Switzerland

As we approach the Fed meeting expect markets to get more volatile. While the odds favor a move, it isn’t a sure thing until it is actually done. We found out last week what happens when forward guidance turns out to be forward misdirection. All those traders who thought they had a sure thing, who assumed that Draghi wouldn’t dare disappoint the market, got whipped. Whipped good.

Turkey's most notorious Twitter personality predicted the downing of a Russian warplane a month in advance in the lead-up to November's fraught elections.

The very first major economic collapse in recorded history occurred in 218-202 BC when the Roman Empire experienced money troubles after the Second Punic War. As a result, bronze and silver currencies were devalued. As HowMuch.net depicts in the video below economic collapses date back thousands of years. While many countries today still feel the effects of the most recent Global Financial Crisis, it is important to note that economic troubles are not unique to the present-day, but rather date back to some of the oldest civilizations.

We are talking of course, about the infamous RRR-hike of 1936-1937, which took place smack in the middle of the Great Recession.

The central banks are simply trapped. They have bought in bonds under the theory that this will stimulate the economy by injecting cash. But there are several problems with this entire concept. This is an elitist view to say the least for the money injected does not stimulate the economy for it never reaches the consumer. This attempt to stimulate by increasing the money supply assumes that it does not matter who has the money... The attempt to “manage” the economy from a macro level without considering the capital flow within the system is leading to disaster.

Even despite the saturation criminality that readers have already seen, many will still argue that we “need” these Big Banks, and that we even “need” fractional-reserve (no reserve) fraud.

What should the rational investor do in an environment of ongoing financial repression? If you wanted to trigger a bank run, this is certainly how you might go about it.

While the storm clouds continue to build above Trafigura, we now know the fate of Galena and why its CEO Letchford departed the company in a hurry last week: according to a follow up from Bloomberg, Trafigura has decided to close the flagship Galena Metals Fund, the latest hedge fund victim of the rout in raw materials markets from oil to copper.

In a statement, the People’s Bank of China thanked the IMF for the recommendation and said it was “an acknowledgment of the progress in China’s recent economic development, reform and opening up”.

The fact of the matter is that despite public opinion, there are problems that are so big that the Central Banks cannot fix them. We’ve seen this in Switzerland and China and now in Europe. It will be spreading to other countries in the near future.

They say people get the governments they deserve; well, they get the institutions and an regulators they deserve, too. Apathy is the greatest destroyer of liberty.

A society that is given the option to protect itself is not a fearful society, it is a prudent one. The victims of Paris were never allowed the option to protect their lives, nor were they fortunate to have armed defenders present or trained combatants to stop the attack before it reached them. People need the opportunity to secure their own safety since, as the past twelve years has shown, the State will fail them.

“From the mass psychology perspective, Gold is very close to putting in a bottom.  Sentiment investors, contrarian investors and investors who are familiar with the concept of mass psychology should consider taking a closer look at the precious metal’s sector now”.

With the ECB's December meeting just one week away, Mario Draghi and co. are still debating how best to package a new round of easing measures. As Reuters reports, the central bank is considering a tiered system for the application of negative rates in an effort to mitigate the effect on banks. Translation: the ECB may be preparing to "overwhelm" with an even larger cut to the already negative depo rate that analysts were expecting.

The world is awash with debt. With central banks increasing their balance sheets through quantitative easing, simultaneously pushing down interest rates and taking huge chunks of the market out of circulation, investors have had to stray beyond developed market government bonds in search of yield.