Month: June 2017

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Back in October of 2016 I covered an issue which I have been very concerned with for over a year now. In an article titled Global Elites Are Getting Ready To Blame You For The Coming Financial Crash, I outlined the basis for my belief that Donald Trump would win the U.S. election and why the U.K. Brexit was allowed to meet with success. Here is a quote from that article to give you a general sense of my position:

“I argue that the Trump tapes will be forgotten in a week and that they have no bearing whatsoever on the election. They are nothing more than bread and circus. Beyond the fact that really, almost no one cares what Trump said a decade ago. I argue that this election has already been decided. I argue that the globalists want Trump in office, just as they wanted the passage of the Brexit. I argue that they need conservative movements to feel as though we have won, so that they can pull the rug out from under us in the near future. I argue that we are being set up.

 

Again, the elites are openly telling us what is about to happen. They are telling us that if ‘populists’ (conservatives) gain political power, the system will effectively collapse. To what extent is hard to say, but let’s assume that the situation will be ugly enough to influence the masses to reconsider the ideal of globalism as a possible solution. The elites are fond of the Hegelian dialectic and the philosophy of ‘order out of chaos,’ after all.”

While Trump did indeed go on to “win” the presidency, I still believe that the basic foundation underlying my prediction has mostly fallen on deaf ears. There is a disconnect in terms of the globalist long game in people’s minds. I think it is because many in the public do not consider the effects of geopolitical events on mass psychology. Or, to be more precise, many people, even in the liberty movement, forget that the ultimate goal of the globalists is not just to corrupt governments and monetary systems, but to corrupt our collective mindset.

As a perfect example, I will link to the latest globalist lunacy from the Pope, Jorge Bergoglio, in which he attacks libertarianism (true conservatism) as a dangerous form of individualism that threatens the fabric of the new and more progressive collectivist world.

In terms of Western culture, recent events would indicate that globalists hope to enlist the newest generation to reach “maturity” (and I use that term loosely), the millennials, as a weapon to deal the death blow to conservatism. If not directly, then indirectly through propagation.  That is to say, if the globalists can’t kill us off immediately, they will try to breed us and our ideas out after bringing down the hammer of economic and social crisis.

When I discuss what essentially amounts to a “war on conservatism,” what do I mean? Well, first let’s consider what it is about conservatives that presents a threat to the globalists…

Limited Government

The basic core of conservative thought rests on the concept of limited or small Constitutional government. If you don’t believe in small government, you are not a conservative. Big (and centralized) government is the most vital tool in the hands of globalists. Without it, they would not be able to accomplish a single item on their agenda.

Big government requires big money. Thus, the central banking syndicate becomes “necessary” to the life of the nation or society because they have positioned themselves to provide the financing and fiat that greases the big government wheels. In a limited government system, central banking becomes irrelevant. It is therefore essential that globalist financiers diminish or destroy conservative principles of limited government because they represent a primal threat to the interdependent behemoth system they hope to create.

Sound Money

True conservatives are sound money champions. This principle fell by the wayside for many decades but has made a resurgence since 2008 as more people have been awakened to the failings of central banking and fiat money. Sound money is basically money backed by a tangible commodity, money that cannot be created out of thin air. If it can be created out of thin air, it is not sound money.

Obviously, the very existence of a true sound money movement horrifies the globalists. Without fiat printing or digital currency systems (which can be created and re-created ad infinitum), the future of a global currency system, the pinnacle goal of the globalist economic scheme, is all but impossible.

Free Thought And Free Expression

If you are in the business of controlling the thoughts and opinions of other people, then you are not a conservative. This is where we find distinct misconceptions, by liberals most of all, as far as what free expression is.

For conservatives, this means that if you are in a publicly funded space or on private property with permission of the owners, you should have the right to say whatever you like whenever you like (this includes so-called "hate speech", millennials and liberals). You should be able to make grievances known and to discuss those grievances in a constructive manner. It does not matter if your thoughts are offensive to some people; their feelings are meaningless compared to your freedom to speak in that space.

Leftists seem to think that freedom of expression means being allowed to invade the sanctity of other people’s private property or invade a public gathering with the intention of disrupting the free speech of others that they disagree with. My favorite argument presented by leftists is their argument that liberty proponents cannot kick them out of events or off of websites because “that would be a violation of our own principles and their free speech.” They don’t seem to understand the different between private and public or destructive and constructive. My other favorite argument leftists often use is their argument that it is an act of free speech when they disrupt other people’s free speech.

