast
Ken Pfeifer

(Editor's Note: This story was just too strange for me to pass up. I sourced it from the Silver for the People Blog. At the risk of being awarded a new tin foil hat, I submit it for your perusal. Sometimes, the truth (if it is true)is stranger than fiction. - JSB)

A massive underwater entrance has been discovered off the Malibu, CA coast at Point Dume which appears to be the Holy Grail of UFO/USO researchers that have been looking for it over the last 40 years. The plateau structure is 1.35 miles x 2.45 miles wide, 6.66 miles from land and the entrance between the support pillars is 2745 feet wide and 630 feet tall. It also has what looks like a total nuclear bomb proof ceiling that is 500 feet thick. Read More

05.21.14- How to Debit Card with Bitcoin
Dan Norcini

Why would anyone expect any different defense from the international banking cartel? They have been nesting in the plush uplift bras and groin holsters of congresscritters for as long as I can remember.

It beats competing in a free market, no? Especially so, since it's your money going to the government-dependent lobbyists!

MasterCard is crying for protection from Bitcoin. The Washington, DC, lobbying firm Peck Madigan Jones have been hired to concentrate on swaying Capitol Hill of the threat from Bitcoin to the established credit card giant and a $50 Billion a year fee based financial services market.

Therefore, expect to see Visa next to initiate a similar course of action. Read More

05.20.14- Nervous Time
Doug Noland

I’ll begin with a few of this week’s notable market moves. The euro/yen declined another 82 bps, increasing its two-week decline to 1.94%, to the lowest level since February. Greek 10-year sovereign yields surged 75 bps to the highest level since March. The spread between Portugal and Germany bond yields widened 35 bps. Spreads to German bunds widened 17 bps in Spain and 24 bps in Italy. Italian stocks were hit for 3.5%. Here at home, the Bank stock index (BKX) dropped 1.7% and the Broker/Dealers (XBD) were hit for 2.2%. Let me suggest weakness at the “periphery of the periphery” - out at the “margin” that I look to for subtle market “risk on/risk off” leanings. I’ll take this week’s trading as added confirmation of the incipient risk aversion thesis. Read More

05.19.14- Wall Street Says It's Different This Time
Sy Harding

It's a good thing it's different this time! We know it is because Wall Street says so.

The high-valuation levels indicated by the Shiller CAPE 10 Price/Earnings Ratio mean nothing this time, because things are different than when that indicator's similar readings in previous periods were accompanied by market tops.

The age of this bull market also means nothing because it's different this time, since we have the Greenspan/Bernanke/Yellen Put in place there's a promise that the Fed is neither ahead of nor behind the curve, as it was so often in the past. This time the Fed is on top of what is going on, and knows what it must do to prevent economic slowdowns or market corrections from worsening into recessions and bear markets. Read More

05.17.14- Prepare for the Death of the Petrodollar
Addison Wiggin.

[Part I of this essay, The US Energy Boom Will End the Dollar's World Reserve Status, was published in yesterday's Daily Reckoning]

"So let's say the U.S. is really not importing much Arab oil anymore," says Erik Townsend in a thought experiment. "Well, if that were the case, it's really hard to see why the Arabs would continue to price their oil in dollars, especially at that point; their biggest customers would be China and Brazil and countries that have no reason to deal in dollars."

We're in debt to Mr. Townsend for helping us tease out the petrodollar's endgame here. Erik parlayed the fortune from his first career as a software entrepreneur into a second career as a hedge fund manager who knows the oil futures market inside out. Read More

05.16.14- The Fall Of The Dollar Based Monetary System: Russia Puts The Avalanche In Motion
Taki Tsaklanos

It is truly astonishing how much trust people have in the establishment. Almost everyone believes that central planners are focused on defending the best outcome for society. In the same respect, almost everyone nowadays believes that “things are contained.”

Looking under the hood, it appears that several worrisome trends are going on. Examining those trends, one can only conclude that they are building up momentum. But make no mistake, momentum, in this case, is not in the right direction. Read More

05.15.14- The Most Profitable Way to Play a Summer Correction
Greg Guenthner

There's no denying it- yesterday's price action was ugly.

After a rather bullish start to the week, stocks tumbled. The fall was led by small-caps, which continue to lag the market in a major way. That's not exactly bullish heading into the summer.

The crash-callers will be out in full force this week. That's fine. Let them have their fun. But back in reality, I don't think it's time to run and hide from stocks just yet. In fact, if you take an objective view of the market, you'll see that a summer correction might be just what the doctor ordered...

