Perusing the last issue of the Economist, I noted that among advanced economies, only Greece (180 bps), Spain (87 bps), Australia (133 bps), South Korea (112 bps) and Chile (108 bps) had larger declines in the ten year yields than the US (81 bps). Of these, one could argue Greece and Spain declines were attributable […]

This book is perhaps the best general overview of its chosen subject area.  One part I enjoyed were the discussions of how much the Balkans once had numerous transport hubs for Europe, Belgrade being one but not the only example: Thessaloniki was among the cities that experienced an economic boom.  The city was home to […]

Or so it seems to me, here is the headline: Washington state waterfront owners asked to take dead whales Here is part of the story: At least one Washington state waterfront landowner has said yes to a request to allow dead gray whales to decompose on their property. So many gray whale carcasses have washed […]

Iran says it has summoned the British ambassador over the weekend after the UK publicly came out in support of the White House assessment pinpointing Iranian forces behind last Thursday’s two tanker attacks in the Gulf of Oman.  Last Friday Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the attacks were “almost certainly” carried out by Tehran. Hunt […]

Authored by Paul Gottfried via The American Conservative, The old S-word bugaboo has surfaced again but the real threat comes from globalism and social progressivism… At a dinner in his New Jersey home to which John O’Sullivan and I had both been invited, former president Richard Nixon posed the question: “What is politics?” My response […]

There is a crisis in America. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 19.7 million children, more than 1 in 4, live without a father in the home. Consequently, there is a “father factor” in nearly all of the societal ills facing America today. Research shows when a child is raised in a father-absent home, he […]

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com, The New York Times has published an anonymously sourced report titled “U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid” about the “placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before” which could potentially “plunge Russia into darkness or […]

First in Poland it was the proposed “Fort Trump,” but now in Israel it is “Trump Heights”. In a breaking story that had us doing a double take just to assure it is indeed real, a new Israeli settlement in the occupied Golan Heights has been named ‘Trump Heights’ in honor Trump’s deeply controversial decision to recognize […]

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the President who did most of his campaigning traveling in his own private branded commercial airliner has plans to revamp Air Force One. And that’s exactly what President Donald Trump is doing, according to Bloomberg. Trump unveiled a new paint job for Air Force One on ABC […]

To anyone expecting a major breakthrough at the June 28-29 Osaka G-20 meeting, Wilbur Ross has a simple message: “Don’t.” Speaking to the WSJ, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross sharply played down prospects of a “major” trade deal if President Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping meet at the Group of 20 summit in Japan […]

Via SharylAttkisson.com, A horrifying practice is happening in China: dissidents in prison are being killed for their organs. That’s according to Steven W. Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, who writes about the practice in an article published the New York Post. Mosher documents a graphic and terrifying account from Zheng Qiaozhi, once an […]

China, the rising power of the world, has seen one of its most popular drone companies step into the education market with a new robot that teaches children robotics, coding, and warfare. DJI, the world’s largest drone maker, has branched out from its traditional Phantom and Mavic drones to an entirely new land-based robot called […]

Source: Mother Jones So last week, merely in passing, I tweeted that “Things are often better than you think, and with a little luck, maybe they might go your way,” Perhaps, people were being too pessimistic in general. That led to a few interesting emails and DMs, which eventually sent me hunting for some more […]

Authored by Nouriel Roubini via Project Syndicate, Across the advanced economies, monetary and fiscal policymakers lack the tools needed to respond to another major downturn and financial crisis. Worse, while the world no longer needs to worry about a hawkish US Federal Reserve strangling growth, it now has an even bigger problem on its hands. […]

Unicorns are real, and they’re stampeding

The recent surge in bitcoin, and the entire cryptocurrency space accelerated over the weekend, coinciding with the latest massive protest in Hong Kong which may be among the catalysts for the aggressive buying, and sending bitcoin above $9,000 for the first time since May 10, 2018, a price that is almost triple where bitcoin traded […]

Authored by Elijah Magnier, Middle East based chief international war correspondent for Al Rai Media Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo conveyed a message from US President Donald Trump to the Iranian leadership, asking the release of 5 US prisoners and inviting Iran to sit around a negotiation table, adding “he [Donald Trump] would be ready to suspend all […]

