Archive - Jun 11, 2014

Tyler Durden's picture

Down And Out In Rio: What To Expect At The World Cup





Sticker shock. Expect to pay a lot. Hellishly hot in the summer and shockingly less sexy than advertised. But the city and local people, called Cariocas, are clean and the crime is greatly exaggerated. The Marvelous City is amazing in many ways. But if you look closely, you see the same old corruption and thuggery, the same painful poverty and injustice, that plague many states. And then there's the Brazilian prostitutes, called programas, who frequent the bars and brothels of Copacabana and Ipanema as well as Central Rio... People in Rio and Brazil are the same as anywhere. They want the same things. Happiness, diversion, laughter, distraction, the so-called good things in life. A slightly larger piece of the pie. The World Cup is just a showcase and a distraction. Bread and circus on a grander scale.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Introducing The Latest Tactic For Governments To Raise Cash





‘Creativity’ isn’t usually a word associated with ‘government’. Words like stodgy, bureaucratic, and incompetent are typically more appropriate. But there is at least one area where bankrupt governments in particular tend to be exceptionally creative - finding unique ways to steal people’s money... and among the most unique just hit the great state of Georgia.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

SMAC: The Next Big Thing





If you don't know SMAC, then you don't know jack. SMAC - Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud - is the ubiquitous term that every startup pre-IPO entrepreneur must use (no matter how awkwardly) in order to garner triple digit P/E valuations. Clearly not as superfluous as Pets.com, Goldman describes the powerful theme in enterprise software, enabling businesses to realign go-to market models with faster and informed decision-making driving an enhanced user experience.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

The NSA Claims It Is "Too Big to Comply" With A Court Order





The fact that that the NSA is now claiming it is “Too Big to Comply” with a court order is an extremely important revelation since it further proves that the super rich and super powerful are in no way shape or form subject to the same laws as the rest of us. The mega banks are “Too Big to Fail,” multi-national corporations are “Too Big to Pay Taxes” and the government is just “Too Big to be Useful.” The rule of law no longer exists in America (remember Jon Corzine), which in turn means there is no longer a functioning society. This may not be obvious to most people at the moment, but it will become painfully clear to everyone in time unless these trends are reversed.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

The End Of US Economic Dominance: Nails In The Dollar-Standard's Coffin





Mike Maloney (of The Hidden Secrets of Money) has demonstrated that that every 30-40 years the world has an entirely new global monetary system, that the current monetary system (the U.S. dollar standard) is aging and becoming unstable, and, just like the previous monetary systems, will soon implode. The following wide-ranging clip shows that the "Nails in the Coffin of the Dollar Standard" are now coming faster and are more furious than ever before. He believes that there will be a global currency crisis before the end of this decade and that the days of the dollar standard are numbered. This will lead to a massive deflation followed by an overnight devaluation of the dollar and huge overnight revaluation of gold, and, though it will be painful for most, it is the greatest opportunity in history for those who are prepared.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

19 Reasons To Laugh When Anyone Tells You That The Economy Is In Good Shape





Have you heard the one about the “economic recovery” in the United States? It’s quite funny, but it is not actually true. Every day, the establishment media points to the fact that global stock markets have soared to unprecedented heights as evidence that the economy is improving. But just because a bunch of wealthy people have gotten temporarily even richer on paper does not mean that the real economy is in good shape. In fact, as you will see below, things just continue to get even tougher for the poor and the middle class.

 

Tim Knight from Slope of Hope's picture

Tenacious D





Many of you probably heard the news yesterday that teachers unions received a nasty (and well-deserved) blow from the Los Angeles Superior Court. So when I was listening to the radio yesterday, and the reporter was saying that California teachers are granted "tenure at eighteen...." I naively assumed the next word was going to be "years." Nope. It was "months." After just eighteen months, these people get what is effectively guaranteed lifetime employment. Even, as in the court's case, the teacher just sleeps at their desk or browses the web.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Global Death Cross Accelerates As World Bank Slashes Growth





The World Bank joined the hallowed ranks of the IMF and admitted it was clueless last night, slashing growth estimates for every developed and developing nation from Brazil to the US. The "bumpy start" as they called it merely exacerbated what is now becoming a dismal joke as the death cross of GDP growth expectations and world stock market valuations diverge in an ever more fragile manner.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Is A Second American Revolution Now Inevitable?





