Archive - Mar 30, 2015 - Story

"Now a legal quirk could bring a surreal ending to... foreclosure cases around the country: [borrowers] may get to keep their homes without ever having to pay another dime."

The exuberance of illiterate Chinese citizens knows no bounds as Shanghai Composite surges once again to record-er highs (now up over 15% in March alone) with some modest give back off the highs of the day. Japanese stocks on the other hand have folded like a cheap lawn-chair, giving up all their US session gains and down over 200 points from the US cash close. A similar pattern is seen in crude oil which has retraced most of the idiotic NYMEX close ramp.

Like many of our prevailing social constructs, this education system is on the way out...

Did Reuters fabricate a key part of its story about the downing of flight MH-17 in which the media outlet revealed "new evidence on downing of Malaysian plane over Ukraine." According to the main witness Reuters supposedly interviewed, the answer is yes: “When we talked about the Boeing on camera, I explained everything as I saw it. The things that I allegedly said off-camera, all this nonsense, was made up by the journalist himself. It's all lies, because off-camera, we never discussed the Boeing, and just spoke about life, about the current situation, so to speak.”

By taking money from American taxpayers to support economically weak and oftentimes corrupt governments, the IMF distorts the market, enriches corrupt governments, and harms both the American taxpayer and the residents of the counties receiving IMF "aid." It is past time to end the IMF along with all instruments of American interventionist foreign policy.

In what FT correctly notes is the "biggest coup yet for China," Tokyo looks set to break ranks with Washington and join the China-led AIIB.

The TSA has issued a set of guidelines that, if interpreted correctly, will assist in the identification of terrorists. Do you fit the description?

This is one of those sad times when The Onion realizes it has badly, and permanently, missed its IPO window.

A number of economists have proposed the implementation of what has been dubbed "QE for the people." They seem to prefer to apply the principle "When in trouble, double." Given the massive mistakes which were made by central banks from Weimar to Bernanke and the relentless attempts to use the printing press to finance governments, it probably shouldn't take much to convince people of alternatives, and not more of the same, right?

So is this why Xi and Putin are pissed?

The models we use for decision making determine the outcomes we experience. So, if our models are faulty or flawed, we make bad decisions and suffer bad outcomes. How broken are they? Steve Keen explains...

Forget Pyrrhic victories, the more Greek tongues that wag, the clearer it becomes that no one appears to have a clue what is going on. The contradictory tone from various Syriza members has allowed the opposition to sit quietly by (with the odd jab from Samaras) and watch the collapse unfold. The more threats and promises Tsipras makes, the more cornered he becomes as cash outflows accelerate and cash demands loom. It appears all over bar the printing as both sides are now just posturing for who bears the blame for the ultimat exit, as one wit noted, "once you remove walking away from a deal as an option, you are no longer negotiating."

When it comes to our current pre-war, pre-revolutionary world (in Paul Tudor Jones' words) there are two social classes which are jockeying for the post positioning when it all comes crashing down: the Ultra High Net Worth, i.e., the 0.01%, those 211,275 individuals (and their families) who have a net worth over $30 million and who collectively control $30 trillion in wealth, and everyone else, with the countdown to extinction for the global middle class now getting louder by the day, leaving a world of a handful of uber-wealthy oligarchs and billions of, well, others. And nowhere is this distinction more vivid than when looking at their residential real estate holdings. But while the real estate of the 99.99% is boring (and increasingly in the form of rentals), when it comes to the dwellings of the 0.01% things get exciting, and are the topic of the latest joint report between Wealth-X and Sotheby's whose findings we summarize below.

Creating even more money will not help the situation, only exacerbate it. Hyperinflation is a cancer that lurks in our monetary structure. Time to surgically remove it before it metastasizes.

As Goldman notes, the driver behind the recent modest rise in real weekly earnings: lowflation - is the wrong recipe for wage growth...