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“noise” and “imprudence” indeed…

Source: MichaelPRamirez.com

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Two days after a strong 6.9 magnitude struck Japan, just off the coast of Fukushima, moments ago JMA reported that another earthquake has hit Japan, once again off Fukushima, which according to NHK reports was modestly weaker, with a preliminary measurement of 6.1 on the Richter scale.

• EARTHQUAKE REPORTED IN JAPAN, OFF FUKUSHIMA, JMA SAYS
• JAPAN EARTHQUAKE MAGNITUDE 6.1, NHK SAYS

NHK reports that there is no tsunami risk.

NHK reporting quake at 6:23am registered 4 on 7-point Shindo scale across Fukushima, Ibaraki prefectures, 3 across Tohoku. No tsunami risk.

— Tokyo Outsider ???? (@tokyo_0) November 23, 2016

?????? ???
Emergency Earthquake Warning in Fukushima Pref. http://pic.twitter.com/5gqANOI4q8

— ???bot@?????XY&Z!! (@serena_pokeXY) November 23, 2016

???? ??? ??? ???? ???? ?? ??? ??.
???? 06:22:45 Seismic intensity 4 Fukushima Int. 3 Ibaraki #Earthquake #?? #???? http://pic.twitter.com/dgpdvqodat

— ??? (@dlaxogud2010) November 23, 2016

Max Shindo 4 in Fukushima. No Tsunami. https://t.co/vT21IB6EJA http://pic.twitter.com/nC95CqodXF

— Joseph Tame (@tamegoeswild) November 23, 2016

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Submitted by Jon Rappoport via Strategic-Culture.org,

They kept telling the American people Hillary Clinton was going to win the election; and in every way they could think of, they told the American people this was a good idea.

Then, on election night, they, the media, crashed.

The results came in.

The media went into deep shock.

As protests and riots then spread across America, the media neglected to mention a) they’d been bashing Trump because he said he might not accept the outcome of the vote, and b) here were large numbers of people on the Democrat side who weren’t accepting the outcome of the vote.

Suddenly, on cue, it was: Hillary Clinton lost because “fake news” about her had been spread around during the campaign.

Fake news sites. That was the reason.

These “fake sites” had to be punished. Somehow. They had to be defamed. Blocked. Censored.

Here is an excerpt from a list of “fake news” sites suggested by one professor. The list is circulating widely on the Web: Project Veritas; Infowars; Breitbart; Coast To Coast AM; Natural News; Zero Hedge; The Daily Sheeple; Activist Post; 21st Century Wire.

Free speech? Bill of Rights? Never heard of it.

Excuse me. “We won’t know what to protect?” Meaning what to favor, what to promote, what to lie about? Meaning only some speech is free?

Obama is way, way behind the curve. Thousands of websites and blogs have been exposing major media as fake for years. I started nomorefakenews.com in 2001.

If Google, Facebook, and Twitter keep expanding their censorship of “disfavored messages,” they’re going to pay a price. More and more users will go elsewhere.

The facade of the major media is getting thinner. You can see a glow of rage and resentment behind it. They’re desperately looking for revenge on the millions and millions of people who are deserting them and laughing at them.

They presumed too much. They presumed they had us in the palm of their hand. We were their property. We were transfixed by their authority.

All that is going away. Bye, bye.

The big shift is accelerating. Independent media are in the ascendance. Understand that. Recognize it.

The impossible is happening.

Fake news sites? Please. The major media are the biggest fakes the world has ever seen. Their anchors and star reporters are bloviating cranks. They’re dinner-theater actors.

Over the years, I’ve talked to some of them. I’ve warned them of their coming troubles. They were miles away from believing me. Now, they’re starting to sweat blood.

Major media news for America is still basically manufactured in New York and Washington—plus occasional outbursts from Hollywood creatures who bemoan the decline of inclusive liberalism, as they expand their gun-toting security staffs and dig deeper bunkers. The New York-Washington axis exists in a self-serving bubble, which has now taken serious punctures. The delusional attacks against “fake sites” underlines how out of touch these elites are with the rest of the country.

Independent media outlets are winning. They won’t be stopped.

When the people who now head the tech giants were growing up, they were heralding the Internet as a new era of free information-exchange. But now that they find themselves working with the government in the Surveillance State, they’re fronting for censorship. In fact, they’re showing they were never for freedom. That was a pose all along. They were, from the beginning, agents of repression. They can try to stop independent media now, but they will fail.

