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08.21.17- The Dow Falls 274 Points As ‘Eclipse Fever’ Hits The Financial Markets
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08.19.17- Marc Faber: In the Age of Cyber-Terrorism, Every Investor Must Own Gold
Dr. Marc Faber, a legendary investor and the editor/publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, is well known for his contrarian investing style. In a recent Metal Masters interview with the Hard Assets Alliance, he noted that the biggest geopolitical risk for Americans today is not a conventional war but rather cyber-attacks that could take down the US power grid. Read More |
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08.18.17- The fiscal benefits of free trade
There is, if treasury economists could only understand it, a solution in free trade. Read More |
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08.17.17- EXPOSED: The Elite’s Plan to Freeze the Financial System
Any one of them could potentially lead to another financial crisis. And the next crisis could see draconian measures by governments that most people are not prepared for today. You’ll see what I mean in a moment. But first, what are the catalysts that possibly trigger the next financial crisis? Read More |
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08.16.17- The U.S. Stock Market Mega-Bubble
That’s a nice message, isn’t it? U.S. markets are higher because of “strong Q2 results”. Move along people, no bubbles to see here. The Dow had eight straight record closes because of (supposedly) “strong Q2 results”. There is just one problem. It’s 100% fiction. There are no strong results. However, before looking more closely at this blatant falsehood it is necessary to provide some context, especially for readers who do not follow U.S. markets closely. Read More |
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08.15.17- Dick's CEO: "The Retail Industry Is In Panic Mode"
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08.14.17- Jim Rogers says the ‘biggest crisis in his life’ is less than a year away
Jim Rogers, the renowned co-founder of Quantum Fund believes that there’s an impending crisis, and it’s much sooner than you think. “We could see the worst crash in my entire life pretty soon,” said Jim Rogers in a recent conversation with Kitco news. Jim Rogers founded the Quantum Fund alongside George Soros, who is regarded as one of the most successful investors of all time. From 1970 to 1980, their portfolio returned 4200% while the S&P had posted paltry returns of about 47%. Read More |
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08.12.17- Cryptocurrency - its status as money
For this reason, the outcome of the cryptocurrency craze is of great theoretical interest. It is also of interest to students of the psychology of speculation. Read More |
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08.11.17- Are Internal Market Cracks Turning Into Chasms?
One of the hallmarks of our intermediate-term Risk Model that helps orient our investment posture toward equities is breadth, a.k.a., internals. Internals measure the level of participation in the stock market, e.g., how many stocks are advancing versus declining, the number of new highs versus new lows, etc. The more participation there is, the broader the foundation for a market rally – and the more comfortable we feel being aggressively invested. Read More |
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08.10.17- The only question is
Wall Street is in a champagne mood. Last week, thanks to a rally in Apple (AAPL 159.3 -0.7%), the Dow Jones (Dow Jones 21942.24 -0.48%) surpassed 22,000 for the first time ever. Nevertheless, Fred Hickey doesn’t share the bubbly vein. The renowned contrarian cautions investors of an unpleasant surprise because central banks like the Federal Reserve are pulling back from their super easy monetary policy. “We could experience a severe market decline or even a crash”, says the outspoken editor of the widely read investment newsletter “The High-Tech Strategist”. Read More |
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08.08.17- The Dow Closes At A Record High For The 9th Straight Time But Experts Warn That A Stock Market Crash Could Be Imminent
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08.07.17- Trump’s Currency War Battle with China Goes Live
As friction between the world’s greatest economic powers deteriorates toward a high stakes currency war, the global economy could see spillover in financial, geopolitical and trade arenas. Read More |
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08.05.17- Anticipating "VIX Shock", Interactive Brokers Raises Vol Product Margins
Last week, in a note looking at what may happen "if the VIX goes bananas", Morgan Stanley's Chris Metli cautioned that it’s easy to become numb to the low volatility environment and the risks it presents. While trying to pick a trough in vol has been a fool’s errand, Metli said that focusing on the risks resulting from vol being so low is not, and warned that low vol has produced a regime where the risks are asymmetric and negatively convex, so being prepared for an unwind is critical. "This is not a call that vol is about to spike, but you need a plan if it does", he echoed many other similar warning issued in recent months. Read More |
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08.04.17- A Dim Outlook for Trumponomics
NEW YORK – Now that US President Donald Trump has been in office for six months, we can more confidently assess the prospects for the US economy and economic policymaking under his administration. And, like Trump’s presidency more generally, paradoxes abound. The main puzzle is the disconnect between the performance of financial markets and the real. While stock markets continue to reach new highs, the US economy grew at an average rate of just 2% in the first half of 2017 – slower growth than under President Barack Obama – and is not expected to perform much better for the rest of the year. Read More |
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08.03.17- Machine Mania in the Marketplace: How Computers Came to Own the World
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08.02.17- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Why the MSM Is Quiet
