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Stocks Ramp To Unchanged On China “Breakthrough” Tweet
And just like that, we are unch…
Thanks to a perfectly timed tweet from Global Times Editor Hi Xijin, algos ignited momentum at the cash open, sending stocks back to unchanged on the day…
Based on what I know, China-US trade talks made breakthrough last week and the two sides have the strong will to reach a final deal. Initial statement of the Chinese side is moderate. This is China’s habit. It doesn’t mean China’s real attitude is not positive.
And ramp…
And with bonds closed, there’s no one left to rationalize market moves.
Did Everything Just Change?
It’s hard to imagine a more euphoric end to the week for bulls.
Two weeks ago I issued a report titled Realistically, What’s Left To Power Asset Prices Higher? which claimed the bulls only hope was for a near-term resumption of QE (quantitative easing, aka “money printing”) or a China trade deal.
Well, this week they got both.
Jerome Powell announced Wednesday that the U.S. Federal Reserve will resume expanding its balance sheet to the tune of $60 billion per month. And just a few hours ago, the Trump administration announced it had reached a partial trade agreement with its Chinese counterparts.
And to put a cherry on top of things, word from across the Pond is that somehow a Brexit deal just might happen by the end of the month.
When I began typing this article earlier today, the markets were fiercely building towards an orgiastic climax. They ended with a slight post-coital breather, closing modestly off the day’s highs.
In short, the bulls are suddenly having the time of their lives.
So, does this mean happy days have returned? Have we been rescued from the rising tide of data warning of an economic slowdown and lower asset prices? Does the Fed — and now China, too — have our back again?
Is it time for investors to become optimistic once more?
“Markets” No More
Before we answer that, though, let’s address the elephant in the room. We no longer have functioning financial markets.
The central banking cartel has killed price discovery. The $15+ TRILLION in liquidity injected by the Fed, EBC, BoJ, BoE and PBoC over the past decade has ‘risen all boats’ when it comes to asset prices.
Whether great, mediocre, or horrible, the price of nearly every company/property/investment has been on a one-way 45-degree ramp upwards since global co-ordinated quantitative easing began in 2009.
And Wednesday’s announcement by the Fed simply shows that this game will continue, despite years of broken promises that it would instead ‘normalize’ (i.e., undo much of its past QE).
As a result, we live in a world where traditional price signals have become meaningless. Management turmoil? Missed earnings expectations? Regulators cracking down on your industry? None of it matters in a world of perpetual QE. As long as stimulus keeps flowing, everything heads in the same direction: UP.
All that matters is guessing what the small coterie of central bankers plan to do next. Will they tighten from here? Or ease? By how much? And for how long?
As a result, ‘investing’ is a dead science. Instead, we’ve all been forced to become speculators.
Meanwhile, extremely manipulable high frequency trading (HFT) algorithms dominate the daily price action. Stock prices now hyper-react instantly to every tweet and leak, which the media and the Trump administration now exploit to maximum advantage.
Seriously — and this is topic for a future lengthy exploration — those in favor of removing President Trump may have a better case to make for market manipulation as his impeachable offense. He’s been shoving market prices around on a daily basis for years now. And how are his tweets this week — one of which instantly sent the Dow skyrocketing 300 points on Thursday — not considered in flagrante delicto examples of painting the tape? (a prohibited form of manipulation in which the criminal ‘creates activity or rumors to drive up the price of a stock’):
Time To Pile Back Into The Market?
But making the (safe) assumption no one in power cares about our broken markets as long as they benefit from the status quo, where are prices more likely to go from here?
Two weeks ago, I argued that the only things that would save the bulls in the near term was new QE and a China deal. Now that the past 48 hours delivered on both counts, the outlook for the rest of 2019 is now substantially more complex to forecast.
Nearly all of the negative indicators we’ve been warning about still remain. The macro outlook still screams recession risk, corporate earnings are still forecast to disappoint, geopolitical strains remain unresolved, and the world’s oil supply chain looks even more vulnerable given today’s news that an Iranian oil tanker was struck by missiles in the Red Sea.
That said, Powell’s new $60 billion per month QE program (which he swears isn’t really QE) will surely have a stimulative impact on the system. Even if those funds don’t make it out into the economy directly, they will keep both good and bad banks solvent and thus keep credit flowing. That will help in keeping today’s zombie companies/jobs/buyback programs alive for the foreseeable future.
As for the China trade deal, honestly, who knows at the moment? Technically, what was announced today isn’t officially an agreement. And what was “agreed” to by the parties were the less-sensitive issues on the table.
Bloomberg controlled most of the information flow about today’s trade news, and this is how its own staff economists summarize today’s “progress”. Not exactly breathless optimism:
Yesterday I was watching a video of Yale History professor Timothy Snyder in which he states “It’s patently clear that some of the people who’re involved in current politics…are borrowing some of the tactics of the 1920s and 1930s.” That came hours after discussing another article comparing the political talk in the UK to the rhetoric of Joseph Goebbels. And look at today’s headlines: “Turkey begins offensive against US Ally in Syria”; “Fed worried about rising economic risks from trade war”; “EU offers ultimatum to Johnson on Brexit plan”; “India and China face off over Himalayan flashpoint”; and “Two Killed in Germany Shooting After Failed Attack on Synagogue.”
I published an in-depth report early in the year all about political populism. The key message was we are seeing echoes of the 1920s and 1930s in today’s politics because we echo the economics of the 1920s and 1930s. We had a debt-driven Gilded Age boom prior to 2008 analogous to the Roaring 20s – and then a colossal bust, analogous to 1929. Since then we have failed to work out how to deal with the debt overhang, or to co-ordinate a global recovery between countries (so all boats rise) and within countries (so all boats rise, not just yachts). We haven’t worked out how to ensure capital circulates sustainably internationally or domestically.
As a response, the “will of the people”, “us vs. them”, ‘walls over bridges’ are back: and, most worrying, now as then, for sound underlying reasons. People didn’t just slip into madness in the 1930s: as Arendt makes clear, if “normality” offers you are a raw deal, you will opt for an alternative. What is being sold via today’s populism may not be a solution: yet neither is the status quo ante. Indeed, we repeat our errors. For example, take the Fed, its history and its present.
You’ve heard about the US-China trade war, but how is communist China actually pushing a much broader offensive against the United States?
What exactly is the Chinese Communist Party’s doctrine of Unrestricted Warfare? And why did the American intelligence community and military fail to recognize this threat for so long?
How exactly has the Chinese regime been waging a “Stealth War” against the United States for decades, and what can be done right now to level the playing field?
This is American Thought Leaders ??, and I’m Jan Jekielek.
Today retired Air Force brigadier general Robert Spalding returns to American Thought Leaders ??. He was the chief China strategist for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, and a senior strategic planner for the White House on the National Security Council. Now, he’s a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
We discuss General Spalding’s new book “Stealth War: How China Took Over While America’s Elite Slept.” We discuss how the Chinese communist regime infiltrated and subverted the United States, using American money. We also explore how the Chinese regime has been incredibly effective at using disinformation and propaganda to control the narrative about itself, both domestically and abroad.
Many want to tell us that this episode is temporary… This is, like the inverted yield curve and the massive rise in negative-yielding bonds, the tip of a truly scary iceberg…
Is There A Ukrainian Armageddon Dead Ahead For Dems?
For three years now, Americans have been hearing the cry “no one is above the law.” Those who have been repeating that mantra – aimed at President Donald Trump – seem to feel, however, that they themselves truly are above the law. As the Democrats’ Ukraine scandal unfolds, this becomes harder to ignore.
Barack Obama
A common Democratic Party narrative has already been established. It is evident in relation to the case of Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, the supposedly hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) server, the 2016 Clinton campaign’s colluding with foreign powers to obtain compromising material on Trump, and now Joe Biden’s corrupt Ukraine racketeering. The narrative goes something like this: To investigate any of these matters – or to even suggest that any Democrat may have acted illegally – is not just un-American but a crime.
