Category: zerohedge

For the first time in history, the price of Bitcoin has surpassed $13,000 (rising from $12,000 in less than a day).

 

For those keeping track, this is how long it has taken the cryptocurrency to cross the key psychological levels:

• $0000 – $1000: 1789 days
• $1000- $2000: 1271 days
• $2000- $3000: 23 days
• $3000- $4000: 62 days
• $4000- $5000: 61 days
• $5000- $6000: 8 days
• $6000- $7000: 13 days
• $7000- $8000: 14 days
• $8000- $9000: 9 days
• $9000-$10000: 2 days
• $10000-$11000: 1 day
• $11000-$12000: 6 days
• $12,000-$13,000: <1 day!

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

This pushes Bitcoin's market cap to around $220 billion (above that of Citigroup) as the market cap of the entire cryptocurrency space is now bigger than JPMorgan.

While no specific catalyst is clear, we note two headlines that stood out:

Tokyo Financial Exchange to Begin Planning for BTC Futures

The Tokyo Financial Exchange, one of Japan’s leading financial exchanges, has announced that they will begin preparations for Bitcoin futures offerings at the beginning of 2018. The company boasts some high value trading partners like JP Morgan Chase and Barclays.

The announcement suggests that the exchange will build a working group to study cryptocurrencies and the potential for futures this January. The working group is the first step toward final action and is generally a strong signal for adoption, since it preceded legislation for approval. According to the CEO Shozo Ohta:

“Once the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act recognizes cryptocurrencies as financial products, we will list the futures as quickly as possible. To achieve that, we will launch this working group to study various aspects, including Bitcoin’s present status, its outlook, and what form it will take root in Japan’s society.”

The announcement falls in line with Japan’s previous moves toward adoption of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The country was one of the first to recognize Bitcoin as a legal payment method, and has been open to increasing changes. At present, Japan is the world’s largest Bitcoin market, with about half of all Bitcoin trades globally being denominated in yen.

JPMorgan Switches Tact, Backs Bitcoin as New Gold

After Jamie Dimon drew a line in the sand for JPMorgan, calling it a ‘fraud,’ the company has once again stepped over that line, praising the digital coin as a ‘new gold.’ Analysts at JPMorgan believe that Bitcoin has changed its shape and that it could soon be joining gold as a reliable, long-term way to store wealth. Recent growth and recent changes have seen Bitcoin lean more towards being digital gold, and this is where JPMorgan see its value.

“Potential to elevate cryptocurrencies to an emerging asset class”

According to JPMorgan analyst Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, the incredible spike in the value of Bitcoin is allowing it to start competing as an asset class; and seemingly at the same time drop out of the currency race.

There are changes afoot in the Bitcoin market, especially when it comes to making the digital currency easier to invest in. Panigirtzoglou said:

“The prospective launch of Bitcoin futures contracts by established exchanges, in particular, has the potential to add legitimacy and thus increase the appeal of the cryptocurrency market to both retail and institutional investors.”

However, amid all the exuberance in bitcoin's incessant rise, RT reports that another question about the safety of cryptocurrency transactions was raised this Wednesday.

Clients of a major Las Vegas bitcoin exchange Bittrex say they can’t withdraw their money and the company doesn’t explain why. The clients of Bittrex, which processes about $1 billion of cryptocurrency payments per day, are angry about the delays, Business Insider reports. They claim to have verification problems but get close to no feedback from Bittrex about the situation.

The company admitted to "significant delays" in handling the issues, but said they affected only "a small percentage of our overall user base."

New identification procedures are being implemented to comply with the US anti-fraud banking regulations.

One of Bittrex users, who asked the media to call him only by his middle name, commented on the problem.

“Bittrex has two levels of verification. Basic Verification, which I completed, but it said it could not find any public record to match what I entered. Then [it] gives you the option to submit what they call Enhanced Verification where you have to submit Gov ID, Passport, Selfie, etc. I, in turn, did this, but that one also failed, saying 'Name Mismatch Error.' To top it off, they do not provide any settings page to correctly make the name change if [there] truly is a name mismatch,” he said.

 

“The next step is for you to submit a support ticket, which I then completed. My support ticket was opened on November 6 with not a single response from anyone at Bitrrex. This is going on for almost 30 days now. I updated the ticket many times to no avail," he added.

Another user complained that when he made the deposit, no verification was required.

But it seems that is not stopping investors. As Ron Paul explains money arose via market transactions, and precious metals have served as money for thousands of years. Then government, for its own reasons, monopolized the creation of money. It has been a disaster ever since. Competing currencies, without government intrusion, will clean up this mess. Is Bitcoin a step in the right direction?