A member of Congress, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has had her #1 IT employee arrested attempting to flee the country. This is huge news in and unto itself. Adding fuel to the fire is that this employee was working on the controversial emails related to DNC voter fraud. This brings in the Seth Rich Murder. This is bigger than Watergate! Yet, the mainstream media is strangely quiet on this issue, suspiciously quiet. Crickets chirping is the best way to describe the media’s reaction to this blockbuster news!!! Why? The following video casts light on these questions and more. Additionally, below the video, is information related to new and very concerning information on this case. Read More |
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08.1.17- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: EXPOSED: IT Hacker, Imran Awan, and His Connections to Bill and Hillary Clinton
Questions are surfacing regarding Imran Awan’s attorney. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s IT specialist could very well bring down the entire fake news Russia story that Hillary Clinton and her campaign staff put together in the run up to their election defeat to Donald Trump. Read More |
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07.31.17- Monday Morning Blues
The two main political issues are in the background, pending additional developments. The North Korean ICBM test spurred new drills by the US, South Korea, and Japan. The new South Korean President, who initially halted the deployment of the US missile defense, reportedly is seeking more launchers. Read More |
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07.29.17- Our Brave New '''Markets'''
One thing is clear: These aren’t your daddy’s markets anymore. Why? Because about 10 years ago the Rise of the Machines (aka high frequency trading algorithms) completely altered the terrain of what we call the ‘capital markets.’ Let’s look at this as a before and after story. Read More |
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07.28.17- Investment Legend Warns of a 1987-Type Market Crash
Klarman is founder of Baupost Group and is widely considered to be one of the greatest value investors in history. In 30+ years from 1982 to 2015, he only had three losing years, and is believed to have averaged returns of 16%. Bear in mind, he did thiswhile keeping 30%-50% in cash at all times. Put simply, Klarmen’s returns on invested capital are simply astonishing. To be able to churn out those types of returns while being that risk-averse borders on the impossible. Read More |
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07.27.17- Bitcoin Is Like The Internet In 1995
Bitcoin has incredible value as an international transfer mechanism. You can take any amount in and out of any country. You don’t need permission from any government. You can send it across any border—or any number of borders—as often as you want. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Read More |
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07.26.17- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The road to Rome leads through Mecca and Jerusalem
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07.25.17- The Future of Money
There was a time when people happily used chickens, pigs, or a nice pile of lumber as payment for a cow, some clothes, or anything else of value. And then some smart people got behind a breakthrough—they introduced currency. Read More |
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07.24.17- A Mystery Investor Has Made A 262 Million Dollar Bet That The Stock Market Will Crash By October
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07.22.17- Billionaire Investors Backing A Marijuana Boom In 2017
In a sector that’s already seen stocks bust the borders with 1000% spikes, there is one company that currently has 2 of the only 50 licenses to cultivate in Canada, positioning itself to burst out of the gates as new legislation creates a multi-billion-dollar industry over night. With one of the largest land packages to build cultivation facilities and 2 current licensed facilities located in two provinces in Canada, small-cap Invictus MD (TSX:IMH.V; OTC:IVITF) is set to rise. Read More |
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07.20.17- I read the news today, oh boy
What we’re witnessing is the demise of the American political system, in real time. We just don’t know it. Actually, we’re witnessing the downfall of the entire western system. And it turns out the media are an integral part of that system. Read More |
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07.21.17- How to Save Our Nation & Our Lives
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07.20.17- I read the news today, oh boy
What we’re witnessing is the demise of the American political system, in real time. We just don’t know it. Actually, we’re witnessing the downfall of the entire western system. And it turns out the media are an integral part of that system. Read More |
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07.19.17- Social Security going bust: The inconvenient issue
The Social Security report finds that the "trust fund" will run out of money in just 17 years. The news only gets worse from there. The program's unfunded liability over the next 75 years is now $12.5 trillion, which is up from $11.4 trillion last year and $4.7 trillion a decade ago. In other words, Social Security's long-term unfunded liability has increased by 166% in the span of 10 years. Read More |
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07.18.17- Navigating Through the Storms
More often than not I end up making the trip in the midst of bad weather. And this time was no different. The Pennsylvania Turnpike is a meandering, decades old, dangerous, mostly two lane highway for most of its 360 mile span. Large swaths of the decaying interstate are under construction. Read More |
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07.17.17- Our Disneyland Economy
Without a doubt, the stock market has been on a tremendous run. Since Donald Trump’s stunning election victory in November, the market has been setting record high after record high, and it is now up a total of 17 percent… Read More |
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07.15.17- Mark Thornton Explains Our Fake Economy
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07.14.17- Is This The Generation That Is Going To Financially Destroy America?