Here's what you need to know...Read More

05.14.14- BRICS 80 Preparing To Take Down The Dollar
Charleston Voice

Ukrainian Crisis is about Taxes

Dr Jim Willie has been talking about the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa) being joined by other nations to take down the dollar. He says there are now 80 nations in the BRICS alliance who have joined together to end the dollar’s reign as the international reserve currency. China could have taken down the US economy any time it wanted to after it had accumulated more than a trillion dollars in US Treasury bonds. All it had to do was to sell them and buy real assets until the US government collapsed and surrendered. Read More

05.13.14- If Economic Cycle Theorists Are Correct, 2015 To 2020 Will Be Pure Hell For The United States
Michael Snyder

Does the economy move in predictable waves, cycles or patterns? There are many economists that believe that it does, and if their projections are correct, the rest of this decade is going to be pure hell for the United States. Many mainstream economists want nothing to do with economic cycle theorists, but it should be noted that economic cycle theories have enabled some analysts to correctly predict the timing of recessions, stock market peaks and stock market crashes over the past couple of decades. Of course none of the theories discussed below is perfect, but it is very interesting to note that all of them seem to indicate that the U.S. economy is about to enter a major downturn. So will the period of 2015 to 2020 turn out to be pure hell for the United States? We will just have to wait and see. Read More

05.12.14- Over 4000 Ton of Gold Stolen by the West and Shipped East
Jim Willie

The crucial swing states for deciding the US presidential elections through voting system fraud were Ohio and Florida. Whether by machine software with rigged software programming or by bussing in Somalians or by altering the vote count upon final submission or basic bully tactics to prevent entrance into the voting centers, the US national elections were truly tainted.

The commonly followed Exit Polls are proof of vote fraud.

A law was even passed to prevent challenges of the voting machines and software, a certain brand always in the spotlight. Recall that voter system fraud is a key trait of a Third World nation, along with bank fraud, absent rule of law, economic decay, and devotion to war. Read More

05.10.14- Why the U.S. Is Not Experiencing "Raging Inflation"
Jim Mosquera

In a recent article in the NY Times Op-Ed section, economist Paul Krugman points out that in the time it was most needed, economics failed.

Let's first start by defining economics. According to Webster, economics is:

A science concerned with the process or system by which goods and services are produced, sold, and bought

In my book, E$caping Oz, I derived four economic laws to help readers understand some basic truths about some of the things occurring in the economy. My fourth economic law says: Read More

05.09.14- Safe Havens Since The Great Financial Crisis
Jesse's Café Américain

"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them."

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929p

“As Treasury secretary under Clinton, Rubin was the driving force behind two monstrous deregulatory actions that would be primary causes of last year’s financial crisis: the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.. and the deregulation of the derivatives market.”

Matt Taibbi Read More

05.08.14- Amazon's Wholesale Slaughter: Jeff Bezos' $8 Trillion B2B Bet
Clare O'Connor

Forget the delivery drones and TV deals. Jeff Bezos' stealthy foray into the unsexy world of B2B distribution is likely his most disruptive move yet — and it has an $8 trillion swath of the economy running scared.

In recent months global Internet retail behemoth Amazon.com has green-lit six new original TV shows, announced an online streaming deal with HBO and tested same-day grocery delivery on the West Coast.

Up next? Possibly a smartphone. And, if billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos has his way, packages dropped off by unmanned drone. Read More

05.07.14- Safe Havens Since The Great Financial Crisis
Taki Tsaklanos

How have the traditional safe havens performed since the great financial crash of 2008 / 2009? What can we expect from the traditional safe havens going forward? Those are the two questions we try to answer in this article.

The safe havens we look at in this article are the US Dollar, US Treasuries, gold and the Yen. Obviously, with a never seen amount of debt backing the US dollar and the Yen, some would (rightfully) question their safe haven status. However, the reality is that the market is considering them safe havens, because of a lack of globally accepted alternatives. Read More

05.06.14- Albert Einstein's timeless advice for investors
Tim Price

“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would use the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I knew the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.” - Albert Einstein

Well into the summer of 1914, when the then 35-year old Einstein was a professor in Berlin, Europe’s stock markets were buoyant.

They initially shrugged off the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo.

But as investors began to grasp the implications of a European war with Russia siding with Serbia, both bonds and stocks started to sag as proactive investors began to raise liquidity. Read More

05.05.14- 3 Underappreciated Indicators to Guide You through a Debt-Saturated Economy
F.F. Wiley

If you're my generation or older, you may remember taking the original Pepsi Challenge - the Coke versus Pepsi taste testing booths that you would find at sporting events, fairs and similar venues. I took the Challenge and stuck with Coke. The majority of people went the other way, as confirmed by even Coke's private tests. Nowadays, though, I'm guessing the public version of a Challenge booth would bring heckling from the nutrition-conscious folks at the Just Juice stand. The bigger challenges for Coke and Pepsi are health risks linked to their flagship products. Researchers are zeroing in on a handful of ingredients that may be harmful, such as sodium benzoate and phosphoric acid. Read More

05.03.14- Weekend Rant: Washington Intends Russia's Demise
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Washington has no intention of allowing the crisis in Ukraine to be resolved. Having failed to seize the country and evict Russia from its Black Sea naval base, Washington sees new opportunities in the crisis.