We leave it to Alan Greenspan to sum up the ironic ignorance of the status quo:

"…you cannot tell me that you can create out of nothing something has a medium orf exchange value…"

via http://ift.tt/2BHWtO5 Tyler Durden

Via The Daily Bell

Don’t you hate when so much extra wealth is added to society, that the economy tanks?

Wait, what?

Yes, that is what The Daily Star says would happen if an asteroid made up of nickel and iron was harvested and brought back to Earth. They claim the asteroid’s materials are worth $10,000 quadrillion.

This would be enough to cause the world’s economy – worth $73.7 trillion – to collapse altogether.

They don’t bother to explain why these extra resources would sink the economy.

But let me try to interpret their economic illiteracy.

They could be under the impression that money and resources are the same thing. If that amount of fiat dollars were added to the economy, it would certainly cause the economy to crumble. Hyperinflation would be so severe that money would be worthless. Metrics of wealth would be wiped out. The economy would have to start fresh, depending on actual resources, as opposed to financial accounting tricks.

Previous work you did, represented by saved dollars, would be eliminated. It would be like current Venezuela, except much worse. To account for the influx of purchasing power, without any corresponding increase in the supply of goods to be purchased, prices would have to rise dramatically. But before prices had a chance to settle, the global supply of goods would be wiped clean, purchased by rapidly inflating dollars. Either that or people would realize that having the material resource is more valuable than having the worthless money. Either way, you wouldn’t be able to buy necessities.

But people don’t use iron, or really even nickel as currencies. They use them as materials in manufacturing.

If the asteroid were made up of gold, The Daily Star’s prediction of economic turmoil might be slightly more accurate. That is because gold is historically accepted as a currency and a store of value. Flooding the gold market would have a similar effect as flooding the market with cash. Gold stores would become worthless, and the value stored in gold would be lost.

But even then, gold has a material value, even if most of that value is based on scarcity. If the asteroid were made up of gold, it would upset the economy by removing the scarcity value from gold. But whatever the actual value of gold as a material for creating goods would be added to the economy.

It would just be very bad for anyone who currently stores value (such as the reward for previous labor, services, or goods) in gold, because the value of their savings would be extremely diluted. That is because the current value of gold is based more on scarcity than the actual usefulness of the metal.

But people don’t tend to store their value in iron and nickel. Surely iron and nickel mines and suppliers would be cast into turmoil. But that would hardly have the devastating effect on the economy that The Daily Star predicts.

There would actually be more useful materials for manufacturing. The cost of products that use nickel or iron would be drastically reduced. You would basically be paying only for the labor of processing the materials into a usable form–the materials themselves would be so abundant that their cost would be negligible.

But how exactly would this sink the world economy? By making useful products cheaper? By decreasing the cost of raw manufacturing materials?

Any decrease in jobs in the iron and nickel supply sector would likely be made by an increase of jobs in the nickel and iron manufacturing industry. Cheaper iron and nickel products would increase demand for those products, and new applications for the cheap metals would abound.

Adding material resource wealth to the economy is not a bad thing. Often, the main cost of goods comes from the manufacturing process anyway, not the raw materials. People would still be employed processing the materials into usable products.

I know The Daily Star is really just tabloid trash. But still, people see something on a media outlet and believe it.

The media is just helping to dumb down the masses. No one is supposed to do any critical thinking for themselves. You are just supposed to repeat what you hear on the news.

“No, man, I heard that adding all those resources to our planet would totally, like, sink our economy. We gotta keep the resource scarcity going, for the sake of humanity, bruh.”

Of course, this is all probably a joke by the elites. The asteroid is named Psyche. It’s all in our minds.

They are just trying to psych us out. Nice try media.

via http://ift.tt/2nAbRtK TDB

Authored by Jacob Hornberger via Ther Future of Freedom Foundation,

The New York Times recently carried an interesting article on the wedding-cake controversy that is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. The article pointed out that prominent lawyers who specialize in First Amendment cases are “vexed” by the controversy.

The facts of the case are simple: A Colorado bakeshop refused to create a wedding cake for a gay couple. The state charged the baker with unlawful discrimination. Those vexed lawyers are having trouble deciding whether the baker has a First Amendment right to refuse to create a wedding cake for the gay couple. Some of them say yes and some say no.

Floyd Abrams, who the Times calls the nation’s most prominent First Amendment lawyer, at first leaned toward the baker, repelled by the notion that the state could require him to create some sort of artistic rendering that violated his conscience. But then he started leaning the other way, asking “Could a painter invite the public to his gallery at which he painted portraits of them for a fee but refused to paint black people?” Abrams finally came down on the side of the gay couple.