This brazenly despotic tactic – demonizing and criminalizing anyone who dares question one’s motives or the legality or morality of one’s actions – was established by the Obama administration. To this day, Obama and his faithful, cultlike followers claim that his time in the White House was scandal-free. Any objective study of his administration’s conduct shows that the opposite was true. In eight years, Obama may have racked up more scandals that any US president in history.
Suggest that anything the Obama administration did was corrupt or inappropriate, though, and one is met with howls of outrage and ridicule. People who dared to mention Solyndra, Benghazi, pallets of cash flown into Tehran in the dead of night, or the government’s dreadful Obamacare website designed by a company owned by an old college friend of Michelle Obama’s were labeled conspiracy theorists or worse.
Ukraine Cover-Up
The very same thing is now happening with regard to Joe Biden, the Clinton 2016 campaign, and Ukraine. The leftist news outlets are hard at work dismissing the entire affair as a right-wing conspiracy theory: Fabricated and debunked.
Joe Biden
Democrats and their media underlings are now furiously attempting to bury the entire Biden-DNC-Clinton-Ukraine web of corruption and complicity. Biden himself has even called upon the media to deny Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, the opportunity to speak about Ukraine. That fact in itself can only cause one to wonder what the Democratic Party’s 2020 frontrunner is afraid of.
Unfortunately for Trump’s detractors, hundreds of documents have come to light which corroborate everything the president and his political allies believed about Biden’s corruption and the Democrats’ attempts to conspire with foreign sources to influence the 2016 election.
The Incriminating Paper Trail
As a result of the investigative efforts of The Hill’s John Solomon – along with a Politico investigation and other media probes – the Democrats’ Ukraine narrative is rapidly falling apart. Neither Politico nor The Hill are known, exactly, for dabbling in right-wing conspiracy theories.
All roads lead to Ukraine, it seems. Not only Biden’s blatant abuse of his vice presidency but the Democrats’ soliciting from Ukraine opposition research on Trump and his political associates. The very birth of the Trump-Russia hoax itself originated from Ukrainian officials who in 2016 disseminated the rumors that Trump was in league with Ukraine’s enemy, Russia.
At this point, it is worth noting that Russia and Ukraine are still foes and remain at war. Russia’s aim remains nothing less than the annexation of its neighbor. It is somewhat amusing, then, to think that Democrats for three years claimed that Trump was possibly an agent of Russia and now they are accusing him of “colluding” with Russia’s regional adversary.
Documents out of Ukraine reveal a number of things highly damaging to Democrats and, in all likelihood, fatal for Biden’s presidential aspirations. They show that, in 2016, the Democratic National Committee dispatched a contractor, Alexandra Chalupa, to Ukraine in search of compromising material on Trump’s then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. This has been confirmed by Ukraine’s Washington Embassy. The aim, apparently, was to spark a congressional investigation right in the middle of the presidential campaign – a development that would have undoubtedly sabotaged Trump’s presidential chances.
In 2016, certain Ukrainian government officials worked to boost Clinton’s presidential campaign by, among other things, openly casting doubt upon Trump’s suitability for the White House and suggesting that he was, in effect, a puppet of the Russian government.
Other documents and statements by Ukrainian officials show that Victor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor who was fired after a threat from Biden to withhold over a billion dollars in loan guarantees to Ukraine, was indeed dismissed because he would not stand down his investigation into Burisma.
Burisma is the Ukrainian energy company that awarded a directorship to Biden’s son, Hunter, just weeks after then-President Barack Obama appointed his VP to be US point-man on Ukraine. Hunter Biden has no experience or qualifications for such a position, raising serious questions about why the company paid him some $50,000 a month.
Shokin stated in a deposition, under penalty of perjury, that he was told he was being fired because of his investigation into Burisma. Ukrainian officials and memos from Burisma’s American legal team indicate that everyone knew Shokin was fired over the Burisma investigation, contrary to what Biden Sr. has insisted.
There also exists documented evidence that congressional Democrats threatened Ukraine’s government, first to hand over information on Trump to then-special counsel Robert Mueller and, later, to not open a new investigation into the Bidens’ Ukrainian connections.
To deflect from all of this, Democrats engineered a phony story about Trump coercing Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky into providing damaging information on Biden, the president’s potential 2020 opponent. The story has been created with the help of an anonymous intelligence community source inventively described as a “whistleblower.”
Fatal Impeachment Blowback
While Democrats have launched an impeachment inquiry based upon the Trump-Ukraine allegation, they have put themselves in a precarious position. Impeachment is not something that can be rammed through Congress behind closed doors in the dark of night. At some point, the president’s political opponents will have to make impeachment proceedings official, giving Republicans – and the president’s legal counsel – the power to seek out exculpatory evidence and mount a defense.
At that point, the Democrats’ 2016 attempts to solicit the aid of a foreign power to influence the election – now corroborated by the Ukrainians – will become an unavoidable story. Biden’s influence-peddling will also be examined because a major part of Trump’s defense will be that his impeachment is, at least in part, a ploy to cover up the potentially illegal activities of the DNC and corruption within the Obama administration.
William Barr
As if the Ukraine situation were not bad enough for Democrats, they may also be concerned about what Attorney General William Barr and his point prosecutor, John Durham, are uncovering in their investigation into the genesis of the Trump-Russia investigation.
The identity of the so-called whistleblower and of the White House sources he or she claims to have will become known, also, if articles of impeachment are introduced. It is simply inconceivable that a president could be impeached based upon second-hand information provided by an anonymous source.
The Ukrainian quagmire could well prove to be the Democrats’ undoing in 2020. Almost certainly, it means the end of Joe Biden’s nomination chances. Of all Trump’s achievements in the three years he has been in office – for better or worse, depending on one’s political point of view – his most significant may be that he has managed to drive the Democrats and the left-wing media so insane with hatred that they continue to shoot themselves in the foot, over and over again.
The story is a familiar one: A large bank with a critical influence on the economy finds itself in a liquidity crunch and then its troubles soon drag down other big banks around the world with it……
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S. on Sept. 9, 2019. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)
I was instructed that if a client wished to sell futures I should simultaneously place both bids and offers with the intent of canceling the bids prior to execution…”
National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow speaks to reporters outside of the West Wing of the White House in Washington on Sept. 6, 2019.
US Economy Is ‘Now on the Upswing’ Despite the Fed and the Global Slump: Kudlow
Strong retail sales data signals a “big” economic growth in the third quarter, says White House economic adviser
Today I am going to explain why US gold and silver coin sales are irrelevant, though they are frequently reported by the US media as a weathervane for global gold and silver demand. Total 2018 sales of American Eagle gold coins sold by the U.S. Mint reached 245,500 ounces, the lowest on a year-over-year basis since 2007. Silver coin sales were 15.7 million ounces, also the lowest since 2007 on an annual basis, according to the U.S. Mint. Just 30,000 ounces of American Eagle platinum coins were sold during 2018. For those of you that follow me on social media, you know that I stated one should establish long positions in platinum after it breached the $865 an ounce mark, after which this price breakthrough happened and the price of platinum quickly soared to over $1,000 an ounce over the next six trading days. For the first seven months of 2019, the US mint reported that they sold 196,000 ounces of American Eagle gold coins, 11.262 million ounces of American Eagle silver coins, and only 40k ozs of platinum coins. Extrapolating the gold and silver ounces to a full year of sales would yield 336,000 AuOzs and 19.3M AgOzs. Though both are considerable increases over 2018 figures, these amounts still represent less than 0.001 troy ounces of gold and less than 0.059 troy ounces of silver per US citizen. To this, I say who cares? Why? The Western mainstream media always fawns over sales of physical gold and silver in the United States, and especially misrepresents the physical gold and silver market during times in the past several years when US gold and silver coin sales were in precipitous decline to imply that the gold and silver coin market is collapsing. Even during times of collapsing US gold and silver coins, despite the significant attention these headlines always generate, I say, “Who cares?” because these Western generated news articles always completely ignore the sales of physical gold and silver that happen in the rest of the world among the 7.371 billion citizens that live outside of the United States of America.
