Stop At Nothing

Carlyle said that every man's death diminished him.

And we certainly decry the loss of life. That of the UK MP recently is no exception. But politics is politics and it's always been down and dirty. So call us sinister or whatever you want. But it remains to be seen and would hardly surprise from what we now know what the threatened will do to keep their power. In their world, one life or reputation is a small price to sacrifice. A young, attractive woman on the rise politically, a mother of two young children. That's the stuff of Hollywood dramas. The only real difference in this power struggle is real people get hurt, like those at Orlando, San Bernardino and now the UK. It's been done before and it will be done again.
T
Much like the  FBI here in the States is speculated as doing. Recruiting homeless people, often with a mental medical history. Befriending them, getting into their heads and giving them funds to buy guns only to arrest them as they're leaving the gun shop and announcing the capture of another would be terrorist. It's called good pub. It helps settle ruffled feathers.

Too bizarre you claim to be believable? Then you don't know how often the police plant incriminating evidence in the automobiles they pull over and search. It's been done before and it will be done again. Even the king of greens for the last two decades, Ralph Nader, a nerd by all accounts, was smart enough to know that the smiling, sexy tall blonde with all the exposed cleavage approaching him in the market had other interests than just bedding  him down.

Who is going to defend or believe the accused? The fear of being a victim of a terrorist attack is so globally widespread now everyone is a suspect. The stay crowd markets the EU as a symbol of unity and strength. Buried there in is an implied guarantee of security and safety. But trusting your future and your safety to a group of distant, cold, insensitive Brussels bureaucrats is akin to leaving a four-year old unattended at a backyard swimming pool with no fence around it, no gate and no lock.

You ought never be surprised when the people you know who will stop at nothing stop at nothing.

Good Luck

In the English language there is still as far as we know the comparative case as in dumb, dumber and dumbest. If you really want to know how pathetically out of touch with reality in their warped Keynesian madness central bankers are, here's a recent quote from European Central Bank President Mario "Whatever It Takes" Draghi.

ECB President Mario Draghi said that negative rates are "not the problem, but a symptom of an underlying problem" caused by a "global excess of savings." If central banks did not do this, investing would be unattractive," added Draghi.



The second part of the quote tells you everything about their narrow thinking and what their real focus is. Rescuing the economy, putting people back to work is all about making investing attractive. These are some sick bureaucrats that we allow to control our lives without any public input. After nearly a decade of pitiful economic growth the best they can come up with is blaming already tapped out consumers for trying to pay down their debt and put some funds away after a decade of global government binging at the public trough.

It also tells you what these elitists think of you. You're just another faceless chunk of human protoplasm squirming around out there struggling to survive in an environment that you had no part in creating. It is not enough that they have debased your economy and your future, now they want to debase your character.

If you live in the UK and you have a vote next week this is what your Prime Minster and the stay people want you to vote to perpetuate. Good luck.

.businessinsider.com/the-us-economy-about-to-hit-a-brick-wall-2016-6?

Overnight

The Nikkei jumped 1.6% in early trading Friday rebounding from the day before losses as the Bank of Japan continued to hold fast on its no new stimulus packages. Hitting 15, 677. 78 it was a big day coming Thursday's 3.1% losses in the index. The index is set to have its largest weekly drop, 5.6%, in 16 weeks.

 Part of the upswing in Asian stock some say owed to the U.S. market breaking its five-day losing streak. Besides the Nikkei, the ASX 200 was up 0.2%, the Kospi edged 0.52% higher and the Hang Send posted a 1.0% gain. In China the two composites, Shanghai, 0.81%, and the Shenzhen, 1.39%, were both higher. Brexit remains where much of the attention is going and the tragic news today that a UK Brexit stay PM died after being shot and stabbed by what was announced by the media as a Brexit supporter will have to play out before the vote next week. Though the man was reported to be a former psych patient, this is not what anyone wanted or needed irrespective how strong people feel about their positions. Two young children are now without a mother.