Fake web sites? What about fake companies? What about Google, Facebook, Twitter? Behind their happy-happy messages, they were built to propagandize, profile, and control.

Understand this: major media have a rock-bottom article of faith. It is: “We own the news.”

They can’t give it up. They’ll never give it up. It fuels everything they do. It’s the substance and core of their attitude.

As their ship goes down below the waves, they’ll be chanting it. “We own the news.”

But they don’t. In truth, they never did. For a time, they managed to sell that delusion to the people.

That time is drawing to a close.

The elite political class and their media minions fear more than independent news countering their own news. For obvious reasons, every civilization down through history has had its own monopolistic media, its central “broadcasting system.” Its controlled outlet. But now, The One has become Many.

That is the threat.

The rapid proliferation of The Many is an unpredictable X-factor.

The population is waking up to decentralized media. Instead of the hypnotic attachment to one basic information source – the habit of a lifetime – the public is learning to handle multiple sources. Therefore, the hypnotic spell is being broken and dissolved.

This is the basic problem for the elites.

How can they reinstate the trance?

By trying to censor the Internet? By creating a sudden war or other disaster, briefly “unifying” the country? These are not permanent solutions, particularly since more and more people understand such maneuvers and their true aims.

Awake is awake. Putting the genie back in the bottle – particularly when major media denizens aren’t very bright, as evidenced by their latest “fake news” scam – is on the order of trying to perform a piece of stage magic after the audience has already learned how it’s done.

Of course, the media clowns will try. And in the process, they’ll further expose themselves and actually assist in the awakening.

Boom.

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

If you’re serious about making money from investing in the financial markets, you need to be able to read the crowd… and go against it.

Let me give you an example… Currently one of the biggest consensus views is that the Gold rally is over and Gold is dead as an investment.

Right off the bat, you know this sentiment is at an extreme and off-base. Despite its recent sell-off, Gold is still crushing stocks in terms of performance year to date.

This is a massive “tell”: people believe Gold is doing very badly when in reality it’s nearly doubling stocks’ performance year to date.

Another “tell” is technical in nature. Investor sentiment is acting as though Gold is dead… when in reality Gold is both oversold and about to stage a bullish crossover (when the 50-wma breaks above the 200-wma).

Put another way, Gold is due for a snapback bounce at the very least… at the exact same time that it’s about to trigger a massively bullish long-term buy signal.

This is a textbook recipe for a “rip your face off” rally.

Again, with Gold today we’ve got:

1)   Extremely bearish sentiment.

2)   An oversold security.

3)   A massively bullish long-term buy signal about to trigger.

You can ignore this all you like. But all of the above suggest Gold will be much higher in the coming weeks.

If you’re looking for a high-octane means of playing Gold’s next move higher, we offer a FREE investment report detailing an unique play on Gold that has the potential to rise 250% or more in the next 12 months.

To pick up a copy swing by:

http://ift.tt/2gmZMAU

Best Regards

Graham Summers

Chief Market Strategist

Phoenix Capital Research 

via http://ift.tt/2gCay99 Phoenix Capital Research

Some thoughts for tomorrow…

 

First things first… Small Caps were up again today – of course – the 14th straight day of gains and the longest streak since Feb 1996. Russell 2000 is the most overbought since 2003…7th Intraday recod high in a row… 8th record close in a row, most since 1996

 

The nasdaq closed red today as S&P scrambled into the green at the close…

 

With that silliness out of the way… As Americans give thanks for Donald Trump's wealth creation miracle, we thought some context for the last few weeks might be useful…

The US Dollar spiked today near 102.00 – and is at almost 14 year highs…

 

China's Yuan has crashed as the dollar soars – breaking above 6.95/$ today – 8 year lows…

 

Emerging Market Currencies plunged to new lows…

 

Gold has been monkeyhammered (jammed below $1200 today), back to 10 month lows…

 

And as Gold collapses, so Small Caps have soared… (do those moves look human at all? perfectly linear ramp squeeze)

 

As The record squeeze continues…

 

But while stocks have continued to soar, long-bonds have trodden water for 8 days (though 30Y did breakout to the upside briefly today)…

 

Even though the short-end has seen yields spike to the hghest since April 2010…

 

