Federal Reserve

• Fed puts December rate hike firmly on the agenda (Reuters)
• Charting the Markets: A More Hawkish Fed Rattles Investors (BBG)
• China to modernize and improve fiscal and tax systems (Reuters)
• Deutsche Bank to Cut 35,000 Jobs in Overhaul (WSJ)
• Deutsche Bank Said to Near $200 Million Sanctions Settlement (BBG)
• Barclays profits drop as it abandons cost-cutting targets (FT)

Gold’s biggest enemy is a brilliant Nobel Prize winning economist, university professor and columnist for the New York Times. Sadly, he is also a con man. 

Nearly all empires end due to over-extension. If brave people from Ottawa to Baghdad simply say “enough” within a brief space of time, hopefully this empire can dissolve relatively peacefully like the Soviet Empire did, leaving its host civilization intact, instead of dragging that civilization into oblivion along with it like the Roman Empire did. But beware, the imperial war party will not go quietly into the night, unless we in their domestic tax base insist that there is no other way. Russia’s entry into Syria has thrown all of the neocons’ schemes into disarray, as even Jordan, that favorite proxy force in Israel’s dreams of regional dominance, has begun coordinating with Russia, in spite of its billion dollars a year of annual aid from Washington. Et tu Jordan?!

No, Ben S. Bernanke will be someday remembered as the world’s most destructive battleship admiral. Not only was he fighting the last war, but his whole multi-trillion money printing campaign after September 15, 2008 was aimed at avoiding an historical Fed mistake that had never even happened!

"We have long lines, but they're patient with it because Illinois is not paying. They're all coming here and saying, 'I'm from Illinois, how do you play it here?'"

Anyone else found to have obtained at least "35 confidential documents" from the Fed on at least "20 occassions" would be sent straight to jail with a prison sentence anywhere between several decades and life.  Goldman's punishment? 0.6% of its 2014 Net Income.

"Fed officials suggested they had become less concerned in recent weeks about turbulent financial markets and uncertain economic developments overseas ... open[ing] the door more explicitly than they have before to raising rates at a final 2015 meeting in December."

We live in an era of illusion: the illusion of understanding, and the illusion of control. The net result is nonsensical policies that fail to achieve their stated objectives.

Gold will also be vulnerable towards the end of an interest rate tightening cycle as was the case in January 1980. Today, central banks including the Fed  are having difficulty raising interest rates in even a small nominal way.

It has been a while since Icahn, who is still looking for a $200+ print on AAPL stock courtesy of corporate buybacks, issued a "no brainer" investment alert. He did that moments ago, when he revealed a "large position" in AIG, whom he is now urging to follow John Paulson's advise in order to hit a $100/share price, by doing two things: "Pursue tax free separations of both its life and mortgage insurance subsidiaries to create three independent public companies" and to "embark on a much needed cost control program to close the gap with peers."

Back in 1999, a quarter of all 25-year-olds lived with their parents. By 2013 this number has doubled, and currently half of young adults live in their parents home. Here, according to the St. Louis Fed, is the answer why.

Impunity has been the norm. The reason there have been no efforts made to criminally investigate is obvious. Former banking regulator and current securities Professor Bill Black told Bill Moyers  that "Timothy Geithner, then Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong."

Have you noticed that things have gotten eerily quiet in the month of October? For those that don’t want to believe that hard times are on the way, they can take comfort in the eerie period of calm that we are experiencing right now. What they don’t realize is that this truly is “the calm before the storm”, and the global economic crisis that is ahead of us is going to be far beyond what most people ever dared to imagine was possible.

The weakness seen in world economic activity is partly the result of the lack of a real purge of the financial system in 2008. It has become unimaginable to let entire parts of the system collapse, and the titling of some financial institutions as “systemic” is part of this logic. Policymakers attempting to keep unhealthy economic and financial institutions alive are making a mistake. The very essence of capitalism lies in the process of creative destruction. What we see here is not a way out of the crisis. Instead, we are on the edge of a new financial disaster.

Prepare for taxes of all kinds: wealth, stealth, and even carry taxes (on physical cash).