Archive - Oct 17, 2015

"They brought it in through Iraqi checkpoints, back-rolled it off the trailer and then drove away"...

"The United States' provocative attempts to infringe on China's South China Sea sovereignty are sabotaging regional peace and stability and militarizing the waters.What on earth makes the United States think China should and will tolerate it when U.S. surface ships trespass on Chinese territory in the South China Sea?"

Until Putin’s speech the world was intimidated by the Washington Bully. Resistance to Washington brought swift retribution. In the Middle East and Africa it brought economic sanctions and military invasions that destroyed entire countries. In France and other US vassal states it brought multi-billion dollar confiscations of bank net worth as the price of not following Washington’s policies toward other countries. Other countries felt powerless in the face of the arrogant hegemonic Unipower, which from time to time replied to noncompliance with threats. President Putin of Russia brought all that to end on September 28. He stood up before the world in the presence of the overflowing hubris of the hegemon and belled the cat.

The United States has had the world’s largest economy for about 140 years, and it roughly accounts for 22% of global GDP. However, in recent times China has overtaken the US by at least one measure of total economic strength, which is GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP). Either way you slice it, the economies are the two strongest globally in absolute terms. That’s where the similarities end.

There is a war, a currency war, and the war is, ultimately, on Americans. Rather than living under a sound currency, modern Americans live under an economic despotism. There are monopoly men who tightly control the money, and are all the more insidious in their subtlety, and quietness in the shadows. In many respects, Americans have fallen far, and hard, from the liberty they once had.

"... you can bet that whenever an earthquake like this happens, especially when it’s triggered by two invisible tectonic plates like put gamma and call gamma and then cascades through arcane geologies like options expiration dates and ETF pricing software, both the media and self-interested parties will begin a mad rush to find someone or something a tad bit more obvious to blame. So you end up getting every investment process that uses a computer – from high frequency trading to risk parity allocations to derivative hedges – all lumped together in one big shotgun blast"

Put yourself in the following situation for a moment. You're a Sunni extremist and your regional and Western backers have just abandoned you. You are now under siege by the Russian Air Force. If you survive the air strikes you will soon have to come face to face with the fiercest, most experienced Shiite militia on the planet in Hezbollah. Would you cut off your beard and run? 

It’s unfortunate that it took the corporate media all these years to" discover" that the United States and Russia are fighting a geopolitical proxy war in Syria. It remains to be seen how many more years and lost lives it will take for them to also "discover" that this proxy war is being fought over resources and power. It’s a sad state of affairs when the Western media provides humanitarian cover for the U.S. and NATO to fuel a brutal civil war simply to create economic advantages for NATO states and allies while undermining stability in the Middle East - creating the greatest humanitarian catastrophe since World War II. And as millions of refugees continue to pour out of Syria into Europe and abroad, the NATO-dominated public of the E.U. and U.S. remain largely ignorant to the fact their own governments helped create the refugee crisis they so abhor.

...with your hosts: ISIS

Michael Wang: too Asian and too perfect for the Ivy League schools. This is a typical example of modern-day socialism’s drive to allegedly “equalize opportunity”, a heading under which the incentive to make an effort to actually accomplish something in life is slowly but surely deadened among those showing the best abilities. Over time, it leads to decay in the population’s morals and intelligence, until you end up with a nation best compared to a ship of fools.

What is surprising about Japan is that unlike most of Europe, which has opted to adopt a Negative Interest Rate Policy, or NIRP,  is that Japan whose monetary policy became a basket case years ago - Japan is currently on QE10 - it still hasn't thrown in the "all-in" towel and announced negative rates. This may have officially changed yesterday, when in an auction that flew deep under the radar, Japan sold 1 Year (not 3 Month) Bills at the most negative yield in history, or -0.0418%, nearly doubly more negative the -0.0252% yield on the September 16 auction.

One of the most dangerous trends in America today is occurring on college campuses. These are the places we grew up viewing as laboratories for free speech, youthful energy and resistance to the status quo. Unfortunately, what they’re turning into are anti-intellectual wastelands in which America’s supposedly “best and brightest” are being transformed into unthinking, mentally shackled, emotionally stunted automatons. The only thing being produced on college campuses these days seem to be frightened, thoughtless worker-bees, conditioned to shut-up and instinctively worship authority.

"A handful of these so-called unicorns will become the great, enduring companies of tomorrow. But a good number seem the flimsiest of edifices. There is also a false sense of security provided by the private markets... some of these valuations are illusory ...Most of the leaders of the subprime unicorns who continue to enjoy the fruits of the private market delude themselves..." -Michael Moritz, Chairman, Sequoia Capital