Florida

Back in January we asked the following: “who will be the first to offer a negative rate mortgage?” As WSJ reports, this bizarre characteristic of the new paranormal is spreading throughout Europe on the back of Mario Draghi’s trillion-euro adventure in debt monetization land: "Tumbling interest rates in Europe have put some banks in an inconceivable position: owing money on loans to borrowers. At least one Spanish bank, Bankinter SA, the country’s seventh-largest lender by market value, has been paying some customers interest on mortgages by deducting that amount from the principal the borrower owes."

• Shale Oil Boom Could End in May After Price Collapse (BBG)
• Oil above $58 on U.S. shale output report, Mideast (Reuters)
• Ackman Says Student Loans Are the Biggest Risk in the Credit Market (BBG)
• Alibaba Disputes U.S. Group’s Claim it Tolerates Fake Goods on Taobao (WSJ)
• Petrobras takes steps to avert a technical default (FT)
• Yen’s Drop Is Approaching Its Limit, Says Abe Adviser Hamada (BBG)
• 'Slicing and dicing': How some U.S. firms could win big in 2016 elections (Reuters)
• Fed official warns ‘flash crash’ could be repeatedv (FT)

Former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, who in 2002 chaired the congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11, maintains the FBI is covering up a Saudi support cell in Sarasota for the hijackers - “One thing that irritates me is that the F.B.I. has gone beyond just covering up, trying to avoid disclosure, into what I call aggressive deception,” He says the al-Hijjis’ “urgent” pre-9/11 exit suggests “someone may have tipped them off” about the coming attacks. “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier,” he said, adding, “I am speaking of the kingdom,” or government, of Saudi Arabia, not just wealthy individual Saudi donors.

“I just have the same horrific sense I had" before, Druckenmiller said to an audience at the Lost Tree Club in North Palm Beach, Florida (according to a transcript obtained by Bloomberg). "Our monetary policy is so much more reckless and so much more aggressively pushing the people in this room and everybody else out the risk curve that we’re doubling down on the same policy that really put us there."

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to officially announce her candidacy for the 2016 presidential election on Sunday, putting an end to months of speculation about her plans. Here are some key things to know about the first Democrat to declare her candidacy...

Before you think about holding out for a taxpayer government-sponsored bailout on your student loans, you may want to check the laws in your state because as it turns out, you may end up losing your driver’s license or worse, your barber’s license.

"Now a legal quirk could bring a surreal ending to... foreclosure cases around the country: [borrowers] may get to keep their homes without ever having to pay another dime."

If there is one chart that most clearly captures the unsustainable US home price appreciation bubble, it is the following which was released overnight from RealtyTrac: home price appreciation nationwide has outpaced wage growth by a 13:1 ratio!

"The planet has been our best friend by buffering our actions and showing its resilience, but for the first time ever," warns Swedish environmental professor Johan Rockstrom, "we might shift the planet from friend to foe." As RT notes, Rockstrom explains there are nine "planetary boundaries" in a new paper published in Science – and human beings have already crossed four of them... Where's Matthew McConaughey when we need him?

Fraud grows in good times because rescission is rarely sought (or granted) when asset values rise. Fraud is not a problem, till it is.

"As a society, we’ve become increasingly obsessed with youth, materialism, power and short-termism, tossing aside wisdom, real joy, soulfulness and connectivity. One of the symptoms of this unfortunate transformation can been seen in how we treat the least fortunate and most vulnerable around us, particularly the homeless."

The percentage of homeowners underwater in the US was flat from Q3 to Q4 which doesn’t sound all that terrible until you consider that this figure had fallen for 10 consecutive quarters. Things look particularly bad in Florida and the midwest where more than 25% of borrowers are sitting in a negative equity position. A new report from Zillow says negative equity will become a permanent fixture in the housing market.

"It would be transformative if everybody voted," Obama said during a town hall event in Cleveland, Ohio. "That would counteract (campaign) money more than anything. If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country." Obama also added that the people who tend not to vote are "young, they're lower income, they're skewed more heavily toward immigrant groups and minorities ... There's a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls."

Documented Corruption In Law Enforcement