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So how do you grow household wealth by $18 trillion in the face of these dismal real world trends? In a word, with a printing press. But what happened today is that Draghi showed he is out of tricks and Yellen confessed she is out of excuses. Yes, this sucker is going down. And this time all the misguided economics professors turned central bankers in the world will be powerless to reverse the plunge.

Update: DMV releases driver's license photo of Farook

In a press briefing on Thursday, San Bernardino officials catalogued the weapons and ammo discovered in the vehicle and home of Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik who killed 21 and wounded 14 on Wednesday. Additionally, CNN (citing "sources") says Farook was likely "radicalized." The pair were "well equipped" and could have staged another attack, police say.

Silicon Valley has been in a food fight for about three years now. Everyone knows it’s going to end, except for the folks in Silicon Valley. Anyone who invested at these valuations will richly deserve what’s coming to them. Those prices were cuckoo.

If we are forced to keep our money in the bank... and cash is outlawed... the Deep State will have total economic control over us all.

The global Central Banks have literally bet the financial system that their theories will work.  They haven’t. All they’ve done is set the stage for an even worse crisis in which entire countries will go bankrupt.

We are talking of course, about the infamous RRR-hike of 1936-1937, which took place smack in the middle of the Great Recession.

The EU’s political leaders and other elites are committed to holding the European Union together. To them, united Europe is an article of faith. They hold the idea with as much ferocity and fervor as any religious belief. But while the European Union is a wonderful political idea, it’s economically terrible. And the EU nations will have to face up to bearing enormous costs to save the Europe we wished for.

From "pumping out lots of jobs" in September to "not slowing meaningfully" in October, and despite consistent job losses in manufacturing (which is odd because auto sales are so awesome, right?), ADP reports November a jump to 217k (against expectations of 190k and October's 182k). ADP has missed expectations 8 months so far in 2015, but November's beat is the biggest since 2014 which one could argue was just catch up from ADP's big miss relative to BLS data (182 ADP with an upward revision to 196K now, vs 271k BLS). Of course, none of this "data" matters apparently as Fed's Lockhart said just this morning that the Fed's "criterion of job market improvement has been met."

“It is not in doubt. ISIS is almost finished. They are weak. If only America would stop supporting them, we could defeat them in days.”

While the populations of Europe and the US are fed raw propaganda about the regional aims involved, the reality is far different. While we might be tempted to sit in our Western environs, secure in the idea that at least we aren’t ‘over there’ where all the bad things are happening, it would be a mistake to think that this turmoil will not impact you.

It appears that the "Robin Hood" CEO who famously raised the minimum wage of his employees to $70,000 while cutting his own $1.1 salary, lauded by progressives, praised by the media, and adored by "wealth egalitarians" everywhere, may have been nothing but a con man.

The problem of suggesting that we have once again evolved into a "Goldilocks economy" is that such an environment of slower growth is not conducive to supporting corporate profit growth at a level to justify high valuations. Such a backdrop becomes particularly problematic when the Federal Reserve begins to raise interest rates which removes one of the fundamental underpinnings of an overvalued market which was low interest rates. Ultimately, higher interest rates, particulalry in an economy with a deteriorating economic backdrop, becomes the pin that "pops the bubble."  It is true that the bears didn't eat Goldilocks at the end of the story...but then again, there never was a sequel either.

BlueCrest Capital Management Limited "BlueCrest" announces it will, over the next several months, transition to a Private Investment Partnership, and will return to its clients the $8 billion it currently manages on their behalf.  Following the transition, BlueCrest will manage assets solely on behalf of its partners and employees.

For all intents and purposes, the National Security Agency has supposedly ceased its bulk collection of metadata from Americans’ phone calls, but read the fine print: nothing is going to change.

While Americans are used to tears (and jeers) in The Capitol as politicians go about their 'business', none of that compares to the behavior of lawmakers in Kosovo this morning.