 

Eugene Volokh, who the Times describes as a “leading First Amendment scholar,” sided with the gay couple as well. While photographers and painters have the First Amendment right to decide which commissions to take, Volokh says, it’s different with bakers. A chef cannot claim a free speech right not to serve people at his restaurant, he said, no matter how beautiful his dishes look.

 

Ilya Shapiro, a lawyer with the Cato Institute, said that writers, singers, actors, and painters are entitled to First Amendment protection but not caterers and limousine drivers. Bakers, he said, are a close call because they are “close to the line.” Shapiro has sided with the baker.

The legal controversy vexing all these great legal minds is a classic example of what happens when the courts compromise (i.e., abandon) the principles of freedom. When that happens, it produces situations where lawyers are “vexed” and end up doing their best to pound square legal pegs into round legal holes.

The fact is that the wedding cake controversy has nothing to do with free speech. Instead, the issue is all about private property and the right to discriminate.

Let’s start with a simple example: the owner of a home.

I think everyone would agree that he has the right to decide who comes into his home.

 

He’s the owner, after all.

 

That’s part of what private ownership is all about — the right to exclude others from coming onto his property.

 

Suppose the homeowner throws a party in which he excludes blacks, Jews, immigrants, and poor people.

 

All of his 100 invited guests are rich white Americans.

Are there any First Amendment issues here? Would those lawyers in the wedding- cake controversy be vexed over whether the homeowner has the right to discriminate? Would they say that the issue turns on how “creative” the party is?

Of course not. Free speech and the First Amendment wouldn’t even enter the picture. Under principles of private property and liberty, the homeowner has the right to discriminate. If the state were to force him to invite blacks, Jews, immigrants, and poor people to his party, there is no way that he could be considered to be a free person. Freedom necessarily entails the right of the homeowner to discriminate on any grounds he wants when it comes to who enters onto his property.

The same principle applies to a person’s business. It’s his business. It’s his private property. He has just as much right to discriminate here as he does with his home.

Thus, by applying that principle, the wedding-cake controversy disintegrates. Bakers have the right to bake a cake for whomever they want and for whatever reason they want. It might well be that they hate blacks, Jews, immigrants, and poor people. Motive doesn’t matter. What matters is that under principles of liberty and private property, private business owners have as much right to discriminate as private homeowners.

By the same token, consumers have the right to boycott the business that is discriminating against others and to advocate that other people boycott it as well. That’s how the free market deals with businesses that people perceive are wrongfully discriminating against others. It nudges them to change their position through loss of sales revenues rather than force them to do so with the power of a government gun.

The problem, however, is that long ago the U.S. Supreme Court held that when people open their businesses to the public, everything changes. The Court held that when business owners do that, they subject themselves to governmental control, including state anti-discrimination laws.

But that’s ridiculous. Why should the fact that a person is selling privately owned things to others cause the principles of liberty and private property to be compromised or abandoned? Why shouldn’t the business owner still be free to discriminate in determining who enters his privately owned business and to whom he sells his private property?

By abandoning those principles of liberty and private property, it has naturally left lawyers vexed on how to resolve the wedding-cake dispute. It has left them relying on the First Amendment to come up with entirely subjective and arbitrary conclusions that have no consistent underlying legal principle undergirding them.

Does the baker have a legal duty to sell his artistic designs to everyone? Does he have the legal right to refrain from selling his artistic designs to certain classes of people? Is a cake an artistic design? Is it like a painting? Is the owner of a painting required to make the sale of his painting open to everyone, like at a public auction? How about the owner of a cake?

Do you see how ludicrous all this is? And it’s all because many decades ago the courts abandoned the principle that liberty and private property necessarily entail the right of freedom of association, which necessarily entails the right to discriminate. If they hadn’t abandoned that principle, there wouldn’t be a wedding-cake controversy before the Supreme Court, and Americans would a less controlled and regulated by the state than they are today.

via http://ift.tt/2iucMGD Tyler Durden

 The Time for Action in Gold is Near

an update of previous post entitled : 'Gold is in a Bear Leg..with an $1800 Target' | Zero Hedge

The death of hope enables freedom to be responsible for your own actions. Hope is merely the flip side of denial. Be prepared or blame the gods for your misery. 

