Archive - Nov 2015

Russia set to retailiate "heavily and militarily"...

We’ve almost become numb to horrendous videos like these.. It seems like a new shocking police abuse video sweeps the nation almost every week. These viral videos help bring a small dose of accountability to government employees. And they don’t like it one bit. It’s all part of a long trend. The government will always try to shield itself from the fallout from its behavior. Another favorite tactic is to simply declare troublesome information “classified” or to withhold it because of “national security,” a vague and misused term. It’s an upside down situation. The government can monitor almost any aspect of the average citizen’s life whenever it wants. But it’s difficult to impossible for the average citizen to monitor the government. In a free society, the opposite would be true.

For the 3rd time since the crash in June, Chinese stocks have staged a magnificent recovery. Amid the selling bans, arrests, deaths, manipulation, massive direct government buying, and general happy-talk propoganda, Chinese stocks are now up 24% from the August lows... Of course, we are sure every one of the grandmas and farmers - fully levered - clung on through the dips.. and are now still 32% down from the June highs...

Following this morning's basic admission by Janet Yellen that "no matter what" The Fed is raising rates in December (which was then solemnly supported by an obedient Bill Dudley who "100% agrees with Yellen"), Fed Vice-Chair Stan Fischer, speaking tonight, reaffirmed this belief by, as we detailed previously, telling investors to ignore weak inflation. After San Fran Fed's Williams admission that "there's something going on here we don't understand," Fischer tonight admitted "US inflation is not as low as you think," at once contradicting Yellen's earlier comments and the various market-based measures, while confirming our previous detailed solving of the mystery of the hidden inflation.

Today the FBI released its latest background check data - a proxy for total gun sales in the United States as most gun purchases require a background check - in which we find that, as expected, Obama's latest threat to implement stricter gun controls backfried once more, and the month of October saw a record number of background checks. The same was true for September, August, and so on: in fact, October the sixth consecutive month to see a record number of checks. 

The lasting legacy of the First World War has been the rationales and implementations of paternalist Big Government in the Western world, with its diminished recognition and respect for individual liberty, free association, freedom of competitive trade and exchange, reduced civil liberties and weakened impartial rule of law. From this has followed the regulating and redistributing State, which includes political control and manipulation of the monetary and banking systems to serve those in governmental power and others who feed at the trough of governmental largess. It is a legacy that will likely take another century to completely overcome and reverse, if we are able to devise a strategy for restoring the idea and ideal of a society of liberty.

As of today, the gold "coverage" ratio, or the amount of paper claims for every ounce of physical, has just hit a new all time high of 293 ounces of paper per ounce of registered physical.

While we are used to David Stockman's detailed and lengthy "nailing" of the real state of the world, the following brief clip of an interview with Fox Business, in which David explains how to 'fix' so many of our problems, can be summarized perfectly in just seven short words: "Replace The Fed with the free market."

As the market now diligently calculates the suddenly surging odds of a December rate hike, here's Yellen with a preview of what will happen once the rate hike cycle is aborted...

• YELLEN SAYS IF OUTLOOK WORSENED FED MIGHT WEIGH NEGATIVE RATES

... just as it was aborted in Japan in August of 2000 when the BOJ also decided to send a signal how much stronger the economy is by hiking 25 bps, only to cut 7 months later and to proceed to monetize not only all net Japanese debt issuance a decade later, but to hold half of all equity ETFs.

Bavarian official Peter Dreier called German Chancellor Angela Merkel to warn her personally of the consequences if Germany welcomes a million refugees, "because Germany now is somewhere at the edge of anarchy and sliding towards civil war, or to become a banana republic without any government. I hope that this threat will have some effect, but knowing the psychological things that Merkel does these days – I don’t believe in it, unfortunately."

The Land of the Free - America has just been stripped of its favorite longstanding self-designation. The official title of ‘Land of the Free’ now belongs to its neighbor to the north, Canada. In fact, Legatum notes that America is an 

Unnamed Lebanese sources claim US spec ops are now operating near Latakia, and while we must consider the source, that would mean direct combat between American troops and Iranian ground forces is virtually a foregone conclusion and would also help to explain why the Pentagon has reportedly sent in the dogfighters to patrol the skies. 

The story behind Malaysia PM Najib Razak's Goldman-backed slush fund just got even stranger as it now appears some $2.3 billion in mystery money tied to an ill-fated investment with the Saudis ended up being managed by an Australian penny stock pusher via a shady Cayman Islands account.