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Traders are dumping equity protection and buting chaos protection as VIX tumbles near the year's lows and Gold jumps back towards its 100-day moving average – and its highest level in a month.
Gold is up 9 of the last 10 days, at its highest since early Dec and testing its 100DMA… ($1292)
And while Bitcoin has stabilized, the divergence between the alt-currencies is closing…
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Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,
The original question the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign was to answer was a simple one: Did he do it?
Did Trump, or officials with his knowledge, collude with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to hack the emails of John Podesta and the DNC, and leak the contents to damage Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump?
A year and a half into the investigation, and, still, no “collusion” has been found. Yet the investigation goes on, at the demand of the never-Trump media and Beltway establishment.
Hence, and understandably, suspicions have arisen.
Are the investigators after the truth, or are they after Trump?
Set aside the Trump-Putin conspiracy theory momentarily, and consider a rival explanation for what is going down here:
That, from the outset, Director James Comey and an FBI camarilla were determined to stop Trump and elect Hillary Clinton.
Having failed, they conspired to break Trump’s presidency, overturn his mandate and bring him down.
Essential to any such project was first to block any indictment of Hillary for transmitting national security secrets over her private email server. That first objective was achieved 18 months ago.
On July 5, 2016, Comey stepped before a stunned press corps to declare that, given the evidence gathered by the FBI, “no reasonable prosecutor” would indict Clinton. Therefore, that was the course he, Comey, was recommending.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch, compromised by her infamous 35-minute tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton — to discuss golf and grandkids — seconded Comey’s decision.
And so Hillary walked. Why is this suspicious?
First, whether or not to indict was a decision that belonged to the Department of Justice, not Jim Comey or the FBI. His preemption of Justice Department authority was astonishing.
Second, while Comey said in his statement that Hillary had been “extremely careless” with security secrets, in his first draft, Clinton was declared guilty of “gross negligence” — the precise language in the statute to justify indictment.
Who talked Comey into softening the language to look less than criminal? One man was FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whose wife, Jill, a Virginia state senate candidate, received a munificent PAC contribution of $474,000 from Clinton family friend and big bundler Terry McAuliffe.
Also urging Comey to soften the fatal phrase “gross negligence” was key FBI agent Peter Strzok. In text messages to his FBI lover Lisa Page, Strzok repeatedly vented his detestation of the “idiot” Trump.
After one meeting with “Andy” (McCabe), Strzok told Page an “insurance policy” was needed to keep Trump out of the White House.
Also, it appears Comey began drafting his exoneration statement of Hillary before the FBI had even interviewed her. And when the FBI did, Hillary was permitted to have her lawyers present.
One need not be a conspiracy nut to conclude the fix was in, and a pass for Hillary wired from the get-go. Comey, McCabe, Strzok were not going to recommend an indictment that would blow Hillary out of the water and let the Trump Tower crowd waltz into the White House.
Yet, if Special Counsel Robert Mueller cannot find any Trump collusion with the Kremlin to tilt the outcome of the 2016 election, his investigators might have another look at the Clinton campaign.
For there a Russian connection has been established.
Kremlin agents fabricated, faked, forged, or found the dirt on Trump that was passed to ex-British MI6 spy Christopher Steele, and wound up in his “dirty dossier” that was distributed to the mainstream media and the FBI to torpedo Trump.
And who hired Steele to tie Trump to Russia?
Fusion GPS, the oppo research outfit into which the DNC and Clinton campaign pumped millions through law firm Perkins Coie.
Let’s review the bidding.
The “dirty dossier,” a mixture of fabrications, falsehoods and half-truths, created to destroy Trump and make Hillary president, was the product of a British spy’s collusion with Kremlin agents.
In Dec. 26’s Washington Times, Rowan Scarborough writes that the FBI relied on this Kremlin-Steele dossier of allegations and lies to base their decision “to open a counterintelligence investigation (of Trump).” And press reports “cite the document’s disinformation in requests for court-approved wiretaps.”
If this is true, a critical questions arises:
Has the Mueller probe been so contaminated by anti-Trump bias and reliance on Kremlin fabrications that any indictment it brings will be suspect in the eyes of the American people?
Director Comey has been fired. FBI No. 2 McCabe is now being retired under a cloud. Mueller’s top FBI investigator, Peter Strzok, and lover Lisa, have been discharged. And Mueller is left to rely upon a passel of prosecutors whose common denominator appears to be that they loathe Trump and made contributions to Hillary.
Attorney General Bobby Kennedy had his “Get Hoffa Squad” to take down Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. J. Edgar Hoover had his vendetta against Dr. Martin Luther King.
