FEB 21 18 SIT EC y POL
ND denounce Global-neoliberal
debacle y propone State-Social + Capit-compet in Econ
ZERO HEDGE ECONOMICS
Neoliberal globalization is
over. Financiers know it, they documented with graphics
"Here's the problem... American economic growth is now based solely upon the
growth in federal debt. Without the
federal deficit spending, the economy
would be shrinking..."
See Chart:
See more interesting charts at:
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The machines lifted The Dow as the FOMC Minutes
hit, tagging Monday's fake-open and then plunging back 500-plus points as bond
yields spiked...
See Chart:
Perhaps
more worrisome is The Dow broke back below its 50% retracement level...
See Chart:
Quite a wild day in FX markets as
the dollar dumped then jumped after the FOMC Minutes...
See Chart:
….
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BOFA: CLIENTS SOLD BOND ETFS FOR THE LONGEST
STREAK ON RECORD Who bought garbage?
"Clients
sold fixed income ETFs for the third week, the longest selling streak since we
began tracking ETF granularity in 2017, driven by institutional and hedge fund
clients."
See Chart:
….
See More Charts at
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Inflation problems:
"...the
most likely surprise in the Fed Minutes tomorrow is
that they may be leaning to four
hikes in 2018, but the biggest surprise would
be growing support to aim for above two percent inflation temporarily to
make up for previous misses to the downside.
The Dollar is suddenly rising and
rate hike expectations are now at their highest of the
cycle - 2.76 hikes in 2018 are priced in - (despite stocks still not being
anywhere near back to pre-Powell-put-implied levels).
See chart:
But as Rafiki Capital Management's Steven Englander notes,
the most likely surprise in the Fed Minutes tomorrow is that they may be leaning
to four hikes in 2018, but the biggest surprise would be growing support to aim for
above two percent inflation temporarily to
make up for previous misses to the downside.
See Chart:
The three
versus four hike debate is already in the open with several FOMC
participants referring to the possibility of four hikes.
About 70bps are now priced in, versus around 65bps
just before the meeting. The FOMC meeting occurred before high AHE and
inflation prints, but in recent meetings the Minutes' discussion has
become more confident that inflation is picking up. I think the risk is
much greater that they signal growing confidence on inflation moving
towards target more quickly than any indication that two hikes might be more
appropriate than three.
This would not mean a strong, overt signal
of four hikes but it is likely they could convey 'three, maybe four'
as their stance.
They are unlikely to go full hawkish in the Minutes
as there have been only moderate hawkish signals since, and monetary
policy was probably discussed in between tinkling champagne glasses at Fed
Chair Yellen's last meeting.
The problem for the
inflation doves is that even if they are ultimately proved right, there
haven't been any recent data releases that would support the view that
inflation will persist below two percent. The characterization of the dovish stance in the December Minutes
now reads too aggressive:
….
Read more at:
Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-20/fomc-minutes-preview-beware-hawkish-tilted-ides-march
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"These signs of impending inflation have investors taking another look at gold as the historically most reliable
hedge against inflation."
The Fed is keeping a close eye on these developments, and
that could fuel the inflation fears. The fear of rising prices includes most economic sectors,
from gasoline, housing, food, healthcare, to clothing.
Predictably, the market reacted immediately to the CPI rise
with a 100-point loss after opening, even though the decline was quickly
reversed. Investors
are anticipating that the Federal Reserve could raise their interest rates
three or more times by year-end.
See Table:
These signs of
impending inflation have investors taking another look
at gold as the historically most reliable hedge against inflation.
See chart:
We could be facing a major gold bull
market soon. This one will be quite different from the bull markets in
the 1970s or the post-2000 market. An entirely new factor is being introduced into the global
gold markets with potentially huge consequences. This time, it includes the Islamic factor in the gold trade. For Islamics, investing
in gold was against Islamic law. Not anymore, now they
“could be infusing the gold market with $3 trillion of investments”.
In
addition, China has opened the Shanghai Gold Exchange. China has huge gold reserves
and wants prices set in actual gold value instead of paper futures. Currently, for each physical ounce of gold, there are 252
ounces of contracted futures on paper. This could change drastically if
China has its way, and it could create a gold bull
market of historic proportions.
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"If
Powell was fully conscious in 2012 of what would happen in markets due to the
Fed’s balance sheet reductions, the
question is, will he be honest about it now? My suspicion is that he
will not..."
Ever since the
credit and equities crash of 2008, Americans have been bombarded relentlessly
with the narrative that our economy is “in recovery”.
