Reality

Great news! The "greatest threat to future generations of the world" has apparently been solved. World leaders Saturday adopted an historic international climate accord in Paris, the first-ever agreement to commit almost every country to fight climate change. However, as we knew all along and just got confirmation, the 31-page pact does not have binding language or a mechanism to force countries to live up to the promises to cut greenhouse gases.

The lies we tell ourselves are only exceeded by the lies perpetrated by those controlling the levers of our society. The country has been living a Big Lie since the day Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, eliminating any vestiges of constraint upon central bankers and politicians.

"A flip to fiscal stimulus is the most likely catalyst for a Great Rotation out of “deflation plays” into “inflation plays”, undoubtedly the biggest investment decision of 2016. Sadly it took the New Deal and WW2 to end the dominance of “growth” over “value” in the 1930s."

While the world patiently waits for Janet Yellen to raise interest rates this month, the markets have been unable to decide as of yet whether such an event is good or bad thing.

Finland made the news recently by proposing a pilot program of guaranteed income for all, also known as Universal Basic Income: Desperate Finland Set To Unleash Helicopter Money Drop To All Citizens. Proponents claim Basic Income can be paid by redirecting existing welfare programs, but a quick review reveals this as nonsense.

Earlier this morning we got another glimpse of reality behind the smoke-and-mirrors, mainstream-media-sponsored last-pillar-standing lovefest that is US auto sales when the business sales data showed a disheartening tumble in sales in October. So where are all the sales going that automakers report? The answer is simple... (and painful).

What the PBOC's unexpected announcement means, is that for anyone who thought the Yuan devaluation is over, now that the currency is at the lowest level relative to the dollar since 2011, the reality is that the devaluation relatively to everyone else is only just starting.

Here’s one for the "actions speak louder than words" file: Investment research firm TrimTabs reported on Wednesday that insider selling reached $7.6 billion for the month of November, the fourth-highest monthly level on record.

As soon as the Fed moves money market rates upwards, unproductive parts of the economy will come under severe strain which in turn sets in motion recessionary forces prompting the Fed to reverse course. The only way out is to realize that the world is awash in mal-invested capital that need to be written off. Since that is inconceivable for today’s vested interests, the way forward will be further “Japanification” of the global economy. And this time we are all out of arrows.

Americans have a broad and heavy bias away from unpleasant data. We are ready to be manipulated by vested interests in finance, economics, and climate change, whose interests might be better served by our believing optimistic stuff "that just ain’t so." We are dealing today with important issues, one so important that it may affect the long-term viability of our global society and perhaps our species. It may well be necessary to our survival that we become more realistic, more willing to process the unpleasant, and, above all, less easily manipulated through our need for good news.

"What’s it like playing chess with Obama?" asks a top aid of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Putin replies, "It's like playing chess with a pigeon. First it knocks over all the pieces, then it shits on the board, and finally it struts around like it won."

Over the last month or so, there’s been a bit of a flurry of U.S. military members with conscience coming forward to tell the truth about incidents or practices they deem unethical. Mistakes happen. In war and in pretty much everything in life. That’s simply unavoidable. What is avoidable is lying after the fact, which is clearly what the U.S. military has chosen to do in this case.

While much of the financial media and Wall Street analysts continue to ignore the risks of a recession, there are some important warning signs that suggest this might be a bad idea. As Charles Gave noted earlier, "We are swimming in an ocean of ignorance... It seems all the painful economics lessons learned over the last 300 years have been forgotten"

"What I find most hilarious is that some serious commentators have been pontificating at considerable length about what the market’s participants think. These days, some 70% of market orders are generated by computers, and many of the rest by indexers. And computers do not think... I cannot remember a time when less thinking has ever been done in the financial markets, which is why I find today’s financial markets infinitely boring."

- Charles Gave