Hopefully you can see the difference between the two ideals. Leftists today seek to control speech and expression they see as “aberrant” or “evil.” Conservatives defend everyone’s right to speak as long as they respect the nature of the property they are standing on and do not abuse the owners of that property — this includes taxpayers, the owners of public property.

Freedom Of Association

This is a very simple and straightforward liberty that has all but been crushed in our country today. Conservatives have this crazy idea that you should not be forced by government to associate with people you do not want to associate with. It does not matter why you don’t want to associate with them. The “why” has no bearing whatsoever. We feel that logic should dictate the situation. If you don’t want to associate with someone, why would they want to associate with you?

But, for some reason, certain people within our culture and within government believe that denying anyone association is discrimination, and, in a progressive and interdependent society, discrimination is unacceptable. I happen to think the ability to discriminate on an individual level is necessary to a healthy society. Discrimination only becomes dangerous when it is backed by government power.

The Right To Self Defense

Many people are so disconnected from their own survival that the notion of “self defense” is alien and terrifying to them. They pay taxes so that “professionals” can handle their security for them, after all. Why should they need the means to secure themselves and their loved ones?

Well, what if the professionals you pay taxes for suddenly turn on you? Or what if they simply quit en masse one day? What if your attacker is 60 seconds from harming you and the closest law enforcement officer is six minutes away? In a conservative society, EVERYONE acts as security for themselves and others if needed.

Globalists need to encourage a culture in which the population is always reliant on government for everything, including their own safety. The most effective form of control comes not through force, but through permission. The most successful tyranny is the one that the people demand rather than the one people barely tolerate.

Sovereignty

All of these principles coalesce into the root principle of sovereignty — the inborn right to self determination. This might take the form of individual action or voluntary group action based on the freedom of association. A single person might seek to live on his own away from others in his own way, and he absolutely has the right to do this even if it annoys people for whatever crazy reason. A large group of people also have the right to cooperate, to build a system or even a nation based on a particular set of shared values and to have their borders respected or avoided by those with different values.

Conservatism, at least in its traditional form, is the vanguard of sovereignty. Without conservatives, sovereignty dies.

*  *  *

Now that we have briefly summarized the conservative archetype, consider for a moment the predominantly progressive millennial generation; what values do they hold? This is not to say that all millennials think the same way, but what about the majority? In 10 years, what would a country like the U.S. look like when they move into power?

The statistics indicate that the U.S. would be even more socialist than it is today, bordering on communist. A paradise for pushing forward the globalist agenda.

When you take into account the fact that Bernie Sanders, a staunch socialist with Marxist tendencies, garnered more support from young voters during the last election than both Clinton and Trump combined, you can see the problem here. Sanders enjoyed nearly 80 percent of the millenial vote in many states, and this tends to correlate with what we have seen in other western nations such as the U.K., where over 70 percent of the young vote was AGAINST the Brexit campaign to leave the globalist EU project.

Also take into account the establishment push to instill millennial academia with open borders propaganda.  In this article for the Washington Post, the president of George Mason University in Northern Virginia argues that open borders are the source of "innovation" and a better economy.  Open borders philosophy cannot coexist with sovereignty.  Sovereignty being a foundation for individualism and nationalism; open borders being a foundation for forced collectivism and a one world system.  For open border ideology to continue forward, all sovereignty must be eliminated.

Here we find the socialist entrenchment within the younger population. To question its validity among them is simply not done. Through most of Europe, for example, to even describe one’s self as “conservative” is considered highly taboo. Many sovereignty activists there will instead list themselves as “classical liberal” (conservatives).

In the U.S., the last true bastion of hardcore conservatives, there is a little more hope as Generation Z teens are showing signs of a conservative resurgence and a little more sense than their older millennial brothers and sisters. This is why I believe the globalists are focusing on the millennial subset; the millennials experienced the American world when they were children at its height pre-2008 and conjured grand dreams of career, success and technological ease. After the crash and subsequent end of college degree relevancy, they now feel jilted and put upon. Clearly “free markets” are the culprit and revolution is the answer.

Generation Z is growing up in the new and downtrodden economic landscape. They are accepting that harder work is necessary and that more freedom is paramount instead of demanding that entitlements be given to them. So, it would appear that the the globalists have a small window of time to stage a coup against conservative philosophy, install a new millennial generation as the captains of the ship and discourage Generation Z from continuing on the path towards what they consider a "terrible and ignorant" world view.

