Money Flow Trading Method along with Risk Management

HOW WE GOT HERE - PART 2 of 3

David Stockman - Contra Corner

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.co...htmare-part-2/

SNIPPET:
The Albatross Of Debt: The Stock Market's $67 Trillion Nightmare, Part 2


By David Stockman. Posted On Friday, February 23rd, 2018

In Part 1 we postulated that the chart below embodies nothing less than the nightmare that will be coming to Wall Street right soon. It means, in effect, that you can climb the financial tiger's back for an extended time, but when you reach the mane its generally impossible to get off alive.
https://orig00.deviantart.net/5ec3/f...er-d9w6atp.jpg
Needless to say, we have reached the mane. What drove the US economy for the past three decades was debt expansion----private and public--- at rates far faster than GDP growth. But that entailed a steady ratcheting up of the national leverage ratio until we hit what amounts to the top of the tiger's back---that is, Peak Debt at 3.5X national income.

As we also showed yesterday, the fulcrum event was Nixon's abandonment of the dollar's anchor to a fixed weight of gold at Camp David in August 1971. That unleashed the Fed to expand it balance sheet at will, thereby injecting fiat credit into the financial system at relentlessly accelerating rates; and it also paved the way for takeover of the FOMC by Keynesian academics and apparatchiks in lieu of the conservative bankers and money men who had run the Fed prior to 1970.

At length, the Fed's balance sheet grew by 82X over the 48 years since June 1970, erupting from $55 billion to $4.5 trillion at the recent QE3 peak. The effect was drastic and enduring financial repression that drove bond yields far below what would have prevailed on the free market based on the supply of domestic real money savings.

Stated differently, as the so-called "reserve currency issuer" the Fed's massive balance sheet eruption forced money-printing reciprocity among all the central banks of the world owing to the fear of rising exchange rates---a syndrome which afflicts politicians and policy-makers everywhere. So the convoy of modest central bank balance sheets that collectively stood at perhaps $80 billion in June 1970 totals more than $22 trillion today.

That is, herded-on by the rogue central bank unleashed at Camp David, the convoy of global central banks evolved into a gigantic yield-insensitive bond buyer. For all practical purposes, they collectively operated the monetary equivalent of roach motels: The bonds went in but never came out.
This massive sequestering of real debt funded by fiat credits, which central banks conjured from thin air, had the obvious first order effect of suppressing yields well below honest market clearing levels. That's just the law of supply and demand 101.

But the second order effect----front running by carry-trade speculators----drove bond prices even higher, thereby pushing yields even deeper into sub-economic levels. That, in turn, caused the carry cost of debt relative to income to steadily fall, incentivizing the public and private sectors alike to ratchet up their leverage ratios to levels that were unheard of prior to 1970.

At length, cheap debt got built into the warp and woof of public and private sectors alike. So doing, rising leverage ratios caused future economic activity to be pulled forward in time----meaning that domestic and world GDP are far higher than they would otherwise be had growth been funded by real savings extracted from current production, not debt enabled, financed and stimulated by central banks.

For example, fixed asset spending financed on the margin through central bank bond purchases---directly or indirectly through arbitrage displacement---added to GDP faster than savings-based investments would have otherwise. Even then, however, the eruption of global central bank balance sheets proceeded apace at rates dramatically faster than the growth of debt-bloated GDP.

Thus, global GDP has expanded from about $3 trillion to $80 trillion since 1970 or by 26X. By contrast, the balance sheets of central banks has exploded by around 275X.

Yet, as economist Herb Stein once famously observed, things which are unsustainable tend to stop. And foremost among them at the present juncture is the central bank driven explosion of total debt.
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.co...9-480x297.jpeg
Indeed, the current state of the US economy and its total public and private balance sheet embodies Stein's Law in spades. To reiterate: In June 1970 the GDP was $1.1 trillion and it has since expanded by 18X to $19.6 trillion. By contrast, total public and private debt outstanding was $1.58 trillionand has since expanded by 42X to $67 trillion.

In effect, the law of compounding eventually rules. That's because to extend these unsustainably divergent trends for even another decade would lead to an outright absurdity. As we also pointed out in Part 1, ten years from now nominal GDP would total $35 trillion and total public and private debt would reach $150 trillion.
Can you say, tilt!

Even the Fed thinks so. And that is the real reason for its pivot to rate normalization and QT (quantitative tightening).

Unfortunately, our monetary central planners fail to realize that the 50 year march up the blue line (debt) in the chart below has badly injured the main street economy, and that as it "removes accommodation" and shrinks its balance sheet the damage will only be further compounded.

Secondly, during the final phases of the 50-year debt bubble, cheap debt increasingly cycled back into the canyons of Wall Street via corporate buybacks, M&A deals and other financial engineers maneuvers. There it fueled an enormous inflation of financial asset values and a veritable tsunami of speculative invention and dangerous wagering.

To wit, there never would have been a double inverse VIX ETF under a regime of honest money and free market financial discipline; nor would you find European junk bond yields trading inside of US treasuries or radically cyclical, price sensitive shale oil plays funded with junk bonds, or "volatility" being traded as an "asset class". In a free market, the latter would have no trend and would therefore be unprofitable to trade.

In a word, the long-running illicit regime of Keynesian central banking is now "priced-in" to the entire warp and woof of the world's $300 trillion market for debt ($220 trillion) and equity securities ($80 trillion).

Therefore, as the Fed moves forward into the terra incognito of QT and the massive draining of cash from the canyons of Wall Street, thereby eventually triggering reciprocal QT up and down the rest of the global central bank convoy, its essential impact will be to "un-price" the falsifications, distortions, deformations and malinvestments accumulated over decades.

Needless to say, "un-pricing" will trigger chain reactions or what the central bankers are pleased to call "contagions" throughout the interstices of the world's vast financial system. Mis-pricing was pleasant and arrived slowly, silently and incrementally; un-pricing, not so much.

Indeed, what lies ahead is akin to what Keynes once observed (in 1919 when he had not yet gone off the deep end) about the insidious workings of inflation: It gets embedded so deeply in the fabric of finance and economic life that it becomes virtually invisible.

Substitute "financialization" and debt-fueled "asset inflation" in the Great Thinker's most famous quote, and you have exactly what the era of Bubble Finance has wrought in the present day world.

"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."

In any event, buried in the chart below is the enormous damage to Main Street and Wall Street alike that has remained dormant most of the time since 1970.
But no more. The great pivot to central bank QT is about to trigger Warren Buffett's equally famous aphorism: The naked swimmers are about to be beached and exposed.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=iAwC
At the main street level, it has long been evident that the nation's post-1970 LBO is grinding the trend growth of real GDP steadily lower. Like in all debt driven economies, the initial impact was pleasant because the incremental activity which was brought forward in time more than outweighed the rising carry cost of the debt.
But those salutary effects were temporary. Thus, the first panel on the chart below represents the pre-Camp David status quo ante. During 1953-1971---the golden age of US prosperity-----real GDP grew at a 3.8% rate per annum rate, while the US economy's historic leverage ratio hugged tightly to the 1.5Xgolden mean. Growth was organic, sustainable and arose from the genius of private capitalism relatively untrammeled by heavy-handed state intervention.

As shown by the red line in the second panel for 1971-2000, the leverage ratio began its relentless climb--accelerating sharply after Alan Greenspan arrived at the Fed in 1987 and explicitly launched the era of Bubble Finance. During this period, the boost to growth from more leverage was only partially off-set by the rising burden of debt carry costs.

The third panel for 2000-2007 captures the final manic blow-off phase of the national LBO when the Greenspan housing boom took mortgage debt into the financial stratosphere. During that seven year interval of insanity, the national leverage ratio soared from an already extended 2.8X national income to 3.8X at the financial crisis peak.

But not withstanding the greatest debt pumping spree ever---including more than $3 trillion of mortgage equity withdrawal (MEW)---which flowed into the consumption spending stream, the toll on economic growth became patently obvious. On a peak-to-peak basis, real GDP growth slowed to just 2.4% per annum.
The final panel covers the ten years since the pre-crisis peak and speaks for itself: Notwithstanding the greatest one-two punch of fiscal and monetary "stimulus" in recorded history, the debt ratio stopped growing and so nearly did the main street economy.

The red line has modestly rolled over because households were already at Peak Debt in 2007 and business debt has grown only modestly----even as it was almost entirely cycled back into Wall Street via financial engineering.

The bottom line, however, leaves little to the imagination. In combination, the carry cost of what is now $67 trillion of public and private debt and the acceleration of C-suite strip-mining of corporate cash flows and balance sheets into order to fund financial engineering, have caused the trend rate of real GDP growth to fall to just 1.2%. That's barely one-third of the rates posted during the golden era of growth prior to the folly of Camp David.

Needless to say, the paint-by-the-numbers folks at the Fed and on Wall Street have no clue about the dismal reality represented in the graph below. They are so focused on the short-term "flows" and high-frequency "incoming data" that they recognize neither the fact of the national LBO, as so stunningly evident in the red line, nor the demise of historic economic growth, as is so unequivocally evident in the grey bars.

Moreover, by now the claim that the tepid recovery is owing to the deep plunge of the Great Recession doesn't wash. To the contrary, if that shock to main street was merely cyclical, as claimed by our Keynesian central bankers, the lost GDP would have been more than recovered after 9 years from the bottom.

In fact, however, the 1.2% real GDP growth rate in the final panel represents the permanent condition of the main street economy and exposes the real truth about the 40-year debt bubble. To wit, the US economy has reverted to payback time. That's the real price of $67 trillion of debt and leveraging the US economy to its peak tolerance at 3.5X national income.
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.co...11-480x317.png
Even then, the grey bars in the chart above probably understate the severity of damage to the main street economy that has resulted from the post-1970 debt explosion. That's because some significant part of even the tepid trend growth since 2007 is owing to the hideous reflation of the stock market and resulting (reversible) wealth effects since March 2009.

All Jews I know don't work on Saturday. You are very busy on Sabbath with your business...

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...chain-reaction

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY - IT WILL BE THE FUTURE - UNDERSTAND and BE AWARE - THEN YOU HAVE AN EDGE !!!


Benjaminis: Have a Great Trading Day !!!

Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,
Central bankers seem to think that adjusting interest rates is a nice little tool that they can easily handle. The problem is that higher interest rates affect the economy in many ways simultaneously. The lessons that seem to have been learned from past rate hikes may not be applicable today.

Furthermore, there can be quite a long time lag involved. Thus, by the time a central banker starts seeing an effect, it may be clear that the amount of the interest rate change is far too large.

