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The next time your friendly, local, asset-gathering, commission-taking, wealth-transferer explains that “you should BTFATH because stock valuations are supported by the fundamentals” – show them these two charts.
Now – what do you think will happen when the Fed turns off the QE tap?
Source: Citi
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1mMsFr6 Tyler Durden
The next time your friendly, local, asset-gathering, commission-taking, wealth-transferer explains that “you should BTFATH because stock valuations are supported by the fundamentals” – show them these two charts.
Now – what do you think will happen when the Fed turns off the QE tap?
Source: Citi
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1mMsFr6 Tyler Durden
What kind of restraint should cops have to
exercise when trying to induce compliance in a target? Judging from
how often the use of force by cops is ruled not excessive, not much
restraint is necessary. More cases of alleged police brutality may
be videotaped, by passersby or by cops’ various cameras, but cops
can often still expect to be exonerated. It took fellow cops at the
Red Bank Police Department in Tennessee
about a month to rule that the use of force by their colleagues
in the video below, including multiple punches while the suspect
was already restrained, was not excessive:
Typical police work?
Lawyers for the man in the video say they may sue, so the police
department says it can’t discuss the matter further.
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What kind of restraint should cops have to
exercise when trying to induce compliance in a target? Judging from
how often the use of force by cops is ruled not excessive, not much
restraint is necessary. More cases of alleged police brutality may
be videotaped, by passersby or by cops’ various cameras, but cops
can often still expect to be exonerated. It took fellow cops at the
Red Bank Police Department in Tennessee
about a month to rule that the use of force by their colleagues
in the video below, including multiple punches while the suspect
was already restrained, was not excessive:
Typical police work?
Lawyers for the man in the video say they may sue, so the police
department says it can’t discuss the matter further.
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Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
– Henry David Thoreau in Civil Disobedience (1849)
Civil disobedience is as American as apple pie. In fact, one of the most memorable moments in the formation of the republic was the Boston Tea Party, a much celebrated and historic act of civil disobedience.
From colonists dressed as Native Americans dumping East India Company tea into the Boston Harbor, to Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience. From Rosa Parks, to Martin Luther King Jr., civil disobedience has been a significant part of what has made these United States free, and is a tactic that should be elevated and encouraged, rather than censored and demonized.
Protect your wealth – Buy Gold and Silver Bullion with Goldbroker.com
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New York-At the United
Nations Climate Summit today, the world’s two biggest emitters
of greenhouse gases, China and the United States, both held off on
making any specific additional pledges regarding their future
emissions. In 2012, humanity emitted
36 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, of which
10 billion came from China and 5.2 billion from the United States.
Convened by General-Secretary Ban Ki Moon, the Summit is supposed
to “catalyze action” in advance of the big U.N. climate change
conference at Paris in 2015. At the Paris conference, the nations
of the world are supposed to make pledges to cut their emissions
sufficient to keep future warming below the internationally agreed
upon threshold of 2 degrees Celsius. It is not at all clear that
today’s Summit catalyzed much more than pious clichés.
In his
remarks before the U.N. General Assembly, President Barack
Obama opened by noting that while the world is confronting the
current issues of terrorism, instability, inequality, and disease,
“there’s one issue that will define the contours of this century
more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and
growing threat of a changing climate.” The president proudly added
that since he took office the U.S. produces three times more
electricity from the wind and 10 times more from the sun. How much
is that? The Energy Information Administration reports that in 2013
electricity from wind power amounted to 4.13 percent
and solar to 0.23 percent of supply.
The president observed that “the United States has reduced our
total carbon pollution by more than any other nation on Earth.” In
fact, by 2012, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions were down by more
than 12 percent over the 2007 peak; down to about where they
were in 1994. However, emissions
upticked 2 percent in 2013. While the president reiterated his
pledge that the U.S. would by 2020 cut its greenhouse gas emissions
17 percent below the levels emitted in 2005, he held off making any
new ones, promising that “by early next year, we will put forward
our next emission target.”
