Feb 04

Today’s News 4th February 2018

  • Paul Craig Roberts Rages At Washington's Nuclear Posture Review

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    The World Will Not Survive the American Neoconservatives’ Doctrine of US World Hegemony

    The government of the United States is clearly in demonic hands. We are overflowing with proof. Take Friday (2-2-18) for example.

    A report from the House Intelligence Committee was released that is proof that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice (sic), and the Democratic National Committee are engaged in a conspiracy against American democracy and the President of the United States with the full support of the presstitute media.

    As if that is not enough, also released today is the Pentagon’s new Nuclear Posture Review. A nuclear posture review specifies a country’s attitude toward nuclear weapons and their use. In past posture reviews, nuclear weapons were regarded as unusable except in retaliation for a nuclear attack. The assumption was that no one would use them. There was always the possibility that false warnings of incoming ICBMs would result in the nuclear button being pushed, thus setting off Armageddon. There were many false warnings during the Cold War. President Ronald Reagan was very concerned about a false warning resulting in mass death and destruction. This is why his principal goal was to end the Cold War, which he succeeded in doing. It did not take successor governments long to resurrect the Cold War.

    The new US nuclear posture is a reckless, irresponsible, and destabilizing departure from the previous attitude toward nuclear weapons. The use of even a small part of the existing arsenal of the United States would be sufficient to destroy life on earth. Yet, the posture review calls for more weapons, speaks of nuclear weapons as “usable,” and justifies their use in First Strikes even against countries that do not have nuclear weapons.

    This is an insane escalation. It tells every country that the US government believes in the first use of nuclear weapons against any and every country. Nuclear powers such as Russia and China must see this to be a massive increase in the threat level from the United States. Those responsible for this document should be committed to insane aslyums, not left in policy positions where they can put it into action.

    President Trump is being blamed for the aggressive US nuclear posture announced today. However, the document is a neoconservative product. Trump, perhaps, could have prevented the document’s release, but under pressure as he is by the accusation that he conspired with Putin to steal the US presidential election from Hillary, Trump cannot afford to antagonize the neoconized Pentagon.

    The neoconservatives are a small group of conspirators. Most are Zionists allied with Israel. Some are dual-citizens. They created an ideology of American world hegemony, specifying that the chief goal of US foreign policy is to prevent the rise of any other power that could serve as a constraint on US unilateralism. As neoconservatives control US foreign policy, this explains US hostility toward Russia and China and also the neoconservatives’ use of the US military to remove governments in the Middle East regarded by Israel as obstacles to Israeli expansion. For two decades the US has been fighting wars for Israel in the Middle East.

    This fact proves the power and influence of the insane neoconservatives. It is certain that people as insane as the neoconservatives would launch a nuclear attack on Russia and China. The Russian and Chinese governments seem to be completely unaware of the threat that the neoconservatives pose to them. I have never experienced in my interviews with Russians and Chinese any awareness of the neoconservative ideology. Possibly, it is too insane for them to grasp.

    Ideologues such as the neoconservatives are not fact-based. They are chasing their dream of world hegemony. Russia and China are in the way of this hegemony. Having learned the limits of US conventional military power—after 16 years the US “superpower” has been unable to defeat a few thousand lightly armed Taliban in Afghanistan—the neoconservatives know that conventional invasions of Russia or China would lead to the total defeat of US forces. Therefore, the neoconservatives have elevated nuclear weapons to a First Strike, usable, arsenal that in the neoconservative dream of world hegemony can be used to destroy Russia and China.

    Ideologues who divorce themselves from the facts create a virtual world for themselves. Their belief in their ideology blinds them to the risks for themselves and others that they impose on the world.

    It is clear enough that without the utterly corrupt Obama Department of Justice (sic) and FBI, the utterly corrupt Clinton-controlled Democratic National Committee, and the utterly corrupt American and European presstitute media working to destroy Trump’s presidency by framing him up as “a Russian agent,” President Trump, understanding that the Pentagon’s posture review would worsen, not normalize, relations with Russia, would have deep-sixed the demonic document that threatens all life on earth.