If you think that perhaps I am exaggerating the gravity of the situation, or that I am applying too much conspiracy to an otherwise random social development, I would like to cite Facebook mogul and globalist cabana boy Mark Zuckerberg, who in a recent speech to Harvard graduates asked them to “fight isolationism and nationalism” which he equated with “authoritarianism” and to support “openness and global community.”

“This is the struggle of our time. This is not a battle of nations, it is a battle of ideas,” Zuckerberg stated.

Zuckerberg’s rant is just the most recent example of this propaganda in action. As I have been warning, the globalist strategy is to destroy opposing ideas, not just opposing groups. And clearly, they want to exploit the millennials to do just that.

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Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

Ever since the election, the democrats and establishment republicans have been ‘investigating’ Russian ties to Trump and how that all led to John Podesta’s email box to be hacked into, which of course led to Hillary Clinton losing the Presidential election. She lost, not because of her criminality, but because of fake news, obviously. It’s worth noting, in a year of arduous investigations, nothing has been proven to tie Trump to the Russians.

Yesterday, Hillary discussed the election, positing questions to the panel regarding RUSSIAN COLLUSION with Trump. She said Trump directed the release of the Podesta emails down to the second, coordinated and directed the fake news media to concoct salacious stories, fueled by the emails, colluding with Russian intelligence to steal the election from her.

In case you’re just tuning in, you did not reject the DNC establishment candidate and vote for populism because you were sick and tired of the same old corrupt DC bullshit. No, you voted for Trump because of the Russians, the ultimate King makers, coerced into the decision via a series of psyops programs, coordinated with Trump, to brainwash people into believing she was not a trustworthy candidate.

Holy shit Hillary has lost her mind. Tucker’s take.

Here are some of her sweeter moments in the interview, accusing the idiot Giant Orange President of being a criminal mastermind — directing endless schemes and plots to seize the Presidency from her claws.
 

“It’s important that Americans…understand that Putin wants to bring us down. He was an old KGB agent.”
 
“We saw evidence of [Russian involvement] and we could track it. But they were shooed away.”
 
“The Russians are increasingly..launching cyber attacks. A lot of the information they’ve stolen they use for internal purposes. So this was different because they went public.”
 
“That was the conclusion. I think it’s fair to ask how did that actually influence the campaign and how did they know what messages to deliver. Who told them? Who were they coordinating with or colluding
with? I’m leaning Trump.”
 
“Within one hour of the Access Hollywood tapes being leaked, the Russians or say Wikileaks — same thing — dumped the John Podesta emails.”
 
“The Russians in my opinion could not have known how best to weaponize that information unless they had been guided by Americans.”
 
“My email account was turned into the biggest scandal since Lord knows when. And, you know, in the book I’m just using everything that anybody else said about it besides me to basically say this was the biggest nothing-burger ever. It was a mistake. I’ve said it was a mistake, and obviously if I could turn the clock back I wouldn’t have done it in the first place. But the way that it was used was very damaging.”
 
“We know it hurt us, as I explain in my book, the Comey letter which was now we know partly based on a false memo from the Russians. It was a classic piece of Russian disinformation. So for whatever reason, he dumps that on me on October 28 and I immediately start falling.”
 
“Well if you went all the way back, doing things that others have done before was no longer acceptable. I didn’t break any rule nobody said don’t do this. I was very responsible and not at all careless. You end up with a situation that was exploited.”
 
“Here’s a really telling statistic that has been validated. I had this old fashioned idea that it would matter what I would do as president. We had a great tech program and a really good set of policies. In 2008 which as the last time you had a contested election, the policies put forth by President Obama, Senator McCain got 222 minutes of airtime. In 2016 despite my best efforts, we got 32 minutes, total, over 18 months.”
 
“Media forces on the Republican side are entrenched and very effective. They’re beginning to call the shots on those local stations. Local TV is still incredibly powerful.”
 
“I have been on many speaking platforms with many men who are in office or running for office. And the crowd gets you going and I watch my male counterparts and they beat the podium and they yell and the crowd loves it. I have tried that and it’s been less than successful.”

 
Regarding her Goldman Sachs speeches.
 

“Men got paid for the speeches they made…I got paid for the speeches I made.”
 
“I have to say, Walt I never thought someone would throw out my entire career…because I made a couple of speeches.”

There you have it. The emails were giant ‘nothing-burgers’ that were attained by an evil genius, criminal, mastermind, named Donald Trump, with the help of the inherently evil Vlad Putin (how many Americans has Russia killed lately?). She lost thanks to a vast right wing conspiracy of media shills at the NY Times and other publications who wanted to see Trump elected.
 
What.the.fuck?

