Today’s News 5th March 2016

• Former UK Ambassador To Syria: US/UK Foreign Policy Is Doomed, Even Corrupt

  Authored by Eric Zuesse,

  Peter Ford, who was the UK’s Ambassador in Syria during 2003-2006, was asked by the BBC in their “The Big Questions” interview on February 14th, whether the current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would have to be a part of the solution in that country after the war is over, and Ambassador Ford said:

  “I think sadly, but inevitably, he is. Realistically, Assad is not going to be overthrown. This becomes more clear with every day that passes. Western analysts have been indulging in wishful thinking for 5 years; it’s time to get real, we owe it to the Syrian people to be much more realistic and hard headed about this. The West has to stop propping up the so-called ‘moderate opposition’, which is not moderate at all.”

  This was quoted by Almasdar News on February 18th, which went on to note that,

  "The frustrated interviewer asked Mr. Ford about 'what we should have done,' and he responded that 'we should have backed off, we should have not tried to overthrow the regime.' Mr. Ford eloquently added that this policy has been 'like a dog returning to vomit.’”

  The video of the interview below showed him making that statement in this context:

   

  The interviewer was clearly anti-Assad, and Ford responded with evident anger by noting (starting at 2:55 on the video) the shocking fact that:

  “In Aghanistan, Iraq, Libya, like a dog returning to vomit, we go back to [and the audience already was started to clap here], we never saw a secular Arab regime that we didn’t want to overthrow.”

  He was saying there that we support only non-secular regimes, sectarian regimes, in Arabia, this meaning fundamentalist Sunni governments — especially Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, the very same regimes that even the U.S. Secretary of State acknowledged in a 2009 cable that was wikileaked, are the chief regimes that are funding Al Qaeda, ISIS and other jihadist groups. Ford was noting that the United States and UK strive to keep in power those governments, the ones that are led by royal families that supply the bulk of funding for jihadist groups — jihadists who perpetrate terrorism in the United States and Europe. “We never saw a secular  Arab regime that we didn’t want to overthrow”: Ambassdor Ford was so bold as to imply that our governments are supporting, under the table, the very same ruling families that they know to be funding (as that cable only vaguely referred to them) “Sunni terrorist groups worldwide” (which includes in Western countries, too).

  The BBC’s interviewer ignored that statement; he wasn’t struck by it, such as to ask: “Why are we supporting the chief funders of Islamic jihad? Why are we overthrowing (or in Syria are trying to overthrow) a secular regime, against which we join foreign jihadist groups in order to overthrow that non-sectarian regime; why are these dogs, as you call the U.S. and UK, returning time and again to that vomit?”

  This was a live interview program, and so the BBC censors weren’t able to eliminate Ambassador Ford’s responses from the interview; but, instead, the interviewer did his best to interrupt and to talk over Ford’s shocking — and shockingly truthful — assertions about the government (ours) that supposedly represent our  interests (and not the interests of Western oil companies etc.). Ford will probably not be invited again to be on live television in the West to air his views about Syria.

  Ford’s evident anger at what’s going on, and at the media’s resistance to letting the public know about the reality, appeared to reach near to the edge of his blurting out that ulterior motives have to be behind this addiction to “vomit” — but he was a professional diplomat, and so he was able to restrain himself there.

  The U.S. Secretary of State who had specifically requested the fundamentalist-Islamic Arab ‘allies’ to stop funding terrorism was Hillary Clinton, the leading candidate now contending for the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination. Here she was, expressing her current view regarding Syria, in a recent debate against her Democratic Party opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders:

  QUESTIONER: In respect to when you take out Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Right now or do you wait? Do you tackle ISIS first? You have said, Secretary Clinton, that you come to the conclusion that we have to proceed on both fronts at once. We heard from the senator just this week that we must put aside the issue of how quickly we get rid of Assad and come together with countries, including Russia and Iran, to destroy ISIS first. Is he wrong?

   

  CLINTON: I think we're missing the point here. We are doing both at the same time.

   

  QUESTIONER: But that's what he's saying, we should put that aside for now and go after ISIS.

   

  CLINTON: Well, I don't agree with that.

  She's still (now after five years, and even though she knows  that we’re supporting jihadist-backing Arabic royal families and their Shariah-law regimes) comes back to that “vomit”: that "we never saw a secular Arab regime that we didn’t want to overthrow.” She’s an example of this addiction, to that “vomit.”

  She does this even though, in October 2014, the man who had collected the mega-donations to Al Qaeda (all of which had been in cash) had detailed, under oath, in a U.S. court proceeding, that the Saud family were the main people who paid the “salaries” of the 9/11 terrorists. The Saud family are now the chief backers of the overthrow-Assad campaign. Do politicians such as Clinton actually represent the Sauds? It’s not only the Bush family who do.

  What’s exhibited here is a double-scandal: first, that a person such as that would even be a Democratic Party candidate for the U.S. Presidency (and Jeb Bush shares Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy prescriptions, though he’s virtually certain not  to win the Republican Presidential nomination); and, second, that the Western press try to avoid, as much as possible, to expose the fact that this is, indeed, “vomit,” and avoid to explain to their audience the very corrupt governmental and news-media system that enables people such as Ms. Clinton to become and remain a leading Presidential candidate in the United States. Clearly, a person like that isn’t qualified to be in government at all; she’s corrupt, or else incredibly stupid. And no one thinks she’s that stupid. But lots of people accuse her of being corrupt.

  *  *  *

  Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
   

   

  

  

  

  

  

• If Voting Mattered, They Wouldn't Let You Do It

  Insanity… Just Obey!

   

  

  h/t The Burning Platform

  Know your place..

  

  h/t The Burning Platform

  As Doug Casey summarized so eloquently, the political system in the United States has, like all systems which grow old and large, become moribund and corrupt.

  The conventional wisdom holds a decline in voter turnout is a sign of apathy. But it may also be a sign of a renaissance in personal responsibility. It could be people saying, "I won't be fooled again, and I won't lend power to them."

  Politics has always been a way of redistributing wealth from those who produce to those who are politically favored. As H.L. Mencken observed, every election amounts to no more than an advance auction on stolen goods, a process few would support if they saw its true nature.

  Protesters in the 1960s had their flaws, but they were quite correct when they said, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." If politics is the problem, what is the solution? I have an answer that may appeal to you.