Originally posted By Soren K. Group on marketslant.com

Yesterday we posted an article noting the Trump Trade’s birth  was responsible in part for the 2016 EOY swoon. We also noted that the tax bill was a likely reignition of that trump trade and warned that gold could succumb to it. We also noted that of yet “gold was hanging tough”. Trump Trade in stocks and Gold (post tax bill momentum on right). Charts here 

Stocks post election and during the tax bill process:

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Gold during the same periods before yesterday:

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Kiss of Death

Yesterday killed that potentially. Markets seemed to discount even more the Tax Bill ratification. 

Our prescience is not a happy event as far as ours do position goes, but it does make all the more real our story last week called “Gold is on a Bear Trend with a $1700 Target”  

So here we are and new things are now on our radar.Blame the Tax bill if you like.  But an actionable  decision will be upon gold traders/ investors soon. 

Here’s where we stand now:

If you have interest in either buying gold or selling what you have the time is now to prepare for the conditions that will trigger your decision to buy, add, sell, or short Gold. We have been saying that the macro buy signal put us into a long position. We have also said repeatedly we are swing-trading from the short side looking to reassess what action to take should certain levels be penetrated on the downside or upside.

Those levels are dynamic but center on the following areas:

1- Fund Finder MA- which has Gold as a long with 6-12 month holding period provided it does not settle below xxx at end of (now) December

This got us long last month. Chart here 

http://ift.tt/2tJEa8s…);”>?

 

2- VBS- our proprietary momentum signal used primarily for short term and swing trading is setting up for a much longer term volatility e passion should we go below $1193 or above $1336. It alone does not suggest direction on trigger. It does reliably foretell expedited movement is coming soon when triggered.Chart here 

http://ift.tt/2tJEa8s…);”>?

3- Moor Analytics– Major Trend Lines with which we are not intimate but a respected analyst is, have been pointed out by Michael Moor. His work, independent of ours recently called for a large bull move higher over a 9-12 month period provided certain lows held. 

“The break ( and sustaining) above here projects this upward $172 minimum, $491 (+) maximum—the maximum to be attained likely within 9-12 months.”

This independently corroborated both our macro reason and VBS alert should gold trigger one. Now, after the previous day's sell-off, he gives an early cause for concern in our own systems. Simply put; Michael’s lows did not hold. See chart below. Accurate, not precise as we are drawing from the road

http://ift.tt/2tJEa8s…);”> ?

 

Currently:

According to Michael, Gold has broken a strong formation that underpinned Weekly support.This he says, puts the Gold bull-call on hold but does not negate it. 

The formation being broken to him indicates a further 19 to 97 dollar drop is on the menu for gold. The only thing that negates this would be strong activity above $1274 on a weekly basis that lead us up to $1300 quickly. This would then reignite the Macro Bull scenario of $1400 to $1800 he reported last month. 

 

Take-Away:

Essentially one can say be short below $1274 on the weekly and flat to long above it depending on your risk, time frame and tolerance for volatility. Or like us, you can stay long macro with an exit on a December settlement below $1282 and continue to day trade from the short side hoping to lessen your macro cost basis while keeping your finger on the pulse come the real event like if a major dip or re-rally would occur. Whether those are buy orsell decisions depends on the individual.

 

To that we’d add:

The VBS says there will be volatility below $1192. We’d like to be in a position to buy physical averaging down if that happens. To do that we’d have to be out (or have hedged) our macro longs long before then. 

Which way gold goes if $1192 is touched is not known, but a decision should be made to buy or sell, or as we may likely do, buy straddles or hedged put spreads the “secret weapon of the Bull”. Just have your levels now and do not hope for divine intervention as the intro quote stated

Original article HERE

Good Luck

via http://ift.tt/2kqBQCL Vince Lanci

While you were sleeping, the stock and bonds of a relatively unknown company in the US, but is a household name in much of the rest of the world, Steinhoff International Holdings NV, plunged after its chief executive officer resigned amid accounting irregularities, with the company announcing that it was indefinitely delaying the release of its results, citing a criminal and tax investigation in Germany that dates back to 2015, rocking a company that’s rapidly expanded from its roots in South Africa into a retail empire spanning Australia, Europe and the U.S.

As Bloomberg reported, the owner of the France-based Conforama furniture chain, Mattress Firm in the U.S. and Poundland in the U.K. and which employs 130,000 people worldwide, said late Tuesday that CEO Markus Jooste quit as it appointed auditor PwC to probe the matter. Prosecutors have said they’re looking into contracts valued in triple-digit millions of euros that appeared to have been conducted with third parties but may have actually involved different units within the company. The company said in August that “no evidence exists” that Steinhoff broke Germany’s commercial laws. It also said a report in Manager-Magazin that Jooste is among employees being investigated by German prosecutors contained information that was “wrong or misleading.”