In fact, we have heard from officials at the Federal Reserve
that the exact opposite is true. They have admitted that the so-called recovery has been fiat driven,
and that there is a danger that when the Fed finally
stops artificially propping up the economy with constant stimulus and near zero
interest rates, the whole farce might come tumbling down.
For example, Richard Fisher, former head of the Dallas Federal Reserve,
admitted a few years ago that the U.S. central bank has made its business the manipulation of the stock market to the upside:
What the
Fed did — and I was part of that group — is we front-loaded a tremendous market
rally, starting in 2009.
It’s sort
of what I call the “reverse Whimpy factor” — give me two hamburgers today for
one tomorrow.
I’m not
surprised that almost every index you can look at … was down significantly.
Fisher went on to hint at the impending danger (though his
predicted drop is overly conservative in my view), saying: “I
was warning my colleagues, don’t go wobbly if we have a 10-20% correction at
some point…. Everybody you talk to … has been warning that these markets are
heavily priced.”
…
Continue reading at:
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It hasn't been a good year for
most hedge funds, but for quants, CTAs, managed futures
and trend followers, it has been an absolute bloodbath...
See table:
….
Source:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-20/who-got-slammed-here-are-best-and-worst-hedge-funds-2018
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Salvese quien pueda .. learn the Apple trick
Apparently, CEO Tim Cook can no
longer stomach leaving such a crucial issue in the hands of Apple's suppliers
See Chart:
…
Source https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-21/apple-talks-source-its-own-cobalt-price-more-triples
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After new- and existing-home sales
tumbled in December, expectations were for a modest 0.5% rebound in January (despite plunging mortgage applications and
soaring rates). But that did not happen as existing home sales tumbled 3.2% MoM to its
lowest level since Aug 2016.
See Chart:
(NOTE - this data is based on signed contracts from
Nov/DEC, which means the recent spike in rates is not even hitting this yet)
Existing
home sales are down 4.8% YoY - the biggest drop since August 2014.
See chart:
So, will higher rates break
housing market momentum?
The
following chart suggest 'yes' - that surge in
rates will have a direct impact on home sales (or prices will be forced to
adjust lower) as affordability collapses...
See Chart:
…
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A week
ago we highlighted the tumble in US
mortgage applications, and things just got worser-er. As mortgage rates
extend 4-year highs, home purchase applications plunged
15% in the last few weeks - the biggest
drop since Feb 2015.
See chart:
…
See more charts at:
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"Central bankers seem to think that adjusting interest rates is a
nice little tool that they can easily handle. The
problem is that higher interest rates affect the economy in many ways
simultaneously. The lessons that seem to have been learned from "past rate hikes may
not be applicable today.
A
recent
Zerohedge article seems to suggest that problems can arise with
10-year Treasury interest rates of less of than 3%. We may be facing a period
of declining acceptable interest rates.
See chart:
Let’s look at a few of the
issues involved:
[1] The standard reason for raising interest rates
seems to be concern about inflationary impacts occurring as a result of
rising food and energy prices. In practice, the impact of such an interest rate
change can be quite severe and quite delayed.
Figure
2 is an illustration from the Bureau of Labor Statistics website showing
one of today’s concerns: rising energy costs. Food prices are not yet rising.
Normally, however, if oil prices rise, the cost of producing food will also
rise. This happens because modern agricultural methods
and transportation to markets both require the use of petroleum products.
See Figure:
See also chart on Interest rates n
OIL prices in 2016
[2] Higher energy prices squeeze a person’s “spendable income.” Higher
interest rates have the same effect.
Economist
James Hamilton showed that ten out of eleven
recent recessions were associated with oil price shocks. We would argue
that if an economy is subject to higher interest rates in addition to higher
oil prices, the economy is doubly likely to go into recession. Figure 6
shows an illustration of the situation.
See chart:
[3] Reduced interest rates can be used to conceal the adverse impact of
rising energy prices.
This is another version of what
we saw in Figure 6. If interest rates can be reduced,
they can offset most of the bad impacts of higher energy prices. For example,
if oil prices are higher, it helps if auto loans and mortgages loans are lower
in cost.
See Chart:
[4] Falling interest rates have an almost magical impact on the economy.
Rising interest rates reverse these magical impacts, and replace them with very
negative impacts.
We saw in Figure 6 how falling
interest rates could more or less conceal a rise in energy prices. The following are a few of the additional magical things
that falling interest rates can do:
(a) Falling interest can raise
asset prices of many kinds, including homes, stock
prices, resale prices of bonds, and the price of land.
