ETC

Having dipped and missing by the most on record in April, Markit's US Manufacturing PMI printed 53.8 (against expectations of 54.5). This comes on the heels of weakness in European PMIs (especially Germany - but but but lower EUR... exports, growth, etc...) and Chinese PMIs. This is the lowest US Manufacuring PMI since Jan 2014 (in the middle of the polar vortex). May saw the slowest rise in new orders since Jan 2014 - but the post-weather rebound? - and input costs rrise for the first time in 2015. Markis now carefully noting that "the survey is likely to encourage policymakers to err on the side of caution."

Sentiment towards gold is as bad as we have seen it since the 2003/2004 period. Bitcoin is the more sexy thing. People want to talk about bitcoin and anything with “bit” in the name seems to be doing very well. Whereas gold is very much less sexy ... for now ...

The problems we’re grappling with have been building for more than 40 years. They’re not going to go away overnight, and they certainly will not be resolved by a report that instructs the police to simply adopt different tactics to accomplish the same results - i.e., maintain the government’s power, control and wealth at all costs. This is the sad reality of life in the American police state.

The consequences of economic stagnation are not limited to finance: stagnation is causing a social depression.

We have all read the latest crop of media articles challenging gold’s investment relevance. The typical approach to bearish gold analysis is to attribute hypothetical fears to gold investors, and then point out these concerns have failed to materialize. Sprott believes the investment thesis for gold is a bit more complex than simplistic motivations commonly cited in financial press. We would suggest gold’s relatively methodical advance since the turn of the millennium has had less to do with investor fears of hyperinflation or U.S. dollar collapse than it has with persistent desire to allocate a small portion of global wealth away from traditional financial assets and the fiat currencies in which they are priced.

GDP purports to measure economic activity while largely divorcing itself from the quality, profitability, depth, breadth, improvement, advancement, and rationalization of goods and services provided. Stated alternatively, GDP fails to accurately assess the value of goods and services provided or estimate a society’s standard of living. It is a ruler with irregular hash marks and a clock with erratic ticks. Simply put, GDP is designed to advance the Keynesian agenda... no matter what.

Whenever secret or confidential information or documents are leaked to the press, the first question should always be who leaked it and why. That’s often more important than the contents of what has been leaked. And since there’s been a lot of hullabaloo about a leaked document the past two days, here’s a closer look.

There’s an old saying that “numbers don’t lie.” However, when we apply simple common sense to the way we hear numbers spun across the financial media what doesn’t add up is precisely that: the numbers.

Fraud is endemic in the financial system today. We know that the currency, stock, bond, and even commodity markets have ALL been manipulated by Investment Banks or Central Banks.

The costs and consequences of Greece exiting the Eurozone may well dwarf the financial losses triggered by Greece's default.

The incredible luxury of having a bedroom to yourself is out of reach for all but the very well-paid. Having an apartment to yourself requires serious money.

If you want to know where social Marxism (collectivism) is headed, this is it: the labeling of individualistic philosophies as dangerous thought crimes and tribal communities as time bombs waiting to explode in the face of the wider global village. They desperately hope to conquer the world by dictating not only national boundaries and civil liberties, but the very moral code by which society and individuals function. They wish to bypass natural law with fear, fear that the collective will find you abhorrent and barbaric if you do not believe exactly as they believe. Individualism will one day be the new misogyny.

Real Estate is a highly “illiquid” asset class ‘most of the time’.  It always has been and always will be.  However, some times, such as now - and from 2003 to 2007 as a prime example - when liquidity is flowing like water, Real Estate’s illiquidity is masked.  Speculators can do no wrong.  Simply having access to short-term or mortgage capital to purchase Real Estate guaranties a double-digit return.  This continues until one day, suddenly, it doesn’t; and, the snap-back to the true, historical illiquid nature of the Real Estate sector happens suddenly and is amplified at first. This creates a snowball effect from which both house supply and illiquidity surge at the same time. Price then becomes the liquidity fulcrum and will drop, relentlessly ripping speculators faces off, until capital begins to view the asset class as a relative value once again.

Did you know that 89 percent of all minimum wage workers in the United States are not teens?  At this point, the average age of a minimum wage worker in this country is 36, and 56 percent of them are women.  Millions upon millions of Americans are working as hard as they can (often that means two or three jobs), and yet despite all of their hard work they still find themselves mired in poverty.  One of the big reasons for this is that we have created two classes of workers in the United States.