Archive - Nov 16, 2015 - Story

It turns out that “terrorist” was originally a term used to describe the government officials who created and executed these oppressive tactics under the guise of keeping people safe from their enemies. Governments have a dangerous tendency to never let a serious crisis go to waste.

If the Fed raises the short-term interest rates next month, it will do so only as a token. And it will continue doing so only as long as it has no negative effect on asset prices. Higher rates, in other words, will only happen as long as – and only insofar as – they are irrelevant. Should higher rates begin to do the work of tightening credit, as they are supposed to, the Fed will back off and fly to the aid of Wall Street and fellow bankers coast to coast. They have rigged the system to function on fraudulently low interest rates; now the fraud has gotten into its bones. The economy – especially the Wall Street economy – depends on cheap money. It will fall in a heap without it.

With a person shot every 3 hours and murdered every 17 hours, perhaps - just perhaps - there is more than just climate change to worry about in Chicago...

Why do they still refuse to believe in the concept of blowback? Is it because the explanation that, “they hate us because we are free,” makes it easier to escalate abroad and crack down at home? It may not be popular to say this as emotions run high and calls ring out for more bombing in the Middle East, but there is another way to address the problem. There is an alternative to using more military intervention to address a problem that was caused by military intervention in the first place.

We're not persuaded that world opinion will ever “make sense” of the Paris attacks. The non-linear rules the day. One thing seems assured: hard-line governments are coming soon. Politically, the West had boundary problems that go way beyond the question of national borders to the core psychology of modern liberalism. When is enough of anything enough? And then, what are you really willing to do about it? The answer lately among the Western societies is to do little and do it slowly. The behavior of college administrators and faculties in the USA these days is emblematic of this cowardly dithering.

The United States still plans to try to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country in the coming year, the State Department said on Monday as the weekend attacks in Paris renewed scrutiny on Syrian migrants. But not just anyone: according to the US State Department, the US will only accept "carefully vetted" Syrian refugees...

Presented with little comment aside to ask WTF?

The allure of ill-gotten oil money remains strong. The lull in drilling has given oil companies more time to scrutinize their operations -- and their losses. As Bloomberg reports, during booms "they are moving at such a rapid pace there’s not a lot of auditing and inventorying going on," said Gary Painter, sheriff in Midland County, Texas, in the oil-rich Permian Basin; but "whenever it slows down, they start looking for stuff and find out it never got delivered or it got delivered and it’s gone." From raw crude sucked from wells to expensive machinery that disappears out the back door, drillers from Texas to Colorado are struggling to stop theft that has only worsened amid tens of thousands of lost roughneck jobs.

Pattern identification...

“If they end up doing nothing to address this budget issue ... Houston could be facing the same problem Chicago is now."

“The correction didn’t really solve a whole lot. You have all the same underlying market fissures in place, yet they will have lasted another six months... the odds are very high that the top was in May. I still think we’re looking at a cyclical bear market.”

Russia’s central bank recently warned about the growing financial risks to the Russian economy from Saudi Arabia encroaching upon its traditional export market for crude oil. Russia sends 70 percent of its oil to Europe, but Saudi Arabia has been making inroads in the European market amid the oil price downturn. The result is a heavier discount for Russia’s crude oil, the so-called Urals blend. Russian officials have accused Saudi Arabia of “dumping” its oil in Europe, a move that Rosneft chief Igor Sechin said would “backfire.”

Harvard officials have stated that "An unconfirmed bomb threat has been received. The Science Ctr, Sever, Emerson, and Thayer Halls are being evacuated." The four buildings are being searched. We expect this process will likely take several hours.

The odds of a December rate hike have slipped in recent days from over 70% intraday to 64.0% today as, while economists remain convinced that rates will rise in December, traders appear a little less confident. One of the most outspoken - having doubted The Fed (and questioned the economy's ability to handle even a 25bps rate hike) since Spring - DoubleLine Capital co-founder Jeffrey Gundlach said on Sunday that the Fed may hesitate to raise rates given rocky economic and financial conditions making it clear, as Reuters reports, "certainly [a Fed] No-Go is more likely than most people think. These markets are falling apart."