Snarkily summarizing the scandalous events involving the aggressive acquiror, Bloomberg said “Retailers Can Forget About Being Bought by Steinhoff Now.”

While the back story behind this sprawling scandal – much of which has to do with South Africa’s culture of corporate corruption – and the company’s sudden implosion is fascinating…

The findings mark a striking turnabout for billionaire Chairman Christo Wiese, South Africa’s fourth-richest man and Steinhoff’s biggest shareholder, who’s taking over the CEO role on an interim basis. Since he bought into the company in 2014, he’s accelerated an acquisition drive alongside long-term ally Jooste. In addition to purchases like the U.K.’s Bensons for Beds, the company has made plays for appliance chain Darty in France and household-goods retailer Argos in Britain.

 

As recently as Nov. 3, Wiese bought 2 million Steinhoff shares at more than three times the price at which they were trading in Johannesburg on Wednesday. That deal alone has cost the chairman 87.7 million rand ($6.4 million). In October, Steinhoff bought back 78 million shares, a deal handled by Johannesburg-based PSJ Capital Pty Ltd. Jooste also resigned as a non-executive director of PSG.

 

Wiese had a net worth of $4.3 billion as of Tuesday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He and Jooste, 56, both own properties in the scenic wine country around Cape Town, alongside other notable South African businessmen including Whitey Basson, who ran retailer Shoprite Holdings Ltd. for 37 years until earlier this year.

…. it’s what happened to the company’s publicly traded securities that was just as interesting, and could have far greater implications.

In kneejerk response to the news, Steinhoff’s stock slumped as much as 72% Wednesday in Frankfurt, wiping out more than €7 billion ($8.3 billion) in value, before closing 64% lower at €1.08 euros. The stock closed at €5.075 on its first day of trading in the German city in December 2015, when the company moved its primary listing from Johannesburg.

But it is what happened to the company’s bonds that mattered most: Steinhoff International debt plunged, with €800 million of senior unsecured bonds due in 2025 falling as much as 41 cents on the euro, to 42 cents, before rebounding modestly. What makes the collapse remarkable is that the notes were issued just six months ago, in July, and have a Baa3 investment-grade rating from Moody’s Investors Service.

But the real punchline is who was one of the bond buyers: this guy.

That’s right: the ECB has emerged as the most prominent, if not so proud, owner of Steinhoff 2025 bonds as a cursory look of the ECB’s latest holdings (courtesy of UBS) reveals:

An ECB official confirmed, telling Bloomberg that the central bank owns “some” of the January 2025 bonds, declining to elaborate on the size of the holding (although it is limited to 70% of the total issue size). As Bloomberg notes, the ECB bought into the 800 million-euro Steinhoff Europe AG bond in July, the same month the note was issued. It is also distinctly possible that the ECB bought the bonds directly from Steinhoff, bypassing the secondary market directly and monetizing what would soon be “half off” paper.

The Steinhoff notes are among the about 129 billion euros ($152 billion) of corporate debt bought by the ECB since June 2016 as part of efforts to “spur the euro-zone economy”. Little did the ECB know that one of its purchases would soon become its most prominent land mine.

While the central bank has limited its risk by only acquiring investment-grade notes, this will be cold comfort now. Incidentally, this reminds us of a question we asked on March 10, 2016, the day the ECB announced its CSPP program: “It is unclear what happens to those IG bonds that the ECB has purchased if and when they get downgraded to junk” which is precisely what is about to happen to Steinhoff bonds.

Furthermore, while there’s no obligation for bonds to be sold if they’re downgraded to junk, according to published guidelines, it is especially unclear what happens if – or rather when in the case of Steinhoff – a company whose bonds the ECB has bought files for bankruptcy, and the debt becomes equitized: this would force the ECB to hold equity in a post-reorganized company, something the ECB has no mandate for. What happens then?

For now, Moody’s rates the Steinoff 1.875% notes Baa3, its lowest investment grade. The bonds will soon be downgraded to junk.

Meanwhile, the ECB’s monetization of all European debt continues apace, and as of last Friday, the ECB held over 40% of Europe’s GDP on its balance sheet.

And while the chart above is the main reason why credit spreads have never been tighter and corporate bond yields, lower, it is also the potential time bomb that threatens to crush up the ECB’s credibility once more Steinhoff grenades blow up. And blow up they will: according to the latest breakdown of ECB holdings by UBS, the central bank now owns 26 “fallen angel”-equivalent bonds with a junk, or BB+ rating, amounting to €18 billion in notional debt.

