Main Street

During the last 27 years the financial system has ballooned dramatically while the US economy has slowed to a crawl - a divergent trend that has intensified with the passage of time. While the rationale for monetary central planning is bogus, the model on which state intervention is based is even more invalid.

"He was incredibly strong because of the methamphetamine"...

Oops, Sorry America!

While the Greek government believes it may have won the battle, if not the war with Europe, the reality is that every additional day in which Athens does not have a funding backstop, be it the ECB (or the BRIC bank), is a day which brings the local banking system to total collapse. And another day, or two, like today, and it may all be over:  According to banking sources, the Greek bank outflows on Friday soared to 700 million Euros from 272 million Euros on Thursday.

U.S. companies announced $141 billion of new stock buyback programs last month and $243 billion of new M&A deals. Both figures are all-time records, and according to bubblevision are further evidence that CEOs are bullish on their companies and the economic outlook. You might say that. Then, again, it might put you in mind of swarming moths heading for a light bulb. The baleful truth is this. In its arrogant and misbegotten seizure of all financial power, the nation’s central bank has turned the C-suite of corporate America into a destructive agent of bubble finance. That’s ‘dumb money’ with a vengeance.

Ali and Frazier, Laurel and Hardy, Mayweather and Pacquiao, Liesman and Santelli, and now Schiff and Maloney. Peter and Mike join clash of the titan-like to discuss their investment strategies and expose the charts the government doesn't want you to seeas "people like Bernanke are taken seriously still and the people that did predict [the crisis] are dismissed as lunatics half the time." The wide-reaching conversation covers everything from gold and stocks to The Fed and The Dollar - Bernanke "took the coward’s way out because all he did was exacerbate the problems to postpone the day of reckoning." The air is coming out of the bubble, they warn, "Bernanke and Greenspan have absolutely destroyed America. People don’t realize what is coming..."

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

The system is corrupt… and dangerously dysfunctional. But why does no one say so? Opinion makers such as Paul Krugman and Larry Summers misunderstand intentionally. But who speaks for the next three decades?  Everyone wants more credit, more inflation, more bubbles, more subsidies, and more special privileges. Who’s on the other side of the trade?

Promptly upon release of today’s GDP update, Steve Liesman and his Wall Street economist pals spent 10 minutes bloviating about why the negative print should be completely ignored. The MSM cheerleaders like Liesman and his pals cannot see the handwriting on the wall because central bank bubble finance has essentially abolished the old rules of macro-economics. Someone should tell them that an economic deja vu is about to happen... all over again!

"On the Wednesday and Thursday it was reported that Greeks withdrew 800 million Euro from checking accounts. Friday's number will dwarf that. Whe you go to a Greek bank you pull off a ticket and wait for your number to be called. The hall in my bank contains about 60 seats all of which were filled. There were folks standing behind the seats and in fact throughout the hall, all wanting to get their cash out before the bank closed at 2 PM."

Statistics have become very misleading: in particular we are being badly misled into believing that the US is teetering on the edge of price deflation, because the US official rate of inflation is barely positive, a level that US bonds and therefore all other financial markets have priced in without accepting it is actually significantly higher.

While an extension of the Patriot Act, that landmark bill which ushered in the America's Big Brother, "turnkey totalitarian state" (previewed here long before Edward Snowden's shocking revelations), is just a matter of time, supporters of the Fourth Amendment scored a brief victory last night when following yet another marathon 10 hour filibuster and refusal to play by the script by Rand Paul, the Senate failed to extend the Patriot Act, leaving the future of America's "war against terrorists" but really against "enemies domestic", i.e., anyone who uses email, has a cell phone or in any other electronic way communicates with others, in limbo.

Fraud is endemic in the financial system today. We know that the currency, stock, bond, and even commodity markets have ALL been manipulated by Investment Banks or Central Banks.

How do you make what had been a very good couple of years for tens of thousands of Avon Products shorts into an absolute nightmare of a day? By doing what PTG Partners just did when moments ago it announced that, out of the blue, it would like to purchase AVP for a price of $18.75 or nearly three times higher than the Avon stock price moments before the announcement. Because why pay double when triple would do.

In short, the very project of counting “jobs” is essentially laughable in the context of the US economy as it is currently structured - for better or worse. But regardless of the equities and efficiencies of the current labor market, one thing is abundantly clear. The Payroll Friday report amounts to virtually meaningless noise. It is bad enough that the bubble vision Romper Room and the casino robo-traders are oblivious to this reality. What is scary is that the Eccles Building is just as clueless.