Tuesday, January 19, 2016
The Citadel Is Breached: Congress Taps the Fed for Infrastructure Funding / Interest-Rates / US Federal Reserve Bank
By: Ellen_Brown
In a landmark infrastructure bill passed in December, Congress finally penetrated the Fed's "independence" by tapping its reserves and bank dividends for infrastructure funding.
The bill was a start. But some experts, including Congressional candidate Tim Canova, say Congress should go further and authorize funds to be issued for infrastructure directly.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Margin Rules Changes Force New Private Funding Of Public Debt / Interest-Rates / US Debt
By: Dan_Amerman
The Federal Reserve and other regulators around the world (including all members of the G-20) have recently agreed to alter margin rules, which will allow them to claim new powers over lending and leverage. In the United States these developing regulatory changes will not be restricted to the Fed's legal oversight over banks alone, but will affect all financial companies.
The new margin rules will impact about $4.4 trillion in investments in the US. In combination with new rules for $2.7 trillion in money funds, the regulations are changing for about $7 trillion in investments. And the combined effect of these changes may be to drive up to $2.5 trillion out of the private investment markets and into purchasing the debts of a heavily indebted US government, thereby providing a very low cost source of funds.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Warning: Stocks Bear Market Rally Trap Ahead / Stock-Markets / Stocks Bear Market
By: Chris_Vermeulen
Technical Evidence Indicates Major Price Movement Just Getting Started!
Stocks around the globe were pummeled again last week.
This is no surprise to our subscribers as our predictive trend analytics model gave us clear technical evidence that important multi-year highs had completed back in the middle of 2015.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
US Dollar Drop to Trendline Likely / Currencies / US Dollar
By: Gary_Savage
The dollar is "crawling" along its 60 dma. When it breaks and closes below the drop into the intermediate cycle low will begin.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
UK Opinion Pollsters Inquiry Smoke Screen for Election Forecast Failure of Polls Sales Industry / ElectionOracle / Opinion Polls & Surveys
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The run up to the May 2015 general election had the the people of Britain convinced that they were going to the polls that were unanimously proclaimed by the mainstream media as being too close to call, one where the Labour and Conservative parties were virtually neck and neck and where even if the Conservatives managed to pull a a handful of seats ahead would still lose be default as they would not be able to form a majority even with Lib Dem support and therefore the Labour party was destined to win the 2015 general election, all of which was based on a year of opinion polls that consistently presented this consensus view right up to the polls closed at 10pm.
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
UK Savers Have the January Blues / Stock-Markets / Savings Accounts
By: MoneyFacts
Data from Moneyfacts.co.uk can reveal that rate reductions in the savings market have now outweighed rate rises for three consecutive months, the first time this has happened since daily rate change monitoring began.*
In the month of December, Moneyfacts recorded just 30 savings rate rises, with only one deal posting a significant increase of 0.50%. Disappointingly, rate reductions over the same period completely eclipsed this figure, with the number of rate decreases over the month standing at 93, with some deals falling by as much as 0.55%.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Why Are We Still Paying Attention To Chinese Economic Numbers? / Economics / China Economy
By: John_Rubino
A few years ago, economist Nouriel Roubini was explaining to a reporter why Chinese economic data couldn’t be trusted. He noted that it takes the US weeks and sometimes months to pull together and process the information necessary to produce a complex stat like GDP, and wondered how China, with its far bigger, less developed (and therefore harder to measure) population was able to do it in considerably less time. He concluded that they’re just making up their numbers.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Junk Bonds Slump - Will 2016 be The Year The Fed Fails? / Interest-Rates / US Interest Rates
By: Clif_Droke
To many economists, the biggest mistake the Fed has made has been a lack of aggression in raising interest rates. After all, they reason, the U.S. job market is as strong as it has been since 2007 and the economy, even if sluggish, is at least back on an even keel. These same observers cheered the Fed's decision to raise the Fed funds rate in December by a quarter percentage point.
Yet there is even more reason to worry that the raising of the Fed funds rate last month may have been a policy blunder of major proportions. In this commentary we'll briefly examine the distinct possibility that the Fed has put the U.S. financial market on the cusp of another troublesome year ahead.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Stock Market Bottoming, but Bear Still Growling / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
By: Brad_Gudgeon
Indications suggest a stock market which is currently oversold and bottoming short term, but still has a long way to go to finish this bear. In fact, I believe we could see the SPX fall as low as the 940-950 area by October of this year as we enter the final innings of the crash phase of the 8 year commodity cycle. Gold and especially the gold miners are struggling even though we are showing positive COT figures.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Oil price Slump Leads To Shale 2.0, The Great Crew Change, And COP21 / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Submissions
Alfidi Capital writes: The oil sector's bear attack shows no signs of abating. OPEC's Saudi-led push for huge overproduction is driving the US shale sector to the brink of collapse. The post-crash survivors can benefit from "Shale 2.0" technologies that keep their costs down. They will need every advantage they can get when the "Great Crew Change" makes finding human talent harder and the UN's COP21 protocols make hydrocarbon production less desirable.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Why This Economic Slump Has Legs / Economics / Recession 2016
By: Raul_I_Meijer
We’ve only really been in two weeks of trading in the new year, things are looking pretty bad to say the least, so predictably the press are asking -and often answering- questions about when the slump will be over. Rebound, recovery, the usual terminology. When will we get back to growth?
