Archive - Oct 2015 - Story

According to multiple reports, the Obama administration is set to send dozens of "military advisers" to Syria. They will serve in an "advise and assist" role in the effort to rout ISIS. Cutting through the obfuscation: Washington needs to figure out how to salvage its strategy in Syria - and fast. Make no mistake, this will be a disaster...

To believe this isn’t a bubble is to believe that all of the hot momo money from insti’s, high/biotech, flipper, flappers, fraudsters, and foreigners buying houses is fundamental and here to stay, which is exactly what everybody thought in 2006. Or, to believe that interest rates will keep falling 1% per year going forward, which would lend an element of support to prices.

The last time S&P 500 rallied at such a pace (from an extreme of oversoldness) and reached such an extreme level of overboughtness, things went south rather quickly...

Having crushed all in front of them to win The World Cup, the US women's football soccer team met with President Obama at The White House this week who just could not resist but pose for another selfie... adding that "this team taught all of America's children that 'playing like a girl' means you're a badass."

"His name is perhaps the strongest example of those who support anything that weakens nation states, they support everything that changes the traditional European lifestyle. These activists who support immigrants inadvertently become part of this international human-smuggling network."

Nearly a year after CNBC said it would no longer rely on Nielsen to measure its daytime audience (due to the collapse in viewership we had previously profiled), it has managed to do it again, only this time slamming not the financial cheerleading cable network but its Comcast affiliate, NBC News, whom its just cost hundreds of millions in advertising revenues after moments ago Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus announced he was suspending the partnership with NBC News for the Republican primary debate at the University of Houston on February 26, 2016.

With inventories building, production limping lower, and prices tumbling (and spiking), Baker Hughes reported a 12 rig drop in the total rig count to 775 rigs (the 10th week without a rise in total rig count). However, the oil rig count tumbled 16 to 578, the 2nd biggest weekly decline in 6 months to its lowest since June 2010.

Having lost an estimated $1.7 billion in his Valeant 'investment' Bill Ackman's almost-four-hour press conference this morning has done nothing to save the stock after yesterday's endless-whammies.  Having bounced up near $110 at the start of the call, VRX is now trading back near the after-hours lows last night, back under $100, after Citron Research warned Valeant is "dirtier than anyone has reported."

Investors are aware that the market is manipulated... and it doesn’t seem to worry them. They don’t fight the Fed; they sit down at the table with it. They play the game. And so far, they have done well. But now... She will signal that, soon, the central bank will begin the long return to “normalcy.” Don’t believe it. The entire system depends on abnormality.

It appears President Obama, not wanting to provide every alternative-media site with a perfect 'compare and contrast' from September 2014's "putting U.S. troops on the ground would be a profound mistake,"  has handed the responsibility for announcing American "boots on the ground" in Syria to his Press Secretary. "If you like your boots on the ground, well, you can keep them.. in Syria."

10-year Puerto Rico general obligation bond yields spiked to 12.3% - the highest on record - as the island’s Government Development Bank's $354 million of principal and interest due on December 1st looms. Puerto Rico is now 450bps 'riskier' than Greece, which means Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was wrong again in not taking the German FinMin's offer in July to swap Puerto Rico for Greece...

Buy high, sell low. The definition of stupid.

For America to come home and untangle itself from the Imperial Project, it will have to do more than not meddle in everyone else's affairs; it will have to learn to live within its means--what it earns from producing goods and services, not what it skims from global financialization.

Even though Chevron said in July that its cost-cutting initiatives would be "completed by mid-November of 2015" it decided to surprise everyone moments ago when on its earnings call it announced it would not only slash its capex by another 25%, but will shortly distribute another 7,000 pink slips. The reason: another terrible quarter in which the $2 billion in earnings were a 73% plunge from a year earlier.