Archive - Aug 2014

Overview of the investment climate and the likey impact from data and events, delivered in dispassionate, even if dry prose. 

Although the US seems intent in playing the drums of war, perhaps realizing that its economic power is slowly headed for oblivion, to join the likes of Japan and the UK, American firms waving international flags don’t have the appetite for war that neocon elitists in the State Department or star-studded bellicosarians in the halls of the Pentagon have.  Not at all!  And here is where the feared industrial-military complex hopefully falls apart as globalist firms give their overall support to peace as a preferred alternative to the specter of a nuclear holocaust.  Russia doesn’t want any military confrontation, nor does China, nor do American and European corporate entities that see no future in suicide. Americans need not drink the kool-aid offered by John McCain and his ilk in the Pentagon, Congress or the State Department; nor should they listen to the sad sack windmill-mouthpiece they have enlisted in the White House: Barack Obama.

One can’t help when looking at all the geopolitical as well as threats of non-containment of the deadly Ebola virus and wonder: Who’s in control here? Here’s a hint – it’s not the people lining up to give the message via oratory salvos. One thing has now been shown in vivid detail: The more messaging put out along these same lines will only make it abundantly clear to any and all opposition that those in charge haven’t a clue.

Presented with no comment (and no hints)...

If the stated purpose of US intervention in the "country formerly known as Iraq", which saw the fourth consecutive US president launching military strikes in a nation now absolutely destroyed thanks to US involvement, was humanitarian (it isn't) and allegedly to "protect" the Yazidi ethnic minority members stuck on a mountain near Sinjar, then it needs some fine-tuning. The reason: as Reuters reports, Islamic State militants have slaughtered at least 500 Yazidis during their latest offensive in the north, with Iraq's human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani adding that the ISIS jihadists also buried alive some of their victims, including women and children. Some 300 women were kidnapped as slaves, he added.

In so many ways caged from birth, is it any wonder we exhibit clear and disturbing signs of depression, neurosis and self destructive behavior?

Give me Football Season over the Federal Reserve any day of the week in terms of actual ‘boots on the ground’ stimulus.

According to the recent AAII Asset Allocation Survey by retail investors, cash levels in July dropped to the lowest level since 1999 at only 15.8%. It appears that the average retail investor has once again been led astray by monetary pumping.

One can only hope the US military doesn't confuse kinetic strikes on the same Iraqi Jihadists it provides weapons and training to in Syria as seen in the clip below... with what it claims is a humanitarian air drop, as seen in the clip below.

While the biggest geopolitical news of the past week was Obama's announcement he would become only the fourth president in a row to order military action in Iraq, explicitly targeting the ISIS jihadists, the far bigger question are the developments that spurred the administration to finally act. Here are, courtesy of Vice News, the first two parts of a series looking at life in the Islamic State caliphate. Vice News reporter Medyan Dairieh spent three weeks embedded with the Islamic State, gaining access to the group in Iraq and Syria as the first and only journalist to document its inner workings.

It has not been a good summer for airplane travel, and following the latest news out of Iran, where earlier today an Iran-140 Sepahan Air passenger plane bound for Tabas in northeast Iran with 48 passengers and crew on board crashed on a road near Tehran’s Mehrabad airport on Sunday, killing at least 38 people, things just got even worse.

With increasingly more cases - for now, largely isolated - of suspicious Ebola infections reported out of Africa and around the globe, it was only a matter of time before one of the world's most densely populated megapolises at 17,024 people per square mile, Hong Kong, raised the alarm as well. Which it did moments ago when Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection said on Sunday that a man from Nigeria is being tested for the deadly Ebola virus at Princess Margaret Hospital. If confirmed, it will be the first case of the disease in Asia.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.--Charlie Chaplin

The last 3 months have seen Russia's "de-dollarization" plans accelerate. First Gazprom clients shift to Euros and Renminbi, then the UK signs currency swap agreements with China, then NATO ally Turkey cuts ties and mulls de-dollarization, Switzerland jumps in the currency swap agreements, and BRICS create their own non-US-based funding vehicle, and then finally this week, Russia's oligarchs have shifted cash holdings to Hong Kong. But this week, as RT reports, Russian and Chinese central banks have agreed a draft currency swap agreement, which will allow them to increase trade in domestic currencies and cut the dependence on the US dollar in bilateral payments. “"The agreement will stimulate further development of direct trade in yuan and rubles on the domestic foreign exchange markets of Russia and China," the Russian regulator said.