- Wee Willie Winkle
From the Slope of Hope: Most of you are probably acquainted with the Internet-based real estate web site known as Zillow, which is a public company under the ticker symbol Z. They haven’t been public that long, and although they aren’t doing as badly as some IPOs (Lending Club – symbol LC – leaps to mind), they aren’t exactly setting the world on fire either.
What you may not know is that Realtor.com (or, more specifically, the parent company called Move) is suing Zillow and two former executives for nearly two billion bucks for stealing trade secrets. One interesting aspect of the case is how much active and aggressive deletion there appears to have been just prior to the lawsuit being filed by the two executives; one snippet I saw read…….
Seems kind of intentional, at least from reading the above, doesn’t it? I mean, I’m not that acquainted with the case, but when I read something like that, I draw my own conclusions.
One would assume that with this kind of evidence, the two chaps being accused would be a little short of plausible excuses. But – nope! – there’s one handy, and boy, is it a doozy:
Multiple computers. Smartphones. Thousands of emails. Text messages. Special programs to wipe out data. Wow, that must have been some really amazing porn!
Of course, a man using a computer on the Internet to look at porn is totally weird and freaky. I mean, what kind of sicko does that kind of thing? And if he did, I don’t blame him for wanting to hide it! What a weirdo! Oh, wait a second……….
More than Netflix. More than Amazon. Oh, and there’s this:
Suffice it to say, if you’re trying to duck a nearly $2 billion lawsuit, declaring that you were ashamed to be watching porn on the web (thus compelling you to go absolutely hog-wild deleting every morsel of data under the sun) is pretty damned amusing.
- The IMF’s Special Drawing Rights, the RMB and gold
The IMF’s Special Drawing Rights, the RMB and gold
The full article with additional charts and tables is published
on GoldMoney.com can be downloaded
here.On April 1, 2016, China’s central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan announced that the Chinese government will take actions to promote the use of SDRs in its do-mestic economy. The announcement was made at the end of a meeting of the G20 in Paris, which is hosted by China this year. China will start to use both the USD and SDRs when reporting its foreign reserves. In addition, the country will also consider issuing bonds denominated in SDRs. This comes five month after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) decided to include the Chinese Renminbi as a fifth currency to the basket of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) along with the U.S. dollar, the Euro, the Japanese yen and the British pound. The change takes effect on October 1, 2016. This marks the first major change of the constituents of the basket since 1981 when the IMF dropped 11 out of 16 currencies in the orig-inal basket. However, when the SDR was introduced in 1969, it was not based on a basket of currencies but linked to gold, 0.888671 grams to be precise, which, at the time, equaled exactly 1 US dollar. The SDR basket based on the original weighting of 16 currencies declined around 87.7% in value vs gold until today. Similarly, the basket introduced in 1978 has lost 84.4%. The smaller 5 currency basket introduced in 1981 is down 55.5% and the current basket is down 77.0% since its intro-duction in 2001.
Taking interest payments into account hardly changes the outcome. It is obvious today that for net holders of SDRs, breaking the link to gold had a negative impact on their reserve value. This is hardly surprising as any currency has under-performed gold over the past 10 years and any timeframe beyond that. Hence, it’s not that the currencies in the basket were Summary poorly chosen or poorly weighted, no combination would have managed to do better than gold, whether the RMB would have been part of the basket all along or not. While it is far too early to conclude that China is challenging the dollar’s dominant reserve position, RMB inclusion in the SDR will nevertheless have a profound impact on percep-tions not only of China’s growing economic power generally but monetary power specifically. But while the impact of the inclusion of the RMB should not be underestimated, it is unlikely that this will change the trend that gold outperforms any fiat currency.
- Fed Cornered: Stocks Slump As "Everything Is Awesome" In China: GDP Meets, Rest Of Data Beats
Heading into tonight's datagasm from China, SHCOMP tumbled and Yuan was strengthening (while money-market rates were ticking higher). Then it began… Retail Sales BEAT (+10.5% vs. +10.4% exp), Industrial Production BEAT (+6.8% vs. +5.9% exp), Fixed Asset Investment BEAT (+10.7 vs. +10.4% exp) and last – but not least – GDP MEET (+6.7 vs. +6.7% exp) – though still the weakest since Q1 2009. The post-data reaction was initially opsitive but then faded fast as reality hit on the lack of stimulus coming.