A recent Zerohedge article seems to suggest that problems can arise with 10-year Treasury interest rates of less of than 3%. We may be facing a period of declining acceptable interest rates.

https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...pg?w=640&h=333

Figure 1. Chart from The Scariest Chart in the Market.
Let’s look at a few of the issues involved:
[1] The standard reason for raising interest rates seems to be concern about inflationary impacts occurring as a result of rising food and energy prices. In practice, the impact of such an interest rate change can be quite severe and quite delayed.

Figure 2 is an illustration from the Bureau of Labor Statistics website showing one of today’s concerns: rising energy costs. Food prices are not yet rising. Normally, however, if oil prices rise, the cost of producing food will also rise. This happens because modern agricultural methods and transportation to markets both require the use of petroleum products.

https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...ng?w=640&h=534
Figure 2. Figure created by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showing percentage change in the Consumer Price Index between January 2017 and January 2018, for selected categories.

In fact, raising short-term interest rates seems to have been associated with trying to bring down rising food and energy costs, as early as the 1970s and early 1980s.
Trending Articles

"Wow, That's Weird" - FOIA Exposes FAA Tapes From Oregon…
On October 25, an unidentified flying object (UFO) was detected on radar, which turned into a series of eyewitness…

https://c5x8i7c7.ssl.hwcdn.net/creat.../dslogo_sm.png
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...ng?w=640&h=258

Figure 3. US three-month treasury interest rates. Chart prepared by St. Louis Federal Reserve.
The reason why an increase in short-term interest rates is helpful is because it reliably induces a recession. A person can see the close connection between short-term interest rate increases and recessions (gray bars) in Figure 3. Recessions in turn damp down food and energy prices.

The reason why this damping down effect occurs is because when there is a recession, many people are laid off from work. These people purchase fewer goods and services. With people out of work, “demand” for goods and services falls. (Demand is very closely related to “amount affordable.”) We might think of demand for goods and services as helping to maintain the “production” of new homes, new cars, upscale food products, toys, and even consulting services.

When demand falls, fewer goods of practically every type are made. This indirectly leads to less need for commodities of many types, including oil, natural gas, metals, and food. Commodities have very long production cycles, and only modest storage facilities. When lower demand for a commodity such as oil occurs, prices tend to adjust sharply downward, in order to signal the need for lower production. Figure 4 shows that interest rate spikes corresponded to the 1973-1974 oil price spike, the 1979 oil price spike, the 2004-2008 price run-up, and perhaps to other shorter oil price spikes.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...ng?w=640&h=386

Figure 4. Annual averages of Brent oil prices (in 2016$) and 3-month average interest rates, based on data similar to that shown in Figure 3 from “FRED.”
The annual data in Figure 4 loses the detail of month-to-month variations. Because of this, it makes the impact of the Great Recession look much less severe than it really was. Figure 5, using monthly data for recent periods, shows more clearly the severe fall in oil prices following the run-up in short-term interest rates in the 2004-2007 period.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...ng?w=640&h=258

Figure 5. Three-month US Treasury interest rates and Brent oil prices, both on a monthly average basis. Graph by FRED.
If a person looks at the indirect impacts on the economy as a whole, it becomes clear that the rise in short-term interest rates was one of the proximate causes of the Great Recession of 2008-2009. I talk about this in Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis. The minutes of the June 2004 Federal Reserve Open Market Committee indicate that the committee decided to start raising interest rates at a rate of 0.25% per quarter for the purpose of stopping the rise in energy and food prices.

The huge financial problems that indirectly resulted did not occur until four years later, in 2008. It is likely that most economists are unaware of the connection between the decision to raise rates back in 2004 and the Great Recession several years later.


[2] Higher energy prices squeeze a person’s “spendable income.” Higher interest rates have the same effect.
Economist James Hamilton showed that ten out of eleven recent recessions were associated with oil price shocks. We would argue that if an economy is subject to higher interest rates in addition to higher oil prices, the economy is doubly likely to go into recession. Figure 6 shows an illustration of the situation.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...ng?w=640&h=413

Figure 6. Image by author showing recessionary impact of rising energy costs and interest costs.
A wage earner’s pay does not normally increase as energy costs rise, or as interest costs rise. Even if energy and interest costs are well buried (in higher food costs, or in the higher cost of goods transported across the country, or in higher student loan payments) the amount of income that a person has available to spend on discretionary goods and services falls if energy and interest costs rise. Having both energy and interest costs take a bigger share of available income at the same time is especially a problem.

[3] Reduced interest rates can be used to conceal the adverse impact of rising energy prices.
This is another version of what we saw in Figure 6. If interest rates can be reduced, they can offset most of the bad impacts of higher energy prices. For example, if oil prices are higher, it helps if auto loans and mortgages loans are lower in cost.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...ng?w=640&h=432

Figure 7. Image by author showing that artificially low interest rates can mostly offset the impact of rising energy costs.
Of course, central bankers don’t necessarily think this through. To what extent is today’s economy really dependent on very low interest rates?
[4] Falling interest rates have an almost magical impact on the economy. Rising interest rates reverse these magical impacts, and replace them with very negative impacts.

We saw in Figure 6 how falling interest rates could more or less conceal a rise in energy prices. The following are a few of the additional magical things that falling interest rates can do:
(a) Falling interest can raise asset prices of many kinds, including homes, stock prices, resale prices of bonds, and the price of land.
(b) Falling interest rates can raise commodity prices, making it possible to extract more fossil fuels and metals. Resources that previously did not look economic to extract, suddenly become economic to extract. This change occurs because with lower interest rates, more people can afford to purchase goods that use oil, such as cars and motorcycles. This tends to raise demand for oil products, and thus prices.
(c) Because higher-priced energy extraction becomes feasible at lower interest rates, more advanced technology, at higher prices, suddenly becomes feasible. Jobs open up in research areas that would not previously have made sense at lower energy prices.
(d) Falling interest rates can make the balance sheets of companies holding stocks and bonds as assets look better, because of their rising prices.
(e) Rising asset prices “feed back” into spendable income. People with homes that have risen in value can refinance, and use the proceeds to fix up their home (add an additional room or an updated kitchen, for example). Individual citizens and companies can sell shares of stock that have risen in value and use those proceeds to augment other income.


If interest rates rise rather than fall, the impacts can be expected to be extremely recessionary. The stock market may crash. Homes are likely to lose value because of a lack of buyers that can afford them. Energy resources that seemed to be available can suddenly seem not to be feasible because of low prices.


[5] The economy was able to reasonably tolerate the run-up in interest rates in the 1950 – 1980 period because the economy was growing very rapidly.
A person can see the pattern of short-term interest rates in Figure 3, above. Long-term (10-year) interest rates follow a somewhat similar, but smoother, pattern (Figure 8).
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...ng?w=640&h=258


Figure 8. Monthly average 10-year Treasury interest rates, through January 2018, in chart by FRED.

World per capita energy consumption was rising very rapidly in the 1950 to 1970 period. Even in the troubled 1970 to 1980 period, per capita energy consumption continued to rise, although not as quickly (Figure 9).
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...ng?w=640&h=383

Figure 9. World per capita energy consumption, with 1950-1980 period of rapid growth highlighted. World Energy Consumption by Source, based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects (Appendix) together with BP Statistical Data for 1965 and subsequent, divided by population estimates by Angus Maddison.


When world per capita energy consumption is growing this rapidly, jobs tend to be plentiful and wages tend to rise faster than inflation. According to Figure 10, US wages rose more rapidly than inflation in the 1950 to 1970 period, without wage disparity becoming a problem. Even in the 1970 to 1980 period, when high oil prices were a problem, US wages were able to rise quickly enough to keep up with inflation. Rising wage disparity did not become a problem until after 1980.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...m-90.jpg?w=640


Figure 10. Chart comparing income gains by the top 10% to income gains by the bottom 90% by economist Emmanuel Saez. Amounts are inflation adjusted. Based on an analysis of IRS data, published in Forbes.

The share of US citizens in the workforce also rose during the period up to 1980, as an increasing percentage of women joined the workforce (Figure 11).
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...ng?w=640&h=258


Figure 11. Employment as a percentage of the population, aged 25-54. Chart from FRED, using OECD amounts.
The thing that made the 1950-1970 period unusual was the growing availability of inexpensive fossil fuels. With fossil fuels, it was possible to add expressways where they had never been before. This allowed more interstate trade and improved the productivity of truck drivers. Labor saving devices allowed women to join the workforce. Farming continued to become more productive, with all of its labor saving equipment. Even as energy prices rose in the 1970 to 1980 period, citizens were able to continue to buy energy products because their wages were rising enough to keep up with inflation.

The growth in productivity was so great that wages plus government benefits (as measured by “Disposable Personal Income”) rose almost too fast. This added inflationary pressures to the economy. It is my opinion that these inflationary pressures contributed greatly to the oil price run-up in the 1973-1974 and the 1979-1981 periods.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...ng?w=640&h=383


Figure 12. Three-year average growth in Disposable Personal Income compared to inflation as measured by CPI-Urban. DPI from US Bureau of Economic Analysis; CPI from Bureau of Labor Statistics. Per Capita Disposable Personal Income is calculated by dividing DPI by US population, also from the BEA.
The run-up in oil prices also to some extent reflected a scarcity problem; note the two spikes in CPI-Urban in the 1970s in Figure 12, which are higher than would be expected, if the problem were simply a problem caused by the very high per capita Disposable Personal Income growth.
A major problem of the 1970s was a decline in US crude oil production for the area outside Alaska.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...ng?w=640&h=384


Figure 13. US crude oil production by type, based on EIA data.
This scarcity problem was significantly mitigated by the development of oil fields in Alaska, Mexico, and the North Sea in the next few years.
One of the things that substantially helped fix the oil problems of the 1970s was the fact that the US, as well as other developed countries, was able to make changes that substantially reduced their oil consumption. These changes included:

 

1. Moving to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars
2. Finding fuel substitutes when oil was being used being burned to create electricity
3. Changing oil-based home heating to approaches that used other fuels

https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...ng?w=640&h=383
Figure 14. Oil consumption by part of the world. Data from BP Statistical Report of World Energy 2017.
The combination of these approaches brought supply and demand more into balance. There was small dip in consumption in the 1973-1975 period, and a larger dip in the 1979 to 1984 period. In comparison, the Great Recession of 2008-2009 hardly made a dent.
An indirect impact of these changes was the fact that the US economy needed to become more integrated into the world market. The US started importing smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles from Japan, since Japan was already making these cars. Japan started making other kinds of goods as well to sell to the US and other markets. The US and other countries built nuclear electric generation to replace some of the oil-fired electricity generation. These plants were capital intensive and required growing debt.


Especially after 1981, changes started to take place in the US economy, reflecting its changed role in the world. US companies grew in size, as they began to add overseas markets to their local markets. Wage disparity became more of an issue, as high tech operations required more specialized high-wage workers and fewer of those with only a general education. Increased competition for jobs with workers from lower-wage countries also tended to hold down wages of those without advanced training.


