SPY

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...

See For Yourself ...

"The bottom line is that people around the world, regardless of their nationality, should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security, and that we take their privacy concerns into account in our policies and procedures.  This applies to foreign leaders as well." - Barack Obama, January 17, 2014

Evil corporate America meets oppressive police state: “When we received word of potential strikes and disruptive activity on Black Friday 2012, that’s when we started to ask the ARC to work with us. ARC had contracted with Lockheed leading up to Black Friday to help source open social media sites.” 

In a shocking new report, Seymour Hersh reveals what he says was a covert operation run by the Joint Chiefs of Staff who sought to undermine the Obama administration and the CIA's goal of overthrowing the Assad regime in Syria. "If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic."

“If you’re pushing for lower management fees to save minimal basis points on a fund where you are unhappy with performance, as a fiduciary, you have to decide whether you want to keep that fund at all.”

A libertarian mindset looks at the same results and concludes that if people are fallible, then the absolutely last thing in the world we should do is to give them sovereignty not only over themselves but over other people as well.

On Friday we get still more evidence that the West is begrudgingly coming to terms with the fact that Assad will be sticking around for the foreseeable future in Syria, as Bild (citing anonymous sources) says German spies have been "cooperating" with Assad for "some time" and are set to establish an intelligence cell in Damascus.

It was recently written in the Washington Post that many Shia Iraqis harbor the conspiratorial belief the US created the Islamic State to destroy Iraq.  Conspiracy theory becomes conspiracy fact. 

China did everything it could to prevent a collapse and it still happened.  How do you think other countries will do?

As many hedge funds are getting “crushed” this year it has become fashionable to bash the industry’s entire fee structure…typically [but not always] 2% management fee & 20% of profits. Obviously, there won’t be too many 20% profit distributions to the portfolio management teams this year but the 2% management fee has been/will be applied. And that may “piss off” some people.

Though none of these men are perfect or trustworthy with ultimate power, President Obama and his team make Donald Trump and Rand Paul look like founding fathers.

We are at a critical crossroads in American history, and we have a choice: freedom or fascism. Let’s hope the American people make the right choice while we still have the freedom to choose.

“Hedge funds have cost the states tens of billions in opportunity costs the last five years."

"Taxpayers and those who count on government services and investments will pay the price.”