Overnight

Flat is the word of the Asian session today after all the concern earlier this week about the Bank of Japan and the Fed meetings.

The Nikkei 225 was down 0.12 percent, reversing some of its earlier 0.4 percent losses, while the Topix index slipped 0.26 percent in morning trade. Japanese markets were shut on Thursday for a public holiday after climbing nearly 2 percent Wednesday when the Bank of Japan (BOJ) announced an overhaul of its monetary policy framework. 

The yen climbed to as high as 100.67 against the dollar, compared to levels above 102 on Wednesday, following the BOJ's announcement and before the Fed's policy decision. At 11:41 a.m. HK/SIN, the dollar/yen traded at 101.18. 

Investors seemed to move toward risk back on as equities moved higher. The ASX 200, a Hang Seng and Kospi were up while the Nikkei and the two Chinese markets were down. Gold was off 0.2%. Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil, was down 1% in early Asian trade. Still there was some hesitation as some investors appeared to be searching for direction after a week of potential news followed by a let down of economic important data to close out the week.

Reuters reported: In the currency market, the dollar was softer on the Fed's policy outlook, with the dollar's index against a basket of six major currencies .DXY =USD slipping to its lowest level in nearly two weeks on Thursday. The index last stood at 95.530, off Thursday's low of 95.048 but down 0.5 percent on the week.

The Pulbic Trough

It is a general stampede all right, one of complete disinformation to drive you further into the anxious arms of these international bureaucrats. They need you to need them.

Here's your tip off.

If policymakers fail to mitigate the negative impacts of unchecked global market forces, then a turn to protectionism could trigger a vicious downward spiral for everyone.

These market forces weren't unchecked. They were manipulated by the powers that be for agenda-driven means, one of which is now known after a convenient name change, climate change. Beware  of anything that has UN in front of it. this is just another call for massive government spending. Massive government spending is just like massive government money prit doesn't create meaningful and lasting growth.

The third leg of the world's intractable depression is yet to come. If trade economists at the United Nations are right, the next traumatic episode may entail the greatest debt jubilee in history. It may also prove to be the definitive crisis of globalized capitalism, the demise of the liberal free-market orthodoxies promoted for almost forty years by the Bretton Woods institutions, the OECD, and the Davos fraternity.

"Alarm bells have been ringing over the explosion of corporate debt levels in emerging economies, which now exceed $25 trillion. Damaging deflationary spirals cannot be ruled out," said the annual report of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

 We know already that the poisonous side-effect of zero rates and quantitative easing in the US, Europe, and Japan was to flood developing nations with cheap credit, upsetting their internal chemistry and drawing them into a snare. What is less understood is just how destructive this has been.

The UN's diagnosis is that "shareholder primacy" and the entire edifice of liberal market finance are among the key culprits, all made worse by stringent fiscal austerity that has starved the global economy of sufficient demand.

Notice the usual suspect here, stringent fiscal austerity.

It is not to everybody's taste. UNCTAD's manifesto of Left-wing proposals clashes with almost every nostrum taught in universities and business schools for the last two generations. Yet its arguments cannot be dismissed lightly, and its dissenting voice deserves to be heard.

The fallacy of the above paragraph is that nothing works to everyone's taste.That hardly means what's required is a "radical prescription" of more mindless government spending.

The report puts the advocates of globalisation (as practiced) in a quandary. They - or we, perhaps I should say -  typically argue that it has vastly raised the living standards of hundreds of millions of people across Asia.

Its prescription is radical. The world must jettison neo-liberal ideology, and launch a "global new deal" with a blitz of investment on strategic sectors. It wants a return of the "developmental state", commanding a potent industrial policy, and backed by severe controls on capital flows.

Here's their remedy, more Keynesian BS. It's just another form of can kicking. Give it a new moniker and it's once again full steam ahead to nowhere.

A much simpler solution is to dismantle these huge bureaucratic morasses that gorge themselves year after year at the public trough. A good place to start would be central banks. And so we will leave you with this quote.  Jim Rogers: ‘Central Banks Are Losing Their Power…Thank Goodness’

telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/09/21/un-fears-third-leg-of-the-global-financial-crisis-with-epic-debt

Get Informed

We've been saying for sometime that the BLS should undergo a name change. Knock out the L and then you'll have it.  A look at these charts will prove our point.

