Bubble

News

Stocks Have Best Week Of The Year As Economy Grinds To A Halt

Sky High

Valuations

DYI

Bubble

News

Have We Just Reached Peak Stock Market Absurdity?

Have you ever wondered how tech companies that have been losing hundreds of millions of dollars year after year can somehow be worth billions of dollars according to the stock market?  Because I run a website called “The Economic Collapse“, there are naysayers out there that take glee in mocking me by pointing out how well the stock market has been doing.  This week, the Dow is flirting with 21,000 and the Nasdaq crossed the 6,000 threshold for the first time ever.  But a lot of the “soaring stocks” that have been fueling this rally have been losing giant mountains of money every single year, and just like the first tech bubble this madness will eventually come to an end in a spectacular fiery crash in which investors will lose trillions of dollars. 

But for the moment, the naysayers are having their time to shine.  Despite the fact that U.S. consumers are 12 trillion dollars in debt, and despite the fact that corporate debt has doubled since the last financial crisis, and despite the fact that the federal government is 20 trillion dollars in debt, they seem to be convinced that this irrational stock market bubble can keep inflating indefinitely.

 DYI

Make America Great

End the Fed!

Breaking up the Big Wall Street Banks is Back in the Headlines

In the past two weeks, newspaper headlines have revived the debate on whether the mega Wall Street banks continue to pose a systemic threat to the U.S. banking system and the economy. This is a desperately needed public debate that demands facts – not a revisionist history of what actually caused the 2008-2010 Wall Street collapse and the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. 

The 1933 Glass-Steagall Act was passed by Congress at the height of the Wall Street collapse and Great Depression. It accomplished two equally critical tasks. It created Federally-insured deposits at commercial banks to restore the public’s confidence in the U.S. banking system and it barred insured commercial banks from being part of a Wall Street investment bank or securities underwriting operation because their high-risk speculative activities frequently blew up the house. That legislation protected the U.S. banking system for 66 years until its repeal under the Bill Clinton administration in 1999 at the behest of Wall Street power players like Sandy Weill of Citigroup. It took only nine years after its repeal for the U.S. financial system to crash, requiring the largest public bailout in U.S. history. 

In a July 2015 column, Cohan ridiculed Senators Elizabeth Warren and John McCain for introducing legislation to restore the Glass-Steagall Act. Cohan wrote: 

“Despite the relentless rhetoric, the fact that commercial banks are in the investment banking business and investment banks are in the commercial banking business had almost nothing to do with causing the financial crisis of 2008.” 

The unassailable facts simply do not support this wild assertion. The largest bank in the country at the time, Citigroup, played the key role in the banking panic. Its share price collapsed by more than 89 percent in 2008, eventually to trade as a 99-cent penny stock. 

Citigroup received the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history – much of it initially shielded from public view. 

The U.S. government infused $45 billion in equity into Citigroup and over $300 billion in asset guarantees; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) guaranteed $5.75 billion of Citigroup’s senior unsecured debt and $26 billion of its commercial paper and interbank deposits; 

the Federal Reserve secretly funneled $2.5 trillion in almost zero-interest loans to units of Citigroup between 2007 and 2010. And those are just the details the public has been given. It took a multi-year court battle to unleash the details of what the Fed was doing behind a dark curtain.  

In fact, researchers at the agency created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation to monitor systemic risk on Wall Street, the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research (OFR), has published data showing that massive concentration of risk and interconnectivity of the largest Wall Street firms is precisely the continuing problem that threatens long-run financial stability in the U.S.

DYI:  The article above provides excellent insight into the Glass – Steagall Act yet falls very short when it comes to the Federal Reserve a private company involved in legalized criminal behavior.  This is a clear cut case of why this central bank monster needs to be slayed by ending its existence.  The Fed’s primary mission is the protection of the New York money centered cartel even at the cost to the American citizens.  It is not and never has been for the protection of the economy or the public at large.

DYI

War

Drums

North Korea puts out new video showing the White House in crosshairs and carriers exploding

President Trump, who has been urging China to apply pressure on North Korea and has warned that his administration will act if Beijing doesn’t, convened members of the U.S. Congress Wednesday to brief them on the “very grave threat” posed by Pyongyang.

