Wall Street Journal

The Home Sales Fallout Ratio gives us an idea of the trend of contracts (aka 'pending home sales') falling through and failing to close. It is telling us that, while sales are at a 9 year high, trouble is brewing in the current version of the bubbly housing market. This could be a harbinger of mass destruction should mortgage rates begin a persistent rise from here.

"A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed. Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus."

It’s happening. As expected, dynastic politics is prevailing in campaign 2016. After a tease about as long as Hillary’s, Jeb Bush (aka Jeb!) officially announced his presidential bid last week. Ultimately, the two of them will fight it out for the White House, while the nation’s wealthiest influencers will back their ludicrously expensive gambit. And here’s a hint: don’t bet on Jeb not to make it through the Republican gauntlet of 12 candidates (so far). After all, the really big money’s behind him.

With a DoJ probe having predictably gone nowhere, a group of pensioners and retirement funds are suing Wall Street and Markit for colluding to monopolize the CDS market. Amusingly, Citadel has been subpoenaed to discuss how it was shut out of creating a CDS trading platform by the "oligopolistic" activities of TBTF banks, even as the firm looks set to dominate the market for IR swaps.

The renewed optimism that's surrounded Greek debt negotiations since Monday evening evaporated like deposits on a hot summer day in Athens this morning as the IMF has indicated it will stick to its "red lines" on pension cuts and the VAT, meaning PM Alexis Tsipras will either surrender unconditionally or embrace an EMU exit.

• Greece Handed New Terms as Tsipras Approaches Decision Time (BBG)
• As U.S. Probes $12.7 Trillion Treasury Market, Trader Talk Is a Good Place to Start (BBG)
• Signs Swedish QE Backfiring as Liquidity Evaporates (BBG)
• ECB approves ELA funding requested by Greece- banking source (Reuters)
• Greek Millennials Can't Find Work But Actually Want to Keep the Euro (BBG)
• Greek deal or not, the euro is now a different beast (Reuters)
• Promoter’s Arrest Sheds Light on Cynk’s $6 Billion Surge (BBG)
• The World's Biggest Economies Are About to Feel the Impact of China's Slowdown (BBG)
• Senate Clears Trade Bill’s Way to Passage (WSJ)

President Barack Obama in 2014 said Mr. Gruber was “some adviser who never worked on our staff.” And then there's this:

“Thank you for being an integral part of getting us to this historic moment,” according to Sept. 9, 2009 email to Mr. Gruber from Jeanne Lambrew, a top Obama administration health adviser who worked at HHS and the White House. In a November 2009 email, she called Mr. Gruber “our hero.”

Greece, Europe and the world are being crucified on a cross of Keynesian central banking. The latter’s two-decade long deluge of money printing and ZIRP has generated a fantastic worldwide financial bubble, and one which has accrued to just a tiny slice of mankind. That much is blindingly evident, but there’s more and it’s worse. The present replay of high noon on Greece’s impossible mountain of debt clarifies an even greater evil. Namely, that the central bank printing presses have also utterly destroyed the fundamental requisite of fiscal democracy. To wit, in the modern world of massive, interventionist welfare states, fiscal governance desperately needs an honest bond market.

It would appear, whether by plan or unintended consequence, Obama's dream of a single-payer socialized healthcare is getting closer by the day, and as WSJ reports, drastically increasing the risk that ObamaCare is creating oligopolies, with the predictable results of higher costs, lower quality and less innovation. The five largest commercial health insurers in the U.S. have contracted merger fever, and if the logic of ObamaCare prevails, this exercise will conclude with all five fusing into one monster conglomerate.

Following last month's disappointing drop in Existing Home Sales (ignored by most since other housing data provided just enough smoke and mirrors to confirm any inherent biases), May saw Home Sales surged 5.1% (handily beating expectations for a 4.4% rise after the 3.3% drop in April). At 5.35m SAAR, this is the highest rate of sales since Nov 2009 at the end of the government's last housing bailout plan spiked sales. For the 39th consecutive month, home prices rose (by 7.9% YoY) but NAR's chief economist proclaimed this as sustainable (despite stagnant incomes and home prices about to take out the previous peak) but with 67% of investors paying cash for homes in May, the demand is clearly foreign as Chinese buyers surpass Canadian snowbirds as QE floods out into every asset.

The West is impotent to prevent Armageddon. It is up to Russia and China, and as Washington has framed the dilemma, Armageddon can only be prevented by Russia and China accepting vassal status. This is not going to happen. Why would any self-respecting people submit to the corrupt West? The hope is that Washington will cause its European vassals to rebel by pushing them too hard into conflict with Russia. If European politicians were to break from Washington’s hegemony and instead represent European interests, Washington would be deprived of cover for its war crimes. The breakdown of the neoconservative unipower model would then be apparent even to Washington, and the world would become a safer and better place.

"My tax plan would blow up the tax code and start over. Today, the American people see the rot in the system that is degrading our economy day after day and want it to end. That is exactly what the Fair and Flat Tax will do through a plan that’s the boldest restoration of fairness to American taxpayers in over a century."

Having explained His vision for a new world order, The Holy See unleashed some scathing remarks towards the bankers of the world in his 183-page encyclical. Appearing to address the bank that does God's work, God's man on earth stated, "Saving banks at any cost, making the public pay the price, foregoing a firm commitment to reviewing and reforming the entire system, only reaffirms the absolute power of a financial system, a power which has no future and will only give rise to new crises." Furthermore, His Holiness called out the financial sector for having outsized influence over the political process and endorsed limiting its reach.

Ronald Reagan is surely rolling in his grave. He is credited for much that he didn’t actually accomplish on the economic front, but his most singular real victory - decisive repudiation of the Keynesian macro-economic policy model that had produced stagflationary havoc for more than a decade - overshadows all his fiscal failures and the urban legend that he actually tamed Big Government. Needless to say, however, that 35-years ago repudiation has now been itself completely repudiated by the keynesian apparatchiks who presently rule the Eccles Building. This week Janet Yellen was at it again, displaying outright contempt for the Gipper’s crowning achievement.

The fox is guarding the henhouse at America's colleges and universities as accreditors slap a seal of approval on schools with subpar graduation rates, clearing the way for government aid to flow where it shoudln't and further imperiling the US taxpayer in the process.