  The first step in solving the problem is to stop actively encouraging it.

  Many Americans have intuitively recognized that government is the problem and have stopped voting. There are at least five reasons many people do not vote:

  1. Voting in a political election is unethical. The political process is one of institutionalized coercion and force. If you disapprove of those things, then you shouldn't participate in them, even indirectly.

   

  2. Voting compromises your privacy. It gets your name in another government computer database.

   

  3. Voting, as well as registering, entails hanging around government offices and dealing with petty bureaucrats. Most people can find something more enjoyable or productive to do with their time.

   

  4. Voting encourages politicians. A vote against one candidate—a major, and quite understandable, reason why many people vote—is always interpreted as a vote for his opponent. And even though you may be voting for the lesser of two evils, the lesser of two evils is still evil. It amounts to giving the candidate a tacit mandate to impose his will on society.

   

  5. Your vote doesn't count. Politicians like to say it counts because it is to their advantage to get everyone into a busybody mode. But, statistically, one vote in scores of millions makes no more difference than a single grain of sand on a beach. That's entirely apart from the fact that officials manifestly do what they want, not what you want, once they are in office.

  Some of these thoughts may impress you as vaguely "unpatriotic"; that is certainly not my intention. But, unfortunately, America isn't the place it once was, either. The United States has evolved from the land of the free and the home of the brave to something more closely resembling the land of entitlements and the home of whining lawsuit filers.

  The founding ideas of the country, which were highly libertarian, have been thoroughly distorted. What passes for tradition today is something against which the Founding Fathers would have led a second revolution.

  This sorry, scary state of affairs is one reason some people emphasize the importance of joining the process, "working within the system" and "making your voice heard," to ensure that "the bad guys" don't get in. They seem to think that increasing the number of voters will improve the quality of their choices.

  This argument compels many sincere people, who otherwise wouldn't dream of coercing their neighbors, to take part in the political process. But it only feeds power to people in politics and government, validating their existence and making them more powerful in the process.

  Of course, everybody involved gets something out of it, psychologically if not monetarily. Politics gives people a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves and so has special appeal for those who cannot find satisfaction within themselves.

  We cluck in amazement at the enthusiasm shown at Hitler's giant rallies but figure what goes on here, today, is different. Well, it's never quite the same. But the mindless sloganeering, the cult of the personality, and a certainty of the masses that "their" candidate will kiss their personal lives and make them better are identical.

  And even if the favored candidate doesn't help them, then at least he'll keep others from getting too much. Politics is the institutionalization of envy, a vice which proclaims "You've got something I want, and if I can't get one, I'll take yours. And if I can't have yours, I'll destroy it so you can't have it either." Participating in politics is an act of ethical bankruptcy.

  The key to getting "rubes" (i.e., voters) to vote and "marks" (i.e., contribu­tors) to give is to talk in generalities while sounding specific and looking sincere and thoughtful, yet decisive. Vapid, venal party hacks can be shaped, like Silly Putty, into salable candidates. People like to kid themselves that they are voting for either "the man" or "the ideas." But few "ideas" are more than slogans artfully packaged to push the right buttons. Voting for "the man" doesn't help much either since these guys are more diligently programmed, posed, and rehearsed than any actor.

  This is probably more true today than it's ever been since elections are now won on television, and television is not a forum for expressing complex ideas and philosophies. It lends itself to slogans and glib people who look and talk like game show hosts. People with really "new ideas" wouldn't dream of introducing them to politics because they know ideas can't be explained in 60 seconds.

  I'm not intimating, incidentally, that people disinvolve themselves from their communities, social groups, or other voluntary organizations; just the opposite since those relationships are the lifeblood of society. But the political process, or government, is not synonymous with society or even complementary to it. Government is a dead hand on society.

  

  

  

  

• The Lure Of Socialism

  Authored by Thomas Sewell, originally posted at TownHall.com,

  Many people of mature years are amazed at how many young people have voted for Senator Bernie Sanders, and are enthusiastic about the socialism he preaches.

  Many of those older people have lived long enough to have seen socialism fail, time and again, in countries around the world. Venezuela, with all its rich oil resources, is currently on the verge of economic collapse, after its heady fling with socialism.

  But, most of the young have missed all that, and their dumbed-down education is far more likely to present the inspiring rhetoric of socialism than to present its dismal track record.

  Socialism is in fact a wonderful vision — a world of the imagination far better than any place anywhere in the real world, at any time over the thousands of years of recorded history. Even many conservatives would probably prefer to live in such a world, if they thought it was possible.

  Who would not want to live in a world where college was free, along with many other things, and where government protected us from the shocks of life and guaranteed our happiness? It would be Disneyland for adults!

  Free college of course has an appeal to the young, especially those who have never studied economics. But college cannot possibly be free. It would not be free even if there was no such thing as money.

  Consider the costs of just one professor teaching just one course. He or she has probably spent more than 20 years being educated, from kindergarten to the Ph.D., before ending up standing in front of a class and trying to convey some of the knowledge picked up in all those years. That means being fed, clothed and housed all those years, along with other expenses.

  All the people who grew the food, manufactured the clothing and built the housing used by this one professor, for at least two decades, had to be compensated for their efforts, or those efforts would not continue. And of course someone has to produce food, clothing and shelter for all the students in this one course, as well as books, computers and other requirements or amenities.

  Add up all these costs — and multiply by a hundred or so — and you have a rough idea of what going to college costs. Whether these costs are paid by using money in a capitalist economy or by some other mechanism in a feudal economy, a socialist economy, or whatever, there are heavy costs to pay.

  Moreover, under any economic system, those costs are either going to be paid or there are not going to be any colleges. Money is just an artificial device for getting real things done.

  Those young people who understand this, whether clearly or vaguely, are not likely to be deterred from wanting socialism. Because what they really want is for somebody else to pay for their decision to go to college.

  A market economy is one in which whoever makes a decision is the one who pays for that decision. It forces people to be sure that what they want to do is really worth what it is going to cost.

  Even the existing subsidies of college have led many people to go to college who have very little interest in, or benefit from, going to college, except for enjoying the social scene while postponing adult responsibilities for a few years.

  Whether judging by test results, by number of hours per week devoted to studying or by on-campus interviews, it is clear that today's college students learn a lot less than college students once did. If college becomes "free," even more people can attend college without bothering to become educated and without acquiring re any economically meaningful skills.