For me personally, but that’s just me, that last question sounds a bit more stupid every single time I hear and read it. Just a bit, but there’s been a lot of those bits, more than I care to remember. Luckily, the answer is easy. The slump will not be over for a very long time, there will be no rebound or recovery, and please stop talking about a return to growth unless you can explain what you want to grow into.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Crude Oil Price Stabilises above $30 Following New U.S. Sanctions Imposed on Duped Iran / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Nadeem_Walayat
The crude oil price reversed direction Monday to climb back above $30 (WTIC) as the market has started to discount the probability that the Iranians have been duped into given up nuclear weaponry, in a perpetual U.S. game of sanctions for ever for the purpose of Iran being systematically disarmed of it's military capacity much as Iraq was disarmed before a pretext for invasion was manufactured by the Intelligence Agencies all to appease the Saudi and Israeli fundamentalist states (Islamic and Jewish).
Monday, January 18, 2016
Ron Paul on When Peace Breaks Out With Iran... / Politics / US Politics
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
This has been the most dramatic week in US/Iranian relations since 1979.
Last weekend ten US Navy personnel were caught in Iranian waters, as the Pentagon kept changing its story on how they got there. It could have been a disaster for President Obama's big gamble on diplomacy over conflict with Iran. But after several rounds of telephone diplomacy between Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif, the Iranian leadership - which we are told by the neocons is too irrational to even talk to - did a most rational thing: weighing the costs and benefits they decided it made more sense not to belabor the question of what an armed US Naval vessel was doing just miles from an Iranian military base. Instead of escalating, the Iranian government fed the sailors and sent them back to their base in Bahrain.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, January 18, 2016
A Look at the Global Stock Markets / Stock-Markets / Global Stock Markets
By: Anthony_Cherniawski
Good Morning!
`SPX futures remained beneath its Head & Shoulders neckline overnight, despite ZeroHedge’s report of an equity futures rebound. Since that early report, SPX and Dow futures dumped. “Remember when oil was in the green (because Iran was "priced in") and stocks were in the green (because China was "fixed") this morning? Well, that's over. The dip-buying algo's reflex has run the stops, filled the gaps to unchanged and now stocks and crude are turning lower once again.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, January 18, 2016
Financial Crisis 2016 - This Is Not 2008: It’s Actually Worse / Stock-Markets / Financial Crisis 2016
By: Michael_Pento
The S&P 500 has begun 2016 with its worst performance ever. This has prompted Wall Street apologists to come out in full force and try to explain why the chaos in global currencies and equities will not be a repeat of 2008. Nor do they want investors to believe this environment is commensurate with the Dot.Com Bubble that caused the NASDAQ to plummet 78% and the S&P 500 to shed 35% of its value. In fact, they claim the current turmoil in China is not even comparable to the 1997 Asian Debt Crisis: when dollar-denominated debt loads couldn’t be repaid and the Thai baht lost half its value, and the stock market dropped 75%.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, January 18, 2016
Central Banks: the Biggest Short of All / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: Mario_Innecco
Transcript Excerpt: Monday January 18th 2006 still like to talk about the big short book written by
mouth Michael movers who is really a lot of other books about finance he wrote
liars poker that was the region no
also lashed boys Wall Street that came out in 2014 the bigger shirt came was
written in and came out in 2010 and I watched the new movie that's come out
the big short that came out on December 15th in the USA is interesting because
it was the day before
hydrates and Wikipedia call in the American biographical comedy drama and
it's interesting to see that it cost twenty million to me the movie and it's
already grossed seventy million dollars in box office which is not bad for a
Monday, January 18, 2016
Gold Price Has Passed the Lows / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016
By: Bob_Kirtley
We preface this article by stating that we are neither gold bears nor bulls. We traders and we target trades with the best possible risk reward dynamics, regardless of market direction. At the founding of our service, SK OptionTrader, we were bullish on the yellow metal and banked considerable profits as gold rallied to all-time highs. Beginning in 2013 we took a heavily bearish view, and again banked triple digit returns on gold as it declined. Now, we believe we have seen the lows and are preparing to get long gold once again.
Monday, January 18, 2016
Free Cash Incentives Tempt Bank Current Account Switchers / Personal_Finance / Current Accounts
By: MoneyFacts
Current accounts are renowned for their perks, which can include benefits such as insurance add-ons, but providers are now upping the ante by offering cash bonuses to entice new customers.
Since the launch of the Current Account Switch Guarantee in 2013, Moneyfacts.co.uk has seen a sharp rise in the number of cash incentives being offered with current accounts, with some deals boasting sums of up to £220 a year.
Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, January 18, 2016
Crude Oil Price Trend Forecast 2016 - Video By Nadeem Walayat / Commodities / Crude Oil
By: Nadeem_Walayat
After a savage bear market for the oil market for the whole of 2015, the crude oil price has got 2016 off with a bang by plunging to just below $30 before recovering at the last close to $30.68 (WTIC). One does not need to look far for the negative fundamentals that are driving the oil price into dust. Fundamentals such as the sharp slowdown in the Chinese economy, fundamentals such as the apparent oil war that Saudi Arabia is engaged in with the United States shale oil industry and now added to are fundamentals of lifting of sanctions against Iran that can literally immediately flood the oil market with 50 million barrels of crude oil in storage and looks set to up its output by 1m b/d this year.
Monday, January 18, 2016
Gold and Silver Mining Stocks Bottom ?..Do they Ring a Bell ? / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2016
By: Rambus_Chartology
Today I would like to take a look at the PM complex as there are some interesting charts building out. Please don’t confuse this report with what Sir Spock, Sir Norvast and others are doing at the Chartology Forum as they’re looking for undervalued PM stocks that will be ready to buy when the time is right. In some cases the time might be now as a few of the PM stocks are holding support. In the vast majority of the cases though, excluding some of the Australian and a few South African PM stocks, most are still under pressure. So for some folks who like to get in a little early and have the patience to wait for the bear market to exhaust itself, one can start picking up a few shares of their favorite PM stocks and see what happens. There won’t be a bell go off at the bottom I can assure you of that.