    Thanks to the American liberal/progressive/left, the entirely of the world is faced with a far more likely nuclear demise than ever threatened us during the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

     

    By its collaboration with the military/security complex and the corrupt Hillary DNC, the liberal/progressive/left has forever discredited itself. It is now seen by every thinking person worldwide as an insane propaganda ministry for the neoconservatives’ plan to use nuclear weapons to eliminate constraints on US unilateralism. The liberal/progressive/left has endorsed “hegemony or death.”

    They will get death. For all of us.

  • Super Bowl LII: Most Rooting For The Eagles

    The Eagles and the Patriots will be going head to head tomorrow to compete for Super Bowl LII.

    Historically, the Patriots have pedigree, with five wins in total.

    The Eagles, very much playing up to their underdog tag, are looking to win their first, having been beaten in 1981 and 2005 – the latter a narrow loss at the hands of the Patriots.

    The American public seems to be rooting for them, too.

    Infographic: Super Bowl LII: Most Rooting for the Eagles | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    As Statista’s Martin Armstrong points out, in total, 45 percent of Morning Consult survey respondents said that they’d like to see the Eagles triumph, to the 26 percent backing the Patriots.

    When Super Bowl LII is kicked off on Sunday, February 4, more than a hundred million Americans will be watching.

    Can Tom Brady carry his Patriots to yet another victory or will the Philadelphia Eagles finally get their hands on the Vince Lombardi Trophy?

    As the following infographic nicely illustrates, it is not only the biggest game of the year, but also a, albeit unofficial, national holiday.

    Infographic: Super Bowl LII | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

  • Match.com Dating Site Is Reporting Fake Active-User Numbers

    Yesterday, we highlighted a story that pulled back the curtain on the shady world of media sites paying for traffic – a practice that countless social-media influencers and AdSense scammers have employed for years to help monetize their respective platforms.

    As it turns out, IBT Media, the publisher of Newsweek and the International Business Times, reportedly schemed to buy fraudulent traffic in order to help secure a major ad contract from a US government agency. A group that investigates fraudulent web traffic initially published the findings, which comport with a story from Buzzfeed news about IBT India.

     

    Match

     

    Now, Thinknum, a FinTech company that analyzes web traffic, has published a report on its blog alleging that SpeedDate.com, one of the 45 web properties owned by Match.com, misleads users by publishing fake engagement data on its homepage.

     

    Random

     

    When the company’s analysts tried to verify the high level of activity (after all, the site regular advertises more than 2,500 singles “online now” – a huge number in many parts of the US) they discovered something disturbing in the website’s header files: A random number generator (highlighted in purple in the image above).

    So we looked deeper – why wasn’t SpeedDate.com registering on our active users counts? Perhaps it’s because they don’t use Facebook login like their other properties, making it difficult for us to track activity? Perhaps it’s because they’re under the radar?

    Or perhaps it’s because they lie?

    When our engineers took a deeper look at SpeedDate.com to figure out how we could track activity – after all, 3,297 Singles Online Now is a lot, and we should be tracking this rising star of digital dating – we found something curious in their header files.

    A random-number generator.

    What’s perhaps even more galling is how the site is “monetized” – instead of relying solely on advertising traffic, real human users must pay for the service.

    You may think this isn’t a big deal, but in an environment in which dating sites are exceedingly difficult to navigate, difficult to use, and sketchy on details, a company as big at Match shouldn’t be commiting a sin as fundamental as making up its usage numbers.

    Perhaps SpeedDate.com is just a placeholder for something bigger. Maybe it’s a relic that Match is no longer feeding. That said, it still entices hapless singles to sign up, give out personal data, and get matched up with users that either don’t exist, or haven’t been using the site in years.

    Oh – and to “verify your profile” you need to enter credit card information and get billed $0.99. After all, there are thousands of singles waiting to meet you, right?

    Right?

    To be sure, the author of the Thinknum post said the company isn’t sure what’s up with Speeddate.com these days, or if they’re even still active as a business. In 2008, they came under fire for some Facebook login shenanigans that got them banned from the social network. Regardless, their site is active – and they’re accepting signups.

     

  • The FISA Memo, Obama, And The Election that Almost Wasn't

    Authored by Tom Luongo,

    “Round up the usual suspects,” will be as far as the Democrats will be willing to go in the wake of the FISA memo’s release. There is nothing in that memo that anyone following the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation doesn’t already know.