In currencies the dollar/yen traded as low as 103.58 and the yen appreciated against the euro at euro/yen 117.75, up from 115.46 the day earlier. Currency moves seem to more in focus among investors than before, particularly in Asia as they look to the U.S. and any signs of a real recovery there. 

Looking For Some Inflation

Donald Trump continues to say all the right things.

Despite what MSM lackeys and a few political hacks from both parties are saying, Trump continues to nail it. Yesterday, for example, he said "....no more State dinners. We should be eating hamburgers." They should serve drive-in fast food at those State dinners. It's good enough for the poor and the undeserved of this country. It's what they have to subsist on everyday. It ought to be good enough for a bunch of flatulent-laden, double-chinned dignitaries, freeloading on the taxpayer dollar, once in their lives.

Here are some more things Trump got correct. He said that the President seems to be madder at him (Trump) than he is at the Orlando shooter. That little gem resonates with a whole lot of Americans, gay or otherwise.

And then there's Trump's recent beauty to his fellow Republicans, "Stop Talking!" Some took potshots at him over his response about the tragic Orlando affair. One such platitude-filled Republican is Tennessee Senator Bob Coker. Now here's an interesting fellow. He came to the Senate a multi-millionaire real estate investor. A real smart guy, you'd think, since real estate involves a bunch of numbers. And no doubt some complicated tax filings every year.

Yet for three years after being elected in a row he apparently had difficulty filing his income taxes correctly to the tune of millions of unreported dollars. This is not hearsay; it's a matter of public record even the neocons at the Wall Street Journal editorial staff wrote about. More recently, again a matter of public record, there's been some questions about possibly trading on insider information back in his home state. It was only after some of this earlier came to light that the good Senator was obliged to correct his seemingly large tax filing oversight.

But there was still a discrepancy between what he thought that he owed and what the IRS thought that he owed. If that sounds familiar the only difference is elected officials get a pass on late fee penalties and interest charges. You and I don't.

We are not implying anything here. People can infer, as they will, what they want. There's most likely enough dirt to go around. The MSM with these stories, holding up high ranking Republicans as if they are some sort of paragon  of measurement, is trying to drive a wedge between Trump and his supporters. It hasn't worked before and it's highly unlikely to work come this November.

Right or wrong, like it or lump it--and that's where the real rub is--he apparently is saying things people want to hear. We heard about a fellow, poor guy, who apparently set some sort of medical record. He was vomiting everyday for a year. Yep, 365 days straight. All the medical experts were stumped until one of them decided to finally take a decent history. Most of you might vaguely recall what that is, when the physician asks questions, takes notes, listens and doesn't attempt to put words or narratives in your mouth for longer than 20 seconds.

That was nearly 30 injections and almost 100 expensive prescriptions later. It's turns out the fellow was feeling so guilty for throwing out a plastic bottle while driving home late one night several years ago from an Al Gore speech, as penance he was forcing himself to read something about climate change every morning. But that's not the saddest part. He recently received his new Obamacare notice. His annual premium is up 1,000 percent.

We've heard, but again can't confirm, he's thinking about making a copy of the bill and sending it to Fed Chair Janet Yellen. Rumor has it she apparently is looking for some inflation.

Politics Is All

 
Hoaxes are like theories. there are two kinds--those that have been disproved and those waiting to be disproved. In some cases the waiting can get rather long in the truth.

There's no shortage of hoaxes making the rounds today. climate change, the lone wolf theory. One of the most prominent and longer standing ones is the Federal Reserve (aka central bankers) know what they're doing. Buried within that is a subset one, that the Fed doesn't have a political agenda. It does.

In the eyes of many, Americans now face two evils running for the White House. Another recently was forced out. One represents the unknown, the uncertainty that change brings. The other is a known quantity yet no less disturbing, more of the same with the possibility, like a huge out-of-control blob, expanding evil even further.

The Yellen-led Fed disdains uncertainty. Volatility is Fed speak for the same. Proof positive is its now exposed, well-documented fence straddling posture. Like her predecessor both are card carrying members. Neither ever met a decision that didn't deserve a good straddle. It's right up there on page two of the How To Be A Good Bureaucrat For Dummies manual.

