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5 Things To Ponder: Independence Day Reading
Submitted by Lance Roberts via STA Wealth Management,
This weekend's reading list is a smattering of articles to enjoy between your favorite beverage, grilled meat and really fattening desert. Just remember to go back to the gym on Monday.
1) Grantham: Stocks Will Continue Upward Until The Election by Justin Kermond via Advisor Perspectives
"Jeremy Grantham says equity valuations are heading toward the "two-sigma" level that is the requisite threshold for a true bubble. At some point – which is not imminent – he said a "trigger" will precipitate the reversion back to mean levels. The market will continue to deliver positive returns until the next election, according to Grantham.
Grantham cited two major causes for the looming bubble: post-Bernanke U.S. Federal Reserve policy and a "stock-option culture" that has both elevated corporate margins and stifled normal levels of capital expenditure investment required to grow the economy."
Read Also: The Last Crisis May Cause The Next One by Robert Samuelson via Real Clear Markets
2) Why This Chinese Bubble Is Different by John Authers via FT
"Whatever else, the incident demonstrated that China's market remains dominated by liquidity. It also showed how badly the authorities want an overextended stock market. So, to adapt an old market saw, perhaps everyone should buy A-shares on the basis of "don't fight the PBoC".
Bulls, led by GaveKal Dragonomics, say for global investors, keeping out of China is "the world's most crowded trade". Ever since metals prices turned down four years ago, suggesting slower Chinese growth, western institutions have been wary. They missed out on last year's boom, explaining their reluctance to see A-shares suddenly appear in their benchmarks."
Read Also: Putting The China Drop Into Perspective by Malcolm Scott via Bloomberg Business
Read Also: Maybe It's Not So Different by Streettalklive.com
3) Private Equity Is "Cashing Out" by Leslie Picker and Ruth David via Bloomberg
"When financier Leon Black said his Apollo Global Management LLC was exiting "everything that's not nailed down" amid rising valuations, he made headlines. Two years later, other private-equity firms are following suit -- dumping stakes into the markets at a record clip.
Firms including Blackstone Group LP and TPG Capital Management have been capitalizing on record stock markets around the world to sell shares, mostly in their companies that have already gone public. Globally, buyout firms conducted 97 stock offerings in the second quarter, more than in any other three-month period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg."
Read Also: Smart Money Is Cashing Out, What About You? by Tyler Durden via ZeroHedge
4) 15 Problems With Real World Portfolios by Ben Carlson via A Wealth Of Common Sense
"Investment strategies have a tendency to look beautiful on paper and in marketing pitch books. You get to see return numbers, risk-adjusted results and pretty looking graphs that show how great things were in the past. I've yet to come across a strategy that couldn't be dressed up and made to look appealing by a skilled sales team or portfolio manager.
While there's nothing wrong with trying to present your investment process so it stands out from the crowd, investors have to remember that the markets are never quite as easy as they look on paper or with the benefit of hindsight. Here are 15 reasons portfolios are always harder in the real world than what you'll see in a marketing pitch or back-test:"
Read Also: When Market Returns Are Reliant On A Single Word by Jeff Erber via Real Clear Markets
5) The Roseanne Roseannadanna Market by Dr. John Hussman via Hussman Funds
"Much of the investment world seems to view present conditions as a "Goldilocks market" where economic growth is positive enough to avoid recession, but not fast enough to provoke the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates. Even if these views on economic growth and Federal Reserve policy are correct, it hardly follows that stock prices will advance. S&P 500 returns are only weakly correlated with year-over-year GDP growth and have near-zero correlation with year-over-year changes in earnings. Likewise, the stance of the Federal Reserve has much less power to distinguish investment outcomes than investors seem to believe, which they might realize even by remembering that the Fed was easing aggressively and persistently throughout the 2000-2002 and 2007-2009 market collapses.
In contrast, we find profound differences in market outcomes across history depending on the combined status of valuations, market internals, and broader measures of market action (which include, for example, overvalued, overbought, overbullish syndromes)."
Read Also: The Single Most Important Element To Successful Investing by Jesse Felder via The Felder Report
Have Another Slice Of Pie
6 Conditions For A Global Bond Crisis by Bill Gross via Janus Funds
A Compendium Of Tweeted Research by Meb Faber via Meb Faber Research
The Current Oil Price Slump Is Far From Over by Arthur Berman via OilPrice.com
The Whole Story Of Factors + Asset Classes by Jason Hsu via Research Affiliates
"Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom... Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution...but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: 'We will not go quietly into the night!' We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!" - Pres. Thomas Whitmore, Independence Day
Have a great 4th of July holiday.
