Author: Tyler Durden

Meet 31-year-old Dan Price. Dan is the CEO of Seattle-based credit card payments processing firm Gravity Payments, and three months ago, he did a funny thing. After talking with a friend who confessed to having difficulties making student loan payments and rent each month on an annual salary of $40,000, Dan decided to set a $70,000 per year pay floor at Gravity. Dan was not, The New York Times says, looking to insert himself into “the current political clamor over low wages or the growing gap between rich and poor.” All he wanted to do was improve the lives of … Continue reading →

Early last month in “Crowdsourcing Police Brutality“, we highlighted an ongoing project at The Guardian which is attempting to tally the number of people killed by police in the US during 2015. Use of deadly force by authorities in America has become a hot button issue after several high profile cases involving the death of unarmed black suspects culminated in a night of violent protests in Baltimore. In the wake of Baltimore’s “purge” (as April’s protests came to be known), two competing theories emerged about what effect the controversy has had on policing in America. We’ve outlined the two theories … Continue reading →

In a rather stunning note, CyberBerkut, a Ukrainian group of hackers, claims to have hacked John McCain’s laptop while he was in the Ukraine, and as Techworm reports, what they have released from his June visit appears to be a fully staged production of an ISIS execution video… As Techworm reports, according to the hackers, they broke into the laptop of one of the American politicians, Senator McCain and after found a video with staged IS execution, which they decided to show to the world community. It so happened that Senator John McCain had visited Ukraine on a official visit … Continue reading →

Via Valuewalk, Don’t tell Jim Grant, the publisher of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, that gold is a hedge. The author and publisher said the metal is much more dynamic; providing a trifecta of price, value and sentiment, and investors should have exposure to it. “[G]old is an investment in monetary and financial disorder – not a hedge. You look around the world and you see exchange rates are properly disorderly, when you look around the world of lending and borrowing — we are in a regime of price control by another name, so-called zero percent rates and quantitative easing by … Continue reading →

*NYSE SUSPENDS TRADING IN ALL SECURITIES * * * The New York Times, citing floor trades, said new software to blame… The market outage has stretched to two hours. Official say a cyber-attack is not to blame. “Trader on the floor of the exchange in lower Manhattan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that after the suspension began, traders were told that the problem was related to updated software that was rolled out before markets opened on Wednesday. According to the trader, the exchange said that the new software caused problems soon after trading began on Wednesday and … Continue reading →

“This is not a secret,” explains Kris Roman, director of geopolitical research center Euro-Rus, “The whole [US] economy is built on the military theme: to maintain its economic growth, the United States needs a war every 4 years, otherwise the economic growth slows down.” The Belgian expert believes that with the collapse of the USSR, NATO should have stopped existing, but somehow the alliance “has grown to the size of the Universe because the motto ‘The Russians are coming!’ is relevant again.” In the 25 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO has not forgotten even for a … Continue reading →

European Parliament president Martin Schulz said his faith in the Greek government had reached “rock bottom,” and, as AFP reports, that he hopes it resigns after Sunday’s referendum. Luckily, he has an idea for a solution… the time between the departure of Tsipras’ hard-left Syriza party and new elections would have to “be bridged with a technocratic government, so that we can continue to negotiate.” As AFP reports, Schulz on Thursday told German Handelsblatt business daily that “new elections would be necessary if the Greek people vote for the reform programme and thus for remaining in the eurozone and Tsipras, … Continue reading →

Via Investment Research Dynamics, BlackRock Inc. is seeking government clearance to set up an internal program in which mutual funds that get hit with client redemptions could temporarily borrow money from sister funds that are flush with cash.  – Bloomberg News We may have been early on warning about leaving your savings in the financial system. It’s okay to be too early getting your money out of the system but it’s fatal to be just one second too late.  The gates are already in place in money market funds just waiting for the signal to be lowered BlackRock’s filing with … Continue reading →

We suspect this will be the last time billionaire investor Carl Icahn is invited on CNBC. Having sold CNBC darling NFLX, he crushed the two main memes of CNBC’s raison d’etre – buy stocks, because where else are you going to put your money – “what’s better – making 2% or losing 30% as people did in 2008…right now it’s an extremely dangerous time;” and the next leg of this bull market will come from an improving real economy – “the economy is not picking up, it is artificial due to low interest rates.” The market has way over-estmated how … Continue reading →

Back in late 2013 and  early 2014, the gold (and silver) market was stunned by a series of massive, unprecedented “stop” or “velocity logic” sales which sent the price of the precious metal crashing so furiously they halted the entire gold futures market anywhere between 10 and 20 seconds.  Some examples: September 12, 2013: Vicious Gold Slamdown Breaks Gold Market For 20 Seconds October 11, 2013: “Stop Logic” Gold Slam Was So Furious It Shut Down CME Trading Again and January 6, 2014: Gold Flash Crashes, Halts Trading As “Velocity Logic” Circuit Breakers Triggered Some said this was nothing but … Continue reading →

Once more, an “insider” from The Fed exposes the reality of an academic ivory tower clueless of the real financial markets. Former adviser to Dallas Fed’s Dick Fisher, Danielle DiMartino Booth speaking in a CNBC interview slams The Fed for “allowing the [market] tail to wag the [monetary policy] dog,” warning that “The Fed’s credibility itself is at stake… they have backed themselves into a very tight corner… the tightest ever.” As she writes in her first Op-Ed, “The hope today is that the current era of easy monetary policy will have no deep economic ramifications. Such thinking, though, may … Continue reading →

The lack of faith in central bank trustworthiness is spreading. First Germany, then Holland, and Austria, and now – as we noted was possible previously – Texas has enacted a Bill to repatriate $1 billion of gold from The NY Fed’s vaults to a newly established state gold bullion depository…”People have this image of Texas as big and powerful … so for a lot of people, this is exactly where they would want to go with their gold,” and the Bill includes a section to prevent forced seizure from the Federal Government. From 2011: “The University of Texas Investment Management … Continue reading →

One week ago we reported that, according to Greek sources, Greece had suffered a “massive” deposit outflow to the tune of €700 million just last Friday, culminating a week of €3.4 billion in total outflows following the acrimonious failure by the Greek government to reach a deal with the Troika. This was confirmed by Wednesday’s news that Greek banks had received another weekly boost in their ELA allottment, the biggest since February, amounting to €2.3 billion and bringing the total to a record €83 billion. … even as deposits continued to slide inexorably toward parity with the ECB’s funding of … Continue reading →

In “Global Youth Unemployment Hits 35 Million As Recent Grads Lean On Parents,” we documented what we have called the “pitiable plight” of recent college graduates whose degrees now cost in excess of $35,000 and who are entering a job market bereft of real opportunities for gainful employment. The OECD estimates that in member countries, as many as 35 million people aged 16-29 are out of work. In a related story, Sallie Mae (from which the nation’s number-one issuer of student loan-backed ABS was spun last year) recently reported that better than two-thirds of parents expect to provide financial support … Continue reading →

As regular readers are no doubt aware, the US and China are racing towards a maritime conflict stemming from Beijing’s construction of what Washington has condescendingly called “sand castles” in the Spratly archipelago. Atop these man-made islands are cement plants, air strips, and soon-to-be lighthouses, as China boldly asserts its territorial claims on what are heavily-contested waters though which trillions in seaborne freight pass each year. Now, with Beijing set to enforce what is effectively a no-fly zone over its new sovereign ‘territory’ we bring you the following graphic from WSJ which shows that when it comes to sheer size, … Continue reading →