One is to restart the Cold War by forcing the Russian government to occupy the Russian-speaking areas of present day Ukraine where protesters are objecting to the stooge anti-Russian government installed in Kiev by the American coup. These areas of Ukraine are former constituent parts of Russia herself. They were attached to Ukraine by Soviet leaders in the 20th century when both Ukraine and Russia were part of the same country, the USSR. Read More

05.02.14- New Dow Record Expands Wall Street Party
The Daily Bell

The Dow Jones industrial average rose to an all-time high on Wednesday after investors assessed more corporate earnings, the latest move from the Fed and an unexpectedly weak reading on economic growth in the first quarter. Sealed Air, a food packing company, and C.H. Robinson, a freight company, were among stocks that rose after reporting earnings. On Wednesday: The Dow Jones industrial average rose 45.47 points, or 0.3 percent, to 16,580.84. For the week: The Dow Jones industrial average is up 219.38 points, or 1.3 percent. For the year: The Dow is up 4.18 points, or 0.03 percent. - MyWayNews Read More

05.01.14- The Latest Bubble to Pop: Mortgage Rates and Their Butterfly Effect on the Economy
Frank O. Trotter

We’ve fallen and can’t quite get up!

Sometimes the unending stream of economic numbers starts to look like the dripping green images in The Matrix.

We attempt to be Cypher, “conceptualizing” the image through the digits: “All I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead.” But our collective attempts at econometric modeling on the fly often result in a muddled, rather than precise, picture.

Still, there are moments when the world clarifies before our eyes. August 1971. October 1979. September 2001. September 2008. Read More

04.30.14- Here's The Percentage Odds That Your Job Gets Replaced By A Robot
Rob Wile

Last year Oxford associate professor Michael Osborne, along with coauthor Carl Frey, published a paper called "The Future Of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs To Computerisation?"

Their central premise: "The secular price decline in the real cost of computing has created vast economic incentives for employers to substitute labour for computer capital."

To see how bad it can get, they took 702 occupations and calculated the odds of them getting replaced by robots. First, they divided the occupations into positive and negative responses to the following question: “Can the tasks of this job be sufficiently specified, conditional on the availability of big data, to be performed by state of the art computer-controlled equipment?” They then further sorted the fields according to a set of skills, like dexterity and originality, that they rated as having a greater or lower tendency toward computerization. Read More

04.29.14- Well this is rather embarrassing...
Simon Black

And another one bites the dust. Now it’s Bank of America, one of the largest banks in the Land of the Free, that is inadequately capitalized.

Last month, Bank of America made a lot of noise about how they were going to buy back up to $5 billion worth of common shares.

As CEO Brian Moynihan stated, “We have simplified our company and we have more than adequate capital to support our strategic plans. We are well positioned to return excess capital to our shareholders.”

Needless to say, investors cheered the announcement, and BofA’s stock price rose nicely as a result. Read More

04.28.14- Why Housing Has Stalled - And Why Everything Else Will Follow
John Rubino

It’s not easy being a mainstream economist. You spend your life building models that become your professional identity. And when those models fail to describe and predict reality, you’re left wondering about the meaning of it all.

The latest case in point is US housing. Keynesian economic models say that if you lower mortgage rates you get more houses bought, sold and built. A nice, simple piece of cause and effect. But today’s mortgage rates are at levels that would have incited a buying frenzy a generation ago, employment is rising — and home sales, home building and mortgage originations are all flat-lining. Read More

04.26.14- Guide: Pathogenesis & Change Factors
Jim Willie

Systemic failure and its pathogenesis have been over 50 years in progress, with countless events. The origin is found with the cabal murder Kennedy, but the climax finale will be found with the Saudi Petro-Dollar rejection and the arrival of Eastern gold-backed currencies. The pathogenesis is fierce, vicious, multi-faceted, coordinated, enforced, unstoppable, destructive, vile, with many unfortunate aspects and facades. The extreme vulnerability of the financial crime syndicate can finally be seen, the symptoms obvious.

If somebody had asked Greenspan in 1995 whether the day would ever come when the US Federal Reserve would install Zero Interest Policy and keep the 0% rate in place indefinitely, then install Quantitative Easing and keep the bond monetization in place permanently, approximately 0% of the experts would say the day would arrive. Read More

04.25.14- US now spending 26% of available tax revenue just to pay interest
Simon Black

By the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire had become a has-been power whose glory days as the world’s superpower were well behind them.

They had been supplanted the French, the British, and the Russian empires in all matters of economic, military, and diplomatic strength. Much of this was due to the Ottoman Empire’s massive debt burden.

In 1868, the Ottoman government spent 17% of its entire tax revenue just to pay interest on the debt. Read More

04.24.14- America's Consumers Are Dropping, Not Shopping: McDonald's Posts Worst Q1 Same Store Comps In A Decade
David Stockman

McDonald's latest results confirm that something is very much amiss on the consumer side. Total global revenue grew only 1% Y/Y, including new store launches and acquisitions.