[6] The situation is very different now, compared to the 1970s. It is doubtful that today’s economy could tolerate a spike interest rates.
Today, we are not seeing rapid growth in per capita energy consumption, the way we were in the 1950 to 1980 period (Figure 9). In fact, world per capita energy consumption is almost flat (Figure 15), the way it was during the period of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the way it was at the time of the collapse of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s (Figure 9).
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...ng?w=640&h=375


Figure 15. World energy per capita and world oil price in 2016 US$. Energy amounts from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017. Population estimates from UN 2017 Population data and Medium Estimates.

There are other similarities to the 1930s period. Short-term interest rates are back to the low level they were in the 1930s (Figure 3). Growth in Disposable Personal Income per capita is persistently low (Figure 12). Wage disparity is at the high level experienced back in the 1930s (Figure 16).
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...ng?w=640&h=480


Figure 16. U. S. Income Shares of Top 1% and Top 0.1%, Wikipedia exhibit by Piketty and Saez.
It is probably because of this renewed wage disparity that we are having difficulty with oil gluts. Oil gluts were also experienced in the 1930s. People with inadequate wages cannot afford goods made with oil products. These gluts occur because of affordability problems–inadequate wages for part of the workforce.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...ng?w=640&h=275


Figure 17. US ending stock of crude oil, excluding the strategic petroleum reserve. Figure produced by EIA. Figure by EIA.
Despite the spike in oil prices that central bankers are concerned about, oil prices are currently too low for producers. Oil exporting countries, such as Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria, depend on high oil prices so that they can collect high tax revenue. These countries are especially hurt by today’s low oil prices.
An increase in interest rates could very easily create a recession and drop oil prices even lower than they are today. Of course, that is precisely the intent of the central bankers. Our problem is that the economy cannot operate without energy products, particularly oil. The cost of producing oil is rising because of diminishing returns. It simply is not possible to drop its price as low as oil-importing countries would like it to be.


[7] Economists and central bankers think that they have good models of how the economy operates, but they really do not.
The economy is a self-organized system that is able to create goods and services using energy products. In fact, it cannot continue its existence, without continued very substantial energy consumption. The economy gradually builds itself up, with new businesses, new consumers, newly invented products, and with transportation and financial systems. I envision the economy as looking something like a child’s toy that is built from many pieces. If one or more pieces are removed, the system could collapse.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpre...01-b.gif?w=640


Figure 18. Dome constructed using Leonardo Sticks
The economy has been built based on the laws of physics. It requires sufficient energy. It is in many ways like a hurricane that loses power if it is forced to go over land for any distance. A hurricane gets extra strength if it is able to pass over very warm water, which provides the energy it needs. Right now, the world economy is showing signs that it does not have sufficient energy; the standard of living of young people around the world is falling. The return on energy investment is far too low.


While it may be true that the US economy looks like it is at full employment, based on the number of people looking for jobs, the percentage of people aged 25-54 with jobs tells a different story (Figure 11). This percentage has fallen since 2000, at least partly because of globalization.

Unfortunately, the approach that economists are taking to model the economy cannot provide a good representation of how the economy really works. A self-organized system has many feedback loops that are difficult to understand and model. One change leads to other changes that are hard to see in advance. The problem with current models is that they are likely to produce misleading indications.



[8] Conclusion
We have heard the saying, “That which does not kill you makes you stronger.” The theory behind raising interest rates seems to follow a similar line of reasoning. If central bankers can raise interest rates, economies will be stronger.

The catch is that we are too close to the “edge” to be testing an increase in interest rates. Economies, below a certain “stall speed,” cannot repay debt with interest, and cannot hope to provide entrepreneurs with an adequate return on investment. Our low rate of growth is already close to this stall speed.
Given where we are today, it would be quite possible to accidentally “kill” the economy with rising interest rates. This would be especially the case if short-term and longer-term interest rates rise at the same time. A budget with large deficits could cause longer-term interest rates to rise. So could selling large amounts of QE debt.
Also, feedbacks don’t come quickly enough to make necessary course corrections. This makes raising interest rates way too much like playing with physics reactions we don’t fully understand. Interest rate increases (like fission reactions) start chain reactions. In an open environment such as the world economy, we have limited understanding of the outcome of these chain reactions.

Understand Market Psychology And Reality ...
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials...iff082208.html

Snippet:

This recent correction saw the most dramatic change in sentiment that I have ever witnessed. But the head fake that caused the market to commit was in fact not worthy of a high school benchwarmer. With absolutely no significant developments that could explain either a top in the dollar, or a bottom in commodities, investors placed their faith in price moments alone. Once the numbers started to show some retrograde motion, everyone simply assumed that a real change had taken place, and the momentum buying and selling began. The rapid movement reveals how clueless participants in these trades had become. Even those fund managers that seem to understand the fundamentals were fooled by the sharp price movements and the rhetoric they spawned.

Lacking any real change in fundamentals, such abrupt changes in sentiment following extreme price swings are as bullish a sign as I have ever seen. There is absolutely no basis for a significant dollar rally, or further weakness in gold, oil, or other commodities.


The U.S. is the focal point of the world’s financial turmoil. We convinced creditors around the globe into loaning us trillions of dollars. Now that it’s becoming increasingly apparent we cannot pay the money back, Wall Street has concocted a scenario where our shell shocked creditors respond by loaning us even more. More alarming is that many brain dead investors see this as a likely development.


End Of Copy And Paste ...

In my 5 years in this amazing business I have NEVER experienced anything like has happened in the change of perception that saw the market see a return to a stronger US Dollar.

The above article pretty well confirms my view of what happened. I honestly did not understand why it happened at the time but it is now clear.

The writer of the article said in the first line of the snippet that I included here that he NEVER saw such a DRAMATIC change in sentiment ever.

I personally have no doubts that my own analysis of the fundamentals is correct. This ensures that my future FX trading will be successful since fundamentally I will not be head faked out of my views.

As a fundamental trader this is essential to winning in FX. I hope everyone reading this will have enough of an open mind to understand this.

It is the same as going to a horse race and knowing who the loser will be. Would you bet on the losing horse. Of course not so why bet on the US Dollar ? In case anyone thinks that these remarks are against anything they believe in it is only about the cold hard uncaring facts.

You either trade FX to win money or you are in the wrong business.

Gold WILL go up. That is a 100% surety. Oil will continue to hold over $100.00 and for the time being that is almost a surety. Those Trillions of US Dollars in losses have to be absorbed by someone. That is a 100% surety.

So who takes the losses guarantees the results. If as seems to be the case now with the FED effectively backing the losses with the acceptance of Congress then the LOSER is the US Dollar.

Why ? Understand what causes monetary INFLATION and you will see that is the TRUTH. There never has been a FIAT currency since the beginning of FIAT currencies that still exists today other than the current ones. The only 100% proven store of Wealth since the start of commerce in our World has been GOLD and Silver. Why will it change now ? It surely will not.

We are ALL living in extraordinary times. 25 Years ago none of us would have known each other like this. The INTERNET will go down in History 100 years from now as the one FORCE that changed the World. The Automobile and the Airplane and The Radio and Television all have one thing in common. They move people and information around HOWEVER they all have a form of CONTROL attached to it. If you are very poor you will not drive around or fly around much. Radio informs you but also can control you with misinformation. As for Newspapers and Television we ended UP with not only 9/11 but the most INSANE war ever in my personal opinion. I understand now why it had to happen but that is much too deep and off topic for Forex Factory.

The difference with the INTERNET is that SO FAR No Government in the World has figured out how to CONTROL it so the free exchange of information between normal intelligent individuals educates those that want to be educated. It also allows those that want to stay ignorant to waste the whole day chatting on MSN or Facebook or wherever they choose.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER only if the KNOWLEDGE learned is applied.

I trade FX for the CHALLENGE of being the BEST there is. That is my NATURE and the Money that I make or lose is just keeping score on how I am doing.

5 Years of incredible energy and time spend and FX traded and Dollars Won and Dollars lost have not been in VAIN. I have paid my DUES and I still pay them everyday that I trade.

There is NO EASY way to succeed in FX or in Life because they are just ONE and the SAME.

The ABOVE was NOT a COPY and PASTE... (SMILE)

Have A Great Saturday Evening if in North America and Good Morning in China and Japan. The Olympics are ending. September is arriving and the Closing Fireworks in China will be nothing compared to the Financial Fireworks probably starting in September right after Labor Day and the end of the Year when I turn 65 on December 31, 2008.

The MOST IMPORTANT Election that America has EVER had in my personal opinion is about to happen on the 2ND Tuesday in November 2008.

We are ALL part of History. Enjoy the Ride and Be A Winner !

G-D Bless All !

A Post From The Past However The Psychology of Forex Trading Always Stays The Same.

Benjaminis

The Most Profitable Traders
I thought I would post this here due to the value behind it, as I believe there are a lot of traders out there that could benefit from basic info such as this. I've posted it elsewhere in ForexFactory as well.

The below list comprises a number of different observations of myself and others through experience working with traders of all shapes and sizes, and is equally relevant to all. Some of the information is rehashed and/or might sound cliche, but here it is:

They are experienced – Probably the most horrifying and worst myth shot out to anyone considering trading for a living is that you will compound millions in an extremely short amount of time. The only true way to make every day profitable comes through experience, and countless hours learning is crucial to longevity of success.

They know the damage they are capable of – Notice I didn’t say potential or profits here. The best traders I know of understand their limits, and seem to focus more on what can go wrong than what can go right. They are not easily convinced of lucrative outcomes, and have a very high sense of self-awareness.

They trade to make money, not to be right – They understand the strengths and possible pitfalls of what it is they do for a living, and use that knowledge to curb their emotional output.

They have an edge and know how to use it – They understand that without it they wouldn’t last long

They have a gameplan, and follow it explicitly – Each trade is planned and opportunities are scouted for before any trading takes place. They steer away from the killer of all killers: overtrading.

They manage risk – Regardless of how much conviction they have on a trade, they will still do what they can to avoid the potential of any losses and understand rule #1 about trading: anything can happen.

They work obsessively – They follow each turn, each piece of info that comes out in regards to their trade, and follow any underlying information relevant to failure or success.

They only access the best information – Information rules in trading, and having some of the best translates to money. Using the wrong information leads to failure.

They think about the trade, not the money behind it - Focusing on money can destroy your means to objectively assess the trade itself.

They are constantly learning - Just when you think you know it all about trading, a new curveball gets thrown your way, not to mention there are continued means and methods to be learned about making money. Even the most highly successful trader I ever knew, a multi-billion dollar portfolio manager, has a team of fundamentalists and technicians come in to train and retrain himself and his traders.

