Author: Tyler Durden

Resentment toward the EU hit a new high yesterday when the upper house of the Swiss parliament on Wednesday followed in the footsteps of Iceland and voted to invalidate it’s 1992 application to join the European Union, backing an earlier decision by the lower house. The vote comes just a week before Britain decides whether to leave the EU in a referendum. Twenty-seven members of the upper house, the Council of States, voted to cancel Switzerland’s longstanding EU application, versus just 13 senators against. Two abstained the Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported. Thomas Minder, counselor for the state of Schaffhausen and … Continue reading →

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With the Bilderberg 2016 meeting now humming along at the Taschenbergpalais hotel in Dresden, deep behind closed doors and protected by heavily-armed guards, many have wondered: just how hyperbolic are allegations that the Bilderbergs run the world. To help readers decide, here is a chart laying out the linkages and various connections – financial, political, statutory and otherwise – between the handful of people who comprise the Bilderberg core and the rest of the world. Reprinted with permission from Zero Hedge.

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“Hillary Clinton is now poised to become the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, but she simply lacks the integrity and temperament to serve in the office. From the bottom of my soul I know this to be true. So I must speak out. I had no animosity toward the Clintons. Out of a sense of loyalty to our First Family I even secretly disposed of sordid physical evidence that might later have been used to convict the president. The blue dress wasn’t the only evidence of his misdeeds. But I could not keep from asking myself how … Continue reading →

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Jim Grant, founder of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer has long been a proponent of gold, and equally a critic of central planners. He sat down recently for an interview at John Mauldin’s strategic economic conference to discuss his views on gold, and how he struggles to understand those who view gold as an irrelevant curiosity. Grant is always worth a read and/or listen. On his current view regarding gold, Grant’s humor was on display as he described to what degree he was bullish on gold, and that he wouldn’t categorize gold as a hedge against monetary disorder but rather a … Continue reading →

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Euro Pacific Capital’s Peter Schiff sat down with Alex Jones last week to discuss the state of the economy, and where he sees everything going from here. Here are some notable moments from the interview. Regarding how bad things are, and what’s really going on in the economy, Schiff lays out all of the horrible economic data that has come out recently, as well as making sure to take away the crutch everyone uses to explain any and all data misses, which is weather. “It’s no way to know exactly the timetable, but obviously this economy is already back in … Continue reading →

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On the corners of Lagos’ Sin Street, the purveyors of the oldest profession in the world have embraced the digital age. Amid the escalating ‘war on cash’, Nigerian hookers have turned to ‘cashless sex’ with point-of-sale machines. The cashless option has become popular among prostitutes and operators of brothels and strippers. As Daily Post reports, “transactional” sex has gone digital… In the city of Lagos, the digital revolution takes firm grip on the daily life of the citizens as shoppers are abandoning cash for digital payment using their Value Cards to purchase needful things and luxurious items––including sex! Patrons of … Continue reading →

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While Sweden’s seemingly self-imposed refugee crisis continues to roil the nation’s population, it appears different and potentially just as problematic social unrest looms. As Gatestone reports, for the last few years, immigration-welcoming Sweden has been overwhelmed with Roma beggars from Romania and Bulgaria who have turned “panhandling into an occupation.” Nobody knows exactly how many of them there are, but The Gatestone Institute’s Ingrid Carlqvist reports, Sweden has been overwhelmed with Roma beggars from Romania and Bulgaria. In 2014, the newspaperSydsvenskan reported that an estimated 600 Roma beggars lived in the country; a few months ago, the government-appointed “National Coordinator for Vulnerable … Continue reading →

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Under the auspices of “protecting clients from criminal activity,” JPMorgan Chase has decided to impose withdrawal limits on certain ATM transactions. As WSJ reports, following the bank’s ATM modification to enable $100-bills to be dispensed with no limit, some customers started pulling out tens of thousands of dollars at a time. This apparent bank run has prompted Jamie Dimon to cap ATM withdrawals at $1,000 per card daily for non-customers. Most large U.S. banks, including Chase, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. have been rolling out new ATMs, sometimes known as eATMs, which perform more … Continue reading →

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When assessing candidates for elected office, foreign policy is perhaps the single most important consideration in an increasingly interconnected world. That’s especially true in the 2016 race for The White House. While the vast majority of the Americans will remain blissfully ignorant when it comes to the nuances, the electorate generally understands a handful of very basic concepts: 1) Russia is resurgent; 2) ISIS is bad; 3) there are a lot of refugees in Europe and some of them are terrorists; 4) there’s something going on in Syria that is apparently connected to ISIS and refugees; 5) Iran is evil … Continue reading →

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Bangladesh is not pleased with the NY Fed. One Friday in early February, hackers who had apparently been stalking the Bangladesh central bank for at least two weeks bombarded the Fed with requests for transfers of nearly $1 billion from the country’s FX reserves. The good news: the vast majority of that total was not transferred. The bad news: $100 million of it was and of that $100 million, more than $80 million is still missing. For those who missed the story, you can review it in all its James Bond-ish glory in the four posts linked below, but here … Continue reading →

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Bangladesh has learned a valuable lesson over the past two months: Do. Not. Trust. The. New. York. Fed. On a quiet Friday morning in early February, a series of instructions using authenticated SWIFT codes was sent to 33 Liberty allegedly from the Bangladesh central bank requesting the transfer of nearly $1 billion from the country’s FX reserves. Now, the first thing that should jump out at you there is that Friday is a weekend in Bangladesh, a fact which probably should have set off alarm bells. But alas, it didn’t and by the time the hackers who sent the transfer … Continue reading →

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The political establishment in America is terrified. Donald Trump gets closer to securing the GOP nomination with each passing month and his rivals on both sides of the aisle are in disbelief. Worse – or “better” if you enjoy entertainment – Trump has seemingly given up any attempt to be anything other than… well… than Donald Trump. He recently offered to pay the legal fees of a supporter who punched a protester, shouted almost maniacally about “Bernie guys” at a recent rally, and frankly seems to have gone punchdrunk with his newfound political clout. That’s not necessarily a criticism. Heaven … Continue reading →

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Back in August 2012, when negative interest rates were still merely viewed as sheer monetary lunacy instead of pervasive global monetary reality that has pushed over $6 trillion in global bonds into negative yield territory, the NY Fed mused hypothetically about negative rates and wrote “Be Careful What You Wish For” saying that “if rates go negative, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing will likely be called upon to print a lot more currency as individuals and small businesses substitute cash for at least some of their bank balances.” Well, maybe not… especially if physical currency is … Continue reading →

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Less than two years ago, news of Russia test-firing an ICBM just as the east Ukraine civil war was heating up was sufficient to send the stock market into a brief tailspin. Since then, the launches of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles has become an almost daily occurrence, with the market hardly batting an eyelid. In fact, it happened just last night at 11:01pm PST at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where – for the second time this week – the US test-fired its second intercontinental ballistic missile in the past seven days, seeking to demonstrate its nuclear arms capacity … Continue reading →

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Negative rates may not have found their way to bank deposits in most locales (yet), but that doesn’t mean the public isn’t starting to see the writing on the wall. At first, NIRP was an anomaly. An obscure policy tool that most analysts and market watchers assumed would be implemented on a temporary basis in a kind of “let’s see if this is even possible” experiment with an idea that, from a common sense perspective, makes no sense. But then a funny thing happened. Central banks from Denmark to Sweden to Switzerland went negative and stayed there. They even doubled … Continue reading →

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