Archive - Dec 2015

• Win or Lose, Trump Has Already Left His Mark on Republican Primary (BBG)
• S&P 500 Futures Rise With Miners; Oil Erases Gains, Euro Drops (BBG)
• U.S. top court divided over affirmative action in college admissions (Reuters)
• San Bernardino Shooter Said to Have Planned an Attack in 2012 (WSJ)
• Gun buyer and gunman linked through marriage, previous plot (AP)

The Fed & ECB are spawning the next crisis....

After yesterday's rollercoaster session in both the S&P and in oil, where initially stocks soared alongside oil, only to promptly tumble as stops were taken out and as the refiners' inventory strategy was exposed after the DOE's latest weekly numbers were released, it has been a quieter session so far, though maybe not for China where stocks jumped at the open only to fizzle and close at the lows in what appears to be ever less intervention by the market manipulating "National Team."

For the 5th day in a row, Onshore Yuan has tumbled against the USDollar. Absent the violent devaluation in August, this is the largest drop since March 2014, leaving the Chinese currency at its weakest level against the USD since August 2011. It appears that after showing some signs of 'stability' to appease The IMF's political decision, and following the weak trade data this week, China has decided to escalate the currency wars, perhaps in anticipation of (or in an attempt to stall) any market turbulence when The Fed hikes rates next week and withdraws up to $800bn in liquidity from global markets.

The U.S. is now experiencing the next stage of the great reset. Two pillars were put in place on top of an already existing pillar by the central banks in order to maintain a semblance of stability after the 2008 crash.  This faux stability appears to have been necessary in order to allow time for the conditioning of the masses towards greater acceptance of globalist initiatives, to ensure the debt slavery of future generations through the taxation of government generated long term debts, and to allow for internationalists to safely position their own assets.  The three pillars are now being systematically removed by the same central bankers. Why? They are simply ready to carry on with the next stage of the controlled demolition of the American structure as we know it.

At the peak of the craziness of the last cycle, banks took to protecting themselves by buying (credit) protection on other banks as a 'hedge' for systemic risk (which instead exacerbated contagion concerns and was never going to payoff anyway given the systemic - counterparty - collapse required to trigger it). Fast forward 8 years and it appears once again, as Bloomberg reports, that banks are buying (equity) protection in order to hedge the stress-test downside scenarios enforced by The Fed.

We are at a critical crossroads in American history, and we have a choice: freedom or fascism. Let’s hope the American people make the right choice while we still have the freedom to choose.

The IMF has now been drawn into the U.S. Cold War orbit. On Tuesday it made a radical decision to dismantle the condition that had integrated the global financial system for the past half century... By doing so, it announced its new policy: “We only enforce debts owed in US dollars to US allies.”

Making preposterous and outrageous proposals hardly disqualifies you for the White House. In fact, some of our “best” presidents – at least, according to historians and the public – were those who did the looniest things... things that were completely at odds with the Constitution, the spirit of liberty, and their own policy goals.

Americans have long lived in a nation made up primarily of middle-class families, neither rich nor poor, but comfortable enough, notes NPR's Marilyn Geewax, but this year - for the first time in US history, that changed. A new analysis of government data shows that as of 2015, middle-income households have become the minority, extending a multi-decade decline that confirms the hollowing out of society as 49% of all Americans now live in a home that receives money from the government each month. Sadly, the trends that are destroying the middle class in America just continue to accelerate.

With Turkey and Iraq still at odds over the former's deployment of between 150 and 300 troops along with two dozen tanks to Bashiqa, Russia told the Security Council on Tuesday that Ankara is acting "recklessly and inexplicably." Of course Moscow has a powerful friend among the five permanent members and on Wdnesday, Beijing weighed in on the Turkish troop issue for the first time.

When Australia released its October jobs data a month ago (printing an astonishing 58k increase - almost 6 times expectations of a 10k increase), the media threw up all over the farce of the best jobs gain in 3 years (amid commodity price collapses, mining industry bankruptcy fears, and China trade implosions) saying simply "don't believe the jobs figure for October." So we cannot wait to see what the men from downunder make of November's print. With expectations of a 10k drop, Australia added a mind-numbing 71,400 jobs - the most in 15 years!! This is equivalent to the US adding almost 1.75 million jobs in 2 months... They just don't care anymore!

"We are living amid an Islamic threat and we should be aware of the consequences. Our country, as well as other European countries, is at war – both outside our borders, in Syria for instance, and inside our borders, because our enemies live in our own country”

Economists have put together models of how an economy works, but these models were developed years ago, when the world economy was far from limits. These models may have been reasonably adequate when they were developed, but there is increasing evidence that they don’t work in an economy that is reaching limits.