Friday, April 14, 2017
China Starting To Resemble Bernie Madoff / Economics / China Economy
By: Jeff_Berwick
Aubible.com just released a new show on Bernie Madoff (Ponzi Supernova, available for free to subscribers) that explains how the world’s biggest financial scam was enabled by banks and hedge funds who were making so much money that they chose to ignore obvious red flags.
Which sounds a lot like today’s China, Inc. Here, for instance, is a sequence of events involving China Huishan Dairy Holdings, an apparently too-big-to-fail chain of dairy farms:
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Friday, April 14, 2017
Supply Crunch Or Oil Glut: Investment Banks Can't Agree / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: OilPrice_Com
In recent years, U.S. shale has thrown in another unknown in the mix of factors driving the price of oil. This year, shale output forecasts combine with OPEC's production cuts, geopolitical factors, and unexpected outages to further complicate supply/demand and oil price forecasts by Wall Street's major investment banks.
The biggest banks remain bullish on oil prices, expecting moderate price gains by the end of the year, even after last month WTI prices dropped below $50 for a couple of weeks.
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Friday, April 14, 2017
Gold Stocks Bull Upside Targets / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2017
By: Zeal_LLC
The get-no-respect gold-stock sector is in a strong young bull market. Past gold-stock bulls have grown to utterly-massive proportions before giving up their ghosts, greatly multiplying the wealth of contrarian investors and speculators. Today’s gold-stock bull is very likely to grow vastly larger before fully running its course. Fundamental gold-stock-bull upside targets reveal the lion’s share of gains are still yet to come.
A little over a year ago in January 2016, a monstrous gold-stock bear finally climaxed. The gold miners’ stocks fell to fundamentally-absurd 13.5-year secular lows as measured by their leading index, the HUI NYSE Arca Gold BUGS Index. Out of those dark depths of despair, a new gold-stock bull was stealthily born. And it soon started flexing its muscle, rocketing 182.2% higher in just 6.5 months by early August!
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Friday, April 14, 2017
KBW Bank Index Extended Correction / Companies / Banking Stocks
By: ElliottWave-Forecast
KBW Bank Index is an economic index consisting of the stocks of 24 banking companies delivering a direct exposure to the banking sector and offering a targeted view to a unique corner of the U.S. financials sector. The top holdings Banks of the index are among the biggest financial institutes in the world and most of them will report earning during this week ( Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America). These companies have a big influence on the financial sector that can be measured by the ETF (XLF), which was up 30% from last year until last month, we mentioned in our previous financial article that XLF was reaching an inflection area which provided the expected pullback.
Friday, April 14, 2017
Trump’s Budget Plan and Gold / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: Arkadiusz_Sieron
After a long wait, President has finally presented his budget blueprint “to make America great again”. Let’s analyze its possible impact on the gold market. First, we need to praise a 1.2 percent cut in discretionary spending, on balance. In particular, Trump wants to cut the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency by 31 percent, the budget of the Department of State and USAID by 29 percent, and both the budget of the Department of Labor and the Department of Agriculture by 21 percent. The table below summarizes the proposed changes in the allocation of discretionary budget funds.
Friday, April 14, 2017
MOAB - US Military Madness / Politics / US Military
By: Stephen_Lendman
WW I French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau was right, saying: “War is too important to be left to the generals.”
Trump delegated warmaking to neocon hawkish generals, favoring belligerence over diplomacy - heading toward escalated war on Syria along with possibly striking North Korea preemptively.
Trump’s geopolitical agenda risks confrontation with multiple countries. It risks nuclear war in Europe and East Asia.
Russia warned it’ll down US warplanes and missiles if its personnel in Syria are endangered. US policymakers and Pentagon officials know it.
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Friday, April 14, 2017
Westinghouse A Bankruptcy of Nuclear Proportions / Companies / Nuclear Power
By: STRATFOR
In any given year, a handful of companies file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States. Rarely, however, does one of these filings reverberate beyond the boardroom and into the realm of geopolitics. Those that do — Lehman Brothers in 2008, or the "Big Three" U.S. automakers in 2008-10 — usually involve hundreds of billions of dollars. But the next big geopolitically relevant bankruptcy may be on the horizon, and the amount of money involved is tiny next to the collapses of the past decade.
Friday, April 14, 2017
The Thieving IRA Going Beyond Extortion to Outright Theft / Politics / Taxes
By: Jeff_Berwick
People need to realize what government is. It isn’t there to protect you. All government really is is a criminal enterprise that is the most successful one in each geographical jurisdiction.
The only difference between the mafia and government is size. And the IRS is just the largest protection racket in the US.
If you pay the IRS its “protection money,” which they call taxes, they won’t kidnap you and put you into a rape camp. That’s the “protection.”
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Friday, April 14, 2017
Energy Market Volatility: What to Expect Next / Commodities / Energy Resources
By: EWI
Our Chief Energy Analyst talks about what he’s looking at across the energy markets
In this new interview with Steve Craig, the Editor of our Energy Pro Service, he explains that when looking across the energy complex, 2017 is playing out according to his Elliott wave script.
