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 burned out (the consequence of his being ‘tired of carrying the
water for the republican party’? - his own words), 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 itsy-bitsy, teeny weeny
wohlman skating rink project as evidence of t_rump’s contribution to NYC (too
small for high new york priority given the magnitude of New York substantial
problems, some largely the result of trumpish tastes, ie., solid 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.pdfhttp://www.albertpeia.com/112208opocoan/PeiavCoanetals.htmhttp://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……
Submitted by Tyler
Durden on 11/09/2013 As reported yesterday, Typhoon Haiyan -
potentially the strongest storm to ever make landfall, and stronger than
Katrina and Sandy combined - has come and left the Philippines (currently
heading for Vietnam), and now the time has come to evaluate the damage and
count the dead. Sadly, as Reuters reports, the devastation is absolutely
massive and especially in the hardest hit city of Tacloban in the central Leyte
province, may match the aftermath of the Fukushima tsunami: "This
is destruction on a massive scale. There are cars thrown like
tumbleweed and the streets are strewn with debris." Airport manager Efren
Nagrama, 47, said water levels rose up to four metres (13 ft) in the airport.
"It was like a tsunami. We escaped through the windows and I held
on to a pole for about an hour as rain, seawater and wind swept through the
airport. Some of my staff survived by clinging to trees. I prayed hard all
throughout until the water subsided."
Recent activity
in asset markets suggests dangerous bubbles are building everywhere. It's time
to bunker down and we look at ways to best protect your capital.
Submitted
by Tyler Durden on 11/09/2013 -Moments ago BitCoin
hit $395, and will likely cross $400 in the immediate future. So as
more and more pile into the electronic currency, some due to ideological
reasons, some simply to chase momentum, some out of disappointment with the
manipulated gold price looking to park their savings in an alternative,
non-fiat based currency, which a year ago traded 40 times lower, the attention
of the government is finally starting to shift to what has been the best
performing asset class in the past year, outperforming even the infamous
Caracas stock market.
Having watched Mike
Maloney's "Secrets Of Money" series (Part 1, Part
2, Part
3, and Part
4 here), Chris Martenson discusses the critical aspects of the must-watch
episodes. Crucially, as we enter a period of apparent Nirvanic equity markets
(and dystopian 'real' economics), Martenson's points on the "unnecessarily
complex monetary system" that we have today are summed up by his statement
that "there is nothing more important that understanding how our
money system operates... and why it will fail us."
Submitted
by Tyler Durden on 11/09/2013 - The chief of the Federal Aviation
Administration predicted Thursday that U.S. airspace could be crowded with as
many as 7,500 commercial drones within the next five years. As The
Washington Times reports, Michael Huerta said his agency would set up six
sites across the country to test drone operators and, in an effort to balance
privacy/safety with anarchic airspace drone pollution, he added, "we must
fulfill those obligations in a thoughtful, careful manner that ensures
safety and promotes economic growth, " as dangerous
incidents involving drones have already taken place... Although they
are expected to be used for peaceful purposes such as firefighting and weather
tracking - it's causing a lot of concern, as Huerta warns "we need
to be responsive to public concerns about privacy."
Submitted
by Tyler Durden on 11/09/2013 - We all intuitively grasp the meaning of
diminishing returns:Either it takes more effort to maintain a project’s payoff, or the payoff
declines even though the effort invested remains constant. The key driver
of diminishing returns is easy to understand. We naturally continue to do more
of what was successful in the past. As the returns decline, we redouble our
efforts, confident that what worked in the past will once again be successful
if only we invest more labor, energy, and capital. However, the status quo's
default diversion of 'money/credit' to support diminishing returns has two
costs: the opportunity costs of what else did not get financed
because available resources were poured down the rat hole of failing programs,
and the largely hidden increase in systemic fragility as productive investments
are starved by the diversion of resources to the rat holes of diminishing
returns. This dynamic leads to the final phase of doing more of
what has failed spectacularly.
Submitted
by Tyler Durden on 11/09/2013 - While the so-called "bulk spying"
of the NSA is major privacy issue, Mises Media's Mark Thornton explains that
the unintended consequences of this surveillance invasion has real economic
implications...
Submitted
by Tyler Durden on 11/09/2013 - In his parting act, Federal Reserve Chairman
Ben Bernanke has decided to continue printing some $85 billion per month (6%
of GDP per year) and spend those dollars on government bonds and, in
the process, keep interest rates low, stimulate investment, and reduce
unemployment. Trouble is, interest rates have generally been rising,
investment remains very low, and unemployment remains very high. As
Lawrence Kotlikoff points out, echoing our perhaps more vociferous discussions,
Bernanke’s dangerous policy hasn’t worked and should be ended.
Since 2007 the Fed has increased the economy's basic supply of money (the
monetary base) by a factor of four! That's enough to sustain, over a
relatively short period of time, a four-fold increase in prices. Having prices
rise that much over even three years would spell hyperinflation.
Submitted
by Tyler Durden on 11/09/2013 - Last week, Citi's Tobias Levkovich raised
numerous concerns about the state of exuberance and "disconcerting
disconnects" that is our new normal market currently. In the
week since, Citi's proprietary Panic/Euphoria model is sending a clear
warning of substantial complacency - its most "euphoric" since 2008.