*CHINA MARCH INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT RISES 6.8% ON YEAR; EST. 5.9%
*CHINA MARCH RETAIL SALES RISE 10.5% ON YEAR; EST. 10.4%
*CHINA JAN.-MARCH FIXED-ASSET INVESTMENT RISES 10.7%; EST. 10.4%
And finally, a mere two weeks after quarter-end, China can calculate GDP confidently and with not a hint of manipulation… lowest since Q1 2009
Bear in mind that the 42 estimates of tonight's 'manufactured' GDP data varied from +6.3% (Barclays) to +7.2% (HFE) – a cool $100bn between most bullish and most bearish.
The reaction all of this great news…not good…
Now The Fed has a problem – solid inflation, solid wages, solid jobs, and no global turmoil – we are going to need some turmoil soon or rates are going up.
Charts: Bloomberg
- The Weirdest Possible Outcomes For The Strangest Election In U.S. History
Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
If you are a longtime activist in the Liberty Movement then you are well aware that elections do not matter in terms of the future direction our nation takes. Presidents are puppets of international financiers, and so are most legislators. Whenever a president does attempt to go against the system, he either ends up shot by a “lone gunman,” or his office is disgraced by a conveniently-leaked scandal.
Today, elections represent the illusion of choice; that is all. The leadership of both major parties seem different in terms of their rhetoric, but this is all cosmetic. Underneath the talk, Democrat and Republican leaders are nearly identical in their support for bigger government, more centralization, less constitutional protections, more globalism, more power to international banks and central banks, and less transparency and accountability.
For many decades now, the choice has been between the puppet on the left hand or the puppet on the right hand. This year is proving to be a little different, at least on the face of things, to the point where elections are becoming rather surreal.
For younger generations with limited experience participating in the world of U.S. elections, developments today might seem odd but not outlandish. For older generations of Americans a consensus seems to be forming and the concerns commonly expressed in the mainstream and on the web appear to match – 2016 is turning out to be the strangest presidential election they have ever seen.
In my recent article “Will A Trump Presidency Really Change Anything For The Better?,” I examine Trump’s ambiguity as an individual and his lack of political history, and why this makes him a hard candidate to pin down. The fact is, Trump is enticing to the public for the most part because the public has no idea what he really stands for. We have no evidence that his rhetoric is false because he has no legislative history to contradict his claims.
With candidates like Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and Ted Cruz, the public is well aware of where they really stand on the issues – Clinton is hardcore globalist establishment, Ted Cruz is the same though he pretends to be opposite, and Bernie, well, Bernie is a damn socialist and his only redeeming value is that he is at least honest about it.
The public knows what they will get with the other candidates; they do not know what they will get with Trump. Thus, Trump enjoys an incredible level of popularity because many Americans would rather gamble on the unknown than stick with the status quo.
The very presence of a candidate like Trump alone makes election 2016 extra weird, but this is only the beginning.
Some might argue that any change in the atmosphere of our election process at this point can only be a good thing. I would argue that the fact that the establishment is allowing their long time control mechanism to evolve into an overwhelming reality television-style circus (rather than the stiff and boringly predictable farce we are used to) suggests that Americans are being deliberately distracted from dangerous geopolitical and economic developments.
Look at it this way; we have Trump who is an attack-dog candidate who ends up in the news every other day for something he said and who attacks a Democratic opponent with which he has in the past maintained a longtime friendship. We have a fully exposed international criminal in the form of Clinton, who has been under investigation and should be prosecuted. We have a full-blown socialist named Bernie whose supporters make up a majority of the crazed social justice and cultural Marxist crowd. And we have Cruz, a “pro-constitution” anti-bank candidate with ties to those same banks and ties to an anti-sovereignty think tank (The Council on Foreign Relations).
Some Republicans accuse Trump of being an agent for the Clinton camp. Some Democrats accuse Sanders of being an agent for the Republicans. Hillary barks like a dog at her own campaign events. Sanders supporters start fights at Trump rallies and then get their asses beat because cultural Marxists are abject weaklings. Cruz gets accused of repeated adultery while some idiot thinks that posting naked pictures of Trumps wife will actually hurt his campaign rather than help it.
This whole situation feels like a soap opera gone terribly awry. How could one NOT be distracted?