The transcript from this week’s MIB: Jonathan Stein, founder and CEO of Betterment, is below. You can stream/download the full conversation, including the podcast extras on Apple iTunes, Bloomberg, Overcast, and Stitcher. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite host sites can be found here. ~~~ This is Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio. BARRY RITHOLTZ, […]

It’s been known for some time that the US Government based its conclusion that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on a report by cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, which the DNC paid over a million dollars to conduct forensic analysis and other work on servers they refused to hand over to the FBI.  CrowdStrike’s report made […]

Authored by Tom Luongo, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has a term of endearment for Iran’s enemies, “The B-Team.” The “B-Team” consists of U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton, Israeli Prime Minister (nee Dictator) Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and the UAE’s Mohammed bin Zayed. When we look seriously at the attacks […]

By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She is currently writing a book about textile artisans. About half of the world’s coral reefs have disappeared since 1980. These ecosystems may collapse entirely as early as 2050 – absent significant progress in mitigating climate change, independently protecting reefs, or […]

Despite City Executive Carrie Lam’s major concession to the protest movement – that is, the (not really) ‘indefinite’ suspension of the extradition bill that catalyzed the protests – a planned protest march went ahead as scheduled on Sunday, marking the second consecutive Sunday of street protests in Hong Kong. Though they celebrated the defeat of […]

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, Review & Update This week I want to step back and talk about some misconceptions with concerning markets, cycles, and investing. However, before we get to that, let me give you a quick review and update on where we are following the “sellable rally,” we have discussed over the last couple […]

From Mrs. Bird, wife of Senator Bird, from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin: “Well; but it is true that they have been passing a law forbidding people to give meat and drink to those poor colored folk that come along?  I heard they were talking of some such law, but I didn’t think any […]

The Russian embassy in Syria has slammed CBS News for sending its reporters into Idlib province, which is controlled by the al-Qaeda group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), at a moment of a stepped up joint Russian-Syrian aerial assault campaign over the northwestern territory.  Over the weekend the embassy tweeted of the CBS team’s reporting from […]

Authored by Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com, Two more tankers were attacked near the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday morning  (6/13/19) in the Gulf of Oman, and if hostilities advance we could be facing a ‘black swan’ event. One that changes everything, and divides the world into ‘before’ and ‘after’ periods. A lot of us are […]

Right now, millennials represent the largest single consumer group in the United States: they number 83.1 million and they represent a full quarter of the US population. When it comes to corporations targeting consumers, millennials are at the top of the list for those obvious reasons, according to a new article by Adweek. But now, […]

by Calculated Risk on 6/16/2019 08:20:00 AM

Chief of Naval Operations lauds return to tradition of ‘false flag’ operations Duffelblog Target’s computer systems reportedly went down nationally, prompting long lines and confusion MarketWatch ‘Software engineering’ was a joke until the mission to the Moon made it the future Fast Company Hackers behind the world’s deadliest code are probing US power firms MIT […]

By Justin Mikulka, a freelance writer, audio and video producer living in Trumansburg, NY. Originally published at DeSmog Blog On June 6, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) announced that the company Energy Transport Solutions LLC had applied for a special permit to transport liquefied natural gas (LNG) in unit trains 100 cars long and […]

With Zimbabwe’s economy in shambles and political tensions rising, leaving the country seems the best option for many who are desperate for jobs. But those dreams often end at the passport office, which doesn’t have enough foreign currency to import proper paper and ink. A passport now takes no less than a year to be […]

That is my essay in the new NBER volume The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda, edited by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb.  Here is one excerpt from my piece: These distribution effects [from more powerful AI] may be less egalitarian if hardware rather than software is the constraint for the next generation […]

Authored by Jake Johnson and Jon Queally via Common Dreams If there were any lingering hopes that the corporate media learned from its role in perpetuating the lies that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and would never again help start a Middle East war on the basis of false or flimsy evidence, the headlines that […]