They are active – Activity sparks creativity, a very crucial part of trading.

They have patience – They understand that the money will come, but everything needs to be in place, first.

NOTE: Not my information however excellent points so I share it here on this quiet Saturday night.

Regards,


Benjaminis

https://seekingalpha.com/article/415...et?ifp=0&app=1

SNIPPET:

Summary

The end of trading complacency.
Worse day ever, adjusting to wild volatility swings.
Investor fear of rising interest rates and emerging inflation.
Using trailing Stop Loss Orders to protect investment principal and stock profits.
Market normalization, a balancing act.
https://static.seekingalpha.com/uplo...8689164913.png
What happened To The Stock Markets?

Simply stated, what happened is a tale of complacency that ran into sudden and unexpected volatility that riled and tanked stock markets. Investors are left scratching their heads and thinking:What Is Happening?

After experiencing a year of profitable investing in a stress free market, driven by buying the dips and watching the value of equities climb higher and higher, the smooth ride up ran into sudden down-drafts. On February 6, biting volatility was back.

Welcome to investment volatility; greed now blended with fear, and markets that can turn down on a dime and crush you. Dealing with shock effects that are more normal than the lengthy complacency is worrisome. Investors now need to get their heads around what is happening and look to protecting principal and stock gains that selling programs can erase in a heartbeat.

The graphic below displays a yearly period of no volatility until February, when a nearly five fold spike ushered in unexpected and sudden lightening quick Market crashes.

Volatility Index
https://static.seekingalpha.com/uplo...9888923137.png
Dow in Free Fall
Stocks went into a free fall on Monday, February 6, resulting in one of the scariest days on Wall Street.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged almost 1,600 points--easily the biggest point decline in history during a trading day. Buyers charged back in and limited the damage, but at the closing bell the Dow was still down 1,175 points.

Dow's Worst Day Ever
https://static.seekingalpha.com/uplo...2235984707.pngSource Market Watch
Why Is Volatility Here?
The equity markets are currently spooked by questionable financial fundamentals that might impede continued economic growth. Reaction has impacted equities like a perfect storm. The triggers can spike selling that drives down the value of stock indexes more than a thousand points within minutes.

Though covered widely in the financial media, a brief commentary about trigger points can help investors focus on them.

Bond Yield Surges
An important trigger point for market volatility has been investor fear about a future surge in bond yields. This was evident on February 15, 2018 as market gains were lost subsequent to the Federal Reserve's release of minutes suggesting a bullish sentiment to raise interest rates. Immediately after the release of the minutes, the yield for the 10-year Treasury Note rose to 2.95 percent, the highest yield since 2014. Concerns are two-fold:

 

1. As bond yields rise, investors expect more risk of inflation.
2. As bonds become a safer investment, bonds might become more appealing investments than stocks.

So, a question to consider is, if interest rates rise to 3% or slightly higher, can this negate how attractive the stock markets might be in a climate of increasing economic growth?
Inflation Fears
Starting last year, The Consumer Price Index began to increase. The index measures changes in the price of goods and services consumers are faced with.
https://static.seekingalpha.com/uplo...1227187984.png
The inflation boogeyman began to rise in 2017 and the chart shows continued acceleration as we moved into 2018.
Perhaps, a major future concern is the Fed's response to the threat of greater inflation. Three rate hikes are anticipated with a possibility of four at a quarter point each. A more aggressive stance would seem to be more threatening to equities.

Political Turmoil
Political turmoil has been with us since the presidential election; recent revelations about political collusion, election meddling, implied lawlessness and other improprieties are daily news fare. At this time, it is difficult to determine the extent to which these disruptions have produced a loss of confidence in our institutions to the point where they affect equity markets. The process bears watching.

High Frequency Trading
High frequency algorithmic programmed trading now involves 74% of all trades and takes one millionth of a second to complete. Markets can plummet incredibly fast. Some concerns about insufficient liquidity pose questions about the dangers to investors who can't exit falling markets.
How Can Investors Better Protect Trades

What can investors do to protect themselves? Although I no longer fit the youth oriented buy and hold for decades scenario, I have always subscribed to a universal investment prime directive:

1. Protect your principal and your profits at all times.

Trailing Stop Orders
Trailing stops, a form of stop loss orders, can protect your principal and equity gains. They provide insurance when the market moves against your stock, something that has been occurring recently as market gains nose-dive before the day's close. First, a quick review:
A stop loss order placed with your broker is a way to protect yourself from a loss should the stock's price fall. A stop loss order tells your broker to sell the stock, when, and if, the stock falls to a certain price.

For example, a 3% stop loss order will sell my stock if it falls three percent from the buy price. This allows me to set an acceptable loss at my buy-point.
If the stock keeps rising or remains above the stop price, nothing happens except that I have locked in my loss against a greater loss if the market crashes.
However, the trailing stop rises with the equity's price. It is triggered when the stock's price falls 3% from a greater high. This allows higher profit levels from being erased by a sudden major stock price decline.

An additional advantage is that you can change the percentage of the trailing stop. Initially, you can set a larger percentage to avoid normal market fluctuations. But, with increased profits, as stocks rise well into resistance areas, the percentage stop can be lowered to get out with more profit if the stock price declines. Doing so might protect gains from the recent trading pattern of "selling the rallies."

Take Away
Clearly, this article is heavy on minimizing risk and light on market positives. The impetus on investor protection is not meant to imply a bearish long-term view of stock markets. But undoubtedly, bond yields, Federal Reserve actions, inflation, and price volatility are critical variables to watch. Judicious use of trailing stop orders can help insure against large losses.

In this environment, time is required for market normalization that will hopefully balance rational fear with greater GDP growth. Investors need to see if the tax cut and other measures increase GDP growth which has been anemic for many years. A key question is, can GDP growth of 3 percent or higher balance out this equation and create an impetus for continued economic expansion. Time will tell.

Author's Note: Thank you for reading and commenting. You can follow my articles on SA by clicking on follow.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.
I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Additional disclosure: The information and data that comprise this article came from external sources that I consider reliable, but they were not independently verified for accuracy. Points of view are my considered opinions, not investment advice. I bear no responsibility for investment decisions you decide to make.

Benjamin, I bet you didn't read what you post here. Nobody reads this, nobody asks questions, nobody posts here. This is useless and non-sense thread.
You just want to impress people with copy/paste hoping that somebody would pay you $39 for your "teaching". But you are wasting your time, you will not scam anybody here. This forum is full of young and smart guys, much smarter than you are.
You are at the age when you should be playing with grandchildren and walking the dogs.

https://bonnerandpartners.com/the-wo...he-modern-age/

The Worst Killer of the Modern Age


FEBRUARY 19, 2018

BILL BONNER

BILL BONNER'S DIARY
PORTLAW, IRELAND – This is a holiday in the U.S. We take the occasion to connect dots. What we see is one of the most curious patterns ever.

Human experience is marked by two contradictory ways of doing things. Longtime Diary sufferers will be quick to raise their hands when we ask, “What are they?”
Of course, they are the familiar win-win or win-lose.

But today, we look at them through a wider lens. We see that they are not merely ways of gaining wealth or doing business deals.

Instead, they are two opposed impulses – both of them etched deeply onto human hardware.



Violence and Persuasion
There are only two ways to get what you want in life. Either you get it peacefully, offering something in trade. Or you take it by violence or the threat of violence.

Even the most common, everyday things are illustrations of one or the other of these approaches. Do you want more sex, Dear Reader?

Well, you have your choice. You can either ask for it politely, perhaps making your request in the alluring, seductive tones of a real paramour; or you can rape someone.

Sometimes, the frontier between rape and request can be unclear.

Sometimes, it shifts with cultural trends.

What was considered acceptable to the baby boomers, for example, may be considered quasi-rape to millennials. Just ask Al Franken.
There is always some gray area between violence and persuasion.

But that is for the courts to figure out. For our purposes, it hardly matters. We are just looking at the black and white parts and telling you what we see. Finer intellects with better eyesight can draw the boundaries.




A New Book
This theme, by the way, is one we are developing in a new book. We took it up because we thought it offered a simpler and better way to understand public life. It surprised us when we saw that it helped us understand the rest of life, too.

In our book, due out later this year, we will explore the difference between the two approaches. We will see that…

…win-win promotes long-term relationships; win-lose is strictly short-term…

…win-win describes the world of the jungle; win-lose is like a zoo…

…win-win provides constant feedback and correction; win-lose cuts the feedback loop, allowing mistakes to continue…

…win-win is the place for entrepreneurs; win-lose gathers in MBAs…

…win-win is best governed by common law; win-lose is favored by edicts and diktats…

…win-win is based on the individual; win-lose targets tribes and groups…

…win-win is local; win-lose is usually national…

…win-win is what they do on Main Street and in markets; win-lose finds a cozy home in Washington…

…win-win creates voluntary collectives; win-lose forces people into involuntary collectives.

We could go on. And we do… in our forthcoming book. But let us today lay a bit of the groundwork.



The Routine of Killing
There was a time when humans lived almost entirely by violence. Plants may have been useful sources of minerals and vitamins.

But the early man had no fires (we are talking about long ago… even before humans became the people we know as Homo sapien sapiens), so he couldn’t eat what are major staples today. Rice, beans, potatoes, and wheat are indigestible when they are uncooked.

In order to get the protein they needed, they had to kill and eat other animals. That’s why humans have eyes on the front of their heads, like other predators, instead of eyes on the side, like grass-fed prey.

The bone records, as well as the oldest oral and written records, show that our ancestors didn’t mind killing each other, either. Killing was routine. And it made sense.
If you killed a stranger, you could take his weapons, his women, his children, and his hunting lands. And you could eat him, too.

If you didn’t kill him, on the other hand, what did you gain? Perhaps you could get a piece of amber from him, trading it for flint. But what else? Not much.

There is plenty of evidence of prehistoric trade. That is, objects are found where they are not native. But we don’t know how they got there. Persuasion? Or violence?

Downward Drift of Violence

In today’s world, between private citizens, violence is rare.

There are bar fights, domestic abuse, murders – but they are relatively few. And becoming fewer. The murder rate, for example, has come down dramatically over the last few centuries.

With a generous dose of doubt and guesswork, here are the figures for the U.S.:
The private murder rate for the 1700s was roughly 30 per 100,000 per year. In the 1800s, the rate fell to 20 per 100,000. Then, in the 20th century, the rate declined to 10 and below. Today, the U.S. murder rate is just 6.

That said, there are local particularities. In Baltimore, for example, the murder rate in 2017 was even higher than it was for the entire U.S. in the 18th century, with 55 murders per 100,000.

And occasionally, there are spectacular murders that make the news and distort popular impressions.