However, as has been the pattern since 2012, US comparable store sales lagged markedly. The rate of contraction in Q1 was actually the worst in more than a decade. Read More

04.23.14- A "Secret Correction" is Gripping Wall Street - Here's What You Need to Know
Birch Gold Group

Overall, the markets were flat last week, and took the day off on Good Friday. The operative word here is “overall”. Let’s look just a layer deeper...

A peek beneath Wall Street’s surface, according to analysis at Zero Hedge, reveals that a major, widespread correction is already underway but is being hidden by the few companies that are still beating the margins. With just this cursory glance beyond where most care to look, the report reveals that 40% of companies in the S&P 500 are already in correction mode - that is, they are down more than 10%. Only 72 companies are up, with the rest flat. This means less than 15% of companies are carrying the index, balancing out the red to make it look flatter overall. Read More

04.22.14- US financial showdown with Russia is more dangerous than it looks,
for both sides
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The US Treasury faces a more formidable prey with Russia, the world's biggest producer of energy with a $2 trillion economy, superb scientists and a first-strike nuclear arsenal

The United States has constructed a financial neutron bomb. For the past 12 years an elite cell at the US Treasury has been sharpening the tools of economic warfare, designing ways to bring almost any country to its knees without firing a shot. Read More

04.21.14- You've heard the adage, "A penny saved is a penny earned"? What if I told you a penny doubled is several million earned??
Bobby Casey

If you want to know the secret to creating long-term wealth in a big way, this article is for you.

Yesterday, I was flying from New York City to Panama City for our spring conference - Global Escape Hatch. Sitting on the plane next to me was a very intelligent young man named Mike.

Normally, when I get on the plane, I am asleep before the plane is pushed back from the gate and wake up when the wheels touchdown at the destination. But this time, Mike and I chatted for most of the flight. Read More

04.19.14- “EU Officially Adopts the Bail-In” with Graham Mehl
My Two Cents - Andy Sutton

It has now been more than a year since that fateful weekend in the Mediterranean when everything changed. However, like most of the big changes we’ve seen lately, there is a subtlety afoot that somehow results in few noticing. This should surprise no one really. How the world can change in such dramatic ways without any type of mass awakening is a topic more for the psychologists who help pull the strings and the evil they represent than for anyone involved in the analysis of economics and events, but I say the above so that you know you’re not kidding anyone.

Even a year later, the subtlety continues and ignorance abounds. Most still don’t know the ramifications of the passage of the Dodd-Frank bill back in 2010. They take it at its word that it is a consumer protection act, but is nothing of the sort. Read More

04.18.14- And Now for Something Entirely Different: 66 years later!

Read More

04.17.14- Economic outlook darkens
Alasdair Macleod

Many decades of Keynesian-inspired economic and monetary corruption have left advanced economies with a legacy of debt and low savings. In a nutshell, that is the problem which is driving us into another financial crisis. That moment could be drawing upon us, signalled by the recent collapse in bond yields.

This nearly happened in 2008. It was bought off by an open-ended central bank guarantee of infinite quantities of cash and credit, initially by the Fed, rapidly followed by all the other major central banks. Six years later, monetary medicine is still being applied globally in unprecedented quantities. And in some countries bank credit has finally begun expanding more rapidly than before. Read More

04.16.14- This Chart Shows Us How Bad The Economy Really Is: "Flashing Red Warning"
Mac Slavo

Recent weeks have led to a fairly significant drop in stock valuations, with many expert analysts struggling to figure out exactly why it’s happening. You’ll hear them cite the weather, or market overreaction, or any number of reasons for why stocks have seen their share prices reduced and why they’ll be rebounding in the near-term.

What they won’t show you on mainstream financial channels is what’s really happening behind the scenes.

Forget about all the minute-by-minute noise for a moment and take a look at the following chart. It gives a very simple overview of earnings growth trends for stocks listed on the S&P 500 on a quarterly basis. Read More

04.15.14- US Stocks Are 50% Overvalued ... It's Time to Get Out
Bill Bonner

The Dow fell 143 points on Friday. Gold was just about flat. Why the fall in stock prices? Many reasons were proposed, but no one knows for sure. There may not be a reason at all. Stocks don’t need a reason to fall. From time to time, they just do. Not to put too fine a point on it, but asset prices go up ... and then they go down. Always have. Always will.

Generally, it’s a credit expansion that drives them up. A credit contraction takes them back down. Credit is still expanding, says economist and author of The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy Richard Duncan. But come the next quarter, watch out. Duncan reckons “excess liquidity” (as he calculates it, the surplus left over between QE stimulus and what the federal government absorbs through borrowing) is going to contract - sharply. Read More

04.14.14- It's Not the Rich - It's The Total Cost of Gov't That is Killing the Economy
Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Do you believe in a fairer system where there is a minimum income cap and a maximum asset cap? We live in an age where productivity has risen through the roof due to technological advancement. Don’t you think humanity is at the stage where it can afford to offer basic income to people so better checks and balances can be set in place to thwart the exploitation of people (see the third world).