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07.13.17- Opinion: The U.S. stock market is 66% higher than it should be
Bubbles everywhere: The price-to-earnings multiple of the S&P 500 (25) is far greater than its historic norm (14.5). I have, in previous articles here on MarketWatch, pointed out the fundamental risks in the U.S. stock market. I have identified the liquidity risks created by the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve in the tightening of monetary policy, in the reduction of the Fed’s balance sheet, and the likelihood that these risks will prick the asset bubble that the market is in today. Read More |
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07.12.17- Dead Malls of America: The Retail Apocalypse Deepens
There’s nothing worse than a group of stocks trending lower during a roaring bull market. These poisonous retail stocks emit a radioactive glow. Even a novice investor can’t miss these losing positions draining the gains from his brokerage account. Traditional retailers and the “mall stocks” are having a downright terrible year. The S&P Retail Index ETF (NYSE:XRT) is down more than 11% so far this year after pushing to new lows on Monday. For comparison, the S&P 500 is up more than 8%. Read More |
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07.11.17- Stock Market Tsunami Siren Goes Off
Since July 2012 – so over the past five years – the trailing 12-month earnings per share of all the companies in the S&P 500 index rose just 12% in total. Or just over 2% per year on average. Or barely at the rate of inflation – nothing more. Read More |
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07.10.17- Why the Next Recession will be a Doozie for Consumers
The employment data released today beat expectations nicely. In June the economy added 222,000 civilian jobs. April and May numbers were revised up. In total, over the past three months, nonfarm payrolls rose by 581,000 jobs. This data will do nothing to deter the Fed from proceeding with its tightening plans. The Fed should never have cut its policy rate to zero, or kept it down that long, and it should have never engaged in QE. However, acting as lender-of-last-resort when credit froze during the Financial Crisis — when even GE and IBM had trouble borrowing to meet payroll — was essential to keep the system from collapsing. Read More |
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07.08.17- Money, Keynes, and History
It is a superstition against which economists before Keynes had struggled with some success for at least two centuries.1 It had governed most of earlier history. This history, indeed, has been largely a history of inflation; significantly, it was only during the rise of the prosperous modern industrial systems and during the rule of the gold standard, that over a period of about two hundred years. Read More |
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07.07.17- How Retiring Baby Boomers
Here’s why retiring boomers could be the biggest new obstacle for stock prices and market stability, and what you should do about it… Boomers have always been a growth driver for our nation, but now they’re starting to retire en masse. Analysts believe that, for the first time in history, this will make boomers an economic hindrance. Read More |
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07.06.17- Auto Sales Tank Again In June – It’s Worse Than Headline Reports
It was the 6th month in a row that auto sales declined. June’s 16.5 million SAAR was 11.7% below the all-time high of 18.7 million SAAR (December 2016). This is a large decline that is not being given much attention in the financial media. Read More |
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07.05.17- The Coming Carmageddon
Falsified debt prices do not promote macroeconomic stability. They lead to reckless credit expansion cycles that eventually collapse due to borrower defaults. We’re now seeing that play out in the auto sector, especially since anyone who can fog a rearview mirror has been eligible for a car loan or lease. If that reminds you of the sub-prime housing disaster, you’d be right. Read More |
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07.04.17- The Broken States of the Union
Main, Connecticut, Kentucky and California are also caught in chronic budget deadlocks that may lead to bankruptcy as a solution for dodging their entitlement obligations. Bear in mind they’re called “entitlements” because it’s money promised to you that you already put in the work to earn. It’s your retirement. Illinois, for example, has over $200 billion in pension obligations that will never be paid, or that can only be paid at a diminished level worked out in some form of effective bankruptcy. Read More |