Last week, for example, 17 youngsters were killed at a public school in Florida.

Our new handy man in Ireland, Declan, was quick with an analysis:
“Terrible…terrible. How was the killer able to get those guns? It sounds crazy to us. The fact that a mental defective can walk into a store, any time day or night, and buy an automatic rifle… I dunno, but maybe that’s what makes America great.”

Despite the sorry exceptions, violence in civil life seems to be on the decline. Why? Our hypothesis: it just doesn’t pay the way it used to.

The police come after you. It’s hard to take over the victim’s property. Or his women. Or anything else.

All you get is a peck of trouble. So why bother? You’d be better off spending your time otherwise.

A Whole ‘Nuther Side
“Thou shalt not kill” was a lesson that was not learned overnight. It took centuries for it to sink in. Still, there are people who haven’t gotten the memo.

Today, the typical killer is a psycho. He doesn’t make a rational calculation leading him to his act. Instead, he is moved by passion, ideology, or delusion.

He is mad. He is upset. He is a nut.

And then, there’s a whole ‘nuther side to the killing story.

While private murder rates declined, the last century saw a big boom in killing as a matter of public policy, a type of murder that the government promotes rather than proscribes.

Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot – these four men alone were responsible for an estimated 120 million deaths.

Hitler is generally credited with 14 million war casualties and another 28 million civilian deaths.

Stalin killed some 20 million in his purges and mass starvations. Another 25 million or so died in WWII – many because of political and tactical directives that were criminally negligent or intentionally lethal.

Mao killed 30 to 45 million in his Great Leap Forward, most of whom starved to death; others were tortured and murdered in the zealous application of his agricultural policies.

In this company, Pol Pot hardly deserves a footnote.

Still, he murdered (or caused the deaths) of some 2 million people. His claim to fame is his market share. As a percentage of the population (25%), he killed more than any of them. This figure even surpasses the murder rates recorded in the bloodiest bone pits ever discovered.

But the astonishing thing about this record of violence is what thinking people make of it.

Disarm Governments
While private citizens have generally become less violent (win-win is a better way to get what you want in a modern, civilized society), public policy – at least if the last century is anything to go by – has become more violent. Or perhaps simply more capable of killing on a grander scale.

Taking the 20th century U.S. murder rate and applying it grossly to the populations of Russia, China, Germany, and Cambodia in the 20th century, we can guess that there were no more than about 10 million private killings in those countries during the entire century.

But in a few short years (we do not even mention WWI, in which public policy carried off some 16 million… or any other wars, pogroms, purges, and government-caused famines in these countries), public policies promoted by Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot alone murdered more than 10 times as many.

Yet, despite this evidence of clear and present danger from malign public policy, the do-gooders, world-improvers, the media and academic and political activists, both Republican and Democrat, can think of nothing more original than – more public policy!

Following the Florida school shootings, for example, the call went out to take guns away from the private citizens, at least from the psychopaths. But military spending is set to increase by $716 billion over the next 10 years.

A logical and impartial spectator might conclude that it was time to disarm both.
Regards,
https://bap-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/...-signature.png

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2...s/#more-171368

Ed Curtin: The Coming War To End All Wars

Authored by Edward Curtin via GreanvillePost.com,

“The compulsive hatred of Putin by many who have almost zero idea about Putin or Russian history is disproportionate to any rational analysis, but not surprising.
Trump and Putin are like weird doppelgangers in the liberal imagination.”

—John Steppling, “Trump, Putin, and Nikolas Cruz Walk into a Bar”
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defa...?itok=MikI3rJX
https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/pa...MghpCJvAHSyZ0A
The Trump and Netanyahu governments have a problem: How to start a greatly expanded Middle-Eastern war without having a justifiable reason for one. No doubt they are working hard to solve this urgent problem. If they can’t find a “justification” (which they can’t), they will have to create one (which they will). Or perhaps they will find what they have already created. Whatever the solution, we should feel confident that they are not sitting on their hands. History teaches those who care to learn that when aggressors place a gun on the wall in the first act of their play, it must go off in the final act.

These sinister players have signaled us quite clearly what they have in store. All signs point toward an upcoming large-scale Israeli/U.S. attack on Lebanon and Syria, and all the sycophantic mainstream media are in the kitchen prepping for the feast. Russia and Iran are the main course, with Lebanon and Syria, who will be devoured first, as the hors d’oeuvres. As always, the media play along as if they don’t yet know what’s coming. Everyone in the know knows what is, just not exactly when. And the media wait with baited breath as they count down to the dramatic moment when they can report the incident that will compel the “innocent” to attack the “guilty.”

Anyone with half a brain can see the greatly increased anti-Russian propaganda of the past few weeks. This has happened as the Russia-gate claims have fallen to pieces, as former CIA analyst Raymond McGovern, the late Robert Parry, Paul Craig Roberts, and others have documented so assiduously. All across the media spectrum, from the big name corporate stenographers like The New York Times, CNN, National Public Radio, The Washington Post to The Atlantic and Nation magazines and other “leftist” publications such as Mother Jones and Who What Why, the Russia and Putin bashing has become hysterical in tone, joined as it is with an anti-Trump obsession, as if Trump were a dear friend of Putin and Russia and wasn’t closely allied with the Netanyahu government in its plans for the Middle-East. As if Trump were in charge. “Russia Sees Midterm Elections as a Chance to Sow Fresh Discord (NY Times, 2/13), “Russia Strongman” (Putin) has “pulled off one of the greatest acts of political sabotage in modern history (The Atlantic, Jan. /Feb. 2018), “”Mueller’s Latest Indictment Shows Trump Has Helped Putin Cover Up a Crime” (Mother Jones, 2/16/18), “A Russian Sightseeing Tour For Realists” (whowhatwhy.com, 2/7/18), etc.

I am reminded of the turn to the right that so many “muckrakers” made during and after WW I. Afraid of a revolt from below, bewitched by their own vision to articulate the world’s future, heady over their own war propaganda, and wanting to be on the safe side of the government crackdown on dissent (The Espionage Act, the Palmer Raids, etc.), many progressives of the era embraced a jingoism similar to the anti-Russia mania of today.

Only someone totally lacking a sense of humor and blind to propaganda would not laugh uproariously at today’s media nonsense about Russia, but such laughter would be infused with a foreboding awareness that as the Middle East explodes and U.S./NATO backed Kiev forces prepare to attack the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, the world is entering a very dangerous period. And of course Trump has said, “The U.S. has great strength and patience but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”

Totally destroy 26 million human beings. While his bully buddy in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, recently said at the Munich Security Conference that Iran is “the greatest threat to the world,” compared it to Nazi Germany, and claimed it was developing ballistic missiles to strike deep into the United States. “Iran seeks to dominate our region, the Middle East, and seeks to dominate the world through aggression and terror,” he said. And he vowed to act against Iran and anyone who supported it – i.e. Lebanon and Syria (Russia).

Putin also, like all the mythic bogeymen, is portrayed as the new Hitler intent on conquering the world. If the American public wasn’t so “sophisticated” and adept at seeing through lies – pause and laugh – we could expect some World War I posters with Russian soldiers (like The Huns), sharp teeth glistening, gorilla strong and beastly, holding American women in preparation for the kill or rape.

Last year, when Oliver Stone did the world the great service of releasing his four-part interview with Putin, he was bashed, of course. Just as he was with his film JFK, the only movie in history to be reviewed and panned one year before its release by a Washington Post reviewer who didn’t see the movie but had a purloined preliminary script as his source. The Washington Post: the object of the latest film drivel, The Post, portraying it falsely as the savior of the nation through the publication of the Pentagon Papers (which is another story). The Washington Post – the CIA’s dear friend.
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defa...?itok=57zciHTJ
In his Putin interviews, Oliver Stone, a man of truth and honor, lets viewers catch a glimpse of the real Vladimir Putin. Of course Putin is a politician and the leader of a great and powerful nation, and one should receive his words skeptically. But watching Stone interview Putin for four hours, one comes away – but I doubt few have watched the four hours – with a reasonably good sense of the man.

And putting aside one’s impressions of him, he makes factual points that should ring loud and clear to anyone conversant with facts.

One: that the U.S. needs an external enemy (“I know that, I feel that.”).
Two: the U.S.A. engineered the coup d’état in the Ukraine on Russia’s border.
Three: the U.S. has surrounded Russia with US/NATO troops and bases armed with anti-ballistic missiles that can, as Putin rightly says to Stone, be converted in hours to regular offensive nuclear missiles aimed at Russia.


This is a factual and true statement that should make any fair-minded person stand up in horror. If Russia had such missiles encircling the United States from Cuba, Mexico, and Canada, what American would find it tolerable? What would CNN and The New York Times have to say? Yet these same people readily find it impossible to see the legitimacy in Russia’s position, resorting to name calling and illogical rhetoric. Russia is surrounded with U.S/NATO troops and missiles and yet Russia is the aggressor.

So too Iran that is also surrounded. These media are propagandists, that’s why. They promote war, as they always have. They are pushing for war with Russia via Syria/Lebanon/Iran and Ukraine, and they are nihilistically demonizing North Korea (as part of Obama’s pivot toward Asia and the encircling of China, as John Pilger has brilliantly documented in his film The Coming War on China) in what can only be called a conspiracy to commit genocide, as Dr. Graeme MacQueen and Christopher Black make clear in their Open Letter to the International Criminal Court.


We are moving toward a global war that will become nuclear if an international anti-war movement doesn’t quickly arise to stop it. Most people bemoan the thought of such a war to end all wars, but refuse to analyze the factors leading to it. It happens step-by-step, and many steps have already been taken with more coming soon. It’s so obvious that most can’t see it, or don’t want to. The corporate mainstream media are enemies of the truth; are clearly part of the continuation of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, and those who still rely on them for the truth are beyond reach.


Douglas Valentine, in The CIA as Organized Crime, says the CIA has long aimed to use and co-opt the “Compatible Left, which in America translates into liberals and pseudo-intellectual status seekers who are easily influenced.” And he adds that the propaganda is not just produced by the CIA but by the military, State Department, and red, white, and blue advertisements that are everywhere. Nothing has changed since the Church Committee hearings in the 1970s.

Valentine adds:
All of that is ongoing, despite being exposed in the late 1960s. Various technological advances, including the internet, have spread the network around the world, and many people don’t even realize they are part of it, that they’re promoting the CIA line.

“Assad’s a butcher,” they say, or “Putin kills journalists,” or “China is repressive.

They have no idea what they’re talking about but spout all this propaganda.

William Blake said it truly:
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear
How to break the chains – that is our task.

