Taps, Please!

Over the past few years we have written numerous times about just how bankrupt these two political parties are. It's The Big Heist. They both have taken voters for granted for years. It makes for a fairly decent parlor game, however.

But just about the time we're about to extend the winning award to the Republicans, we get reminded of all the thugs and slugs crawling around the Democrat party. One's the party of privilege, the other of victimhood. Added together they spell warmed-up leftovers. Boring, snoring losers all. If the masses who think they're pissed now over losing this election, if and when they ever wake up they'll be really pissed off about who really played them for fools.

Forget Dolly. It's going to be hello Democrats. Those stodgy old smug Republicans were never that smart, that sinister or that sensitive. When you're drowning in self-love and admiration your eye sight goes to shit. That fecal-strewn path takes in the editorial boards of the Wall Street Journal and the National Review Neocons. The other brown-stained brick road ends at the doorstep of MSM. Only two groups have lower reputations today than MSM--child molesters and child molesters.

As currently constructed and run these two parties are dead. Someone just needs to play Taps.
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For all practical purposes, both traditional parties have blown themselves up. The Democratic Party morphed from the party of thinking people to the party of the thought police, and for that alone they deserve to be flushed down the soil pipe of history where the feckless Whigs went before them. The Republicans have floundered in their own Special Olympics of the Mind for decades, too, so it’s understandable that they have fallen hostage to such a rank outsider as Trump, so cavalier with the party’s dumb-ass shibboleths. It remains to be seen whether the party becomes a vengeful, hybrid monster with an orange head, or a bridge back to reality. I give the latter outcome a low percentage chance.

Mommy is all about feelings and Daddy’s role is action and that is another reason that Hillary lost and Trump won. We’ve heard enough about people’s feelings and it just doesn’t matter anymore. You’re offended? Suck an egg. Someone appropriated your culture? Go shit in your sombrero. What matters is how we’re going to contend with the winding down of Modernity — the techno-industrial orgy that is losing its resource and money mojo. The politics of sacred victimhood has got to yield to the politics of staying alive.

President-elect Trump may not know it yet, but events are now in charge, not personalities, not even his super-sized persona.Global trade and economic activity have been winding down all year and it’s finally affecting financial markets kept aloft on borrowed money, sending a strong signal through bonds that the borrowed money may never be paid down, and that additional borrowing will cost a whole lot more — so much more that it will bankrupt the nations that issue it.

kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/boo-hoo 

The Faking Continues

What the fake is going on?

Before the results rolled in election eve, one political  party was setup to hold an orgasm. That orgasm turned out to be fake.

The only fake in the alleged fake news that twisted the election was Hillary. She kept faking she was an honest person until the fake news outfit CNN decided to feed her questions in the debates via another fake, a Clinton insider who was faking it that she was not herself a faker.

Now the fake Facebook is going to start investigating the real fakers, the SNL crowd. They just did a fake show about the fake MSM. And one fake news story just broke that CNN fake anchor Wolf Bliter's real name is Fake Blitzer and, even more important, the champagne he was seen on television drinking celebrating the fake stand-in for Hillary after her fake nomination was fake.

Someone just told us Bob Schiffer called the whole thing a disgraceful fake. It turns out the Schiffer at those debates was allegedly fake. That was allegedly a department store manikin owned by a fake Las Vegas ventriloquist. But the really big news is all the Weiner tubes were fake, including the kid in one of them. Weiner's estranged wife was reported after the election shedding fake tears. But the one that really got us is the one that just came to light: that cigar Bill Clinton passed to Arafat was fake, or so goes the fake news report. Talk about cheap bastards. Some people are just fakes and, oh yea, that estranged wife of Weiner, she's supposedly a fake spy for Saudi Arabia.

And damn those fake Russians faking all those faking hacking jobs. Someone noted--now this one is probably really fake--those Russian hackers hacked into purple Bill's account to see if all those dickings some fake claimed were fake or not while fake Hillary was faking being out of town. Now another fake story making the rounds is a fake Scandinavian country just cut back their fake donations to the fake Clinton Foundation owing to decreased fake influence since Hillary faked her win in the recent fake election some fake Broadway performers find the results appalling.

Those fake WikiLeaks and that fake FBI director brought all this fake stuff on. On Election Day we personally saw a lot of fake voters lining up to fake it. One even strolled over to another fake voter, handed him a stack of fake ballots and was overheard to say: "The hell with it. They only paid me to vote six times and this last one was my 17th fake vote for fake Hillary. Fake it! I'm goin' home!"

