Reality

The consequences of all this will be felt all over the world, and for a long time to come. All of our economic systems run on oil, so many jobs are related to it, so many ‘fields’ in the economy, and no, things won’t get easier when oil is at $20 or $10, it’ll be a disaster of biblical proportions, like a swarm of locusts that leaves precious little behind. Squeeze oil and you squeeze the entire economic system. That’s what all the ‘low oil prices are great for the economy’ analysts missed (many still do). Entire nations will undergo drastic changes in leadership and prosperity.

"Today we feast, for tomorrow we die..."

At the start of September last year, as stocks began to ramp aggressively off the Black Monday crash lows, we unveiled a rather discomforting "decoupling" that suggested strongly "don't believe the hype." Four months later, and able to remain strongly convicted of the trade, the inverse VIX ETF (XIV) and the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) have recoupled back at the lows from August 24th. We await the recoupling of equity exuberance to credit curmudgeon-ness...

There are now more than 100 FBI agents investigating Hillary Clinton. Her denial that she is at the core of their work is political claptrap with no connection to reality. It is inconceivable that the FBI would send such vast resources in the present dangerous era on a wild-goose chase. It is the consensus of many of us who monitor government behavior that the FBI will recommend indictment. If the FBI recommends indictment and the attorney general declines to do so, expect Saturday Night Massacre-like leaks of draft indictments, whistleblower revelations and litigation, and FBI resignations.

One of the Main Causes of Our Economic Problems

Thus we are treading water for about a year at this 9.2 million barrels per day level, but that just isn`t going to cut it considering the drop in spot prices of crude oil.

Just when Hillary Clinton thought her political fiascoes would be the worst of her ongoing troubles as she glides through the Democrat primaries, and then takes on Trump sure to find a Warren Buffett-funded victory, suddenly everything appears to have gone wrong in what is most important to the scandal-ridden former Secretary of State and presidential contender: her second - and final - campaign for president.

"The chaos that one day will ensue from our 35-year experiment with worldwide fiat money will require a return to money of real value. We will know that day is approaching when oil-producing countries demand gold, or its equivalent, for their oil rather than dollars or euros. The sooner the better."

Periods of transition between “rising powers” and “declining powers” have been described in terms of the so-called Thucydides Trap, when fear within a static or declining power (historically, Athens) of a rising power (historically, Sparta) makes war seemingly inevitable. The phenomenon today applies not only to the China-U.S. dynamic - as has been widely remarked - but to the Middle Eastern imbalance, the “north-south” imbalance, and so on. Accompanying this sliding vertical scale of strategic power balance is the sliding horizontal scale of population volatility and movement, characterized by the breakdown of the Westphalian nation-state concept.

When markets begin a "bear" cycle, they can remain in an oversold condition for extended periods. There is an important 'truism' to remember - "Markets crash when they’re oversold."

Following a comprehensive review of China's housing market, we now realize it's much worse than the consensus understands.

Europe has voluntarily begun the process of giving up its liberal and hard-fought-for freedoms. Free speech no longer exists, only -- straight out of totalitarian ideologies -- "responsible" free speech: "free" only if it does not "offend" anyone. The desire of many Europeans and other self-declared devotees of "human rights" to cover up, downplay or explain away what is happening in Europe, in fact represents the opposite of respect for others and equality before the law.