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT ABOUT TRADING FOREX


Benjaminis

I have a suggestion for you how to improve your thread. You are posting here articles from unreliable and untrustworthy web sites and authors. If you can't copy/paste articles from reliable sites like Reuters or Bloomberg, post ONLY YOUR OWN opinion and analysis. People here read what they believe it is beneficial for them, not what you want them to read.

Good Afternoon Folks

I have many sources of information and most do not come from the FAKE NEWS Sources or MOST of MSM.

Foolish people not educated who are programmed and who do not think for themselves think great information sources such as Zerohedge and others are not credible. Fortunately those type of people do not POST on my thread.

Earlier today I posted information that concerned me as a human with loved ones.

I just got information that confirms the immediate danger is over. The following article from a source that has proven to be extremely accurate as to the real story as the media reports events however not what happened behind the scenes. I do not post information that I have not verified from more than two independent sources.

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index2496.htm

SNIPPET:
February 25, 2018

Trump Pulls World From Brink Of War By Warning “Deep State” America Will Leave Syria
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers

A hopefully worded new Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) report circulating in the Kremlin today states that President Donald Trump has singlehandedly pulled the world back from the brink of total war after he publically rebuked the American shadow government “Deep State” by declaring that the United States is going to leave Syria with his saying “we're there for one reason: to get ISIS and get rid of ISIS, and to go home...we’re not there for any other reason and we’ve largely accomplished our goal”—and that by his doing so, enabled, just hours ago, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to unanimously adopt the Swedish-Kuwaiti sponsored landmark Resolution 2401. [Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tsss1.jpg

According to this report, over the past fortnight, the “Deep State” has pushed incessantly for a global war—and by whose actions led to an estimated 200 Russian citizens in Syria being killed in the “Euphrates Massacre” when they were deliberately “targeted for death” by US warplanes—and that, also, saw Turkey invading Syria after the US stated its intention to create a new 30,000 strong terrorist army—and to which Turkey warned the Americans to soon expect an “Ottoman Slap”.


With the “Deep State” pushing the world to brink of the unthinkable, this report continues, this past week Russia ordered the Americans to leave Syria—as this never before seen in history showdown was quickly spiraling out of control—and whose only outcome would, most assuredly, lead to the shattering defeat of the West.

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/eeee1.jpg

In their seeking to accelerate their plans for global war, this report details, “Deep State” elements within the US military this past week shockingly began to remove captured Islamic State (ISIS/IS/Daesh) commanders from their prison cells by helicopter then flying them into the Damascussuburb of Eastern Ghouta—and who upon arriving there, then began unleashing a massive shelling attack upon innocent civilians with their, also, targeting the Russian Reconciliation Center.


With these “Deep State” backed terrorists refusing all Russian attempts to end this needless violence, this report notes, they then sealed their borders to keep the civilians under their brutal control from leaving—and that was immediately responded to by Russian air forces beginning a non-stop obliteration campaign in Eastern Ghouta to destroy all of these terrorists’ headquarters, arm depots and fighters—with the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) 7th Armored Division and elite 4th Division Tiger Force then moving in to destroy these terrorists forever.


Keeping the truth about what was happening from the American people, this report says, the “Deep State” used the nefarious actions of their terrorists to create an international Cause Célèbre—a controversial issue that attracts a great deal of public attention—decrying the loss of civilian life caused by Russian and Syrian forces actions to stop this needless bloodshed—but that President Putin, 3 days ago, quickly countered by ordering into the Syrian war zone for the first time two fearsome Su-57 PAK-FA “Nuclear Strike” Stealth Fighters—with his ordering another two of these dreaded warplanes to Syria on Friday.

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tsss2.jpg

Feared Russian Su-57 PAK-FA “Nuclear Strike” Stealth Fighters begin arriving in Syria on 22-23 February 2018

Within 2 hours of the second set of these feared Russian Su-57 PAK-FA “Nuclear Strike” Stealth Fighters arriving in Syria on Friday, this report continues, President Trump spoke at a joint news conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at the White House—and where, for the first time, he openly rebuked “Deep State” elements within the Pentagon and State Department by his declaring that the United States had no intention whatsoever of staying in Syria.

Putting his words into action 24-hours later, this report notes, President Trump then ordered his United Nations delegation, yesterday, to accept the Swedish-Kuwaiti sponsored Resolution 2401 that calls for a 30-day cessation of hostilities in Syria—but that, most importantly, doesn’t apply to the “Deep State’s” terrorists, and that says:
Affirms that the cessation of hostilities shall not apply to military operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Daesh), Al Qaeda and Al Nusra Front (ANF), and all other individuals, groups, undertakings and entities associated with Al Qaeda or ISIL, and other terrorist groups, as designated by the Security Council.

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tsss3.png

The critical importance of Resolution 2401 not applying to these “Deep State’s” terrorists, this report explains, is due to the US-backed terrorist forces in Eastern Ghouta refusing to protect the lives of the civilians under their brutal control—and who wrote directly to the United Nations Security Council shockingly stating that they would not give up their “human shields”, and who declared: “we refuse categorically any initiative that includes getting the residents out of their homes and moving them elsewhere”.


With these US-backed “Deep State” terrorists in Eastern Ghouta now targeting hospitals in Damascus, but who are now not protected by Resolution 2401, this report continues, just hours ago Syrian military forces began a major offensive, led by the elite Tiger Division against these terrorists—but with no major advances, as of yet, being reported.

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tsss4.jpg

Elite Syrian Tiger Division forces begin major offensive to retake Eastern Ghouta from US-backed terrorists on 25 February 2018

With the Foreign Ministry saying that it expects the patrons of opposition forces in Syria to ensure the Resolution 2401 ceasefire observance, and its further warning that “we will block any attempts to fuel anti-Russian and anti-Syrian hysteria and derail the Syrian peace process”, this report concludes, President Trump is, also, showing his determination to remove his nation from Syria so peace can be achieved by his scheduling “sensitive” talks with the patron nations to this conflict of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emiratesin order to extricate them from “Deep State” control—but whose consequence for failure has, perhaps, been best articulated by the American intellectual Edward Curtin who has just warned what the “Deep State” has planned in their “war to end all wars”:
We are moving toward a global war that will become nuclear if an international anti-war movement doesn’t quickly arise to stop it.


These sinister players have signaled us quite clearly what they have in store.
All signs point toward an upcoming large-scale Israeli/U.S. attack on Lebanon and Syria, and all the sycophantic mainstream media are in the kitchen prepping for the feast.
Russia and Iran are the main course, with Lebanon and Syria, who will be devoured first, as the hors d’oeuvres.

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/tsss5.jpg

February 25, 2018 EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.

[Note: Many governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagree with in believing that it is every human beings right to know the truth. Due to our missions conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit us, and others like us, that is exampled in numerous places, including HERE.]

[Note: The WhatDoesItMean.com website was created for and donated to the Sisters of Sorcha Faal in 2003 by a small group of American computer experts led by the late global technology guru Wayne Green (1922-2013) to counter the propaganda being used by the West to promote their illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.]
[Note: The word Kremlin (fortress inside a city) as used in this report refers to Russian citadels, including in Moscow, having cathedrals wherein female Schema monks (Orthodox nuns) reside, many of whom are devoted to the mission of the Sisters of Sorcha Faal.]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...ops+to+zero%29


SNIPPET:
On Friday, Washington announced "the largest-ever set of new sanctions on the North Korean regime". The sanctions targeted the country’s industries and exports.
The sanctions were levied against 27 foreign companies, 28 ships and one individual on Friday, with President Trump unveiling them during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference - Trump's second since taking office. Later in the day, Trump delivered an ominous threat, saying the North Koreans wouldn't like "phase two" of the American response to their nuclear weapons program - possibly alluding to a preemptive nuclear strike.
In April, the US and South Korea will resume massive military drills called Foal Eagle and Key Resolve. Pyongyang views these exercises as a rehearsal for war, while the US and South Korea say they're necessary to prepare for a North Korean invasion.
Russia and China have persistently urged the two sides to come to an agreement that they call a "double freeze" arguing that the US should cease military drills in exchange for the North suspending its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
* * *
China issued a stern rebuke on Friday after the sanctions overwhelmingly targeted Chinese entities.
"The Chinese side firmly opposes the US imposing unilateral sanctions and 'long-arm jurisdiction' on Chinese entities or individuals in accordance with its domestic laws," said the Chinese Foreign Ministry in a statement. "We have lodged stern representations with the US side over this, urging it to immediately stop such wrongdoings so as not to undermine bilateral cooperation on the relevant area."
US satellites have captured images of Chinese vessels engaged in illegal ship-to-ship transfers of energy products to North Korean-controlled ships.
China is North Korea's largest trading partner, supplying 90 percent of North Korea's total trading volume according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

I post again via Zero Hedge and Contra Corner very important financial FACTS from David Stockman.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...lion-nightmare


Benjaminis

https://dollarcollapse.com/debt/2018-year-margin-call/

SNIPPET:
2018: The Year Of The Margin Call


FEBRUARY 25, 2018
Indicators of a market top began piling up way back in 2014, and since then most have gone on to unprecedented extremes. Every analyst has their favorite harbinger of financial doom, but the easiest to understand — and the most tragic — is probably margin debt.


This is money borrowed by (usually individual or “retail”) investors against their existing stocks to buy more stocks. Investors tend to do this when markets are rising and using leverage seems like an effortless way turbocharge their gains. But eventually the market turns down, leaving stock portfolios insufficient to cover related margin debt and generating “margin calls” in which brokers demand more money and/or start liquidating customer portfolios. This sends the market down sharply and indiscriminately, as fairly-valued babies are dumped along with overvalued bathwater. The result: a quick, brutal bear market.


Margin debt hit record highs several years ago and has just kept on going. From yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:

Investors’ Zeal to Buy Stocks With Debt Leaves Markets Vulnerable
Investors borrowing record sums to bet on stocks exacerbated this month’s selloff, after they were hit with calls to reduce those obligations and forced to sell shares to raise cash.

If that debt, known as margin loans, continues to rise at the current pace, analysts warn that big selloffs and sudden bouts of volatility in the stock market could become more commonplace.

Retail and institutional investors have borrowed a record $642.8 billion against their portfolios, according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, as they try to pocket bigger gains by ramping up their exposure to stocks.

So-called net margin debt was worth 1.31% of the total value of the New York Stock Exchange last year, according to Goldman Sachs data stretching back to 1980, eclipsing the previous peak of 1.27% reached in the buildup to the tech bubble in 2000.

Lending against securities is a key profit center for brokerages, as firms charge interest on the money that is used and say they have found they better retain clients who take on the debt. These loans can also factor into brokers’ compensation, incentivizing many to extend money to clients regardless of whether they need it or not.