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07.03.17- The Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence
Too often the answer to this question resembles the plot of a sci-fi thriller. People worry that developments in A.I. will bring about the “singularity” — that point in history when A.I. surpasses human intelligence, leading to an unimaginable revolution in human affairs. Or they wonder whether instead of our controlling artificial intelligence, it will control us, turning us, in effect, into cyborgs. Read More |
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07.01.17- Bob Rodriguez: "We Are Witnessing The Development Of A Perfect Storm"
There will be a reversion to the mean. We are in a very difficult and challenging time for active managers, and in particular, value style managers. Many of these managers are fighting for their economic lives. Read More |
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06.30.17- Understanding money and prices
Very few people have a full understanding of the relationship between money and goods. This is the relationship that sets prices. Yet, without that understanding, central banks will almost certainly fail in their policy objectives (as they always have done so far), and individuals unaware of gold’s monetary properties will be unable to protect their wealth in monetary and financial conditions that are becoming unstable. Read More |
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06.29.17- Short All Retail, Especially Amazon
The quote above is from Fred Hickey, who writes the The High-Tech Strategist newsletter. Mario Draghi, Chairman of the ECB, is under pressure to reduce the Central Banks’ asset purchases (it’s buying corporate bonds, including junk-rated bonds). Apparently some Dutcn legislators presented Draghi with a tulip in reference to the Dutch tulip mania in the 1630’s. The Bank of Japan and the Chinese Government are working to reduce their money printing. The Fed is still buying mortgages but it seems determined to slowly tighten monetary policy. Read More |
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06.28.17- The Super Bubble Is in Trouble
Meanwhile, however, the US Federal Reserve (Fed) keeps bringing up its borrowing rate; and even the European Central Bank (ECB) is now toying with the idea of putting an end to its expansionary policy sooner rather or later. Most notably, however, US long-term rates have come down since the end of 2016, despite the Fed raising its short-term interest rate. How come? Read More |
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06.27.17- If We Don't Change the Way Money Is Created, Rising Inequality and Social Disorder Are Inevitable
Everyone who wants to reduce wealth and income inequality with more regulations and taxes is missing the key dynamic: central banks' monopoly on creating and issuing money widens wealth inequality, as those with access to newly issued money can always outbid the rest of us to buy the engines of wealth creation. = History informs us that rising wealth and income inequality generate social disorder. Read More |
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06.26.17- Central Banks –
For the past twelve years, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen have been piloting the US Federal Reserve Bank with the same hubris as Captain Edward John Smith when he cheerily departed Southampton at the helm of the RMS Titanic. Read More |
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06.24.17- The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare
She tried to stay quiet, she really did. But after eight years of keeping a heavy secret, the day came when Alayne Fleischmann couldn't take it anymore. "It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street," she says. "I thought, 'I can't sit by any longer.'" Fleischmann is a tall, thin, quick-witted securities lawyer in her late thirties, with long blond hair, pale-blue eyes and an infectious sense of humor that has survived some very tough times. She's had to struggle to find work despite some striking skills and qualifications, a common symptom of a not-so-common condition called being a whistle-blower. Read More |
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06.23.17- What to do with a broken Illinois: Dissolve the Land of Lincoln
But before we run out of the essentials, let's finally admit that after decade upon decade of taxing and spending and borrowing, Illinois has finally run out of other people's money. Those "other people" include taxpayers who've abandoned the state. And now Illinois faces doomsday. So as the politicians meet in Springfield this week for another round of posturing and gesturing and blaming, we need a plan. Read More |
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06.22.17- Is the US Dollar About to Make A PARABOLIC MOVE…to the Downside!