“No One Comes Back From This Uninjured” – Fiat Currency Endgame Looms
No One Comes Back From This Uninjured. In one word, the devaluation is set to ESCALATE.
In fact, I term it Competitive Devaluation. There are several countries that will be the pioneers of it, but it will eventually reach the United States of America. In Europe and in Japan, we are closer to seeing it happening; in the next 2-5 years, you’ll hear about governments’ first official plans to do this,
They will NOT alert the media to notify the public to own gold and silver. They haven’t thus far (and they won’t going forward, either), and meanwhile, they’ve been accumulating them at the fastest pace in more than half a century.
The central banks want to buy gold, uninterrupted. Since they do not buy silver, the mania that will ensue in that niche market will be huge.
Not just gold and silver stand to gain from devaluation; companies that are able to increase prices and not lose consumers will be great winners as well. These are the world-dominators with pricing power, and I will profile my top-5 holdings for the Endgame Decade (2020-2029) in a Special Report due to be published by September 30th.
Real estate prices in metropolitan areas will also continue to rise; these are hard assets that are difficult to increase in supply, but my analysis is that of the three – world-class companies, precious metals, and real estate, silver will be the BEST PERFORMER.
Courtesy: U.S. Global Investors
Central banks are not able to inflate the real debt levels away. The most extreme case of this is Japan, whose central bank has done ALMOST everything under the sun to relieve the country of its deflationary spiral and has failed miserably.
We are a few years from that because many countries have still not reached the negative-yield world. Trump’s entire argument is that the FED doesn’t need to have ammunition come next recession, because interest rates are never going higher again, so just slam the bid, shove the thing to ZERO, or lower and help monetize bonds.
That’s Trump’s attitude, and as bizarre as it sounds, it is becoming our way of life. Under this fiat monetary system, we are never going back to normalized rates; the path is Competitive Devaluation.
Debts will be written off, savings will become extinct and it’s all because our political systems, demographics projection, and growth curves do not align at all.
In the short-term, September will be a month of relief. The Treasury will be funded, the debt ceiling will be raised and dollar liquidity will be increased by the FED; they will lower rates with 100% uncertainty. Any other announcement and the markets will dive by 15%-20%, like in December.
A cyclist wears a protective face mask while riding along a dusty road where dozens of factories processing rare earths, iron, and coal operate on the outskirts of Baotou city in Inner Monglia, northwest China
US Needs Alternatives to China’s Rare Earth Monopoly
As the trade war goes on, China threatens to deprive the US of critical elements its economy and its military can’t do without
Amazon Chaos: “BlackRock Is Literally Reaping Profits As The World’s Jungles Burn”
According to a new report from the Friends of the Earth U.S.; Amazon Watch; and Profundo, Larry Fink’s BlackRock Inc is one of the top investors in companies “responsible for tropical forest destruction in the Amazon and around the world.”
The report called BlackRock’s Big Deforestation Problem, published on Amazon Watch’s website, claims BlackRock is the top three shareholders in 25 of the world’s biggest publicly traded deforestation-risk companies; these companies are known for producing soya, beef, palm oil, pulp and paper, rubber and timber, but also have a long track record in burning down forests to clear land for agriculture purposes. The New York-based investment bank is also a top ten shareholder in another 50 of the world’s top deforestation-risk companies, the report added.
“The data is clear: from the Amazon to the great forests of Africa and Southeast Asia, BlackRock is a global leader in financing forest destruction,” said Jeff Conant, senior international forest program manager with Friends of the Earth U.S., the report’s lead author.
“As long as this financial behemoth continues to unconditionally back the world’s most destructive agribusiness companies, the forests of the world, and consequently the climate and the rights of forest-dwelling people, will continue to go up in flames. BlackRock is literally reaping profits as the world’s jungles burn.”
Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), addresses the media following a meeting with the ECB’s council in Frankfurt, on Sept. 6. The European Central Bank has applied the concept of negative interest rates to money banks hold at the Central Bank. (Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images)
As the U.S.-China trade war deepens, it creates ripple effects throughout the world. Growth rates are falling in China and other economies from Asia to Europe. In response, central banks are cutting interest rates to stimulate economic activity and growth.
Pioneers of game theory and nuclear strategy
– notably Thomas Schelling and Herman Kahn – sought to turn Russell’s logic on its head, arguing that the alternative to playing the game of chicken was surrender, and that the way to win was to put on a blindfold or remove the steering wheel, signalling that swerving was not an option. But I am not sure how strong those arguments really were.
Today’s games of chicken, you may say, are for lower stakes. There are economic risks to a no-deal Brexit and to an all-out US–China trade war, but no one is about to launch nuclear missiles. That may explain why so many games of chicken are being played: even if nobody jumps or swerves, it’s not Armageddon.
There is, however, a possible exception to the rule, and that is the game of chicken being played by the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, with the planet itself. In defiance of climate science and educated opinion, he has rolled back environmental protections for the Amazon rainforest. The result is a vast conflagration.
Nothing could better illustrate the dilemma of the modern green movement in Europe and North America. All the efforts they expect their own governments and peoples to make will be ineffectual if Brazil — and, more importantly, India and China — brazenly increase their carbon dioxide and other emissions. Yet environmentalists shrink from the imperialist implication: if Brazil, India and China won’t mend their wicked ways, then they must be forced to do so.
Bolsonaro is not just playing chicken with the planet. He is playing chicken with an international system that, until now, assumed global warming could be halted by voluntary agreements between sovereign states. And he does not look like a jumper — or a swerver — to me.
Trump ended his Friday on the phone to Bolsonaro.
“Our future Trade prospects are very exciting and our relationship is strong,” he tweeted, “perhaps stronger than ever before. I told him if the United States can help with the Amazon Rainforest fires, we stand ready to assist!”
Fried chicken, anyone?
China’s Oil Imports From Venezuela Fell in July on US Sanctions
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (1st R), U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer (2nd R), and other U.S. officials meet with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He (1st L), Central Bank Governor Yi Gang (2nd L), and other Chinese officials in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 30, 2019. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Trump Says China Talks Coming, Beijing Calls for Trade War Resolution
August 26, 2019
BIARRITZ, France/BEIJING–The United States and China sought to ease trade war tensions on Aug. 26, with Beijing calling for calm and U.S. President Donald Trump predicting a deal after markets fell in response to new tariffs from both countries.
The European PMIs that were released earlier today beat forecasts. And it felt positively quaint when the euro and bund yields rose to their respective highs of the day. If that is all it takes to change the mood, then economists should be enlisted to keep low-balling any economic estimates. Algorithms can be forgiven for reacting to the prints. No human trader should have been doing anything else besides fading the move for better intraday trade location.
That’s harsh. But it reflects two realities.
The market fully expects central banks to be dovish.
And the market is relying on that fact for its investing thesis.
Yet deep down inside, investors worry, probably even know, that further monetary policy stimulus will be of dubious value in actually getting the global economy moving at a quicker pace. Expensive money is not what ails us.
Trading volumes remain, understandably, very low. Earlier in the week, that didn’t mean there weren’t things to be learned from the price action. Whatever today brings should probably be taken with a little bit more wariness. Traders have a tendency to talk themselves into all sorts of notions when the event they have been preparing for suddenly looms.