With China clearly in mind, President Obama declared, “We can
only succeed in combating climate change if we are joined in this
effort by every nation –- developed and developing
alike. Nobody gets a pass.”
General
Secretary Ban Ki Moon had hoped to attract heads of state of most
the big emitting countries to the Summit, but China’s President Xi
Jinping declined to come. Instead, Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli
put forward China’s views at the international confab today.
Like Obama before him, Zhang largely stuck to restate China’s
earlier pledge of cutting its carbon intensity by 40 to 45 percent
by 2020 from the 2005 level. Carbon intensity is the ratio of
carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product –
basically burning ever less fossil fuel to produce goods. Zhang
noted that by 2013 China’s carbon intensity was already down by
28.5 percent. There is plenty of room to improve: China emits
almost twice as
much carbon dioxide per dollar of GDP as does the United
States.
Like President Obama, the Chinese vice-premier was not yet ready
to reveal his country’s negotiating bid just yet, stating, “We will
announce post-2020 actions on climate change as soon as we can.”
Zhang did, however, suggest that China’s future pledges with regard
to its greenhouse gas emissions will aim to bring “about marked
progress in reducing carbon intensity, increasing the share of
non-fossil fuels and raising the forest stock, as well as the
peaking of total CO2 emissions as early as possible.”
On the face of it, this part of Zhang’s statement – especially
the part about peaking emissions – should cheer those concerned
about man-made global warming. Well, maybe. In his remarks, Zhang
also restated China’s dogged insistence on adherence to the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In that treaty,
China and a bunch of other developing countries have no firm
obligations whatsoever to do anything about their emissions. That
treaty was adopted in 1992 when China’s was much poorer and its
emissions hovered around a third of what they are today. In other
words, Zhang seems to be insisting that the world’s biggest emitter
should be given a “pass” with regard to making any commitments
toward actual cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile Zhang
also declared that “developed countries need to intensify emission
reduction and fulfill their commitment of annual financial support
of 100 billion US dollars and technology transfer to developing
countries by 2020.”
I plan to do a more in-depth report and analysis of what
happened – and did not happen – at the U.N. Climate Summit later
this week.
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Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
The U.S. economy has had six full years to bounce back since the financial collapse of 2008, and it simply has not happened. Median household income has declined substantially since then, total household wealth for middle class families is way down, the percentage of the population that is employed is still about where it was at the end of the last recession, and the number of Americans that are dependent on the government has absolutely exploded. Even those that claim that the economy is "recovering" admit that we are not even close to where we used to be economically. Many hope that someday we will eventually get back to that level, but the truth is that this is about as good as things are ever going to get for the middle class. And we should enjoy this period of relative stability while we still can, because when the next great financial crisis strikes things are going to fall apart very rapidly.
The U.S. Census Bureau has just released some brand new numbers, and they are quite sobering. For example, after accounting for inflation median household income in the United States has declined a total of 8 percent from where it was back in 2007.
That means that middle class families have significantly less purchasing power than they did just prior to the last major financial crisis.
And one research firm is projecting that it is going to take until 2019 for median household income to return to the level that we witnessed in 2007…
For everybody wondering why the economic recovery feels like a recession, here’s the answer: We’re still at least five years away from regaining everything lost during the 2007-2009 downturn.
Forecasting firm IHS Global Insight predicts that real median household income — perhaps the best proxy for middle-class living standards — won’t reach the prior peak from 2007 until 2019. Since the numbers are adjusted for inflation, that means the typical family will wait 12 years until their purchasing power is as strong as it was before the recession. That would be the longest period of stagnation, by far, since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Of course that projection assumes that the economy will continue to "recover", which is a very questionable assumption at best.
Meanwhile, total household wealth has been declining for middle class families as well.
According to the New York Times, the "typical American household" is now worth 36 percent less than it was worth a decade ago.