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Last month, we pointed that one of wall street’s largest underwriters of auto debt was suddenly slashing their own holdings of auto loans while simultaneously ramping up the issuance of auto securitization facilities thereby pawning off the risk to ‘suckers’ who have no idea they’re jumping in front of yet another financial freight train (see “Deja Vu: JPM Slashes Auto Loans For Their Own Book; Ramps Up ABS Issuance For The Suckers“).

Now, according to Bloomberg and Wells Fargo, new signs are emerging which suggest that auto ABS facilities, like their RMBS cousins of last decade, aren’t quite as bullet proof as the ‘suckers’ thought they were.  While a subtle degradation, Wells Fargo points out that fewer auto borrowers are suddenly paying off their loan balances early.  And while that may not sound as dire as say a default, it suggests that auto borrowers may be finding it more difficult to find new financing when they go to trade in their 3-year old clunker for that brand new BMW.

Fewer subprime borrowers are paying off their auto loans early, a possible sign that consumers with weaker credit scores are struggling more, according to a report by Wells Fargo & Co. researchers.

 

Borrowers are making fewer extra payments on loans that were bundled into bonds in 2015 and 2016, compared with loans in 2013 and 2014 bonds, according to Wells Fargo analysts led by John McElravey. The data on prepayments may offer another sign that subprime consumers are having more trouble paying their bills, the analysts wrote in a note dated Tuesday. Borrowers are already defaulting on a growing amount of auto debt.

 

Last decade, slower monthly payment rates on credit cards were an early sign of the consumer credit cycle changing for the worse, the analysts wrote. For auto loans, slower prepayment may be more of a coincident indicator than a leading one, they wrote.

Of course, just like 2007, the largest seller of auto ABS, Wells Fargo (just as Bear Stearns did in 2007), is telling investors that they have nothing to worry about…unless you think slower paydowns and a massive declines in used car prices are a problem…

The researchers at Wells Fargo, the number one seller of bonds backed by subprime auto loans, have said that the bonds pose few risks to bondholders, even though they recommend investors cut their risk exposure because of valuations.

 

Slowing prepayments can hurt investors in bonds backed by car loans, said Peter Kaplan, a senior portfolio manager at Merganser Capital Management. They can result in a deal’s bonds getting paid down more slowly, which can hurt the riskiest securities in a transaction.

 

“I think downgrades are completely possible,” with a remote possibility that the riskiest securities will take losses, he said.

 

Lenders and big bond graders, such as S&P Global Ratings, have pointed to the debts’ fast amortization and possible upgrades as reasons for investors to have faith in the securities.

Of course, this is just the latest sign of trouble in auto ABS…below are recent developments in delinquency and default trends courtesy of Morgan Stanley.

***

If you’re among the growing minority of investors still under the impression that  ‘everything if awesome’ in the auto industry simply because new car sales volumes continue to hover around all time highs, while turning a blind eye to soaring incentive spending and that pesky little debt bubble, then we may need your help with how we should be interpreting the following subprime auto loan delinquency stats from Morgan Stanley. 

In a recent report, Jeen Ng of Morgan Stanley took a look at 266 subprime auto ABS deals to assess the underlying ‘health’ of the auto loan market and this is a recap of what he found.

First, despite low unemployment, high consumer confidence and debt-to-income ratios at 30-year lows, 60+ day delinquencies and default rates are soaring back to ‘great recession’ levels for prime and subprime auto securitizations.

 

Meanwhile, loss severities are also starting to rise… 

 

….just as used car prices come under pressure…

 

…which likely has something to do with the flood of lease returns that are about to hit the market…

 

Of course, it can’t be that these deteriorating credit metrics are the result of 21 consecutive quarters of loosening lending standards from 2Q 2011 through 2Q 2016, right?

Lending Standards Have Eased…: While overall household debt remains below pre-crisis peaks, auto debt has ballooned to all-time highs. While this debt grew, the median FICO score of borrowers receiving auto loans fell roughly 30 points from peak to trough. According to the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS), auto lenders eased lending standards for 21 consecutive quarters from 2Q 2011 through 2Q 2016.

 

…but Lenders Now Appear to Be Reversing Course and Tightening Standards: While FICO scores did drop precipitously, they have recovered in recent months, and the SLOOS reports 3 quarters of tightening standards after the 21 of easing. A look at the weighted average FICO scores of loans going into subprime ABS deals reveals similar trends, with a number of lenders reporting increases in these scores over recent years. However, the overall trend has moved lower since 2013.