Dear Labor Department, please explain...
Initial jobless claims tumbled last week to 252k - practically its lowest level since 1973.
BUT...

US economic growth has collapsed as jobless claims have plunged to four-decade lows...

zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-22/thursday-humor-initial-jobless-claims-hit-43-year-lows



 These charts give you some idea how MSM distorts things.



Now you know why you want to keep the Internet out of the bailiwick of bureaucrats and politicians.  It doesn't belong to them.



 There is nothing to cheer about here.

 

Get informed.

Change The Past

For longer than we care to recall we've been arguing that the Democrats have been taking the African-American vote for granted since 1932. They see African-Americans as one monolithic block of voters they can count on election after election.

Our first encounter with such occurred many years ago when we did a graduate school paper about FDR's New Deal and blacks. It was an historical study right up to the then current times.Only then during the 1930s they were referred to as Negroes. So our paper had the title: "Negroes and the New Deal."

Our only mistake was to turn it into a propagandizing leftist professor. One can be fairly naive even in graduate school.  He couldn't criticize it on the merits of its content, its writing or grammar. All he could do was downgraded it on his bias. In his eyes even way back then nobody dared to question the accepted wisdom. And if you know anything about academia, you know there is no arguing or even debating with accepted wisdom.

Somewhere on the Internet today I came across a you tube message from Louis Farrakhan to Obama that said,we'll paraphrase it, but it can be found. Leave Trump alone to do what he does.You failed intercity blacks. In our view, that's way too kind. The Democrats have been failing them for years and now there are doing the same with Hispanics. And so has the Republicans; that's why we say both of these parties are stone cold bankrupt.

In Zen there is saying: The only thing you can change is the past. Lots of people struggle with that and what it means. It's really quite simple. Change the past or repeat if you don't.

Dirty Money

This what you're up against. Those banks that were too big to fail that the government bailed out with your tax dollars now are literally trying to buy this election. It an in-your-face-like-it-or-lump move.
See Buffett financialspuds.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-omaha-hypocrite.

You still have purchasing power. And until they take it away too--and they will--you still have a right to do business where and with whom you want. This is dirty money.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-21/wall-street-goes-all-hillary-clinton

Hedge fund moguls are pouring stunning amounts of cash into the main super-PAC supporting Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

George Soros and Donald Sussman, liberal financiers based in New York, have now given at least $10.5 million each to Priorities USA, an outside group that has already reserved more than $150 million in advertising to help Clinton win the White House.

Pushing him over the $10 million mark, Soros sent the super-PAC an additional $2.5 million in August, according to the latest reports from the Federal Election Commission.

Sussman sent $2 million in August too, giving him an identical total donation to Soros.

Soros scaled back his political spending during the Barack Obama years. Stories later emerged suggesting he’d been unhappy with the way he’d been treated by the president.

An email released last year by the State Department showed Clinton ally Neera Tanden telling the then-secretary of State that when she spoke with Soros at a dinner, he’d told her he regretted supporting President Obama over Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary.

Recounting her conversation with Soros, Tanden told Clinton: “He’s been impressed that he can always call/meet with you on an issue of policy and said he hasn’t met with the President ever (though I thought he had.)”

The latest injections of cash from Soros and Sussman continue a trend of Wall Street money flowing overwhelmingly to Clinton over her Republican rival Donald Trump.

It’s highly unusual — perhaps unprecedented — for a Democratic presidential candidate to out-raise a Republican among the financial sector by the margin by which Clinton is out-raising Trump. 

Citing data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, the Wall Street Journal reported in July that “seven financial firms alone have generated $47.6 million for groups working on Mrs.Clinton’s behalf.”

The comparable amount raised for Trump at that time was $19,000. And though his haul from the financial industry has increased substantially by now, it still pales in comparison to Clinton’s.

Overnight

Denial is usually counter intuitive, most particularly when it comes from politicians and bureaucrats.