(b) Falling interest rates can
raise commodity prices, making it possible to extract more fossil fuels and
metals. Resources that previously did not look economic
to extract, suddenly become economic to extract. This change occurs because
with lower interest rates, more people can afford to purchase goods that use
oil, such as cars and motorcycles. This tends to raise demand for oil products,
and thus prices.
(c)
Because higher-priced energy extraction becomes feasible at lower interest
rates, more advanced technology, at higher prices, suddenly becomes feasible.
Jobs open up in research areas that would not previously have made sense at
lower energy prices.
(d) Falling interest rates can
make the balance sheets of companies holding stocks and bonds as assets look
better, because of their rising prices.
(e)
Rising asset prices “feed back” into spendable income.
People with homes that have risen in value can refinance, and use the proceeds
to fix up their home (add an additional room or an updated kitchen, for
example). Individual citizens and companies can sell shares of stock that have
risen in value and use those proceeds to augment other income.
If
interest rates rise rather than fall, the impacts can be expected to be
extremely recessionary. The stock market may crash. Homes are likely to
lose value because of a lack of buyers that can afford them. Energy resources
that seemed to be available can suddenly seem not to be feasible because of low
prices.
[5] The economy was able to reasonably tolerate the run-up in interest
rates in the 1950 – 1980 period because the economy was growing very
rapidly.
A
person can see the pattern of short-term interest rates in Figure 3, above.
Long-term (10-year) interest rates follow a somewhat similar, but smoother,
pattern (Figure 8).
See chart:
….
See more charts at
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POLITICS
Seudo democ y sist duopolico in US is obsolete; it’s full of frauds & corruption. Urge
cambiarlo
Though the
media often attempts to twist the gun rights debate into a web of complexity, gun rights is in
fact a rather simple issue - either you believe that people have an inherent
right to self defense, or you don’t. All other arguments are a
peripheral distraction...
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"Similar to how he
hijacked and exploited black people’s emotion regarding police use of force
incidents into the COP HATING Black Lives Matter movement."
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"US citizens would do well to refresh on the untold history of
their country to appreciate how they
are being manipulated. "
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"Think of it as the
chicken-or-the-egg question for the ages: Do very real threats to the United States inadvertently benefit the
military-industrial complex or does the national security state, by its very nature, conjure
up inflated threats to feed that defense machine? "
See graphic:
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/2018-02-20_17-54-59.jpg?itok=tmUAevlA
Think of it as the chicken-or-the-egg question for the ages:
Do
very real threats to the United States inadvertently benefit the
military-industrial complex or does the national security state, by its very
nature, conjure up inflated threats to feed that defense machine?
….
Continue reading at:
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MIDDLE
EAST & WORLD ISSUES
"...
the situation is still highly
combustible right now and a larger war could break out at any time due
to even the slightest miscalculation by the Syrian side, thus leaving the whole
world watching with bated breath to see what happens next."
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DEMOCRACY
NOW
US politics crisis: Trump
captured by Deep state to reproduce old cronyism without alter-plan
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GLOBAL
RESEARCH
Geopolitics & Econ-Pol
crisis that leads to more business-wars:
its profiteers US-NATO
La ruso-fobia es el termómetro del WW3: mide
avances del Penta y NATO en esa dirección
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URGENT:
RU must set a Moscow meeting with PMs of Syr, Turk, N-K & Iran. Issue avoid WW3
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INFORMATION
CLEARING HOUSE
Deep on the US political
crisis, their internal conflicts n chances of WW3
Washington Delivers New Ultimatum On Iran By Bill Van Auken
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U.S. Empire Still
Incoherent After All These Years By Nicolas J.S. Davies
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Meddling for Empire: The CIA Comes Clean By Binoy Kampmark
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Venezuela: Revenge of the Mad-Dog Empire By Ajamu Baraka
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COUNTER
PUNCH
Ajamu
Baraka Venezuela:
Revenge of the Mad-Dog Empire
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Kevin
Zeese - Margaret Flowers War
Preparations on Venezuela as Election Nears
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Judith
Deutsch Finkelstein
on Gaza: Who or What Has a Right to Exist?
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SPUTNIK
and RT SHOWS
Geopolitics & the nasty
business of US-NATO-Global-wars uncovered ..
