ETC

"Increasingly concerned about the markets, I’ve taken more aggressive action than in 2007, the last time I soured on the equity markets. Let me explain why and what I’m doing to try to profit from what may lie ahead."

In this perfection of consumerist narcissism, the only goal is maximizing private gain by whatever means are available. Clinton solidified the modern presidency's narcissistic obsession with public approval (the political equivalent of "likes" on Facebook) and the exploitation of that popularity for maximum self-enrichment.

Another weekend of glad-handing and Sunday talk-shows and still The Donald dominates the GOP Presidential nominee race. With all eyes firmly glued on this week's debate, Trump had a few choice words for those who attended the Koch brothers' biannual conference (which he was not invited to), tweeting "I wish good luck to all the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money etc. from the Koch Brothers... Puppets?" As WSJ reports, Mr. Trump poses a more delicate short-term challenge for the GOP, thanks to high name recognition, celebrity appeal and a populist message that taps a powerful anti-Washington vein.  "I don’t think you should underestimate how frustrated people are," Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said Sunday during a lunch at the Koch gathering. "Mr. Trump has tapped into some of that."

We have lived through a credit hyper-expansion for the record books, with an unprecedented generation of excess claims to underlying real wealth. In doing so we have created the largest financial departure from reality in human history. Bubbles are not new – humanity has experienced them periodically going all the way back to antiquity – but the novel aspect of this one, apart from its scale, is its occurrence at a point when we have reached or are reaching so many limits on a global scale. The retrenchment we are about to experience as this bubble bursts is also set to be unprecedented, given that the scale of a bust is predictably proportionate to the scale of the excesses during the boom that precedes it. Deflation and depression are mutually reinforcing, meaning the downward spiral will continue for many years. China is the biggest domino about to fall, and from a great height as well, threatening to flatten everything in its path on the way down. This is the beginning of a New World Disorder…

Both bubbles (rents and housing) are vulnerable to popping. The real test of valuation is: what's it worth in a recession, after all the easy money and the jobs that depended on easy money have vanished?

"This was nothing but a coup. In 1967 there were the tanks and in 2015 there were the banks. But the result is the same in the sense of having overthrown the Government or having forced it to overthrow itself."

Back in the 1960s, Alan Greenspan wrote a well-known essay that to this day is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand the present-day monetary and economic system (which is a kind of “fascism lite” type of statism, masquerading as capitalism) and especially the almost visceral hate etatistes harbor toward gold. Greenspan’s essay is entitled “Gold and Economic Freedom”, and as the title already suggests, the two are intimately connected.

Having told Jimmy Kimmel that he "would love to" appoint Sarah Palin to his cabinet, The Washington Post asks (and answers), just what would a trump cabinet look like?

Our monetary politburo is driving the US economy in the wrong direction. That is, toward dis-employment of its true, wealth-creating economic resources - human labor, entrepreneurial talent and market driven gains in economic factor efficiency. Contrary to this week’s self-congratulatory statement, all is not well and its not getting weller.

This erosion of opportunities to complete life's stages and core dramas is rarely recognized, much less addressed. The End of Secure Work and the diminishing returns of financialization are disrupting these core human challenges and frustrating those who are unable to proceed to the next stage of life...

This negative breadth signal has an ominous long-term track record. The 59 occurrences all took place in 4 distinct periods, though most of them happened within 2 clusters: August 1972 (13), November 1999-March 2000 (44), September 2007 (1), July 2015 (1)

Authorities pushing currency devaluation as a cure for their stagnating economies might want to study Frederic Bastiat's insight into the eventual cost and consequences: "For it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa.”

Having gazed ominously at the extreme monetary policy smoke-and-mirrors intervention in bond markets, and previously explained that "the stock market is to important to leave to the vagaries of an actual market." While the rest of the world's central banks' direct (BoJ) and indirect (Fed, ECB) manipulation of equity markets, nobody bats an eyelid; but when PBOC steps on market volatility's throat (like a bull in a China bear store), people start complaining... finally. There is no difference - none! And no lesser Asian expert than Stephen Roach warns that we should be afraid, very afraid as he states, the great irony of manipulation, he explains, is that "the more we depend on markets, the less we trust them."

"A global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. Unlike nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators and warlords."

Recently, the US Supreme Court ruled that employers have a duty to protect workers invested in their 401(k) plans from mutual funds that perform poorly or are too expensive. By passing this ruling, the US government has the power to seize private pension funds “to protect pensioners”. It also has the authority to dictate how funds may be invested. The way is now paved for the requirement that 401(k)s be invested heavily in US Treasuries.