Archive - Jun 25, 2014

Tyler Durden's picture

Turkey's "200 Tons Of Secret Gold" Trade With Iran: The Biggest, Most Bizarre Money Laundering Scheme Ever?





While Ben Bernanke once said that "gold is not money", it appears China, Dubai, and most especially Turkey and Iran would disagree. On the heels of the "Petrogold" wars we discussed previously, a leaked report of a secret plot to 'juice' Turkey's trade balance exposes gold at the heart of "one of the most complex illicit finance schemes [prosecutors] have seen."

 

Tyler Durden's picture

ISIS Holds Parade With Captured US Military Vehicles





As ISIS marches south over Iraq, produces movies, creates annual reports, and attacks dams; The Long War Journal reports The Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham's Ninewa Division continues to crank out images of its conquest of Mosul and the surrounding province. Earlier today, the Ninewa Division released photographs of its forces seizing control of several bases, displaying captured military hardware, and executing Iraqi soldiers. Then, the Ninewa Division published a set of photographs of a military parade in the city of Mosul. The photographs provide a glimpse of the ISIS' military strength in Mosul and the captured US-supplied Humvees, armored cars, and even artillery pieces are shown.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

"The Gap Between Those With Money & Those With Knowledge Has Grown Catastrophic"





"The one unlimited resource we have on the planet is the human brain – the current strategy of 1% capitalism is failing because it is killing the Golden Goose at multiple levels. Unfortunately, the gap between those with money and power and those who actually know what they are talking about has grown catastrophic. The rich are surrounded by sycophants and pretenders whose continued employment demands that they not question the premises."

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Today's Global Warming Propaganda Is Brought To You By...





“It’s going to get a lot hotter in the United States over the next 100 years, and worse going forward," notes a report cited by Bloomberg.The report, below, fearmongers the mutually assured destruction that will happen if something is not done right now about global warming (despite the implications being out to the year 2200) concluding... "The risks are much more perverse and cruel than we saw with the financial crisis, because they accumulate over time...a business-as-usual approach is actually radical risk-taking." Can you guess who sponsored the report and used those M.A.D. words?

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Visualizing The Five Reasons To Own Gold





Following last night's 94-page extravaganza on gold, this infographic, part four in our 2014 Gold Series (part 1, part 2, & part 3 here), covers the five best reasons to own gold: 1) Gold helps investors diversify their portfolios; 2) Gold is a great store of value; 3) Gold helps protect against inflation and other risks; 4) Gold demand is driven by a growing east, while grades are dropping and new discoveries are more scarce; and 5) Gold stocks are as cheap as they have ever been, using the GDX as a proxy. The reasons to own gold have not changed since the peak in 2011.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Citi Warns US Equities Are Facing A Pullback





US equity indices are showing signs that a pullback may be developing, Citi's FX Technicals group notes, as the S&P 500 Index, the NASDAQ Composite Index and the Dow Industrials Index all posted bearish key days yesterday. A short-term correction on the order of 3%-6% may be developing on the back of this. The Dow Transports Index, which has been the leading US equity Index this year, has already been showing signs of stress as well. The VIX Index is also turning higher from low levels and should head up towards at least 14% if not 18% if the pullback in equities materializes.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

How Barclays Got Caught Red-Handed With "Pernicious HFT Fraud"





First it was gold, now it is HFT - poor Barclays just can't get away with any market rigging crime these days: "In sum, Barclays’ courting of high frequency traders, and its willingness to falsify the extent of high frequency trading activity in its dark pool, was contrary to Barclays’ representations to clients that Barclays operated with “transparency” and provided a safe venue in which to trade. As described by one former senior Barclays Director:  “there was a lot going on in the dark pool that was not in the best interests of clients. The practice of almost ensuring that every counterparty would be a high frequency firm, it seems to me that that wouldn’t be in the best interest of their clients . . . It’s almost like they are building a car and saying it has an airbag and there is no airbag or brakes.”

 

Tyler Durden's picture

GDP Disaster: Final Q1 GDP Crashes To -2.9%, Lowest Since 2009, Far Below The Worst Expectations





Remember when in January 2014, Q1 GDP was expected to rise 2.6%? Well, here comes the final Q1 GDP revision and it's a doozy: at -2.9%, far below the -1.8% expected and well below the -1.0% second revision, it is an absolute disaster, and is the worst print since Q1 2009.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Blind Faith





Obamacare, the Stimulus, TARP, Fast and Furious, support of the Egyptian regime change, Libyan Leading from Behind, four American killed in Benghazi, blaming a video for the Benghazi attacks, the IRA targeting, NSA email and phone file storage, Syrian Red Line, the Russian takeover of Crimea, the VA handling of veterans, release of Taliban terrorists from Guantanamo, the onslaught of children crossing the Mexican border, two years of lost emails of the key IRS individual and now Iraq. I can’t imagine any previous U.S. President having so many scandals attributed to his administration and virtually none of them adequately answered or resolved.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Goldman Issues "Kiss Of Death": USA 81% Likely To Reach World Cup Knockouts





Forget Maradonna's "Hand Of God", and Luis Suarez' "Jaws Of Doom"; Goldman Sachs just issued their latest set of updated predictions for the FIFA World Cup and unleashed a "kiss of death" on USA. The bank (whose win rate on predictions so far has been a lowly 30%) forecast the odds of USA making it to the 2nd Round (the knockout stage) is 81.6% (with Portugal a lowly 5.3% likely). Given the variance of results so far, we hope they are right; but their odds seem a little long (and they have Belgium beating USA in the next round).

 

Tyler Durden's picture

The State Of The Union: A Friendly Reminder Where We Stand Now





Spend more than a few minutes watching CNBC (yes all 2,000 of you) and you will be told how great things are, how great things will be, and how (no matter how bad the immediate 'event' is) the hockey-stick of future exceptionalism will always be there. In the interests of full disclosure, that is wrong and these four charts show why... a friendly reminder of the state of the union...

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Baghdad May Lose Its Drinking Water As ISIS Approaches Second Largest Dam





Against a background of having lost control of all western border crossings, Iraqi officials are concerned that ISIS fighters are advancing on the Haditha Dam, the second-largest in Iraq. With militants pouring in from the north, the northeast and the northwest, The NY Times reports, army officers told employees to stay inside and to be prepared to open the dam’s floodgates if ordered to do so. "This will lead to the flooding of the town and villages and will harm you also," warned one worried employee but this would not be the first time that the Iraqi government and ISIS have engaged in dam warfare, as the closure of the Falluja dam earlier in the year starved areas downstream in the provinces of Najaf and Diwaniya of water needed for crops. The situation is growing more grave as Maliki rejected calls for a caretaker government and has forced Iran's hand to help. Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia noted "the Iranians are playing in a big way in Iraq."

 

Tyler Durden's picture

The "Never Say No" Economy





"No" is not a word one hears very often in the new normal centrally-planned, no consequence world in which the world increasingly finds itself. As ConvergEx's Nick Colas notes, there is good reason not to scare people off as the power of the word “No” in human interaction shows its psychological heft is inversely proportional to its length. From early childhood, Colas points out, we learn that “No” signifies a negative outcome, and that wiring stays with us the rest of our lives. Studies using brain-imaging scans show this in detail. Subjects who hear the words “Yes” and “no” exhibit dramatically different brain activity. “No” gets processed slightly more slowly, but with powerful negative emotion. The result is less trust and cooperation from the person who hears “No”. If that is your desired result, “No” is your word of choice. But if it isn’t, try something else.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Bed, Bath & Beyond Buybacks





One can almost smell the CapEx renaissance.... Any minute now.

 
Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!