    All the memo does is corroborate the bread crumbs left behind by a drip feed of leaks, counter-leaks and good ol’ fashioned investigative journalism.  Since the memo is based on actual evidence that the FBI admits is real but will not allow us to see, the memo itself can be taken as fact.

    The FBI has the evidence.  They’ve showed it to the House Intelligence Committee.  Both agree on the facts.  So, by extension, the memo is all the evidence we need.

    Put that in your DNC-scripted talking point pipe and blow it out your ass.

     

    Conclusions Matter

    Now that the timeline and paper trail have been determined the real implications of the memo and its facts can be discussed.  I’m no longer interested in the game of cut and thrust to stop the truth from coming out.

    I’m only interested now in the conclusions we can draw from the memo itself.

    And those conclusions are chilling.

    The out-going Obama administration, at the highest levels in coordination with the media, conspired to create news stories that supported a FISA warrant based on politically-motivated opposition research to undermine the newly-elected President of the United States.

    Moreover, it knowingly omitted material facts to the court not once, but four times, to keep that surveillance warrant open in service of this operation.  A warrant the FBI deputy director, Andrew McCabe, testified under oath to Congress that was key to its issuance.

    They knew the dossier on Trump, compiled by Michael Steele, was unverifiable. They hid its origin and motivation from the court.  The information from this warrant and the details of the dossier were used to move public opinion and Congress into supporting Robert Mueller’s investigation.

    But, to what end?

    To disgrace and force from office the President of the United States.  Thus, these people, and the leadership of the Democratic Party, President Obama himself and Hillary Clinton’s staff all conspired to criminally disenfranchise more than 60 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump.

    To say that this is bigger than Watergate is like calling World War II a minor kerfuffle.

    What About the Voters!?

    Think about this for one second and you know what I’m saying.

    All of these people are guilty, at a minimum of corruption, conspiracy and fraud.  I’m no legal scholar, so I’m sure the list of offenses is longer than one of Hillary Clinton’s tirades after someone criticized her latest pantsuit atrocity.

    This ultimately opens all of these organizations up to the biggest civil rights class action lawsuit in the history of this country.  The Obama administration and the Democratic Party used opposition research to paint a false narrative of corruption in the Oval Office to discredit the election.

    How many riots and street demonstrations did we see in 2017 as outraged and triggered liberals ran around smashing in windows and beating people up because of their delusion based on a lie?

    How many hours of lost productivity did the country suffer because of FBI complicity in an operation to overturn a legal election?

    How many millions in property damage?  Destroyed careers?

    What about the direct victims of this disgusting display of government corruption taken to its logical conclusion?

    Why is Michael Flynn nearly bankrupt after being hounded by Mueller for months only to get a nothing guilty plea on the thinnest of procedural offenses?

    When the corruption is this venal isn’t it our right under the Constitution to petition our government for a redress of grievances?  Who do we sue?

    Because there’s material harm here and someone should be held responsible.  This began under Obama’s watch.  He set this whole process in motion.  High ranking members of his cabinet are directly implicated by the facts in the memo.

    And the memo is just the beginning of the discovery phase of this very public trial.

    Government on Trial

    But, I want more than that.  I want it all out in the open. And I want those responsible, those for whom the titles, salaries, benefits and power we bestow on them to do our work, to stand up and be accountable.

    And if they are too venal, feckless and narcissistic to admit these things, then we’ll drag them through the most embarrassing of show trials.

    And that means stripping them of their wealth, power and privilege.

    It means turning off their house organs in the media; outing the enablers, leakers, trolls and spooks.

    It means releasing everything, unredacted, in the name of national security.

    It means reminding them of just how much all of that depends on our consent, not theirs.

    Because if we don’t demand these things, then next time there won’t even be the pretense of an election.

  • Uma Thurman Says Her Assault By Weinstein Was Like "A Bat To The Head"

    After months of telling inquiring reporters that she would share her “Weinstein story” when she felt ready Uma Thurman – one of the actresses most closely associated with the Weinstein brothers’ Miramax film production studio – has finally opened up to the New York Times about her history of rape and abuse at the hands of Harvey Weinstein.

