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Scared Half to Death

by Andrew Hoffman
Miles Franklin

Last night marked a sad day in the history of America’s dying culture. After 156 episodes, “The Good Wife” ended its reign as the nation’s top prime-time drama. For seven years, the show was must-see Sunday night television, in a medium where writing, producing, and performing – like music – has been unceremoniously “phased out” by dumbed down, get rich quick commercialism. For me particularly, “The Good Wife” – and the “Big Bang Theory,” which likely has just one season left itself – have been the only shows, other than ESPN’s “Sports Reporters,” that I regularly watch. And now that the Good Wife is gone, with the Big Bang Theory right behind it, the odds of my retaining our cable contract when it expires later this year are close to zero. Good riddance to what is becoming a blight on society – featuring reality shows, one-time specials, and anything else that can generate a quick buck; and farewell to one of America’s great, industry-leading arts.

Continue Reading at MilesFranklin.com…

SentimenTrader Just Issued a Crucial Update on Gold & Silver

from King World News

With gold and silver getting hit recently, SentimenTrader just issued a crucial important update on the gold and silver markets.

From Jason Goepfert at SentimenTrader: “The latest Commitments of Traders report showed mostly the same themes as prior weeks. “Smart money” hedgers are holding massive (and growing) shorts in gold and silver…For gold, their current positions against the metal have been matched only two other times in its history, both leading to months of consolidation.

Continue Reading at KingWorldNews.com…

Trump’s Latest “Insane” Proposal

by Michael Covel
Daily Reckoning

Donald Trump has the establishment scared ****less…

That’s exciting. I love it.

Look at their reaction to his plan to reduce the national debt.

The Washington Post, which is owned by a Deep State member, says it’s “reckless.”

Wall Street blowhards call it “absurd.”

And a former senior U.S. Treasury Department official calls it “insane.”

Continue Reading at DailyReckoning.com…

Forget About Income Inequality: Bloomberg

by Jeff Nielson
Bullion Bulls Canada

Don’t touch the wealth of the wealthy. We hear that message, dozens of times each month, disguised in various ways by the Corporate media. We hear it despite the fact that wealth inequality has reached a greater extreme in our societies than at any time since the last revolutionary cycle, nearly three hundred years ago. The Top 0.1% now hoard as much wealth as the bottom-90% combined.

However, few of these don’t-touch-our-wealth messages have been as obvious or insipid as Bloomberg’s latest effort. The latest brainwashing is couched in the loftiest of headlines:

The Wisdom to Know Which Causes of Inequality Can Be Changed

Ironically, the article itself points out one of the primary reasons why income/wealth inequality continues to worsen in our societies, despite reaching historic extremes:

Continue Reading at BullionBullsCanada.com…

This is What Governments Do to People Who Try to Change the World

by Daily Bell Staff
The Daily Bell

Creator of online money Liberty Reserve gets 20 years in prison … Before the virtual currency Bitcoin there was Liberty Reserve — and its founder just got sentenced to 20 years in prison. Arthur Budovsky, 42, ran an online digital money business out of Costa Rica called Liberty Reserve. The U.S. government contended that the whole thing was just a massive, $6 billion money laundering operation. – CNN

Sentence by sentence, the US judiciary is creating its own version of the constitution.

It is one that forbids people from creating online marketplaces or even putting silver into coins and selling them.

Most recently, as we can see above, Arthur Budovsky, founder of Liberty Reserve just got 20 years in prison for allegedly running a money laundering operation.

Prior to Budovsky’s sentencing, Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Sllk Road, received a life sentence for founding and running a “darknet” marketplace that allowed people to buy illegal items like drugs and guns. Ulbricht is appealing.

Continue Reading at TheDailyBell.com…

Virtual Reality and Blockchain = Freedom!

by Chris Campbell
Laissez Faire Books

Your brain is your reality. Not reality itself. Therefore, strange as it is to think about, each individual, in a weird way, is living in a sort of virtual reality.

(Tape up those spectacles, dear LFT reader. It’s time to geek out.)

