Friday, March 17, 2017
Preserving Order Amid Change in NAFTA, U.S. Sovereignty v. WTO / Economics / Global Economy
By: STRATFOR
By Reva Goujon and Matthew Bey : It took more than a decade and three presidencies, from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton, to conceive and craft the North American Free Trade Agreement. Will a single presidency manage to undo the process of North American integration? While the risk is real, the reality may be less dramatic.
Friday, March 17, 2017
US Government Hits Its Debt Target (Ceiling) Again As Trump Has No Plan To Reduce Government / Interest-Rates / US Debt
By: Jeff_Berwick
Many people fell for Donald Trump’s pre-election promises, but we warned there would be no major changes made and that Trump was an elite insider.
How right we were.
Here was a list of his biggest promises and how he has already backtracked on all of them:
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Friday, March 17, 2017
3 Maps That Explain Why Syria Raqqa Battle Will Drag On / Politics / ISIS Islamic State
By: STRATFOR
BY GEORGE FRIEDMAN AND ERIC CZULEGER : The United States, Turkey, and Russia have deployed forces to fight against the Islamic State in a run-up to the final battle for Raqqa. But no one has made a definitive move.
We’ve touched on Syria before, but this is because the battle for the ISIS heartland is complicated by geography and conflicting interests of regional and international actors.
These three maps show the complexity of this battle and why it will be a marathon rather than a sprint.
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Thursday, March 16, 2017
Crude Oil Price Outlook 2017 - Video / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Nadeem_Walayat
My crude oil in-depth analysis and concluding trend forecast for 2016 proved remarkably accurate, and so I get a lot of comments requesting a similar exercise for 2017. However my analysis has so far not lead me in the direction of the oil price, nevertheless my recent analysis on the SNP's latest call for a Scottish independence in an attempt at subverting BrExit, that eventually aim to convert into a video did include a brief look at the most probable prospects for the crude oil price for 2017 as being a significant factor with regards forecasting the outcome of the Scottish second referendum.
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Stock Market Resume Uptrend Or Correct Now? / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Gary_Tanashian
Call Me Boring, But… Those who don’t like my writing style may already call me boring (or worse), but as far as stock holdings go I willingly take on that description. If you’re looking for words about yesterday’s FOMC meeting, you won’t find them here. There are plenty of people picking that thing apart and trying to make chicken salad (news) out of chicken shit (a non-event).
I am not going to go on about the precious metals’ big rip yesterday because that is for casino patrons to get excited about. I’ve expected the sector to bounce from oversold conditions. When it takes out real upside parameters (that NFTRH will surely manage) we’ll amp up the hysterics (not really).
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Thursday, March 16, 2017
Dutch and French Electons - Winners are Losers and Left is Right / Politics / European Union
By: Raul_I_Meijer
The Dutch elections on Wednesday have provided a whole bunch of Orwellian narratives. PM Mark Rutte’s right wing VVD party, actually the ‘business’ -or should we say ‘rent-seekers’ in 2017- party, who lost some 20% of the seats they had obtained in the previous parliamentary election in November 2012, down from 41 to 33 seats, is declared the big winner. While Geert Wilders’ very right wing party, PVV, won 25% more seats -it went from 16 to 20- and is the big loser.
Moreover, Rutte’s coalition partner, labor PvdA, gave up 29 out of 38 seats to end up with just 9. That’s a loss of over 75%. Together, the coalition partners went from 79 seats in the 2012 election to 42 in 2017. That’s an almost 50% less. Not that it could prevent Rutte from proudly declaring: “We want to stick to the course we have – safe and stable and prosperous..” Makes you wonder who the ‘we’ are that he’s talking about.
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Thursday, March 16, 2017
The Straddle Trade Stock Market Brief / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Christopher_Quigley
Day Trade the News with Straddle Trades.
As part of my trading system I have 7 day trading strategies that I utilise. One such strategy employed is the straddle. This strategy I use to: “trade the news”. (I list all the other 6 strategies below for review. Over the next few months I hope to explain each in greater detail and provide examples of their technical set-up and actual execution).
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Thursday, March 16, 2017
Red States Have Had Their Say… It’s Now the Blue States’ Turn / Politics / US Politics
By: Harry_Dent
We’ve not seen this level of political polarization since the Civil War. And it’s not unique to the U.S. It’s happening around the world… a backlash against globalization.
The red states scored a massive victory when President Donald Trump won against the odds. Six states switched from borderline blue to borderline red during that election.
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Thursday, March 16, 2017
It’s Time to Stop Putting a Patch on the Euro / Currencies / Euro
By: Rodney_Johnson
Andreas Georgiou can’t catch a break.The Greek statistician moved back to his home country in 2010, at age 50, to help right the financial ship. He left Washington, where he had spent 21 years working for the International Monetary Fund, to take over the agency that reports Greece’s financial health.
Part of the problem with Greece is that no one knows exactly how big their problems are, since the numbers weren’t exactly accurate.