A few days ago, everyone was sure exactly what Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was going to say and what the central banks were going to do. Today will be about traders torturing themselves by questioning those assumptions. Whether they have been right or wrong in formulating their expectations, nothing in Wednesday’s Fed minutes nor this morning’s PMIs will change what ends up happening in September.
Having said that, the short end of the Treasury curve is probably right in being just a little bit more circumspect about pricing beyond next month. Emphasis on the word “just.” There has been a lot built into expectations that go well beyond data-dependence. And there are plenty of domestic and international challenges that are very much known unknowns. Some of which, it would seem, can change on a whim or political expediency.
Whatever path markets take to get there, they have confidently assumed that the central banks are very focused on asset prices and will try to maintain their buoyancy. That will get harder to accomplish over time. But timing is everything.
The euro is the most interesting currency trade of the day. It needs to start holding up for more than short bursts of time or risks taking a new look at year-to-date lows. I guess it will wait until after the G-7 to decide what it is going to do. But it is really just hanging on. It seems even more in play than the dollar, which refuses to break out higher but also doesn’t back off. It’s becoming a frustrating exercise to trade. The yen is also worth keeping a close eye on. It’s hard to find anyone who isn’t bullish on it, which raises the question, why isn’t USD/JPY lower? Maybe it, rather than the euro, will decide which way the dollar indexes end up going.
If looking for a canary in the coal mine, given all of the interest-rate assumptions that current market pricing is based on, watch gold.
If you’re frantically buying or selling stocks based on what the inversion and the subsequent uninversion of the yield curve is signalling, Jim Cramer has a message for you: Calm down.
‘Everything seems like a trap now. It was a trap to sell off the inverted, and now they have to go buy back on the uninverted. What happens if we get inverted again?’
That’s Cramer questioning the wisdom of traders who seem to be reacting to every headline popping up in the financial news cycle these days.
People look at products at the Huawei stall at the International Consumer Electronics Expo in Beijing, on Aug. 2, 2019. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)
MORRISTOWN, New Jersey—President Donald Trump on Aug. 18 said he did not want the United States to do business with China’s Huawei even as the administration weighs whether to extend a grace period for the company.
Reuters and other media outlets reported on Friday that the U.S. Commerce Department is expected to extend a reprieve given to Huawei Technologies that permits the Chinese firm to buy supplies from U.S. companies so that it can service existing customers.
The “temporary general license” will be extended for Huawei for 90 days, Reuters reported, citing two sources familiar with the situation.
On Sunday, Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One in New Jersey that he did not want to do business with Huawei for national security reasons.
“At this moment it looks much more like we’re not going to do business,” Trump said. “I don’t want to do business at all because it is a national security threat and I really believe that the media has covered it a little bit differently than that.”
He said there were small parts of Huawei’s business that could be exempted from a broader ban, but that it would be “very complicated.” He did not say whether his administration would extend the “temporary general license.”
Euro, Bond Yields Tumble As ECB Official Says Stimulus Measures “May Overshoot”
And the jawboning begins:
As Europe’s banking system collapses, ECB is resorting to over-promising more of the same and as ECB Governing Council member Olli Rehn said, the ECB “will announce a package of stimulus measures at its next policy meeting in September that should overshoot investors’ expectations.” More from Bloomberg:
“It’s important that we come up with a significant and impactful policy package in September,” ECB Governing Council member Olli Rehn (governor of Finland’s central bank) says in interview with Wall Street Journal.
“When you’re working with financial markets, it’s often better to overshoot than undershoot, and better to have a very strong package of policy measures than to tinker”
Bitcoin Back Below $10k As $3 Billion China Ponzi Allegedly Dumps Crypto
Bitcoin is back below $10,000 for the first since July (testing below $9500 intraday before rebounding)…
Source: Bloomberg
Yesterday saw a big dump across all cryptos…
Source: Bloomberg
The broad-based selling has created the worst three days for Bitcoin since Nov 2018, and while immediate catalysts are unclear (as HK tensions, ARG chaos, and China currency turmoil remain), CoinTelegraph’s Marie Huillet reports on one possible driver of the selling pressure.
Amid a downturn in the cryptocurrency markets, the apparent swathe of Bitcoin sell-offs from a $3 billion Chinese Ponzi scheme could be to blame.
On Aug. 14, Dovey Wan – founding partner of blockchain-based investment company Primitive Ventures – called attention to the ongoing mass sell-offs from the fraudulent Chinese investment scheme, dubbed PlusToken.
10 million investors scammed of $3 billion
As Wan outlines, PlusToken was created in mid-2018 and promised high yield investment returns at different rebate percentages to its four tiers of member — a classic Ponzi scheme structure. By early 2019, the project claimed to have over 10 million members.
Wan has attached data on all the wallet addresses — including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and EOS— known to be associated with PlusToken and urgently called on exchanges and over-the-counter platforms to blacklist them.
She notes that Chinese police hunted down a core team member of the scheme two months ago and have revealed that investors were scammed of a whopping $3 billion.
Alongside the addresses, Wan has attached investigative data from security audit firm Peckshield that reveals the money flow from PlusToken’s wallet as of early July, the date the sell-offs are thought to have begun:
Graph showing PlusToken’s money flow in early July. Source: Peckshield via @DoveyWan
Incessant sell-offs
Despite the arrest, the cryptocurrency cannot reportedly be rolled back, as Wan explains:
“Many of their BTC addresses are started with P2SH which commonly used for mutil-sig, most likely some ppl who hold the keys are not being caught hence police can’t unlock the wallet. For EOS/ETH wallet can be diff case but so far police was not able to touch any of those.”
In an attempt to curb the impact of the sell-offs, she has recommended that Peckshield and blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis analyze the flows more closely, noting that PlusToken appears to be moving their funds in small batches of 50-100 BTC into exchanges.
Chinese traders have reportedly claimed that an unknown address has in recent days been dumping 100 BTC incessantly on crypto exchange Binance, which Wan suspects to be connected to the scheme.
As just reported, the PlusToken scheme was identified as being the largest single incident of loss in a recent summary of 2019 crypto-related theft from blockchain security firm CipherTrace, having purportedly defrauded investors of $2.9 billion.
Rather than incoming polls or specific political maneuvers, going forward investors may want to center their attention on any hints about the broad contours of the economic agenda of a probable Fernandez-Kirchner administration.
Global Times Shows Dramatic Video Of Chinese Army Preparing For Hong Kong Invasion
“Rich Chinese are smart to diversify to developed Western countries. Poor Chinese go to backward countries to try to become wealthy. Africa is the prime recipient…”
The last few months have seen the Turkish Lira rallying, rebounding off record lows, despite nothing positive coming from that country… and now we may have a better idea of how this lift was achieved (or how investors were fooled).
One More Higher High In Gold, Then Down We Go – David Brady (26/07/2019)
By David Brady, CFA 7 days ago
July 26, 2019
Once again we are approaching another FOMC meeting, upon which we will learn whether Gold has already peaked or has one more higher high before doing so. Either way, it is only a matter of time before we get a significant reversal. Until then, unless 1385 is broken, I am only looking up for now.
We have enjoyed a $287 rally from 1167, a rise of 25% since August, and a $187 rally from 1267, a rise of 15% since May 2, to a high of 1454. These numbers will be even bigger if we have not seen the peak yet, but by then, a sizeable reversal will be overdue. We may have to wait until after the FOMC and a spike higher before such a reversal occurs.
The data is piling up against Gold here, just as it did in the opposite direction at the low last August, but it can become more extreme before it matters.
TECHNICALS
Daily
There is a bearish ending diagonal or flag playing out on the daily chart, allowing for one more higher high. A break of that flag to the downside will be first sign that a bigger drop is coming.
The RSI and MACDs are set-up for another negatively divergent higher high, assuming the high is not already in place.
Should Gold rise further, the RSI will become extreme overbought again while also being negatively divergent.
