KIM

Is the US dollar really strong now? We explain why your measuring stick can massively distort your perception away from the reality of facts and truth.

Last week, many woke up to news that the UK had raised its terror threat level from “substantial” to “severe.” Considering the competence and trustworthiness of the nation’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, there must be some specific threat they’re concerned about to justify instilling fear in a population of 65 million. Nope. Although the new threat level rates the risk of an attack on the UK to “highly likely,” Home Secretary Theresa May stated that “there was no evidence to suggest one was imminent.” Well then. It makes you wonder if the the change in threat level is being used in part to justify the extraordinary $80 million sum spent on building a fortress around the Newport and Cardiff city centers in Wales, which many are describing as “similar to the Berlin Wall,” or a “zoo,” in an unprecedented display of protection for many of the world’s most corrupt politicians.

A limerick for Barry Jung Un...

Below is my one-hour video debunking all the critical points Reich raises in “Inequality for All.” 

Phil is interviewed on Money Talk where he outlines some option trade ideas. 

As part of Bernanke's and now Yellen's experiment in market central-planning, in which newsflow no longer matters to a market that has lost all ability to discount anything except how big a central bank's balance sheet will be and where HFT momentum is far more important than fundamentals, one of the greatest investing perversions to emerge has been our finding from two years ago since confirmed on a monthly basis, that the best performing asset classes happens to also be the most hated one, as the most shorted stocks have outperformed the market better than twofold just since 2012.

August gold GCQ14 and September silver SIU14 contract purchases spiked the exact moment Malaysia Airlines reported MH17 missing. Coincidence or tragedy profiteering? You decide.

The venture capital world is currently paying inordinate amounts of money for software companies which are making a lot of noise and not much else!

Abe's honeymoon is over. Following nearly two years of having free reign to crush the Japanese economy with his idiotic monetary and fiscal policies - but, but the Nikkei is up - the market may have finally pulled its head out of its, well, sand, and after last night's abysmal economic data from Japan which saw not only the highest (cost-push) inflation rate since 1982, in everything but wages (hence, zero demand-pull) - after wages dropped for 23 consecutive months, disposable income imploded - but a total collapse in household spending, the USDJPY  appears to have finally been dislodged from its rigged resting place just around 102. As a result the 50 pip overnight drop to 101.4 was the biggest drop in over a month. And since the Nikkei is nothing but the USDJPY (same for the S&P), Japan stocks tumbled 1.4%, their biggest drop in weeks, as suddenly the days of the grand Keynesian ninja out of Tokyo appear numbered. Unless Nomura manages to stabilize USDJPY and push it higher, look for the USDJPY to slide back to double digits in the coming weeks.

We all knew just how wrong it was as we sat there and listened to the World Bank going on in January about how world economic growth would top 3.2%. Today the World Bank has downgraded economic growth to 2.8%, which some might say is even over the odds

Nothing lasts forever: Why the perceptions of North Korea may be different from reality

The most humiliating economic SNAFU in recent history continues, and this time the rabbit hole goes really deep because somehow the worst unadjusted manufacturing ISM

There can be little doubt that Thomas Piketty's new book Capital in the 21st Century has struck a nerve globally. In fact, the Piketty phenomenon (the economic equivalent to Beatlemania) has in some ways become a bigger story than the ideas themselves. However, the book's popularity is not at all surprising when you consider that its central premise: how radical wealth redistribution will create a better society, has always had its enthusiastic champions (many of whom instigated revolts and revolutions). What is surprising, however, is that the absurd ideas contained in the book could captivate so many supposedly intelligent people. 

On the same day in which we released our letter writing campaign to “End Gold Price Manipulation Now!”, Barclays Plc was fined $43.8 million and Barclays trader Daniel James Plunkett was fined more than $160,000 for manipulating the gold price to avoid a $3.9 million payout to a client that had placed options on gold in the market. Of course, these types of shenanigans have been going on for more than a decade now, but since this event marks the first significant fine against a bullion bank and a banker for gold price manipulation, it is groundbreaking in that regard.

Recent developments indicate that North Korea is very quietly beginning to expand its commercial interests. Some of this is due to internal change, but it would seem that much larger geopolitical forces are at work.