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06.21.17- Get Ready for Brexit II
I was among the few to prepare investors for that shock. In the days before the vote, I urged my readers to short GBP and buy gold. Those who did made huge gains. Some readers even wrote to me to say thanks for paying their kids’ college tuitions for that year — that’s how much money they made. Read More |
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06.20.17- The Housing Market Bubble Is Popping
New home sales were down last month, according to the Census Bureau, 11.3% and missed Wall Street’s soothsayer estimates by a rural mile. Strange, that report, given that new homebuilder sentiment is bubbling along a record highs. Existing home sales were down 2.3%. You’ll note that the numbers reported by the Census Bureau and NAR are “SAAR” – seasonally adjusted annualized rates. There is considerable room for data manipulation and regression model bias when a monthly data sample is “seasonally adjusted/manipulated” and then annualized. Read More |
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Today, Albertson’s explained in an amended S-4 filing for a debt exchange offering just how tough things have gotten for traditional supermarket chains. As is so often the case, there is a private equity angle to it. Albertson’s was acquired in a 2005 LBO by a group of PE firms led by Cerberus. In January 2015, it acquired Safeway to eliminate some competition. It then wanted to sell its shares to the public. But in October 2015, as brick-and-mortar retail began to melt down, it scrapped its IPO. Read More |
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06.17.17- Hawaii may become first US state to adopt basic income The bill, titled House Concurrent Resolution 89, was brought by Hawaii State Representative Chris Lee and was passed by both houses of the state legislature in a unanimous vote. The resolution declares that all the islanders “deserve basic financial security.” Read More |
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06.16.17- We Are Getting Very Close To An Inverted Yield Curve – And If That Happens A Recession Is Essentially Guaranteed
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06.15.17- 1984 Was a Warning,
In the 1980s, the totalitarian fear was that some overenthusiastic government agent would go to the library and pull your library card to see if you were reading seditious texts. Seems a bit quaint now, doesn’t it? It didn’t at the time. Of course, the East German Stasi went to those lengths to spy on its citizens, but there was never any real danger of it happening in the US. Read More |
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06.14.17- Zimbabwe: When the Black Market Becomes the Real Market Black markets appear whenever an official market has become overregulated or otherwise unworkable due to governmental interference. They then thrive in direct proportion to the failure of official markets to function freely. They are, in fact, both a barometer and a checks-and-balances system for official markets. Read More |
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06.13.17- The Chinese Trilemma
It was developed by economists Robert Mundell and Marcus Fleming in the early 1960s. In its simplest form, the Mundell-Fleming model says that a country cannot have an open capital account, a fixed exchange rate, and an independent monetary policy at the same time. It can have any two out of three, but not all three. A country that attempts to have all three will fail in one of several ways including a reserve crisis, an exchange rate crisis or a recession. Read More |
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06.12.17- Ethereum Price Surges Over $400 - Has The Cryptocurrency Asset Class Arrived?
