January 10: Daily Contrarian Reads

It’s Goldman Again—How The Vampire Squid Has Jammed It Blood Funnel Deep Into Trumpland

How did a candidate who repeatedly demonized Goldman Sachs as the poster child for a corrupt establishment that owned Washington end up with Goldman Sachs’ progeny filling every post that even tangentially has the odor of money or global finance? One answer is family ties; another may be something darker….Trump’s non-stop nominations and appointments of Goldman Sachs alumni have left his supporters stunned. Trump nominated Steven Mnuchin, a 17-year veteran of Goldman Sachs to be his Treasury Secretary. Stephen Bannon, another former Goldman Sachs banker, was named by Trump as his Chief Strategist in the White House. The sitting President of Goldman Sachs, Gary Cohn, has been named by Trump as Director of the National Economic Council, which, according to its website, coordinates “policy-making for domestic and international economic issues.”  Last week, in a move that stunned even Wall Street, Trump nominated a Goldman Sachs outside lawyer, Jay Clayton of Sullivan & Cromwell, to serve as Wall Street’s top cop as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission…..

America Versus the Deep State

The bamboozlement of the public is nearly complete. The Deep State has persuaded 80 percent of Americans that all news is propaganda, especially the news emanating from the Deep State’s own intel department. They’re still shooting for 100 percent. The fakest of all “fake news” stories turns out to be… “Russia Hacks Election.” It was reported conclusively Saturday on the front page of The New York Times, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Deep State:

Why This Bull Market Is In Its Final Inning

As investors await the Dow Jones 20,000 with baited breath, one widely followed chart watcher believes the current market rally is actually on its last legs…..Risk has been priced out of the market,” said Sven Henrich of NorthmanTrader.com on CNBC’s “Futures Now.”….What’s more, Henrich also believes that the S&P 500 has continued to trade in a “bearish wedge pattern” that began just after the end of the last recession. The wedge pattern Henrich speaks of consists of two trend lines: One that runs along the S&P’s highs and a second that runs along its lows, that look to meet sometime in 2017. It is at that point that Henrich believes the rally will have run its course, and a downside will soon follow.

Get Ready—-2017 Will Bring One Financial Shock After The Next

It seems that we are now seeing the beginning of reversals in many markets. Some of these new trends will take longer to develop and some could happen surprisingly quickly. Most major markets will be affected, namely bond & credit markets, currencies, stocks, metals, precious metals mining stocks and property. Let’s first look at the biggest bubble of all bubbles in history – the global bond market.  This is a market which has virtually exploded from $10 trillion in 1990 to $100 trillion today. And if we look at the debt expansion in the last 10 years since the Great Financial Crisis started in 2006, the global bond market has gone up by 70%.

The Intelligence Community “Assesses” Means It “Guesses”

Repeating an accusation over and over again is not evidence that the accused is guilty, no matter how much “confidence” the accuser asserts about the conclusion…. But the case, as presented, is one-sided and lacks any actual proof. Further, the continued use of the word “assesses” – as in the U.S. intelligence community “assesses” that Russia is guilty – suggests that the underlying classified information also may be less than conclusive because, in intelligence-world-speak, “assesses” often means “guesses.”

Mexico Heading For Crisis Far Greater Than Tequila Crisis 22 Years Ago

Things are rapidly going from bad to worse in Mexico. Hundreds of people were arrested and a handful of people killed over the past week as peaceful protests against the government’s hike of gasoline prices (by as much as 20% in some states) descended into widespread looting and rioting. The mood on the street was hardly helped when Mexico’s deeply unpopular president, Enrique Peña Nieto, tried to defend his actions by asking the public, “What would you have done?”…..There are few bigger threats to Mexico right now than the President Elect Donald Trump, who last week announced the appointment of Robert Lighthizer as the United States’ new Trade Representative. Lighthizer, a trade lawyer and vocal supporter of protectionist policies, is expected to play a leading role in the renegotiation of NAFTA, which helped transform Mexico into a low-cost industrial powerhouse while also shackling its economic fate to its northern neighbor….

The “Company” Is Out Of Control—-Purge The CIA

Only in Washington would this exchange not be followed by howls of jeering laughter. It was Clapper, after all, who lied under oath to Sen. Ron Wyden and the Senate when asked about the extent of spying on US citizens engaged in by the National Security Agency, and later was forced to apologize for it. And of course it is a brazen lie that anything published by WikiLeaks in its decade-long history has ever resulted in a single death – except, perhaps, the death of the US government’s credibility….That the CIA, in particular, has become a thoroughly politicized cadre of desk jockeys whose intelligence-gathering abilities have seriously atrophied is borne out by the remarks of one “Ishmael Jones,” a former CIA officer writing under a pseudonym: “CIA intelligence reporting stating that the Russian government hacked the presidential election in order to elect Donald Trump is false. It is merely a political attack against Donald Trump with the goal of delegitimizing his presidency.

Donald, You Embraced Glass-Steagall—-So Let’s Enact It!

…… to endorse a demand that President-elect Donald Trump fulfill a campaign pledge. Trump made the pledge on October 26 of this year in a speech he delivered in Charlotte, North Carolina, promising to enact a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act to reform Wall Street. Such legislation has been sitting dormant in both the House and Senate for years. If enacted, it would separate the deposit-taking, taxpayer-insured commercial banks from the globe-trotting, high-risk trading casinos known as investment banks on Wall Street……Following the financial crash in 2008, the Federal Reserve fought for years in court to avoid providing details of the money it funneled to the Wall Street banks during the years of the crisis. When the Fed finally lost the legal fight, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) tallied up the secret Fed loans, all of which had been made at super low, below-market interest rates with no public or Congressional disclosure. The final tally came to $16.1 trillion in cumulative loans. (See the GAO report for a bank-by-bank breakdown of the loans.)

Ron Paul Nails It—-Obama First US President To Be At War Everyday Of His Terms

Following our discussion of the unprecedented bombing-fest that has been undertaken during President Obama’s reign…Seven years after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” despite having been in office for less than one year and having pretty much no actual, tangible foreign diplomacy accomplishments at the time, President Obama will depart the White House having dropped 26,171 bombs on foreign countries around the world in 2016, 3,027 more than 2015…..Sounds about right for a president who bombed 7 nations and became the first in U.S. history to be at war every single day of his eight year administration.

42% Of “Suspicious” IP Address Cited By Homeland Security Weren’t Russian—-They Were From A US Based Anonymity Cite Called Tor Projects 

First reported by the Intercept on Wednesday, nearly half of the 876 “suspicious” IP addresses identified by DHS (roughly 42 percent) are currently Tor exit nodes or have been Tor exit nodes in the past few years. Up to 367 IP addresses listed alongside the government report on Russian malicious cyber activity may have been used, or may be presently in use, by thousands of internet users who have no ties to Moscow, the DNC hack, or any kind of malicious cyber activity. Tor is a powerful anonymity tool used around the world by a wide range of people, including human rights activists, journalists, and everyday users—including some criminals—in order to conceal their identities and physical locations. The software, partially funded by the U.S. government, is also used by dissidents in countries, such as China and Turkey, that impose online censorship and crack down on internet activity.