Margin debt has been on the rise for years and is generally considered a gauge of investor confidence. The long-running stock rally has helped push debt levels higher since investors tend to be more willing to take loans against investments that are rising in value. However, it can also precipitate a steep market downturn as it did before the burst of the dot-com bubble and the financial crisis of 2008.

The growing loan balances have caught the attention of Wall Street’s watchdog. Finra in January published an investor alert after the total value of margin loans broke $600 billion for the first time, saying investors may be underestimating the risks of trading on margin and may not understand how margin calls work.
https://i0.wp.com/dollarcollapse.com...50%2C471&ssl=1
Many of the hardest-hit investors were those who had used exchange-traded products to wager that low volatility would persist and stock prices would remain stable.
Harvey Hajiyan, a 35-year-old financial adviser who lives in Toronto and has been investing for more than a decade, assumed stocks would continue to grind higher this year, similar to the gains the Dow and the S&P 500 had posted for much of the past two years without a pullback.

“All of the strategists agreed the market would go up,” said Mr. Hajiyan.

At the end of January, he placed an ill-timed bet and used only margin to fund a large position in the ProShares Short VIX Short-Term Futures exchange-traded fund (SVXY), which rises as long as stock prices remain stable. When the S&P 500 fell into correction territory to erase one of its best starts in years, Mr. Hajiyan’s investment in the ProShares fund tracking expected market swings was nearly wiped out, forcing him to liquidate hundreds of thousands of dollars of securities to answer the margin call.

“I was in denial,” said Mr. Hajiyan after he realized he lost about 600,000 Canadian dollars (US$472,260) worth of his C$1.1 million investment portfolio.
Despite losing a sizable portion of his wealth, Mr. Hajiyan says the experience hasn’t soured him on using margin debt. “If I wasn’t using margin, I wouldn’t be at this level,” Mr. Hajiyan said of his profits before the pullback. “As my money grows, I’ll limit the amount of margin I use.”

Why This Matters
“So-called net margin debt was worth 1.31% of the total value of the New York Stock Exchange last year, according to Goldman Sachs data stretching back to 1980, eclipsing the previous peak of 1.27% reached in the buildup to the tech bubble in 2000.”

When an indicator exceeds its dot-com bubble extreme, it’s in mania territory. The reason equities seem relatively sedate this time around is that they’re just part of a much broader bubble. Bonds around the world are an historic bubble – one that may be starting to burst as interest rates rise. Real estate prices in trophy cities have exceeded their 2007 extremes. Debt levels in the developed world (and China) have blown through their previous cyclical peaks. And of course cryptocurrencies are generating dot-com level excitement and fear of missing out. This “everything bubble” is completely unprecedented.

“The growing loan balances have caught the attention of Wall Street’s watchdog. Finra in January published an investor alert after the total value of margin loans broke $600 billion for the first time, saying investors may be underestimating the risks of trading on margin and may not understand how margin calls work.”

The “may not understand” part is, as usual at market peaks, an understatement. Towards the end of a long cycle like the current one, a whole new generation of investors emerges who, never having experienced falling prices, eagerly embrace tools that magnify their genius. This is a rite of passage that all investors have to go through on their way to cautious middle age, but with each new debt binge the stakes get higher. Now we’re talking total wipeout rather than painful but survivable life lesson, and systemic collapse rather than one or two bad years.

Benjaminis: Margin Debt !!! Watch Out !!!

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2...x/#more-171373

SNIPPET:
If industrialized super-countries (U.S.A. tops the list right now) slowly bleeds off excess wealth too much too soon, through a fiscal and economic collapse, there will be no one on the face of the Earth that will retain the ability to put us on the road to the stars.


This is my greatest fear.

I fear that normal human nature, greed, short life span (with matching short attention span) and ignorance will simply keep things on the same old road until there is not sufficient wealth available over and above the cost of just food, water and the necessities of staying alive to allow us to even try.

Then we are truly stuck in an extinction mode of being trapped with no hope of escape as a species.

We absolutely must – without fail – make our top priority the rapid escape from the Earth and quickly escape the solar system as well. We must, as a species, spread our seed to the stars if we are to escape the fate of the dinosaur. We must convince others to take the long view and the long goal and work toward this goal at an accelerated pace or events of our own nature will catch up with us and prevent us from doing it at all.

There is no way that even a small fraction of Earth’ masses can be vaulted to the stars. Those here now and those in the intermediate future will die here. But, as a race, we can indeed send representatives and our seed itself to populate other worlds and other stars so that when our time on Earth is finished, humans will live on in other places and times.

The time to begin action is now or we will forever loose the chance. If the masses of this world are too stupid and too shortsighted to slow the deterioration of our Earth, then those of vision and ability and wealth must take action to escape it and do so as quickly as we can possibly do it. (Think Space X)

There is no alternative. There is no other way to insure that we, as humanity (or a derivative of it), can survive. If we are trapped on this fragile Earth, we will die as surely as the least of the species gone extinct before us. The only question is when; sooner amidst the inexorable grinding and detritus of our own nature, stupidity and excesses or later at the whim of the Universe itself.

Now – at last – we come to the short term which, if you listen to the alt-new on the Internet, is going to be very short indeed. The Global debt situation is totally out of control, the money-printers (the Fed, the US Treasury and most of the other countries who do this – worldwide), ever since Alan Greenspan have all lost their minds borrowing and printing and printing and borrowing and borrowing and there are bubbles EVERYWHERE..



Those bubbles are about to POP. When they start vanishing, then we’ll know why the police forces in this country of ours has been militarized with Humvees, machine guns, AR-15’s and most every type of military arms there are to be had.

We will be walking – blindly for the most part – into an even Greater Depression (Oh, how I wish we had Paul Volker as Fed Head back in the 90’s or early 00 years. He’d fix it the hard way (just like he did in the early to mid-70’s).

But it’s too late now to gracefully fix anything. There is too much debt that cannot be paid but will be defaulted on via hyper-inflation and then collapse. The Federal Government can be counted on to fight the losing battle with every nasty trick they can including closing banks, freezing bank accounts and “bailing-in” those very banks with depositor money. Same with brokerage accounts and look for another ban on holding gold (and maybe silver, this time as well)..
In any event, between now and – say 2020 to 2025 – this bankruptcy will occur along with very likely an accompanying major war. This war will be started to take the civilian minds off their own problems. If you think this has never happened before, you don’t know your history.

Benjaminis: We are looking into the FUTURE and MSNBC and NBC and Bloomberg and all the other MSM will not discuss it for obvious reasons !!!

TO FURTHER MAKE THE POINT AND EDUCATE THOSE THAT DO NOT KNOW !!!

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2...k/#more-171371


SNIPPET:
That’s the headline. Seriously.


The entire media as well as the combined forces of social media are going all out in an effort to drown the crisis actor baby in the bathtub before it goes full blown Fake News on them. Deleting hundreds of thousands of accounts, flagging posts, de-listing and banning posters on forums and message boards and calling everyone with a pulse and an IQ on the right hand side of the bell curve a tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist for even suggesting the entirely plausible based on the evidence suggestion that people aren’t genuine but rather contrived mouthpieces of an agenda seems a bit, I don’t know, overblown.

Every major newspaper in the country has front page stories this weekend trying to prove that actors aren’t really actors when they’re caught acting if it gets in the way of The Narrative. If we notice the ear pieces and rehearsed lines, the internships at the same network that refers to them as victims when they weren’t within earshot of the event and then act like it’s a total coincidence, and the ‘random student’ selected to speak out at the totally spontaneous Town Hall Event (the one that threw out the kid who saved fellow students for wanting to ask his own question instead of the scripted one CNN insisted he read) then we’re the problem?

OK. Got it.

The saddest example is the New York Time’s Headline from above, written by newly minted American/Dreamer, Niraj Chokshi. I understand that words are confusing things, some of them are big and others are just loaded with cis-privilege, but to confuse the Civil War with civil rights? Hello? Is this thing on?

Hey Niraj, you had just one job. How did you screw it up so badly? And NYT, I know that no one outside of Woody Allen’s circle still reads that fish-wrap you call a newspaper, but are there any editors left at The Old Gray Lady? I get it, I get, the word ‘civil’ implies a foreign idea to the people employed by the Ochs-Sulzberger Cartel, but you were off by a hundred years. ONE.HUNDRED. YEARS.

You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.


Benjaminis

https://vantagepointtrading.com/1987...n-and-history/

1987 Stock Market Crash, History and Lessons
Posted on February 25, 2018 by Cory Mitchell, CMT


The 1987 stock market crash refers to the selloff that occurred on “Black Monday,” October 19. It was the largest single-day decline in the history of the US stock market–the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) lost 22.6%. While it was a massive decline, it was short-lived.


In August of 1987 the DJIA peak at 2,722 and drifted a bit lower. Troubles began in mid-October. On October 14 the DJIA dropped 3.8% and another 2.4% on October 15. On October 16 the DJIA fell 4.6%, which was a Friday. The Eastern markets were the first to open on Monday (Sunday in the US) and experienced massive selling. The selling continued during the London session followed by US session.


While the selloff shook investors, and the regulators and economists who tried to make sense of it, by early 1989 the DJIA reclaimed its 2,272 high. The decline was swift and relatively brief compared to other historical crashes (like 1929) that lasted much longer.
https://vantagepointtrading.com/wp-c...ash.jpg?x22506
The crash is often blamed on “program trading” or computer programs that sold stock in mass. Others blame conflicts that were taking place during this time between Iran and US. There were also some pricing differences between New York and Chicago which caused traders to buy in one market and sell in the other. This coupled with the program trading, and portfolios trying to hedge, created a financial storm. These all may have contributed to the crash. Articles in the Further Reading section below discuss the political and economic climate of the late 80’s in more detail.

https://vantagepointtrading.com/wp-c...ner.jpg?x22506
Lessons From ’87 Crash

Ultimately, the cause of a crash or selloff doesn’t matter much. The lesson is that selloffs happen with regularity. When trading, risk management is important…especially if short-term trading and a significant decline could decimate the account. If long stocks and prices start to fall, get out at a pre-determined level or with a pre-determined method. While prices may eventually recover, they may not do so within the timeframe you require. The crash of 1987 started with several smaller declines which would have gotten short-term traders out of most of their long positions before the major selloff on Black Monday.

Investors holding long-term positions need to continually take inventory of how stocks are valued and consider whether they will hold their stocks through a significant decline, should one arise. One factor to consider is that when stock prices are high relative to the earnings those companies produce there is a greater risk of a significant and sustained crash. In 1987 stocks were not priced that high relative to earnings, leading to a fairly quick recovery. Following the ’87 crash, stock prices moved higher into 2000. By 2000, stocks were valued at insanely high levels, leading to a larger and longer crash.