We heard later the guy's real job was being a fake stand-in in fake Hollywood. We didn't bother to check it out because it is probably fake, but we heard he also worked as a letter writer for Jeffery Katzenberg. That sounds to us like a real fake. But maybe this isn't. George Stephanopoulos and his wife allegedly faked their escape to Canada. Somebody reported they saw a fake Mark Cuban and Cher on the same Iranian airlines. Cuban supposedly was wearing a fake Maverick shirt turned inside out and a baseball cap with the initials BO. He was lip sinking out loud some fake questions he had for the Ayatollah. We can't say for sure, but someone said they were just warmed over fake ones he was going to ask Trump.

A few minutes later a fake hearse pulled up and a couple of fake attendants wearing fake blue T-shirts saying "Together We Fake Things" hurriedly carried two coffins to the rear of the poling place. Now we didn't get a look inside those coffins, but one bystander who claimed he did was going around telling anyone who would listen one of them looked like a faked John Podesta and the other like a fake Tony, John's fake DC lobbyist brother.That didn't bother us too much until a big blue election bus pulled up and stopped to drop some fake human feces into a public drain that runs to the fake Pacific Ocean. At that point some fake climate change people came out and started boarding the bus, singing not my feces.

All this faking is getting out of hand, governments faking job and other numbers and now you got one of the original fakers from Facebook coming after the real fakers. Sooner or later a lot of people are going to have to be told to go fake themselves.

In the meantime we wish everyone a happy faked Thanksgiving.

Overnight

An earthquake apparently couldn't keep the Nikkei 225 from pushing higher after selling off initially helping other Asian shares up with the ASX 200 gaining 1.2% bringing the index to a one month high. Oil helped out on expectations OPEC will pull off a cut in production.

In other markets, the Kospi gained 0.8%; the Hang Send moved up 1.3%;and the Shanghai Composite added 0.2%. After. 6.9 earthquake off the eastern coast of Japan disrupted the market earlier, but stocks came back.

Reuters reported:
Asian stocks struck one-week highs with investors undeterred by a powerful earthquake in Japan on Tuesday, but after Wall Street closed at a record peak they were also wary of chasing prices higher until President-elect Donald Trump picks his economic team.

Crude oil extended gains in Asian trading with U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) up 1 percent in early deals as the dollar pulled back.
Prices surged 4 percent to a three-week high on Monday, after comments from Russian President Vladimir Putin raised hopes that producer countries will reach a deal to limit output at a meeting next week.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 1.2 percent, pulled up by a 1.3 percent rally in Australian shares. Korean shares and Hong Kong stocks also rose 1 percent each.
"Most of the flow into stocks seems to be retail-oriented with institutional investors preferring to sit out the rally unless they get a clearer picture on Trump's economic team," said Andrew Sullivan, managing director, sales trading at Haitong International Securities Group in Hong Kong.
Trump met some officials and outlined plans for his first day in office on Monday, including withdrawing from a Asia-Pacific free trade accord and investigating abuses of work visa programs.


The dollar eased against major currency pairs with the dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, trading at 100.8 in what was a consolidation move since it had gained more than 5% afterTrump's election. A weak dollar usually means stronger gold prices and that's exactly what occurred overnight with spot gold up 0.3% at $1217.70 an ounce. Gold has been on a downward direction, falling 10% since the election.

Popularity On The Rise

Apparently, there was more--and still is--more angst out there than the polls and the red votes showed. Not the kind many expected.

We said before the election many would vote their consciences once safely inside those voting booths. PC is one of the patented ways used to shut people who disagree with them up. What we will never know is how many who said publicly they were blue voters but voted red once inside those booths.

What a difference a week makes. The day before the election, Economist/YouGov polls showed 39% Favorable and 60% unfavorable towards Donald Trump (as it was oh-so-obvious that Hillary was about to break that glass ceiling). 9 days later, The Hill reports, Donald Trump's popularity has surged.
Are Americans no longer 'shy' of admitting their support for Trump?

Chart: RealClearPolitics (adjusted)
According to a poll released Monday by Politico and Morning Consult., which confirms the latest post-election poll from Reuters/Ipsos...

Forty-six percent of those polled hold a very or somewhat favorable view of Trump, while 34 percent hold a very unfavorable view of him. Twelve percent hold a somewhat unfavorable view of the president-elect.

Deeply Divided

This poll shows how either out of it or in a state of denial Grand Old Party members are.