Putin Warns North Korea Situation Has ‘Seriously Deteriorated’

DYI:  Unless China intervenes AND accepts Korean reunification I only see this resolved through war.  It has now become completely unacceptable with North Korea threatening nuclear strikes as their capability to do so convert’s into reality. 

 DYI

Disruptive

Technology

Waymo’s self-driving minivans are now offering rides to real people in Arizona

Waymo, the self-driving car startup spun off from Google late last year, announced today that it’s offering its services to members of the public for the first time. Waymo is calling it an “early rider program,” intent on cataloguing how on-demand, driverless cars will factor into people’s everyday lives. Interested participants can sign up on the company’s website, and Waymo will select riders depending on the the types of trips they want to take and their willingness to use the self-driving service as their primary mode of transportation. 

A Waymo test driver will be behind the wheel at all times, but the company insists that the vehicle will drive without human intervention as much as possible. Rides will only be available to residents of Phoenix and the surrounding towns, like Gilbert, Tempe, and Chandler. Waymo describes the service areas as twice the size of San Francisco.

DYI:  This technology will arrive faster than the naysayers yet slower for the early adopters; the safety issue will have to be over come and will have to be shown as significantly superior to a human driver to be accepted.  Closed courses will be used first in a totally driverless capacity such as hospital complexes, universities, military bases, etc. all within a very controlled traffic environment.  Once the bugs are worked out this will spread to other less controlled closed courses such as city busses (if the union will permit) once that is accomplished then its off to long haul trucking and then lastly individual renting or ownership.  All in all my best guess market saturation at all levels will arrive around 2035 to 2040.

DYI

China’s

Growing Naval

Strength 

China launches second aircraft carrier that is first built at home

Warship is due to go into service in 2020 when it will join existing carrier, the Soviet-era Liaoning, bought secondhand from Ukraine.

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***************

Kremlin advisor reveals 'cure for US aggression'

"The more aggressive the Americans are, the sooner they will see the final collapse of the dollar and by getting rid of the dollar this would be the only way for victims of American aggression to stop this onslaught. As soon as we and China dump the dollar, it will be the end of the US’ military might," Sergey Glazyev said in an interview with TASS. 

"The United States has no tools to make all others use the dollar other than a truncheon. That is why they are indulging in a hybrid war with the entire world to shift their debt burden on to other countries, to confine everyone to the dollar and weaken territories they cannot control."

DYI:  Russia is moving with their plan to price oil and gas in gold how many Dollars, Euros, Pounds, or Yen required to pay the price is of no concern of Moscow.  The day this arrives the U.S. Dollar – along with all of the other fiat currencies – will be hit hard.  This will NOT bring the U.S. to our knees; however the days of global empire will be severely reduced along with our endless wars.

DYI

Medical Industrial Complex

Runaway Costs

Graft – Collusion – Waste – Monopolies

And

Massive Campaign Donations

(Insurance is NOT the Problem!)

DYI:  The Medical Industrial Complex is a juggernaut of explosive growth in costs ramping up insurance premiums relentlessly for almost 60 years at an average annualized rate before inflation (nominal) 9.2%!  This is NOT due to an ageing society as Medicaid a health government program for the poor all under the age of 65 is moving up at the same rate.  As my title explains this industry has been colluding in order to price fix and create monopolies along with out right graft.  Until this industry is brought under the Clayton Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act costs will continue to soar depressing economic growth as the populous pulls the heavier and heavier health care anchor.

At what point will an underground medical economy emerge?  At what level of GDP will this occur?  An interesting question and one that I can only guess (and most likely be wrong) will it be 25% maybe 35%?  Who knows but it will happen.  In between that time medical tourism will soar as Americans travel to foreign countries for major medical events as opposed to the real casualty of bankruptcy as deductibles rise exponentially.

What is amazing only a handful of bloggers are talking about the Medical Industrial Complex’s soaring costs yet everyone believes that if they replace Obama Care everything will be peachy.  Costs were ramping up non stop way and I mean way before Obama Care yet non one in the main stream press or the alt media (a hand full only) has reported the underling reasons for the huge ongoing price gouging.  This will blow the Federal budget and when interest rates normalize a crises will hit.  When? At current trends within 4 to 7 years!