Ethereum topped $400 for the first time this morning... Increasing its relative share of the cryptocurrency market notably (as Bitcoin's market share drops below 50%)... Read More |
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06.10.17- Parabolic Coin
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06.09.17- “The U.S. Is Going to Have a Crash and It Will Be Massive” That’s what Mark Yusko is telling investors. This is a bold call, for sure. But Yusko, who manages more than $2 billion at Morgan Creek Capital, is used to making (and nailing) calls like this. In early 2015, he said that the price of oil would hit $30. At the time, oil was trading at around $50 a barrel…or half of what it traded for just eight months prior. Read More |
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06.08.17- The Real Economic Predicament Trump Inherited from Obama
Just about all presidents discuss the direness of the economy in order to quickly claim credit for any uptick in growth, blaming the current state of affairs on the previous administration’s policies. While many think the chief executive has the ultimate power to steer our economy in the right direction, he or she can only do so much. But the blame game is useless. Let’s stick to the economic reality. Read More |
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06.07.17- "Forget Terrorism": The Real Reason Behind The Qatar Crisis Is Natural Gas
However, as often happens, the official narrative is traditionally a convenient smokescreen from the real underlying tensions. Read More |
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06.06.17- Summer Storm Keeps Building as Second Dip of Great Recession Approaches
Total household debt now exceeds the peek it hit just before the economic collapse into the Great Recession. While the number of households is also up, wages are correspondingly down, so households have maxed out … again: Read More |
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06.05.17- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Vile Despicable Tactics of the Left
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06.03.17- The Chinese Economic “Death Spiral”
The answer is contained in three key words: debt, deflation and waste. Waste is a blunt word referring to non-productive investment. The investment component of China’s GDP is about 45% of the total. Most major economies show about 25% to 35% for investment. Read More |
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06.02.17- The Cultural Consequences of
But there are certain things that economists can say about the culture, and more precisely, that economists can say about the transformation of the culture. So what is culture? Well, to put it simply, it is the way we do things. This can include the way we eat — whether or not we dine with family members on a regular basis, for example — how we sleep, and how we use automobiles or other modes of transportation. And of course, the way we produce, consume, or accumulate capital are important aspects of the culture as well. Read More |
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06.01.17- China’s Next Step to Destroy the Dollar
If this China-Saudi deal happens — yuan for oil — it’s another step closer to the grave for the petrodollar, which has dominated global finance since 1974. You can revisit Jim Rickards article about the Assault on the Dollar, here. Read More |
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Have we now entered a time of major financial shaking? On Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 274 points. The was the largest decline for the Dow since May, and high yield bonds were down dramatically as well. Many are blaming the terror attack in Barcelona and “instability in the White House” for the downturn, but could “eclipse fever” also be a factor? The closer that we get to 
Take it from “Dr. Doom”: own some 
Western governments have an overriding problem, and that is they have reached or exceeded the bounds of taxation, at a time when legally mandated welfare costs are accelerating. Treasury departments in all the welfare nations are acutely aware of this problem, to which there’s no apparent solution. The economic recovery, so consistently forecast since the great financial crisis, has hardly materialised and has added to the problem.
Today’s complacent markets are faced with a number of potentially destabilizing shocks.
With Dick's stock crashing after reporting dreadful results this morning, in which both comp sales and EPS missed as the company slashed its full year guidance below even the lowest sellside forecast (it now sees full year EPS of $2.80 to $3.00, below the previous guidance of $3.65 to $3.75 and the Wall Street estimate of $3.62 ), the management team had no reason to hold back on today's earnings call, and luckily - unlike many other retailers who still hold out hope that the worst is behind them - it did not, for an unvarnished look into the retail space. 
The cryptocurrency craze is fascinating to an economist, or at least a student of catallactics, because it is a test of the theory of exchange ratios and prices, which is what catallactics is about.
Recently noted deterioration in market internals appears to be getting worse, as evidenced by this rare divergence in the Nasdaq market.
Anyone putting money in the stock market at this point should have their head examined. The fact that the stock market 
The bigger they come, the harder they fall. On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a record high for the ninth straight session. It has been a remarkable run, but many experts are pointing out that big trouble is brewing under the surface. As you will see below, 79 components of the S&P 500 have already dropped more than 20 percent below their 52-week highs, and it is mostly just a handful of high flying tech stocks that are still propping up the market at this point. Over the past several weeks, I have been documenting so many of the prominent voices that are 
Welcome to the currency wars. The Trump administration has entered a new low in relations with China. The change comes after the White House announced it is officially beginning to take aim at China’s economic strategy.
Even as the VIX has continued to plumb new all time lows, unable to rebound from the realm of single-digits where it has spent a record amount of time in 2017, warnings about a potential surge in the volatility index have been growing in recent weeks.
"The Gap Between Wall And Main Street Is Widening... Correction Is Inevitable"
With 60% of stocks now being traded by bots that fake each other out in order to create buying opportunities, stock exchanges have lost their connection to the reason markets are created in the first place. The exchanges no longer exist as places for people to buy and sell ownership in a corporation. They exist simply as the neural junctions of a conglomerated machine that plays tricks on itself, and your sole goal is no longer to invest, but to put money in the slot machine that is the quickest trickster. 
The US dollar is enjoying a respite from the recent selling, but its gains have been shallow, and will likely prove brief. The upticks have been concentrated in the recently high-flying dollar-bloc currencies, and sterling. The tone appears to be more consolidative than corrective, and month-end adjustment provides an additional wrinkle.