The poll was conducted on Nov. 9-13, one day after the November 8 election and after a contentious presidential campaign involving the two of the least popular candidates in postwar U.S. history. It found that all major subgroups of Americans share the view that the nation is divided, though Republicans (68%) are less likely to believe this than independents (78%) and Democrats (83%). That is consistent with the findings in the past two polls, conducted after the 2004 and 2012 presidential elections, in which the winning party's supporters were less likely to perceive the nation as divided.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-21/america-has-never-been-more-divided-gallup

The United States is on the brink of a civil war. We are not advocating anything nor are we the only ones who have pointed this out. So don't come around accusing us of anything. It will usually be something seemingly insignificant that triggers it, like in the markets. But it's there, just as the recent election disgruntlement was always there for anyone who cared to look.This is why MSM and all the pundits even including those about Brexit missed it. Even those usually reliable bookies missed it, too.

Crumb tossing will no longer do it so the paper covering of all these many years can continue. The debt level is one. Elected officials on both sides of the aisle continually lining their pockets is another. The stone cold smug indifference of the elites toward the masses--brown, yellow, black and white. Too many people, especially the so-called pundits, mistake how many of these folks get it. Political correctness with its zero tolerance will prove what it's already become, one of this nation's and the globe's biggest nightmares.

The high end Silicon Valley crowd are hardly the only ones who want to leave this country as it's currently glued together.They just think they are.That's an old idea and these nerds are just tech heads come lately to the game room. Term limits are a must. That will give these elected political thieves less time to slop at the public paid for trough. An end must be put to the Pelosies and McConnells; and an end to the Schumers and McCains.

Young people hardly have the sole market for being brain dead to themselves. In some eyes the young have two valid excuses: inexperience and drugs.

 Half of Europe is falling over itself to complain about America no longer being the "indispensable nation," no longer willing to pick up the tab for often sticking its bulling nose where it doesn't belong--in other sovereign nation's business. That's the height of disrespect.The latest  example was Brexit. The central bank deliberately and premeditatively opted to bail out its rich Wall Street brethren and let the COLA gang twist in the wind. In case you were too dense to look: There are lots of yellow, brown, black and whites in that group.That's a huge crime that should never go unpunished. It's also prima facia evidence the central bank has outlived its corrupt-from-the-beginning usefulness.

The arrogance of gays who think anyone really gives a big shit who they get butt-screwed by is another dividing point. If an employer wants to hire an incompetent slug who will destroy his or her business instead of a woman or a gay who will create more business than that business owner ever dreamed of, that should be his or her right to be stupid and to fail. Life is as much about failure as it is about success, a point PC wants to outlaw with its phony equal outcomes BS. It's also why if everyone gets--not earned--a trophy nobody ever learns the art of losing graciously.

Yea, this nation is deeply divided. If you want pry open that can of civil war peas, fine. Somebody's got to lose and somebody's going to win. In the interim, however, there's going to be a whole lot of the industrial-military complex and their elite friend's favorite BS term--collateral damage. The dead won't know the difference.

Classic Elitism

This is what avowed socialists and card carrying PC members do. This from a guy with less than a four percent approval rate of the citizens of his country currently embroiled in an election to dump him and his party. They threaten.

For those who suspect the EU is just big bureaucratic boondoggle to threaten and abolish your freedom of choice here's proof positive. This is classic elitism on public display.

"This Paris agreement... is irreversible, no one can get out of it," said Hollande during a speech in the southwest of France.

"And even if he could be tempted, there will be forces, amongst them American democracy, who will ensure that it is respected."

The Paris accord went into effect on November 4 after surpassing the necessary twin targets of 55 countries and countries producing 55 percent of greenhouse gases ratifying the agreement that was adopted at the UN climate conference in December 2015.

What makes this hilarious is you have a socialist talking about democracy, using threatening language. He's not talking about American democracy. He's talking about American fascism, the kind leaving the White House in less than 60 days.

telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/19/us-climate-commitment-irreversible-francois-hollande-warns-donal/

Overnight

Play defense. That seems to be the theme overnight in Asia.

The dollar and bond yields are up as bond prices suffered and stocks joined the party triggered by the Trump election, but some saying the party's gotten ahead of itself and bond yields are due to go down again. Whether that's just wishful thinking or reality remains to be seen. Bank of America announced it's looking for further upside through the holidays in what they are calling a Santa Clause rally.

Reuters is reporting:
Asian shares were on the defensive on Monday, undermined by fears that the strength in the U.S. dollar and rising U.S. bond yields since Donald Trump's election to president could accelerate fund outflows from emerging markets.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS dipped 0.1 percent, staying near four-month lows. Japan's Nikkei .N225 rose 0.3 percent as the yen continued to slip against the dollar.

