Note: I’m here in San Diego County in my new/old 39 foot Chevy Motorhome. I can’t get a signal for my Verizon LG smartphone (I’ll be taking a spin in my Ford Explorer in search of a signal; my VOIP phone, magicjack requiring a broadband connection, is currently not up except for voicemail). The radio reception is also limited which led me to ‘sample’ some limited AM offerings which included shallow sean hannity the hallmark of insanity, and ‘rush revere’ (limbaugh… he’s totally burnt-out, relegated now to authoring children’s illustrated books of a simplistic nature). Shallow sean’s latest ‘crusade’ (beyond the same note/key obvious debacle of wobamacare) was defense of the indefensible mobster but friend of sean’s, donald trump (trump should be in jail). In defense of t_rump, he offers up the teeny wohlman skating rink project as evidence of t_rump’s contribution to NYC (much too small for high new york priority given the magnitude of New York substantial problems, some largely the result of trumpish tastes, ie., gold trump tower fixtures, etc., that trump’s ‘pre-packaged bankrupcies’ seem to fail to touch, and which extravagance must be paid for by someone, but not him). Shallow sean’s excoriation of new york city never seems to link the obviousness of t_rump’s grandstanding responsibility for same. After all, someone ultimately has to pay for trump’s disproportionate non-value-added livin’ large. No talk of trump’s ingratiating bribe strategy for protection ( ie., retainer’s to law firms linked to state attorney generals, viz., {kimmelman} wolf and sampson, chris droney’s brother, his sister’s protection/corruption and quid pro quo from the federal bench, etc., and as well, protection of drug-money laundering through his now nominal only casinos … See, ie., http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/ricosummarytoFBIunderpenaltyofperjury.pdf  http://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/PeiavCoanetals.htm  http://albertpeia.com/fbimartinezcongallard.htm  .  Trump’s a fraud! I won’t be listening to ‘rush revere’ or shallow sean prospectively. They’re a waste of time and preposterous given their unbridled support of war criminals bush, cheney, etc., and the failed debacles they created, etc……

 

 

 

Tide Thefts, Cargo Hijacking And Cattle Rustling: Why Is An Epidemic Of Thievery Sweeping America?  Desperate people do desperate things, and it appears that Americans are rapidly becoming a lot more desperate.  An epidemic of thievery is sweeping across America, and authorities are not quite sure what to make of it.  Down in Texas, cattle thieves can get up to $1,500 per head of cattle, and cattle rustling was up nearly 40 percent last year.  As you will read about below, cargo hijacking is becoming much more sophisticated, and it is being estimated that losses from cargo thefts will total about $216 million this year alone.  And for some reason, Tide laundry detergent has become a very hot commodity among common criminals all across America.  In fact, it is being reported that some grocery stores are "losing $10,000 to $15,000 a month" as a result of Tide thefts.  So why is all of this happening?  Well, as I have written about previously, crime is on the rise in the United States, and poverty is absolutely exploding.  In fact, according to the latest numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, 49.2 percent of all Americans are receiving benefits from at least one government program each month.  Over the past five years, we have seen an unprecedented rise in the number of people that cannot take care of themselves without help from the government.  Millions upon millions of Americans that have been forced into poverty are becoming increasingly angry, frustrated and desperate.  And what we are watching right now is only just the beginning - all of this is going to get a whole lot worse. (Read More....)

 

Obamacare 'Truth' (In One Cartoon)

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2013 - ...this is the not the Obamacare you are looking for...

 

Figuring Out The Fed

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2013 - Since 2008, the Federal Reserve has been trying one program after the other in order to kick-start the US economy. It culminated in currently buying around $1 trillion of bonds a year. But economic growth remains weak. Why does the Fed continue its ultra-lax monetary policy despite evidence it doesn't help much? The people at the Fed are not stupid, so there must be a rational explanation. This is an attempt to figure out their 'game plan'.

 

Event Risk: Down But Not Out

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2013 - The German election is over and the confrontation over the US debt ceiling has ended, so event risk should be minimal, right? Not so fast, UBS' Mike Schumacher warns - plenty of pitfalls could trip markets. Forward-looking measures of 'risk' are beginning to show some signs of less-than-exuberance reflected in all-time-highs across all US equity indices and if previous episodes of 'low-vol' are any guide, the current complacency is long in the tooth... no matter how 'top-heavy' stocks become; bloated by the flow of heads-bulls-win-tails-bears-lose ambivalence...