  More fundamentally, making all sorts of other things "free" means more of those things being wasted as well. Even worse, it means putting more and more of the decisions that shape our lives into the hands of politicians and bureaucrats who control the purse strings.

  Obamacare has given us a foretaste of what that means in reality, despite how wonderful it may sound in political rhetoric.

  Worst of all, government giveaways polarize society into segments, each trying to get what it wants at somebody else's expense, creating mutual bitterness that can tear a society apart. Some seem to blithely assume that "the rich" can be taxed to pay for what they want — as if "the rich" don't see what is coming and take their wealth elsewhere.

  

  

  

  

  

• "This Is A Ridiculous Joke" – An Abandoned, Rotting Vancouver House Is Listed For $7.2 Million

  One month ago, we wrote about the curious story of several Vancouver homes which sold in 2011 to Chinese buyers for millions and dollars, and which had since been left completely abandoned, vacant and rotting. As Postmedia News first reported that the home — in the 4100-block West 8th Avenue, bought for $4.6 million in July 2011 by Huaican Ren and his wife Xuepei Sun, was subject to a City of Vancouver “untidy premises” order.

  A quick reminder for those new to the story:

  The Point Grey property stopped functioning as a home and became a storage of wealth six years ago, according to property documents and a neighbour’s account.

   

  It was well-cared for in 2010 when it was sold to an investor. Since then it has been flipped through a property transfer in a Beijing law office and left unoccupied.

   

  Current owners of the other vacant property residing on the 4100-block 8th Avenue West home are Huaican Ren and Xue Pei Sun.  Since the purchase, the current “owners” have not been seen. Huaican Ren is founder of a number of China-based companies with interests in real estate development, as well as gemstones, retailing, tourism, and restaurants. His wife is a shareholder in companies.

   

  City hall is currently trying to estimate how many Vancouver homes are vacant. And these online communities are anecdotally gathering photo evidence and coming to conclusions that offshore investment is to blame. In other words, the “Chinese.”

  The property, because “house” is too generous a word, in question – located on the 4100-block West 8th Avenue in Vancouver – is shown below:

  

  

  

   

  According to the Global Real Estate Institute, Huaican Ren is chairman of Kunming North Star Enterprise Company Limited and is among “the world’s leading real estate players.”  According to other sources, he is the “founder of a number of China-based companies with interests in real estate development, as well as gemstones, retailing, tourism, and restaurants.”

  Whatever his profession may be (or was) one thing is certain: he is long gone. 

  The Chinese businessman aka “launderer of hot money into Canadian real estate” and his wife also own a $3.57-million Arbutus Ridge home that also appeared to be vacant. The Province attended the Arbutus Ridge home last week seeking to speak to Huaican Ren for this story, and attempted to reach Huaican Ren through the listing brokerage for the Point Grey home. No one answered the door at the Arbutus Ridge home.

  What is fascinating is the history of flips involving just this one home, and involving Chinese “investors: Huaican Ren, then listed as “businessman,” and his wife Xue Pei Sun, “homemaker,” bought the home from Wei Min Zhang in July 2011 for $4.6 million.  Wei Min Zhang in turn had bought the home in July 2010 for $3.35 million.

  And it is about to be flipped again: according to Sam Cooper of PostMedia news, the vacant, rotting, “ownerless” $6.2-million home is on the market again. For $7.2 million!

  While we don’t know who the seller is – after all the official owner appears to have disappeared – we have no doubt it will be sold: recall this chart of Vancouver real estate prices, which incidentally is the best indicator of China’s capital outflow problem:

  

  We are sad to say that this “abandoned, rotting” house will sell, and almost certainly above asking. At that point we can begin counting down the days until the new owner (Chinese, of course) will likewise disappear. We explained this odd dynamic a month ago:

  What is happening is quite simple:

  • Chinese investors smuggled out millions in embezzled cash, hot money or perfectly legal funds, bypassing the $50,000/year limit in legal capital outflows.
  • They make “all cash” purchases, usually sight unseen, using third parties intermediaries to preserve their anonymity, or directly in perso, in cities like Vancouver, New York, London or San Francisco.
  • The house becomes a new “Swiss bank account”, providing the promise of an anonymous store of value and retaining the cash equivalent value of the original capital outflow.
  • Then the owners disappear, never to be heard from or seen again.

  We also said that “as more Chinese scramble to engage and repeat if only the first three steps, the price of local housing, which is merely a store of value to price indiscriminate foreign buyers, soars while it makes home purchases for the domestic population prohibitively expensive and virtually impossible.”

  For its part, the local government has no incentive to stop this recycling of real estate: after all the higher the price, and the more the “flips”, the greater the taxes collected.

  We do, however, express our condolences to the local population which not only can not afford to chase these ridiculous bids ever higher, but is left out in the cold… literally.

  It remains to be seen how much longer such Chinese house flipping will continue, because the natives are getting restless, and also angry. 

  As we reported earlier this week, when we brought readers the story of another Vancouver shack selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars above asking, everyone involved in these kinds of transactions can not believe what is going on, starting with the real estate agent, who was incredulous. “For it to go over $4 million is remarkable. I had five offers,” he said. “These were local buyers just looking to make a shift who wanted to move into this area.”

  Thomas Davidoff with UBC’s Sauder School of Business told Vancity Buzz: “These prices are getting pretty freaking nuts in my opinion.” 

  “As a proposition for someone who’s going to live in that house and what you’re getting for four million plus – that is a ridiculous joke and that is not something that’s going to work for people who just make a living in Vancouver,” Davidoff says.

  We can’t wait to learn the reaction of the people who “make a living ” in Vancouver when they learn that this “rotting, abandoned” sheck is about to sell above its $7.2 million asking price.

  

  

  

  

• Why We're Ungovernable: The "Unprotected" Push Back

  Submitted by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

  Peggy Noonan, former Reagan administration speech writer and current Wall Street Journal pundit has, like most of her peers, been wondering what’s gotten into the unwashed masses lately that makes them such unpredictable voters. And she’s come up with a useful conclusion: The rise of Donald Trump (and similar iconoclasts in other countries) is due to the gradual division of society into the protected — that is, people who make the rules and therefore benefit from them — and the unprotected, who don’t make the rules and end up getting screwed. The latter have finally figured this out and have stopped supporting the former. Here’s her latest OpEd piece, in its entirety:

  Trump and the Rise of the Unprotected: Why political professionals are struggling to make sense of the world they created.

