KIM

The ongoing deterioration in fundamentals, economics and technicals suggest that risk currently outweighs the potential reward for now. With respect to the technical front, the ongoing deterioration in relative strength, momentum, and breadth, combined with a compression of price action, have only been witnessed at more important market peaks in the past. "Bull markets" do not die on their own. Their death is generally dictated by the onset of an unexpected catalyst that creates enough "panic selling" to spark a liquidation cycle. Does the current situation in China rise to such a level? Maybe. It is an issue we began discussing this past June, and there may be a danger in dismissing the issue too quickly.

At 1000-to-1, Kim Kardashian is an outsider in the race to be the next US President but perhaps most notable in the odds that bookies are willing to offer is the 7th place that Donald Trump ranks (at 18-to-1 or just a 5% probability of winning), below GOP rivals such as Jeb Bush (23% probabiity) and Marco Rubio (11% probability). Trump even ranks below Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden according to where the money is being bet! Of course, Hillary remains the odds-on favorite at 10/11 (or 52% probability).

A Hillview man has been arrested after he shot down a drone flying over his property - but he's not making any apologies for it. "I just think you should have privacy in your own backyard," said William Merideth, 47, "I went and got my shotgun and I said, "I'm not going to do anything unless it's directly over my property."" That moment soon arrived, "within a minute or so, here it came... it was hovering over top of my property, and I shot it out of the sky." Merideth was arrested and charged with first degree criminal mischief and first degree wanton endangerment...

What is on display more brightly and clearly than ever, though, is the utter fakery of international banking. The players have lost faith in their own shenanigans. They simply go through the motions now awaiting the political fallout, which is to say the revolt of the people who can still do arithmetic. The old refrain, “your check is in the mail” may not be so reassuring to folks who haven’t eaten for three days. Personally, I would expect the gasoline bombs to be flying around Syntagma Square before the middle of the week.

Our modern western financial and banking system with its massive dependency on single interface websites, servers and the internet faces serious risks that few analysts have yet to appreciate and evaluate.

“A person under surveillance is no longer free; a society under surveillance is no longer a democracy.”

Ever wondered what life would be like if a country actually disappeared off the face of the planet or at least transformed into something else?

Welcome to SmartKnowledgeU Podcast #10, Free Your Mind. For many of us, almost every single belief we hold about religion, politics, financial markets, war, law, morality was fed to us by another human being, and not something that we arrived upon from our own path of critical thought.

Between 1974 and 2009 there were 62 magnitude 3.0 or stronger earthquakes in Oklahoma. In the past five years there have been 1,070 M3.0+ quakes. The chart of Oklahoma's quake surge correlates perfectly with the amount of wastewater injected into the state. And when it comes to Oklahoma's "induced seismicity" there is nobody more responsible for either Oklahoma's "shale miracle" or the resultant earthquake epidemic than David Chernicky, CEO of Tulsa-based New Dominion.

"Mr. Hamm is very upset at some of the earthquake reporting to the point that he would like to see select OGS staff dismissed."

We need to wake up....and FAST!!!

Satellite images dated October 2014 appear to show a battery of six ZPU-4s lined up in front of "some sort of downrange targets" just outside of Pyongyang, suggesting that executions by anti-aircraft gun may not be all that uncommon in North Korea and reinforcing the following message: "No napping."

There was some confusion what caused the fallout between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his defense minister, Hyon Yong Chol. According to Reuters Chol was charged with treason, including disobeying Kim. According to Bloomberg, his offense was more trivial: he fell asleep. The defense minister "was captured napping in video footage of the event late last month."  Whichever one is true is irrelevant, but one thing is certain: nobody will ever be caught napping at official events ever again because Chol was executed in front of an anti-aircraft gun at a firing range. 

• Obama, McConnell missteps undercut trade pact in U.S. Senate (Reuters)
• Bears Beware: Rout Puts Investors on Wrong Side of Central Banks (BBG)
• U.S. Set to Rip Up UBS Libor Accord, Seek Conviction (BBG)
• Greece’s Creditors Said to Seek EU3 Billion in Budget Cuts (BBG)
• Amtrak train derails in Philadelphia, killing at least five (Reuters)
• Oil glut worsens as OPEC market-share battle just beginning (Reuters)
• China Stimulus Aims at Restructuring Trillions in Local-Government Debt (WSJ)

Following yesterday's turbulent bond trading session, where the volatility after the worst Bid to Cover in a Japanese bond auction since 2009 spread to Europe and sent Bund yields soaring again, in the process "turmoiling" equities, today's session has been a peaceful slumber barely interrupted by "better than expected" Italian and a German Bund auction, both of which concluded without a hitch, and without the now traditional "technical" failure when selling German paper. Perhaps that was to be expected considering the surge in the closing yield from 0.13% to 0.65%. Not hurting the bid for 10Y US Treasury was yesterday's report that Japan had bought a whopping $23 billion in US Treasurys in March, the most in 4 years so to all those shorting Tsys - you are now once again fighting the Bank of Japan.