Just as Morpheus pointed out in The Matrix, everything you experience as “real” can be reduced to electrical activity in the body. Our sensory organs deliver information about the world around us in the form of electrical signals to the brain. And that’s what we experience — not the world itself.

Continue Reading at LFB.org…

Of Course the US Government Will Default on Its Debt

by Tho Bishop
Mises.org

Last week Donald Trump set the financial punditry class aflame with his suggestion that the United States may end up asking lenders to take a haircut on its debt obligations. The resulting firestorm created a race to see who could come up with the strongest condemnation of Trump, David Ader of CRT Capital Group told Bloomberg the comments were “stupid and ridiculous,” while Business Insider’s Josh Borro labeled them “insane.” Vox’s Matt Yglesias described the proposal as a threat to “incinerate the world economy.”

While Yglesias is correct that a US default would have major ramifications for the global economy, lost in all this hand wringing is the fact that the damage has largely already been done. As Jim Grant noted in his Time cover article this month, the United States debt situation is far more serious than most “experts” would like to believe. By accumulating a debt that now towers over $19 trillion, the United States government has written a check it will not be able to cash.

Continue Reading at Mises.org…

Here’s Why Some Confident Investors Are in for a Big Surprise

Invest with absolute certainty at your own risk

by Chuck Jaffe
Market Watch

Just five months ago, as we entered into the New Year, there were two things seemingly every market observer was certain of for 2016.

One was that the Federal Reserve was serious about raising interest rates and likely to bump them up three or four times in the year ahead. The other was that Donald Trump would never be the Republican nominee for president, so no one had to worry about how his candidacy might affect the market.

By now, a host of pundits are eating crow. The rest of us should take three basic lessons out of the missed forecasts:

1) Outrageous short-term predictions make good headlines, but bad wagers.

Continue Reading at MarketWatch.com…

Former Facebook Curators Reveal How Conservative News is Censored

by Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg

[…] Facebook is a private company and has every right to do as it pleases with its platform, even if that means pushing a political agenda via its “news” feed. That said, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been explicit with his intention to dominate news dissemination to his users. For example, we learned the following in last year’s post, Facebook Reveals its Master Plan – Control All News Flow:

In recent months, Facebook has been quietly holding talks with at least half a dozen media companies about hosting their content inside Facebook rather than making users tap a link to go to an external site.

Continue Reading at LibertyBlitzkrieg.com…

The Titillating and Terrifying Collapse of the Dollar Again

by Michael Pettis
Financial Sense

Foreign perceptions about the Chinese economy are far more volatile than the economy itself and are spread across a fantastic array of forecasts. On one extreme there are still many who hold the view that overwhelmingly dominated the consensus just four of five years ago, with a book by Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World, titillating or terrifying many with a subtitle that promised the end of the Western world and the birth of a new global order. Although few within this camp still believe in their earlier forecasts of 8-9 percent annual growth for another one or two decades, many among them still think China will manage to double its GDP in ten to twelve years.

Continue Reading at FinancialSense.com…

John Rubino – China is Always the News

from Financial Survival Network

John Rubino returns for another installment…. A Chinese news outlet states that it China can’t keep pursuing it’s current economic agenda because it’s not working. Money creation and borrowing isn’t helping the economy grow and is having the opposite. It’s going to be an “L” shaped recovery. They article said that China also needed to deal with their bad loans. Commodities back down, stocks also. Gold silver are down major.

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Trumptopia

by James Howard Kunstler
Kunstler.com

For years, it was easy to see the political storm clouds gather over Europe with its fractious coalitions and its ancient babble of conflicts. Marine Le Pen’s Daddy, severe old Jean-Marie, was on the scene in France decades before Donald Trump ascended to glory on the noxious clouds of America’s crapified culture, attended by heavenly hosts of Kardashian angels and the cherub Honey BooBoo.

For all the strains in recent American life, the two-party system had seemed as solid as the granite towers of the Brooklyn Bridge. Not even the estimable Teddy Roosevelt could blow up the system when he tried in 1912 — though his Progressive (“Bull Moose”) Party carried California, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, and he far out-polled the incumbent Republican President Taft, who garnered a measly 8 electoral votes (Democrat Woodrow Wilson won). Ross Perot made an impact in 1992 — he certainly had a good point about NAFTA and “the giant sucking sound” of jobs draining out of the USA. But his popinjay manner didn’t go over so well, and at the critical moment in the general election he lost his nerve and withdrew, only to foolishly re-enter weeks later. Then there was the Ralph Nader in 2000, whose egoistic crusade arguably put George W. Bush in the White House.

Continue Reading at Kunstler.com…

U.S. Treasury Secretary Heading to Puerto Rico to Address Debt Crisis

from Fox News

In an effort to put pressure on Congress, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew is heading to Puerto Rico on Monday to see firsthand the effect the island’s $70 billion debt crisis is having on the millions of Americans who live there.

Lew’s one-day trip is part of the Obama administration’s campaign to pressure Congress to act. House Republicans are expected to announce new legislation this week creating a control board to help manage the U.S. territory’s debt and oversee some debt restructuring.

It will be the third draft of the House bill, which has come under fire from some conservatives who worry it would set a precedent for financially ailing states.

Continue Reading at Latino.FoxNews.com…

North Carolina Sues

by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org

It’s about damn time.

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory filed suit Monday against the Department of Justice in a bid to preserve the state’s controversial “bathroom” law, after the Obama administration said the policy violates the civil rights of transgender people.

The state was facing a Monday deadline set by the administration to respond to its demand that North Carolina either scrap the law or face legal action and risk losing federal funds.

McCrory refused, and instead filed suit

McCrory is correct on the facts and the law.

Federal civil rights law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.

Continue Reading at Market-Ticker.org…

Cost of Running a Home in the UK Now Almost Half of All Household Income

The average water bill in a three bedroom home is £69.33

by Sam Dean
Telegraph.co.uk

Nearly half of all household income is spent running the home, according to a new report which reveals the financial strain of paying household bills in the UK.

The average annual cost of household bills and mortgages for UK homes with three bedrooms is almost £20,000, the research found.

Monthly running costs for owners of three-bedroom homes are £1,634 on average, while renters pay £1,576 per month, according to a report carried out by home insurers More Than.

For households where two working adults take home the average yearly salary of £27,600, this means homeowners spend 45pc of post-tax earnings on household bills and mortgages.

Continue Reading at Telegraph.co.uk…

China Trade Actions Solidly Benefit Trump: On Purpose?

by Mike ‘Mish’ Shedlock
Mish Talk

Seven New Dumping Investigations, Most Since 2003

Actions by the Chinese government to subsidize failed corporations led to seven new “dumping” investigations in the first quarter. It’s the most since 2003.

US Steel is one of the companies screaming loudly.

In effect, China just served Donald Trump his primary campaign issue on a silver platter.

Is it remotely possible China would rather have Trump than Hillary as US president or are China’s actions simply “Trump Luck”?

Continue Reading at MishTalk.com…

Report: 2008 Bank Bailouts Are Still Alive

by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade

The U.S. is now in its eighth year since the Wall Street bank collapse of 2008 and most members of the general public believe the bailouts are long finished. That’s a fallacy. Last Friday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report showing that there are 16 banks still involved in the original bailout program – one of which, First Bancorp, owes the government $124.97 million or 49 percent of the funds owed by the other 15 banks combined. First Bancorp continues to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol, FBP. The common stock of First Bancorp has declined from over $150 a share in 2009 to close last Friday at $3.72. According to the company’s 10K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for year-end December 31, 2015, the U.S. government still owned 4.8 percent of the company’s common stock at that time.

In addition, as Wall Street On Parade reported last month, the U.S. Treasury agreed to pump in an additional $258.1 billion going forward if Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae run into trouble, on top of the $187.5 billion they have already received from the U.S. taxpayer. In their first quarter earnings reports, both companies reported significant losses in their derivatives books but did not tap their Treasury lifelines further – at least for now. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were put into conservatorship by the U.S. government during the 2008 crisis. Wall Street banks are entangled with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae because they serve as counterparties to each other’s trillions of dollars in derivatives.

Continue Reading at WallStreetOnParade.com…

These Are the 8 Triggers for a New Financial Crisis

from Zero Hedge

Authored by Satyajit Das (Author of A Banquet of Consequences), via The Independent,

There are a number of potential triggers to a new crisis.

The first potential trigger may be equity prices.

The US stock market runs into trouble. A stronger dollar affects US exports and foreign earnings. Emerging market weakness affects businesses in the technology, aerospace, automobile, consumer products and luxury product industries. Currency devaluations combined with excess capacity, driven by debt fuelled over-investment in China, maintain deflationary pressures reducing pricing power. Lower oil prices reduce earnings, cash flow and asset values of energy producers. Overinflated technology and bio-tech stocks disappoint.

Continue Reading at ZeroHedge.com…

These Are the Triggers for a New Financial Crisis

With existing political elites seen as captured by businesses, banks and the wealthy, electorates are turning to political extremes in search of representation and solutions. The resulting policy uncertainty and inconsistency further suppresses recovery

by Satyajit Das
Independent.co.uk

There are a number of potential triggers to a new crisis.

The first potential trigger may be equity prices.

The US stock market runs into trouble. A stronger dollar affects US exports and foreign earnings. Emerging market weakness affects businesses in the technology, aerospace, automobile, consumer products and luxury product industries. Currency devaluations combined with excess capacity, driven by debt fuelled over-investment in China, maintain deflationary pressures reducing pricing power. Lower oil prices reduce earnings, cash flow and asset values of energy producers. Overinflated technology and bio-tech stocks disappoint.

Earnings and liquidity pressures reduce merger activity and stock buybacks which have supported equity values. US equity weakness flows into global equity markets.

Continue Reading at Independent.co.uk…

Gold is Slowing

by Keith Weiner
Gold Seek

The price of gold moved down slightly this week, while that of silver dropped more substantially—1.9%. We don’t see much decrease in the enthusiasm yet from this minor setback.

This was a shortened week due to the May Day holiday outside the US.

Let’s look at the only true picture of supply and demand fundamentals. But first, here’s the graph of the metals’ prices.

Continue Reading at GoldSeek.com…

London Property Bubble Bursts

by Mark O’Byrne
GoldCore

The London property bubble shows renewed signs that it is beginning to burst. Property sellers in the UK have reduced their asking prices and London property prices have fallen by 7.8 per cent on average and as much as 30% in some areas according to City AM today.

“People trying to sell their homes are increasingly having to mark down their original asking price – and the amount they are dropping it by is going up.

Last month we heard that sellers in some London boroughs were having to drop prices by as much as 29 per cent, but new research suggests the issue is even more wide-spread – and the amounts are getting bigger.

On average, sellers are now reducing their asking price by more than £25,000 – a jump of £4,000 of 17 per cent since the start of the year, according to Zoopla.

Continue Reading at GoldGore.com…

Public Servants: Who is Serving Whom?

by Matthew Bankert
Mises.org

When was the last time you used a government “service”? Maybe you went to the DMV to get a new driver’s license, or maybe you signed up for new healthcare plan using Healthcare.gov (you’d better — or else!). Whatever transaction it was, there was a government employee on the other end — or as some like to call them, a public servant.

Though the public’s perception of the Federal government is near rock bottom, there is still a generally positive view of government workers. A recent post from the official White House blog asks citizens to consider “making a difference as a public servant,” knowing that your work would help “make someone’s life just a little bit better.” (Presumably, those who are not public servants do not perform work that “makes a difference” or makes anyone’s life better.)

Continue Reading at Mises.org…

Hedge Funds Take Bullish Gold Bets to Highest Since 2011: Chart

by Luzi-Ann Javier
Bloomberg.com

For gold bulls, it looks like the good times of five years ago all over again, at least in one respect. Money managers boosted their net long positions to the highest since 2011, when gold prices surged to a record. Wagers on price gains climbed 27 percent in the week ended May 3, days before a Labor Department report showed U.S. employers added the fewest workers in seven months, weakening the case for the Federal Reserve to raise rates.

