The Economist

Six years ago, hardly anybody outside financial circles had any idea what Quantitative Easing was – hell, many within financial circles had no idea what QE entailed. The success of the narrative created around QE; that it is the mythical ‘free lunch’ that we all intuitively know can’t exist but secretly hope does, has played perfectly to the public and now, having endured for two electoral cycles, the next wave of politicians also believe it will have no consequences and are actually using it when planning the message they feel will endear them to the electorate. What plays better than free money?

As Turkey requests NATO support after launching strikes against both ISIS and PKK, question have arisen about Ankara's links to Islamic State and about the real aim of the country's "terror" crackdown.

"Erdogan is trying to achieve the result he failed to in the June 7 election in a political coup. That's the real aim of the steps taken now." "ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks."

A former BOE employee and Mervyn King speechwriter who went on to a lucrative private sector career as a bond strategist at Deutsche Bank, and then as a hedge fund economist, is now going back to the BOE as a voting member. And that's not all. This revolving door story has a punchline...

For as long as the present economic system lumbers along, Keynesians will control the levers of power and influence. But when at last the system goes down in a heap, and central banks cannot restore the system, there will be a quest for answers. When you live by the Federal Reserve, you die by the Federal Reserve.

• Chinese shares tumble 8.5 percent in biggest one-day drop since 2007 (Reuters)
• Japan’s Economy Shrank Last Quarter, Top Forecaster Says (BBG)
• Creditor teams in Athens to work on third bailout (AFP)
• Tsipras’s Paradox Is Six Months of Pain and Enduring Popularity (BBG)
• Goldman-Backed Instant Messaging Company Seeks New Investment (WSJ)
• Best Buy will sell the Apple Watch on August 7th (Engadget) - when is it coming to Dollar General?
• Senate votes to revive Ex-Im (Hill)
• U.S.-Turkey Deal Paves Way to Set Up Buffer Zone in Northern Syria (WSJ)

The risk that bail-ins pose to companies, trade, commerce, employment and entire economies is something at which we have looked frequently in recent months. Indeed, we think we are largely alone in focussing in detail on the risk that bail-ins pose not just to individual savers but also to millions of small and medium size enterprises throughout the world.

Just minutes after rumors of Axel Springer Verlag's interest in buying The Financial Times were flatly denied, Marketwatch reports that Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei said Thursday that it is buying Financial Times from U.K. publishing group Pearson for 160 billion yen, or $1.29 billion.

In his Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, Lords of Finance, the economist Liaquat Ahamad tells the story of how four central bankers, driven by staunch adherence to the gold standard, “broke the world” and triggered the Great Depression. Today’s central bankers largely share a new conventional wisdom – about the benefits of loose monetary policy. Are monetary policymakers poised to break the world again?

Donald Trump is not a pleasant man. He is egotistical, vain, bombastic, often mean-spirited. He revels in his financial superiority, which he conflates with human goodness. When he contorts his mouth into a kind of tube as he talks, you brace yourself for something outrageous—and it nearly always emerges as expected. His likability quotient, at least in terms of his public persona, is down somewhere in single digits. And yet he has just taken hold of the American political system by the neck and doesn’t seem inclined to let go anytime soon.

On Thursday this past week there were a few attempts at crisis management that should go into textbooks (as well as history books) everywhere in years to come as: Crisis Management 101.a – Lessons in Ineptitude. The responses as to settle the angst in an ever-more-skeptical, as well as frightened investing class was not only inane as demonstrated by the responses (or better yet; lack there of) given at the NYSE by way of “answering” as to why it halted its operation for nearly 4 hours. Was only outdone by what many view as the near insane when one views the steps taken in China to “calm” their markets. Is that how one instills confidence? It instills something – however the term isn’t anything resembling “confidence.”

Buying stocks "is buying the Chinese Dream," proclaimed a top brokerage after officials 'promised' a centrally-planned bull market for the on-the-verge-of-social-unrest-after-real-estate-collapse population... but instead they have lured them into a bear trap. Even The Economist sees the irony... as yet another centrally-planned market economy scars a generation of investors...

The EIU forecast victory for the "No" camp as soon as the referendum was called. We are sticking to that call.

— The EIU Europe (@TheEIU_Europe) July 5, 2015

Yes, the clock’s ticking louder, louder, warns the Economist, “only a matter of time before the next recession strikes.” Unfortunately, the “rich world is not ready.” America’s not prepared. You are not ready.

Watching as bankrupt (Western) governments pay near-zero or even negative rates of interest on their debts, we see a financial fraud and sham of unparalleled dimensions in the history of our nations. However, when these same regimes inflict these fraudulent interest rates on “savers” (i.e. their own populations), while double-digit inflation rages all around us, this is nothing less than a crime against humanity – with even worse crimes still to come.

Ten days ago it seemed as if America's corporatism would finally be slowed in its tracks after the House unexpectedly killed the fast-tracking of Obamatrade, aka the fast-tracking of the Trade Promotion Authority. Alas, it was not to last, and moments ago, in a "nailbiting" 60-37 vote, the Senate advanced Obama's fast-track tarde bill.