Trump's unexpected election victory has led to a major repricing of assets, with investors rushing to buy U.S. stocks and the dollar, while dumping bonds and emerging market assets.
Carrying out even some of his plans for deregulation and tax cuts would undermine assumptions investors had long held - that the U.S. economy would grow modestly and inflation would remain tame in the foreseeable future.

Trump's protectionism could hurt many of U.S. trade partners, including emerging markets which could see decline in exports to the U.S..To be sure, investors have little idea to what extent Trump can implement his proposals, including slapping tariffs on major trading partners such as China and Mexico and heavy tax cuts that would widen the U.S. fiscal deficit.

Some investors think the market will have reality check as soon as differences between the new administration and Congress appear over some of Trump's policies.
"Next week, we have events that would make investors more sober, such as OPEC meeting and Italian referendum. By then this Trump-inspired market may come to an end for now," said Norihiro Fujito, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities
The Nikkei is up o.49% trading at 18,055.23; the Kospi down 0.07%; the ASX 200 also off slightly, 0.01%; the Hang Send edged higher o.59%. The dollar continued its rally hitting 101/3 against a basket of six other currencies which the euro makes up a good part. the dollar/euro continues to near parity,trading ar 1.06.11 overnight changed from levels of 1.1134 just 20 days ago. The yen softened again,the eighth straight day with the buck at 110.66.

Crude oil saw some upward light at the end of the energy tunnel with WTI up 0.83% at $46.07 a barrel and Brent tacking on 0.9% at $47.28, a 5% upswing for both in the last week. Some are saying gold is oversold in here. It traded at $1,207.40.

Pundits Wring Their Hands

Uncertainty is as much a part of life as life itself.

Only a few groups try to outlaw it, the PC crowd, those with bad cases of OCD and market pundits.

The hand wringing going on by the pundits since the Trump election is both amazing and amusing. It's amusing because it couldn't happen to a nicer more staid bunch. It's amazing because change and uncertainty often travel the same paths. Trump represents change as did Mr.Obama who actually ran on it as a theme.

Trouble is most bought into the big lie it was going to be good change. More than 55 million Americans just voted it wasn't. So the negative crowd are ramping up the what if game. It's a fun game, so let indulge a bit.

They're enumerating all their concerns:globalization, trade tariffs emerging markets and protectionism. Then there's that wall. "Tear down that Wall, Mr. Gorbachev," said one of the most hated presidents in U.S. history. Now another one, probably even more hated and he hasn't even taken office yet, has bellowed about building another wall and  telling it's builders to pay for it.

It's more than a bit interesting how often these worriers cough up the terms democracy and law when they make their case about markets and such. One would guess--and it's a huge guess because of how selective they are--they're talking about the rule of law and property rights. John Authers of the Financial Times, "Ugly new world risks bringing even US back to emerging market status,"writes:

But we should all step back and look a little deeper about what is implied. The last great emerging markets bull market, from 2002 to 2008, was predicated on the notion of “decoupling” — that the emerging world could continue to thrive even if the developed world fell into recession. The EM crash during the financial crisis disproved the notion. Now, we have moved to the idea that the US can prosper as the emerging world languishes.

This is also a questionable, for a reason that goes beyond economics to the deeper cause for the gap between the developing and emerging markets: their institutions. It is a weak institutional structure that keeps a country in emerging status. If democracy or the law is weak, if there is not a backbone of trust or an agreed route to combat corruption, development and growth are far harder.

Lacking full shareholder protections, EM companies are likely to be controlled by families or founding institutions, or by the state. Companies with the widely dispersed ownership in the US are unusual.

Apparently, Mr. Authers and his flock pulled a Rip Van Winkle during the Obama crowd's stay in Washington and their astonishing attack on property rights and the rule of law. Somewhere in there is the word trust and an agreed route to slay corruption.Three quarters of that description to us just defined the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank and it intimate relationship with their Wall Street families.

 We said these people have their selective memories. Authers then brings up rumors that Trump  would go after corporations and individuals who publicly derided him in the campaign. "Such things," he notes, "do not happen in a healthy and functioning democracy." He conveniently omits that Mr. Obama's known hit list of those those differed with him was longer than that of the so-called paranoid one, Dick Nixon.

And that brings us back to what if. What if all these hand wringing, the sky-just-fell pundits who would have others endorse unwanted changes but feverishly resist it themselves are wrong? Our advice is play the markets accordingly and don't expect any mea culpas from this crowd.