A maximum asset cap would also act as a positive filter in business ownership, don’t you think? The businessmen interested mainly in greed won’t fill those positions, but those who are driven more by other means, hopefully positive ambitions, will fill those roles (CEO,COO, managers, etc.) Read More

04.12.14- Trillions in Subsidies, but Banks Still 'Struggle'
Rick Ackerman

Think you could make it in business with a trillion dollar subsidy? That's a very conservative estimate of what the banks can borrow each year at almost no cost, courtesy of Fed easing. Returning the favor, the banks plow most of the funny money into Treasury paper, stocks and bonds, then lend the crumbs that remain to the riff-raff at usurious rates that can exceed 20% — a tad more than Frankie the Camel charges his customers. What a great way to make money! And yet, how do we account for this recent headline in The Wall Street Journal: Bank Profits Are Looking Stressed - Slumps in Trading Revenue, Mortgage Business Are Expected to Weaken Quarterly Earnings Reports. Read More

04.11.14- Have They Decided To
"Get Out Of The Way?"
Bill Holter

Yesterday the Wall Street journal wrote that Goldman Sachs may be in the process of shutting down their "Sigma X" dark pool clearing. Little more than 2 weeks ago they first announced that they would no longer "play" in the HFT games and followed this by announcing they would give up their "Designated Market Maker" status on the NYSE. Why, what's up with this?

Speculation on my part but it seems to me like “they know.” They know that something VERY BIG is afoot. This “something” could be one of many possibilities but a firm like Goldman Sachs who has gorged at the table of American financial plenty forever would never ever leave if there was still food at the table. Please remember that they are second only to JPM with their “trading” prowess over the last few years. Read More

04.10.14- IMF warns U.S. over potentially bumpy exit from extraordinary monetary policy
Lu Hui

A badly-timed and bumpy exit from extraordinary monetary policy in the United States could undermine global financial stability and spill over to emerging markets, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned Wednesday.

"Undue delay could lead to a further build-up of financial stability risks, and too rapid an exit could jeopardize the economic recovery and exacerbate still-elevated debt burdens in some segments of the economy," the Washington-based IMF said in its latest edition of Global Financial Stability Report, noting that "the timing and management of exit is critical." Read More

04.09.14- Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: Gold and The Dollar Are In A Fight to the Death!
Greg Hunter

View Video

04.08.14- What In The World Is Happening To The Nasdaq?
Michael Snyder

All of a sudden, the Nasdaq is absolutely tanking. On Monday, it fell more than 1 percent after dropping 3.6 percent on Thursday and Friday combined. At this point, the Nasdaq is off to the worst start to a year that we have seen since 2008, and we all remember what happened back then. So why is this happening? In recent years, the Nasdaq has been ground zero for "dotcom bubble 2.0". The hottest stocks in the entire world are on the Nasdaq - we are talking about stocks like Yahoo, Netflix, Apple, Tesla, Google and Facebook. Those stocks have gone to absolutely incredible heights, but now they are starting to fall. Some are blaming insider selling, and without a doubt the "smart money" is starting to flee the stock market. Read More

04.07.14- COT Breakdown
Dan Norcini

Another Friday - another release of the Commitment of Traders report from the CFTC - let the entrail reading begin in earnest!

A caveat before we begin - the report only covers trading through the end of the combined pit and screen session on Tuesday of the current week. It therefore does not take into account the price action from Wednesday through the close of trading on Friday.

On Tuesday of last week ( 3-25-2014) gold closed at $1311.40. On Tuesday of this week, it closed at $1280 for a loss ( Tuesday - Tuesday ) of $31.60. Read More

04.05.14- Emerging Dynamics of Petro-Yuan Standard
Jim Willie

The shocks will be many as the USDollar struggles and falls off the global financial stage in full view. The desperate maneuvers like in Syria and Ukraine should be seen as last ditch efforts to save a dying system. For two decades the USDollar has been defended by military means. Worse, for 50 years the USGovt has been a hidden nazi enclave of wicked fascists who have hidden behind their overt disdain for communism, with Kissinger the flag bearer, with Brzezinski the ideologue, with Papa Bush the executor, with narcotics and genetics and gold thefts their principal agenda. Read More

04.04.14- Billionaire Warns: Yellen Collapse 'Will Be Unlike Any Other'
Money News

Another horrific stock market crash is coming, and the next bust will be “unlike any other” we have seen.

That’s the message from Jeremy Grantham, co-founder and chief investment strategist of GMO, a Boston-based firm with $117 billion in assets under management.

Grantham pulls no punches when he discusses who he holds responsible for the coming financial carnage. In a recent interview with The New York Times, he calls Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen “ignorant” and said the Federal Reserve all but killed the economic recovery. Read More

04.03.14- Dollar Death Mask
JC Collins

"This week, the US Congress again failed to approve a modest appropriation that would have shored up financing for the International Monetary Fund and given China and other emerging economies greater responsibility there. Support for the IMF may seem arcane, but it has important implications for America's global role - and the signs are not good."