Lower lows occur below 1400 (bottom of E in ABCDE of wave 4) and 1385 in particular, confirming the beginning of the drop.
Seeing the 20D EMA break the 50D MA would also be a confirmation, but a delayed one.
Weekly
The RSI was beyond extreme overbought at its peak of 77 recently, its highest level since the August 2011 high. Each time the RSI was 70 or above in 2010-11, whether followed by a negative divergence or not, it soon led to a fall of over $100 next.
The weekly RSI was also negatively divergent at 1454 and is still extreme overbought at 74.
The MACD Histogram is coming off its highest level since April 2016, and the MACD Line from its highest since August 2016.
A weekly close below 1400 would likely signal the peak is in. The MACD Histogram crossing zero to the downside also.
FIBONACCI LEVELS – 1485 is the 50% Fib of the entire drop from 1923 to 1045. I expect this to be strong resistance, just like the 38.2% resistance was at 1377, and certainly not broken the first time around.
ELLIOTT WAVES
As with all Elliott wave analysis, there are several possible counts, but the common theme in all of these scenarios is that we’re going to get a sizeable pullback one way or the other soon. Possibly to ~1350, 1270, 1170, or even sub-1000, but the latter is a very low probability event, and only if 1167 is broken.
SENTIMENT is extremely bullish up here. There are very few bears left, which increases the likelihood of a major turn downward. I am a long-term bull, by the way, but I go where the data leads me in the short-term, and the signals are pointing south.
POSITIONING
Commercials hit their highest net short position since September 2016 recently. The Banks, since October 2016. One final spike higher in Gold could see them hit new record high short positions before the drop occurs. This would be a mirror image of their record long levels back in August 2018, and we all know what happened next.
Funds have increased their net long position by 228k contracts since April, a massive move, and now are close to 200k net long.More than sufficient for a peak to already be in place , but even more so if we do get one more pop before we drop.
INTER-MARKET ANALYSIS
USDCNH & XAUCNY
USDCNH remains stuck around 6.88. Could it be the calm before the storm? Could we see a spike higher on an escalation in the trade war? This would weigh on Gold in dollar terms.
XAUCNY tagged 10000 and retreated, as forecast, and is now hitting lower lows.
The daily RSI has reset to 54, so plenty of room for this to spike higher to a negatively divergent higher high and then dump.
The weekly RSI is coming off an extreme peak of 80 and is now down to 75. This is sufficient for a spike higher to establish that negative divergence before it dumps. Alternatively, the peak is already in.
TIPS / REAL RATES
Real Yields may have bottomed out, based on the 5-Year in particular.
Momentum higher is clearly failing in TIPS, but there is room for one more spike higher here too. (TIPS are basically the inverse of real yields).
A break of 114 would signal trouble.
The weekly chart is even more concerning.
The RSI and MACD Histogram are both negatively divergent here, and the RSI remains extreme overbought.
Perhaps even more importantly, the MACD Line is rolling over from extreme levels.
The ending diagonal is precarious, to say the least, as is the steepness of the rally. This is vulnerable to a violent break to the downside, which would likely weigh on Gold also.
FUNDAMENTALS
Once again, all eyes are on the Fed. The FOMC decision next week is pivotal.
Beyond the short-term, the return to ZIRP, possibly NIRP, QE, and ultimately MMT means Gold and Silver are going multiples higher once the dollar peaks and falls.
In the meantime, an escalation in the trade war could send USD/CNH through 7, coupled with a peak and drop in XAU/CNY at or above 10000 yuan, which would send Gold tumbling lower.
A stock market crash would be deflationary in the short term, and we could see a repeat of April-October 2008 sell-off in Gold ahead of the return to QE.
CONCLUSION
Technicals, Sentiment, Positioning, Elliott Waves, USDCNH & XAUCNY, and real yields all signal a peak in Gold is imminent, if it has not already occurred, but we may get one more spike higher before that happens. Wait for a break of support at 1400 or, more conservatively, 1385 for confirmation.
That said, unless 1167 is broken (and that’s a long way away) we’re still in a bull market, and the dips should be bought. At the same time, remain patient in doing so. No one wants to catch a falling knife.
Fed Lowers Interest Rates as Expected, Leaves Door Open to More Cuts
July 31, 2019
WASHINGTON—The Federal Reserve cut interest rates on July 31 for the first time since 2008, citing concerns about the global economy and muted U.S. inflation, and signaled a readiness to lower borrowing costs further if needed.
Financial markets had widely expected the quarter-percentage-point rate cut, which lowered the U.S. central bank’s benchmark overnight lending rate to a target range of 2.00 percent to 2.25 percent.
In a statement at the end of its latest two-day policy meeting, the Fed said it had decided to cut rates “in light of the implications of global developments for the economic outlook as well as muted inflation pressures.”
The Fed said it will “continue to monitor” how incoming information will affect the economy, adding that it “will act as appropriate to sustain” a record-long U.S. economic expansion.
The decision drew dissents from Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren and Kansas City Fed President Esther George who argued for leaving rates unchanged.
Both have raised doubts about a rate cut in the face of the current expansion, an unemployment rate that is near a 50-year-low, and robust household spending.
U.S. jobs report, China-U.S. trade talks jostle for attention
Bloomberg Economics’ guide to the world economy’s week ahead
‘Bloomberg Surveillance’ (07/29/2019)
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‘Bloomberg Surveillance’ (07/29/2019)
Economist Reinhart Says Fed Should Cut 50-Basis Points, Then Move On
Economist Reinhart Says Fed Should Cut 50-Basis Points, Then Move On
There will be no chance of a summer break for investors or policy makers in coming days as they brace for what might be the busiest week for the world economy this year.
The highlight is Wednesday’s decision by the Federal Reserve with markets and economists virtually united in predicting Chairman Jerome Powell and colleagues will cut interest rates for the first time in more than a decade.
What’s Likely to Happen?
Median probability assigned to potential outcomes
Some Fed watchers predict officials will cut their benchmark by half a percentage point, but the signal is that they will eschew a bigger move in favor of a quarter point reduction. They will likely also leave open the possibility of further action down the road as they seek to sustain the record-long U.S. expansion and kick start inflation.
“While the Fed cutting rates by a quarter point will hardly be a surprise to financial market participants — as it has been well advertised and is priced in with a relatively high probability — the broader question will be how the Fed telegraphs its intentions regarding additional easing,” said Carl Riccadonna, chief U.S. economist at Bloomberg Economics. “Policy makers are keen to avoid getting ‘bullied’ by the markets into more than 50 to 75 basis points of rate reductions.”
The Fed isn’t the only event with the ability to shape the outlook for the global economy this year.
On Monday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are set to travel to China for for the first high-level, face-to-face trade negotiations between the world’s two biggest economies since talks broke down in May.
Then on Friday, the monthly payrolls report will shed light on whether the Fed’s move was necessary. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg predict a 166,000 gain in non-farm jobs in July, slower than the 224,000 of June.
If that’s not enough, Bank of Japan policy makers meet on Tuesday amid calls to reinforce their commitment to low rates and Brazil’s central bank may cut rates on Wednesday. Thursday sees the release of global manufacturing data amid concerns many industries are already suffering recession.
Economist Reinhart Says Fed Should Cut 50-Basis Points, Then Move On.
There will be no chance of a summer break for investors or policy makers in coming days as they brace for what might be the busiest week for the world economy this year.
The highlight is Wednesday’s decision by the Federal Reserve with markets and economists virtually united in predicting Chairman Jerome Powell and colleagues will cut interest rates for the first time in more than a decade.
Median probability assigned to potential outcomes
Some Fed watchers predict officials will cut their benchmark by half a percentage point, but the signal is that they will eschew a bigger move in favor of a quarter point reduction. They will likely also leave open the possibility of further action down the road as they seek to sustain the record-long U.S. expansion and kick start inflation.
