Reality

Bonds are back in town and stocks are tumbling. Dow Transports remain the worst performer of the major indices (down over 11% year-to-date), but, after the exuberance of October, November's reality of a tightening Fed has dragged first Small Caps, then The Dow, and now The S&P into negative territory for 2015. Only Nasdaq remains in the green (up a stunning and entirely unsustainable 10% YTD). The S&P 500 also broke below its 200-day moving average.

Prepping has not only gone mainstream, it's infected even the billionaire culture as referenced recently on a ZH article:

There is a driving desire among weaker-minded people to seek control over other people in the name of arbitrary standards of safety as well as arbitrary standards of “civil” conformity. While such people proclaim publicly that they do what they do for the “greater good,” in reality they seek only to satiate a private lust for power. Any fight for freedom from collectivists will require the removal of command and control. This is the only way that humanity can be given breathing room to rebuild without remaining under constant preplanned threat.

People are going to be pissed off no matter who wins this election and that is a very important social dynamic that is vastly under appreciated by the majority of mainstream pundits and analysts out there. The truth is, the American public is tricked into thinking they disagree with each other on the big issues, when in reality there’s enormous overlap. Until we stop being tricked, the status quo will continue to suck the economy dry through their religious-like embrace of corruption and crony capitalism. Unfortunately, the people who could benefit the most from reading this post, will never see it.

Watching Hilary Clinton debate Bernie Sanders- or like lastnight, Jeb Bush against Donald Trump - doesn’t strike us as too different from when Hulk Hogan faced off against Andre the Giant in Wrestlemania. In fact, it’s essentially the same with elections today, it's "political entertainment." It’s all fake. It’s sound bites, jabs and jibes, and pointless banter completely devoid of any real substance. But the truth is, none of it really matters, the United States objectively speaking is far past the point of no return.

Macy's is down over 13% today, pushing towards a sub-$40 handle - the lowest since February 2013 - after lowering guidance and disappointing a market full of hope (and hype) that retail is back (remember, all the retail hiring last Friday). However, that is not the most prescient issue as 3 years of buying back billions of dollars of Macy's stocks - to financially-engineer earnings to ensure executive compensation is satisfactory - have been completely wasted. And worst still, the additional debt added to fund the total failure in timing of buybacks has now sent Macy's credit spiking to multi-year highs (as the stock tumbles).

"It is a bloodbath. We’re at the highest point of fear and uncertainty now.... God only knows what’ll happen if oil doesn’t rebound. I try not to let that penetrate my mind."

Breaking a critical trendline (particularly one that has been in place for several decades) is one thing. Breaking it and then failing to reclaim it during the following bounce is indicative of BEAR MARKET.

Well that didn't last long. After diappointing data from Japan (very weak Reuters Tankan), and China overnight confirming the weekend's dire trade data (and crushing the soft survey-based idiocy of the PMIs), global equity markets ramped abruptly because "bad news is good news" still in China - meaning moar stimulus is due. However, Draghi's lack of exuberance this morning, and the reality of Macy's outlook reflection on the US consumer have dragged all the overnight gains back into the red...

There is “a barbarous relic” in our global monetary system. It is the U.S. dollar: the worthless, monetary relic of an empire in decline.

Believers in "technology always creates more jobs than it destroys" never address the knotty issues of taxpayer subsidies, secular trends of higher labor costs, the eradication of low-skill jobs that pay enough to live on without taxpayer subsidies, or the structural surplus of conventional labor and capital--the scarcity value of both are dropping to zero. While many hope that every low-skill person can become a high-skilled worker, training people doesn't create jobs for them.

Are we in for another nuclear standoff with the Kremlin?

"...middle-aged whites have lost the narrative of their lives. ... while universal health care, higher minimum wages, aid to education, and so on would do a lot to help Americans in trouble, I’m not sure whether they’re enough to cure existential despair."