From BusinessDay Website, Tuesday, April 1, 2014.

The shifting reality of the global economy is becoming more and more apparent. With each passing day we are hearing and reading additional news and events which are leading the world towards the multilateral financial system.

Many of the discussion points and topics on this site have been spot on with many of the readers discovering supporting evidence well in advance of the mainstream media and other sites. The hard work of everyone is making the overall picture clearer and clearer with each comment and link to outside sources. Read More

04.02.14- Underground Commerce is the Real Economy
James Hall

As the deadline for filing yearly income taxes is rapidly approaching, businesses especially hard pressed to make a profit in a depressed economy struggle with their tax compliance. Reporting legitimate deductions and costs is the easy part. When you are losing money, disclosing a diminished income stream based upon lower margins, is not a difficult decision. Nevertheless, small enterprises burdened with government regulation costs and tax obligations, often are unable to conduct business and retain a net return. Self-proprietorships frequently are so scared that many look to the cash underground economy to hide income earnings. Read More

04.01.14- Ukraine is the Waterloo event for the USDollar
Jim Willie

The desperation of the Anglo-American leadership, guided by the steady corrupt banker hands, has never been more acutely high, nor obvious in full view. The entire Ukraine situation is a travesty. It includes Langley agents killing police and street demonstrators from rooftops, the confirmation coming from the Estonian Embassy (translation of scripts).

• It includes thefts of official Ukrainian Govt funds, again sent to the Swiss hill sanctuary.
  
  
• It includes sanctions delivered by a US Paper Tiger, sure to cause horrific backlash.
  
  
• It involves the last gasp attempt to obstruct the Gazprom energy pipelines, which will inevitably corner the European market in monopoly. Read More

03.31.14- Russia's secret weapon: crashing US economy by collapsing petrodollar
Igor Siletsky

Russia can collapse the United States, prominent US trader Jim Sinclair believes. The economist, famous for his forecasts, explains that the strength of the dollar is based on the US agreement with Saudi Arabia that all contracts for fuel deliveries be in the US dollars. Now, Moscow can collapse the petrodollar in one moment. The slapping of sanctions on Russia is tantamount to a shot in the foot. The expert explains that the only true value in the world today is the petrodollar. But Russia can collapse it by demanding Euros or Yuan for its oil.

What’s more, the US may lose its influence on Europe for good, if Russia starts selling its fuels for anything but the dollars. Angela Merkel would be only happy, for Germany, as well as other European countries would then have no need for currency markets. The rate of the Euro would then grow, while the cost of oil and gas would go down. But the United States should be ready for an abrupt increase in gasoline prices, for hyperinflation amid a poor business climate and a crash of the Dow Jones industrial average, Sinclair predicts. Read More

03.29.14- Gold And Silver - They Are Money!
Michael Noonan

Almost all who read our commentaries know that we place the greatest importance on reading the developing market activity, as best seen in charts, in order to have the closest pulse on what is going on in the market[s]. The reason is because the activity found in price and volume behavior reflects the decisions of all market participants.

Smart money leads, the rest follow. What constitutes smart money? Those with the most knowledge and deepest pockets that control what goes on. In the US stock market, it used to be institutional money that drove stocks. For the past few years, it has been the Federal Reserve, through Permanent Open Market Operations, [POMO], and the all of the QEs that have unsustainably propped up stocks. Read More

03.28.14- Directed History of the City's Alliance with China
The Daily Bell

Bank of England agrees Chinese London currency clearing hub ... The deal is part of a plan to make London a key offshore Chinese currency clearing centre ... The Bank of England has agreed a deal with the People's Bank of China to make London a hub for Chinese currency dealing. The memorandum of understanding, to be signed on Monday, sets out settlement and clearing arrangements for the renminbi, or yuan, in London. - BBC

This is great for London's City ... and so surprising, too. Read More

03.27.14- Welcome to the Currency War, Part 14:
Russia, China, India Bypass the Petrodollar
John Rubino

As it tries to punish Russia for the latter’s dismemberment of Ukraine, the West is discovering that the balance of power isn’t what it used to be. Russia is a huge supplier of oil and gas — traded in US dollars — which gives it both leverage over near-term energy flows and, far more ominous for the US, the ability to threaten the dollar’s rein as the world’s reserve currency. And it’s taking some big, active steps towards that goal. As Zero Hedge noted on Tuesday: Read More

03.26.14- Will Inflation Make A Comeback In 2014
When The Consensus Worries About Deflation
Ronald Stoeferle

Two months ago, Incrementum Liechtenstein released its chartbook entitled "Monetary Tectonics" which illustrated the raging war between inflation and deflation in 40 charts. Meantime, the authors of the chartbook have launched the "Austrian Economics Golden Opportunities Fund," a fund that takes investment positions based on the level of inflation. The key tool in their investment decisions is the "Incrementum Inflation Signal" (also referred to as the "monetary seismograph"), a continuing measurement of how much monetary inflation reaches the real economy based on a series of market-based indicators. Read More