 

via http://ift.tt/2Aef4oG Tyler Durden

From the Slope of Hope blog: On my crowded bookshelf of history texts is one book called Dot Con, which recounts the build-up to, and the bursting of, the Internet bubble. I hadn’t read this book in many years, but I pulled it from the shelf yesterday to thumb through it, since we seem to be living in identical times right now (although with a far more pervasive and much, much bigger, bubble). Here’s one quote I typed in for your reading pleasure. You’re welcome.

“All speculative bubbles go through four stages, each with its own internal logic. The first stage, which is sometimes referred to as the displacement, starts when something changes people’s expectations about the future…….a few well-informed souls try to cash in on the displacement by investing in the new vehicle of speculation, but most investors stay on the sidelines.

The early investors make extremely high returns, and this attracts the attention of others. Next comes the boom stage, when prices are rising sharply and skepticism gives way to greed. The sight of easy money being made lures people into the market, which keeps prices rising, which, in turn, attracts more investors. Eventually, those upstanding citizens who haven’t’ joined in the festivities feel left out. Not just left out. They feel like fools…..

Boom passes into euphoria. Established rules of investing, and often mere common sense, are dispensed with. Prices lose all connection with reality. Investors know this situation can’t last forever, and they vie to cash in before the bubble bursts……a larger and larger group of people seeks to become rich without a real understanding of the processes involved. Not surprisingly, swindlers and catchpenny schemes flourish. Finally, inevitably, comes the bust. Sometimes there is clear reason for the break; sometimes, the market implodes of its own accord. Either way, prices plummet, speculators and companies go bankrupt, and the economy heads into recession. A few months later, everybody looks back in amazement, asking, ‘How did that happen?'”

Sound like anything that might be going on right now?

Since so many years have passed, some of us have forgotten how insane the Internet bubble was, and how optimistic people were about the future. Take note: “The epic stage of the Internet bubble lasted from October 1998 to April 2000. During that period, more than 300 Internet firms did IPOs.” President Clinton declared the national debt would be paid off by the year 2015 (excuse me for just a moment: HA! BWA HA HA! OH MY GOD! BWA HA HA HA HAHHHHH! HAAAAAAA!!!!!!!)

Dot Con also adds this hilarious anecdote “On Sunday, January 30, 2000, Super Bowl XXXIV took place….dotcom companies had sent the cost of a thirty second Super Bowl spot to about $2 million. Seventeen Internet advertisers paid that price, including Computer.com, Epidemic.com, Onmoney.com, Lifeminders.com, kForce.com, and Ourbeginning.com”.

OK, have you heard of ANY of those companies? And yet they were so loaded with venture capital funds, they were able to pay for insanely expensive advertising. I decided to look at these URLs, out of curiosity more than anything else. Here’s what I found:

Computer.com – a really boring site based in Wyoming with articles about technology.

Onmoney.com – doesn’t even load.

Lifeminders.com – a few junk ads. A parked domain.

kForce.com – actually seems to have survived. Still never heard of ’em.

Ourbeginning.com – looks like the domain was taken over by a children’s pre-school.

And as for Epidemic.com………..

Everything that’s going on right now — from the sky-high equity market, to the President’s endless tweeting about record asset values, and the madder-than-a-hatter activity going on with cryptocurrencies, seems to me like a jumping-up-and-down market of bubbles. For safety’s sake, every person with a pulse (including Jim Cramer) has offered up the limp phrase, “This will end badly someday”, more as a verbal insurance policy than anyone else, but their words say one thing and their actions another.

I believe it’s going to end badly someday too. What’s different about my opinion is that I think that “day” is extraordinarily close, if not immediate. Want to see the future? Just hop over to epidemic.com and find it.

via http://ift.tt/2AYORKu Tim Knight from Slope of Hope

Amid threats, promises, and outrage across most of the middle-east, President Trump will announce this afternoon that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, but will sign a waiver delaying the relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to there for 6 months.

Note that Trump is not the first US president to promise to move the US embassy to Jerusalem.

The process of moving the embassy could take years and puts the U.S. in compliance with Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995. Each president since the act’s passage has signed a waiver every six months while in office, keeping the embassy in the city of Tel-Aviv for national security concerns.

 

Former President Bill Clinton made Jerusalem a campaign issue in 1992, attacking then-former President George H.W. Bush for having allegedly “repeatedly challenged Israel’s sovereignty over a united Jerusalem” and vowing to move the embassy during his administration.

 

Clinton, however, believed moving the embassy and recognizing the capital may derail his many attempts at brokering a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians.

 

The cycle appeared to repeat itself once again during the 2000 U.S. presidential election when former President George W. Bush castigated Clinton for failing to follow through on his embassy promise and vowing to get the process started in his few months in office. Bush never made a concerted effort towards moving the embassy and became embroiled his own Middle East conflicts.