   

  We’re in a funny moment. Those who do politics for a living, some of them quite brilliant, are struggling to comprehend the central fact of the Republican primary race, while regular people have already absorbed what has happened and is happening. Journalists and politicos have been sharing schemes for how Marco parlays a victory out of winning nowhere, or Ted roars back, or Kasich has to finish second in Ohio. But in my experience any nonpolitical person on the street, when asked who will win, not only knows but gets a look as if you’re teasing him. Trump, they say.

   

  I had such a conversation again Tuesday with a friend who repairs shoes in a shop on Lexington Avenue. Jimmy asked me, conversationally, what was going to happen. I deflected and asked who he thinks is going to win. “Troomp!” He’s a very nice man, an elderly, old-school Italian-American, but I saw impatience flick across his face: Aren’t you supposed to know these things?

   

  In America now only normal people are capable of seeing the obvious.

   

  But actually that’s been true for a while, and is how we got in the position we’re in.

   

  Last October I wrote of the five stages of Trump, based on the Kübler-Ross stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Most of the professionals I know are stuck somewhere between four and five.

   

  But I keep thinking of how Donald Trump got to be the very likely Republican nominee. There are many answers and reasons, but my thoughts keep revolving around the idea of protection. It is a theme that has been something of a preoccupation in this space over the years, but I think I am seeing it now grow into an overall political dynamic throughout the West.

   

  There are the protected and the unprotected. The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting to push back, powerfully.

   

  The protected are the accomplished, the secure, the successful—those who have power or access to it. They are protected from much of the roughness of the world. More to the point, they are protected from the world they have created. Again, they make public policy and have for some time.

  I want to call them the elite to load the rhetorical dice, but let’s stick with the protected.

   

  They are figures in government, politics and media. They live in nice neighborhoods, safe ones. Their families function, their kids go to good schools, they’ve got some money. All of these things tend to isolate them, or provide buffers. Some of them—in Washington it is important officials in the executive branch or on the Hill; in Brussels, significant figures in the European Union—literally have their own security details.

   

  Because they are protected they feel they can do pretty much anything, impose any reality. They’re insulated from many of the effects of their own decisions.

   

  One issue obviously roiling the U.S. and Western Europe is immigration. It is the issue of the moment, a real and concrete one but also a symbolic one: It stands for all the distance between governments and their citizens.

   

  It is of course the issue that made Donald Trump.

   

  Britain will probably leave the European Union over it. In truth immigration is one front in that battle, but it is the most salient because of the European refugee crisis and the failure of the protected class to address it realistically and in a way that offers safety to the unprotected.

   

  If you are an unprotected American—one with limited resources and negligible access to power—you have absorbed some lessons from the past 20 years’ experience of illegal immigration. You know the Democrats won’t protect you and the Republicans won’t help you. Both parties refused to control the border. The Republicans were afraid of being called illiberal, racist, of losing a demographic for a generation. The Democrats wanted to keep the issue alive to use it as a wedge against the Republicans and to establish themselves as owners of the Hispanic vote.

   

  Many Americans suffered from illegal immigration—its impact on labor markets, financial costs, crime, the sense that the rule of law was collapsing. But the protected did fine—more workers at lower wages. No effect of illegal immigration was likely to hurt them personally.

   

  It was good for the protected. But the unprotected watched and saw. They realized the protected were not looking out for them, and they inferred that they were not looking out for the country, either.

   

  The unprotected came to think they owed the establishment—another word for the protected—nothing, no particular loyalty, no old allegiance.

   

  Mr. Trump came from that.

   

  Similarly in Europe, citizens on the ground in member nations came to see the EU apparatus as a racket—an elite that operated in splendid isolation, looking after its own while looking down on the people.

   

  In Germany the incident that tipped public opinion against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal refugee policy happened on New Year’s Eve in the public square of Cologne. Packs of men said to be recent migrants groped and molested groups of young women. It was called a clash of cultures, and it was that, but it was also wholly predictable if any policy maker had cared to think about it. And it was not the protected who were the victims—not a daughter of EU officials or members of the Bundestag. It was middle- and working-class girls—the unprotected, who didn’t even immediately protest what had happened to them. They must have understood that in the general scheme of things they’re nobodies.

   

  What marks this political moment, in Europe and the U.S., is the rise of the unprotected. It is the rise of people who don’t have all that much against those who’ve been given many blessings and seem to believe they have them not because they’re fortunate but because they’re better.

   

  You see the dynamic in many spheres. In Hollywood, as we still call it, where they make our rough culture, they are careful to protect their own children from its ill effects. In places with failing schools, they choose not to help them through the school liberation movement—charter schools, choice, etc.—because they fear to go up against the most reactionary professional group in America, the teachers unions. They let the public schools flounder. But their children go to the best private schools.

   

  This is a terrible feature of our age—that we are governed by protected people who don’t seem to care that much about their unprotected fellow citizens.

  And a country really can’t continue this way.

   

  In wise governments the top is attentive to the realities of the lives of normal people, and careful about their anxieties. That’s more or less how America used to be. There didn’t seem to be so much distance between the top and the bottom.

   

  Now is seems the attitude of the top half is: You’re on your own. Get with the program, little racist.

   

  Social philosophers are always saying the underclass must re-moralize. Maybe it is the overclass that must re-moralize.

   

  I don’t know if the protected see how serious this moment is, or their role in it.

  Noonan nails the political/social zeitgeist but for some reason misses the financial side of the phase change: Governments and other protected classes have borrowed unmanageable amounts of money and are now maintaining their power by squeezing workers and savers. Corporations lower their costs by shipping jobs overseas while governments cut their debt service by reducing (or eliminating) interest rates on the bank accounts and bond funds that once allowed savers to build capital and retirees to eat.

  In this sense, QE, ZIRP and NIRP are a declaration of war on the unprotected, and as the victims figure this out they’re lining up behind anyone who promises to 1) raise the minimum wage, limit immigration, and prevent corporations from moving jobs overseas; 2) break up big banks and jail Wall Street criminals; 3) hand out free stuff, paid for by confiscating the ill-gotten gains of the 1%.