The Bank of Japan rolled forth what it 's calling a "new form of policy easing." That alone should trouble you. But when bank chief Kuroda says he doesn't think the bank has been cornered--meaning out of  arrows in its monetary quiver--they've been cornered. Much the same holds for the indecisive, Janet Yellen-led Fed. Here we use the term led real loosely. About as loosely as one of Al Roaker's 15 year old suits would fit him now days. There's hardly a shortage of reformed weight loss zealots today. Brave central bankers, yes! The Fed held to its steady as she goes theme. But actually threatened  all of us with the prospect of fewer cuts in 2017 and 2018,

Things never happen in a vacuum. Other central banks will now have to adjust, if for no other reason than the fear of being outliers. Remember, central bankers are not picked for their path blazing fearlessness. We're talking economists here, human behavior, not a bunch of coonskin cap-wearing Daniel Boones. These people are well trained, one of their major flaws. Most of them never saw the inside of a good bar room drunken brawl. For a lot of them their version of making love is still most likely holding hands in the last row of a darkened theater.

Another way to recognize for certain the counter intuitive is check with MSM. Specifically, Bloomberg. Late last year, October to be exact, the editorial board released this gem: "Abernomics Is Working." Sure it is. From first blush it looks as if overnight investors got what they wanted as Reuters reported:

Asian shares surged on Thursday, taking their cue from Wall Street, after the Federal Reserve left U.S. interest rates unchanged and slowed the pace of future hikes, slugging the dollar and lifting commodity prices. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS advanced 0.9 percent in its sixth straight session of gains, just 1.1 percent off its one-year high touched earlier this month. Australian shares rose 0.9 percent, while South Korea's KOSPI .KS11 advanced 1 percent.

Asia's strong gains follow a surge of 1.1 percent for the S&P 500 .SPX, 0.9 percent for the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI and 1.3 percent for the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC, which closed at a record high. Thursday was a Japanese holiday. But the Nikkei closed out Wednesday up 1.2%. So the next open session could be a blazing one for Japanese equities, depending how well that meal gets digested within the next 24 hours.

CNBC reported: U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures were trading at $45.59 per barrel at 0045 GMT, up 25 cents from their previous close. The contract had already gained as much as 3 percent the day before. Prices jumped after the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) surprised the market with a 6.2 million barrel fall in crude oil inventories last week to 504.6 million barrels. Forecasters in a Reuters poll had expected a 3.4 million-barrel build. "Oil prices rose after EIA data showed U.S. crude inventories declined to the lowest level since February," ANZ bank said in a note on Thursday.

The Omaha Hypocrite

 
Here is another BS MSM story, this one about multi-billionaire Warren Buffett. Buffett, in image of a Nebraska replica of Garrison Kellior, likes to spin his own folsky yarns.

He also likes to tell other people how they should live their lives. Like how much taxes they should cough up on their California digs while he brags about paying much lower one on his folky homestead on the prairie in Middle America.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says that for wealthy people there comes a point where money “has no real utility.”

In an interview with Yahoo Finance’s editor-in-chief Andy Serwer at the Concordia Summit, the 86-year-old Berkshire Hathaway CEO discussed The Giving Pledge, which he founded with Bill and Melinda Gates in 2010. The pledge is a signed commitment by the wealthiest people to give away more than half of their money to philanthropy either during their lives or when they die.

Buffett argued that excessive wealth doesn’t do much for the rich and their families.

“There comes a point where money really has no real utility,” he said. “You can use it to show off, but you can’t do much else with it. I don’t think it’s good for your family. It can do wonders for people around the world.”

He noted that when the Forbes’ “rich list” of 400 wealthiest people debuted in 1982 the total wealth was around $92 billion. Now it’s $2.4 trillion.

“There’s a greater concentration of wealth than there was 30 or 20 years ago,” he noted. “What can you do with it? It seems so obvious to me you can take wonderful care of yourself. Are 10 houses better than one? Do you really want a boat?”

Buffett ranks No. 3 in the world on the rich list with an estimated net worth of $63.5 billion. He’s always maintained a low-key lifestyle, living in a modest home in Omaha and driving a practical car.

To date, 150 people have signed the pledge.

If money reaches a point in life where it has no utility why is he and billionaires like George Soros still trying to rig elections with their money. And they're not alone. Buffett is a known hypocrite. Other people have written about him. One of the people money has done wonders for is him. He boastfully uses it to pay less taxes than his secretary. 

It's okay for him to take advantage for those dirty loopholes regulators in their zeal to try to level that which is beyond being leveled, human nature, but don't let the rest of us try it. To say that Buffett and other billionaires, right and left, don't use money to push agendas is what known in polite company as a lie.