 

Meanwhile, just like in the past housing crash, the mix of “deep subprime” collateral being pawned off on the ABS market is soaring…because who else would buy it?

Shift in Deal Mix the Real Culprit: The main driver of this dynamic appears to be that, while individual lenders are increasing their weighted average FICO scores, the securitization market has become more heavily weighted towards issuers that we would consider deep subprime – those with a weighted average FICO score below 550. In fact, since 2010, the share of Subprime Auto ABS origination that has come from these deep subprime deals has increased from 5.1% to 32.5%.

 

Deep Subprime Driving Delinquencies: Since 2012, 60+ delinquencies of non-deep subprime deals picked up from 3.03% to 3.92%. While that 89bps increase certainly demonstrates deterioration, it pales in comparison to the over 300bps increase coming from these deep subprime deals.

 

But sure, 18mm new cars per year is probably a ‘normalized’ level of demand for the U.S. market…just like 1.3mm in new home sales was ‘normal’ in 2005.

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Via Paul Craig Roberts and Dave Kranzler,

In a series of articles, we have proven to our satisfaction that the prices of gold and silver are manipulated by the bullion banks acting as agents for the Federal Reserve.

The bullion prices are manipulated down in order to protect the value of the US dollar from the extraordinary increase in supply resulting from the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing (QE) and low interest rate policies.

The Federal Reserve is able to protect the dollar’s exchange value vis-a-via the other reserve currencies—yen, euro, and UK pound—by having those central banks also create money in profusion with QE policies of their own.

The impact of fiat money creation on bullion, however, must be controlled by price suppression. It is possible to suppress the prices of gold and silver, because bullion prices are established not in physical markets but in futures markets in which short-selling does not have to be covered and in which contracts are settled in cash, not in bullion.

Since gold and silver shorts can be naked, future contracts in gold and silver can be printed in profusion, just as the Federal Reserve prints fiat currency in profusion, and dumped into the futures market. In other words, as the bullion futures market is a paper market, it is possible to create enormous quantities of paper gold that can suddenly be dumped in order to drive down prices. Everytime gold starts to move up, enormous quantities of future contracts are suddenly dumped, and the gold price is driven down. The same for silver.

Rigging the bullion price prevents gold and silver from transmitting to the currency market the devaluation of the dollar that the Federal Reserve’s money creation is causing. It is the ability to rig the bullion price that protects the dollar’s value from being destroyed by the Federal Reserve’s printing press.

Recently, the price of a Bitcoin has skyrocketed, rising in a few weeks from $1,000 to $2,200. Two explanations suggest themselves.

One is that the Federal Reserve has decided to rid itself of a competing currency and is driving up the price with purchases while accumulating a large position, which then will be suddenly dumped in order to crash the market and scare away potential users from Bitcoins. Remember, the Fed can create all the money it wishes and, thereby, doesn’t have to worry about losses.

 

Another explanation is that people concerned about the fiat currencies but frustrated in their attempts to take refuge in bullion have recognized that the supply of Bitcoin is fixed and Bitcoin futures must be covered. It is strictly impossible for any central bank to increase the supply of Bitcoins. Thus Bitcoin is standing in for the suppressed function of gold and silver.

The problem with cryptocurrencies is that whereas Bitcoin cannot increase in supply, other cryptocurrencies can be created. In order to be trusted, each cryptocurrency would have to have a limited supply. However, an endless number of cryptocurrencies could be created that would greatly increase the supply of cryptocurrencies. If entrepreneurs don’t bring about this result, the Federal Reserve itself could organize it.

Therefore, cryptocurrency might be only a temporary refuge from fiat money creation. This would leave gold and silver, whose supply can only gradually be increased via mining, as the only refuge from wealth-destroying fiat money creation.

For as long as the Federal Reserve can protect the dollar by bullion price suppression and money creation by other reserve currency central banks, and as long as the Federal Reserve can keep the influx of new dollars out of the general economy, the Federal Reserve’s policy adds to the wealth of those who are already rich. This is because instead of driving up consumer prices, thus threatening the US dollar’s exchange value with a rising rate of inflation, the Fed’s largess has flowed into the prices of financial assets, such as stocks and bonds. Bond prices are high, because the Fed forced up the price by purchasing bonds. Stock prices are high, because the abundance of money bid prices higher than profits justify. As the US government measures inflation in ways designed to understate it, the consumer price index and producer price index do not send alarm systems into the markets.

Thus, we have a situation in which the Fed’s policy has done nothing for the American population, but has driven up the values of the financial portofilios of the rich. This is the explanation why the rich are becoming more rich while the rest of America becomes poorer.