That is a pretty substantial drop. But you never hear our politicians (especially the Democrats) bring up numbers like that because they want us to feel good about things.
So why is all of this happening?
The biggest reason why the middle class is struggling so much is the lack of good jobs.
As the chart posted below demonstrates, the percentage of the working age population that is actually employed is still way, way below where it was prior to the last recession…
The "employment recovery" (the tiny little bump at the end of the chart) has been so miniscule that it is hardly even worth mentioning.
At the moment, we still have 1.4 million fewer full-time jobs than we did in 2008 even though more than 100,000 people are added to the U.S. population each month.
And a lot of the workers that have lost jobs since the start of the last recession have never been able to find a new one.
According to a brand new survey conducted by Rutgers University, more than 20 percent of all workers that have been laid off in the past five years still have not found a new job.
Meanwhile, the control freak bureaucrats that run this country continue to kill off small businesses.
In recent years we have seen large numbers of small businesses fail, and at this point the rate of small business ownership in the United States is at an all-time low.
As a result of everything that you have just read, the middle class is shrinking and dependence on the government is soaring.
Today, there are 49 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity, and Americans received more than 2 trillion dollars in benefits from the federal government last year alone.
For many more statistics just like this, please see my previous article entitled "30 stats to show to anyone that does not believe the middle class is being destroyed".
Without a doubt, things are not that good for the middle class in America these days.
Unfortunately, the next great wave of financial trouble is rapidly approaching, and once it strikes things are going to get substantially worse for the middle class.
Yes, the stock market set record high after record high this summer. But what we have observed is classic bubble behavior. So many of the exact same patterns that occurred just prior to previous stock market crashes are happening once again.
And it is interesting to note that September 22nd has marked important market peaks at various times throughout history…
For traders, September 22 is one of those days with a notorious history. UBS's Art Cashin notes that September 22 marked various market highs in 1873, 1929, 1980, and even as recent as 2008.
Could the coming months be the beginning of the next major stock market decline?
Small-cap stocks are already starting to show signs of real weakness. In fact, the Russell 2000 just hit a "death cross" for the first time in more than 2 years…
The Russell 2000 has been diverging from the broader market over the last several weeks, and now technicians point out it has flashed a bearish signal. For the first time in more than two years, the small-cap index has hit a so-called death cross.
A death cross occurs when a nearer-term 50-day moving average falls below a longer-term, 200-day moving average. Technicians argue that a death cr
oss can be a bearish sign.
None of us knows what the market is going to do tomorrow, but a lot of the "smart money" is getting out of the market right now while the getting is good.
So where is the "smart money" putting their assets?
In a previous article, I discussed how sales of gold bars to wealthy clients is way up so far this year.
And CNBC has just reported that the ultra-wealthy "are holding mountains of cash" right now…
Billionaires are holding mountains of cash, offering the latest sign that the ultra-wealthy are nervous about putting more money into today's markets.
According to the new Billionaire Census from Wealth-X and UBS, the world's billionaires are holding an average of $600 million in cash each—greater than the gross domestic product of Dominica.
Why are they doing this?
Are they concerned about the potential of a market crash?
And if we do see another market crash like we witnessed back in 2008, what is that going to mean for the rest of us?
2008 certainly did not destroy our economy.
But it did cause an immense amount of damage that we have never recovered from.
Now the next wave is approaching, and most people don't even see it coming.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1vdJqe0 Tyler Durden
Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
The U.S. economy has had six full years to bounce back since the financial collapse of 2008, and it simply has not happened. Median household income has declined substantially since then, total household wealth for middle class families is way down, the percentage of the population that is employed is still about where it was at the end of the last recession, and the number of Americans that are dependent on the government has absolutely exploded. Even those that claim that the economy is "recovering" admit that we are not even close to where we used to be economically. Many hope that someday we will eventually get back to that level, but the truth is that this is about as good as things are ever going to get for the middle class. And we should enjoy this period of relative stability while we still can, because when the next great financial crisis strikes things are going to fall apart very rapidly.
