The Economist

The EU’s political leaders and other elites are committed to holding the European Union together. To them, united Europe is an article of faith. They hold the idea with as much ferocity and fervor as any religious belief. But while the European Union is a wonderful political idea, it’s economically terrible. And the EU nations will have to face up to bearing enormous costs to save the Europe we wished for.

"... As the tide of leverage goes out, the full extent of irresponsible lending becomes apparent. The previously virtuous cycle between risk spreads and fundamentals goes into reverse, with lower prices, defaults, and downgrades forcing leveraged investors to sell, leading to even lower prices."

"The previous three times this metric fell that far into negative territory on the S&P 500 were Q1 1990, Q1 2001, and Q4 2007, coinciding with the start of each of the last three high yield default cycles"

On Monday, Mauricio Macri, the son of Italian-born construction tycoon Francesco Macri, beat out Cristina Kirchner’s handpicked successor Daniel Scioli for Argentina’s presidency in what amounted to a referendum on 12 years of Peronist rule. Now, Macri faces a trio of daunting tasks: i) restore central bank liquidity, ii) implement a new FX regime, and iii) tackle the ballooning budget deficit. The most most pressing concern: the central bank is literally out of dollars. 

"The Islamic State has grown that strong due to the irresponsible policy of the United States," exclaimed Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev this morning, demanding that "really consolidated efforts" are needed to counter ISIS' terrorist threats. This comes just hours after President Obama toughened his rhetoric, vowing that the global coalition formed to destroy ISIS "will not relent," adding, rather oddly, that the group responsible for the Paris terror attacks is "a bunch of killers with good social media."

Who is really winning the "war on terror"?

"New banknotes were being delivered daily in boxcar loads. In October 1923, banknote circulation amounted to 2,496,822,909,038,000,000 and everyone called for more. It is this last fact that is most telling, that every group believed that the solution was simply more money. They failed to grasp that what was needed was to simply cease all manipulation of the system and let the free market return. Their failure assured that the only possible outcome was the collapse of the system."

Gold bullion coin and bar demand surged in Q3 as gold’s continuing COMEX driven price weakness in July and sharp falls in stock markets in China and globally in August saw store of wealth buyers internationally again accumulate bullion.

"the seasonally adjusted labour force estimates from the Australian Bureau of Statistics for October sound incredible and they should be treated as just that: not credible.  Don't believe politicians as they gloat and claim credit. Don't believe the wire services when they report the estimates as fact....  The former chief statistician recently said the data was not worth the paper it was written on."

"Using a dataset on developed market business cycles, we calculate that the unconditional odds that a six-year-old expansion will avoid recession for another four years—and mature into a 10-year-old expansion—are about 60%."

The most important question (which no one’s asking) that needs to be asked and addressed today is: With the Fed. all but signalling come heck or high-water – they’re raising in December. Do the global markets once again stand at the same ledge they did in early August? And if that is indeed so, the question that is self-evident is this: Are you now better equipped both psychologically, as well as strategically and tactically adroit to handle such gyrations? Or, have you focused on “fees” and “diversification” as expounded via today’s financial books with a tendency to just BTFD because it’s worked so well in the past regardless of forethought or angst?

Most investors don’t take kindly to change. “The market” chooses to stay in the here and now; each human component vibrant and alert while the whole is passive and inert…like a herd of wildebeests, protected by its mass and collective wisdom that each one of them is statistically safe from lions as long as they stay together.

No, Ben S. Bernanke will be someday remembered as the world’s most destructive battleship admiral. Not only was he fighting the last war, but his whole multi-trillion money printing campaign after September 15, 2008 was aimed at avoiding an historical Fed mistake that had never even happened!

Impunity has been the norm. The reason there have been no efforts made to criminally investigate is obvious. Former banking regulator and current securities Professor Bill Black told Bill Moyers  that "Timothy Geithner, then Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong."