Bubble

News

Insider Warning: Top execs are selling Stocks at Record-breaking Speed

As major stock market indices continue to climb, the trading activity of top U.S. executives and bankers suggest that the end may be near. According to security filing analysis by the Wall Street Journal, since the election nearly three months ago, insiders have sold off a staggering $100 million in shares. Is this just a coincidence, or are they preparing for something the rest of us don’t know about?

 What Average Investors Don’t See

Stocks might be hitting record highs, but there’s a reason why the Wall Street power players know it’s too good to be true. In terms of price-to-sales, stocks are more overvalued today than they were before the crash of 2008 and the crash of 2000.

The Central Banks Face Unwelcome Realities: Their Policies Boosted Wealth Inequality and Failed to Generate "Growth"

What's happening beneath the happy-happy surface is that the returns on expanding credit are diminishing rapidly. The Fed's QE "free money for financiers" never did "trickle down" to the bottom 95%, and the enormous expansion of bank credit is no longer driving corporate profits higher.

 
Whatever the causes, the reality is that the positive results of credit expansion have reached the top of the S-curve and are now declining. Expanding credit, via central bank monetary policy or private-sector bank credit, is no longer boosting profits or wages.

Markets Smell a Rat as Central Banks Dither

Markets are suspecting that central banks are in the process of exiting this fabulous multi-year party quietly, and that on the way out they won’t refill the booze and dope, leaving the besotted revelers to their own devices. That thought isn’t sitting very well with these revelers. 

In the US, 10-year Treasury prices have also fallen and the 10-year yield has surged by over a full percentage point since last summer. Unlike the central banks in Japan and Europe, the Fed is on a path of raising rates and is also thinking out loud about unwinding its big-fat balance sheet by shedding some of its Treasuries or mortgage backed securities or both. 

So it would make sense for US yields to rise. But why are yields in the bailiwicks of the other central banks so jumpy? Because markets smell a rat – as central banks, despite ceaseless jabbering, appear to be sitting on their hands after years of iron-fisted market domination. 

But markets have gotten so used to central-bank booze and dope that they “cannot believe” it will ever really end.

 Censorship & Propaganda

News

Bad Idea Or The Worst Idea? Having The FTC Regulate 'Fake News'

Over the last few months, we've talked about the weird obsession some people upset by the results of the election have had with the concept of "fake news." We warned that focusing on "fake news" as a problem was not just silly and pointless, but that it would quickly morph into calls for censorship. And, even worse, that censorship power would be in the hands of whoever got to define what "fake news" was. Thus, it was little surprise to see China and Iran quickly start using "fake news" as an excuse to crack down on dissent online. 

And, as always seems to be the case with "fake news," there's the whole "eye of the beholder" problem. That is, whoever gets to define what fake news is... can do an awful lot of damage. Our own President has now taken to calling CNN "fake news" -- when it's really just news he doesn't like, or with a slant he doesn't like. Do we really want to give the FTC -- whose commissioners are appointed by the President -- the power to take down news for being "fake?"

 DYI:  There are two separate issues present with the first and second paragraph. 

One:  I completely agree there is no place for the FTC or any other alphabet soup government agency regulating the news media. Period! 

Two:  CNN has been caught so many times using “crises actors” in order to drive the government narrative or to pump up a news story to create great optics.   When Trump or about 80% plus of Americans call the main stream press as fake it is with good reason.  It is now to the point of absurdity.

Two examples of outright propaganda: 

One: 9-11-2001 when the second plane was “absorbed” into the South Tower and almost came out the other side.  Obviously camera trickery was used to deceive the public of an airliner crashing into the building.  Any journalist with only a rudiment amount of engineering – or just plain old common horse sense would know immediately what was being shown is fraudulent.  When citizens questioned this obvious fakery the mainstream press was quick to label as conspiracy types furthering the governments official –faked - conclusions.

Two:  2019 will mark the 50^th anniversary of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the make believe moon at area 6 about 90 minutes North West of Las Vegas, Nevada.  Six landings within four years ALL during the Nixon administration giving the impression of an easy accomplishment.  So much so the last faked landing TV viewers were complaining that reruns of I Love Lucy were interrupted by the news media.  Even today neither the U.S. nor any other country has the technology to conquer the moon with astronauts.  Be as that may be, a massive psychological operation to bolster a failing administration.  Along with contractors who committed fraud in the multi – billion dollar range against the American people.  This would not have been possible without willing participation of the top brass of the main stream press CBS, NBC, ABC, New York Times, Washington Post and the Los Angles Times.  I must admit as far as fake news - propaganda this is the gold standard as today many still believe Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

Fake news or propaganda has been with us since WWI and remains to this day.  The internet with citizen journalist and newly formed media outlets are breaking the government’s monopolistic ability to drive the political narrative.  This is why the main stream press with their government masters is so vocal in their attempt to clamp down on the newly formed entities.

  DYI