The U.S. Census Bureau has just released some brand new numbers, and they are quite sobering. For example, after accounting for inflation median household income in the United States has declined a total of 8 percent from where it was back in 2007.
That means that middle class families have significantly less purchasing power than they did just prior to the last major financial crisis.
And one research firm is projecting that it is going to take until 2019 for median household income to return to the level that we witnessed in 2007…
For everybody wondering why the economic recovery feels like a recession, here’s the answer: We’re still at least five years away from regaining everything lost during the 2007-2009 downturn.
Forecasting firm IHS Global Insight predicts that real median household income — perhaps the best proxy for middle-class living standards — won’t reach the prior peak from 2007 until 2019. Since the numbers are adjusted for inflation, that means the typical family will wait 12 years until their purchasing power is as strong as it was before the recession. That would be the longest period of stagnation, by far, since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Of course that projection assumes that the economy will continue to "recover", which is a very questionable assumption at best.
Meanwhile, total household wealth has been declining for middle class families as well.
According to the New York Times, the "typical American household" is now worth 36 percent less than it was worth a decade ago.
That is a pretty substantial drop. But you never hear our politicians (especially the Democrats) bring up numbers like that because they want us to feel good about things.
So why is all of this happening?
The biggest reason why the middle class is struggling so much is the lack of good jobs.
As the chart posted below demonstrates, the percentage of the working age population that is actually employed is still way, way below where it was prior to the last recession…
The "employment recovery" (the tiny little bump at the end of the chart) has been so miniscule that it is hardly even worth mentioning.
At the moment, we still have 1.4 million fewer full-time jobs than we did in 2008 even though more than 100,000 people are added to the U.S. population each month.
And a lot of the workers that have lost jobs since the start of the last recession have never been able to find a new one.
According to a brand new survey conducted by Rutgers University, more than 20 percent of all workers that have been laid off in the past five years still have not found a new job.
Meanwhile, the control freak bureaucrats that run this country continue to kill off small businesses.
In recent years we have seen large numbers of small businesses fail, and at this point the rate of small business ownership in the United States is at an all-time low.
As a result of everything that you have just read, the middle class is shrinking and dependence on the government is soaring.
Today, there are 49 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity, and Americans received more than 2 trillion dollars in benefits from the federal government last year alone.
For many more statistics just like this, please see my previous article entitled "30 stats to show to anyone that does not believe the middle class is being destroyed".
Without a doubt, things are not that good for the middle class in America these days.
Unfortunately, the next great wave of financial trouble is rapidly approaching, and once it strikes things are going to get substantially worse for the middle class.
Yes, the stock market set record high after record high this summer. But what we have observed is classic bubble behavior. So many of the exact same patterns that occurred just prior to previous stock market crashes are happening once again.
And it is interesting to note that September 22nd has marked important market peaks at various times throughout history…
For traders, September 22 is one of those days with a notorious history. UBS's Art Cashin notes that September 22 marked various market highs in 1873, 1929, 1980, and even as recent as 2008.
Could the coming months be the beginning of the next major stock market decline?
Small-cap stocks are already starting to show signs of real weakness. In fact, the Russell 2000 just hit a "death cross" for the first time in more than 2 years…
The Russell 2000 has been diverging from the broader market over the last several weeks, and now technicians point out it has flashed a bearish signal. For the first time in more than two years, the small-cap index has hit a so-called death cross.
A death cross occurs when a nearer-term 50-day moving average falls below a longer-term, 200-day moving average. Technicians argue that a death cross can be a bearish sign.
None of us knows what the market is going to do tomorrow, but a lot of the "smart money" is getting out of the market right now while the getting is good.
So where is the "smart money" putting their assets?
In a previous article, I discussed how sales of gold bars to wealthy clients is way up so far this year.
