Wall Street Journal

Important pillars of the bull case evaporated throughout 2015. Global price pressures weakened, the global Credit backdrop deteriorated and the global economy decelerated. The huge bets on central bank policies left markets at high risk for abrupt reversals and trade unwinds – 2015 The Year of the Erratic Crowded Trade. Indeed, a global bear market commenced yet most remain bullish. Serious and objective analysts would view this ominously.

"If the president’s announced sanctions ultimately aren’t executed, it would demonstrate a level of fecklessness that even the president hasn’t shown before."

The unfolding correction of the visible excesses of the credit inflation - such as overinvestment and malinvestment - will destroy incomes and profits; the Great Unwind of the less visible effects, such as the sovereign wealth fund liquidations, are a giant pin aimed squarely at the monumental worldwide bubbles in stock, bonds and real estate.

The S&P 500 closed at 2052 on November 18,2014. That was 405 days ago, and despite the rips and dips in the interim the broad market average has gone nowhere.

Market-based Credit is unstable. This remains the fundamental issue – the harsh reality – that no one dares confront. Long-term stability in a Capitalistic system requires sound money and Credit (hopelessly archaic, we admit). Over the years, we've tried to differentiate traditional finance from unfettered “New Age” finance. The former, bank lending-dominated Credit, was generally contained by various mechanisms (including the gold standard, effective currency regimes, bank capital and reserve requirements, etc.). This is in stark contrast to the current-day securities market-based global financial “system” uniquely operating without restraints on either the quantity or quality of Credit created. There’s no precedence for such a globalized monetary fiasco, though there are a number of historical episodes that provide valuable insight.

"Anyone who has studied microeconomics knows... that an income transfer, as opposed to a gift in-kind, gets you to a higher level of utility," but as WSJ reports, putting theory under the tree is another matter. After years of studying the economics of gift-giving, economists have found that some gifts are valued more highly than others, and that some gift-givers seem to be better than others...

According to WSJ, "the Obama administration pursued secret communications with elements of Syria’s regime over several years in a failed attempt to limit violence and get President Bashar al-Assad to relinquish power, according to U.S. and Arab officials. Early on, the U.S. looked for cracks in the regime it could exploit to encourage a military coup, but found few.”

"This is a dangerous movie for Wall Street, the government, and the establishment in general. ... cuts through the crap and reveals those in power to be corrupt, greedy weasels who aren’t really as smart as they want you to think they are. The finale of the movie is sobering and infuriating."

At 108 four-year colleges, at least half of all students hadn’t paid even $1 of what they owe within three years of leaving college. Those colleges got more than $10 billion in federal student loans and grants last year.

People are waking up to the darkness in American policing, and the cops don't like it one bit...

A new whistleblower has leaked a catalog of cell phone surveillance devices used by the military, intelligence agencies, and local police departments, including the controversial ‘Stingray’ spying tool. At this point, it’s painfully obvious that America is the home of the Police-Surveillance State. Privacy is a dying notion in a nation of fools determined to be safe rather than liberated. If you give a damn, now is the time to stand up and be heard.

• Splintered Spanish vote points to fraught coalition talks (Reuters)
• Brent Oil Falls to 11-Year Low in London as Global Glut Persists (BBG)
• Oil prices hit lowest since 2004 as supply balloons (Reuters)
• U.S. Probes Theranos Complaints (WSJ)
• Driver plows onto Las Vegas Strip sidewalk 'like bowling ball', one dead (Reuters)
• Yellen, Bull Markets and Extinction in a Seven-Year Stock Rally (BBG)

"The key to understand the situation here is that this is not normalizing, and we don’t have a precedent. We really don’t. We’re kind of all being soothed and reassured by the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg and the financial authorities that we’ve been down this path before, we’ve been down it many times, more often than not we’ve had rising markets as a result and, really, there’s nothing to worry about. The issue with that is there are many things this time that are entirely different..."

“To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious, but the stupid have an answer for everything.” ~Edward Abbey