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[[ PEACE vs. WW3 is main issue
now. Gun
Control: is a distraction set by evil-twin Parties: Dems & GOP. Guns are
neutral -like other instrument- is the person who uses the gun the ones who
kills. Person’s ideology, habits and attitudes come from the cultural context
they live in. If this context is loaded with violence is natural that a person
will act –soon or later- with violent too. If you teach your kid to love
video-games with wars. you are responsible if they later on hurt siblings and members
of your neighborhood too. Religion’
ideology and nationalist ideologies were in history the most violent
institutions involved in criminal wars. You either are instructed to kill in
the name of God (god bless your crimes) o or kill to defend the “Nation”. In both cases they lie to you. With your
killings you do not serve neither God nor you Nation, you serve the king’
royalty, the emperor’ family, the furer’ party members and the elected President’ family paid by Big Corp that manufacture weapons and wars. Does
the killing in Nagasaki & Hiroshima serves you? NOT.. they ashame you. The
same with the wars in Iraq, Lybia, Syria, Afghanistan n others . A lesson come
from all wars: criminal violence in any society comes from top-to bottom. Schools
teach kids those ideologies (both religion n nationalism) to later enroll them
into violent wars. This is the ideological context that create the killers in
schools. Check the ideology of the recent killer and you will find traces of Trumps ideology and also traces of the ultra-rightist
neo-nazi ideology. If you suppress those ideologies you will be able to
suppress the killers. HOW TO? We will be back on this issue.
Regarding
gun control: You are wasting your time requesting gun control in public
meetings. You control your guns inside your family. Underage persons can’t bring them to public places. Muchs less
to schools, not even teachers should do that. If so, the boses of the family or
any Institution are penalized severely, even with jail if reincidents. You
better organize meetings against WW3, and against the manufacture of nuke-missiles.
If happens WW3 you will be killed and your entire Nation too. You better start
demanding the dismantle of nuclear weapons in Central nations, not in the Periphery.
No-body is stupid to give up their weapons to NATO nations. They used in WW2
and they can do it again. State Nations have the right to defend themselves against
any Empire Aggression. ]]
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RT SHOWS
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NOTICIAS
IN SPANISH
Latino America looking for
alternatives to neoliberalism to break with Empire:
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Y cuantas lechugas te comiste en la
otra ciudad, me preguntó mi cimarrona antes de ir a la camita. Se refería a la ciudad donde yo iba a trabajar y de
donde regresaba cada 15 días-. Solo 4 y en 4 años, le respondí. Pues ahí no hay
nada que perdonar, dijo ella. Yo solo me
comí un cuerpo, agrego. Solo uno? Pregunte sorprendido. Me cogió amorosamente
de la mano, me llevo a la ventana y me dijo ESE, señalándome la casa del
cuerpo de bomberos. Pero todo ocurrió en 4 noches, dijo ella. No hubo
romance alguno como en los tuyos, los míos fueron simples acostones Ahora ya no
son los mismos ni me interesan. Solo me interesas tú, me dijo con un beso bien
suavecito. Entonces no hay nada que perdonar, le dije. No, absolutamente nada
que perdonar. Si los veo los invito a cenar aquí para que les agradezcas. De
que?, le pregunte. Fueron ellos los que te allanaron los dos caminos al cielo..No?.
Bueno, bueno..eso si es cierto y ahora a la camita, le dije, mientras le
agarraba suavemente el trasero. No, No,-me dijo- 1ro tienes que darte un buen
baño porque estas apestando a polvo ajeno. Ah, y yo me olvidé de contártelo.
Como te diste cuenta? Le pregunte. Las mujeres tenemos mucho mejor olfato que las
gatas en celo, me dijo. Me perdonas?, le pregunte. Por supuesto, me dijo. Ahora metete a la tina y yo te
espero con la camita bien calientita. Creo que me dormí en la tina.. cuando fui
hacia ella.. ya estaba soñando dormida y hablando consigo misma … mencionaba
los nombres de 10 sujetos que los indicaba con sus dedos. Quise despertarla,
pero me abstuve. Ella misma se interrumpió su sueño cuando se le cayó un
pedo .. -ya no se los puede tirar sonoros- .. pero si que son recontra
hediondos que ni ella misma los resiste. Se despertó y me pregunto: Listo para
subir al cielo?. Si le dije .. abrí una
ventana, prendí el ventilador y los dos gozamos un buen viaje al cielo. De esos
viajes que solo los viejos que pasan de los 60 se pueden dar: con doble y hasta
triple agüita de la quebrada. Sin duda: God bless their love y la unidad
dialéctica de esos supuestos ‘contrarios’.
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… continua el reporte del día
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-Por eso me iré a la Amazonia del sur
Latino si estalla el WW3
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Keiser
Report La gran
tradición de la charlatanería en EE.UU.
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PRESS
TV
Global situation described by
Iranian observers..
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