Wall Street Journal

Another weekend of glad-handing and Sunday talk-shows and still The Donald dominates the GOP Presidential nominee race. With all eyes firmly glued on this week's debate, Trump had a few choice words for those who attended the Koch brothers' biannual conference (which he was not invited to), tweeting "I wish good luck to all the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money etc. from the Koch Brothers... Puppets?" As WSJ reports, Mr. Trump poses a more delicate short-term challenge for the GOP, thanks to high name recognition, celebrity appeal and a populist message that taps a powerful anti-Washington vein.  "I don’t think you should underestimate how frustrated people are," Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said Sunday during a lunch at the Koch gathering. "Mr. Trump has tapped into some of that."

Amid the collapse in coal prices, not helped by the 'China situation' and President Obama's nudge, WSJ reports that the ailing US coal just got another black eye as Alpha Natural Resources is expected to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection early Monday to cut its more than $3 billion debt load. After four straight annual losses, Alpha - one of America's largest coal producers - has secured $692mm in DIP financing as it prepares its restructuring plan expected to sell some of the best mines and shutter others. It appears the Arch Coal's CEO's ominous words last week were prophetic - “Coal markets are as difficult as I’ve seen them during my 30 years in the industry."

Back in the 1960s, Alan Greenspan wrote a well-known essay that to this day is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand the present-day monetary and economic system (which is a kind of “fascism lite” type of statism, masquerading as capitalism) and especially the almost visceral hate etatistes harbor toward gold. Greenspan’s essay is entitled “Gold and Economic Freedom”, and as the title already suggests, the two are intimately connected.

... FIGHTING ISIS (Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine Confirm What Zero Hedge Has Been Saying)

We’re always interested in alternative economic frameworks that can help address the sizable gaps left open by classical approaches. Behavioral economics can fill part of that void, of course, as it describes some basic shortfalls in the assumption that we’re all superhuman welfare maximizing individuals. One step beyond that is evolutionary economics, which borrows from biology rather than psychology to form models about economic behavior.

How many more blind eyes can the press (or "we, the people") turn?

Religious imagery... peak condescension... everyone proclaiming "gold is dead"... In a nutshell, sentiment has plunged to negative levels not seen in years, if not more than a decade. Here are four mainstream media articles that provide some evidence we may be approaching a sentiment low. Some of them we're sure you’ve seen, others perhaps not. What amazes us is how they’ve all come out within the last two weeks.

The bear market in bullion is an artificial creation. This artificial, indeed fraudulent, increase in the supply of paper bullion contracts drives down the price in the futures market despite high demand for bullion in the physical market and constrained supply. 

When we first exposed the shockingly dire lack of breadth in US equity markets, it was shrugged off by the mainstream media as yet another 'worry' in the wall to climb. It seems, however, that facts inevitably force their way to the surface and so both Bloomberg (more than 100% of this year’s increase in the S&P 500 Index is attributable to two sectors, health-care and retail. That’s the tightest clustering for an advancing year since at least 2000) and The Wall Street Journal (Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, Gilead and Walt Disney Co. account for more than all of the $199 billion in market-capitalization gains in the S&P 500) have been forced to expose the ugly truth about US equities... it is not a stock market - it's a market of 6 tail-chasing momentum stocks.

For those who are speculating on the dollar—i.e. most people—there was good news. The dollar rose to 28.3mg gold. It’s a big gain, and welcome news for those who keep all of their eggs in the one dollar basket.

Amid the 16 (yes sixteen!) candidates for Republican Presidential nominee, there is one, and only one, that stands above the rest in terms of sheer un-filtered, un-political, and some would say un-presidential outspoken-ness. In an oustanding aggregation of abuse, The Hill has documented Donald Trump's Top 30 insults (so far in the 2016 campaign alone).

With the FBI and DoJ now involved in yet another Hillary Clinton scandal - that she sent confidential emails from her personal email server - it seems the 'presidential' former Secretary of State has felt pressured to come somewhat clean. While some might argue "what difference does it make?" The Washington Post reports that Hillary Rodham Clinton will testify on Oct. 22 before the House select committee investigating her role in connection with the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. The testimony - before the committee formed last year - will be in a open setting (apparently against the wishes for privacy that committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy initially requested).

"German banking regulator Bafin cleared former Deutsche Bank AG co-Chief Executive Officer Anshu Jain of misleading the Bundesbank about his knowledge of the company’s role in attempts to manipulate benchmark interest rates," Bloomberg reports. This comes just three months after the very same regulator said that "Mr. Jain has been proven to have learned about discussion in the market concerning the susceptibility of the LIBOR to manipulation in 2008."

It's not that Donald Trump needed much help in his juggernaut campaign across the GOP presidential primary with his lead at last check in the double digitts, but moments ago the flamboyant billionaire got an unexpected present from the WSJ which may have just crippled the chances of his biggest democrat competitor as well, Hillary Clinton. WSJ reports that according to an internal government review Hillary Clinton, as former Secretary of State, "sent at least four emails from her personal account containing classified information during her time heading the State Department."And now, at long last, it appears that both the FBI and the DOJ are finally getting involved.