 

 

Guest Post: Yellenomics – Or The Coming Tragedy of Errors

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2013 - 20:35 The philosophical roots of Janet Yellen's economics voodoo, it seems, are in many ways even more appalling than the Bernanke paradigm (which in turn is based on Bernanke's erroneous interpretation of what caused the Great Depression, which he obtained in essence from Milton Friedman). The following excerpt perfectly encapsulates her philosophy (which is thoroughly Keynesian and downright scary): Fed Vice Chairman Yellen laid out what she called the 'Yale macroeconomics paradigm' in a speech to a reunion of the economics department in April 1999. "Will capitalist economies operate at full employment in the absence of routine intervention? Certainly not," said Yellen, then chairman of President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. "Do policy makers have the knowledge and ability to improve macroeconomic outcomes rather than make matters worse? Yes," although there is "uncertainty with which to contend." She couldn't be more wrong if she tried. We cannot even call someone like that an 'economist', because the above is in our opinion an example of utter economic illiteracy.

 

 

Ebay Expands Accepted Digital Currencies, Says PayPal May One Day Incorporate BitCoin

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2013 - 19:36First it was China hinting that where Silk Road failed in monetizing, pardon the pun, BitCoin, the world's most populous nation could soon take the lead. Then, none other than private equity titan Fortress said it had great expectations for the digital currency. Now, it is eBay's turn to announce that it is preparing to expand the range of digital currencies it accepts, adding that "its payment unit PayPal may one day incorporate BitCoin." But not just yet. FT reports that according to eBay CEO John Donahoe, "digital currency is going to be a very powerful thing."

 

Buying Time In A Brought-Forward World... And Why There Is No Plan B

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2013 - Here we go again, creating another asset bubble for the third time in a decade and a half, is how Monument Securities' Paul Mylchreest begins his latest must-read Thunder Road report. As Eckhard Tolle once wrote, “the primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it," and that seems apt right now. After Lehman, policy makers went “all-in” on bailouts/ZIRP/QE etc. This avoided an “all-out” collapse and bought time in which a self-sustaining recovery could materialize. The Fed’s tapering threat showed that, five years on from Lehman, the recovery was still not self-sustaining. Mylchreest's study of long-wave (Kondratieff) cycles, however, leaves us concerned as to whether it ever will be. More commentators are having doubts; and the problem looming into view is that we might need a new "plan." The (rhetorical) question then is "Have we really got to the point where it's just about more and more QE, corralling more and more flow into the equity market until it becomes (unsustainably) 'top-heavy'?"

 

Guest Post: Finland's Gold

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2013 - 17:4On Wednesday Finland gave in to public pressure and revealed where she stores her gold reserves. The statement followed a press release by the Bank of Sweden on similar lines released on Monday. All was 'normal' until the head of communications added some more color on what exactly the Finnish central bank does with its gold..."half of the gold has been within investment activity over the years. Gold has been invested among other things in deposits similar to money market deposits and using gold interest rate swaps. Gold investment activity is common for central banks." The evidence is mounting that Western central banks through the Bank of England have been feeding monetary gold into the market through leasing operations. This explains in part how the voracious appetite for gold by China, India and South-East Asia is being satisfied, without the gold price rising to reflect this demand.

 

A "Frothy", "Overbullish", "Overbought", "Overmargined" Market With "Not Enough Bears" - In Charts

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2013 - 16:55

Last week, Bank of America warned that "it's getting frothy, man" based on the sheer surge of fund flows into equities. Here is the same firm with some other observations on what can simply be described as a "frothy", "overbought", "overmargined" market with "not enough bears."

 

Michael Woodford Warns "By Blinking [On Taper], [The Fed] Has Made A Negative Reaction More Likely"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2013 - Widely credited with being the seminal paper at the 2012 Jackson Hole conference and setting the scene for "threshold-based" policy, Michael Woodford discusses his views on the costs and benefits of "forward guidance" in this Goldman Sachs interview. The Columbia professor explains how he thinks about asset purchases versus forward guidance (it’s a mistake to think of asset purchases as a way to avoid having to talk about future policy intentions), and why the market and the Fed have seemed so disconnected at various points this year despite substantial attempts by the Fed to communicate more clearly (there were mistakes in communication, but that does not mean the situation would have been better if the Fed had instead kept its mouth shut, especially in such unprecedented times.) Ultimatley he warns, "by blinking when they did, I fear that they have made a negative reaction more likely in the future, because they are now back to square one, with people once again lacking a clear sense of how close the Fed is to tapering and thus vulnerable to surprise."