There's a principle that the closer you observe something the more it changes. Another paradox. In  his new book, The Great Invention, Ehsan Masood, seems to argue, and this is our interpretation, the Fed tries by focusing on GDP growth, to micromanage what can't be micromanaged. Controlling what you measure then often distorts your outcome.

One of the Darth Vaders is a well-known business person. To many that's in itself scary enough. The other is a well known cattle trader. The path of least resistance for the Fed is the cattle trader. It's the easiest fence to straddle. So don't expect any interest rate hikes until after Inauguration Day, if even then. Politics is all and all is politics.

Overnight

Well, the Fed spoke Wednesday, dialing back talk about raising interest rates, as one commentator reported, just how quickly they will be hiking rates in the future. The new normal although it's hardly new and it isn't very normal is the Yellen-led Fed is searching for some inflation as it appears inflation of the only thing that's going to get this Fed off the dime.

Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan made few friends among investors, something it now is in dire need of, after sitting tight on any new monetary stimulus. With the U.S. dollar softening on the Yellen news and the yen pushing higher ever so slightly against the dollar, it was not a recipe to make make investors in Japan jump for joy. Couple that with the upcoming Brexit vote in the UK and you have a wait-and-see play going on.

Asian shares broadly turned south after digesting the news with the Nikkei down -3%, the Hang Send for over -2%, the Korean Kospi faded -1.07% , the Shanghai Composite edged lower- 0.21%. the Australian ASX 200 was among the few bucking the down draft by edging slightly higher 0.06%.

For Japan's Nikkei it hit a four-month low overnight taking out its April low and at one point trading at 15,436.61. The yen helped itself to trade near a 22-month high, Reuters reported. Again, as previously noted, the strong yen won't make the export sector happy.

Here in the U.S. Thursday brings the consumer price index, expected at 8:30 a.m. EDT  in what some are labeling is "the first fresh inflation report after the Fed forecasts Wednesday revealed that one rate hike is probably more likely than two this year. Fed forecasts also show at least four fewer hikes than previously forecast through 2018."

Hallelujah!

This story ran today on Bloomberg. Anyone surprised?  Sure, if Brexit passes, they'll be some volatility. Life is full of volatility. That's why we'll be buyers--opportunity to be apart of something much better. The word deceit is conjured by one Brexit-stay wag. Question: Who would know more about deceits than the already, long entrenched?

He goes on to say that he is more "worried now, much more worried than I was was in 2008." You'd be worried too if you were about to lose lucrative control of peoples' lives that you and your kind have been doing all in your power to decimate for years.

The campaigns for and against keeping the U.K. in the European Union laid out opposing visions of life outside the bloc as dueling ahead of next week’s referendum enters its final stretch.
Brexit Watch: The pound, the polls, and the probability of Brexit, all in one place
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne painted an unremittingly bleak picture of the country’s finances after a vote to leave, detailing an emergency slate of spending cuts and tax hikes he said would be required. Appearing at a rail depot east of London on Wednesday alongside his Labour Party predecessor, Alistair Darling, Osborne warned that a 30-billion-pound ($43 billion) “black hole” would open in public finances due to reduced trade and investment.
Claims of benefits from Brexit are “fantasy economics. Worse than that, it’s a deceit,” said Darling, who served as chancellor during the financial crisis. “I’m more worried now, much more worried than I was in 2008,” he said.
In a sign of discord within the ruling Conservative party, 57 of it 330 lawmakers declared their opposition to Osborne’s proposed emergency budget, writing in a letter that his position would be “untenable” if he tried to implement it. Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn said he wouldn’t back a fresh round of fiscal austerity either.
Hours earlier, the increasingly confident “Leave” campaign unveiled its own legislative agenda, pledging laws to restrict free movement of people and reduce the influence of EU judges with the goal of an ultimate departure by 2019. With a “framework for taking back control” comprising six bills, its proposals resemble an alternative government platform, again highlighting the divisions among Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives. Most Tories -- and bookmakers -- expect him to step down within a year if “Leave” is victorious.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-15/u-k-campaigns-lay-out-post-brexit-visions-in-push-for-dominance.