“While the Fed cutting rates by a quarter point will hardly be a surprise to financial market participants — as it has been well advertised and is priced in with a relatively high probability — the broader question will be how the Fed telegraphs its intentions regarding additional easing,” said Carl Riccadonna, chief U.S. economist at Bloomberg Economics. “Policy makers are keen to avoid getting ‘bullied’ by the markets into more than 50 to 75 basis points of rate reductions.”
The Fed isn’t the only event with the ability to shape the outlook for the global economy this year.
On Monday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are set to travel to China for for the first high-level, face-to-face trade negotiations between the world’s two biggest economies since talks broke down in May.
Then on Friday, the monthly payrolls report will shed light on whether the Fed’s move was necessary. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg predict a 166,000 gain in non-farm jobs in July, slower than the 224,000 of June.
If that’s not enough, Bank of Japan policy makers meet on Tuesday amid calls to reinforce their commitment to low rates and Brazil’s central bank may cut rates on Wednesday. Thursday sees the release of global manufacturing data amid concerns many industries are already suffering recession.
WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 14: U.S. President Donald Trump confers with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) while departing the U.S. Capitol following a St. Patrick’s Day celebration on March 14, 2019 in Washington, DC. Also pictured (L-R) are Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), and Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump announced on July 22 that the White House has reached a deal with Democratic and Republican leaders on a two-year budget, amounting to an against-the-odds victory for Washington pragmatists seeking to avoid politically dangerous tumult over fiscal deadlines.
“I am pleased to announce that a deal has been struck with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy – on a two-year Budget and Debt Ceiling, with no poison pills,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “This was a real compromise in order to give another big victory to our Great Military and Vets!”
Aides on both sides of the talks say the deal would restore the government’s ability to borrow to pay its bills into the next administration and build upon recent large budget gains for both the Pentagon and domestic agencies. It would mostly eliminate the risk of a repeat government shutdown this fall.
The agreement is on a broad outline for $1.37 trillion in agency spending next year and would represent a win for lawmakers eager to return Washington to a more predictable path amid political turmoil and polarization, defense hawks determined to cement big military increases, and Democrats seeking to protect domestic programs. Both sides view it as better than a protracted battle this fall that probably wouldn’t end up much differently.
It’s not often that job cuts in the City of London make the same sort of headlines as layoffs at a car plant in Swindon or a steelworks in Scunthorpe – so you know something’s up when the 18,000 job losses at Deutsche Bank hit the front pages of all the wrong newspapers.
The decision by Deutsche Bank to finally throw in the towel on its 25-year attempt to build a global investment bank to rival the Wall Street giants is a parable of the past 25 years in global banking. You might even say it was the moment that the full impact of the financial crisis finally sunk in for the industry, albeit perhaps 10 years too late.
Deutsche Bank will cut a fifth of its global workforce over the next three years, effectively shut down some businesses altogether, and significantly reduce the giant bond and derivatives trading business on which the entire Deutsche Bank project had been built. Perhaps a few thousand of the 8,000 or so staff at Deutsche Bank in the UK could be at risk. It can sometimes be hard to feel sorry for bankers, but for every one of them it will be a devastating personal blow.
WASHINGTON— The U.S. Senate on June 27 passed a $750-billion defense policy bill with provisions that target China on issues from technology transfers to the sale of synthetic opioids, pushing to counter growing Chinese influencearound the world.
Metals Bulls Need This Indicator To Turn Higher, To Confirm Recent Gold Rally!
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Corporations motivated by insatiable greed endanger us all and must be stopped before it’s too late, veteran journalist Chris Hedges told RT, warning that future generations will suffer immeasurably unless action is taken now.
Appearing on George Galloway’s political talk show ‘Sputnik’, Hedges decried how the “psychopaths” who run the world’s largest multinational corporations are “hurling us all over a cliff” in the pursuit of “short-term profit.”
We’re going to talk about the destruction of the ecosystem that sustains life. And [that’s] what is happening in the hands of the oligarchic elites in the fossil fuel industry – and let’s not forget the defense industry, the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses is the US military.
Asked by Galloway if their grandchildren will “have a world to live in,” Hedges offered a grim assessment:
“Not unless we – and I don’t use this word lightly – overthrow corporate power. Otherwise it’s very clear that these people will kill us.”
China continued its renewed (public) gold-buying spree in May adding almost 16 tons of the precious metal to its reserves – the biggest monthly increase since January 2016.
President Trump Is Confident Mexico Will ‘Try Very Hard’ to Enforce New Immigration Deal
President Donald Trump is optimistic about the new immigration deal reached between the United States and Mexico on …
Dollar dump? Russia & China agree to bilateral trade in national currencies during Putin-Xi meeting
Russia and China took another step away from the US dollar after the two countries agreed to develop bilateral trade using the ruble and the yuan.
It was just one of the major deals reached after the presidents of the two countries, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, held talks in Moscow on Wednesday.
“Russia and China intend to develop the practice of settlements in national currencies,” Putin told journalists at the news conference following the talks. He added that the states have signed intergovernmental agreements on expanding the use of the yuan and the ruble in bilateral financial operations.
A draft government decree on the national currencies trade was released earlier during the day. The document stipulates that Moscow and Beijing will cooperate on development of national payment systems, as well as facilitate cross-border payments in national and other currencies.
It was earlier reported that the deal is worth $1.7 billion and construction is scheduled to begin in October 2021 and August 2022.
In another major deal, inked following the high-level talks, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), China’s Alibaba, and Russia’s Mail.Ru Group agreed to invest a total of $382 million into an e-commerce joint venture. Alibaba Group is to provide some $100 million, while the rest will be funded by the Russian side.
“We expect that its activities will make a significant contribution to the development and implementation of the most advanced technologies and solutions for the development of the economies of our countries and the further strengthening of our partnership,” RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev said.
After the Moscow talks, presidents Putin and Xi Jinping will depart for St Petersburg to take part in Russia’s key annual business event. Dozens of multi-billion dollar deals related to energy, industry, and finance, are expected to be signed during the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, which runs from June 6 to June 8.
Venezuela Defaults On $750 Million Gold-Backed Swap With Deutsche Bank
Somewhere Hugo Chavez, who several years ago successfully repatriated much of Venezuela’s gold, is spinning in his grave.
It started in March, when Venezuela’s embattled leader Nicolas Maduro defaulted on a $1.1 billion gold-backed loan with Citi, in the process losing several tons of gold placed as collateral by Venezuela’s central bank after the deadline for repurchasing them expired. Now, Bloomberg reports that Venezuela has also defaulted on a gold swap agreement valued at $750 million with Deutsche Bank, prompting the German bank to seize the precious metal which was used as collateral, and close out the contract.
Maduro and a stack of 12 Kilogram gold ingots
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As part of a financing agreement signed in 2016 which we profiled here, Venezuela received a cash loan from Deutsche Bank and put up 20 tons of gold as collateral. The agreement, which was set to expire in 2021, was settled early due to missed interest payments as Venezuela has now effectively run out of foreign reserves.
It was the second time this year that the Maduro’s regime has failed to make good on financing agreements which have resulted in losses at a time when gold reserves are already at a record low. As we have noted previously, for example in “Venezuela Prepares To Liquidate Its Remaining Gold Holdings To Pay Coming Debt Maturities” Venezuela’s dwindling gold holdings had become one of Maduro’s last remaining sources of cash keeping his regime afloat and his military forces loyal. Before the central bank missed the abovementioned March deadline to buy back gold from Citigroup for nearly $1.1 billion, the Bank of England refused to give back $1.2 billion worth of Venezuelan gold.