    Thurman explains she waited for two reasons: She was worried she “might cry” because of the intensely emotional subject matter, and she also felt guilty for being both a victim and an enabler of Weinstein’s predation. The two worked on a series of immensely popular films together, beginning with the 1994 blockbuster “Pulp Fiction”. Weinstein even introduced her to former President Barack Obama at a fundraiser he hosted for the former president at his house

     

    Weinstein

    After more than two decades in the film industry, Thurman is worried that her behavior inadvertently set a precedent that other women followed – willingly and naively walking into the web of a predator.

    “The complicated feeling I have about Harvey is how bad I fell about all the women that were attacked after I was,” she told me one recent night, looking anguished in her elegant apartment in River House on Manhattan’s East Side, as she vaped tobacco, sipped white wine and fed empty pizza boxes into the fireplace.

    “I  am one of the reasons that a young girl would walk into his room alone, the way I did. Quentin used Harvey as the executive producer of “Kill Bill”, a movie that symbolizes female empowerment. And all these lambs walked into slaughter because they were convinced nobody rises to such a position who would do something illegal to you, but they do.”

    Thurman, like fellow Weinstein victim Rose McGowan, accused her former agency, Creative Artists Agency, of abetting Weinstein’s predatory behavior.

    The agency has issued a pubic apology. And Thurman says she feels conflicted about her status as being both a victim and a part of the system that turned a blind eye to this culture of victimization.

    Like McGowan, Thurman’s history of being assaulted by powerful men in Hollywood began when she was a teenager and just starting her career.

    One night when she was 16, Thurman went out in Manhattan and met an actor nearly 20 years her senior. The two went back to his Greenwich Village brownstone for a nightcap.

    “I was ultimately compliant,” she remembers. “I tried to say no, I cried, I did everything I could do. He told me the door was locked but I never ran over and tried to grab the knob. When I got hoe I remember I stood in front of the mirror and I looked at my hands and I was so mad at them for not being bloody or bruised. Something like that tunes the dial one way or another, right? You become more compliant or less compliant, and I think I became less compliant.”

    Turning to the subject of Weinstein, Thurman explained how he and his first wife, Eve, befriended her in the aftermath of “Pulp Fiction” – the movie that launched Thurman to stardom.

    In a story that by now has become familiar to anybody following the #MeToo movement, Thurman explained how Weinstein groomed her, spending hours discussing film and her career.

    Then, one day, they were arguing over a script in a Paris hotel room, when – as Thurman tells it – Weinstein’s infamous bathroom came out.

    “I didn’t feel threatened,” she recalls. “I thought he was being super idiosyncratic, like this was your kooky, eccentric uncle.”

    Her first attack occurred later at the Savoy Hotel in London.

    “It was such a bat to the head. He pushed me down. He tried to shove himself on me. He tried to expose himself. He did all kinds of unpleasant things. But he didn’t actually put his back into it and force me. You’re like an animal wriggling away, like a lizard. I was doing anything I could to get the train back on the track. My track. Not his track.”

    The next day, she received a bouquet of flowers from Weinstein with a note that read “you have good instincts.” Thurman says she was repulsed.

    After that, Thurman soured on Weinstein, but reluctantly continued their working relationship, seeking to minimize her contact with him. Eventually, her repulsion to Weinstein impact her relationship with director Quentin Tarantino. After twice being told about Thurman’s assault, Tarantino confronted Weinstein, who eventually offered Thurman what she described as a “half-assed apology.”

    But Tarantino’s increasingly demanding requests of Thurman during the shooting of “Kill Bill” eventually led Thurman to sour on the director. Following a near-fatal accident on the set of “Kill Bill”, Thurman says her resentment finally boiled over and she began to despise Tarantino, who in turn began to resent her.

    Weinstein is back in Arizona for rehab. He has reportedly been spotted around Los Angeles following the dozens of accusations, and it’s believed that at least one of the many law enforcement agencies that are investigating him for potential sexual assault charges will soon move forward with an arrest.

     

     

  • Video Captures Cruise Missile Strike On Militants That Shot Down Russian Fighter Jet In Syria

    The Russian Ministry of Defense has released footage showing a precision strike against terrorists in the northwest Syria province of Idlib, following the downing of an Su-25 jet. The pilot, Roman Nikolaevich Filippov safely ejected – only to be killed by militants on the ground, according to the Ministry. 