And everywhere we look relationships have broken…

Stocks and volume…

 

US equity factors have decoupled…

 

Small Caps and credit sensitivity has broken…

 

Banks and the yield curve have snapped…

 

Bank stocks and bonds have no idea…

 

EM Bonds and Stocks…

 

Bond yields are above stocks…

 

As Yuan crashed today, Treasury yields decoupled…

 

US Treasury yields are notably underperforming global developed market bonds…

 

And finally, Gold and The Dow are equial YTD…

 

 

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Submitted by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

Some pretty good economic reports have energized various parts of the financial markets lately. Consumer spending is up, GDP is exceeding expectations and even factory orders, that perennial downer, popped this morning.

In response the dollar is soaring and interest rates are at breaking out of their multi-decade down-channel. The economy is clearly recovering, implying a return to normality. Right?

Nah, it’s just the usual election year illusion.

When the presidency is at stake the party in power always pumps up spending in an attempt to put people back to work and create the impression of a well-run country whose leaders deserve more time in the spotlight. After the election, spending returns to trend and the resulting bad news gets buried in “political honeymoon” media coverage.

How do we know this year is following the script? By looking at the federal debt. If the government is borrowing more than usual and (presumably) spending the proceeds, then it’s likely that the economy is getting a bit more than its typical diet of stimulus. So here you go:

Note that after seven years of massive increases, the federal debt plateaued in 2015, which is what you’d expect in the late stages of a recovery. With full employment approaching and asset prices high, there should be plenty of tax revenues flowing in and relatively few people on public assistance, so the budget should be trending towards balance.

Well, more people are working this year than last, and stock, bond and home prices all rose in the first half of the year. So why the approximately $1.8 trillion surge in government borrowing? Because a robustly-healthy economy was necessary to help the party in power stay in power.

This is a huge jump in government debt, even by recent standards. And its impact is commensurately large, accounting for a big part of the “growth” seen in recent months. But it’s also unsustainable. You don’t double a government’s debt in a single decade (from an already historically high level) and then keep on borrowing. At some point an extreme event or policy choice will put an end to the orgy.

Either the markets impose discipline through a crisis of some sort, or the government adopts a policy of currency devaluation or debt forgiveness. And – in a nice ironic twist – the people who did the insanely-excessive borrowing are leaving town, to be replaced by folks who will inherit something unprecedented, with (apparently) no clear idea of what’s coming or what will be necessary in response.

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Over two weeks after India’s abrupt demonetization of high denomination banknotes on November 8, the cash-driven economy still remains largely in a state of standstill, particularly the rural parts of the nation, where the government’s attempts to restock banks with “new” cash (even with the use of army helicopters) have failed to re-normalize commerce. As a result, the local population of business owners, unable to spend or deposit their “sackfuls of large bank notes amid India’s crackdown on hoarding cash”, is taking matters into its own hands, and as the WSJ explains, has started paying employees months of salary in advance, ringing up bogus sales and even buying gold they can smuggle overseas to get rid of stashed money or conceal its source.

The problem is that such workarounds are illegal and threaten to undercut the very premise behind Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s shocking move to cancel India’s highest-denomination rupee bills, which was meant to punish tax evaders and other criminals and bring more of the nation’s $2 trillion economy out of the shadows. As we explained previously, it was also meant to eliminate as much as $50 billion (or more) of the country’s debt.

And, as the paper notes, if Mr. Modi’s unprecedented social-engineering project fails to net too many of the biggest tax cheats, he risks further incurring the wrath of Indians already frustrated with the pain and economic dislocation the experiment has brought about in its first two weeks.

According to some, Mody is already on the defensive: “Canceling these 500- and 1,000-rupee notes has caused inconvenience to you,” the prime minister said at a recent rally. “But some people’s whole life has been ruined—that is how I have punished them. Because they looted the poor, the middle class. They looted your money to run their business. That is why I launched this fight.”

On one hand, Modi’s move was somewhat justified: as a mostly cash-based economy, it is relatively easy to engage in all-cash transactions which leave no trace, and thus lead to no taxes. Tax officials in India have for decades played testy games of cat-and-mouse with rich individuals and businessmen who accumulate wealth off the books and store it as real estate, jewelry, financial assets and cash stuffed in wardrobes. It also explains why India was, until recently, the largest imported of gold in the world (at least until China’s recent ascent to the top spot).

