Transparency

Fill In The Blank: "Greece will achieve economic success when ____"

In an Onion-esque story almosty too unbelievable to be real, IB Times reports, in a memo obtained by Capital New York, Cuomo officials announced that mass purging of email records is beginning across several state government agencies. The timing of the announcement, which followed through on a 2013 proposal, is worth noting: The large-scale destruction of state documents will be happening in the middle of a sprawling federal investigation of public corruption in Albany.

• Yellen faces Senate grilling on Fed rate policy, transparency (Reuters)
• Big Banks Face Scrutiny Over Pricing of Metals (WSJ)
• Greece makes more concessions to euro zone, Germany sets vote (Reuters)
• Time for another executive order: Longer Lives Hit Companies With Pension Plans Hard (WSJ)
• The Syria invasion "false flag" approaches: Islamic State in Syria abducts at least 90 from Christian villages (Reuters)
• Why Lenders Love the $2.5 Million Home Loan (BBG)
• Reuters journalist Maria Golovnina dies in Pakistan aged 34 (Reuters)
• Qatar’s Ties to Militants Strain Alliance (WSJ)

If you thought the Greek tragicomedy is over, you ain't seen nothing yet, because despite the so-called Friday agreement, the immediate next step is for Greece to submit its list of reform measures to the Troika, which will almost certainly result in an immediate revulsion in Germany's finance ministry, and lead to another protracted back and forth between the Troika and Greece, which may once again well end with a Grexit, especially if the Greek liquidity situation, where bash is bleeding from both the banks and the state at a record pace, remains unhalted.  It is therefore not surprising that the ongoing decline in the EURUSD since the inking of the agreement, and the fact that the pair briefly dipped below 1.13 this morning - over 100 pips below the euphoric rip on Friday - is a clear indication that the market is starting to realize that absolutely nothing is either fixed, or set in stone.

"...Large areas of the United States that used to experience few or no earthquakes have, in recent years, experienced a remarkable increase in earthquake activity.. This rise in seismic activity, especially in the central United States, is not the result of natural processes... Instead, the increased seismicity is due to fluid injection associated with new technologies that enable the extraction of oil and gas from previously unproductive reservoirs."

A literal Tour de Force, likely the most indepth, practical analysis of the Grexit situation as you will ever read. This is why I like blogging... You can never find stuff like this in the mainstream media.

Meet SuperFish - Lenovo's, the world's largest computer manufacturer, pre-installed, image recognizing tracking software that monitors everything you do, and breaches web security... all for the purpose of pushing more ads in your face. After its initial approach of being completely unapologetic and dismissal, Lenovo is now groveling for forgiveness. The company’s Chief Technology Officer now says, “We messed up badly here,” and “We made a mistake.”

He is the gentleman with the white hair.

What exactly was the reason for the Greek disagreement? Now that both the acceptable, pre-revision (source), and rejected, post-revision (source) texts are available, we can find precisely which inserted and deleted words infuriated the Greeks so much. Presenting: the red-line (or rahter blue-line) comparison between the two drafts, none of which was ultimately signed by anyone.

Straight-forward discussion of the international climate.

What is not often covered in the media are the audits of the US official gold reserves stored at the US Mint, which is the custodian for 95 % (7716 tonnes) of the stash – nowadays also referred to as custodial deep storage, and at the Federal Reserve Bank Of New York that safeguards the remaining 5 % (418 tonnes). The lawful owner of the US official gold reserves is the US Treasury. Part one covered the most recent records I could find published by the US government, in this post we’ll examine more historical records and approach this matter from a more critical angle.

Because nothing says "independence" like snuggling up to the newly Republican-controlled Congress. Having, in recent years, been accused of being too closely aligned with Democrats, WSJ reports that the Fed's "Liaison Office" - which lobbies for the bank's interest on Capitol Hill - has begun cultivatinmg relationships with the GOP in a desperate bid to evade Rand Paul's "Audit The Fed" Bill.

Greece has the potential to be the small domino that ends up toppling much larger dominoes.

It would appear the powers that be are getting nervous. Yesterday, Fed Governor Jerome Powell (and Fisher and Plosser) stepped up the central bank’s push against what he termed congressional efforts to extend political influence over monetary policy, calling them "misguided" and "in violent conflict with the facts." Today we have Senator Elizabeth Warren trying to sound supportive of transparency but proclaiming that she opposes Rand Paul's "Audit The Fed" Bill because it promotes "congressional meddling in the Fed’s monetary policy decisions," and has "dangerous implications for financial stability and the health of the global economy."