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Happy Independence Day, enjoy it while it lasts.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. - Thomas Jefferson
Freedom isn't free. Happy 4th everyone.
Red: all the blood that was spilled, blood of our British kinsmen, other Europeans and of course the Natives
Blue: all the ocean that was crossed to build an empire
White: the purity with which we treat this brutal war of independence and the subsequent wars, purity through propaganda and rewritten history.
Happy 4th everyone
this could potentially be the last peaceful Independence Day,, so enjoy it bitchez
I predict with 100% certainty that you will have a millennium of peaceful Independence Days within 50 years.
Calling All Texans: It Is Time, Texas! Treaty Oak Awaits Us Once Again. Operation Texas www.OpTexas.org
FUCK TEXAS !!
They're so full of SHIT, they can't tell themselves from all the brown people crossing the border by the millions every year.
Something I Wrote Several Years Ago...It Is Even More Apropos, Today:
I Fly The Flag
I fly the flag not in honor, but in memory.
I fly the flag not for what is, but for what was.
Americans no longer stood when it passed by.
Americans sat as it passed and was delivered into the dustbin of history.
To all who protected it and died with honor, may you and The American Republic rest in Eternal Peace.
"Happy Independence Day, enjoy it while it lasts."
Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME ???? DID YOU JUST ARRIVE FROM THE PLANET DUMBASS ??? WHAT FUCKING FREEDOM DO YOU HAVE LEFT ?????
Have you something to add to that, or has that pulsing artery finally blown out?
Nope...nothing to add. Everything that has needed to be done has been done in order to destroy this nation. And here's what's been done. Absolutely nothing.
Enjoy what's left of your little useless ritual called the 4th of July. Just don't bitch about the useless eaters out there too distracted by their iThingies and a hand full of Cheeze-Doodles. When all you worthless fucks will be distracted by fireworks and a hot dog in your hand.
“Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
– Hermann Goering, Nazi leader.
The United States wasn’t to be that way, it wasn’t to be a monarchy, it wasn’t to be a totalitarian Communist regime; it was to be a republic where, as Hamilton said, the people rule.
And in its early years, war decisions were handled by the representatives of the people. And if the people objected, a declaration of war was not possible.
Nowadays, under control of the Fed banking cartel, war decisions are made, not by the president and not by the congress (they won’t even vote on it). The decisions are made by the bankers because war is their favorite enterprise.
“It comes down to this. If you hate war, oppose the Fed. If you hate violations of your liberties, oppose the Fed. If you want to restrain despotism, restrain the Fed. If you want to secure freedom for yourself and your descendants, abolish the Fed.” Lew Rockwell, June 9, 2008
I always hand out nice little bound booklets with the Declaration and Constitution in them. The Cato ones are nice and cheap in bulk.
Get your copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution from the Cato Institute but don’t let the Cato Institute tell you what they say. Because Cato, once pretending to be a free enterprise, conservative institution ain’t even close to that anymore. Case in point, here’s Cato “scholar" Ilya Shapiro on the gay marriage decision:
Marriage and Equality at the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to both recognize and license same sex marriage. Cato scholar Ilya Shapiro comments, “Just because today’s opinion was expected by all doesn’t make it any less momentous. It was in 2003 that the Court had to invalidate the criminalization of gay sex and a mere 12 years later it commands state officials to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. …Good for the Court – and I echo Justice Kennedy’s hope that both sides now respect each other’s liberties and the rule of law.”
Join us at 3pm for a LIVE discussion on Obergefell v. Hodges — what the ruling means to the 14th amendment and for marriage equality.
http://www.cato.org/
Here is a goodie, too: https://mises.org/library/five-laws-repeal-independence-day
Busy now.
YTD cum flows? Those are soaring in Obama's mouth from banksters, corporations, lobbyists, and Reggie.
This weekend's reading list is a smattering of articles to enjoy between your favorite beverage, grilled meat and really fattening desert. Just remember to go back to the gym on Monday.