Is history repeating itself — with the designated target of an elite FBI cabal being the President of the United States?
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New-, Existing-, and now Pending-Home Sales all beat expectations in November.
Pending sales just printed a surprise 0.2% gain (against expectations of a 0.4% drop) with a surge in Northeast offsetting a second monthly decline in sales in The West.
Notably, pending home sales in The West are down 2.3% YoY – the 10th monthly drop in YoY sales in a row…
What happens next? (After the tax reform changes)
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This is the highest level of confidence in the "present situation" since April 2001, but just as we saw in 2000 and 2007, the divergence between current confidence (high) and hope for the future (low) is becoming extreme…
The headline Conference Board Consumer Confidence print disappointed (dropping to 122.1 from 129.5, missing expectations of 128.0).
The 'miss' was driven by a huge tumble in "Expectations" which dropped from 113.3 to 99.1 – the lowest since Nov 2016.
This is one of the widest spreads between current and future expectations in history..
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[Editor’s Note: As we’re coming up on the end of the year, we thought it would be appropriate to republish some of our most popular articles. Today’s was originally published on December 9, 2016]
Did you know that until June 28, 2016, the song “Happy Birthday” was actually copyrighted material?
Yes, I’m serious. And I’m talking about THAT Happy Birthday, as in the song we all sing at birthday parties.
The original melody was written by two sisters, Patty and Mildred Hill, back in 1893. But instead of “Happy Birthday” they called it “Good Morning to All.”
The Happy Birthday lyrics started appearing in the early 1900s, and throughout the 20th century the song became popular to sing at birthdays.
Now, remember that a song– any song– is a form of intellectual property, just like a patent, manuscript, or software code.
And when you own intellectual property, other people have to pay you for the right to use it. These payments are typically known as royalties.
The Beatles’ song Yesterday, for example, was originally written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney in the early 1960s.
Yesterday is one of the most popular songs in history, and it’s been covered by more than 3,000 other artists, from Frank Sinatra to Daffy Duck.
But each of those 3,000+ artists had to pay a royalty to John Lennon and Paul McCartney for the rights to use the song.
Similarly, the owners of Happy Birthday were receiving royalties on their song as well.
If you ever saw Happy Birthday sung in a movie or TV show, the song’s owners got paid a royalty.
The last owner of the song, Warner/Chappell music, claims to have been receiving a whopping $2 million PER YEAR in royalties on Happy Birthday. Unbelievable.
Earlier this year a judge ruled that Happy Birthday is now officially in the ‘public domain’ and free for everyone to use.
But it’s interesting to think about an asset like that: there’s some up-front work involved in writing a song, and then you can collect royalty income for years. Decades.
That’s a hell of an asset to own.
Of course, most of us don’t have the musical talent to crank out a hit song that can produce royalties forever.
Fortunately, we don’t need to.
Artists can create intellectual property. But as investors, it’s possible for us to BUY it.
Just like Apple stock can change hands between buyers and sellers, intellectual property can also be bought and sold.
For example, big technology companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, etc. have purchased tens of thousands of patents from inventors and designers.
Songs are the same way.
Paul McCartney used to purchase the rights to other artists’ songs (including Buddy Holly).
McCartney even coached Michael Jackson about making the investments– and Jackson famously returned the favor in the 1980s by buying the rights to a number of Beatles songs.
Artists understand that a hit song, like any great intellectual property, can be a fantastic investment… a gift that keeps on giving.
But again, you don’t have to be a rock star to make an investment.
These days, a lot of artists are hesitant to sell their songwriter credits; they’ve heard too many boogeyman stories about other artists getting screwed.
But there is a unique type of investment where both the artist AND the investor get what they want.
It’s called an advance; it’s basically a loan that’s secured by the artist’s current or future royalties.
Rock stars will often get an advance when they sign a deal with a record label; it’s nothing more than a loan against the future earnings of the album.
Artists will also frequently seek an advance on their existing catalog of songs, backed by their royalty income.
So an artist that’s generating $1 million per year in royalties might get an advance for, say, $2-3 million.
The investor then receives ALL of the royalty income directly from the distributor until the loan is paid off.
Here’s the kicker– the interest rate on these loans is typically more than 25%!
Imagine getting a 25% return when your collateral is Yesterday, a song that has consistently generated millions of dollars in steady royalty income.
Unreal. The artist gets to keep the song. But investors are making out like bandits.
And it’s no wonder a handful of players in this space have been keeping the deals all to themselves.
But technology is now managing to upend this monopoly.
Some of my oldest and closest friends run an industry-leading website called RoyaltyExchange.com, which combines this royalty-backed advance loan with the Peer-to-Peer lending concept.