The Fed has rigged the system for the rich, and the whores in the financial media and among the neoliberal economists have covered it up.

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In what is bound to create mass hysteria among the mainstream media, NYPost's bombastic columnist John Crudele reports that the Trump administration is spying on a number of journalists in an effort to flush out The White House leakers.

Crudele notes that there was a big ruckus four years ago when the Associated Press announced that telephone records for 20 of its reporters had been subpoenaed by the Justice Department.

The government was apparently looking for CIA leaks about an operation in Yemen that time. Crudele reports it is happening again…

The Justice Department has gotten a warrant from the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — also known as the FISA court — to conduct electronic surveillance on a group of journalists who’ve been the recipient of leaked information, the source said.

 

The journalists are not the target, according to my source – and I say, thank goodness for that. Instead, the Trump administration is looking for the leaker.

Of course, just as with practically every media story nowadays, the source is anonymous and there is no confirming evidence or secondary source, but as we reported previously, three White House leakers (who were holdovers from the Obama administration) have either already been fired or will soon be, the source claims.

Last week, the Trump campaign released an email to supporters entitled "SABOTAGE," in which the campaign said, "There are people within our own unelected bureaucracy that want to sabotage President Trump and our entire America First movement."

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A few days ago, controversial Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte made a fairly ‘unsavory’ quip in a speech to soldiers about his decision to declare martial law following a prolonged battle with drug lords and ISIS threats in this country.  In what was meant as “sarcasm,” at least according to Duterte, he told soldiers that the ramifications of martial law would fall upon the presidency alone and that he would take the blame if soldiers “rape three women.”  Per the Daily Mail:

“For this martial law and the consequences of martial law and the ramifications of martial law, I and I alone would be responsible.”

 

“Just do your work. I will handle the rest. I will be imprisoned for you. If you rape three (women), I will say that I did it.”

Of course, as Sean Spicer recently found out when he idiotically compared Assad to Hitler, there are a couple of topics that should just be off limits in political speeches…and rape is one of them. 

Not surprisingly, the comment immediately drew international criticism including the following tweet from Chelsea Clinton…you know, because we’re apparently supposed to care what she has to say still.

Not funny. Ever. https://t.co/XUIo85noBQ

— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) May 26, 2017

 

But, as we’ve learned before after he called Obama a “son of a whore,” Duterte is not the type to back down from the pressure of public opinion and/or the twitter rants of former first daughters.  Therefore, it’s not terribly surprising that he lashed out at Chelsea with the following:

“These whores, they hear “rape”. Like, like Chelsea, she slammed me. I was not joking, I was being sarcastic. Listen to the speech. I do not laugh at my own jokes.”

 

“I will tell her, when your father, the president of the United States, was f***ing Lewinsky and the girls in the White House, how did you feel? Did you slam your father?”

And, just in case there was any confusion, Duterte has subsequently asked Chelsea again: “I repeat, when President Clinton was fucking Lewinsky, what was your statement or your reaction?”

‘It is a crime actually committed by soldiers, mostly Americans in Okinawa,’ he said, referring to several rape cases involving U.S. servicemen stationed in Japan, most recently last year.

 

“But, we never heard of a Filipino. But I am just warning them that anything they do, I have to answer for it. I take full responsibility for your foolishness. I speak sarcastically.”

 

‘You Americans, like Chelsea, be careful because you live in a glass house,’ he said.

 

‘I repeat, when President Clinton was fucking Lewinsky, what was your statement or your reaction?’

Somehow we suspect Chelsea’s going to pass on offering up her thoughts on the topic of her father’s infidelities despite Duterte’s repeated requests for additional information.

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Back on  February 27, when bitcoin was trading in the mid-teens, we wrote “Step aside bitcoin, there is a new blockchain kid in town.”

In recent days, the world’s second most popular digital currency, Ethereum, has been surging (despite its embarrassing hack last June when some $59 million worth of “ethers” were stolen forcing the blockchain to implement a hard fork to undo the damage), prompting many to wonder if some big announcement was imminent. It appears that yet again someone “leaked” because on Monday, an alliance of some of the world’s most advanced financial and tech companies including JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Intel and more than two dozen other companies teamed up to develop standards and technology to make it easier for enterprises to use blockchain code Ethereum – not bitcoin – in the latest push by large firms to move toward the holy grail of a post-central bank world in which every transaction is duly tracked: a distributed ledger systems.