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Thursday, April 13, 2017
Will All Of This ‘Optimism’ Crash The Stock Markets? / Stock-Markets / Financial Crash
By: Chris_Vermeulen
Currently, the short-term trend for the SPX is NEUTRAL. The intermediate and long term trends are still very BULLISH! There is No trend, in the market, at this time. It is neither overbought or oversold.
The SPX is in a ‘Non-Trending’ market. I expect this next retracement will be completed by the end of April 2017. I plan on taking advantage of this summer’s rally.
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Thursday, April 13, 2017
Passive Investing Will End In Pain For Many Stock Market Investors / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: John_Mauldin
Every bear market correction since 1947 that didn’t come during a recession was relatively quickly reversed. Think about what happened in 1987 and 1998. There were pretty serious corrections and then a bull market.
The bull market that found its footing in 1987 lasted for another 13 years. In 1998, we were only a few years away from a major correction accompanied by a recession.
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Thursday, April 13, 2017
12 Charts That Show Why A 60% Stock Market Crash Is Very Real / Stock-Markets / Stock Market Crash
By: John_Mauldin
BY JOHN MAULDIN : A few weeks ago, I spent two days giving multiple speeches alongside my friend Steve Blumenthal of CMG in New Jersey. I listened to Steve do deep dives on stock market valuations.
Steve puts a great deal of research into the topic, so I asked if he could share some data from time to time, and he agreed. With his help, I compiled valuation measurements used by people who know what they’re talking about.
Not surprisingly, they all point to the fact that equities are pricey. But what is surprising is the degree of overvaluation—we are talking about the risk of a 60% decline.
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Thursday, April 13, 2017
Best Strategies To Survive A Financial Crisis In Your Home Country / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: HAA
Stephen McBride : Praised be the 17th-century Italian wisecrack who noted that you shouldn’t “keep all your eggs in one basket.” It’s still true today and just as applicable to life as to investing.
If you live and work in the US, bank in the US, invest with a US brokerage, and hold your savings in US dollars—your eggs could use some diversification.
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Thursday, April 13, 2017
5 Events This Year That Could Spark The Next Gold Bull Market / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: HAA
Stephen McBride:
Gold had a satisfying first quarter, rising 9% since the beginning of the year. While that can be considered a good start, five events sprinkled throughout 2017 could send it much higher.
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Stock Market Weak Technicals, Pullback Continues, Negative Day Across the Board / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Harry_Boxer
The stock market was decidedly lower today. The indices started the day out, though, with a little pop to the upside, but resistance failed immediately. They then started to work their way lower by late morning, and reached the session lows on both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, bounced in the afternoon, took back about two-thirds of the losses, and then pulled back down and retested the lows before a late bounce pulled them off the lows for the day.
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Thursday, April 13, 2017
Preparing for the Reign of the First Widow / Politics / US Politics
By: Stewart_Dougherty
We believe the 6 April 2017 Tomahawk missile attack on Syria indicates that Donald Trump has concluded that the fiscal, economic and political situations in the United States are beyond repair, and that without continued, massive military interventionism and spending, U.S. GDP will plunge, taking all of his campaign commitments down with it. Therefore, he has capitulated to the agenda of the Deep State looters and war profiteers. Trump’s capitulation has profound personal and financial implications for the citizens of the United States and the world.
Thursday, April 13, 2017
United Airlines "Just Kill Him" - A Symptom of New Fascist Reality In America / Politics / US Politics
By: Jeff_Berwick
I’ve never understood airlines overbooking their flights. What other industry does that?
“Hi, I’m here to pick up the painting I bought from you online.”
“Oh, there are two other people here who bought it too. I guess I sold it too many times, sorry. I’ll just have some armed men escort you out!”
It sounds crazy, right? But, when it comes to airlines it happens all the time.
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Thursday, April 13, 2017
Stock Market Signs of Concern / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Donald_W_Dony
After a strong showing of strength from the markets over the last four months, a topping appears to be developing.
Some of the factors that seem to be soften the near-term bull market are geopolitical risks.
The building tensions around Syria and North Korea have placed many investors on edge and moved them toward safe-havens.
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Thursday, April 13, 2017
America, the Waning Days / Politics / Social Issues
By: Raul_I_Meijer
Potential earthquakes and black swans are right ahead of us. What else is new? On April 16, Turkey has a referendum to decide whether Erdogan will become de facto supreme ruler. What happens if he loses the referendum is completely unclear, undiscussed even, but it’s obvious a loss would have the country shake on its already shaky foundations.
The Turkish economy is in horrible shape and Erdogan’s post-coup firings (hundreds of thousands) and jailings (tens of thousands) have made large parts of society unattended. The biggest of which may well be the army; you can’t fire large numbers of officers and pilots and expect to retain the same strike effectiveness.
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Wednesday, April 12, 2017
US Economy Contracting but Expect Higher Stock Prices / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Chris_Vermeulen
The United States is the world’s largest and most diversified economy! It is currently suffering through a protracted period of slow growth which has held down job creation and labor market participation. The Pew Research Center reported, in late 2015, that a mere 19% of Americans trust the government either always or most of the time.
The FED must print more money in order to keep the party going forward.
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