In the meantime, we have a global economy returning to extreme volatility after years of central bank manipulation which has failed to accomplish anything except make the rich and powerful more rich and powerful. We have potential geopolitical hot spots in Syria, Ukraine and the South China Sea which continue to present possible triggers for global conflict. We have internationally organized terrorist supervillains in the form of ISIS, the same Islamic extremists that Western covert intelligence agencies trained and funded to destabilize the Middle East now attacking multiple countries in the West. And, we have Eastern and Western banks working closely with the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements while pretending to be at odds with each other.
Any of the above factors could set catastrophes in motion that could change the world for a hundred years or more, and yet we are fed a steady diet of campaign mega-drama.
As stated earlier, elections in the U.S. do not decide the future of our nation, but they do in many ways reflect the level of insanity that our collective society has reached, and, they also can reflect the direction in which the establishment hopes to send us.
I believe it is very possible, considering the already erratic nature of the elections so far, that we might end up with unexpected developments and outcomes designed to further mesmerize the masses. Here are just a few of those potential events.
A Three Or Four-Way Race
Trump has suggested in the past that he might run as an independent candidate in the event that the Republican Party uses a brokered convention to remove him from the race. I am not convinced that the entire Trump vs. Republican Establishment situation is not a contrived Kabuki theater. That said, the general argument would be that a Trump independent run would “guarantee” a Democratic win.
Again, I believe the winner of the election is already predetermined, but assuming for a moment this is not the case, the Democrats have the same problem as the Republicans. Bernie Sanders has said months ago that he was not interested in running under a third party if Clinton gets the nomination, but his supporters continue to call for him to do so, and, many of those polled have stated that they would refuse to vote for Clinton if Sanders loses the nomination.
This presents a potentially frenetic final election filled with utter chaos; a three- or four-way “competition” in which there is no clear leader; a funny prospect for those of us who are tired of the election con game, but pretty disturbing to everyone else.
Delegates Choose A Candidate That Does Not Represent Public Wishes
Contentions are increasing over the existence of “super delegates” in the Democratic Party which have the power to override party majority sentiment towards a particular candidate. Many of these super delegates are actually top ranking members and officials of the Democratic Party, and can vote for any candidate they wish rather than following a “pledge” to vote at the convention for the candidate that the democratic constituency wants.
While the Republican establishment tends to use convention “rule changes” as a fail-safe to prevent a grassroots candidate from achieving an upset in the nomination (as they did with Ron Paul), the Democrats use the super delegates as a fail-safe for the same purpose. It is very possible that Bernie Sanders could receive the widest popular support among Democrat voters but still lose the nomination to Clinton through the super delegates.
Convention-Inspired Conflict And Riots
Given the already seething angst between supporters of Trump, Cruz, Sanders and Clinton, any railroading of a candidate at the conventions, whether real or fabricated for effect, could very well result in internal violence spilling into open riots. Some candidates, including Trump, have suggested this will be the ultimate outcome. I tend to agree. The divisions between Americans are so pronounced now that I would be shocked if people did not react emotionally to a brokered or stolen convention. This would also be a fantastic method to continue the distraction of the public away from greater problems.
A Surprise Combined Ticket
This scenario had not struck me as realistic until last week; I'm not sure why (perhaps it is too strange), but it is certainly plausible. The idea that Trump and Cruz or Clinton and Sanders might actually combine forces at a brokered convention might sound ridiculous today, but keep in mind that most elections are nothing more than theater, and this includes fake rivalries. Beyond this, the argument could be made on either side that the only way to "win" is to unite the divided Democrats or divided Republicans through a truce. I can hear the sound bites now – "People, in the end we are all (Democrats/Republicans), and we must stop the divisiveness for the good of the party. It is time to focus on the real enemy; the (Democrats/Republicans)…"
Such a scenario could stave off rioting and inner-party chaos, but the final election results would still be a guaranteed explosion of tensions.
Widespread Election Fraud On Both Sides
Yes, there is already widespread election fraud in the U.S. every two to four years. However, what I am referring to is election fraud which takes a mainstream stage and which makes even the most oblivious Americans question the validity of the process. I am talking about the mainstream media deliberately pushing the meme of election fraud to help the establishment conjure the environment of instability they obviously want. I am talking about the complete unraveling of the American presidential race.