  In the US, this produces a political campaign with Donald Trump giving voice to the darkest impulses of the electorate and both major Democratic candidates running to the left of Barack Obama.

  In Europe, fringe parties of both the right and left are taking over, leading almost inevitably to a dissolution of the eurozone and a radical scale-back of the European Union. For starters.

  This is starting to look like the French Revolution, with bankers, CEOs and their favored politicians in the role of Marie Antoinette.

  

  

  

  

  

• The Printing Press: A Great Way To Fool People

  Via SchiffGold.com,

  In his most recent Gold Videocast for SchiffGold, Albert K Lu interviewed John Rubino, founder of DollarCollapse.com. Rubino had a pretty compelling explanation for why there wasn’t a massive, sustained economic collapse a decade ago, and why he thinks it’s still lurking on the horizon.

  "The reason that we’re still here, when we really should have fallen apart based on how much debt there was out there, and various other measures of instability, is that a printing press has turned out to be a great tool for fooling people.”

  Rubino pointed out that this is the first time in human history that all of the world’s governments are armed with a basically unlimited fiat currency printing press. The ability to create money out of thin air has allowed governments to take on more debt than anybody imagined feasible. Rubino noted that economists 20 years ago couldn’t have imagined $7 trillion of bonds trading at negative interest rates, and global debt at 300% of global GDP, but that’s where we are today. He went on to explain how the entire world pitched in to help the Federal Reserve keep things limping along after the 2008 meltdown. For instance, post 2009, China borrowed more money than any country has ever borrowed in history.

  Rubino said there’s no way to know when the economy will hit the wall, but it will likely be pretty soon. At some point central banks and governments will run out of the ability to borrow and print, and they will have to start living within their means again.

  According to Rubino, It’s going to be a painful transition. So, what does this mean for gold? Lu and Rubino share their insights.

   

  Follow along with the full transcript:

  Albert: Gold storms up as U.S. stocks struggle to extend streak. Hi, I’m Albert Lu, welcome to SchiffGold. That was a headline out of MarketWatch, and as the global financial turmoil continues, interest in gold appears to be growing. Gold is up nearly 16% this year, and as we approach the Fed’s March meeting, it’s looking more and more like that highly anticipated rate hike could be off the table. Joining me now is John Rubino, who manages DollarCollapse.com, and he’s also the co-author, The Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit From It, as well as many other fine books. John, thanks for joining me today. How are you?

  John: Good, thanks for having me on, Albert. Good to talk to you.

  Albert: Good to talk to you, John. I have to ask you, first of all, when you went out and got that domain, dollarcollapse.com, were you thinking a two-year lease?

  John: Yeah, I actually did expect this particular gig to last just a couple of years because this was 2004 when I set up the original dollarcollapse.com website. And it really did seem like the global financial system was on the precipice. I thought I would chronicle our descent into financial chaos for a couple of years, and then move on to something else. But the story has turned out to have legs. We have kept it together more or less in ways that I never expected us to be able to. And that the reason that we’re still here, when we really should have fallen apart based on how much debt there was out there, and various other measures of instability, is that a printing press has turned out to be a great tool for fooling people. This is the first time in human history that all of the world’s governments are armed with basically an unlimited fiat currency printing press. And so, it’s allowed them to take on more debt than seemed feasible based on history. And to manipulate interest rates down to levels that I don’t think anybody really expected. We’re in a negative interest rate world now, or we’re entering it. And if you’d gone back 20 years, and asked 100 economists if today’s world was possible, they would have said, “Nah, no way. You’ll never have $7 trillion of bonds trading at negative interest rates, and you’ll never have global debt at 300% of global GDP; that’s just not possible.” And yet here we are. My sense and my take on this is that we didn’t actually fix anything. We basically just bought ourselves time in which to build up even more debt to leverage ourselves even more catastrophically, and then make the eventual reckoning that much more serious. I think what’s coming is going to be unlike anything that has happened in living memory, certainly, something comparable to the Depression, but probably much worse. And so we’ve got very interesting decade ahead of us, Albert. And I wish that the details were easily predictable, but they’re not, except to say volatility and chaos are the rule for our immediate future here.

  Albert: Yeah. I think you hit on something very important there. Basically, we have I think, it’s close to half of a sovereign debt trading in negative yields. Negative yields persisting up the yield curve, all the way to five years in some cases. I think it has helped a lot, and maybe this is what was not factored into some of our calculations is how much the world, the rest of the world would assist the US central bank in this game that we’re playing. If the US had to carry the entire economy on its back, I think we would have seen that, maybe not hyperinflation, but we would have seen something very bad. By spreading it around, by having the Bank of Japan help, by having the ECB help, I think this has kind of spread the symptoms of the catastrophe that you and James wrote about.

  John: Yeah. Post 2008-2009, China for instance borrowed really more money than any country has ever borrowed in history. And that was the big driver of the “recovery” of the last few years. They just bought up all the natural resources in the world and drove the prices of iron ore, and copper, and timber, and oil through the roof. And that created a global resource boom. And that basically pulled us out of the, what would have been a depression after 2008-2009. But of course, that was done via huge amounts of new debt. And so, now the world is something like $60 trillion more in debt than it was back when debt was so accessible that it almost blew up the global financial system in 2008. And yeah, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan, and the US Fed, along with the People’s Bank of China, and the Chinese government have kind of gone back and forth borrowing money, and then lending it to each other. And they’ve enabled the system to hold on for much longer than it would have if it was just one country doing things like this. But that’s not a perpetual motion machine; we can’t keep going on like this forever, because we are building up more and more debt. And the big banks are bigger than ever, they’re more leveraged than ever. This time, the emerging markets have been pulled into it with something like $9 trillion of dollar denominated debt that they can’t manage. So at some point, it blows up. And then the question is, is it this year, or is it 2017, or 2020? There’s no way to know when we hit that wall. But I think it’s highly likely if not absolutely guaranteed that we do hit the wall pretty soon. We can’t go on for decades more as we’ve gone on for the past three decades. At some point, we basically run out of the ability to borrow, and print, and we have to start living within our means again. And at that point, we have to go through a transition from what is today unsustainable, to whatever we do after this that is sustainable. And it’s going to be a really painful transition. And there’s really only two ways to get there; either all the debt or most of the debt that we’ve taken on defaults, and we have a 1930s style deflationary depression, or we inflate our way out of it. That is we create enough new currency to make today’s debts manageable, but in doing so, we risk people losing faith in the fiat currencies that we’re creating with such abandon, and end up with a currency crisis, and that’s it. Those are our two choices. The next few years will determine which of those courses that we end up, and which kind of crisis we’ve chosen, but we can only chose one or the other, that’s all that’s left.