Commenting on the sharp – for the time – rise in ETH price (which had moved from $13 to $15), we said “the move may be just the beginning if most corporations adopt Ethereum as the distributed ledger standard: Accenture released a report last month arguing that blockchain technology could save the 10 largest banks $8 billion to $12 billion a year in infrastructure costs — or 30 percent of their total costs in that area.” Since then most corporations have indeed adopted Ethereum as the distributed ledger standard.

* * *

Three months later, and with Ethereum 15x higher at $230, Bloomberg today writes: “Step aside, bitcoin. There’s another digital token in town that’s winning over the hearts and wallets of cryptocurrency enthusiasts across the globe.”

It’s not just the lede that is familiar, it’s everything else too, especially the forecast.

The value of ether – the digital currency linked to the ethereum blockchain – could surpass that of bitcoin by the end of 2018, according to Olaf Carlson-Wee, chief executive officer of cryptocurrency hedge fund Polychain Capital who was interviewed by Bloomberg.

“What we’ve seen in ethereum is a much richer, organic developer ecosystem develop very, very quickly, which is what has driven ethereum’s price growth, which has actually been much more aggressive than bitcoin,” said Carlson-Wee, in an interview on Bloomberg Television Tuesday.

As we previously reported, while Ethereum suffered an embarrassing hack last summer resulting in the theft in millions of ether, the cryptocurrency has drawn the interest of industries from finance to health care because its blockchain does far more than let bitcoin users send value from one person to another. “Its advocates think it could be a universally accessible machine for running businesses, as the technology allows people to do more complex actions in a shared and decentralized manner.“

Which is why ethereum is gaining increasingly more converts. Carlson-Wee wasn’t the first to forecast a bright future for ethereum. Fred Wilson, co-founder and managing partner at Union Square Ventures, laid out an even more ambitious timeline for the cryptocurrency in an interview earlier this month.

“The market cap of ethereum will bypass the market cap of bitcoin by the end of the year,” said Wilson, who is also chairman of the board at Etsy.

In fact, if one looks at the relative market share of various cryptocurrencues, and extrapolates current trends, ethereum could surpass bitcoin in just a few months.

Bitcoin currently dominates a little less than half of the digital currency market, down from almost 90 percent three months ago, according to Coinmarketcap.com data. Meanwhile, ethereum has quadrupled its share, which now represents more than a quarter of the pie.

Indicatively, as of this moment, the market cap of Bitcoin is $37 billion, 75% higher than Ethereum. If the optimsitic forecasts are accurate, Ethereum, which is currently offered at $230, will cost roughly $400 next time we look at  it, if not more. What is more interesting is that while bitcoin hit an all time high of approximately $2900 one week ago, it has failed to recapture the highs, even as ethereum has continued surging ever higher, perhaps a sign of a broad momentum shift from the legacy “cryptocoin” to the “up and comer.”

“We’re absolutely still in the infrastructure building phase,” Carlson-Wee said. “But I do think within one to two years, we’ll start to see the first viral applications that are user facing.”

In any case, for readers interested in putting money into either extremely volatile crypto, be prepared, in fact assume, a complete loss of your investment as chasing such speculative manias rarely has a happy ending. Then again, trying to time the peak of any bubble is a fool’s endeavor. Just look at the S&P.

Bitcoin’s growth has started to catch up to its fundamentals, which is likely what has been driving its astronomical gain as of late, he said. Others have attributed the surge to speculation, as well as increased interest in Asia and adoption by established companies.

 

Impressive performance aside, more than $150 has been knocked off bitcoin’s price since late last week amid concerns about transaction speed, safety and a possible price bubble.

Full interview below.

via http://ift.tt/2qC9OTa Tyler Durden

Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com, 

Here are some visual aids to help the Fed spot the housing bubble.

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari was the latest Fed official to claim in an essay – thus following in the time-honored footsteps of former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke – that “spotting bubbles is hard,” that the Fed cannot see them, and that if it could see them, it shouldn’t do anything to stop them because it had only “limited policy tools,” and because “the costs of making policy mistakes can be very high.”

But it’s OK to use these “limited policy tools” to inflate the greatest bubbles the world has ever seen and then preside over the damage they cause to the real economy before they even implode.

Neither Kashkari nor anyone else working at the Treasury Department in 2006 – when they were tasked by Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson to look for signs of trouble because they were “due for some form of crisis,” as he writes – could see any bubbles, not even the housing bubble although it was already beginning to deflate.

“It is really hard to spot bubbles with any confidence before they burst,” Kashkari writes, specifically naming stock prices and house prices. “Everyone can recognize a bubble after it bursts, and then many people convince themselves that they saw it on the way up.”

