Archive - Nov 2015 - Story

D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier is an outspoken proponent of gun control (in a district which already has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation). So, when asked by 60 Minutes how people should respond to being near an active gunman, Lanier's response was bemusing as The Washington Times reports, saying that the "best option for saving lives before police can get there" would be for citizens to try to subdue, or even kill, the gunman.

It's the kind of business plan that would be laughed out of a business school classroom. "The co-ops were essentially amateur exercises." Why not scrap the perverse ACA regulations and admit it was a pipe dream to ever assume young, healthy people could be coerced into paying several times their expected costs to cover other people’s excessive spending.

“China has for decades proudly proclaimed its lack of military facilities on foreign soil, so seeking long-term military access at a quasi-base level is a massive about-face… China is poised to cross the Rubicon.”

They are among us, appears to the message being delivered to America this Thanksgiving holiday. As Fox News reports, elite FBI teams are tracking at least 48 "high-risk" ISIS suspects within the U.S., as Republican Senator Dan Coats, who is on the Select Committee on Intelligence, said "there is a very significant number of people that are on suspicious watch lists, under surveillance... it's almost overwhelming."

The fundamental fact is that the current financial and economic paradigm, characterized by heavy handed Federal Reserve intervention into credit markets, is dying.  Debt based stimulus is both sustaining and killing the economy at the same time.

While the deployment of the Russian SAM missiles was already known, the real message from today's presser, the one that will be the topic of a private and "serious talk with Russia's US partners", is that Putin indirectly blames Obama for what happened on Tuesday realizing that Erdogan was merely the "executor", one who is simply motivated to protect his (and his son's) Islamic State oil routes.

Banana Republic 101: when the despotic president of a corrupt regime is faced with facts exposing his lllegal activity, what does he do? He arrests and journalists who discovered said facts, and demands they spend the rest of their lives behind bars. Welcome to Turkey.

As Europe's democratically elected leaders (and the people they represent) grow increasingly wary of the tsunami of refugees flooding their nations, prompting calls for restrictions on visa-free travel and an end to the so-called Schengen agreement, unelected EU leaders, clinging to their centralized power, are increasingly warning of the consequences of any restrictions. As EUObserver reports, EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker warned that the euro is pointless if people can't move around freely to use it.

With over 1.6 million internally displaced in South Sudan, and another 600,000 refugees in neighboring countries, are oil price declines exacerbating humanitarian crises in oil-producing African countries, and can we expect further deterioration as a result of the recent price depression?

With the world closest to World War 3 since the cold war era and Russia about to unleash escalating sanctions of Turkey, it makes perfect sense that 'investors' would want to purge themselves of precious metals. Someone decided that Friday after Thanksgiving would be the perfect time to dump over 18,000 contracts (around $1.9 billion notional) sending the price of gold futures to their lowest since Oct 2010, below what Goldman called a "crucial level."

Having announced in two brief tweets on Thanksgiving - just as we warned was very possible - that he would pull his shares from being available-to-lend, Martin Shrekli has sent the meteoric Volkswagen-like trajectory of KaleBios vertical once again. With short-interest having surged to 49% (from 5.6%), the yanking of his loanable shares has sent KBIO up 65% in the pre-market, back above $45 (from just 45c 10 days ago).

From witch hunts to corporate defaults to abysmal data, Friday marked a rather unceremonious end to the week for China, as a veritable perfect storm of bad news sent the SHCOMP reeling. Unfortunately for China's day trading masses the plunge protection team was, like Guotai Junan International Holdings’ CEO Yim Fung, "missing" in action.

• Russia Takes Aim at Turkish Economy Amid Fighter-Jet Spat (WSJ)
• ‘Commercial scale’ oil smuggling into Turkey becomes priority target of anti-ISIS strikes (RT)
• Russia-Turkey Ties Are Headed Into a Deep Freeze (WSJ)
• France signals softer stance on Assad after Russia talks (FT)
• China Calm Shattered as Brokerage Probe Sparks Selloff in Stocks (BBG)
• China Stock Bulls Hit Breaking Point as State Dials Back Support (BBG)
• China's Bond Stresses Mount as Two More Companies Flag Concerns (BBG)

After several months of artificial, centrally-planned calm in Chinese markets, where "malicious sellers" found out the hard way the Politburo means business, overnight the relative quiet in Chinese stocks since August broke with a bang when the Shanghai Composite tumbled as much 6.1% before closing down 5.5%, the biggest drop in three months and the largest weekly loss since the depth of the Chinese rout in mid-August while a gauge of Chinese volatility surged from the lowest level since March.