ETC

A major bear market truly has started, and we're going to see the fraud from the past six years unwind in a glorious, albeit inconsistent, fashion.

Justice in America is not all it’s cracked up to be. On paper, you may be innocent until proven guilty, but in actuality, you’ve already been tried, found guilty and convicted by police officers, prosecutors and judges long before you ever appear in a courtroom. Chronic injustice has turned the American dream into a nightmare.

What if Syriza were not just a particularly fluffy breed of miniature Europoodle but actual honest-to-goodness revolutionaries, ready to do whatever it takes? How would they act differently? And what would be the result? Given that the price is so high, perhaps it would be better after all if we just sat quietly, allowed the rich get richer as the poor get poorer, watched listlessly as the environment got completely destroyed by capitalist industrialists in blind pursuit of profit, and eventually curled up, kissed our sweet asses good-bye and died? Good luck selling that idea to young radicalized hotheads who have nothing to lose - except maybe you, if you happen to stand in their way as they change the world!

Greece. China. Banking system messes. Central bank printing. And here we are, under $1140. Breakdown?

That cannot be determined from price charts. We want to know the fundamentals of supply and demand. Here's how we measure it.

What both Wall Street in general as well as the Federal Reserve has wrought is a market so adulterated, so anemic, and so mistrusted the euphemistic “money on the sidelines” has more in common with nursery rhymes than it does with anything reality based. There is no money on the sidelines. Nobody wants “in” to this market. Anyone with half a brain and a modicum of common sense wants out – and the outflow numbers show it still to be true.

French President Francois Hollande said that the 19 countries using the euro need their own government complete with a budget and parliament to cooperate better and overcome the Greek crisis. “Circumstances are leading us to accelerate,” Hollande said in an opinion piece published by the Journal du Dimanche on Sunday. “What threatens us is not too much Europe, but a lack of it.”... Countries in favor of more integration should move ahead, forming an “avant-garde,” Hollande said.

The ongoing downshift in property construction will continue to undercut China's demand for commodities, raw materials and machinery, weigh on property as well as mining and industrial investment, and be a drag for overall GDP growth in 2016. The most direct and important channel through which this impact spreads is trade linkages, given China's role as the top exporter and second largest importer in the world.

This contrarian play could be one of the most potent and profitable strategies in years.

Now that even the IMF has admitted Greece has an unsustainable debt problem with a debt-to-GDP ratio which will soon cross 200% after its third bailout (even if it leaves open the question what the IMF thinks about Japan's debt "sustainability") we wonder what the IMF thinks when looking at Greece's net government liabilities, which as SocGen's Albert Edwards reminds us are rapidly approaching 1000%. Which incidentally means that Greece is only marginally better than the USA, whose comparable net liability is a little over 500%, while its other nearest comparable is none other than France, whose next president may will be "Madame Frexit" and whose biggest headache will be how to resolve government promises to creditors and retirees that are five times greater than the country's GDP.

The trick is to borrow as much as you can and leverage it to the hilt, and buy, buy, buy.

Our boots-on-the-ground coverage from the Greek 'frontline': what do normal Greek citizens think of all this mess?

With Puerto Rico missing a payment on a bond overnight "due to non-appropriation of funds" but denying that this constitutes anything close to a default, the territory may be about to retake the limelight as Greece is now "fixed." As Peter Schiff explains, this is far from over... As in Greece, the Puerto Rican economy has been destroyed by its participation in an unrealistic monetary system that it does not control and the failure of domestic politicians to confront their own insolvency. But the damage done to the Puerto Rican economy by the United States has been far more debilitating than whatever damage the European Union has inflicted on Greece. In fact, the lessons we should be learning in Puerto Rico, most notably how socialistic labor and tax policies can devastate an economy, should serve as a wake up call to those advocating prescribing the same for the mainland. 

"The European Central Bank has introduced secret credit lines to Bulgaria and Romania as part of a broader effort to convince foreign regulators not to pull the plug on the local subsidiaries of Greek banks," FT reports.

Younger generations are highly susceptible to social trends and are often easily manipulated by popular culture and academic authority, which is why we are seeing PC cultism explode with the millennials and post-millennials.  The result is a vast division within American society that cannot be mended. Those of us on the side of liberty are so different in our philosophies and solutions to social Marxists that there can be no compromise.  The whole carnival can end only one way: a fight. And perhaps this is exactly what the elites want: left against right, black against white, gay against religious and straight, etc. As long as the PC movement continues to unwittingly do the bidding of power brokers in their efforts toward the destruction of individual liberty, we see no other alternative but utter conflict.