Reality

One would think the market is trading Elon Musk’s reputation instead of two utterly separate companies, considering how they look like clones.

Having disappointed an expectant market by voting overwhelmingly (8-1) to leave monetary policy unchanged, the initial plunge in USDJPY and Japanese stocks has found a mysterious (and massive) JPY seller and Nikkei 225 buyer. USDJPY is now 100 pips and Nikkei 225 500 points above post-BOJ dip lows... because hawkish is the new bullish...

The desire to take the American public out of the “of the people, by the people, for the people” business can minimally be traced back to the Vietnam War, to the moment when a citizen’s army began voting with its feet and antiwar sentiment grew to startling proportions not just on the home front, but inside a military in the field.  It was then that the high command began to fear the actual disintegration of the U.S. Army. From that moment on, the urge to demobilize the American people and send them to Disney World would only grow.

The 100 largest CEO retirement funds are worth a combined $4.9 billion. That’s equal to the entire retirement account savings of 41 percent of American families - more than 50 million families and more than 116 million people.

Bernie Sanders supporters seem to be everywhere. 49% of Democrats now have a favorable view towards socialism. This is scary. And sad. No matter how it is wrapped, socialism is still the belief that we can raise people out of poverty by taking money out of the hands of those who have learned how to produce. And it has never worked. Socialism always fails because at some point people realize they don’t have to work as hard to get the same amount of stuff. It takes all the incentive away to really succeed.

"House prices have decoupled most from local incomes in Hong Kong, London, Paris, Singapore, New York and Tokyo. Buying a 60-square-meter apartment exceeds the budget of most people who work even in the highly-skilled service sector. Loose monetary policy has prevented a normalization of housing markets and encouraged local bubble risks to grow"

On Wednesday morning a new national poll revealed that 54% of Americans rate the economy as 'poor', but instead of focusing oin that, Becky Quick quizzed Marco Rubio about his 'lack of bookkeeping skills,' Carl Quintanilla posed questions about homosexuality and fantasy football, and the astonishingly incompetent John Harwood expressed doubt about Donald Trump's 'moral authority.' The interaction between the candidates and the CNBC moderators revealed the yawning gap between the bubble world at the intersection of Washington and Wall Street and the hard scrabble reality of economic stagnation and political alienation on main street America.

Don't call us, we'll call you: "This is an Iraqi affair and the government did not ask the U.S. Department of Defense to be involved in direct operations. We have enough soldiers on the ground."

Stagnation is but a small price to pay, Europeans think, to achieve the goal of everyone being taken care of. 

"The rise in household savings rates amid so much central bank support is paradoxical to us, and mimics what we highlighted in the credit market earlier this year. Companies in Europe are deleveraging, not releveraging"

Back at the beginning of 2014 - when commercial traders were net long nearly 40,000 options and futures contracts on the US long bond - it marked the peak in yields and preceded a 13 month rally in bonds that took 30-year treasury rates from 4% to 2.25%. Now, as Gavekal Capital's Bryce Coward notes, the commercial traders, aka "smart money," were net long about 61,000 contracts, or 50% more contracts than the peak in 2014. If recent history is any guide then a 1 handle on the 30-year treasury bond could be a reality!

We're all minions now of the stock market. By cowering in terror of a stock market tantrum, the Fed has surrendered everything: its vaunted (and completely phony) independence; its duty (yes, go ahead and laugh) to the nation and the real economy - everything. The Fed is nothing but an abject slave of the market.

As tipped earlier this month, Deutsche Bank just turned in a Q3 loss of €6 billion as a raft of writedowns hit the bottom line. The bank also announced more details of "Strategy 2020", which include layoffs and a corporate rethink that will see Europe's largest bank exit a multitude of markets. 

Gold’s biggest enemy is a brilliant Nobel Prize winning economist, university professor and columnist for the New York Times. Sadly, he is also a con man.