Archive - Nov 2015

History takes no prisoners. It shows, with absolute lucidity, that the Islamic extremism ravaging the world today was borne out of the Western foreign policy of yesteryear.

CAT has now suffered a record 35 months, or nearly 3 years, of consecutive declining annual retail sales - something unprecedented in company history! But fear not, the company has a cunning plan how to stem the bleeding...

The arrests or investigations targeting the finance industry in the aftermath of China’s summer market crash have intensified in recent weeks according to Bloomberg, creating a climate of fear among China’s finance firms and chilling their investment strategies. As one professor of Chinese economy noted, "some in the political leadership sought to find scapegoats to blame" for the market crash which along with massive intervention "created uncertainty and anxiety that can only undermine the effort to make these markets work better."

Despite two years of liberal redistribution from Mayor de Blasio, the majority of New Yorkers continue to struggle to make ends meet mirroring his 2013 "tale of two cities" campaign theme. The NYTimes poll finds that only 20% are living comfortably while 51% are just getting by or finding it difficult to manage, and shows even greater disparities in quality of life across the city’s five boroughs.

Today we got confirmation that the spinning plates of the Affordable Care Act are finally falling down, when none other than the U.S.’s biggest health insurer, UnitedHealth, cut its 2015 earnings forecast with a warning that it was considering pulling out of Obamacare, just one month after saying it would expand its presence in the program. 

China’s producers couldn’t get the prices they wanted anymore, as early as 4 years ago, and that’s where deflationary forces came in. No matter how much extra credit/debt was injected into the money supply, the spending side started to stutter. It never recovered.

In what appears to be a first for a serious presidential contender, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is going after five comedians who made fun of the former Secretary of State in standup skits at a popular Hollywood comedy club. “They threatened me,” Masada told Judicial Watch. “I have received complains before but never a call like this, threatening to put me out of business if I don’t cut the video.”

In what amounts to evidence that the subprime auto problem is indeed growing, The New York Fed's Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit (out today) shows that lenders extended more than $110 billion in auto loans to borrowers with credit scores below 660 over the past six months alone. 

It seems it is high time for a strategic rethink in the Global War On Terror, but powerful forces are arrayed against it. Apart from the fact that a truly huge racket is at stake, the situation is also reminiscent of the proverbial guy with the hammer – everything looks like a nail to him. So we should reasonably expect more of the same, only in even grander style (as the so-called “surge” has shown, any successes tend not only to be temporary, but have a habit to soon give way to even greater disasters).

“Some Chinese firms have entered the Ponzi stage because return on investment has come down very fast. As a result, leverage will be rising and zombie companies increasing.”

There's no doubt that money is important. There's good reason why most of us devote a huge percentage of our lives to pursuing it. But there's much about money that is misunderstood.

Leader  of the Free World...

"Welcoming immigrants and New Americans is a critical part of my strategy to grow Baltimore, and I hope that refugees from Syria will look to our city as a potential place to call home."