Archive - Sep 28, 2014 - Story

If you can't beat it, may as well bid it. That, at least, is the take home lesson to Nanex' Eric Hunsader who says that after listening to the "Goldman Tapes" I'm putting everything in GS - because these guys can do whatever the hell they want"...

"I should be clear that market peaks often go through several months of top formation, so the near-term remains uncertain. Still, it has become urgent for investors to carefully examine all risk exposures. When extreme valuations on historically reliable measures, lopsided bullishness, and compressed risk premiums are joined by deteriorating market internals, widening credit spreads, and a breakdown in trend uniformity, it’s advisable to make certain that the long position you have is the long position you want over the remainder of the market cycle. As conditions stand, we currently observe the ingredients of a market crash." - John Hussman

When one of the most watched German channels - south German state TV channel ZDF - releases an 8+ minute satirical spoof of all the fabricated "news" surrounding the Ukraine "ïnvasion" by Russia and all the associated newsflow from the region (in which "any similarity to the current news is unintended and accidental, but absolutely inevitable"), you know that the time has come to double down on the propaganda effort because if ground zero of media indoctrination, Germany, is starting to see through the fog of endless media BS, then how long until the rest of the world follows?

In May, the USDA's Office of Inspector General filed a request for these weapons. But why exactly do they need them? According to a USDA press rep, the guns are necessary for self-protection. “OIG Special Agents regularly conduct undercover operations and surveillance. The types of investigations conducted by OIG Special Agents include criminal activities such as fraud in farm programs; significant thefts of Government property or funds; bribery and extortion; smuggling; and assaults and threats of violence against USDA employees engaged in their official duties,” wrote a USDA spokesperson. Those seem like legitimate enforcement activities, but still: submachine guns?

With no more “free money” pouring in from the Fed. for “investors” to slap around anywhere and everywhere in the hopes of something sticking. They’re going to do what anyone would do. Buy Nothing – Sell Anything and everything that isn’t making real money. For they are well aware their bankers or margin clerks – don’t accept “likes” as legal tender for deposits in their accounts either. One last thing: If you think all this “worry” stuff is just nonsense. Let me leave you with this one line… Yahoo™ just announced it’s interested in AOL™. Feel better now?

The €64K question is whether the hand off from the Fed to the ECB and BOJ will be smooth enough to avoid a stock market crash between now and the end of 2016. Everything else is semantics

"Behind our democracy lurks a powerful but unaccountable network of people who wield massive power and reap huge profits in the process. In exposing this shadowy and complex system that dominates our lives, Owen Jones sets out on a journey into the heart of our Establishment, from the lobbies of Westminster to the newsrooms, boardrooms and trading rooms of Fleet Street and the City. Exposing the revolving doors that link these worlds, and the vested interests that bind them together, Jones shows how, in claiming to work on our behalf, the people at the top are doing precisely the opposite. In fact, they represent the biggest threat to our democracy today - and it is time they were challenged."

"The Markets Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York manages the size and composition of the Federal Reserve System’s balance sheet consistent with the directives and the authorization of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), supports debt issuance and debt management on behalf of the U.S. Treasury, provides foreign exchange services to the U.S. Treasury and provides account services to foreign central banks, international agencies and U.S. government agencies. Markets Group is establishing a presence at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and has openings for both experienced professionals and recent graduates.

When a member of the black community was shot by a local Ferguson cop on August 9, under circumstances still undetermined, it led to several weeks of angry rioting by the largely impoverished population of this St. Louis suburb, not to mention broad popular outcry against the tactics employed by the Ferguson PD and wholesale punditry taking over primetime TV for hours on end. Fast forward several weeks when last night, Reuters reports, a police officer from the "strife-hit Missouri city of Ferguson was shot and authorities are still searching for the shooter, law enforcement officials said."

Can market forces prevail in the Eurozone? With another round of central bank intervention coming four plus years after the start of the Eurozone debt crisis, this is a question worth considering, at a time when the Southern Eurozone members - Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal, which collectively account for over 30% of the GDP of the early adopters of the Euro as a whole – continue to struggle. This is a complex topic for sure, but a simple economic indicator can be used to help frame the situation.

Yesterday we reported that the biggest riot over the weekend was not in Ferguson (although things there are hardly stable after a local police officer was shot in the violent town overnight) but in Hong Kong, where students and other mostly young people are protesting the recent loss of their democratic vote powers and thus "the loss of their freedom." Since then things have gotten from bad to worse when late last night Hong Kong declared the start of the Occupy Central disobedience campaign, leading to violent skirmishes with the police, which over the past hour have included the use of tear gas by the police as well as the first outright warning by the cops demanding that the student protesters disperse or risk being fired upon.