Take Hydroxycut pills with Adderall (the 20MG organge tablets known as Amphetamine salts) which controls appetite and doesn't make one look like a fat slob ( like the majority of middle aged people seem to be the further west you go from NYC or from Boston Massachusetts). besides isn't the above supposed to be done during Thanksgiving?? I am now 40 years old. People think I am my late 20's or 30s.. Seeing what people who actually are over 40 in central Massachusetts (the towns west of I 495) is downright scary
Those supplements seem to make you delusional.
For a spot to have your Independence Day picnic while pondering ZH’s recommended reading list, you might want to skip the streets of San Francisco. Because these days, “San Francisco smells like a toilet.”
Avert Your Eyes and Hold Your Nose : The streets of San Francisco have taken on a new odor.
San Francisco’s Summer of Muck
By Debra J. Saunders – 7.2.15
Downtown San Francisco feels like a large public toilet without enough janitors. More than once this year, I’ve seen men drop their pants in public places — including at Fifth and Market — to leave a smelly mess on the sidewalk. You can walk for blocks and never escape the stench of stale urine. At lunchtime, I see street people passed out on high-traffic sidewalks, and I am afraid to walk around them.
The homeless have been a problem in San Francisco for as far back as anyone remembers, but to me it seems this year is the worst. There’s a sense among people who work downtown that City Hall doesn’t care about cleaning up San Francisco’s Summer of Muck.
If this year is worse, two culprits are the drought and the city’s booming economy. The drought means “there’s no rain washing down the streets,” San Francisco Public Works spokeswoman Rachel Gordon told me. The city’s housing and office building boom has filled in alleyways and once-neglected pockets where the homeless used to be able to hide.
Jim Lazarus of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce told me businesses have more complaints about the homeless. “We are a live-and-let-live town genetically,” quoth Lazarus, “but we’re also letting people live on the streets who shouldn’t be living on the streets.”
What can be done? Increase the number of uniformed officers on the street. The chamber supports Mayor Ed Lee’s 18-month plan to add 300 police officers and bring SFPD to its authorized maximum of 1,971, as well as Supervisor Scott Wiener’s proposal to hire an additional 200 cops. “Not that that means you want police out arresting homeless people,” said Lazarus, but their presence alone should “encourage more civil behavior.”
Lazarus also suggested more public toilets in places like city parking garages. BART is looking at reopening bathrooms in its underground stations — and erecting canopies to prevent homeless people from using escalators as toilets. It says something about how dysfunctional Bay Area politics are that these common-sense solutions did not happen years ago.
Mayor Lee implemented a Pit Stop program that set up staffed public bathrooms in neighborhoods, starting with the Tenderloin. “It’s not going to fix the stink in the city,” said Gordon, but requests for sidewalk, alley and street steam cleanings are down near the four Pit Stops. First, I caution, the city has to send the message that it’s not OK to eliminate in public.
S.F. homeless czar Bevan Dufty is big on the city’s new Navigation Center on 16th Street. Some homeless adults are reluctant to go to a shelter because it means giving up their possessions or splitting with a partner or pet. With services and space to accommodate shopping carts and dogs, the center is designed to transition street people off the street for good.
I love the idea, but I want to see — or not smell — something for it. The city’s 2014 homeless services budget was $167 million — to serve 6,355 homeless people. The new homeless census will be out shortly. Dufty told me, “The number is going up, but not significantly up.” So you’ve got about the same number of homeless people passed out, peeing and pooping in the crowded city.
San Francisco is such a beautiful city. Why do we let people poop all over it?
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/saunders/article/San-Francisco-s-Summer-of-Muck-6361637.php?cmpid=twitter
I could be homeless for a fraction of $167 million.
There was a letter to the editor today in the Chronicle from a writer who calculated if the funding for the homeless was divided equally amongst them, they would be earning slightly more than San Francisco's minimum wage, $12.25 an hour. Or $26,278.00 annually.
He asks:
"What services is our city providing for free to the homeless that others working 40 hours weekly at minimum wage have to earn with their labor?"
Bagdad, Iraq was a beautiful modern city before Americans bombed it and the population into oblivion. San Francisco is just another bankrupt American shitty.
Here's something to ponder on Independence Day.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceaucescu
**POLITICIANS around the world are well aware of this event and others like it.**
Fuck with the people long enough and the pitchforks, torches, guillotines, and firing squads will come for you.