A Postponed Election
In the event of stolen conventions, election fraud or rioting, the election itself could very well be postponed. Congress does have the authority to pass a law postponing federal elections due to emergencies or “extenuating circumstances”, and, they also have the ability to transfer that authority to the executive branch.
Keep in mind, this could also take place in the event of a national crisis outside of the election process. An economic collapse, large scale terrorist attacks, or general social breakdown could result in a postponed election. Though this is an incredibly unlikely scenario, with the way 2016 has been going I would not rule anything out. Also take note that such a scenario would result in a prolonged Obama White House and of course the inevitable outcome mentioned below…
Civil War
I have said it before and I’ll say it again, if Hillary Clinton is chosen by the establishment to take Obama’s place, the result would probably be outright civil war in the U.S. The level of hatred among conservatives for that woman is so stratospheric I cannot see any other outcome. It might not happen immediately, but a solid bet would be conflagration within her first term.
With a Trump win, I could also see at the very least nationwide riots similar in tone to those that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri, with the social justice cultists running wild with their goofy slogans and molotov cocktails. These people are a paper tiger however, and are only a threat if they manage to convince a majority of the ethnic American population to follow their lead.
The greater danger is if Trump is actually an agent for the establishment rather than anti-establishment. If Trump responds to rioting using unconstitutional measures or exploits the crisis to overstep the bounds of federal power, at that point we will know exactly who he works for. Again, with Trump, everything is a gamble and we won’t know until we know.
Some of the above theoretical scenarios might sound outlandish, but then again, if you traveled back in time a decade ago and tried to explain what the conditions of elections would be in 2016, I doubt anyone would believe you.
I continue to hold to the premise that the elections have entered the world of the weird because America itself is on the edge of something that will shake its very core. What that event will be is hard to say because there are so many possibilities, but tensions of this caliber usually escalate to crisis before they deescalate, and tensions today are surely escalating.
It is clear that we are in for a roller-coaster ride in the next year, so prepare accordingly, but also keep in mind that elections in themselves do not represent threats or solutions to threats. You and I, the awake and aware, are the solution to the threats facing this country. The elections only serve as a gauge for how close to the bottom of the abyss we actually are.
- Why Young Arabs Are Joining The Islamic State
And that is why we said this was the scariest chart in the world for these reasons!
A recent poll has found that young Arabs across the Middle East reject the so-called Islamic State and believe it will not succeed in creating a caliphate. Entitled “The 2016 Arab Youth Survey”, it also found several reasons why younger Arabs think people are attracted to the terrorist group. A chronic job shortage in the region is one of the primary reasons, far ahead the presence of Western troops in the Middle East.
- Live Feed Of New York's Democrat Debate… And More Bad News For Hillary
As Hillary and Bernie launch this evening’s “critical”, according to CNN, debate in Brooklyn, the tide has shifted somewhat for both candidates and especially for Hillary the news is not good. According to newly released favorability ratings from Gallup, Hillary’s image is at an all time low.
Back in November, when Bernie Sanders was still quite an unknown to most mainstream voters, Hillary’s favorable ratings among Democrats was +63. Today, that net favorable is just +36 (66% giving her favorable rating, and 30% gave her an unfavorable rating). Conversely, Bernie Sanders has a net favorable rating of 52, down slightly from recent April highs, but up from his November rating of just 42.
And in even worse news for Hillary, the latest Fox News poll shows Clinton’s national lead imploding and after having a comfortable 13 point, 55 to 42 lead in March, she is effectively tied with the socialist, as her lead just one month later tumbles to only 2 points, a 48%-46% split, which falls within the margin of error.
Hillary currently leads in the race to 2,383 delegates by a count of 1,307 to 1,087 according to the NYT, but she is reeling from losing to Sanders in eight of the last nine primaries, and is growing irritated with Bernie’s ability to keep the race interesting. The Brooklyn debate comes just days ahead of the April 19th New York primary, which contains 291 democratic delegates.
One thing that Hillary does have going for her, at the moment at least, is that she holds a 17 point lead amongst New York’s Democratic voters in New York. New Yorker’s are seemingly forgetting that Hillary has made millions by giving speeches to Wall Street banks; “New York union members know what she did after 9/11,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. “She didn’t come across while she was senator here as being a cheerleader for Wall Street.”