  Albert: And clearly the preference of the big thinkers at the world central banks would be to inflate the debt away, hence to target positive inflation rates, those are supposed to be a good thing. It’s 2% now; I can see that very well going higher. But the consequence of that, of course, is that the market recognizes the price inflation. Now, gold has not been responding, but it seems like perhaps this correction is coming close now because gold is starting to respond the way you would expect it to respond. And part of the consequence of having this be a worldwide effort, all of the central banks participating in different currencies is sometimes the appreciation in gold is masked, meaning that the US dollar as a unit of account, the US dollar has not been participating in this currency war, but in other currencies, I believe you would have seen gold rising.

  John: Yeah. Well, the US dollar has been the strongest currency in the world for the last few years. And that’s largely because…we’re not in great shape, but we look relatively good compared to the rest of the world. So a lot of capital is flowing in to the US and that creates demand for dollars, and pushes up the value of the dollar. But yeah, as you said, if you value gold in virtually any other currency it’s up now. So gold’s bear market ended some time in 2013 or 2014 depending on the country that you’re focusing on, and it’s been going up ever since. And finally, at long last, it has started to go up in dollars. So, whether that’s the beginning of a new leg in the gold market, or just a kind of a fake out before we get one more down leg before the gold market resumes, we can’t know that until retrospect, until afterwards. But when the gold bull market resumes, this is what it’ll feel like, this is what the early stage will be like. And so now the question is, will it continue through the rest of the year? I don’t know. But eventually, because gold is the form of money that humanity has used for the last 3,000 years, and it’s held its value for that entire time, it tends to be where we hide out when things get crazy. And as things get crazier, and crazier, and more and more capital is going to flow into gold, and also into silver, so other things being equal, you’ll see upward pressure on their prices even when priced in dollars over the next few years. Whether it’s a gradual kind of, a little at a time bull market, or a parabolic one when all of a sudden in the space of a couple of months we see another $1,000 added to gold’s dollar price, we can’t know, because that depends on the other stuff that’s going to happen out there. Will we have a raging war in the Middle East that distorts global trade? Will China have a hard landing credit crisis? Is the European Union or the Eurozone going to spin apart? And is the dollar going to do something crazy like spike from here or fall from here? We can’t know any of these things. But we can say with a fair degree of certainty based on history that things are going to be really volatile, and they’ll get crazier and crazier as this debt really bites. As our bad decisions of the past come home to roost, and the globe will be one of the beneficiaries of that, because that’s the way it’s worked in every previous currency crisis. You can go back to the Roman Empire, and France in the 1700’s, and Weimar, Germany; it’s always been the same. Money flows out of these mismanaged fiat currencies, and into real money like, gold and silver. There’s no reason to think it won’t happen again, and the only question is timing.

  Albert: John, with just a minute left, I want to get your thoughts on two points. We got a fairly important decision coming up in March; the Fed is going to decide whether to pause or to go ahead. I think that this time, it may be different, meaning that this time, gold will win either way at least relative to the stock market, because if the Fed eases, sure stocks will get a break. But investors seem to be sensitized to inflation now, so I would expect gold to go up more. If the Fed tightens, gold may go down, but I think the stock market will just be obliterated. And so, I want to get your thoughts on that. And then finally as we close out, where do you see gold going by the end of the year?

  John: Well, let me take the second question first. I am terrible at making short-term predictions, so I have absolutely no idea. Gold can be $900 or $2,000 by the end of the year. And both crises would be justifiable based on what’s going on immediately in the financial markets. But the first part of your question, I think, is very interesting, because it is possible that no matter what happens to the stock market and bond yields, and things like that, that capital is going to flow into gold going forward, because gold responds not to any particular set of economic data, but to the volatility and the stress in the markets. So if things seem really unpredictable, and really volatile, and people get scared, they will move some of their money into gold. And lots of things can scare people out there – a parabolic rise in stock prices that coincide with a bear market in bonds that might send people into precious metals. But a collapse in the stock market, same thing. What we saw in January of this year, when stocks went down hard, and a lot of that money that was taken out of the stock market flowed into precious metals; so gold went up, that could happen too. I think in the longer-term, I have no idea about this year, but in the longer term gold is a beneficiary of the instability that necessarily flows from borrowing too much money. And so, I think people who buy gold gradually, right now, not all at once at any given price, but a little at a time over a long period of time are going to be glad they did that five years from now. And who knows what the world will look like, but I think it’ll be a more stressful world than today’s, and gold will be an antidote to the stress of the world in that time.

  Albert: That’s very good advice, John. We’re out of time, so I’ve got to let you go. Thank you very much for joining me on the program today. I really appreciate it.

  John: Thanks Albert enjoyed it.

  

  

  

  

  

• "There Is No Clear Way Out" – Richard Koo Says "The Price For QE Has Yet To Be Paid"

  In his latest note tited “The Calm before The Storm”, Nomura’s traditionally downcast Richard Koo is not too excited about the market’s future prospects, in fact quite the opposite and makes the point that since QE was no game changer, not only is there no clear way out, but “the price for QE has yet to be paid.”

  What does that mean for risk assets:

  Recently, for example, the markets took a tumble when the Fed moved to normalize monetary policy. The US central bank responded by delaying the normalization process, which stabilized the markets, but eventually fears of falling behind the curve on inflation will force it to resume the process. That will lead to renewed market turmoil in a cycle that has the potential to repeat itself endlessly.

   

  I expect this balancing act between the monetary authorities, who want to push ahead with policy normalization, and the markets, which violently reject each such attempt, will persist for an extended period of time, interspersed with periodic lulls like the current one.

  Some further insight from Nomura’s Richard Koo:

  For more than half a century after macroeconomics began to develop as an independent academic discipline in the 1940s, the emergence of breakthrough products such as aircraft, automobiles, home appliances, and computers provided companies in the developed world with a host of investment opportunities. Perhaps it should not be surprising that economic theorists at that time were unable to envision a world of no borrowers.