Do you know Seth Klarman?
InternationalMan's Nick Giamburno
The rogue states of Saudi Arabia and Israel are under massive attack from a Russian, Chinese, Pentagon and Iranian alliance and will have no choice but to surrender. It is only a question now of when, not if. When these rogue regimes surrender, their leadership is going to be forced to expose who gives them their orders and they will point to Rome and the black sun worshippers at the P2 freemason lodge. These are the self-appointed social engineers behind most of the world’s troubles. Once they are exposed, it will be game over and a world revolution leading to world peace will take place. 
Not since the arrival of the almighty dollar has currency been poised for a more dramatic leap forward.
One mystery trader has made an extremely large bet that the stock market is going to crash by October, and if he is right he could potentially make up to 262 million dollars on the deal. Fortunes were made and lost during the great financial crisis of 2008, and the same thing will happen again the next time we see a major stock market crash. But will that stock market crash take place before 2017 is over? Without a doubt, we are in the midst of one of the largest stock market bubbles 
The biggest multi-decade opportunity for investors right now is the Canadian government’s legislation to legalize recreational marijuana by this time next year—and the first companies to win government approval will the high-risers.
Reading the news on America should scare everyone, and every day, but it doesn’t. We’re immune, largely. Take this morning. The US Republican party can’t get its healthcare plan through the Senate. And they apparently don’t want to be seen working with the Democrats on a plan either. Or is that the other way around? You’d think if these people realize they were elected to represent the interests of their voters, they could get together and hammer out a single payer plan that is cheaper than anything they’ve managed so far. But they’re all in the pockets of so many sponsors and lobbyists they can’t really move anymore, or risk growing a conscience. Or a pair. 
Buried down deep in the Friday afternoon news dump is the not inconsequential news that Social Security is about to go bust – a lot faster than anyone had predicted earlier. Investor's Business Daily sums up the coming fiasco pretty well:
Several weeks ago I had to drive west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to pick up my son after his sophomore year at Penn State. I’ve made this trip a dozen times over the last few years, since this is my second son attending Penn State, with a third starting in the Fall. It’s a tedious, boring, protracted, four hour trek through the rural countryside of the Keystone State. During these trips my mind wanders, making connections between the landscape and the pressing issues facing the world. I can’t help but get lost in my thoughts as the miles accumulate like dollars on the national debt clock.
Disneyland is known as a place “where dreams come true” and where every story always has a happy ending. But there is going to be no happy ending 
Did you know that the federal government is going to spend more than 4 trillion dollars this year? To put that into perspective, U.S. GDP for the entire year of 2017 is going to be somewhere between 18 and 19 trillion dollars. So when you are talking about 4 trillion dollars you are talking about a huge chunk of our economy. But of course the federal government doesn’t bring in 4 trillion dollars a year. At the beginning of Barack Obama’s first term, we were 10.6 trillion dollars in debt, and now we are 
We’re kicking off the trading week with another brutal day for the retail sector.
Everyone who’s watching the stock market has their own reasons for their endless optimism, their doom-and-gloom visions, their bouts of anxiety that come with trying to sit on the fence until the very last moment, or their blasé attitude that nothing can go wrong because the Fed has their back. But there are some factors that are like a tsunami siren that should send inhabitants scrambling to higher ground.
The chief root of our present monetary troubles is, of course, the sanction of scientific authority which Lord Keynes and his disciples have given to the age-old superstition that by increasing the aggregate of money expenditure we can lastingly ensure prosperity and full employment.
In 2016, the first group of baby boomers turned 70 years old. Millions more will do the same over the next 15 years, and as a result, selling activity in their retirement portfolios could be a big problem for markets.
June auto sales on a “SAAR” basis (seasonally adjusted annualized rate) fell 1.2% from May to 16.5 million “SAAR.” The non-SAAR number available from sources like Autonews.com show a 3% year over year drop from June 2016. The year over year comparison for the same month eliminates seasonality and it eliminates statistical errors compounded by the annualization calculation.