So here are some visual aids I put together for Kashkari and other Fed governors. It will help them “spot” the beautiful housing bubbles in the US – because bubbles really aren’t hard to recognize before they burst, if you want to recognize them.

What’s hard to predict accurately is when they’ll burst.

The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index for March was released today. It jumped 7.7% year-over-year, far outpacing growth in household incomes. This has been the case for years. In fact, real household incomes are almost back where they were in 2006 (/sarc). So what could go wrong?

At 198.26, the index surpassed the peak of Housing Bubble 1 in May 2006 by 11% (data via FRED, St. Louis Fed):

Since everyone called it a housing bubble after it had imploded, even Kashkari, today’s phase in the wondrous market is Housing Bubble 2, no?

The other day, Zillow reported that the national median home value in April rose 7.3% year-over-year to $198,000. It too beat the peak of Housing Bubble 1 ($196,600) set in April 2007. “It only took a decade,” Zillow said.

The National Association of Realtors reported that the median price in April hit $246,100, which is 6.8% above the peak of Housing Bubble 1 ($230,400 in June 2006).

The Case-Shiller Index appears to have more stature at the Fed than Zillow or the NAR. So we’ll use it here in our visual aids for the Fed.

It is based on a rolling-three month average; hence, today’s release was for January, February, and March data. So it’s always behind. Instead of median prices, it uses “home price sales pairs,” for example, a house sold in 2011 and then again in 2017. Its algorithms adjust this price movement over the years and numerous other factors into a data point that becomes part of the index. The index was set at 100 for January 2000. So an index of 200 means prices have doubled in the past 17 years.

Housing is local. Therefore housing bubbles are local. But if enough of them come together at the same time, the housing bubble takes on national proportions. This is the phase, as the above chart shows, that the US has now reached: In some metros, prices are still below the peak; in other metros, prices are setting new records. Overall, prices have surpassed those of Housing Bubble 1.

So dear Fed Governors, please have a look at some of the beautiful housing bubbles around the country. As you’ll see, they’re really not “hard to spot.”

This is the Boston metro, where the current home price index is now 9% above the peak of Housing Bubble 1 (Nov 2005):

Prices in the Seattle metro have surged even more, pushing the index 13% above the peak of Housing Bubble 1 (Jul 2007):

And here’s Denver’s house price bubble, where prices have soared a breath-taking 38% since the prior peak (Aug 2006):

I know that folks in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro felt left out during Housing Bubble 1. I heard many complaints about that at the time. They also missed out on much of the house price crash.

But they sure know how to make up for things. Home prices have now surged by 37% since the last peak in June 2007:

The Atlanta metro isn’t quite back to the peak of Housing Bubble 1, but it’s near-perfect V-shaped bubble recovery will soon hit it:

For the Portland house price bubble, the index is now 14% above the prior peak:

The Case-Shiller Index for San Francisco, which covers the five-county Bay Area, is now 7.7% higher than at the peak of Housing Bubble 1. However, in the city (and county) of San Francisco, the median home price has soared 47% above the prior peak (Nov. 2007). This is the chart for the five-county Bay Area house price bubble-crash-bubble:

The city of San Francisco is also the first city in this lineup where the median home price is now heading south on a year-over-year basis. During Housing Bust 1, the City was late to react. This time, it seems to be ahead of the pack.

And the Case-Shiller index for the condo price bubble in New York City has soared 17% above the prior peak (Feb. 2006), with prices nearly tripling since 2000:

The local housing bubbles across the US blew up with spectacular consequences, all in their own time frames. Plenty of local home price bubbles are now coming together to form a national home price bubble. So it’s really not hard to spot them, Mr. Kashkari.

Sure, there has been some inflation – 17% since 2006, based on the Fed’s favorite core PCE measure. Home prices in some of the cities have already reached a new peak even after inflation. And besides, it’s not a housing bubble until it reaches the inflation-adjusted point where the prior one took down the financial system? Is that the point when Housing Bubble 2 begins, instead of ends? If so, what would Housing Bust 2 look like? A vision too ugly to behold.

What’s hard to predict is the moment when housing bubbles begin to deflate. With monetary policies still in easing mode, with the federal government subsidizing the housing market in numerous ways, and with homes having become a securitized asset class for global speculators, house price bubbles can inflate – as we have seen – far more than a rational human mind might think possible. But we do know that they will deflate.

In San Francisco, the signs and numbers are already lining up. Read…  Will these 2 Forces Crush San Francisco’s Housing Bubble?

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