 

Former President Barack Obama himself never attacked Bush or Clinton for not moving the embassy to Jerusalem but declared in a 2008 campaign speech, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

 

The Obama administration similarly never pursued a serious effort at moving or declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel formally, even taking a case all the way to the supreme court to block American citizens born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their place of birth.

Trump's decision to unilaterally recognize Jerusalem upends decades of American policy in the Middle East and risks inflaming violence in an already-tense region.

And already is…

The Turkish government’s spokesman on Wednesday said that the United States’ decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will plunge the region and the world into “a fire with no end in sight”.

“Declaring Jerusalem a capital is disregarding history and the truths in the region, it is a big injustice/cruelty, shortsightedness, foolishness/madness, it is plunging the region and the world into a fire with no end in sight,” Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Twitter. “I call on everyone to act logically, respect the agreements they signed and behave reasonably, avoid risking world peace for domestic politics or other reasons,” he said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the “whole world is against” Trump’s move. He says that moving the embassy to Jerusalem would be a “grave mistake” and would “not bring any stability, peace but rather chaos and instability.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would be a “red line” for Muslims and “a big blow to the conscience of humanity.” The leader of NATO ally Turkey warned that the US taking such a step would force Ankara to sever diplomatic ties with the Jewish state. Erdogan has called for an emergency summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation on December 13 to discuss the possibility of Jerusalem becoming Israel’s capital.

The Council of the League of Arab States released a statement calling the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital an act of “open aggression” against “the rights of the Palestinian people and all Muslims and Christians.”

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has also blasted Washington's decision to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem as a display of incompetence. "That they claim they want to announce Quds as the capital of occupied Palestine is because of their incompetence and failure," Khamenei said, using the Arabic name for Jerusalem.

The Syrian government also weighed in on the planned move. "[The move] is the culmination of the crime of usurping Palestine and displacing the Palestinian people," a Foreign Ministry official told state news agency SANA.

On Tuesday, Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem were spotted burning photographs of Donald Trump and holding signs reading “Move the embassy to your country, not ours,” and “Jerusalem, Palestine's heart, is not up to negotiations.”

Palestinian protesters burn Trump pictures in Bethlehem on December 5, 2017

* * *

President Trump's announcement is due to start at 1300ET:

The declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital carries deep symbolic significance and could have dangerous consequences. The competing claims to east Jerusalem, the section of the city captured by Israel in 1967, have frequently boiled over into deadly violence over the years. East Jerusalem is home to the city’s most sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites, as well as its 330,000 Palestinian residents.

The United States has never endorsed the Jewish state’s claim of sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem and has insisted its status be resolved through Israeli-Palestinian negotiation.

The mere consideration of Trump changing the status quo sparked a renewed U.S. security warning on Tuesday. America’s consulate in Jerusalem ordered U.S. personnel and their families to avoid visiting Jerusalem’s Old City or the West Bank, and urged American citizens in general to avoid places with increased police or military presence.

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Following this weekend’s shocking disclosure that Peter Strzok was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia-Trump election (having previously handled the Clinton email server probe and interviewing Michael Flynn) after allegedly having exchanged anti-Trump and pro-Hillary Clinton text messages with his mistress (who was an FBI lawyer working for Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe), an angry Senator Senator Grassley – who was previously stonewalled by the FBI and DOJ from getting requested information about Strzok’s unexpected removal – has issued a letter demanding FBI documents in advance of an upcoming Senatorial interview with the anti-Trump FBI agent.

In his letter to FBI director Christopher Wray, Grassley writes:

The Committee has previously written to Mr. Strzok requesting an interview to discuss his knowledge of improper political influence or bias in Justice Department or FBI activities during either the previous or current administration, the removal of James Comey from his position as Director of the FBI, the DOJ’s and FBI’s activities related to Hillary Clinton, the DOJ’s and FBI’s activities related to Donald J. Trump and his associates, and the DOJ’s and FBI’s activities related to Russian interference in the 2016 election. To date, the Committee has received no letter in reply to that request.