Continue Reading at Bloomberg.com…

Get Your Affairs in Order Because This Rare Technical Signal is Flashing Red

Critical intelligence before the U.S. market opens

by Shawn Langlois
Market Watch

The U.S. dollar, which has been under pressure since late last year, is coming off its best week of the 2016. While it wasn’t exactly a huge move, it was enough to deliver a hit to currency traders, who had started the week loaded up on short positions to a degree not seen in almost two years.

In other words, it was finally a great week to be a dollar contrarian.

Marc Chandler of Brown Brothers Harriman says “the key issue facing the foreign exchange market is whether the modicum of strength the U.S. dollar demonstrated last week is the beginning of a sustainable move.” Read his full weekly preview.

The potential impact of the healing greenback on a fragile stock market is something traders will keep their eye on as we exit a mostly downbeat earnings season.

Continue Reading at MarketWatch.com…

Hillary Consolidates Wall Street Support as Republican Financiers Shift to Clinton

by Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg

As I wrote about in detail in last week’s post, Why Trump Winning the Republican Nomination is Good for American Democracy, the best thing about Donald Trump beating all of his controlled Republican rivals is that a Trump vs. Clinton general election will prove once and for all that there’s essentially no difference between the Republican and Democratic parties when it comes to the really big issues of our time.

In a typical election, both corrupt political parties diligently work to ensure that the American public has no real choice, and they are almost always successful. With the clueless citizenry being forced to choose between one corporatist puppet, banker bailout supporting, war mongering, civil liberties destroying sociopath or anothe, people generally end up voting based on wedge issues such a abortion or guns, and the road to serfdom marches onward. That’s how pretty much all elections during my lifetime have operated.

Continue Reading at LibertyBlitzkrieg.com…

The 45-Year Record of Gold-Silver Ratios

by Mickey Fulp
Silver Seek

A Monday Morning Musing from Mickey the Mercenary Geologist

The gold to silver price ratio determines the relative value of the two precious metals and is a useful parameter in deciding which metal to buy at any given time.

In two previous musings, I first documented the history of gold, silver, and the US dollar from the establishment of a national monetary system in 1792 until abandonment of the gold standard in 1971 (Mercenary Musing, April 25, 2016); then price histories and gold-silver ratios from the United States’ abandonment of the gold standard in 1971 to present (Mercenary Musing, May 2, 2016).

Continue Reading at SilverSeek.com…

The Times, They Are a Changin’!

Get ready for a paradigm shift

by Justin Raimondo
AntiWar

In the summer of 1998, just as this web site was getting off the ground, I wrote the following for Chronicles magazine:

“As the U.S. stumbles, or is pushed, into another unwinnable land war in Asia, the anti-war protesters of the future will come from the ranks of the Right. [Patrick] Buchanan, and the editors of this magazine, in alliance with other conservatives and libertarians, stood firm against the war hysteria that preceded Gulf War I. This time around, with the stakes even higher, that same alliance has the potential to expand its ranks to include the overwhelming majority of Americans. Let our rulers unleash the dogs of war to mask their own corruption: they will ignite a social and political explosion that will make the sixties seem relatively tranquil.”

We are witnessing that explosion today, on both sides of the political spectrum and in both major parties. The ease with which Donald Trump and his “America First” program – denounced as “isolationist” by the Beltway elites – has swept the GOP presidential primaries has the media and the political class in a panic. On the left, the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, who is likewise critical of interventionism, has given frontrunner Hillary Clinton a run for her money.

Continue Reading at AntiWar.com…

The Necessity of Human Action

by Jeff Thomas
International Man

In 1987, Levon Helm, a former cotton farmer from Arkansas, sat brooding in his yard, trying to describe why his apparent success had turned to near-bankruptcy:

“Well, it’s hard to put your finger on. You get behind financially and once you get behind financially, you seem to get behind spiritually. And your luck turns against you.”

Levon’s perception of his situation is a common one. He had become quite successful, but had never learned to understand more about economics than, “If you got it, spend it.” As a result, throughout his life, he repeatedly found himself in monetary difficulties. He habitually lived in the moment and didn’t invest much time analysing what his actions would need to be to assure a sound economic future. Unfortunately, his approach to his future is, to a great extent, the approach of the vast majority of people.

Continue Reading at InternationalMan.com…