And CNBC has just reported that the ultra-wealthy "are holding mountains of cash" right now…
Billionaires are holding mountains of cash, offering the latest sign that the ultra-wealthy are nervous about putting more money into today's markets.
According to the new Billionaire Census from Wealth-X and UBS, the world's billionaires are holding an average of $600 million in cash each—greater than the gross domestic product of Dominica.
Why are they doing this?
Are they concerned about the potential of a market crash?
And if we do see another market crash like we witnessed back in 2008, what is that going to mean for the rest of us?
2008 certainly did not destroy our economy.
But it did cause an immense amount of damage that we have never recovered from.
Now the next wave is approaching, and most people don't even see it coming.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1vdJqe0 Tyler Durden
One look at the chart below showing Q1 Bed Bath And Beyond (BBB)Buybacks, and we have just three questions:
No further commentary necessary, although perhaps it is worth noting that in a quarter in which BBBY spent 30 cents of every dollar from its $2.94 billion in sales on $1 billion in buybacks, or about 3 times more than its $368MM in cash from operations, it also spent a “whopping” $88 million on CapEx.
All joking aside, here’s what happened: in Q1 BBBY issued $1.5 billion in Senior Unsecured Notes, and promptly used $1 billion of this to buyback its own shares. Because this time the credit bubble is different.
Thank you Bernanke.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1uj92cz Tyler Durden
The Government Accountability
Office (GAO) has put out a new report intended to analyze the
performance of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in the operation of
the watchlists that determine how much abuse passengers have to
suffer before being allowed on a plane (assuming they’re
allowed).
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) read through the
report and was a bit disturbed at what they’ve discovered. The
ACLU, you may recall, has been suing the government (and
winning) over the horrible, opaque way the watchlists and
no-fly lists have been operating in secret. You may also recall a
recent report from The Intercept showing that
hundreds of thousands of Americans placed on watchlists for
extra screening have no known ties to terrorism. In fact, today
Stephen Hayes, a senior writer for The Weekly Standard,
tweeted that he discovered he’d been added to a DHS watchlist
after taking a one-way flight to Turkey in July.
The ACLU
notes that the TSA has taken to assigning passengers to risk
categories for reasons that have nothing to do with any law
enforcement agency recommending them for review. That may explain
Hayes’ experience:
Thanks to the GAO report, we now know that the TSA has modified
the Secure Flight program so that it assigns passengers to one of
three risk categories: high risk, low risk, or unknown risk. We’ve
long been
critical of this kind of passenger profiling—which the TSA has
proposed in the past—because it inevitably leads to greater
intrusion into individuals’ private lives. And of course, it raises
the question of what criteria and information the TSA uses to sort
people into these categories.The TSA is keeping those criteria secret, which is part of the
problem. However, the GAO report states that the “high-risk”
passengers aren’t just those who appear to match a name on the
FBI’s No Fly, Selectee, or Expanded Selectee lists (as problematic
as those lists may be). Now, the TSA is also using intelligence and
law enforcement information, along with “risk-based targeting
scenarios and assessments,” to identify passengers who may be
“unknown threats.”In other words, the FBI’s flawed definition of someone who is a
suspected threat to aviation security isn’t relaxed enough for the
TSA, so the TSA is creating its own blacklists of people who are
hypothetical threats. Those people are also subjected to
additional screening every time they fly. To make matters worse,
another recently
published GAO report indicates that the redress process for
travelers who have been incorrectly caught up in the watchlisting
system does not apply to these new TSA blacklists. So the TSA’s
“unknown threats” are truly without recourse.
Hayes tweeted that when he attempted to file a “redress” form
online, it couldn’t be processed. Imagine that.
The ACLU also noted that there’s a “whitelist” for millions of
government employees, which allows them into the Pre-Check line. We
could potentially join them in that line, if we’re willing to give
the government enough private information to prove to them that we
aren’t terrorists.
Read the full ACLU report
here.
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