 

In advance of Mr. Strzok’s interview, please provide the following communications, in the form of text messages or otherwise, to the Committee no later than December 11, 2017:

1. All communications sent to, received by, or copying Mr. Strzok related to then Director Comey’s draft or final statement closing the Clinton investigation, including all records related to the change in the portion of the draft language describing Secretary Clinton’s and her associates’ conduct regarding classified information from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless”;
2. All communications sent to, received by, or copying Mr. Strzok regarding the decision to close the Clinton investigation without recommending any charges;
3. All communications sent to, received by, or copying Mr. Strzok related to opening the investigation into potential collusion by the Trump campaign with the Russian government, including any FBI electronic communication (EC) authored or authorized by Mr. Strzok and all records forming the basis for that EC;
4. All communications sent to, received by, or copying Mr. Strzok related to the FBI’s interactions with Christopher Steele relating to the investigation into potential collusion by the Trump campaign with the Russian government, including any communications regarding potential or realized financial arrangements with Mr. Steele;
5. All communications sent to, received by, or copying Mr. Strzok related to any instance of the FBI relying on, or referring to, information in Mr. Steele’s memoranda in the course of seeking any FISA warrants, other search warrants, or any other judicial process;
6. All FD-302s of FBI interviews of Lt. Gen. Flynn at which Mr. Strzok was present, as well as all related 1A documents (including any contemporaneous handwritten notes); and
7. All communications sent to, received by, or copying Mr. Strzok containing unfavorable statements about Donald J. Trump or favorable statements about Hillary Clinton.

Since this will be the first – and so far only – glimpse inside the ideological motivations inside Mueller’s prosecutorial team, the public will be greatly interested in finding what they reveal, especially those which show any direct communication between Strzok and Comey.

Grassley’s full letter below (Link):

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Tech is warning about inflation.

Tech performs terribly during periods of higher inflation. If you think I’m making this up, take a look at the NASDAQ’s performance versus Gold during the last inflationary spike in 2011.

Tech tanked, Gold soared.

Which is why the recent very bearish breakdown in Tech is worth noting.

Between this and the rise in inflationary signals in the financial system (the NY Fed's UIG, the Cleveland Fed's stick inflation, and Producer Price Indexes), it’s looking more and more like 2018 will be a repeat of 2011.

And the good news is that with the right investments, you could see major returns.

We just published a Special Investment Report concerning FIVE secret investments you can use to make inflation pay you as it rips through the financial system in the months ahead

The report is titled Survive the Inflationary Storm. And it explains in very simply terms how to make inflation PAY YOU.

We are making just 100 copies available to the public.

To pick up yours, swing by:

http://ift.tt/2knowyr

Best Regards

Graham Summers

Chief Market Strategist

Phoenix Capital Research

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Muddy Waters' founder Carson Block unveiled his latest short play Wednesday morning. And instead of being another obviously fraudulent Chinese company, Block's target is OSI Systems, an American firm that manufactures security equipment x-ray machines and metal detectors. The company is best known as the owner of Rapiscan Systems – a division that manufacturers scanning machines used at airports.

In a 13-minute video, Block lays out his research, explaining how he suspects OSI’s executives are guilty of multiple violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for paying kickbacks to local officials who in turn rewarded it lucrative contracts. But as if corruption weren't enough, Block explains how roughly half of the company’s EBITDA is tied to turnkey contract in Mexico that could disappear as soon as next month.

The company is "rotten to the core" warns Block, "we have smoking gun evidence" as the importance of the contract to the company’s bottom line has been obscured by the fact that it represents only 15% of total revenues.

Tracing the threads of corruption led Block to Albania, Mexico and Puerto Rico, three locations where OSI has won lucrative concessions by offering kickbacks to local government officials – kickbacks that were readily accepted.

“I know this will sound crazy – but Albania is a pretty corrupt place," Block says, before explaining that it was practically "an open secret" that OSI benefited from bribing local officials.

For one of OSI’s concessions in Albania, the company turned over half of the contract to a local shell company for roughly $4.50, according to official documents.

As is typical when Block announces a short, OSI – which has a market cap of about $1.3 billion – was down about 15%.

In a statement provided to Zero Hedge, Block said he’s short OSI because he feels it’s “rotten to the core."

“We are short OSI Systems, Inc. because we think it is rotten to the core. We believe it obtained a major turnkey contract in Albania through corruption. It is likely that OSIS’s accounts are misstated as a result.

 

We believe the pricing of its Mexico turnkey contract does not stand up to scrutiny. This contract is up for renewal in 2018, and we estimate that it accounted for more than 50% of OSIS’s FY2017 EBITDA.

 

Non-renewal or a material reduction in pricing of the Mexico contract would seemingly have a significant impact on OSIS’s profits. Former employees’ statements support our view that OSIS is rotting from the inside."

Block’s latest bet comes on the heels of a stunning victory for his firm. Last month, Huishan Dairy entered provisional liquidation, validating Block’s call – made about 10 months earlier – that the company’s shares would go to zero.

Now, the question is: Will he do it again?
 

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