This shows that while Price to Earnings ratios provide some insight into whether stocks are overvalued or undervalued by historical standards, the ratio is a not a timing indicator as stocks can stay over or undervalued for long periods of time. It also shows that even when stocks are seemingly priced low or fairly, significant selloffs can still occur.
https://vantagepointtrading.com/wp-c...-PE.jpg?x22506
Historical Schiller S&P 500 Price/Earnings Ratio. Source: www.multpl.com
What P/E does help with is assessing whether to hold an investment if stock prices start declining (the chart above is a Schiller P/E ratio, which also considers inflation). If stocks are undervalued already, it is more likely that eventually stocks will return to average or overvalued and can be sold for a profit. If stocks are excessively overvalued, then there is a greater risk that the stock may never reach its prior highs, or will take many years, even decades, to recover the losses it sustains during a crash.

When dealing with individual stocks, the prospects of that company must also be assessed. A fair (or in some cases High) P/E in a stock with stable or rising earnings is more attractive than a stock with a temporarily nice P/E where earnings are in a long-term decline. Price is not the only factor to consider; the future of earnings must also be considered.

Long-term investment is not to be confused with short-term trading. Short-term traders should always cut losses swiftly and mechanically per their strategy, regardless of how they think the stock is valued. Longer-term investors may hold stocks through declines if they believe in the future prospects of the company, and they purchased the stock at a reasonable price which will likely be surpassed (could take months or years) after the crash ends and prices begin to rise again. As mentioned, paying an excessively high price for a stock could mean the price never recovers its former glory or lofty price.

Shorter-term traders can trade in the trending direction regardless of value but must exit losing trades quickly, especially if in a volatile or highly speculative asset.

Such an approach greatly reduces the chances of being caught in the major portion of a market crash.

Further Reading on the 1987 Crash
Cancel Crash – A TastyTrade documentary on the 1987 crash, as told by the traders who were there.
Black Monday – The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago provides a detailed fundamental view of the events leading up to the ’87 crash.
Below, is a PBS broadcast from the day of the crash.


Articles On Other Stock Market Crashes

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...ops+to+zero%29

Via SputnikNews.com,
Former Texas Congressman and leading libertarian thinker Dr. Ron Paul has shared his views on President Trump's job as president after his first year in office, the situation in Syria and the renewed debate on gun control in the wake of the Florida school shooting.
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defa...1024575024.jpg
Trump's Year in Office
Sputnik: Donald Trump has been in office for over a year. What is your general assessment of his job as president?

Ron Paul: Mediocre; probably not worse than the other options. But I don't think presidents really have much control. I think the deep state – the people behind the scenes and the shadow government, who control the monetary system, who control our foreign policy and the welfare state, and are connected to the media and the military-industrial complex. – I don't think the presidency is as important as it's made out to be. But everybody talks about it; it's a political thing, and they keep churning the issue and directing everybody to ask 'is Trump a good guy or a bad guy, and are we going to impeach him or what's going to happen', rather than [asking] what kind of philosophy do we have: why do we have this philosophy of welfare-warfare, spend money, run up debt and let the central bank print all that money.

They don't even talk about it; the major parties, including Trump, they sign even more controls on us when it comes to FISA courts and spying on us. In spite of the fact that government officials like the FBI and others actually spy on our own president, he supports this; he passes and signs bills on that. So that really raises questions about 'does the president really have much to say', and I think he has much less to say than a lot of people believe. I believe that if he had stuck to his guns and had a different relationship with Russia and started bringing troops home and not aggravating things, he wouldn't have been tolerated. Something would have happened.

Syria and America's Place in the World
Sputnik: Moving on to the Middle East, in your reports you've stated that with so many countries controlling territory in Syria, there's very little left for the Syrians. Do you think there's a good chance that government forces can regain control of the country?

Ron Paul: I do. I think there will always be a Syria. What it's going to look like is the big problem. At the moment, it's hard to predict and say that the people who have invaded — the Turks, the Israelis, the United States will leave. They're going to have to suffer a defeat somewhere along the way. That may occur soon –another defeat like Aleppo. That might make them think differently, but it's still a hotbed…

Sputnik: There's an ongoing campaign in the east of Demascus in Eastern Ghouta, with media portrayals of it in the West comparing the ongoing campaign to Srebrenica and what happened in Bosnia. Why do you think this is, and how is the situation being portrayed in the West? Do Americans know what's actually going on?

Ron Paul: I think this, indirectly, may be a subtle bit of good news…You know Aleppo was seen as a return of Syrian territory, and a lot of people moved back! Everybody said that 'it's Assad who wants to kill his people and gas his people,' and yet they all moved back after the fighting stopped. So maybe this is one of the last desperate stands [for the anti-Damascus forces], at least for the part of Syria where Assad is stronger…

Sputnik: The UN has been commenting on this to emphasize how bad things are in Syria, and particularly in Eastern Ghouta. But the situation was also really bad in Mosul in Iraq, with recent video footage showing the results of US airstrikes. Where do you think the UN was then?

Ron Paul: Probably cheering them on. We often have a foreign policy, especially in the last several decades, of being the dominant power. We pressure people; if they do what we tell 'em, we send them more money, since we can print the world currency. And if they don't do what we tell 'em, then we have to participate in a little aggression by bombing and doing these kinds of things. My argument from the day they started, back to 1998 – I argued don't mess around with sanctions on Iraq, it'll lead to war.

Someday, we'll go broke. I don't think that we all of a sudden will have a reasonable foreign policy. I think it's going to be financial. I believe it was the financing of the Soviet system that brought it down as much as anything; that's the way most authoritarian empires end, and I think that's the way our system is going to end. Who knows when that's going to happen, but we can't continue to do what we're doing.

We can't continue to run the world. Our deficit's exploding. I think the sentiment toward the United States has started to shift too; there was a time when we were welcome, and were on the side of trying to help people, but right now it's on the side of expanding our controls around the world.

Gun Control
Sputnik: On the subject of gun control: You've stated that those demanding that guns be taken away don't talk much about guns when it's government authorities who are the ones shooting innocent people. Why do you think that's happening?





Ron Paul: Because there are some people who believe that guns belong in the hands of the government. Those are the authoritarians. Those who believe in a free society [say] that the people should have the guns, and the government should fear the people.

This was an argument back in the days when they were [creating] our constitution, and of course [Thomas] Jefferson argued the case that the government shouldn't have the guns that are ruling and controlling the people. That doesn't mean that we don't have a national defense; it just means that the people deserve guns, because ultimately, the problem that has existed throughout history has always been the abuse by government in taking freedoms away from the people.

I think we see that happening now in our country. Every time there's an incident, certain groups want more regulation. But if they were consistent, if they found one of our policemen shooting somebody that may have been a petty criminal…they would never say 'Well, he overreacted, so what we have to do is take guns away from people'. No, they never even mention it…But if something like a school shooting occurs, they use that as an excuse where private guns aren't to be used. And of course my argument is that private security is superior to anything the government will offer us.

Sputnik: You've said that tragedies like the one that happened in Florida can't be prevented by banning guns. What measures do you see as the most effective in addressing this national issue?

Ron Paul: I think some of our problems occur because we don't have enough guns in the right place. It's more than just saying 'the guns are the problem, get rid of the guns and give them to the government,' because I don't think that's the solution…

I often mention a chemical plant next door to where I live: they have a lot of security, and it's not the government, it's not the police department; they have private security, and it does quite well. They're responsible, it's a very dangerous place, they don't want anyone in there.

So I think the more that's privatized, the better. Private schools don't have these problems. Home schooling obviously wouldn't have problems like this, and the smaller schools don't have problems because everybody knows everybody. Sometimes these movements towards gigantic school districts where there are thousands of kids in one school, where people don't know exactly what's going [on] sort of introduces these problems.

But I think we should talk about gun-free zones…where nobody is allowed to have a gun. I hate the idea of getting more guns, but quite frankly, if I was in charge of a very dangerous area or a private school and it was getting dangerous, a private owner has a right to use a gun. So yes, there are times when I think that teachers or some other school officials could have guns and be ready to deal with them.

The problem with my argument is that people will construe it as being 'oh well he doesn't care about the kids', but quite frankly, the kids still are getting killed, and when you look at what our government guns do, if you measure how many kids are dying in Yemen right now because we're allies of Saudi Arabia – why aren't we worried about that? Not only about the policemen who shoot badly, but what about our own government, that's in so many countries, with so many innocent people dying from our bombs and our interference in other peoples' lives in other countries? So I think that's involved in massively more killing than what's happening in the schools. That doesn't mean I'm not concerned about the schools, but they ought not be so inconsistent in what their arguments are.

http://news.gold-eagle.com/article/i...sector-buy/936

SNIPPET:
Gold Prices This Week and Next Week’s Outlook
Inflation is Not the Right fundamental backdrop for the gold sector.

Despite much analysis to the contrary, history shows that sure, gold stocks can rise during inflationary phases, but that sooner or later the eroding fundamentals of such a backdrop will catch up to the miners.

One example is the inflation-fueled bull market in precious metals, commodities and stocks that took place under Alan Greenspan’s oversight. Gold flat lined or gently declined in ratio to cost input commodities like mining materials and energy. The final highs in 2008 resolved into the H&S top that formed in 2007-2008 and a massive liquidation into Q4 2008, which proved an epic buying opportunity amid a pervasive deflationary backdrop.

A more recent example was as noted in this week’s NFTRH premium report (#488):
“Since the beginning of the most recent inflation cycle, when gold and gold stocks bottomed and led the initial surge [in January 2016], the slow grind of increasing inflation expectations and inflationary signals in the economy has come with a long sideways grind in nominal GDX and a downward trend in GDX/SPY (see below).
Now look at the mid-2016 period. That was when we were going on an on about the erosion of gold’s fundamentals. https://nftrh.com/2016/05/30/amat-ch...mentals-erode/.

I realize that gold’s link with inflation is rooted in the mass psyche and it is true that gold benefits from inflation over the very long-term. But the gold sector, the miners of this long-term inflation, currency and monetary disaster hedge do not prosper fundamentally during risk ‘on’, pro-cyclical inflationary phases.”

http://news.gold-eagle.com/sites/def...gt022518-1.png
And folks, what is going on in the macro right now is an expression of an ‘inflation trade’. So while there will be rallies along the way (silver’s sentiment and CoT data are contrarian bullish) the real lock and load buy for the sector will be when economic contraction and deflationary winds start to blow.

Same as it was in 2001, Q4 2008 and on a micro scale, Q1 2016.

Meanwhile, silver continues to point toward a contrarian positive setup in the making as Commercial Hedging entities trend toward a flat short/long orientation. Courtesy of Sentimentrader.com:
http://news.gold-eagle.com/sites/def...gt022518-2.png
Website: https://nftrh.com/

********