"When an activist movement holds the moral high ground against a repressive establishment power structure, the establishment’s primary recourse is to target the character of its principles. The secondary recourse is direct confrontation. If a dissenting organization is not mindlessly vicious in its methods, then simply make it 'appear' vicious. If it is not hateful in its rhetoric, then artificially tie it to people who are. And if a government really needs to kick-start a crackdown, it can engineer its own man-made calamities and blame the groups that most threaten its authority."

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Iraq Gives Obama Green Light To Commence "Kinetic Support" Against Al Qaeda





And just like that the war in Iraq, "Bush's war" according to so many, is about to come back with a vengeance this time under Nobel peace prize winning president, and what makes it most grotesque is that this time the US will be waging combat with at a military force that it itself is training and arming in neighboring Syria. Which of course is good news for the military-industiral complex and US Q3 GDP, if not so good for millions of innocent civilians soon to be known as "collateral damage."

 

Tyler Durden's picture

More Facts About The Tea-Party's "Goliath-Slayer" David Brat





  • ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS PROFESSOR WITH DIVINITY DEGREE
  • FAN OF AYN RAND
  • ARGUED RELIGION PLAYS ROLE IN ECONOMIC GROWTH RATES
  • OPPONENT OF IMMIGRATION REFORM
  • FACE-OFF AGAINST FELLOW FACULTY MEMBER
  • WAS CRITICIZED BY CANTOR FOR BEING A LIBERAL
 

GoldCore's picture

Steve Forbes Warns Of Economic "Catastrophe" Due To Fed’s Dollar Debasement





In order to back the dollars now in circulation and on deposit -- about $2.7 trillion -- with the approximately 261 million ounces of gold believed to be held by the U.S. government, gold prices would have to rise as high as $10,000 an ounce. Who said gold is not money?

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Bank of America Shocker: New Commercial Loan Plunge Is Largest Since Lehman





A shocker from Bank of America: "The number of new commercial loans made by BAC has declined notably over the first half of the year. Measured as an indexed level to cycle peak (which was December 2005), the data show that the recent drop was the largest since the recovery began." Oops. If this is accurate then not only is the Fed fabricating loan data outright, it is massively misrepresenting the general direction of loan creation altogether. In fact, if loans are contracting, when one adds the decline in reserve "asset" creation, then banks are set for a world of pain come October when QE is set to end!

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Goldman Warns Of "Tax Inversion" M&A Euphoria





Corporate “inversions” have been around since the 1980s in various forms but have come back into focus recently, but as Goldman's Alec Phillips notes have recent regained popularity as world tax rates grow ever more divergent. On the back of several high profile 'proposed' deals, a certain level of hysteria has taken hold amid potential targets but the issue has drawn enough attention that politicians are once again considering intervening. As Goldman warns, however, companies considering these transactions may now hesitate in light of the possibility that the expected tax benefits will be undone (and expect broad-based tax reform to reduce, if not eliminate, any advantages).

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Mindblowing Fact Of The Day: China Has Over 52 Million Vacant Homes





Over 1 in 5 homes (with $674 billion of mortgages) in China stand empty... and if you think that urbanization will fix that, as WSJ reports, a 10 percentage point rise in the urbanization rate (already at 54%) would result in only a 2.6% drop in vacancy rates. China has a major over-supply issue thanks to property developers who had rushed into the market to build homes, which have been a popular investment as prices seemed bound to keep rising. But now, as Vanke recently warned, things are changing and "the golden era" of China's property market are over. The vacancy rate of sold residential homes in urban areas reached 22.4% in 2013 and as new home prices are slashed to move product, a 30% drop would leave 11.2% of Chinese homes underwater on their mortgages...

 
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