Part Of The Globalist Agenda

 
Here's another Obama move you should be quite leery of if you value your freedom and sanity.This from the Peterson Institute of International Economics.

WHITE HOUSE MAKES ANOTHER EX-IM MOVE: The Obama administration late Friday made another play at getting the Export-Import Bank fully operational again by nominating Claudia Slacik, a former senior vice president for export finance at the bank, to the agency’s board of directors.

With the nomination, two officials are now awaiting approval by the Senate Banking Committee to fill open seats on the bank’s board. Committee chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) has so far refused to act on Obama’s previous nomination, Mark McWatters, leaving the bank’s five-member board with only two seats filled. Without a quorum of at least three members, the bank has been unable to approve deals worth more than $10 million. Slacik, who worked at Ex-Im from 2013 until May of this year, previously worked for JP Morgan and Citigroup, the White House said.

politico.com/tipsheets/morning-trade/2016/09/peterson-institute-trumps-trade-proposals-horribly-destructive-obama-continues-courting-gop-establishment-on-tpp-white-house-makes-another-ex-im-

The last thing you want if you value your your sovereignty and independence is the Ex-Im bank to return to being fully operational. This is a topic that came up earlier this year. This is a bank in the name of free trade that subsidizes multi-billion dollar corporations like General Electric and its CEO and close Obama friend, Jeffery Immelt.

The Peterson Institute is a Washington-based think tank sump masquerading as a nonpartisan outfit. Check out its board of directors and other close associates. It reads like a whose-who list of globalists. One thing we all no in Washington there is no such thing an a nonpartisan outfit. Big Pharma reportedly has 5,200 lobbyists there.

Note the arrogance just oozing from the opening paragraph of this second article on the same subject. It's as if the world would stop turning if this elitist didn't share his brilliance with the rest of us. If you like GMOs you'll love these people.

For months Steph Haggard has been on my case to write about Donald Trump, the political economy of trade, and KORUS. I counselled patience, but he got so frustrated that he even took a shot himself. Good things come to those who wait, and today we unveil the Big Kahuna.

For the last few months, Gary Hufbauer, Sherman Robinson, Tyler Moran and I have been working on an analysis of the two major presidential candidates. In our report, we take Hillary Clinton to task for her opposition to TPP. We think that such opposition is wrong on both economic and geopolitical grounds and is not in the best interests of either the United States or South Korea. But as any American with a cable TV subscription knows, Secretary Clinton’s opponent, Donald Trump, takes her reticence on trade policy to new radical depths. Trump has advocated punitive sanctions on Mexico and China, at times advocating firm-specific tariffs (which are historically unprecedented, illegal, and probably unconstitutional), has talked about abrogating “disastrous” free trade agreements (including that “job-killing” KORUS agreement, which along with NAFTA, he seems to regard with particular ire), and even talking about withdrawing from the WTO which could undo 80 years of economic diplomacy and plunge the US back into the Smoot-Hawley world of the 1930s. When asked about trade wars, he insouciantly replied “who the hell cares about a trade war?”

piie.com/blogs/north-korea-witness-transformation/how-donald-trump-could-terminate-job-killer-korus

The institute chairman is Peter G. Peterson, former chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, former United States Secretary of Commerce, and one of the founders of the Blackstone Group. Vice chairman is United Technologies Corporation Chairman, George David.
Other prominent members of the institute's board of directors include:

• Leszek Balcerowicz, former Chairman of the National Bank of Poland;
• Ronnie Chan, Chairman, Hang Lung Properties;
• Chen Yuan, Governor of the China Development Bank;
• Jessica Einhorn, Dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies;
• Mohamed A. El-Erian, Co-CEO and Co-CIO, PIMCO;
• Stanley Fischer, Governor of the Bank of Israel;
• Jacob A. Frenkel, Vice-Chairman of American International Group and former Governor of the Bank of Israel;
• Maurice R. Greenberg, former CEO of American International Group;
• Carla A. Hills, Chairman, Hills & Company; former United States Trade Representative; former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; former Assistant Attorney General of the United States;
• Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore;
• Reynold Levy, President of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts;
• Paul O'Neill, former United States Secretary of the Treasury;
• David O'Reilly, Chairman of Chevron Corp.;
• Peter R. Orszag, Vice Chairman of Citigroup and former director of the Office of Management and Budget;
• James W. Owens, Chief Executive of Caterpillar Inc.;
• David Rockefeller, former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank;
• Edward W. Scott, cofounder of BEA Systems;
• Lawrence Summers, former United States Secretary of the Treasury;
• Jean-Claude Trichet, former President of the European Central Bank;
• Laura D'Andrea Tyson, former Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors;
• Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve;
• Marina v.N. Whitman, Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy at the Ross School of Business;
• Ernesto Zedillo, former President of Mexico.