(Happily I became a shareholder in the business earlier this year.)
The website has brokered a number of major deals, from the Eurythmics to Barry White, in a way that allows individual investors to generate safe, substantial returns.
There’s more and more capital coming in to this type of asset, which pushes down the interest rates. But investors are still achieving yields of 9% to 13% on an annualized basis.
As with all things, this is definitely not for everyone.
But it’s a great example of the substantial investment opportunities that exist for people willing to look outside of the mainstream, made possible by industry-disrupting technology.
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On Tuesday, the city of Erie, Pennsylvania signed a declaration of disaster emergency, after a two-day storm dumped 5-feet of snow. Heavy lake-effect snow set record-setting snowfall totals in the snow belts to the east of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.
From 7 p.m. on Dec. 24 to 6:02 p.m. Dec. 26, Erie had received 60.0
inches of snow, which shattered numerous records for the region. Nearly
all of the snow fell on Monday and Tuesday.
AccuWeather Meteorologist Bill Deger said, “this is now the biggest two-day snow total on record for Pennsylvania, besting the old record of 44 inches, which was set in Morgantown from March 20-21, 1958.”
Dale Robinson, the county’s emergency management coordinator, said that the declaration will allow the National Guard to respond to the paralyzed region. Robinson adds the National Guard deployment is “really for precautionary measures for the additional amount of snow we think we’re going to get.”
Images posted on social networks showed a world covered in several feet of snow:
Erie, PA: One resident’s house is barely recognizable with over 5-feet of snow.
Erie, PA: Brave man dreams about baseball in the chest-high snow.
Erie, PA: Resident is trapped within the home upon opening the door to over 5-feet of snow.
Erie, PA: Handrailings are barely recognizable
Erie, PA: Erie News Now’s vehicles are not going anywhere. Sorry, no news today.
Erie, PA: Clearing a pathway through the front yard never looked so hard.
Erie, PA: One resident might have to file for disability after shoveling 5-feet of snow from their driveway.
As of Wednesday morning, NWS Cleveland reports additional snow will accumulate through the day with temperatures ranging from -5 and -10 degrees F. So far no sign of global warming…
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Some feel assets or charts have memories. If this is true, Tech bulls might be hoping that a certain level is forgotten!
The above chart looks at Tech ETF (XLK) on a monthly basis, since 1998. XLK peaked at the 2000 highs at (1), where a bearish reversal pattern (bearish wick) took place. This monthly pattern ended up being the monthly high before the ETF declined over 80%.
17-years later, XLK finds itself testing the 2000 highs again this month at (2). Tech bulls wish for the New Year… They want this level to be forgotten and see an upside breakout.
Tech bulls would get a caution message if selling pressure would start and support would give way at (2)!
Chart pattern analysis with brief commentary:
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Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
Independently-controlled cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin may or may not survive in the long run, but blockchain technology is definitely here to stay.
This technology has revolutionized how digital financial transactions are conducted, and it was only a matter of time before the big boys began to adopt it. Previously, I have written about how the Washington Post is hyping something known as ‘Fedcoin’, but Fedcoin does not yet exist.
However, a digital currency that uses blockchain technology that is called ‘Utility Settlement Coin’ is actually very real, and it is currently being jointly developed by four of the largest banking giants on the entire planet. The following was recently reported by Wolf Richter…
UBS, BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank, Santander, the market operator ICAP, and the startup Clearmatics formed an alliance in 2016 to explore the use of digital currency between financial institutions and central banks, using blockchain.
The ultimate goal of the project is to create a digital currency known as Utility Settlement Coin (USC), which will facilitate payment and settlement for institutional financial markets.
I decided that I had to know more about Utility Settlement Coin, and so I decided to go to the source.
This is what the official Deutsche Bank website says about Utility Settlement Coin…
USC is an asset-backed digital cash instrument implemented on distributed ledger technology for use within global institutional financial markets. USC is a series of cash assets, with a version for each of the major currencies (USD, EUR, GBP, CHF, etc.) and USC is convertible at parity with a bank deposit in the corresponding currency. USC is fully backed by cash assets held at a central bank. Spending a USC will be spending its paired real-world currency.
UBS and Clearmatics launched the concept in September 2015 to validate the potential benefits of USC for capital efficiency, settlement and systemic risk reduction in global financial markets. The project was initially incubated as part of the UBS Crypto 2.0 Pathfinder Program, UBS’s initiative for research and experimentation on blockchain.
This could ultimately turn out to be a complete and total gamechanger.
UBS, BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank and Santander are four of the biggest banks in the western world, and the fact that they are working on this project together is a sign that they are very serious about succeeding.
