Federal Reserve Bank

Given the rather depressing plight of the average US laborer, it’s little wonder that some workers are inclined to “alter their mood” a bit before punching the clock. Indeed, over the past 24 months, a decades-old trend towards falling workplace drug usage has reversed itself, with 4% of workers now testing positive for either legal or illegal drug use.

There's Always Been Some Corruption in the U.S. ... But Never Like THIS

When there is so much bullshit floating around that you forget what you wrote just a month ago, and when the central planners can't even agree on what lie to agree to use, then the status quo truly be in jeopardy.

The punchline from the most recent San Fran Fed "research" paper is that since Glenn "double seasonal adjustment" Rudebusch is one of Yellen's favorite hometown economists, she now has the green light to completely ignore the weakest economic print since last Q1, and to focus entirely on the best economic print in the US: the surge in part-time senior citizen workers, pardon, the "zero slack" unemployment rate of 5.4%. She also has the justification why to ignore it: the bad data wasn't seasonally adjusted enough (the good data was seasonally-adjusted just right).

Whoever holds the most gold will hold the most real wealth and, by extension, gain the most prominent seat at the bargaining table for decades to come. Whether that table will be the IMF, the new AAIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank), or any future central economic entity, the future will go to the player with the most metal, as he will be able to create the most currency, in whatever form it may take.

In the coming months, however many hours Clinton spends introducing herself to voters in small-town America, she will spend hundreds more raising money in four-star hotels and multimillion-dollar homes around the nation. The question is: "Can Clinton claim to stand for 'everyday Americans,' while hauling in huge sums of cash from the very wealthiest of us?" This much cannot be disputed: Clinton's connections to the financiers and bankers of this country - and this country's campaigns - run deep. As Nomi Prins questions, who counts more to such a candidate, the person you met over that chicken burrito bowl or the Citigroup partner you met over crudités and caviar?

Systematic Corruption Has Metastasized throughout the U.S.  ... Making Our Once-Great Nation Deathly Ill

While officials have begun their own versions of capital controls by raiding pension funds, confiscating local government cash, and surcharges on withdrawals (and transfer ceilings); it appears the market participants themselves have now imposed their own share of capital controls. As Bloomberg reports, international securities firms are curtailing trading with major Greek banks - pulling credit lines and restricting FX trading limits - as fear of Grexit looms.

Until the advent of the BIS, gold held by central banks came in one version. Physical. It was only after the BIS arrived on the scene did gold's macabre doppelganger, so-called paper, registered or "earmarked", gold emerge for the first time. Here is a brief history of how earmarked gold came into being...

The past few years have been a period of relative stability for the U.S. economy.  A lot of people have been lulled into a false sense of security during that time.  These people have become convinced that our problems have been fixed.  But they haven’t been fixed at all.  In fact, our problems are far, far worse than they were just prior to the last financial crisis. Don’t let this next recession take you by surprise.

Just three questions here about Sarah Dahlgren's "resignation":

1. Why is she resigning now: is there a crackdown on just how corrupt the Goldman Sachs branch office at Liberty 33 truly is?
2. What will her salary at Goldman Sachs be once she joins the 200 West firm?
3. Which Goldman partner will replace her.

“Promoted by the intellectual glitterati of the central banks, our economic system has become addicted to all forms of debt, much of which has been unproductive." The seemingly universal agreement that the prerequisite for a healthy economy is the growth of debt at all costs highlights both a lack of discipline and an aversion to consider different ideas on the part of economic policy-makers.

When we first exposed in February how yet another bank - Bank of America - has been quietly preserving the post Glass-Steagall world in which cash depositing taxpayers are on the hook for a bank's stupidity, some shrugged it off and looked to stress test to solve all the problems. However, it appears - for once - the SEC is not willing to just ignore the bank's actions. Just as JPMorgan's CIO Office, aka the London Whale, took advantage of fungible, taxpayer-insured funding in the form of excess US deposits over loans, to corner the US credit market (in what was clearly a directional prop trade); so, as WSJ reports, The SEC is investigating whether BofA broke rules designed to safeguard client accounts, potentially putting retail-brokerage funds at risk in order to generate more profits using large complex trades.

The Fed once stored $4 billion in hard currency in an underground Virginia bunker in preparation for a nuclear showdown with the Soviet Union. Here are the blueprints and pictures.