B+

Moments ago, the in a 241-185 vote, the House passed passed H.R. 3189, aka  Fed Oversight Reform and Modernization Act. The bill would make changes to how the Fed conducts monetary policy and regulatory activities and would direct the Fed to take a rules-based approach to interest rate decisions; require audits of more Fed functions such as monetary policy; and place restrictions on its emergency lending powers. In other words, everything that the banks that are direct and indirect stakeholders in the Fed would fight to the death to prevent.

Even if nothing else doomed the status quo, the widening gap between household incomes and costs will push the corrupt contraption over the cliff by itself. The status quo (whatever you wish to call it) requires "growth" to sustain itself--growth in consumption, spending, sales, debt, asset valuations, profits and of course taxes, and ultimately all of those "growths" depend on household incomes. Incomes even for the most highly educated workers are stagnating..

While await a full blown European version of the Patriot Act, we can say that the second part of the forecast just came true, because this morning The European Commission announced it had adopted a package of measures to strengthen control of firearms across the European Union and meant simply to make it "difficult to acquire firearms."

Charlie Sheen’s announcement that he is HIV positive has created a huge uproar as critics attack him from every direction, but the truth is that Charlie Sheen is simply a reflection of our society as a whole.  You see, the truth is that it isn’t just big Hollywood stars that are engaged in risky sexual behavior.  According to the CDC, there are 110 million cases of sexually-transmitted disease in America today, and another 20 million STD cases are added to that total every year.  The United States has the highest STD infection rate in the entire industrialized world, and more than half of all Americans will have a sexually-transmitted disease at some point during their lives..."the increases are quite alarming." 

Sure, the stock market had a great October with the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumping by 8.5%, but the disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street is too stark to ignore, and the Federal Reserve is about to pop the easy-money financial bubble.

The just concluded 13-F bonanza shows that "some of the world’s top hedge fund managers scaled back their U.S. stock investments last quarter as markets tumbled." Below, courtesy of Bloomberg, is the full summary of what the most prominent hedge fund names did in Q3...

As the third day after the Paris attacks dawns, and hours after France launched an unprecedented blitz airstrike on the Islamic State "capital" of Raqqa (located in the sovereign state of Syria), here are the latest developments following the worst European terrorist attack in the past decade.

"Do not intervene yourself.."

USA! USA! USA! Exceptional America is #1 once again... oh wait!

In very raw terms, if a man wanted to buy a house and a car in 1975 he had to work just under five years to pay for them.

If he wants a house and a car today, he has to work almost 11 years...

The world of Bubble Finance economies created by the Fed and other central banks is fundamentally different than that prevailing under the “Lite Touch” monetary policies which preceded the Greenspan era. The problem today is that the PhDs running the Fed have an economic model which is a relic of the Lite Touch era. It is not only utterly irrelevant in today’s casino driven system, but is actually tantamount to a blindfold. It causes them to look at a dashboard full of lagging indicators like jobs and GDP components, while ignoring the explosive leading indicators starring them in the face on CNBC. The clueless inhabitants of the Eccles Building do not recognize that they have created a world in which Wall Street supersedes main street.

With the crude market on tenterhooks since API reported a huge surge in inventories (especially at Cushing), DOE reported a considerable 4.2mm barrel build (less than API's 6.3mm) but way above analyst expectations of a modest draw (7th week in a row). Cushing saw a very significant 2.24mm barrel build (API 2.5mm). Crude Production also rose near 3mo highs, putting firther pressure on crude prices which are whipsawing wildly on this data...

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse - amid supply gluts, production surges, market share scrambles, and demand disappointment - it does. OPEC this morning confirmed not only no change in the already weak global demand picture but the current oil inventrory surplus is the largest in at least a decade. This has driven WTI prices down close to a $41 handle this morning (from over $48 a week ago) as simply put, there's too much oil and OPEC's grand strategy for solving this imbalance - pray for a colder winter...

Social Security has long been sold to the public on the notion that what a worker will receive back is what he or she pays into the system. For decades, however, the government has been changing the terms of this "agreement" as part of an effort to avoid outright default, hiding it, instead, with a long, slow method of piecemeal default.

Watching Hilary Clinton debate Bernie Sanders- or like lastnight, Jeb Bush against Donald Trump - doesn’t strike us as too different from when Hulk Hogan faced off against Andre the Giant in Wrestlemania. In fact, it’s essentially the same with elections today, it's "political entertainment." It’s all fake. It’s sound bites, jabs and jibes, and pointless banter completely devoid of any real substance. But the truth is, none of it really matters, the United States objectively speaking is far past the point of no return.