In the short run, uncertainty is certain. In the long run the UK and its currency will be stronger and better. In fact, it will become even more of a safe haven, like the old Swiss gold-backed franc, against volatility and EU bureaucratic nonsense.

So don't let the scaremongers with deep vested interests in keeping you and your future in their greedy, grimy little clutches frighten you. Think of MLK's famous words: "Free at last, free at last."

Can someone now please shout out a Hallelujah!

Brexit: It's Your Vote And Your Life

If UK voters are looking of another reason to for leaving the EU, here it is. We have no connection with Google or any other Internet news provider. We challenge anyone to prove otherwise.

In fact, Google recently censored us for 16 days for writing material like what we've been writing here since we first began. We defy them, Google, to deny what we just wrote. The censor came without reason. This is about the liberty of the Internet., keeping it out of the hands of indifferent, distant bureaucrats, and at large you're own personal liberty.

 We’ve written plenty of times about ridiculous European plans to create a so-called “snippet tax” which is more officially referred to as “ancillary rights” (and is really just about creating a tax on Google).

The basic concept is that some old school newspapers are so lazy and have so failed to adapt to the internet — and so want to blame Google for their own failures — that they want to tax any aggregator (e.g., Google) that links to their works with a snippet, that doesn’t pay for the privilege of sending those publishers traffic. As you may remember, Germany has been pushing for such a thing for many, many years, and Austria has been exploring it as well. But perhaps the most attention grabbing move was the one in Spain, which not only included a snippet tax, but made it mandatory. That is, even if you wanted Google News to link to you for free, you couldn’t get that. In response, Google took the nuclear option and shut down Google News in Spain. A study showed that this law has actually done much to harm Spanish publishers, but the EU pushes on, ridiculously.

As discussed a year ago, some in the EU Commission are all for creating an EU-wide snippet tax, and as ridiculous and counterproductive as that is, the Commission is about to make a decision on it, and the public consultation on the issue is about to close (it ends tomorrow). Thankfully, many, many different groups have set up nice and easy systems to understand and respond to the consultation — which you should do. Here are just a few options:

• The EU Commission’s own consultation platform (this one is messy, buggy, and annoying, but it’s the official one).
• The site FixCopyright.eu has a well done “answering guide” that helps you through the consultation and explains the details behind many of the questions in the consultation.
• SaveTheLink.org from OpenMedia has a simple signup form that just adds your name to a letter.
• The group Allied for Startups has another good sign on letter Stop the link tax

zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-15/eu-wants-impose-tax-sharing-links-internet

Overnight

We always enjoy it when we read an opening paragraph like this one from Reuters:

Japanese stocks rose in choppy trade on Wednesday, snapping a four-day losing streak thanks to short-covering, while coming central bank meetings and worries that Britain might vote to leave the European Union kept investors on edge.

Short-covering is the polar stock market opposite of profit taking in the media as the the market was down today owing to profit taking. What that really means is they don't have a clue why the market did what it did, since there is short-covering and profiting-taking every day the market is open. So more of the same is most likely more accurate in the face of little news.

With that said, the Nikkei edge up some, 0.38%, to 15,919 after opening down, the Shanghai Composite was up 1.40%, the Hang Send Index 0.27% while the Korean and Australian markets moved down with the Kospi off -0.16% and the ASA 200 dropped -1.08%

China apparently paid a price for its earlier attempts this year to control capital flight out of the country as, the WSJ reported: MSCI said it would admit Pakistani stocks to its Emerging Markets Index for the first time while excluding Chinese A shares, citing the inability of investors to get their money in and out of the country freely as a key reason. But again much seems to be riding on Wednesday's Fed meeting and the same for the upcoming meetings at the BOJ as investors remain cautious over these and the scheduled Brexit vote in the UK.