DYI      

Russian

Turkey Shoot?

EXCLUSIVE: Did Russia Shoot Down US Missiles in Syria?

In an exclusive video interview with RiskHedge, a long-time geopolitical expert says there is an alternate story making the rounds about the United States’ April 7 missile strike on Syria’s Shayrat Airbase in response to the Syrian regime’s alleged use of sarin gas on its own people. 

“Not all missiles made their target,” says Dr. Theodore Karasik, a senior advisor to Gulf State Analytics. “There were supposed to be 60. One malfunctioned on one of the ships. 36 made target, the remainder did not. And, there’s a question of where did they go?” 

Dr. Karasik, a former senior political scientist in the International Policy and Security Group at RAND Corporation, spent the last decade in the Middle East and retains an extensive network in the region. 

“The missing [missiles] were either brought down by S-300 battery or were taken over by Russian electronic jamming and were plunged into the sea,” explains Dr. Karasik. “Now, this alternative theory means that the US and Russia have already clashed if you will—technically—with the use of the TLAMs (Tomahawk missiles) and then being intercepted or taken over by Russian control.” 

If true, this means the US and Russia have had a direct military confrontation for the first time in decades.

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SIGNALS: A Candid Discussion

 with

 Dr. Philippa Malmgren

by Paul Nash  |  on May 18th, 2015  

DYI:  Despite the interview a bit dated her insights are "spot on" especially regarding inflation and geopolitics.  Well worth the your time.

 DYI

Socialist’s

Paradise?

Many poor Venezuelans too hungry to join protests against President Maduro

Many of the impoverished residents of the vast slums that ring Caracas and other major cities are angry about a collapsing economy and food shortages. But Venezuela’s political unrest remains mostly confined to middle-class enclaves, underscoring the struggle the opposition here faces in trying to unseat an increasingly authoritarian government. 

More than four in five Venezuelans say they don’t earn enough to meet basic needs and three-quarters say they have lost an average of 19 pounds of weight last year, according to the Encovi survey by Venezuela’s top three universities.

DYI:  Bernie Sanders Vermont’s resident socialist is all too quiet when it comes to the woes of Venezuela.  Utopia doesn’t work.  That’s right Bernie; it never works leading the country into despair.  Socialist’s are always selling utopia yet it never works ending in a dictatorship or politburo style government with a total loss of rights for the average citizens, along with malnutrition and outright starvation (North Korea) due to the loss of free markets.

If the world goes into recession dropping oil prices substantially Venezuela could very possibly loose 10% to 15% of her population due to starvation, along with the remainder fleeing to other countries reducing the overall population by 40%.  This is not Cuba with an ocean surrounding the island nor a police state such North Korea but a nation with very porous borders.  The exodus has already begun with the middle class immigrating to other countries a world wide recession will turn the fleeing citizen’s into a mass evacuation.

DYI

WOW!

"The Retail Bubble Has Now Burst": A Record 8,640 Stores Are Closing In 2017

The devastation in the US retail sector is accelerating in 2017, and in addition to the surging number of brick and mortar retail bankruptcies, it is perhaps nowhere more obvious than in the soaring number of store closures. 

While the shuttering of retail stores has been a frequent topic on this website, most recently in the context of the next "big short", namely the ongoing deterioration in the mall REITs and associated Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities and CDS, here is a stunning fact from Credit Suisse:"Barely a quarter into 2017, year-to-date retail store closings have already surpassed those of 2008."

With all that in mind, is Amazon assured of becoming the world's first trillion-dollar stock, perhaps hitting the milestone even before Apple? 

Perhaps, then again, chains such as Wal-Mart have stepped up their game. In a bid to better compete with Amazon.com , the giant retailer has been scooping up e-commerce startups, including Jet.com and ModCloth. And just this past week, PetSmart Inc. bought Chewy.com, a fast-growing online rival. 

Others have given up waiting for a recovery that seems always out of reach and are settling into what appears to be the new normal. “We’re planning as if the environment is not going to improve,” Jerry Storch, chief executive of Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor parent Hudson’s Bay Co., told analysts earlier this month. In the meantime, expect more store closures, more bankruptcies (recall "According To Fitch These Eight Retailers Will File For Bankruptcy Next"), and, of course, far lower asset prices, both for retail equities and mall REITs, as well as the underlying CMBS securities that for years funded the US retail (and especially mall) bubble, which has now violently burst.

