The Tiny Little Straw That Could Break The Stock Market’s Back This Month
European deposits have grown as the ECB has pumped trillions of Euros into their banking system. Deposit growth has not kept pace with the growth of the ECB’s balance sheet. This also suggests that money has been leaving the Continent and heading to Wall Street. But that could all be about to change…
Anatomy of A Crypto-Nightmare: The Ripple Pump
Amidst all of the bullish talk about cryptocurrencies we know that a strike back from the banking system and its owners is coming. In fact, the attack as I see it is well underway. And it began with the attack on the credibility of Bitcoin Cash and it’s continuing with the insane pump of Ripple and any coin which has direct ties to old money. What I want to posit today is how the next crash in the cryptocurrency markets can, and likely will, play out.
Some Kind of Sweet Spot—-The Incoming Data Follies
One quarter of 5% GDP is utterly meaningless. In fact, two straight quarters of 4.5% growth or better made no difference whatsoever. The Establishment Survey went off, averaging by late 2014 more than 250k a month. None of it meant what everyone said it did largely because they ignored all the gathering evidence these good numbers were a tiny holiday island in the ocean of malaise. Trends don’t break so quickly, at least without legitimate energy (and QE just was never going to be that).
NYC Apartment Sales Collapse By 25% in Q4
Apparently the combination of a massive flood of excess supply in the form of new luxury developments and a Trump tax plan that penalizes people living in expensive cities by capping SALT, mortgage interest and property tax deductions was simply too much for the Manhattan real estate market to ignore in 4Q 2017. As Douglas Elliman points out in their new Q4 2017 Manhattan Market Report, both prices (-9.4%) and volumes (-25.4%) of New York City apartments collapsed sequentially in Q4 as potential buyers took a pause amid the growing uncertainty.
The Real Smoking Gun—Unedited Comey Memo Says Hillary Was “Grossly Negligent” Five times!
As the document also shows, Comey’s original statement was edited by subordinates to remove five separate references to terms like “grossly negligent” and to delete mention of evidence supporting felony and misdemeanor violations.
Ukraine, Libya, Syria and Now Iran—We’ve Heard This Song & Dance Before
This is all coming off the back of the nonstop CIA/CNN narrative being advanced that Iran is a top perpetrator of state-sponsored terrorism, which is just plain false. I have a lot of Trump-supporting followers, and I would like to stress to them that the group of intelligence veterans who authored this memo about Iran is the same group who released a memo dismantling the bogus Russiagate narrative; these are good people and you can trust them. I encourage you to read it.
Thank You Mr. President—-For Proving That The System IS Rigged
A year later, the boondoggles continue at home. The phony wars continue overseas. And it’s all still funded by a fake-money system……Posing as a friend of the little guy, Mr. Trump proved to be the perfect big guy president – cutting taxes for the big guys on Wall Street… increasing spending for the big boys in the Pentagon and its industry cronies… helping to stifle real reform of runaway entitlements… teaming up with Pelosi and Schumer to keep the debt ceiling going up with no limit on deficits.
Tesla’s Model 3 Deliveries Fissile
There was just one number the investing public cared about in the just released Tesla Q4 vehicle production and deliveries update: the number of Model 3 cars delivered. And the reason why Tesla stock is not happy after hours is because for yet another quarter, Elon Musk’s “everyman” electric car disappointed badly once again, with just 1,550 deliveries, almost exactly 50% below the 2,917 cars the sellside community expected.
Peak Autos—-2017 Sales Drop Below 2015
Total new-vehicle sales in the US fell 5.2% year-over-year in December to 1.6 million units. For all of 2017, sales declined by 320,000 vehicles, or 1.8%, to 17.23 million units. It was the first overall decline since the Financial Crisis. Compared to 2015, sales fell by 249,033 vehicles, or 1.4%.
Jeff Sessions Just Demonstrated Why We Need to Decentralize Government
Late last year, I wrote a series of posts where I highlighted three specific areas I thought the U.S. government might overreach and do something really stupid in 2018. Jeff Sessions didn’t waste any time making my first prediction look prescient…..couldn’t help himself from doing something monumentally stupid and evil, both politically and ethically.
