AUG 28 16 SIT EC
y POL
ZERO HEDGE
ECONOMICS
JUST 3 CHARTS
ON THE CURRENT ECON CRISIS
As the
cracks in the veneer of central bank omnipotence grow ever wider, some
brief reflection on the following three charts may
awaken some 'animal' spirits of a different sort as the gap between fundamental
reality and 'market' perception has never been wider...
Bottom-Up - It's Ugly...
Image location at: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2016/08/25/20160828_threecharts1_0.jpg
Before-tax
corporate earnings fell 4.9 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier,
the fifth consecutive decline and the worst streak since the end of the
recession in mid-2009, Commerce Department figures showed on Friday. The
profit slump, included in the report on revisions to gross domestic product,
softens the outlook for already-weak business investment and also poses a risk
to continued strength in hiring, which has been a bright spot for consumer
spending and for the economy.
Top-Down - It's Worse...
Image location at: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2016/08/25/20160828_threecharts2_0.jpg
Since the reality-awakening lows
in February, global central banks have unleashed over $1.8 trillion of freshly
minted QE across various asset classes (e.g. corp bonds in Europe, Equity ETFs
in Japan, gilts in UK) which has enabled the facade of confidence to spread - lifting US equity markets (and just look at EM inflows) to
record highs as every fundamental indicator (except the well-managed jobless
claims and payrolls data) shifts from bounce to bad to worse.
And The Wall Of Worry has
Fallen...
Image location at: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2016/08/25/20160828_threecharts3_0.jpg
Those trillions of dollars have
enabled the biggest surge into short VIX futures bets in history as the
so-called 'most-hated' rally of all time is now, by
far, the most speculatively embraced with Dow and Nasdaq futures also having
never been so speculatively long positioned.
***
We
are sure none of this matters though... corporate
profits disappear, economic growth turns negative, industrial production and
productivity collapse, but Dow hits 100,000 thanks to VIX slamming to
zero as the world's central bank balance sheets go to
the moon alice...
Bonus Chart: It seems one
asset class was paying attention...
Image location at: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2016/08/25/20160828_threecharts4_0.jpg
….
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While policymakers have maintained the Fed
should eventually reduce its bond holdings, Lockhart said some
officials were closer to accepting that they needed to
learn to live with them. "I
suspect there are colleagues who are contemplating at least maybe a statically
large balance sheet is just going to be a fact of life and be central to the
toolkit," he said. Most now agree with him.
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With year-end bonuses due in just 4 months, and
with hedge funds significantly underperforming the market in absolute and
risk-adjusted terms as of this moment, bonuses are not looking good. So what do hedge funds do? Why go all in of course.
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As part of Obama's parting gift to the US, not
only will his successor inherit a $20 trilion mountain of debt, but also rising
deficits, which after six years of declines, are set to grow again.
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POLITICS
"We
are at a point where the encroachment of government power, whether foreign or
domestic, has historically resulted in some form of a rebellion against said
power."
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The
Federal Reserve’s long-term influence hinges in part on its ability to convince
millennials that its current policies can help push inflation closer to the
central bank’s 2% goal. That’s not as easy as it sounds, because this
cohort has both a different history and current relationship with this economic
variable. Why?
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"The state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight..."
VIDEO URL: Mike Lofgren – The Deep State : https://youtu.be/n3fYc5tQbNQ
It is not too much to say that
Wall Street may be the ultimate owner of the Deep State and its strategies,
if for no other reason than that it has the money to reward government
operatives with a second career that is lucrative beyond the dreams of avarice
- certainly beyond the dreams of a salaried government employee.
The corridor between Manhattan
and Washington is a well-trodden highway for the personalities we have all
gotten to know in the period since the massive deregulation of Wall Street."
-Mike Lofgren
Here some extracts:
As we
noted previously, the deep state seems to
have grown, strengthened and tightened its grip. Can a lack of real money restrain or starve
it? I once thought so, and maybe I still do. But it doesn’t use real money, but rather debt and creative financing to get that
next new car, er, war and intervention and domestic spending program. Ultimately it’s not sustainable,
and just as unaffordable cars are junked, stripped, repossessed, and crunched
up, so will go the way of the physical assets of the warfare–welfare state.
Because inflated
salaries, inflated
stock prices and inflated
ruling-class personalities are month to month,
these should evaporate more quickly, over a debris field once
known as some of richest counties in the United
States. Can I imagine the
shabbiest of trailer parks in the dismal swamp, where high rises and government
basilicas and abbeys once stood? I’d certainly like to. But I’ll
settle for well-kept, privately owned house trailers, filled with people
actually producing some small value for society, and minding their own
business.
Finally, what of those pinpricks
of light, the honest assessments of the real death trail and consumption pit
that the deep state has delivered? Well,
it is growing and broadening. Wikileaks and Snowden are considered assets
now to any and all competitors to the US deep state, from within and from
abroad – the Pandora’s box, assisted by
technology, can’t be closed now. The
independent media has matured to the point of criticizing and debating
itself/each other, as well as focusing harsh light on the establishment
media. Instead of left
and right mainstream media, we increasingly recognize state media, and delightedly observe its own struggle to survive
in the face of a growing nervousness of the deep state it assists on command.