 DYI

May 7, 2017

French Heavy Weight Championship!

Le Pen VS Macron

Macron and Le Pen go to second round in French election – as it happened

Tale of the Tape

Le Pen

1.  She Promises to Remove Illegal Immigrants from the Country.

2.  She Also Wants to Restrict Legal Immigration.

3.  She Says She Will Ban Symbols of Religion in Public.

4.  She Wants to Renegotiate With the European Union & Possibly Withdraw From It.

5.  She Wants to Cut Taxes & Lower the Retirement Age.

Macron

1.  He Is a Former Member of the Socialist Party But Is Now Running Under the Centrist “En Marche!” Movement.

2.  He is Pro European Union.

3.  He Is For Strengthening the EU’s Borders But Says France’s Security Policies Have Unfairly Targeted Muslims.

4.  He Promises to Make France More Business Friendly.

5.  He Wants to Increase Defense Spending & Is in Favor of Intervening in Syria

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“Large centers of private power are dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people.”

Louis Dembitz Brandeis

Associate Justice Supreme Court

1916 to 1939

Is It Time to Break Up Google?

In just 10 years, the world’s five largest companies by market capitalization have all changed, save for one: Microsoft. Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Citigroup and Shell Oil are out and Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon and Facebook have taken their place. 

They’re all tech companies, and each dominates its corner of the industry: Google has an 88 percent market share in search advertising, Facebook (and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) owns 77 percent of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market. In classic economic terms, all three are monopolies. 

We have been transported back to the early 20th century, when arguments about “the curse of bigness” were advanced by President Woodrow Wilson’s counselor, Louis Brandeis, before Wilson appointed him to the Supreme Court. Brandeis wanted to eliminate monopolies, because (in the words of his biographer Melvin Urofsky) “in a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power is dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people.” 

We need look no further than the conduct of the largest banks in the 2008 financial crisis or the role that Facebook and Google play in the “fake news” business to know that Brandeis was right.

DYI:  Article from the New York Times editorial page written by Jonathan Taplin director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”

Taplin states further into the article penning a possibility these companies could be treated as natural monopolies such as AT & T before its eventual breakup.  Nothing could be further from the truth as these high tech companies have none of the technical issues associated with electric utilities or land line telephone companies.  That nonsense is being perpetuated by the likes of Google and Facebook in an attempt to maintain their monopolistic market share.  The government’s incentive to protect these mass communication platforms from competition is for the political elites to control the news flow to the public.  In other words, Facebook and Google enjoy their monopoly – independent news organizations are driven off – allowing the political elites to “pump out” massive amounts of propaganda. 

All and all, a surprisingly good article from the New York Times.

What we face today is the scourge of mega corporations in bed with big government. What is required is Trust Busting; unfortunately I don’t see any movement in this area by the Trump Administration (I voted for him) as Congress is NOT required as the Sherman Antitrust Act has been on the books for over 100 years; it simply needs to be enforced.

 DYI

      

Medical

Tyranny 

Dozens of Unvaccinated Students Banned from Class

In an unusual move that comes amid intensifying efforts across America to provide what critics call “medicine at gun point,” dozens of schoolchildren were banned from attending class in Rochester, Minnesota, for not proving they received a dizzying array of government-mandated vaccines.

Among the myriad shots now being required by state officials in Minnesota is one for chicken pox, which countless experts have questioned or even lambasted as counter-productive. Also required is the measles vaccine, which, according to the federal government's own data, is far more likely to kill American children than the disease it purports to protect against. Failure to receive even one of the more than one dozen mandatory shots resulted in the children being removed from class, according to press reports. Like most state governments across America, Minnesota authorities take their cues on vaccines from federal “recommendations” developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).   

“Big Pharma and the CDC have very profitably generated and then propagated the myth that their over-priced and very poorly researched vaccines are both effective and safe,” added Dr. Kohl, a retired physician who had a 40-year family practice career and now tries to sound the alarm on vaccine dangers. “ 

The safety and efficacy of all vaccines has been disproven (including the 270 new ones that the industry is currently developing and planning to market), 

but the word has not broken through to the large clinics like the Mayo Clinic.” 