    Earlier, Ebaa Agency released a video of the moment the Russian Su-25SM was shot down by MANPADS over Saraqib, in Idlib. According to Ebaa, the AlQaeda affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) backed by Qatar, was responsible. The MANPADS was probably an FN-6 delivered through Turkey, the agency speculated.

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    Russia promptly responded: The aerial night-vision footage shows a barrage of cruise missiles hitting ground targets, which are believed to have killed around 30 terrorists. 

    More footage reveals a heavy cluster bomb attack on the village of Maasaran, near the site of the downed Su-25:

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    As we reported earlier, the Su-25 warplane was the first Russian fighter jet downed above Syria since 2015. A Russian defense ministry official confirmed the plane was shot down, stating “The plane was flying around the de-escalation zone of Idlib.”

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    The extremist group Tahrir al-Sham has claimed responsibility for the downing of the Ruissian Su-25, according to Reuters – while another militant group, Jaysh al-Nasr, took credit as well – posting pictures and videos celebrating the downed aircraft to its twitter account. 

    The group posted a video with an unknown date containing footage of a 23mm Anti-Aircraft gun ostensibly used to shoot down the Russian jet. 

  • How Do You Hide Stolen Cryptocurrency?

    The anonymous nature of digital wallets continues to stymie investigators in last week’s theft of 58 billion yen ($530 million) worth of NEM cryptocurrency from a Tokyo exchange, the biggest cryptocurrency heist in history.

    Authorities know which user accounts were affected by the Jan. 26 hacking, and the accounts holding the pilfered funds can be immediately identified because the virtual coins are traceable. And, as the Nikkei writes, if the Coincheck exchange case were a regular bank robbery, identifying the bank accounts holding the stolen money would let law enforcement easily return the funds to victims.

    But individuals who open a bank account must identify themselves, and no such requirement exists for opening a digital wallet. Anyone can obtain an anonymous digital wallet as easily as walking into a store and paying cash for an actual wallet.

    That helps explain why Coincheck and the NEM Foundation, the international organization that manages and promotes the currency, are having trouble identifying the owners of the wallets and demanding the restoration of funds.

    The foundation, which tags the NEM coins, could rewrite the blockchain virtual ledgers and forcibly return the stolen funds to Coincheck. But the NEM group has pledged never to rewrite blockchain records, so even those “transactions” resulting from a hack will remain valid.

    The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department had received communication logs maintained by Coincheck as of Thursday. The logs are being analyzed for any violation of Japanese anti-hacking laws, but the investigation is expected to encounter challenges similar to those in past cybercrime cases.

    In 2015, servers belonging to the state-run Japan Pension Service sustained a cyberattack in which computer viruses were used to obtain names, identification numbers and other data belonging to some 1.25 million people. The next year, travel agency JTB suffered a data breach affecting 6.79 million customers. In both cases, the hackers may have infiltrated systems via offshore servers, but no suspects have been named to date.

    When Mt. Gox went bankrupt in February 2014 after a massive amount of cryptocurrency went missing from its exchange, it took about a year and a half for authorities to arrest CEO Mark Karpeles, who was suspected of falsifying account data. Investigators went as far as crunching data in servers located in the U.S.

    Meanwhile, on Saturday, the infamous Coincheck exchange said it was preparing to announce a timeframe when yen withdrawals can begin. All yen deposits registered to customer accounts are being stored in a customer-specific account in a major financial institution, the exchange said adding that cryptocurrencies registered to customer accounts have been transferred out of hot wallets and are being stored in cold wallets, etc. And Google translated in its entirety:

    As we are announcing at the release on January 30, 2018, we are currently undergoing verification and verification of technical safety etc. accompanying Japanese yen withdrawal, and we are preparing for resumption We are. Based on the confirmation / verification that we are doing with the cooperation of outside experts, we will inform you of the timing of resumption of Japanese yen withdrawal.

    The Japanese yen held by the customer in the account is preserved in the customer exclusive account of the financial institution. Also, with respect to the virtual currency (BTC / ETH / ETC / LSK / FCT / XMR / REP / XRP / ZEC / LTC / DASH / BCH) which the customer has in the account, evacuate from the hot wallet, We keep it.

    We are sorry for the inconvenience for a while, thank you for your consideration.