Maybe we will one day soon be
able to debate how deep the deep state really is, or whether it was all just a
dressed up, meth’ed up, and eff’ed up a sector of society that deserves a bit
of jail time, some counseling, and a new start. Maybe some job training that goes beyond the
printing of license plates. But given
the destruction and mass murder committed daily in the name of this state, and
the environmental disasters it has created around the world for the future
generations, perhaps we will be no more merciful to
these proprietors of the American empire as they have been to their victims.
The ruling class deeply fears our judgment, and in this dynamic lies the
cure.
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But
does it even matter? What we discovered this week is that one of the nation’s
top officials created a private server that housed proof that she continued a
secret, ongoing entwinement with her family foundation - despite ethics
agreements - and that she destroyed public records.
If that alone doesn’t disqualify her for the presidency, it’s hard to
know what would.
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ME & WORLD ISSUES
A whiff
of World War III hangs in the air. In the US, Cold War 2.0 is on, and the
anti-Russian rhetoric emanating from the Clinton campaign, echoed by the
mass media, hearkens back to McCarthyism and the red
scare. In response, many people are starting to think that Armageddon might be
nigh - an all-out nuclear exchange, followed by nuclear winter and human
extinction. It seems that many people in the US like to think that
way. But most of the recent American warmongering
toward Russia can be explained by the desire to find anyone but oneself to
blame for one’s unfolding demise.
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GLOBAL RESEARCH
Long-Term
Scenario of Economic Stagnation and Financial Instability: US Federal Reserve
Chair Janet Yellen By Barry Grey
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Hillary
Clinton: “If I’m President, We Will Attack Iran… We would be Able to Totally
Obliterate Them.” By Stephen Lendman
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THE REAL NEWS NETWORK
Only international
schemes and the organization of ordinary people can counter the interests of
the most powerful global industries, says economist James Henry
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TRNN Replay: Dr.
Kumar says the roots of Islamophobia are to be found in a conflict between
empires and economic interests, not a clash of civilizations
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INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE
|
The Ankara-Tehran-Moscow Coalition
By Pepe Escobar
|
|
The ‘policy shift’ is a direct consequence of
the failed military coup in Turkey.
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The Syrian Conflict
is a PR war mounted by the western powers and their surrogates
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The government
prefers to treat the public like mushrooms – keeping them in the dark and
feeding them bulls*it.
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There is no sign that
the Neoconservatives are willing to give up their hegemonic agenda for the sake
of life on earth.
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Maine Governor Paul LePage (R) called people of
color and people of Hispanic origin “the enemy” and implied they should be
shot.
[[ With same logic
BLM & Native Coalition’ leaders can say: Bad people
where expelled from Europe & came to America as pilgrims to disposes
the native from their land and riches and slave or killed them like rabbits.
They are the enemy of our current society. You should identify them and “You
shoot the enemy”. This is exactly
that Mr. Paul LePage is saying about people of color & of Hispanic
origin. Of course the ex-Pilgrims have
the weapons to kill innocent people, like Clinton did it in Waco-Texas, and oppressed
people do not have it then. But.. one year after , a retaliation to the
barbaric crime in Texas came in Oklahoma & similar barbaric act was done
against FBI’ family members. This is that Mr Paul
LePage is instigating today with his xenophobic attitude. In the current spiral of violence ..
retaliation may happens again.]]
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RT SHOWS
RT
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SHOWS
On contact Halfway
to freedom with Stanley Cohen Hedges
discusses the business of privately-run halfway houses with civil rights
attorney Stanley Cohen, just released
from prison: tax violation
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Worlds Apart Yesterday's
enemy? On Turkey-Russia: in
geopolitics there is not permanent friends, only permanent interests.
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News Thing Jeremy
Liar on the burkini ban in France
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WASHINGTON BLOG
REPLACE the imperial terrorist army (its NATO) with a Universal army to support Justice, Peace & real democracy..
A NICE UTOPIA ..
only possible in the aftermath of WW3. Meanwhile, assure peace by dismantling the nuke power
top-down is a more reliable dream .. We almost got it before.
Read this
Fredric Jameson is an
otherwise leftist intellectual who’s put out a book, edited by Slavoj Zizek, in
which he proposes universal conscription into the military for every U.S.
resident. In subsequent chapters, leftist intellectuals critique Jameson’s
proposal [of suggesting] an expansion of a machine of mass murder. Jameson adds
an Epilogue in which he mentions that was not the problem at all.
What Jameson wants is
a vision of Utopia. His book is called An American
Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army.
HIS PURPOSE: He wants to
nationalize banks and insurance companies, seize and presumably shut down
fossil fuel operations, impose draconian taxes on large corporations, abolish
inheritance, create a guaranteed basic income, abolish NATO, create popular
control of the media, ban rightwing propaganda, create universal Wi-Fi, make
college free, pay teachers well, make healthcare free, etc.
Sounds great! Where
do I sign up?
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NOTICIAS IN SPANISH
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"Los golpeaban con cucharas de
madera": Misioneros de EE.UU. adoptaron y torturaron a niños peruanos
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El burkini en la Europa de las libertades AR. Totalitarismo, patriarcado y
xenophobia
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PRESS TV
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