Not New

 reuters.com/article/us-funds-doubleline-gundlach-


This isn't new. What's new is more and more coming right out and saying it. MSM lackeys and sycophants aside, this is a healthy sign. Social, financial or whatever, facts are stubborn things and people are finally getting less and less cowered by PC irrespective.

You can't criticize unless you're civil and have a better plan. And other such nonsense. The market is way over-valued, the Fed has created numerous bubbles and people are finally getting it: the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream. That clearly omits bureacrats, politicians, elists, economists, climate alarmists and central bankers.

We will be buyers on any significant downturn owing to Brexit. Not that the EU will survive because it shouldn't. There are only two boondoggles in this century that will prove to be greater farces than the EU. One of them is gluten, the other climate change. People are slowly catch
ing on to the gluten farce and the EU charade. Climate change won't be far behind.

You know the time is growing near when their backers and fellow zealots seek to make it a criminal and civil offense to question their orthodoxy or speak out against them. They're worried. Speak out. These nearsighted, arrogant central bankers hold your financial future in their scope of incompetence. If you screw up your future that's one thing. Own it and move on. If they do it's another, one you should be ashamed of allowing to happen.

If you have a voice, use it. A vote, exercise it. The only thing these people understand is pressure. And lots of it. If that sounds a bit bellicose, so be it. They'll be a hell of a lot less apologetic after their incompetence finishes screwing up the next generation of your life.

Jeffrey Gundlach, the chief executive of DoubleLine Capital, said on Tuesday investors are dropping risky assets and turning to safer securities including Treasuries and gold because they are losing faith in central banks.

The man known on Wall Street as the 'Bond King' is one of the first heavyweight investors to publicly raise red flags about the credibility of major central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, as countries struggle to manage economic growth.
Last year, Gundlach correctly predicted that oil prices would plunge, junk bonds would live up to their name and China's slowing economy would pressure emerging markets. In 2014, he forecast U.S. Treasury yields would fall, not rise as many others had expected.

"Central banks are losing control and they don't know what to do ... just like the Republican establishment and Donald Trump," Gundlach told Reuters in a telephone interview, referring to the Republic Party's unpredictable presumptive nominee for U.S. President.
Safe-haven German Bund yields fell below zero on Tuesday for the first time and global equity markets slid for a fourth day in a row on intensifying worries about a potential British exit from the European Union next week.

Gundlach's remarks come the day before U.S. Federal Reserve officials are widely expected to leave short-term interest rates unchanged following a dismal May jobs report.
"The Fed is confused and their confusion spills into investor psychology," said Gundlach, who oversees more than $100 billion at Los Angeles-based DoubleLine.
"The Fed changes its tone so frequently, it seems every other week the message is different. They’ve turned into the 'Zombie Fed.' They say the meeting this week is 'live,' but investors all know it isn't at all."

Gundlach said it is a "dangerous price appreciation game" to purchase German Bunds at current levels and that gold and gold miners are still an attractive place to put money to work.
On a webcast for investors later on Tuesday he said negative interest rates implemented by some major central banks, notably in Japan, were backfiring. "Negative interest rates don't do what they're theoretically supposed to do," he said, noting the appreciation in the Japanese yen.
He added that negative interest rates "aren't leading to higher economic growth." He said world gross domestic product could be averaging around just 1 percent against the backdrop of aggressive global monetary policies.

Gundlach also noted the dramatic "drawdowns" from the highs in several stock markets. Germany is down 22 percent, Japan is down 23 percent, China is down 45 percent, the United Kingdom market is down 15 percent and France is down 20 percent.
"Negative rates do not prop up stock markets," Gundl
ach said on the webcast

Gundlach's prescient investment calls have accelerated DoubleLine's rise and earned him a reputation as a savvy investor. DoubleLine's flagship DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund (DBLTX.O), which invests mainly in mortgage-backed securities, has assets of $60.3 billion, making it one of the world's largest bond mutual funds.