    Meanwhile, someone is half a billion richer following the Coincheck theft, and nobody has any clue who it is.

  • Nunes: FISA Memo Just "Phase One," Now Targeting State Department In "Phase Two"

    Devin Nunes (R-CA) said that the investigation leading up to the four-page FISA memo released on Friday was only “phase one,” and that the House Intelligence Committee is currently in the middle of investigating the State Department over their involvement in surveillance abuses. 

    “We are in the middle of what I call phase two of our investigation, which involves other departments, specifically the State Department and some of the involvement that they had in this,” said Nunes. 

    “That investigation is ongoing and we continue work towards finding answers and asking the right questions to try to get to the bottom of what exactly the State Department was up to in terms of this Russia investigation.”

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    While it is unclear what role the State Department may have in surveillance abuses, the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York noted last month that former MI6 spy, Christopher Steele, was “well-connected with the Obama State Department,” according to the book Collusion: Secret meetings, dirty money, and how Russia helped Donald Trump win” written by The Guardian correspondent Luke Harding and published last November.


    Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele

    Harding notes that Steele’s work during the World Cup soccer corruption investigation earned the trust of both the FBI and the State Department: 

    The [soccer] episode burnished Steele’s reputation inside the U.S. intelligence community and the FBI. Here was a pro, a well-connected Brit, who understood Russian espionage and its subterranean tricks. Steele was regarded as credible. Between 2014 and 2016, Steele authored more than a hundred reports on Russia and Ukraine. These were written for a private client but shared widely within the State Department and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of the U.S. response to the Ukraine crisis. Many of Steele’s secret sources were the same sources who would supply information on Trump. One former State Department envoy during the Obama administration said he read dozens of Steele’s reports on Russia. The envoy said that on Russia, Steele was “as good as the CIA or anyone.” Steele’s professional reputation inside U.S. agencies would prove important the next time he discovered alarming material, and lit the fuse again.

    Aside from the infamous 35-page “Trump-Russia” dossier Steele assembled for opposition research firm Fusion GPS (a report which was funded in part by Hillary Clinton and the DNC), Congressional investigators have been looking into whether Steele compiled other reports about Trump – and in particular, whether those other reports made their way to the State Department, according to The Examiner. 

    …they are looking into whether those reports made their way to the State Department. They’re also seeking to learn what individual State Department officials did in relation to Steele, and whether there were any contacts between the State Department and the FBI or Justice Department concerning the anti-Trump material.

    It will be interesting to see how the State Department – and in particular Secretary of State Rex Tillerson – responds to “phase two.”


    Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

    Watch the entire Nunes interview here: 

  • The 1% Gets A Scare – More To Come?

    Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

    Most Americans have spent the last few years pressed up against the proverbial bakery window, watching the 1% enjoy a life of ever-increasing wealth and seemingly total indifference to the multitudes who aren’t favored by zero interest rates, big trust funds and political/corporate connections.

    The one consolation for the have-nots has been that, by owning few stocks and bonds, they would suffer less when those bubble markets did what bubbles always do, which is burst.

    Friday was a small but satisfying taste of that eventuality.

    From Bloomberg:

    World’s Richest People Lose $68.5 Billion in Stock Selloff

    The fortunes of the world’s 500-richest people dropped by $73.9 billion Friday as equity markets swooned with investor worries about the pace of interest rate hikes in the U.S. Warren Buffett led the declines, shedding $3.3 billion to end the day at No. 3 on the Bloomberg Billionaire Index with $90.1 billion.

    The chart shows about $100 billion of play money evaporating in the past week. Not enough to seriously inconvenience most of the people on Bloomberg’s billionaires list, but still a nice reversal of fortune versus the average person with a house, small bank account and not much more – who didn’t lose a thing.

    As for whether Friday was just a blip in an ongoing “secular bull market” or a sign that fundamentals are at last gaining the upper hand on “liquidity,” that remains to be seen. Longer-term though, there can’t be much doubt that today’s stock and bond valuations are higher than they’ll be during the next downturn.

    Here’s a chart from John Hussman’s latest (Measuring the Bubble) that illustrates the point.

     

    The adjusted price/earnings ratio on US stocks is now higher than before both the Great Depression and the dot-com bust.

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