Meanwhile, as Bloomberg reports, opposition leader Juan Guaido’s parallelgovernment has asked the bank to deposit $120 million into an account outside President Nicolas Maduro’s reach, which is the difference in price from when the gold was acquired to current levels.
“We’re in touch with Deutsche Bank to negotiate the terms under which the difference owed to the central bank will be paid to the legitimate government of Venezuela,” said Jose Ignacio Hernandez, Guaido’s U.S.-based attorney general. “Deutsche Bank can’t risk negotiating with the central bank’s illegitimate authorities,” particularly after it was sanctioned by the U.S. government, Hernandez said, even though the military has stubbornly refused to go along with the US attempted government coup, leaving the seized gold in limbo.
While insolvent Venezuela, which defaulted on its dollar-denominated bonds in 2017, is becoming increasingly cut off from the global financial network due to sanctions, it still managed to sell $570 million in gold last month, prompting total foreign reserves to tumble to a 29-year low of $7.9 billion.
Meanwhile, Venezuela has not only become a symbol of the destructive influence of socialism and associated hyperinflation, but a case study of how to obliterate the only real hard currency left when everything else is gone: the government managed to blow through more than 40% of Venezuela’s gold reserves last year, selling to firms in the United Arab Emirates and Turkey in a desperate bid to fund government programs and pay creditors.
This Cycle’s Most Dangerous Bubble, In Three Charts
One of the lessons of the past few decades’ boom/bust cycles is that each financial bubble emerges in a different asset class. In the 1970s it was precious metals, in the 1980s junk bonds, in the 1990s tech stocks and in the 2000s mortgage-backed bonds.
Today the only one of these with a reasonable chance of blowing up the economy is Big Tech, which is wildly overvalued by any historical measure.
But a better candidate for the title of most dangerous bubble is emerging: Corporate debt, specifically the “almost junk” portion of that market.
Let’s start with the ongoing surge in overall corporate borrowing, which as a percentage of GDP is now back to the high achieved during the Great Recession, and higher than before the previous two recessions:
But not all corporations are misbehaving. The clear and present danger is coming from BBB rated debt, which means low-rated borrowers that aren’t quite as dicey as actual junk borrowers. This category was less than $1 trillion in the 2000s housing bubble and has since about tripled.
Meanwhile, the terms of these loans are increasingly of the “covenant-lite” variety that don’t require companies to keep their finances within reasonable boundaries. This kind of bond is now 80% of the speculative-grade, or leveraged, loan market, up from just 6% in 2006.
American Soil Is Being Globalized: Nearly 30 Million Acres Of US Farmland Now Owned By Foreigners
All across America, U.S. farmland is being gobbled up by foreign interests. So when we refer to “the heartland of America”, the truth is that vast stretches of that “heartland” is now owned by foreigners, and most Americans have no idea that this is happening. These days, a lot of people are warning about the “globalization” of the world economy, but in reality our own soil is rapidly being “globalized”. When farms are locally owned, the revenue that those farms take in tends to stay in local communities. But with foreign-owned farms there is no guarantee that will happen. And while there is plenty of food to go around this is not a major concern, but what happens when a food crisis erupts and these foreign-owned farms just keep sending their produce out of the country? There are some very serious national security concerns here, and they really aren’t being addressed. Instead, the amount of farmland owned by foreigners just continues to increase with each passing year.
Exclusive: Purging Brazil of Socialism, an Ongoing Battle—Eduardo Bolsonaro
Stephen Gregory
PUBLISHER
March 2019 Updated: May 16,
The Epoch Times had the opportunity recently to sit down with Eduardo Bolsonaro, a congressman in Brazil and the son of Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, to discuss the situation in Brazil, on the occasion of his father’s state visit to the White House on March 19.
The Epoch Times: You have served two terms in Congress in Brazil, and in this last election, I understand you won in a huge landslide—you had more votes than any Brazilian congressperson has ever won?
Eduardo Bolsonaro: Yes. It was a surprise for us. We weren’t expecting that much, but it was historic. It says a lot about the moment that we are living in and not only in Brazil. If you look around in the whole region, you have other people with the same thinking, the same way as President Jair Bolsonaro, and as Trump, too. You look to Chile, you have [President] Sebastian Pinera; Colombia, [President] Ivan Duque [Márquez]; Paraguay, [President] Mario Abdo Benítez; [President Mauricio] Macri in Argentina.
So it’s not a movement about the extreme right, as the press usually sees that we are. It’s something that is natural and is a huge message that we don’t want socialism anymore
Global Investors Flee Chinese Stocks at Fastest Pace Since 2015
FRANKFURT, May 8 (Reuters) – Deutsche Bank faces a possible public rebuke from shareholders after two influential investor advisory groups urged them to issue a vote of no confidence in the lender’s management.
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The best performing metal this week was palladium, up 3.52 percent as CPM Group noted that the price could climb to $1,800 on supply constraints. Gold traders and analysts switched from bullish to mostly neutral or bearish on the yellow metal this week, according to the weekly Bloomberg survey.
Turkey’s gold reserves reversed this week by rising $227 million from the previous week. The central bank’s holdings are now worth $20.9 billion as of April 12, according to official figures. Kazakhstan also increased its gold holdings to 11.63 million ounces in March, up from 11.46 million in February. Mexico, too, raised gold reserves by 3.86 million ounces last month.
Bloomberg’s Cormac Mullen writes that currency traders should get ready for a big move in the dollar, if past periods of low volatility are a guide. Over the last 25 years, there have been three previous troughs in the JPMorgan Global FX Volatility Index, and each time the U.S. Dollar Index has moved around 10 percent over the subsequent six months, according to Bloomberg data. A weaker U.S. dollar has historically been positive for the gold price as the two trade inversely.
Jamie Dimon said capitalism was ‘the most successful economic system the world has ever seen’. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
The world’s most powerful banker has attacked socialism, saying it produces “stagnation, corruption and often worse”.
JP Morgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, took aim at socialism in his annual letter to shareholders, and warned it would be “a disaster for our country”.
Dimon, who was paid $31m last year as the head of America’s largest bank and who is estimated by Forbes to be worth $1.3bn, took his swipe as a new wave of left politics has emerged in the US.
Democratic socialism has been embraced by a new generation of politicians, including New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and supporters of Bernie Sanders, a longtime socialist now making a second bid for the presidency.
Dimon’s attack also comes as many leftwing Democrats, including Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren, have called for the breakup of big businesses and greater regulation of banking in particular.
In his letter, Dimon wrote: “When governments control companies, economic assets (companies, lenders and so on) over time are used to further political interests – leading to inefficient companies and markets, enormous favoritism and corruption.”
He went on: “Socialism inevitably produces stagnation, corruption and often worse – such as authoritarian government officials who often have an increasing ability to interfere with both the economy and individual lives – which they frequently do to maintain power. This would be as much a disaster for our country as it has been in the other places it’s been tried.”
Socialism is set to be one of the key issues of the 2020 election cycle. Donald Trump has already begun campaigning against socialism and used his State of the Union address to declare that “America will never be a socialist country.”
“It is absolutely obvious that a big chunk of [people] have been left behind,” Dimon said last month. “Forty percent of Americans make less than $15 an hour. Forty percent of Americans can’t afford a $400 bill, whether it’s medical or fixing their car. Fifteen percent of Americans make minimum wages, 70,000 die from opioids [annually].”
In his letter, Dimon acknowledged capitalism’s “flaws” but praised it as “the most successful economic system the world has ever seen”.
He wrote: “This is not to say that capitalism does not have flaws, that it isn’t leaving people behind and that it shouldn’t be improved. It’s essential to have a strong social safety net – and all countries should be striving for continuous improvement in regulations as well as social and welfare conditions.”
