Paul Tudor Jones

The seventh anniversary of Zero Hedge is just around the corner, and so, for the seventh year in a row we continue our tradition of summarizing what our readers found to be the most relevant, exciting, and actionable news of the year, determined by the number of page views. We bring you the articles that you, dear reader, found to be the most interesting in the past 365 days.

“To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious, but the stupid have an answer for everything.” ~Edward Abbey

Why Now?

"The positive wealth effect of the equity market on consumption or aggregate demand is limited in China, but an equity market collapse would hurt millions of mid-class households and pose great danger to the economy and social stability."

"We have a problem with this, and that is central bank hubris. They now think that they are omnipotent, because, essentially the government has said we are going to pass over all control of the economy to the central banks, they say to everybody else including financial market participants that “you don’t know, you don’t understand, we have our models and they are right”. And that kind of hubristic approach is when you sow the seeds of your own destruction."

As many as four gunmen fired automatic weapons against the Dallas Police headquarters, and that at least at least two pipe bombs were found outside the police headquarters after the initial shooting. At least one attacker opened fire on Dallas' police headquarters early Saturday, riddling windows and police cars with bullets before fleeing in a van to a suburban restaurant parking lot, where officers surrounded the vehicle in a standoff that has lasted for hours, CNN reports.

There is something morbidly ironic when one of the world's richest men, in this case South African Johann Rupert, who has made billions (his net worth is roughly $7.5 billion) peddling Cartier jewelry and Chloe fashion as founder and chairman of luxury conglomerate Richemont, whose 20 brands also include Vacheron Constantin and Montblanc, said tension between the rich and poor is set to escalate, that the "envy, hatred and the social warfare" may crush society, and that "we are destroying the middle classes at this stage and it will affect us."

Just when you thought the US regulators may have finally become less tone deaf to the shame of the revolving door, especially following last year's latest scandal confirming Goldman runs the New York Fed (and every other central bank), here comes the SEC with an absolute shocker, not only proving once and for all that when it comes to regulatory capture, there is nobody in charge quite like Lloyd Blankfein, but unveiling what may have been the first ever double revolving door in SEC history, after the SEC announced it had hired as its new chief of staff a former Goldman worker who had previously worked at... the SEC. And with that the we have gone not only full circle but full retard as well.

"Today, six and a half years after the collapse of Lehman, there is a Bigger Short cooking. That Bigger Short is long-term claims on paper money, i.e., bonds."

The divergences and similarities of these charts is quite baffling...

"No one could have foreseen the turbulent times ahead on one spring day in 1770. The shadow of Versailles is packed to its gilded rafters with the glittering crowds of the royal court." Replace Versailles with modern day Monte Carlo, New York or St. Barts, and the "crowds of the royal court" with the "0.001%", and one can easily see why 'nobody' can foresee that which in retrospect will have been all too obvious, only not 250 years ago, but this very moment.

"The median stock in the S&P 500 is the most expensive it has even been (for as long as we have data). That's never a good sign! If your favorite valuation indicator is not at 'the highest ever', then it is likely now at 'the highest ever except 2000'. That's not good company unless you are a short seller."

"... part of the problem today is that over the last 15-20 years, capitalism has been propped up every time it’s about to go through one of the cyclical creative destruction phases. Compounded up that's left us with a big mess to clear up across the globe and a lot of sub optimal resource allocation. So across a lot of the Western World we're left with too much debt, too much inequality, low real wage growth, limited conventional tools to help the economy to de-lever, QE and ZIRP and a political backlash against the mainstream."

"Deutsche Bank’s illegal conduct involved nearly a decade of lying, cheating, and stealing. This criminal conduct was pervasive and widespread, involving dozens of employees from Deutsche Bank offices including New York, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and London. Deutsche Bank’s traders engaged in a brazen scheme to defraud Deutsche Bank’s counterparties and the worldwide financial marketplace by secretly manipulating LIBOR. The conduct is appalling. It was a complete criminal fraud upon the worldwide marketplace." 

- SEC Commissioner Kara Stein