Fail

"Water is one of the great opportunities of our times. If you look at the world there are some huge shortages developing in some parts but there is also a lot of water in other parts, just in the wrong place – like water in Siberia for instance, which is not where most people are. There are going to be wars in the Middle East over oil east of the Red Sea, but west of that there will be wars over water since there are serious water problems in that region." Jim Rogers:

The Economist is a quintessential establishment publication. Keynesian shibboleths about “market failure” and the need to prevent it, as well as the alleged need for governments to provide “public goods” and to steer the economy in directions desired by the ruling elite with a variety of taxation and spending schemes as well as monetary interventionism, are dripping from its pages in generous dollops.  The magazine has one of the very best records as a contrary indicator whenever it comments on markets. While gold hasn’t yet made it to the front page, but the Economist has sacrificed some ink in order to declare it “dead” (or rather, “buried”).

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail

We need to wake up....and FAST!!!

Last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio published their prescription for reviving the American dream. They are right to focus on the dream. They are wrong in their understanding of American history and the role government can play in restoring and fostering the dream.

"To critics who warn that pumping trillions of dollars into the economy in a short period is bound to drive up inflation, today's central bankers point to stagnant consumer prices and say, 'Look, Ma, no inflation.' But this ignores the fact that when money is nominally free, strange things happen, and today record-low rates are fueling an unprecedented bout of inflation across asset prices."

What’s left for Greece in Brussels that is beneficial to the country? We don’t see it. It makes us think more of a Stockholm syndrome by the hour. Get out, get your own currency, negotiate a treaty with Italy and Spain, maybe France. But don’t stay in a ‘union’ with outsiders who think they can tell you, Greeks, how to run a democracy, or when to hold a referendum. That can only be a road to nowhere.

It's worthwhile recalling that mainstream economists, the Federal Reserve, government agencies and the mainstream financial media all deny the economy is in recession until it falls off a cliff.

The FDIC explains, banks have grown far larger and even more complex since 2008, and that "[s]uch trends have not only continued, they accelerated as a result of the crisis." The FDIC goes on to suggest that its current tools and business model are “not sufficient to mitigate the complexities of large institution failures." Not only are they not equipped to handle it, they’re not entirely sure what to do: that’s why the FDIC is "seeking comment on what additional regulatory action should be taken..."

The fact is that much of the globe, particularly the developed west, is up to its eyeballs in debt. Mind, you, this is based solely on official public debt numbers.  If you include unfunded liabilities, then the US, most of Europe, Japan, and even China are sporting Debt to GDP ratios well over 300%.

A lawyer for the conductor of Amtrak Regional 188 which derailed earlier this week killing 7 and injuring hundreds says his client has no recollection of the event and no explanation for what happened. Meanwhile, politicians rush to blame infrastructure spending.

Mainstream media reporting on the controversy over the Jade Helm 15 military exercises, set to take place over eight weeks across several U.S. states, was primarily about characterizing and demonizing Texans concerned about the exercises as backwater, paranoid rednecks with wild fantasies about an imminent government takeover. While exercises like these will always cause the imagination of some to run amok, the key point here is this: concerns that U.S. military exercises will be used to exert more power over states is not a fringe view.

As innovation ouptaces regulation, a few pointers on how to manage risk in the search for funding and revenue

It is perhaps an emblematic description for our current bubble age; QE doesn’t work but “we” can’t wait for more. Maybe that is just the logical evolution of monetary magic, since QE was brought on with almost mythical properties that were going to cure a lot of financial and economic ills (Bernanke the former). Now resignation (Bernanke the latter) has left it with only the hope that it can just save us from the worst downside, even without any real expectation of a true upside in the economy. In other words, markets hope for the QE zombie, where the economy is kept from death by it, with full recognition now that it will never regain full life either.

We have called this a tale of two graphs. But what it really describes is a clear and present danger to American capitalism fostered by an unelected monetary politburo in thrall to its own lust for power and mesmerized by its own doctrinaire group think. The tragedy is that nothing can stop them except the thundering crash of the gargantuan bubble they have single handedly enabled.