In a stunning statistic, only around 20 million individuals and families, or around 1.6% of the country’s population, paid any income tax in 2013. Government revenue from income tax is less than 6% of the size of the economy in India. In advanced nations, the average is around 12%.

So in an attempt to overturn the existing system, one where vast amounts of wealth were concentrated in inert cash, Modi launches the biggest demonetization experiment in modern history: requiring Indians to exchange their big bills at banks for newly created ones—or suffer a quiet, potentially catastrophic financial loss—was the prime minister’s way of forcing hidden riches to the surface. There, authorities would be watching, ready to examine large cash deposits. Or at least in theory: the exchange process has been plagued with inefficiencies, shortages, massive lines, in some cases even casualties.

Whie millions of Indians have heeded the call and more than $80 billion in old bills has been exchanged or deposited since the November 8 announcement, this is insufficient and represents just 40% of the value of all large rupee bills in circulation. The deadline for turning in canceled bills is Dec. 30.

And it is here that those who are unwilling to exchange their “unprovable” cash for new banknotes, are coming up with novel ideas, and are discreetly jettisoning their cash stockpiles in more-inventive ways. Some examples:

In Kolkata, a longtime hub for illicit financial activity, a lively trade has sprung up for converting voided bills into new bank notes, gold or checks, each for a different price. Tax officials say some people are buying gold with old notes and smuggling it out of the country, where it can be resold for hard currency. Recently, a man was caught trying to bring 2.5 kilograms of gold, worth nearly $100,000, on a Mumbai-to-Dubai flight. Usually in India, the gold-smuggling goes in the other direction.

 

“We are on alert as more people try to take gold overseas,” one revenue official said.

Ironically, what was until recently the world’s biggest (illicit) importer of gold, may soon become the biggest exporter.

A retailer in northeastern India said he helped account for his cash pile by writing up invoices showing nonexistent past sales. Accountants in Mumbai have advised builders to pay subcontractors with invalidated bills. The subcontractors use the cash to pay laborers, whose meager earnings make their transactions less likely to face official scrutiny.

 

“Any poor person right now in India is useful for tax dodgers whose money is just going to evaporate,” said Prashant Thakur, a former income-tax officer in Kolkata.

 

Enough rich Indians were enlisting others to redeem small batches of cash at multiple bank branches that the Ministry of Finance last week ordered banks to mark people’s fingers with indelible ink when they come in to exchange old bills.

 

This safeguard—which India also uses to prevent people from voting more than once during elections—hasn’t proved airtight. This week, outside a dingy auto-parts store behind a bank in New Delhi, people were using diluted battery acid to wipe the ink off their fingers. The shop’s owner wouldn’t say whether he sold them the acid.

In what may be the biggest problem for Modi’s grand plan, one which every other developing nation will face, “In India, if there are five people thinking about making a law, there are 50 people thinking about breaking that law,” said Mukesh Butani, managing partner at BMR Legal, a New Delhi-based law firm.

To be sure, when it comes to finding loopholes to Modi’s cash exchange, the local population has truly impressed with its unique, if illegal, schemes. Disposing of bigger bankrolls requires even greater ingenuity.

One cooking-gas distributor in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh ticked off the many ways he unloaded his cache of 7 million rupees, or around $100,000. His connections at banks helped him deposit around 500,000 rupees in old bills, backdating the transactions so they appear to have gone through before the notes were canceled on Nov. 9. The priest at a local temple accepted 35,000 rupees and gave it back to him in 100-rupee notes, he said.

 

He also paid more than 40 of his employees—laborers, accountants, guards, drivers—months of salary and bonuses in advance. “My security guard was overjoyed,” the businessman said.

 

While such leaks may prevent authorities from ever nabbing many Indians who sidestep taxes, some economists say they could also be cushioning the immediate blow dealt by the currency squeeze, which has choked off cash-based commerce this month. Laundered bills, unlike those kept under mattresses, remain in the economy for others to spend. That helps prevent the money supply from contracting too severely.

But the biggest problem, as SocGen explained last week, is that the longer the Mody’s “conversion” draws out, the greater the hit to the economy.

“If the ‘black economy’ was contributing 10% or 20% or 50% of GDP growth, and if you wipe that portion off the economy, it is obvious to have a negative impact,” said Nikhil Gupta, an economist at Motilal Oswal Securities in Mumbai.