Given the double digit lead in the polls, and the relative bout of amnesia New Yorkers are having, it would appear that Bernie has a big uphill climb ahead of him to pull off an upset, if only in New York
The Clinton camp is already stepping up the rhetoric, trying to put a greater sense of pressure on Bernie to make something happen in New York.
“We are too late in the calendar for the Sanders campaign to successfully spin a second-place finish in New York as some kind of moral victory,” said Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon. “A loss here has the potential to be decisive in the overall nomination fight.”
However while Clinton is almost assured of winning New York tonight, should Bernie’s surge continue, Hillary may find herself in deep trouble in the days ahead.
Live webcast from tonight’s speech below:
- What is Coming? Elite Feverishly Building Survival Bunkers: "Fear Of Uprising From The 99%"
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via SHTFPlan.com,
Panicked Elite Buying Bomb-Proof Luxury Survival Bunkers to Escape Civil Unrest, Disasters
Panicked members of the elite are buying luxury bomb-proof underground survival bunkers because they fear mass civil unrest might be on the horizon.
The company behind the construction of the sprawling complexes, Vivos, says the facilities are for the “protection of high net worth individuals” in the event of apocalyptic-style scenarios during which “millions will perish or worse yet, struggle to survive as victims”.
“Where will you go when pandemonium strikes?” asks a promo for the luxury shelters.
The biggest facility, called Europa One, is located in Germany and is “one of the most fortified and massive underground survival shelters on Earth, deep below a limestone mountain” and is “safely secured from the general public, behind sealed and secured walls, gates and blast doors”.
Journalist Lynn Parramore said she also visited another site in Indiana which is a former Cold War communications facility.
“Built during the Cold War to withstand a 20 megaton blast, within just a few miles, this impervious underground complex accommodates up to 80 people, for a minimum of one year of fully autonomous survival, without needing to return to the surface,” states a promo for the bunker on the Vivos website.
The main selling point is the location of the facility, which is a “safe distance away from the New Madrid fault line” and therefore a good hideaway to escape a “tsunami-type event”.
“You go underground and it feels like you’re in a very nice hotel,” said Parramore.
“This is for wealthy people who are concerned about various disaster scenarios, but a common theme among them is a fear of civil unrest, a fear of an uprising from the 99%,” she added.
Units in some of the underground shelters, which also come with a year’s supply of food and water, start at around $35,000 dollars but the largest ones sell for upwards of $3 million dollars.
“There is no assurance that our race will continue, therefore it is our responsibility to do everything we can to survive,” warns the Vivos website, which invites elitists to contact them for further information that is on a “need to know” basis only.
As we reported last week, millionaires are fleeing Chicago and other major cities due to concerns over racial tensions and rising crime rates.
“About 3,000 individuals with net assets of $1 million or more,” left Chicago in just the last year alone according to the Chicago Tribune.
Paris and Rome are also seeing a mass exodus of millionaires, while wealthy elites are also installing panic rooms in their big city apartments due to fears over potential civil unrest and skyrocketing crime.
Land and remote homes in places like New Zealand are also popular with the global 1%, with realtors citing the threat of worldwide financial instability and domestic disorder as motivating factors behind the purchases.
- US Judge Rules Sandy Hook Victims Can Sue "Military-Style" Gun-Maker
In a somewhat stunning decision, SkyNews reports that a US judge has ruled that the families of victims in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School can sue the maker of the weapon used in the attack, arguing the Bushmaster rifle is a military weapon that should not have been sold to civilians.
Gun companies had sought to reject the negligence and wrongful death lawsuit filed two years after the attack by nine victims' relatives and a survivor.
But Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis said a 2005 federal law protecting gun-makers from lawsuits does not shield the companies from legal action in this case.
She ruled that lawyers for the victims' families can still argue the semi-automatic rifle is a military weapon and should not have been sold to civilians.
The legal action names Remington Arms, maker of the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, model XM15-E2S, as well as the distributor and seller.
A lawyer for the families, Josh Koskoff, welcomed Thursday's news that the lawsuit can proceed.
"We are thrilled that the gun companies' motion to dismiss was denied," he said.
"The families look forward to continuing their fight in court."
Gunman Adam Lanza used the Bushmaster to kill 20 children and six adults at the school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012.
Earlier this week a judge ruled that state police do not have to release to media some of Lanza's writings, including his spreadsheet ranking mass murders.
Media were also seeking publication of 20-year-old Lanza's notebook titled The Big Book of Granny.
