Archive - Dec 18, 2015

If you like your nuclear-capable weapons, you can keep your nuclear-capable weapons...

Update: CISA is now the law: OBAMA SIGNS SPENDING, TAX BILL THAT REPEALS OIL EXPORT BAN

"They’re kind of pulling a Patriot Act." When Obama signs the $1.1 trillion Spending Bill in a few hours, as he will, it will be official: the second Patriot Act will become the law, and with it what little online privacy US citizens may have had, will be gone.

The announcement of the restoration of Israel-Turkish relations should be seen in the context of Turkey having nowhere else to go.

"It's not just warm, but very warm," exclaims one east coast ski resort owner, adding "I can’t remember it ever being like this here." But why? As WSJ reports, two weather occurrences - the Arctic Oscillation and El Niño - are combining to shake up temperatures from coast to coast in the U.S., bringing springlike conditions to the Northeast for much of this month and leaving parts of the West colder and wetter than usual. “If people are nervous, they should be nervous.”

"The new rounds of rate cutting and Quantitative Easing that the Fed will have to unleash will echo the military "surge" in Iraq in 2007. Those fresh troops were needed to roll back the chaos that the Administration had ignored for so long. But just as that surge only bought us a few years of relative calm, look for the gains brought about by our next monetary surge to be even more transitory. That is a development for which virtually no one on Wall Street is preparing."

The Chinese are so desperate for clean air - amid the most disgusting pollution in history - that they have turned to buying cans of fresh air to breathe during the most smog-filled days. With low oil prices crushing their economy, Canada has begun to export another resource as CNBC reports Alberta-based Vitality Air is selling "Rocky Mountain air" to the Chinese for $10 to $20 per can.

Perhaps the first step in rectifying our situation is to begin to look at the world not as it could be, but how it is. To see things for what they are, to discard the falsehoods, no matter how pleasant they may seem in order to embrace the truth regardless of how painful it may be. And that’s not a theory, that’s a reality.

Following Vladimir Putin's 'endorsement' of The Donald, explaining his hope for "a more substantial, deeper relationship," with America, Trump has reciprocated the show of respect by thanking the Russian president for the "great honor." This mutual back-patting stunned MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough, who exclaimed, Putin "is a person who kills journalists, political opponents and invades countries," to which Trump responded, silencing Scarborough, "he's running his country, and at least he's a leader, unlike what we have in our country."

As FT reports, “Argentines woke up on Thursday richer than Poles, Chileans and Hungarians [but] by bedtime they were not only poorer than all three, but also more pecunious than Mexicans, Costa Ricans and the good people of Equatorial Guinea.”

"I don’t mean to make anybody too worried about this stuff, right? ... We can speak less about stuff and pretend like everything’s just always great. It makes me think hey, should we be calling Yellen... and saying, let us tell you what we are seeing."

On Wednesday, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations said the agency has no evidence the married couple accused of killing 14 people in San Bernardino, California earlier this month had any connection to an active terror cell. This admission from the FBI directly contradicts media reports that immediately claimed the San Bernardino shooters were linked to Daesh (ISIS) via social media.

As Spiegel reports, an ISIS turncoat now in German custody says that "during his time in the Syrian warzone, he frequently heard people talking about attacks in the West and says that pretty much every European jihadist was approached with the same questions he had been asked." "They want something that happens everywhere at the same time."

The Fed pricked the financial bubblethis week as expected. Janet Yellen’s press conference couldn’t have been more perfect as it confirmed that the money printers have come to a stark dead end. The fact is, the global economy is deflating rapidly and the U.S. is sliding into recession. But our Fed chairman is clueless about what’s happening. She and her posse of money printers are going to get bushwhacked by reality in the year ahead.

When the 'Land of the Rising Sun' jumps into the abyss...