Colorado has passed another major marijuana milestone, surpassing $1 billion in state revenue since it legalized the drug in 2014. Source: Colorado.gov Up to May of this year, Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes that the state has seen more than $6 billion in total marijuana sales since the industry was given the green light. You will find […]

Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation, Generally, when discussing air-defense systems here, we are referring to Russian devices that have become famous in recent years, in particular the S-300 (and its variants) and the S-400. Their deployment in Syria has slowed down the ability of such advanced air forces as those of […]

The latest Cushman & Wakefield commercial real estate report shows demand for US industrial space collapsed 60% on year in 1Q19, reflecting the global synchronized decline and the deepening trade war. Cushman & Wakefield’s economists warned President Trump’s trade war is unraveling complex supply chains around the world that have led to a slump in […]

As discussed earlier, and as both Bank of America and JPM explained, the biggest risk for the market next week is if the Fed not only doesn’t cut – the market assigns a very low probability to such a “pre-emptive” move – but fails to signal an aggressive dovish reversal in the form of a […]

Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.  Remembering Martin Feldstein June 13, 2019 — Here in Cambridge, we are reeling from the passing of Martin Feldstein on Tuesday.  He was tremendously influential both […]

Total credit card debt among American consumers jumped 29% since 2015, reaching a whopping $807 billion in 1Q19, according to the latest Experian data. In the past year, as the economy cycles down, overall credit card debt rose 6%. More than 60% of Americans used credit cards for basic purchases in 1Q19. That’s an 11% […]

Authored by Walter Williams, op-ed via Townhall.com, We are living in a time of increasing domestic tension. Some of it stems from the presidency of Donald Trump. Another part of it is various advocacy groups on both sides of the political spectrum demanding one cause or another. But nearly totally ignored is how growing government […]

As the boom in mortgage applications and refinancing activity last week would suggest, the return of interest rates toward multi-year lows this year is helping to pump more froth into the already bubblicious American housing market. But while somebody will inevitably be left holding the bag when the bubble bursts, for now, at least, the […]

With arguably the most important two weeks of the year looming, on Friday Bank of America’s Chief Investment Officer, Michael Harnett, laid out a 2-by-2 matrix summarizing the four possible scenarios that could result from the Fed’s announcement next week, and the G-20 meeting on June 28-29, where there is a chance (if minuscule) that […]

Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com, It’s been well over a year since the then-United States Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis accused Russia and China of being “revisionist powers” each working its way toward making a power grab on the world stage and announced that the U.S. would be shifting its international relations focus away […]

What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Own Business Culture.  It is the best book on business culture in recent memory, here is one bit: When Tom Coughlin coached the New York Giants, from 2004 to 2015, the media went crazy over a shocking rule he set: “If you are on […]

Tax payments for big businesses are declining much faster than was initially anticipated due to Republican tax cuts, according to Politico. As we profiled earlier this year, this could provide significant ammunition for Democrats who are calling for corporate tax increases as a staple of many 2020 platforms. The US Treasury says that they saw […]

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The American Institute for Economic Research, Facebook changed the way we communicate, interact, and gather information. You don’t have to love all the results. But the reality of the shift in our lives is undeniable. Will Facebook’s new initiative to create a cryptocurrency do the same for money and payment […]

Amid fears that the US is running headlong into yet another sure to be disastrous war in the Middle East, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told reporters Friday that the Pentagon is prepping “contingency plans” should things quickly escalate militarily. “When you look at the situation… 15 percent of the world’s oil flows through the Strait […]

Authored by EconomicPrism’s MN Gordon, annotated by Acting-Man’s Pater Tenebrarum, A Loose Relationship The Dow Jones Industrial Average made another concerted run at the elusive 27,000 milestone over the last several weeks.  But, as of this writing, the index has stalled out short of this psychosomatic barrier.  By our estimation, this is for the best. Since early […]

A Tesla driver appeared to be “fully sleeping for at least 30 miles” while barreling down a Southern California freeway, according to NBC. A passenger alongside of the vehicle, Shawn Miladinovich, began taking video when he noticed that the driver was passed out, and that he had something “tied to the steering wheel” that the report assumes […]