It contains a story he wrote in fifth grade featuring a character who likes hurting people, especially children.
So an otherwise totally normal kid driven to massacre by the 'availability' of a weapon? yep makes perfect sense.
- Why For Japanese Traders "Every Day Is Like Being Alice In Wonderland"
As the world is now fully aware, The BOJ surprised markets in January when it set a –0.1% rate on some deposits that banks place at the central bank, effective from mid-February. Its move was designed to encourage banks to lend more, spurring higher spending and inflation. Things are not working so well…
And now, as The Wall Street Journal reports, some are already doubting the policy…
Trading has withered in Japan’s money markets, where big banks and others usually park their excess cash hoping to receive some interest—despite predictions from the Bank of Japan that its latest easing of monetary policy would spark more activity.
Traders have also pushed up the yen believing Japan’s central bank can’t do much more to ease policy.
“Every day is like being Alice in Wonderland,” said Tomohisa Fujiki, head of interest-rate strategy at BNP Paribas Securities Japan. “Interest-rates levels are having no effect on credit demand, the market function is declining. You can’t expect everything to go according to plan.”
“There’s no guarantee that lowering interest rates for retail and corporate borrowing would have the same effect [of preventing deflation] as it did in Europe,” said Nobuyuki Hirano, president of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial ??Group?Inc., Japan’s biggest bank, on Thursday, adding the negative-interest policy had caused households and businesses to rein in spending amid growing uncertainty over the future.
But it is the money markets that are becoming a major issue…
Money markets allow banks and other financial institutions to lend and borrow money for a period of less than a year, often not backed by collateral. If fewer banks invest cash in short-term markets, it is harder for other banks to get short-term loans to finance their operations.
One problem has been Japanese banks’ computer systems: The trade confirmation system used by money-market brokers wasn’t fully updated for negative interest rates until over a month after the BOJ rate cut. Money-market trading volumes dropped to their lowest level since at least 2011 at the end of March, according to Japan’s Money Brokers Association, down to nearly a tenth of January’s levels.
Japanese trust banks that manage cash on behalf of mutual and pension funds have in recent weeks been placing excess money on deposit at the Bank of Japan rather than into overnight money markets, where it might now attract a negative interest rate.
“If the money market dries up, if there is an event like the Lehman crisis, there won’t be the infrastructure for banks to raise capital,” said Naomi Muguruma, strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities. “It could cause interest rates to rise sharply.”
Problems in the money markets have run counter to BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s expectations: last month he said that as market players get used to negative rates, money-market trading should increase.
So – to sum up – NIRP has crushed liquidity (in all markets), sent foreign investors piling into JGBs to front-run chaotic BoJ buying, has actually discouraged risk-taking (breaking the back of Abe's crucial belief-based system of monetary policy), has strengthened the Yen (screwing the exporters), and finally – drum roll please – begun to drain money-market funds placing the entire Japanese financial system in a much more systemically-fragile state.
But apart from that – more of the same is just what the doctor ordered.
Given that Japan is now at QE22 with no signs of anything promised at all…
As Alhambra's Jeffrey Snider once wrote,What none of those have amounted to is an actual and sustainable economic advance; NONE, no matter how you count them. In very simple fact, the idea that central banks “need” to keep doing them in continuous fashion is quite convincing that at the very least they don’t mean what central bankers think they mean, and perhaps worse that the more they are done and to greater extents the more harm that eventually befalls. It isn’t difficult to suggest and even directly observe that Japan’s economy has shrunk during the QE age, but that fact isn’t applicable to Japan alone (there are sure too many non-adjusted data points that uncomfortably assert the same for even the US). That would seem to at least offer a basis for a “deflationary mindset” no matter the actual economic effects.
This is not so much investing or even finance as it is a cult (calling it a religion or even ideology is unjustifiably too charitable). That is the usefulness of “deflationary mindset” not so much as a matter of actual economic pathology but as a built-in, squishy appeal to “we’ll get it right next time.” And there is always, always a next time which doesn’t seem to count for much inside the cult when, in fact, it is everything.
And so finally, as if you had not had enough of the farce they call Japan, we get this headline tonight:
- *BOJ SAID TO BE RECEPTIVE TO BUYING MORE ETFS: REUTERS
And scene. It really is the monetary equivalent of “the beatings will continue until morale improves.”
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