For a country which is expected to have the fastest economic growth rate in 2017, this could be a major issue, not only economically but also politically and socially, should it leads to an economic slowdown or, even worse, recession:

Ultimately Mody’s plan appears doomed to fail not so much as a result of its implementation, but due to the mindset inherent within the population. Mr. Butani, the lawyer in Delhi, said India has to do more than void notes if it wants to wean itself off cash. It also has to target the underlying reasons for which businesses amass paper money, such as the need to pay officials who demand bribes.

Whatever the legal-tender status of 500- and 1,000-rupee bills, “if an inspector wants money from me, he still wants it,” said V.K. Agarwal, managing director at a small electrical-cable manufacturer in Lucknow. “He says, ‘Give me new notes—I don’t care where you get them from.’ So what do I do?”

Ultimately, the biggest risk is the politicians in charge, themselves:

Politics in India is another big cash business. Because the country’s electoral rules don’t require political parties to disclose the sources of small donations, companies regularly use cash to buy influence. Parties then use the cash to buy votes ahead of elections.

 

The currency replacement is just “a spring-cleaning exercise,” said Jagdeep Chhokar, co-founder of the New Delhi-based Association for Democratic Reforms, which advocates for greater transparency in party financing. “Unless we change our way of living, our house is not going to be clean. It is going to get dirty again every year.”

He is absolutely correct, however this particular spring cleaning, which won’t achieve anything positive in the long run, threatens to send the one economy which until recently, was the best performing in the world, into a tailspin. We can only imagine what one of the world’s best respected, former central bankers, Raghuram Rajan, thinks of all of this.

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IHS Markit today released their annual study on the average age of light vehicles registered in the U.S..  As expected, the average fleet age continues to tick up and currently stands at 11.6 years.  While this may be great news for consumers, higher quality and longer useful lives can have a detrimental impact on annual auto sales.

“Quality of new vehicles continues to be a key driver of the rising average vehicle age over time,” Mark Seng, global automotive aftermarket practice director at IHS Markit, said in a statement.

 

Not only are vehicles getting older, consumers are keeping their vehicles for longer, too, IHS said. As of the end of 2015, the average length of ownership was 79.3 months — a record — up 1.5 months from the previous year.

 

About 11 million light vehicles were scrapped during 2015, or about 4.3 percent of the overall population, according to IHS.

 

IHS forecasts that the volume of vehicles in the new- to 5-years-old category will grow 16 percent by 2021, while vehicles in the 6- to 11-year-old range will grow 5 percent, and vehicles that are 12 or more years old will grow 10 percent.

 

The market research company said the oldest vehicles on the road are growing the fastest. Vehicles 16 years and older are expected to grow 30 percent from 62 million units today to 81 million in 2021.

 

IHS research also showed that there will be more than 20 million vehicles on the road in 2021that will be more than 25 years old.

Per data from the Bureau of Transportation, the aging auto fleet is nothing new.  The average age of vehicles on the road in the U.S. has increased over 3 years in just the past 20 years. 

 

That said, what is new is that there are roughly 265mm light vehicles registered in the U.S. today compared to only 255mm driving age people, or just over 1 car per driver. So, while annual auto sales have historically been able to absorb quality gains with increased penetration rates, that game is likely now over.

Just to illustrate the potential problem, the following table shows the implied U.S. auto SAAR based on varying useful life assumptions….each 1 year expansion in a vehcle’s useful life cuts about 1mm out of required annual sales.

 

Said another way, in order to maintain the current 18mm annual selling rate of vehicles in the US, with a 20-year assumed useful life, each driving age person would have to own 1.4 vehicles.  We’re certainly not math geniuses but we’re pretty sure you can only drive 1 car at a time.

 

As our readers know, we’ve frequently noted that ,with an implied total SAAR of 18.0mm for the U.S. market, that auto sales have likely peaked. 

 

With full penetration rates, increasing vehicle useful lives and the threat of autonomous vehicles increasing utilization rates, it’s difficult to see how “normalized” auto sales aren’t substantially lower than the current run-rate of 18mm.  Moreover, with interest rates starting to rise and auto buyers extremely sensitive to monthly payments, we suspect the auto SAAR game is reaching the end of it’s useful life.

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