Commenting on the decision to remove children from school for non-compliance with the federally backed vaccine mandates, Kohl used harsh words to describe the scheme. “Sounds like police state tactics to me,” he said, noting that everything the Gestapo did in National Socialist (Nazi) Germany was technically legal under laws passed by the Nazi-controlled Reichstag. “The school board is as dis-informed as most health journalists are on this issue.” He suggested that media outlets may some day be accused of being “an accessory to a crime” for helping propagate what he called the “subterfuge” of the “safe and effective vaccine.” 

And all of the efforts to use coercion to push vaccines are happening despite the fact that Big Pharma lobbyists already convinced Congress to protect vaccine manufacturers from liability. 

That means that families of victims injured or killed by vaccines must be compensated by taxpayers through a special vaccine court, putting taxpayers on the hook for problems resulting from shots. 

Virtually no other industry enjoys such a privilege.  

Attacks on medical freedom and informed consent similar to what is happening in America are underway outside of the United States, too — particularly as more and more parents begin to question the safety and efficacy of vaccines. In Australia, for instance, almost 150,000 families were cut off from childcare benefits for failure to obey vaccine mandates. Many European governments are also cracking down on resistors. In Africa, numerous prominent doctors and religious officials have argued that the United Nations was using a vaccine program to sterilize women. 

Doctors: UN Vaccines in Kenya Used to Sterilize Women

Less than a year after the United Nations unveiled a sweeping population-control plot aimed at reducing the number of people in Kenya, a supposed UN “vaccine program” is under fire by doctors and Catholic bishops for deliberately sterilizing millions of women. The explosive revelations were released after medical researchers and the Catholic Church found a sterilization agent in tetanus inoculations being foisted on Kenyan women by two UN agencies in cooperation with the national government. Incredibly, it is not the first time that international vaccine campaigns by the UN targeting Third World populations have been exposed as covert sterilization and eugenics programs. Some critics have even referred to the latest plot as race-based genocide.

DYI

High – Tech

Job

Destructiveness 

The retail sector is shedding jobs like it’s a recession

The U.S. retail industry is shedding jobs at an unparalleled pace outside of recession and stands to lose many more as the industry continues to shrink its physical footprint, a response to the shift in consumer shopping habits away from purchasing in stores and malls in favor of e-commerce.

Canadian

Bubble

News 

How Canada completely lost its mind over real estate

Canada’s out-of-control real estate market has now gone totally mad­—and there’s no turning back

DYI

Over the next weeks and months I'll be discussing all Seven Institutional Changes and Why these 7 will make America Great!

Make America Great

7

Sisters

Of

Institutional Change

1.)   End the Federal Reserve

2.)   Repeal 17^th Amendment – Reinstate Federal Senators chosen by State Legislators.

1. Term Limits – Constitutional Amendment

A. Two six year terms for Senators

B. Three terms House of Representatives

3.)   Repeal 16^th Amendment – Income tax replace with value added tax.

4.)   Pass the Balanced Budget Amendment

5.)   Exit the United Nations

6.)   Reign in the Medical Industrial Complex

a. Enforce Anti-Trust Laws

b. Pass Legislation for re-importation of ethical drugs

7.)   End Federal and Private Student Loans

DYI 

Corporate

Crime

(No One Goes to Prison??)

Wells Fargo exec was fired for not scamming N.J. customers, lawsuit says

A Somerset County woman is suing Wells Fargo Bank alleging she was fired for refusing to participate in an alleged scheme similar to the bank's widespread account scam that led to millions of dollars in federal fines.  

Melinda Bini, a former assistant vice president and regional private banker at the Highland Park bank's branch, says in a recent lawsuit that supervisors instructed her to manipulate accounts and sell banking products or investments that were not the customers' best interest or without their knowledge.

 Wells Fargo, the second-largest banking institution in New Jersey, was fined $100 million in September 2016 by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for using fake emails to sign up current customers for additional accounts without their consent. 

The bank eventually fired more than 5,000 employees for enrolling customers illegally as a way to meet their sales quotas.

 DYI