This article explains the money side of prices, and why government currencies, unbacked by gold, are doomed to collapse. And why gold, which is the sound money chosen by markets throughout history, will retain or increase its purchasing power measured in the goods it buys over the coming years.
You do not need to be a financial market wizard to see that especially bond markets have reached bubble territory: bond prices have become artificially inflated by central banks' unprecedented monetary policies. For instance, the price-earnings-ratio for the US 10-year Treasury yield stands around 44, while the equivalent for the euro zone trades at 85. In other words, the investor has to wait 44 years (and 85 years, respectively) to recover the bonds' purchasing price through coupon payments.
Centrally issued money optimizes inequality, monopoly, cronyism, stagnation and systemic instability.
Illinois is likeVenezuela now, a fiscally broken state that has lost its will to live, although for the moment, we still have enough toilet paper.
Markets were shocked when UK voters chose to leave the European Union, EU, on June 23, 2016. That was the so-called “Brexit” or British exit from the EU. Within hours of the vote becoming official, the pound sterling, GBP, plunged 13% against the dollar, and gold soared 8% in dollar terms, even more measured in GBP.
As with all other highly manipulated data, the financial media has a blind bias toward the “bullish” story attached to the housing market. Understandable, as the National Association of Realtors spends more on special interest interest lobbying in Congress than any other financial sector lobby interest, including Wall Street banks.
Aldi’s $5 billion bet at a brutal time.
An unprecedented bill supporting the idea of universal basic income (UBI) has been introduced in the American state of Hawaii. 
If something happens seven times in a row, do you think that there is a pretty good chance that it will happen the eighth time too? Immediately prior to the last seven recessions, we have seen an inverted yield curve, and it looks like it is about to happen again for the very first time since the last financial crisis. For those of you that are not familiar with this terminology, when we are talking about a yield curve we are typically talking about the spread between two-year and ten-year U.S. Treasury bond yields. Normally, short-term rates are higher than long-term rates, but when investors get spooked about the economy this can reverse. Just before every single recession since 1960 the yield curve has “inverted”, and now we are getting dangerously close to it happening again for the first time in a decade. 
For many years, I’ve described black markets not as the evil danger to economies that governments profess them to be, but as predictable and sensible reactions to the overregulation of official markets.
The trilemma, also known as the “impossible trinity” is a fundamental thesis of international economics. 
When writing an article about the recent move in bitcoin, one should probably not begin by preparing the chart images. Chances are one will have to do it all over again. It is a bit like ordering a cup of coffee in Weimar Germany in early November 1923. One had to pay for it right away, as a cup costing one wheelbarrow of Reichsmark may well end up costing two wheelbarrows of Reichsmark half an hour later. These days the question is how many wheelbarrows of US dollars one may need to pay for a bitcoin. 
President Trump has said on multiple occasions that he inherited an economic mess from his predecessor. The mainstream media fact checkers moved quickly to disprove him, pointing to the grossly misleading low unemployment rate as all the proof you need. While the current economy looks better on the surface compared to 2009, there are still many danger signs pointing to perhaps a second Great Recession coming much sooner than you think. 
According to the official narrative, the reason for the latest Gulf crisis in which a coalition of Saudi-led states cut off diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar, is because - to everyone's "stunned amazement" - Qatar was funding terrorists, and after Trump's recent visit to Saudi Arabia in which he urged a crackdown on financial support of terrorism, and also 
These updates to my list of “
Liberals have always portrayed themselves as the champions of the people. They love to call themselves Progressives, as if they and only they know how progress should proceed. The truth, as revealed by Kathy Griffin, Black Lives Matter terrorists, the brain dead SJW’s on college campuses across the land, the Soros funded ironically named Antifa fascists, the left wing fake news media, and despicable lefty politicians like Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi, is that left wingers are violent, lying, bullying, anti-First Amendment, thugs willing to do anything to crush anyone who doesn’t bow down to their fascist agenda. 
It may seem unusual that an economist would talk about culture. Usually, we talk about prices and production, quantities produced, employment, the structure of production, scarce resources, and entrepreneurship.
China is currently modifying the terms of its oil trade with Saudi Arabia. Specifically, China is working on a deal to pay for Saudi oil using Chinese yuan. This effort poses a direct threat to the security of the dollar.