03.25.14- How Edmund de Rothschild Managed to Let 179 Governments Pay Him for Grasping Up to 30% of the Earth
Anders Bruun Laursen

Woe to him that ... establisheth a city by iniquity!... that the people shall labor in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity (Habakkuk 2:12-13)

After Edmund de Rothschild’s statement, without basis, at the 4th World Wilderness Congress in 1987, that CO2 is the cause of a non-existent global warming - and that combating it needs money (our money), he founded the World Conservation Bank for this reason. In 1991 its name was changed to The Global Environment Facility (GEF). The purpose of this facility is to lend money to the poorest countries, printed by the IMF out of thin air, and with the guarantee of our governments. The facility takes wilderness areas with mineral riches as security. The GEF money is then to flow back to our governments as reimbursement for paid loans. I.e. We give away our tax money. For what? When a country cannot repay loans to the GEF it must give up a piece of its territory to the Rothschild banks. Read More

03.24.14- Barack Obama does -not- want you to own this stock...
Simon Black

When it comes to investing money, there’s no such thing as a sure thing.

Even the ‘safest’ investment in the world (US Treasuries) is anything but safe.

I mean... on what planet does it make sense to loan your hard-earned cash to the biggest debtor that has ever existed in the history of the world?

Once you deduct taxes, the net return you’ll receive won’t keep pace with the official rate of inflation. It’s an insane investment... hardly ‘risk free’. Read More

03.22.14- Jim Rickards: Gold Revaluation & The Death of Money
Mike Maloney



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03.21.14- Tumbling Chinese yuan sets off 'carry trade' rout, triggers derivatives contracts
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The yuan has lost 3pc since January, a clear break with China's long-standing policy of slow appreciation

China’s yuan has suffered its biggest one-week fall in 20 years, nearing key trigger levels that threaten a wave of forced selling and mounting stress for those with dollar debts. Read More

03.20.14- The US Is Recovering but Britain Isn't? Don't Believe It
The Daily Bell

Budget 2014: Britain's false recovery is a credit mirage, unlike real recovery in the US ... UK has a current account deficit running at more than 5pc of GDP, the worst in a quarter of a century and by far the worst of the G7 ... David Bloom, from HSBC, says sterling is all of a sudden the "least ugly" currency in a world where even the Japanese and the Swiss are holding down their exchange rates. "There is nowhere else to go," he said. - UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: Britain is recovering, that's obvious. Good, too.

Free-Market Analysis: This story is interesting for two reasons: It speaks the truth about Britain's non-existent recovery and it lies about the US one. Read More

03.19.14- Rick Rule: Coming Natural Resource Market Will 'Elate or Terrify You'
Sprott Global

Rick Rule, Chairman of Sprott Global Resource Investments Ltd., has been involved in natural resource for four decades. Rick says he expects some familiar patterns to emerge in the coming year.

Sprott Global: Rick, you've predicted an impending bear-market bottom in precious metals and natural resources. Are we there now?

Rick Rule: I believe we are. We'll see a rising market with higher highs and higher lows. We'll also see high volatility -- which one day will elate you and another day will terrify you. That's the way this works. Read More

03.18.14- Kremlin: If The US Tries To Hurt Russia's Economy, Russia Will Target The Dollar
Wolf Richter

Another warning shot was fired before an all-out assault on the dollar system begins. This time, an official shot: Alexey Ulyukaev, Russia’s Minister of Economic Development and former Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank, fired it. It was a major escalation, Valentin Mândra˘s¸escu, editor of The Voice of Russia’s Reality Check, told me from Moscow.

Last time, it was Sergei Glazyev, an advisor to Vladimir Putin who’d fired the shot. But he wasn’t a government official. “Anonymous sources” at the Kremlin claimed he wasn’t speaking for the government. As Mândra˘s¸escu reported in his excellent article, From Now On, No Compromises Are Possible For Russia: Read More

03.17.14- Gold's Protection Against Counterparty Risk Is Coming Alive
Taki Tsaklanos

History repeats itself. Although it does not repeat exactly in the same way, it rhymes. Consider this, exactly one year ago, on March 16th, Cyprus reached the newswires globally with the announcement of its bank bail-ins.

One year later, the geopolitical escalation between Ukraine and Russia is front stage. Just moments ago, the long awaited referendum in Crimea resulted in an overwhelming 95% of votes to join Russia, according to Reuters. The Western world, even before the closing of the referendum, has officially stated that it denies the results. Read More

03.15.14- Baltic Dry Plunges 8%, Near Most In 6 Years As Iron Ore At Chinese Ports Hits All Time High
Tyler Durden

It would appear record inventories of Iron ore and plunging prices due to China's shadow-banking unwind have started to weigh on the all-too-important-when-it-is-going-up-but-let's-blame-supply-when-dropping Baltic Dry Index.

