What if former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been pulling the wool over our eyes for years? What if, while she was secretary of state, she ran two secret wars, one in Libya and one in Syria? What if there already were wars in each of those countries, so she used those wars as covers for her own? What if President Obama gave permission for her to do this? What if the president lacks the legal authority to authorize anyone to fight secret wars? What if she obtained the consent of a dozen members of Congress from both … Continue reading →

If Reddit is anything to go by, air travel is a lot riskier than you think. A discussion on the website this week called for pilots to reveal what was the “closest disaster you’ve averted on a flight that the passengers had no idea about?” It has attracted almost 5,000 comments in less than 48 hours, with the following tales among those most likely to worry nervous fliers. Pressure drop I am a commercial airline captain on a newish Embraer 175. Probably one of the scarier things I have had happen was when one of our cabin pressure control channels … Continue reading →

Wee! This is becoming a weird form of time travel. Twenty-five trading days ago the S&P 500 was just 0.1% below its all-time high of 2131 recorded on May 21. Since then we have traveled backwards about 415 days! That’s right. Yesterday’s 1893 close was down 11.2% from the all-time high, and marked the chart point first crossed way back on May 22, 2014. ^SPX data by YCharts Do not fret, however. Beijing has called in the Red Cavalry—otherwise known as the PBOC. In standard central bank fashion, the latter injected (even) moar credit into the Chinese economy via a 25 bps rate cut, reduction of bank reserve requirements by 50 bps and mainlining about … Continue reading →

BALTIMORE, Maryland – Is Donald Trump broke yet? We don’t know. But at the end of the first quarter, investors held about $24 trillion in stocks. Stock prices are down about 10% since then… leaving the rich $2.4 trillion less rich. Government bonds have generally gone up. Junk-grade corporate bonds have gone down. And real estate? It takes longer to react. Real estate is not “marked to market” immediately. Buyers and sellers discover prices slowly. Phony Wealth The “wealth” created in Stage III of the U.S. credit boom was largely phony. It came as the Fed dropped the price of … Continue reading →