Wall Street Journal

While the Affordable Care Act fines those who don't have health insurance, it also provides subsidies for people making up to four times the federal poverty line ($46,680)... but, as The Washington Examiner reports, the subsidies are based on past tax returns, so many people may be receiving too much. In fact, as H&R Block calculates, as many as 3.4 million people who received Obamacare subsidies may owe money to the federal government.

Despite the anecdotal evidence plastered daily on financial media channels of a scruffy, young, upstart working from his parents' basement and creating the next great social, mobile, analytics, cloud app worth a cajillion dollars, from nothing but tween eyeballs, the sad reality is the 'American Dream' for young Americans is over. As The WSJ reports, the share of people under age 30 who own private businesses has reached a 24-year-low, according to new data reflecting a generation struggling to find a spot in the workforce. While there are numerous possible reasons, one professors worries about the systemic aspect as "the fear of failure is the measure we should be most concerned about."

Meet Emerge Energy Services: the poster boy for the “irrational exuberance” that has become institutionalized throughout the length and breadth of the Wall Street casino. Today’s Wall Street Journal story coming just five months after last summers potboiler is therefore not simply an update on a speculation gone horribly wrong. It’s actually a template for the deluge to come.

Martin Armstrong, Max Keiser and High-Level Economists Weigh In

While Jim Cramer went "all-in on oil stocks" in May 2014 (right before the collapse), it was the fracking sand-providers that were the most-loved stocks on many individual investors buying lists last year... until their worlds caved in. As WSJ reports, for many sand producers, this is their first time on the bucking bronco that is the cyclical energy business—and not all of them are ready for the wild ride. As one CEO exclaimed, "there are a lot of wide-eyed people out there right now in the industry."

The Japanese stock market reached its all-time-high on December 29th 1998, and as The Wall Street Journal reports, analysts were still looking forward to another strong year for shares in 1990, despite some signs of danger. Reading through the headline on that day suggests, 25 years later, investors and talking-heads have learned absolutely nothing...

Apparently taking a page out of China's book, Factually reports the Philadelphia Federal Reserve office (apparently aware of the worthlessness of their fiat currency) sends old currency to local power plants, where it's burned for electricity. As WSJ reports, The Fed destroys more than 5,000 tons of U.S. currency a year - most of it once went to landfills, but the central bank has pushed for years to go green with all that green. It appears we have come a long way from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s 1953 annual report when it boasted it had "money to burn."

As a result of Deutsche Bank's gold-rigging problems, the German bank's practically brand spanking new Singapore gold vault, just over a year old, is about to go on sale. But while one can debate when the brand new storage facility will see a "for sale" sign attached to the main vault door, one thing is clear: Deutsche Bank's massive, and even newer, gold vault in London is already looking for offers. According to Reuters, Deutsche Bank is "open to offers for its London-based gold vault following the closure of its physical precious metals business."

2014 was quite a bizarre year. The past 12 months brought us MH370, Ebola, civil war in Ukraine, civil unrest in Ferguson, the rise of ISIS and the fall of the Democrats in the midterm elections. Our world is becoming crazier and more unstable with each passing day, and we have a feeling that things are going to accelerate greatly in 2015... despite record-er-est US stock prices.

We live in a new world, and the Saudis are either the only or the first ones to understand that. Because they are so early to notice, and adapt, I would expect them to come out relatively well. But I would fear for many of the others. And that includes a real fear of pretty extreme reactions, and violence, in quite a few oil-producing nations that have kept a lid on their potential domestic unrest to date. It would also include a lot of ugliness in the US shale patch, with a great loss of jobs (something it will have in common with North Sea oil, among others), but perhaps even more with profound mayhem for many investors in US energy. And then we’re right back to your pension plans.

The oil price drop that has dominated the headlines in recent weeks has been framed almost exclusively in terms of oil market economics, with most media outlets blaming Saudi Arabia, through its OPEC Trojan horse, for driving down the price, thus causing serious damage to the world's major oil exporters – most notably Russia. While the market explanation is partially true, it is simplistic, and fails to address key geopolitical pressure points in the Middle East.

No respite for the American oil patch and its investors.

Natural Gas prices are down over 11.5% in the last 2 days, falling to their lowest price since January 2013, as a familiar tale of excess production in the face of ebbing demand looms large. As WSJ reports, BNP Paribas' Teri Viswanath notes "the delayed return of cold weather has simply curbed all buying interest," and this was exaggerated by technical selling as the market broke previous support around 3.50. Ironically, given its detrimental impact on GDP, Macquarie points out, "it is increasingly apparent to us that weather will need to bail the market out again this winter - otherwise prices could see material downside during the spring and summer months."

Every year, David Collum writes a detailed "Year in Review" synopsis full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. This year's is no exception. "I have not seen a year in which so many risks - some truly existential - piled up so quickly. Each risk has its own, often unknown, probability of morphing into a destructive force. It feels like we’re in the final throes of a geopolitical Game of Tetris as financial and political authorities race to place the pieces correctly. But the acceleration is palpable. The proximate trigger for pain and ultimately a collapse can be small, as anyone who’s ever stepped barefoot on a Lego knows..."

"Most investors go about their job trying to identify ‘winners’. But more often than not, investing is about avoiding losers. Like successful gamblers at the racing track, an investor’s starting point should be to eliminate the assets that do not stand a chance, and then spread the rest of one’s capital amongst the remainder." So as the year draws to a close, it may be helpful if we recap the main questions confronting investors and the themes we strongly believe in, region by region.