Archive - Dec 12, 2015 - Story

What stinks in Saudi Arabia ain’t the camel dung. It’s the monarchy of King Salman and his hot-headed son, Prince Salman. For decades they have financed terrorism under a fake religious disguise, to advance their private plutocratic agenda. It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with money and oil. Saudi control of that oil wealth (from Iraq to Syria) via their ISIS agents, along with her clear plan to take out the US shale oil competition, or so Riyadh reckons, would make the Saudi monarchy a vastly richer state.

The build-up in credit or leverage in many Emerging Market economies has been an important focus for EM investors given historical episodes of credit crunches and subsequent growth slowdowns. While broadly speaking, EM stocks began to drastically underperform DM stocks at the start of QE3, Goldman summarizes in a heat map, the EM nations with greatest potential for the upcoming Fed liftoff to cause a major disruption.

Can the third great bubble of this century survive a Fed that finally wants to get off the zero bound after its way too late, but can’t do it anyway without a massive crash inducing cash drain from Wall Street? And in the teeth of the next recession to boot? Yes, the end of the bubble does begin on December 16th.

As goes the South African Rand, so goes The World?

Calling for a moratorium on Muslim immigration “until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” Donald Trump this week ignited a firestorm of historic proportions. As all the old hate words - xenophobe, racist, bigot - have lost their electric charge from overuse, and Trump was being called a fascist demagogue and compared to Hitler and Mussolini. Why the hysteria? Comes the reply: Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration tramples all over “American values” and everything we stand for, including the Constitution. But is this really true? In fact, is this move a well thought out cunning plan?

Meet 'The Gold Armed Police' - China's special army unit dedicated to acquiring and protecting the nation's precious metals.

Since 1929, there have been only eight such instances, and each one was followed by bear market losses of 30% or more...

At one time, the United States had the most vibrant middle class the world had ever seen. We were the envy of the rest of the planet, and people all over the world wanted to come here and live out “the American Dream”. Unfortunately, “the American Dream” is now dying, and most Americans don’t seem to care. Politicians of all stripes are saying the exact same thing during this election season... Sadly, when we send these politicians to Washington D.C. they just continue on with business as usual. No matter who resides in the White House and no matter who controls Congress, the game remains the same and the middle class just continues to suffer.

Elections are misunderstood. On the surface they are contests between zombies and cronies. The zombies (leftists, socialists, Democrats) want lots of little handouts. The cronies (rightists, Wall Streeters, Republicans) want fewer but bigger ones. All the loot comes from the voters – who willingly give up both their money and their liberty believing that, somehow, they are better off for it. But the real winner is the Deep State. It usually controls the candidates... and continues to gain power and resources, no matter which side wins. But the Deep State is not immune to setbacks.

"Mission Accomplished?" Amid failure after failure for President Obama's 'legacy' policies, Americans can rest assured that the "historic" signing of today's climate accord will be spun in its most positive, "see, I saved the world from its greatest threat" awesomeness, despite, as we detailed earlier, the utter farce of it all.

The spread of extremist Islamist ideology is as much a result of Western foreign policy as of Saudi machinations. It is no coincidence that ISIS is adopting Saudi religious textbooks in its schools, killing Shia in Saudi Arabia just like the early Wahhabi zealots wanted to, and generally garnering much support on a popular level in the kingdom.

Can GOP Establishment dreams come true... after all it's nearly Christmas...