Reality

Financial fraud is any method by which deception or duplicity induces those with money to "invest" in a scheme...   

On Dec 16, Federal Chair Janet Yellen announced the Fed was raising the federal funds rate by 25 basis points. She will have to take it back.

People are waking up to the darkness in American policing, and the cops don't like it one bit...

"The trouble is that rents are running high not because house prices are booming and/or construction is sawing but because structurally new entrants to the housing market are renters not owners. This is reflected in the very low first time homebuyer rate, less than 30 percent."

There are many half-truths perpetrated on individuals by Wall Street to sell product, gain assets, etc. However, if individuals took a moment to think about it, the illogic of many of these arguments are readily apparent. The index is a mythical creature, like the Unicorn, and chasing it has historically led to disappointment. Investing is not a competition, and there are horrid consequences for treating it as such.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s seminal masterpiece Crime and Punishment is often thought of as one of the longest classics at more than 200,000 words. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016, which was signed into law on Friday, is nearly twice as long. At 887 pages, the bill allocates $1.15 trillion in war and discretionary spending for fiscal year 2016 which began almost three months ago. (That’s an average of $1.3 billion in spending PER PAGE of the bill.) In making it public law, President Obama has effectively signed the death warrant of the US government’s finances.

We now enter the “discovery” phase of financial collapse, where things labeled “capital” and “credit” turn out to be mere holograms. It’s not just the Federal Reserve; everything around us is backed into a corner as the rude discovery that capital is not what it has appeared to be is now underway, with the power to derail political systems and societies.

Following a brief dead-cat-bounce into The Fed's policy error, high-yield bonds are once again being sold for the 3rd day in a row, filling the gap-up from last week. This reality - among others - is weighing on US equities as The S&P just gave up all its Monday morning "stocks are up and they should be" gains.

While many still cling to the belief that U.S. shale and tight oil plays are commercial even at current low oil prices but data on the Permian basin and Bakken plays simply does not support this hope. In fact, less than 2 percent of Permian basin tight oil wells are commercial at $30 per barrel oil prices.

Fukushima radiation just off the North American coast is higher now than it has ever been, and government scientists and mainstream press are scrambling to cover-up and downplay the ever-increasing deadly threat that looms for millions of Americans.

The Fed is now - for the first time in adult memory for half the world’s traders and money managers - tightening rather than loosening monetary conditions. A quick look at financial history is all it takes to lead anyone with leveraged money at risk to lighten up. Equally important - and vastly more strange when you think about it - this tightening comes at a time when major parts of the global economy are either grinding to a halt or imploding.

"My minions in the Federal Reserve - such loyal servants! - continue feeding an orgy of leverage and debt, spreading ruination under the false guise of prosperity. What a delicious irony, that the fools doomed to eternal damnation in my Empire believe themselves prosperous as they absorb the poison of exponentially rising leverage and debt."

Al-Qaeda inspired terrorism is a threat to the Western countries but the Islamic countries are encountering a much bigger threat of inter-sectarian conflict. For centuries the Sunni and Shi’a Muslims have coexisted in relative peace throughout the Islamic World but now certain vested interests are deliberately stoking the fire of inter-sectarian strife to distract attention away from the Home Front: that is, the popular movements for democracy and enfranchisement in the Arab World.

In 13 succinct words, Donald Trump summed up reality in American politics...

What happens the next time global GDP takes a nosedive when Central Banks have already used up all of their ammunition?