  Economists were focused instead on the problem of how to effectively allocate a limited pool of private-sector savings. Government borrowing and spending was seen as something to be avoided since it was a symbol of inefficient resource allocation.

  And until Japan caught up with the west in the 1970s, economists’ attention was focused on monetary policy since there was a surplus of domestic private-sector borrowers and no one envisioned capital fleeing the developed world for the EMs. This was the world of Phases 1 and 3, in which there were enough borrowers. Given the historical backdrop, it is perhaps only natural that economists at that time moved in the direction they did.

  Macroeconomics did not keep up with changes in global economy

  Subsequently, the global economy underwent major changes, with manufacturing shifting to Asia and the developed economies—almost without exception—experiencing asset bubbles that eventually burst, triggering balance sheet recessions. These economies entered Phases 2 or 4 as a result.

  The discipline of economics, however, did not keep pace with these changes. Economists continued to build their theories and models based on assumptions that had only been valid in the developed economies of the 1950s and 1960s.

  That is the main reason why most economists, whether in academia or the private sector, were completely unable to predict what has happened since 2008. They could not imagine a world where the private sector is actually minimizing debt instead of maximizing profits. Even now, the discipline tends to suffer from the bias that monetary policy is inherently good and fiscal policy inherently bad.

  Unconventional monetary policy creates problems when it is wound down

  These preconceptions underlie the current policies of inflation targeting, quantitative easing, and negative interest rates. Because central banks have pushed ahead with these policies even though there is no reason why they should work at a time of no borrowers, excess reserves created by the central bank now amount to $2.3trn in the US, or 15 times the level of statutory reserves, and to ¥222trn in Japan, or fully 26 times statutory reserves.

  I have used the term “QE trap” to describe the problems that must be confronted when such policies are unwound. They can trigger severe market turmoil that cannot be avoided no matter how extensive the authorities’ dialogue with market participants.

  Recently, for example, the markets took a tumble when the Fed moved to normalize monetary policy. The US central bank responded by delaying the normalization process, which stabilized the markets, but eventually fears of falling behind the curve on inflation will force it to resume the process. That will lead to renewed market turmoil in a cycle that has the potential to repeat itself endlessly.

  QE was no game changer, and price has yet to be paid

  Professor Krugman, who came up with the idea of lowering real interest rates by combining an inflation target with quantitative easing, has finally acknowledged that these measures were no “game changer” capable of sparking an economic recovery. But he still insists they did no real harm. (https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2015/RES111915A.htm)

  While that may be the case during a balance sheet recession, when there is no private loan demand, these policies can cause huge problems when they are wound down (witness the market’s recent gyrations). The global economy has now entered a phase characterized by this kind of instability.

  Inasmuch as there is no clear way out, I expect this balancing act between the monetary authorities, who want to push ahead with policy normalization, and the markets, which violently reject each such attempt, will persist for an extended period of time, interspersed with periodic lulls like the current one.

  

  

  

  

  

• BlackRock Suspends ETF Issuance Due To "Surging Demand For Gold"

  BlackRock's Gold ETF (IAU) has seen fund inflows every day in 2016 (no outflows at all) and with the stock trading above its NAV for most of the year, the world's largest asset manager has made a significant decision:

  • *BLACKROCK SAYS ISSUANCE OF GOLD TRUST SHARES SUSPENDED
  •  *BLACKROCK SAYS SUSPENSION DUE TO DEMAND FOR GOLD

  

   

  BlackRock Statement:

  Issuance of New IAU (Gold Trust) Shares Temporarily Suspended; Existing Shares to Trade Normally for Retail and Institutional Investors on NYSE Arca and Other Venues

   

  Suspension results from surging demand for gold, which requires registration of new shares

   

  iShares Delaware Trust Sponsor LLC, in its capacity as the sponsor of iShares Gold Trust (IAU), has temporarily suspended the creation of new shares of IAU until additional shares are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

   

  This suspension does not affect the ability of retail and institutional investors to trade on stock exchanges. Retail and institutional investors will continue to be able to buy and sell shares in IAU.

   

  IAU holds gold as a physical asset. IAU is an exchange-traded commodity (ETC), which therefore is not eligible for registration as an investment company under the ’40 Act. IAU may only be registered under the ’33 Act as a grantor trust. Under the ’33 Act, subscriptions for new shares in excess of those registered requires additional filings with the SEC.

   

  Nearly all other U.S. iShares are exchange-traded funds (ETFs), registered as investment companies under the ’40 Act. The ’40 Act provides for the continuous offering of shares and does not require registration of additional shares as the fund grows due to investor demand in connection to new subscriptions.

   

  Since the start of 2016, in response to global macroeconomic conditions, demand for gold and for IAU has surged among global investors. IAU has $8 billion in assets under management, and has expanded $1.4 billion year to date. February marked its largest creation activity in the last decade.

   

  This surge in demand has led to the temporary exhaustion of IAU shares currently registered under the ’33 Act. We are registering new shares to accommodate future creations in the primary market by filing a Form 8-K to announce the resumption of the offering of new shares. The ability of authorized participants to redeem shares of IAU is not affected.

  It appears the huge demand for physical gold (and lack of supply) is finally catching up with the manipulation of paper prices.

  If this is anything other than a brief technical suspension, it could well unleash panic-buying as we already pointed out – there is no physical gold!

  

   

  As we previously concluded, the reality that there are just two tons of gold to satisfy delivery requsts based on accepted protocols should in itself be troubling, ignoring the latent question why so many owners of physical gold are de-warranting their holdings.

  Considering there are now less than 74,000 ounces of Registered gold at the Comex, or just over 2 tonnes, we may be about to find out how right, or wrong, the skeptics are, because at this rate the combined Registered vault gold could be depleted as soon as the next delivery request is satisfied. Or isn't. 

  Meanwhile, this is how gold is taking the news – it would appear that some gold is still available… one just has to pay up for it.