Your Area Or Mine?

Here is an interesting development, one that shows you how divided America is.

Everyone knows the definition of a recession. It's when your neighbor loses his or her job. It only becomes a depression when you lose yours.

Texas, which has taken in more refugees than any state in the nation over the past year, is threatening to leave the federal refugee program if the Obama administration does not meet its security demands.

The dispute comes as the Obama administration has announced a new goal of resettling 110,000 refugees in the United States in the coming year, including an unspecified increase in the number from Syria.

 Without an agreement, Texas would join Kansas and New Jersey in withdrawing state participation in the refugee program over the federal government's vetting procedures to screen out potential terrorists.

chron.com/news/politics/article/Texas-threatens-to-exit-the-federal-refugee-9236722.php 

Obama is a lame duck president. These are in-your-face retaliatory actions. There are peaceful ways to express your objections. This is clearly a local versus central debate. At which point do the citizens and residents of a particular state have the ultimate right to decide their fate and that of the off spring? It's the same question wrapped in different wrapping paper as to when do the taxpayers of one state have the right not to send off their tax dollars to the centralized government just to be rerouted to those in another state to buoy programs you neither like nor support.

Another question here, who gets to decide how many are enough, the residents of the area who will have to contend with the change these things impose or some distant bureaucrat? Despite what others will say, this is a good thing to come just before this election. It's healthy. They are giving you the chance to express your vote on this and many other issues. Whichever side you are on, the choices could not be more clear. There ought to be no name calling here. Vote your vote.

And if you think it can't happen to you and your area, keep chomping on those mushrooms you have stored in your refrigerator. It can happen to any of us in a second. That's what elitism is about. This is hardly an issue many will want to trust the court system to decide. Everything has its history. Elitism is no exception.

Our View

Many people think today's biggest problem is making the best choice to whom is best prepared to lead us. Interesting, to be sure, but not even close.

Here are some random names: MSM,CDC,BLS, FBI, DEA, RNC, DNC, CIA, BLM, USDA, to list just a few. The biggest problem we see, especially in this election year, facing the American public, and its huge with huge implications, is deciding who is the biggest liar.

Yes, we said liar. Rather harsh but a long, long way from being untruthful. And the more interesting thing is, the public is beginning to get it. One can only postulate what is in store when they finally get the whole picture. We've said it before and we will say it again, both of these political parties are bankrupt and are a poorly disguised perpetuation of the status quo and the elites are right now quaking in their Gucci slippers trying to figure out how they will steal this election without blowing their cover. In this case many of them are pacing the floor weekend in their recently built  home way from home bomb shelters.

If you recommend gold--and according to what we read the Russians just bought a boatload--you're a fiat money hater and a gold bug. That should tip you off right there. If you question the elites with their expertise--and given Harvard's recent limp endowment fund performance--some of them are quaking lately when their check their safe deposit boxes, you're an ignoramus, maybe even worse. As Twain told anyone who would listen years ago, there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics.

You don't need a program these days to tell who gets their oxygen pumped into their econometric cellars. As the elites get more bold, arrogant and determined to drive you back into your acquiescent place, just as in the upcoming election, you have to make a tough choice: turn the cheek or let your voice be heard. Only the clearly destructive religion of PC prevents you from calling BS what it is, when it is and where it is when you encounter it.

That means you have to take the time to gather the one thing they never want you to gather, information. That's why they spend so much time distorting it. And that's why the free Internet--kooks, dreamers, grammatically weak, phobia freaks of every strip and shape, scholars, entrepreneurs, lazy, ambitious or otherwise, is their biggest threat.

Let them farm that out and you've clamped shut those shackles on your own ankles whether you're black, white, brown or look like a barber pole.

That's our view. We hope you know yours.