Will the general public still be willing to pay a huge premium for independently-controlled cryptocurrencies once the banksters start coming out with their own versions?
The cryptocurrency revolution is still in the very early stages, and nobody is exactly sure how it will end, but without a doubt the banksters will be a major player in this drama. If you doubt this, just consider what one of the top executives at UBS is saying about Utility Settlement Coin…
“Digital cash is a core component of a future financial market fabric based on blockchain technologies,” said Hyder Jaffrey, Head of Strategic Investment & FinTech Innovation at UBS Investment Bank.
“There are several digital cash models being explored across the Street. The Utility Settlement Coin is focused on facilitating a new model for digital central bank cash.“
Digital central bank cash?
I don’t like the sound of that at all.
We definitely do not want the banksters to co-opt this movement. Blockchain technology should be used to free humanity from debt-based central banking, but instead the exact opposite could end up happening.
If someday independently-controlled cryptocurrencies are completely banned or suffocated nearly out of existence by oppressive regulation, the way would be clear for the banksters to force everyone to use their own digital currencies. There are many nations around the world that have already gone nearly cashless, and the potential for tyranny in a cashless system where all digital currency is controlled by the banksters would be absolutely off the charts.
* * *
Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.
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After selecting Fed governor Jerome Powell to replace Janet Yellen as Fed Chair when her term expires in February, the Trump White House has now moved on to interviewing a series of candidates for the Vice Chair position. As the Wall Street Journal notes this morning, two of the more likely candidates for that role are a pair of economists who served in senior positions in the George W. Bush administration.
The pair being considered by Trump consists of Richard Clarida, a managing director at money manager Pimco and a professor of economics and international affairs at Columbia University, and Lawrence Lindsey, who runs an economic-advisory firm in Washington.
In addition to his current roles, Clarida served as assistant secretary for economic policy at the Bush Treasury Department from 2002 to 2003. Lindsey was a top economic adviser to the Bush White House from 2001 to 2002 and served as a governor on the Fed’s board from 1991 to 1997.
As further background, here is Clarida’s bio from PIMCO:
Dr. Clarida is a managing director in the New York office and PIMCO’s global strategic advisor. In this capacity he leads PIMCO’s annual Secular Forum process and works closely with the Investment Committee to assess and analyze global monetary and fiscal policy trends. Since joining the firm in 2006, he has worked extensively with and served as a trusted adviser to the firm’s many central bank and sovereign wealth fund clients. Prior to joining PIMCO, he gained extensive experience in Washington as assistant Treasury secretary, in academia as chairman of the economics department at Columbia University, and in the financial markets at Credit Suisse and Grossman Asset Management. He has 19 years of investment experience and holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He received his undergraduate degree with Bronze Tablet Honors from the University of Illinois.
And Lindsey’s bio from The Lindsey Group:
Larry Lindsey is President and Chief Executive Officer of The Lindsey Group. He has held leading positions in government, academia, and business. Prior to forming The Lindsey Group, he held the position of Assistant to the President and Director of the National Economic Council at the White House and was the chief economic adviser to candidate George W. Bush during the 2000 Presidential campaign.
Dr. Lindsey also served as a Governor of the Federal Reserve System from 1991 to 1997, as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Economic Policy during the first Bush Administration, and as Senior Staff Economist for Tax Policy at the Council of Economic Advisers during President Reagan’s first term. Dr. Lindsey served five years on the Economics faculty of Harvard University and held the Arthur F. Burns Chair for Economic Research at the American Enterprise Institute. From 1997 until 2001 he was Managing Director of Economic Strategies, a global consulting firm.
Dr. Lindsey earned his A.B. Magna Cum Laude from Bowdoin College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He was awarded the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award by the National Tax Association and named the Citicorp Wriston Fellow for Economic Research at the Manhattan Institute. He is the author of numerous articles and three books: The Growth Experiment, Economic Puppet Masters and What a President Should Know…but Most Learn Too Late.
In terms of policy preferences, Clarida has often spoken favorably in interviews about the accommodative monetary policies of Yellen. The Obama administration considered nominating Clarida to a vacant Fed seat in 2011, but he withdrew from consideration which ultimately resulted in Powell being chosen for the seat.
Lindsey, on the other hand, was one of the few to warn of a stock-market bubble in 1996 and said the Fed had an obligation to prevent the bubble from growing out of control…advice that someone should have given Janet Yellen about a year ago.
In terms of other candidates, the Trump administration is also considering Mohamed El-Erian, the former chief executive of Pimco and a former deputy director of the International Monetary Fund. El-Erian is also considered by many Fed watchers to be a potential candidate to lead the New York Fed, which will name a new president next year.
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