Hundreds of police swarmed the streets of Beijing’s financial district on August 6 as Chinese authorities aggressively quashed a planned protest against losses sustained by peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms. (GREG BAKER/AFP/Getty Images)
Another P2P Lending Crisis in China, 220,000 Investors Losing 14.5 Billion Yuan
One of China’s top peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms, tuandai.com, collapsed last week, resulting in financial losses for scores of Chinese investors. The platform owners Tang Jun and Zhang Lin surrendered themselves to police on March 27.
“Never say never, but it would take a massive shift in the appetite for risk assets globally for us to go retest the lows or make new lows for the crypto market now.”
April Gold’s tortuous slog toward an ‘easy’ rally target at 1332.00 warrants a closer look at the bearish case. For if the futures were to fall just $9 to the green line shown in the chart (click on inset), that would trip a theoretical sell signal to as low as 1255.90 — a 4.5% plunge from current levels. Although the bull trend begun last August from 1182 still dominates the daily chart, the A-B countertrend shown in the chart is sufficiently compelling to imply that a sharp correction may be imminent. The danger would be averted by a rally exceeding 1356. 80, where a small but technically significant peak was notched on the way down from 1400 last spring.
“The extraordinary stress currently seen in Turkey’s lira funding market may appear to be a niche issue, but the repercussions will be far-reaching…”
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Indy media starting to admit Adams was right: Crypto industry “riddled with con artists, scammers and fraud”
QuadrigaCX, which had been Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange prior to its sudden collapse, was seemingly a trustworthy storehouse of its customers’ crypto wallets – its CEO, Gerry Cotten, also a seeming humanitarian who, prior to his alleged “passing away,” was supposedly traveling in India where he was “opening an orphanage to provide a home and safe refuge for children in need.”
But many are asking serious and pertinent questions following the news that Cotten was allegedly the only person at QuadrigaCX who possessed the “keys” to the company’s crypto wallets, and that he somehow failed to share these keys with anyone else – even though he knew he was sick.
The official story is that Cotten let out his final breath after suffering “complications” associated with his “Crohn’s disease,” and that remaining employees at QuadrigaCX have had “no luck” gaining access to the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of crypto coins that are now supposedly inaccessible by anyone.
“Since his death, 115,000 customers of the exchange have been struggling with Mt. Gox-style ‘liquidity issues’ as those trying to withdraw their funds have suddenly found it extremely difficult – if not impossible – to do so successfully,” explains ZeroHedge.com.
Crypto General News
Binance has partnered with Israel-based payments processing firm Simplex to allow purchases with Visa and MasterCard. At launch, credit card purchases will be enabled for BTC, ETH, LTC and XRP – tradable against the 151 other tokens Binance offers.
Boerse Stuttgart Group, Germany’s second-largest stock exchange, has launched a mobile app for crypto trading after a year of development. The Bison app is available on iOS 9+ and Android 4.4+ devices in Germany, and allows users to trade in BTC, ETH, LTC and XRP and fund their accounts with euros – along with zero trading fees and a built-in wallet.
B2C2, an electronic OTC trading firm and crypto liquidity provider, has received the green light to offer crypto derivatives in the U.K. The FCA regulated firm will offer crypto contracts for difference (CFDs) for BTC, BCH, ETH, LTC and XRP.
Cboe has resubmitted its joint proposal with VanEck and SolidX after being withdrawn earlier this month due to the U.S. government shutdown.
Cottonwood Vending LLC is the latest company to receive New York’s coveted BitLicense and is now the third Bitcoin ATM operator to do so.
Fidelityannounced its crypto trading and custody platform is in its “final testing” phase. The release noted the company has on-boarded “a select set of eligible clients” already.
IBM has completed a trial of blockchain technology to track a shipment of 28 tons of mandarin oranges from China to Singapore. IBM created an electronic bill of lading, or e-BL, which sped up administrative processes “to just one second” along with reducing costs.
Prime Trust, the Nevada trust company, announced it has removed all fees for storing cryptocurrencies – in line with what it charges to custody stocks and bonds.
QuadrigaCX, the Canadian crypto exchange, is filing for protection from creditors, a step taken to avoid bankruptcy. QuadrigaCX has asked the Nova Scotia Supreme Court to appoint Ernst & Young (EY) to act as independent third party to oversee its proceedings.
Staked, a startup that provides institutional investors with the infrastructure for non-custodial staking, has received $4.5 million in a seed round led by Pantera Capital. Notably, a Bloomberg article published today suggests proof-of-stake (PoS) token investors have a unique option to survive the protracted crypto market slump: staking their holdings.
Ethereum$107.72 USD (0.17 percent) anticipated test net solution, Görli blockchain, launched today. Görli will function as the test network to initiate new validators, as part of “phase zero” – Prysmatic Labs test for Ethereum’s shift towards proof-of-stake (PoS).
Stellar’s$0.083537 USD (0.32 percent) micropayments startup SatoshiPay is partneringwith Axel Springer, a publishing house owning some of Europe’s largest newspapers.
Ripple$0.309756 USD (0.49 percent): SBI CEO Yoshitaka Kitao just gave a speech on the impact Ripple and R3 will have on international payments: “Swift have run out of options, Swift have given up on what they can do internally.”
America’s growing budget deficit, and surging debt issuance, has so far not been a major issue allowing the US to fund itself with relative ease. However, one look at the CBO’s long-term debt forecast, and the skies may turn cloudy fast.
Bitcoin is NOT decentralized: Just 1,000 accounts control 85% of all Bitcoins in the world… and they easily rig market swings to skim profits from the masses
A sizable number of formerly dormant Bitcoin wallets are mysteriously coming alive, new reports indicate – including the relatively small handful of Bitcoin wallets that collectively hold upwards of 85 percent of the world’s total Bitcoin supply.
Following the recent mega-decline in Bitcoin’s value, where the popular cryptocurrency dropped in value from around $20,000 per coin last year to around $3,500 per coin at present, many Bitcoin wallets that have been inactive for anywhere between six months to two-and-a-half years are suddenly “waking up” – which has investors projecting more wild price swings for Bitcoin in the near future.
It would appear as though Bitcoin’s earliest adopters, many of whom have been sitting on somewhat large amounts of the cryptocurrency and doing nothing with it, are suddenly getting in on the action. According to Flipside Crypto, the number of inactive Bitcoin accounts has plummeted from nearly four million back in September to well under three million as of this writing.
“The owners of some of bitcoin’s oldest accounts — many of which have long been dormant — have shown signs of life starting in October,” explains Zero Hedge, citing data recently published by Bloomberg about where Bitcoin could be headed now that the old dogs are starting to play the game.
“The actively-traded supply of bitcoins has risen 40% since last summer … This is important because a similar pattern preceded large price swings in 2015 and 2017, most recently foreshadowing the frenzy of (manipulation aided) buying that sent the price of a bitcoin to $20,000 briefly before prices cratered the following year.”
As rumors about a possible Deutsche Bank merger with rival troubled German lender Commerzbank continue to swirl despite the seemingly never-ending investigations into a suite of alleged misdeeds by the bank, Bloomberg has given would be merger arbs weighing whether to buy the German lender’s battered shares one more reason to hold off.
The goal of the Cultural Revolution isn’t to persuade, it’s to enforce compliance…
Bankruptcy is a when, not an if… Whether they realize it or not, they’re playing with nuclear warheads that could annihilate not just the French, but Europe’s and the entire world’s financial system…”
“[The] Russian government is about to make a step to start diversifying financial reserves into Bitcoin since Russia [is] forced by US sanctions to dump US Treasury bonds and [take] back US dollars,”
“…it will probably take more negative market action to prompt the Fed to stop even if it may have effectively paused as regards the prospects for more Fed rate hikes…”
Despite cost controls, increased efficiency, and higher activity offshore Norway, oil production at Western Europe’s largest oil producer fell in 2018 compared to 2017 and is further expected to drop this year to its lowest level since 1988.
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