 

Guest Post: What Has Changed In Spain?

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2013 - Despite the country’s macro figures and a budget which assumes that 30% of the country’s spending next year will go to debt interest payments, how is it possible that we are suddenly being bombarded with wonderful news about Spain’s current situation – no longer at a cross roads – and colorful future? Several things have happened, we think. First, the public wants to hear nice things because they are tired of hearing the bad; so if they want good stories, they’ll get them; second, time references have changed; and finally, the divorce between the people and their representatives has consummated. The government tells its stories while the people perceive a different reality. Yet this matters little. What matters is making it through tomorrow. And if to make it through tomorrow the government has to go back on its words and say it meant differently from what it said not long ago, so be it.

 

 

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... Like India's 'Gold Refuge' From "The Establishment"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2013 - Westerners aren't used to the kind of inflation levels, government confiscation, and currency volatility so common in places like India; and so the need to own gold as protection isn't fully appreciated in the West. Westerners pay lip service to gold's being "an inflation hedge" or "a currency" or "a safe asset", but these terms are used in an extremely abstract way by the vast majority of the investing public, who see gold as mostly just another trading vehicle. India's love affair with gold is well-understood in Asia but completely misunderstood in the West — a phenomenon we have always found fascinating — but recently it has become abundantly clear that this disconnect is widening almost daily as the Western fixation with 'The Gold Price' and the Eastern obsession with 'The Price of Gold' take ever more divergent paths... In short, Asians like their gold to be heavy, shiny, and made of ... well, gold.

 

Guest Post: The Noble Lie Of Government Healthcare

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2013 -  “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”

These words, spoken by U.S. President Barack Obama in various forms and iterations, have become a running joke amidst the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. All across the country, hundreds of thousands of citizens are receiving cancellation notices in the mail. The stringent requirements for insurance plans under the new edict are curtailing many individual policies. A simpleton can grasp the economics: you prohibit something, it goes away. And yet, for years prior, the White House ignored the oncoming train and is now slowly inching away from the wreckage.

This was not the unforeseen consequence of good-intentioned legislation.

 

Show Me The Lack Of Money: Global Corporate Cash Flow Slides To 2009 Levels

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2013 -The last time we looked at global corporate cash flow and capex as a percentage of G4 (US, UK, Europe and Japan) things were bad. Two quarters later, things have gotten much worse, with that purest proxy of true growth, or lack thereof, corporate cash flow (and not fudged, adjusted, normalized, pro forma earnings), sliding yet again tracking the ongoing collapse in capex, and now down to levels last seen during 2009, and what's worse going further back, all the way back to 2003 levels. In other words, even when taking into account the tens of trillions of liquidity injections by global central banks to prop up capital markets, the flow through to actual corporate cash flow has been non-existent, and the entire past decade is now a scratch despite the global asset price bubble rising to unprecedented new heights.

 

Edward Snowden Releases "A Manifesto For The Truth"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2013 - While Edward Snowden may be reviled at the top echelons of Western developed nations and is wanted in his native US on espionage charges for peeling back the curtain on how the gargantuan government machine truly works when it is not only engaged in chronic spying on anyone abroad, but worse, on its own people, the reality is that his whistleblowing revelations have done more to shift the narrative to the topic of dwindling individual liberties abused pervasively in the US and elsewhere, than anything else in recent years. And alongside that, have led to the first reform momentum of a system that is deeply broken. Which also happens to be the topic of a five-paragraph opinion piece he released today in German weekly Der Spiegel titled "A Manifesto For The Truth" in which he writes that his revelations have been useful and society will benefit from them and that he was therefore justified in revealing the methods and targets of the US secret service.

 

Money, Markets And Macro In 61 Charts

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/03/2013 - 10:04

For all your Sunday morning chartporn needs.

 

 

U.S. Points Out that Only Tyrants Treat Journalists As Terrorists … While Doing the Exact Same Thing

Posted by : George Washington

Post date: 11/03/2013 - 18:55

It’s Only Tyrannical When OTHERS Do It