With the worst start to a year in over a decade, the recent recovery in prices provided faint hope that the worst of the global trade collapse was over... however, today's 8% plunge - on par with the biggest drops in the last 6 years - suggests things are far from self-sustaining.

Still think we are insulated from the arcane China shadow-banking system, which suddenly everyone is an expert of suddenly? Think again. Read More

03.14.14- And whether pigs have wings Part One: Something Wicked This Way Comes
Johnny Silver Bear

(Editor's Note: One of the perks of editing "the Bear" is getting to repost my own rants. In an ongoing attempt to "turn the lights back on" I chose to start out the year (2012) with a three part piece, entitled; "And Whether Pigs Have Wings" The point of this series is an attempt to wake up those of you that are not exactly sure what I mean when I bring up the "Dumbing Down" of America. This will be Part one, through which I will try to enlighten you to a far larger, and much more insidious conspiracy that is intended to take absolute control over you, everything you have, and every thing you do. We have to take this journey one step at a time so as to keep it from becoming "overwhelming". In this part I will try and exhibit the fact that some of the things you are absolutely sure of are absolutely wrong.- JSB) Read More

03.13.14- U.S. Definitely Wants War in Ukraine-Paul Craig Roberts
Paul Craig Roberts

Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Dr. Paul Craig Roberts thinks the Neoconservatives in the U.S. government want war in Ukraine. Dr. Roberts says, "They definitely want war, of course. They've wanted it ever since Reagan was President. The Neocons were always saying we have to attack the Soviet Union, and Reagan said we are not going to win anything, we are going to end it. The Neocons got to where they really disliked Reagan because he wouldn't take advantage of Soviet weakness to attack them. So, they are war minded. They produce documents that say nuclear war is winnable. So, they are basically crazy people; and, yet, they have determined the course of foreign policy since the Clinton Administration. Under George Bush, they controlled the show; and today, under Obama, the Neoconservatives control it." Read More

03.12.14- Currency Devaluation Result Of Geopolitical Tension, Government Corruption, Money Printing
David Levenstein

Even though continued tensions in Ukraine gave a boost to gold prices in yet another turbulent week for the yellow metal, the upward momentum in prices was thwarted by a better-than-expected non-farm payroll report released in the US on Friday.

The price of gold soared to a fresh four-month high near $1,355 last week as tensions flared in Ukraine on Monday. However, gold prices were unable to hold above the $1350 an ounce level, and subsequently dipped but prices looked set to break above this level again early Thursday. Read More

03.10.14- Elevating markets: A signal of reviving bank lending?
Alasdair Macleod

Earlier this week Bill Gross who runs Pimco's bond fund made a conditional case for investing in high-yielding bonds, even though on first cut the yield benefit appears insufficient to justify the extra risk. Put bluntly, he suggests that investing in bonds issued by insolvent Eurozone governments or second-rank corporate borrowers could be profitable.

Mr Gross is following some other smart and usually sceptical fund managers in appearing to throw in the towel against persistently low bond yields and equity markets that defy gravity. He is unlikely to take this stance without good reasons. Read More

03.08.14- Debt Rattle Mar 7 2014: The US Economy's Volatile Inertia
Raúl Ilargi Meijer

175,000 new jobs (we await revisions) and a rising unemployment rate (6.7%). Which was not due to people re-entering the labor force, as has been suggested, since the labor force participation rate remained stuck at 63%. This hasn’t been going anywhere for years now, it’s all stuck around 150,000 or so - the running to stand still level - , sometimes up, sometimes down, with lots of revisions. It should worry the pants off of America, but stock markets set new records on a regular basis instead.

Since the real economy is hardly budging at all, the “new profits” can only come from QE-esque money streams, and that, after 5 years now, is getting extremely worrisome. Read More

03.07.14- 8 Real World Events That Prove Your Money Isn't Safe In Europe (Or Anywhere)
Jeff Berwick

As I write this, the European Union has just announced a possible $15b aid package to the Ukraine (including 8 billion euros in fresh credit). Everybody has read the headlines about Europe: record unemployment, no end in sight, and so on. So you might be wondering just where the European Union, and its' constituent nations, scrapped together the money to propose aid for the Ukraine. Well, wonder no more, because the following eight events might give you an idea of where governments go to get a little extra cash. Read More

03.06.14- Putin Targets America's Achilles Heel: "He's Going to Destroy the Stock Markets"
Mac Slavo

In 2012 an elite insider claimed that on or around March 4, 2014 the doomsday clock would ring, the effect of which would be a complete collapse of the U.S. economy. How former Vice Presidential adviser Grady Means came to this conclusion with a specific target date may forever remain clouded in secrecy. But given the state of current affairs around the world today, one can’t help but consider that maybe Grady Means was on to something. With the fight over political and resource control in the Ukraine heating up, is it possible the Means was referring to this very set of circumstances?

We know the U.S. economy is literally on the brink of a collapse. All we need now is a triggering mechanism. Read More

03.05.14- Economist John Williams: Financial Collapse if Russia Sells U.S. Dollar Holdings
Greg Hunter