This is worrisome, he notes, since there is an 80% probability of a market
decline in the next 12 months based on the current reading.
"Debt matters...
even if it is possible to pretend for many years that it doesn't,"
is the painful truth that, author of "Avoiding The Fall",
Michael Pettis offers for the current state of most western economies.
Specifically, Pettis
points out that Japan never really wrote down all or even most of its
investment misallocation of the 1980s and simply rolled it forward in the
form of rising government debt. For a long time it was able to service this
growing debt burden by keeping interest rates very low as a response to very
slow growth and by effectively capitalizing interest payments, but, as Kyle
Bass has previously warned, if Abenomics is 'successful', ironically, it
will no longer be able to play this game. Unless Japan moves quickly to pay
down debt, perhaps by privatizing government assets, Abenomics, in that
case, will be derailed by its own success.
Submitted
by Tyler Durden on 11/09/2013 - To many institutional investors, buying the
Russell 2000 is merely the highly levered bet with which the bulk of
institutions (recall that almost all hedge funds, and a majority of mutual
funds, are underperforming the S&P for a 5th consecutive year) seek to make
up for losses in their portfolios by chasing high (and even higher with
leverage) beta. Which is why as the next chart below shows, in a furious
scramble to catch up by year end, the institutional Russell net futures (i.e.
levered) positioning just hit a record high: the biggest investors are now
all-in the smallest names. So is the massively overbought small cap
sector due for a correction? With these manipulated, centrally-planned markets,
nobody has any idea. However, for those who have once again bet all in, which
just happens to be most plain vanilla dumb money, it may be time to reevaluate.
Submitted
by Tyler Durden on 11/09/2013 - 1. Even if the economy returns to full
employment under existing policies, it won’t remain there after (and if) interest
rates normalize.
2. Based on today’s debt and valuation levels (charts 8-9, for example), rising
interest rates will have an even harsher effect than suggested by the 60 year
history
3. Contrary to the establishment’s “sustainable recovery” narrative, the most
plausible outcomes are: 1) interest rates normalize but this triggers another
bust, or 2) interest rates remain abnormally low until we eventually experience
the mother of all debt/currency crises.
We’re stuck in an Escher
economy (see below), thanks to the impossibility of the establishment economic
view, and this will remain the case until the existing structure collapses and
is rebuilt on stronger policy principles.
Submitted
by Tyler Durden on 11/09/2013 - Venezuela's relatively new government has
adopted arguably the best and brightest socialist policy wielded by both
Hollande and Obama, namely the "fairness doctrine." However,
in this case it is not about what is a "fair" tax for the wealthy (as
taxes in Venezuela's socialist paradise will hardly do much to build up the
desperately needed foreign currency reserves), but what is a "fair"
price for electronic appliances like flat screen TVs, toasters, and ACs. The
result is that Maduro's government now determines what equilibrium pricing should
be. The reason for this latest socialist victory over the tyranny
of supply and demand is that overnight Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro ordered
the "occupation" of a chain of electronic goods stores in a crackdown
on what the socialist government views as price-gouging hobbling the country's
economy. Various managers of the five-store, 500-employee Daka chain
have been arrested, and the company will now be forced to sell products
at "fair prices," Maduro said late on Friday.
Submitted
by Tyler Durden on 11/08/2013 - America has become a gigantic gulag over the
past few decades and most of its citizens don’t know, or just don’t care. One of the primary
causes of the over incarceration in the U.S. is the absurd, tragic failure that
is the “war on drugs”, and indeed nearly half of the folks in prison are there for
drug related offenses. Making matters worse is a rapidly growing private
prison system, which adds a profit motive to the equation. Recently, we wrote
an extensive rant against the private prison system and provided details on how
it works in: A
Deep Look into the Shady World of the Private Prison Industry. Now here
are some of the sad facts...
We previously
highlighted Didier Sornette's excellent work trying to identify pre-crash
conditions in financial markets and John
Hussman's chart below suggests we are indeed heading that way. His warning,
however, "Don't rely on further blow-off - but don't be shocked -
risk dominates... Hold Tight."
Most market watchers expect
that Janet Yellen will grapple with two major tasks once she takes the helm at the Federal
Reserve in 2014: deciding on the appropriate timing and intensity of the Fed's
quantitative easing taper strategy, and unwinding the Fed's enormous $4
trillion balance sheet (without creating huge losses in the value of its
portfolio). In reality both assignments are far more difficult than
just about anyone understands or admits.
Zero Hedge | A tiny 18% of
uninsured Americans – the primary target population for the exchanges – have so
far attempted to even visit an exchange website.
Zero Hedge | A tiny 18% of
uninsured Americans – the primary target population for the exchanges – have so
far attempted to even visit an exchange website.
Reuters | The Senate
Intelligence Committee has quietly approved a plan to step up both public and
internal government oversight of the use of armed drones.
CNSNews.com | The unemployment rate increased in
October compared to September, when it was 3.9 percent, but improved overall
since its peak in 2013 when it stood at 5.3 percent in July.