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Thursday, March 16, 2017
Gold Up 1.8%, Silver Up 2.6% After Dovish Fed Signals Slow Interest Rate Rises / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: GoldCore
– Gold up 1.8%, silver up 2.6% – Fed signals slow rate rises
– Dollar sells off as Fed raises 0.25% to target range of 0.75 percent to 1 percent on inflation outlook and “ebullient” stocks
– Gold’s biggest 1 day percentage gain since September 2016
– Fed raises rates for only the third time since crisis
– Fade out Fed “jibber jabber” and focus on still ultra low rates (see chart)
– Rising rates bullish for gold as seen in 1970s and 2003 to 2007 (see table)
– Silver rose 26% in 2003, 14% in 2004, 29% in 2005 and 46.6% in 2006
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Stocks Get Close To Record High Again As Fed Hikes Interest Rates / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Paul_Rejczak
Briefly: In our opinion, speculative short positions are favored (with stop-loss at 2,410, and profit target at 2,200, S&P 500 index).
Our intraday outlook is bearish, and our short-term outlook is bearish. Our medium-term outlook remains neutral, following S&P 500 index breakout above last year's all-time high:
Intraday outlook (next 24 hours): bearish
Short-term outlook (next 1-2 weeks): bearish
Medium-term outlook (next 1-3 months): neutral
Long-term outlook (next year): neutral
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Scotland Second Independence Referendum War - SNP Determined to Destroy the UK / Politics / BrExit
By: Nadeem_Walayat
In the run up to Scotland's September 2014 Independence Referendum, the Scottish Nationalists from Alex Salmond to Nichola Sturgeon down promised that they would abide by the results of the referendum, declaring that it was at least a once in a generation decision if not once in a life time decision. So here's a reminder of why the SNP cannot be trusted who blindly only see Independence as the answer to every question, and thus remain fanatically determined to destroy the United Kingdom at every opportunity.
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Trump’s Infrastructure Boondoggle / Politics / Infrastructure
By: Mike_Whitney
Donald Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan is not an infrastructure plan and it won’t put $1 trillion of fiscal stimulus into the economy. It’s basically a scheme for handing over public assets to private corporations that will extract maximum profits via user fees and tolls. Because the plan is essentially a boondoggle, it will not lift the economy out of the doldrums, increase activity or boost growth. Quite the contrary. When the details of how the program is going to be implemented are announced, public confidence in the Trump administration is going to wither and stock prices are going to plunge. This scenario cannot be avoided because the penny-pinching conservatives in the House and Senate have already said that they won’t support any plan that is not “revenue neutral” which means that any real $1 trillion spending package is a dead letter. Thus, it’s only a matter of time before the Trump’s plan is exposed as a fraud and the sh** hits the fan.
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Here’s How Pharma Is Using AI Deep Learning To Cure Aging / Companies / AI
By: John_Mauldin
BY PATRICK COX : In 2011, scientists made one of the most important discoveries in the history of AI development. They found that graphics processing units (GPUs) are far better at simulating biological learning than central processing units (CPUs).
In retrospect, it seems obvious. Human brains are much more like GPUs than CPUs. Both brains and GPUs rely on parallel processing that simulates and predicts real world physics.
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Thursday, March 16, 2017
China’s Economic Miracle Is Over / Economics / China Economy
By: John_Mauldin
BY GEORGE FRIEDMAN : Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told the National People’s Congress that China’s GDP growth rate would drop from 7% in 2016 to 6.5% this year. In 2016, the country’s growth rate was the lowest it has been since 1990.
The precision with which any country’s economic growth is measured is dubious, since it’s hard to measure the economic activity of hundreds of millions of people and businesses. But the reliability of China’s economic numbers has always been taken with a larger grain of salt than in most countries. We suspect that China’s economy is growing less than 6.5%, if at all.
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Thursday, March 16, 2017
US Interest Rates Up Quarter Percent, Stock Market Loved It / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Harry_Boxer
Fed Yellen raised interest rates a quarter percent today and the stock market loved it. The Nasdaq 100 popped early, and then pulled back, but the S&P 500 kept going up all morning. By midday, just before the FOMC, they pulled back just a little going into that meeting, and then exploded. They pulled back again and rallied sharply. Only at the end of the day did they pull back a little to pare back the profits.
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Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Stock Market Chaos in the Chicken Coop / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Anthony_Cherniawski
SPX has exceeded its 61.8% Fib retracement and may be headed for the hourly Cycle Top at 2391.50. It is overbought to an extreme and may reverse at any time.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Gold and Silver Price Manipulation: The Biggest Financial Crime In History / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2017
By: Stewart_Dougherty
According to the mainstream financial media (MFM), the biggest financial frauds in history are the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, with roughly $20 billion in net investor losses, and the Bank State rigging of LIBOR, which resulted in 16 guilty banks paying $35 billion in fines, which supposedly equated to their theft.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
“Ryancare” Dead on Arrival: Can We Please Now Try Single Payer? / Politics / Healthcare Sector
By: Ellen_Brown
The new American Health Care Act has been unveiled, and it has been pronounced an even greater disaster than Obamacare. Dubbed “Ryancare” or “Trumpcare” (over the objection of White House staff), the Republican health care bill is under attack from all sides, with even conservative leaders calling it “Obamacare Lite”, “bad policy”, a “warmed-over substitute,” and “dead on arrival.”
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Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Fanaticism, Stock Market Crash 2017 or Continuation of Bull Market / Stock-Markets / Stock Market 2017
By: Sol_Palha
Not too long ago this bull market was one of the most hated in history; that no longer appears to be the case. Throughout the unpopular phase of this bull market, we consistently and much to the dismay of many penguins, oops we mean experts, stated that every pullback should have been treated as a buying opportunity. There were two reasons for this; market sentiment was consistently negative, and the trend was up.
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