  

  

  

  

  

  

• Stocks Surge On Biggest Bear Market Short-Squeeze Since Nov 2008

  They are pulling out all the stops on this one…

   

  Another chaotically wild week…

  • Small Caps (Russell 2000) up 4.65% – biggest week since Oct 2014

  

  • S&P 500 up 3% – best week in 3 months
  • Dow Transports up 3.7% – best week since Dec 2015

  • "Most Shorted" stocks up 8.8% – biggest short squeeze since Nov 2008 (and in 3 weeks "Most Shorted" are up 19.8% – the most ever)

  

  • HYG (high yield bond ETF) up 2.3% – best week in 5 months (best 3 weeks since Dec 2011)
  • 2Y, 5Y, 10Y, 30Y biggest weekly surge in yields in 4 months
  • 7Y biggest weekly surge in yields in 9 months
  • Aussie Dollar soared 4.25%  – the biggest week since Dec 2011
  • Oil up 9.6% this week – 2nd biggest week since August
  • Oil up 21.2% in 2 weeks – biggest 2 weeks since Jan 2009
  • Copper up 7.2% – biggest week since Dec 2011
  • Gold up 3.5% to 13 month highs
  • Silver up 5.8% – biggest week since May 2015

   

  Ahead of China's National People's Congress, Chinese stocks were 'lifted', but as is clear, the intervention was aimed at mega caps and not the tech-heavy small caps of ChiNext and Shenzhen…

  

   

  Which lifted stocks into the payrolls print…and then the chaos began

  

   

  After the initial weakness, stock were panic-bought only to snap at 2pmET on possible Fed limits on banks…

  

   

  Dow tops 17000 at the close, but S&P lost 2000 right at the bell… closing at 1999.99!!

  

   

  All about Super-Duper Tuesday…

  

   

  Still a crazy week… with Trannies and Small Caps dramatically outperforming…

  

   

  As Most Shorted soared again…

  

   

  Energy & Financials outperformed… but note that when The Fed headlines hit, things stalled…

  

   

  The reaction to payrolls was all over the place…

  

   

  For the first time in 2 months, XIV (inverse VIX ETF) is trading below VXX (VIX ETF)…

  

   

  Treasury yields spiked after the "better-than-expected" jobs data with the belly underperforming in the week (and 2s adn 30s outperforming – though still out 10bps)…

  

   

  5Y yields touched the 50DMA back within their 4 year range…

  

   

  The USD Index dropped (led by strength in EUR and cable, but Aussie Dollar was the big mover)

  

   

  In fact Aussie Dollar was the biggest gainer of all major FX this week – up a shocking 4.25% – the most since Dec 2011, to 8 month highs…

  

   

  Commodities were all on fire this week…But crude just melted up…

  

   

  Gold closed at its highest in 13 months…

  

   

  Finally, we note several risk assets at or near their 200 Day Moving Average: Credit Suisse comments on the slightly uncanny fact that so many risk assets now at their 200DMA (just highlights further the high level of correlation between asset classes).  Brazil is now +26% from its lows and sitting right on its 200d. Glencore +104% from its lows, and on its 200d. Kumba Iron Ore +225% from its lows and on its 200d. Turkish equities +14% from their lows and on the 200d. Copper is only 2% below its 230 level. S&P500 only 1% below its 200d, so perhaps more interesting are two assets that stick out as still having significant upside: OIL 200d is at $43 and finally the ESTOXX AT 3300

  

   

  Charts: Bloomberg

  

  

  

  

• Religion In America: One Nation Under Multiple Gods

  While Christianity remains the largest religion in all 50 states, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism are on the rise across the nation.

   

  

  Chart: BofA

  As the chart shows, Islam is the second largest religion in 20 states (mostly in the Midwest and South), Judaism in 14 states (mostly in the Northeast), and Buddhism in 13 states (mostly in the West).

  

  

  

  

  

• Expect Large Builds in Oil Inventories For Next 7 Weeks (Video)

  By EconMatters

  

  Starting this time last year we added over 40 Million Barrels to US Oil Stockpiles. The question is can storage facilities handle another 40 Million Build in Oil Stocks over the next 7 weeks?

   

  

  © EconMatters All Rights Reserved | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Email Digest | Kindle   

  

  

  

  

• "It's A Depression" – The Disturbing Email A Houston CEO Sent His Soon To Be Laid Off Employees

  This is the email that David Little, Chairman and CEO of Houston-based DXP Enterprises sent to his employees to explain why, “due to bank obligations and to continue a positive cash flow profile” the company has to freeze 401(k), why it is cutting pay in some cases as much as 60% and  why many employees are about to lose their jobs in the middle of what is an “oil and gas depression.” It is a disturbing read.

  Dear DXPeople,

   

  As you well know, these are very challenging times for everyone in the oil & gas industry and other industrial markets. We are working hard to navigate both the challenges in oil & gas and an industrial recession plus what appears to be continuing softening. Normally, when upstream oil and gas is down the rest of the industrial market is booming, not this time!

  This past Friday, we announced our fourth quarter and year-end results. Our revenues were down 17% from a year ago and 27% from the fourth quarter of 2015 versus the fourth quarter of 2014. Fiscal year 2016 has started off even weaker than we anticipated with January sales down an additional 12% from December. Oil and gas related companies across the country have reported sales declines as high as 50% – 60%. All of this in the midst of declining industrial confidence and performance. Furthermore, the forecast by experts suggests the oil & gas economy will get worse before it gets better. We are currently 20 months into this oil & gas down cycle which is also unusually long for a correction.

   

  It goes without saying but over the past twelve months, we have all made efforts to contain costs and improve operations where possible. All, while focusing on growth. For this, we thank all of you for the sacrifices, discipline and effort you are making each and every day. But I am sorry to say that because of bank obligations and to continue our positive cash flow profile, we have to do more. The leadership team and I have been reviewing line-by-line every location, budget and expense, on how we can reduce costs while considering every decision through the prism of our values, culture and priorities. While we fulfilled a $2.9 million company match to our U.S. 401 (K) savings plan for 2015, we have determined it should be frozen immediately for the remainder of 2016. The Board of Directors, senior management and leaders in management positions will participate in a 10% reduction in base pay effective March 14th. Additionally, DXP as a whole company will require that we right size the company for our expected sales volume. This is in an effort to reduce labor costs while preserving as many DXPeople as possible in this uncertain economic environment.

   

  We have all taken pay reductions over the last year with some of us taking reductions as high as 50% – 60% (via commission or bonus declines) including senior management. It is unfortunate, but the prolonged oil and gas depression and industrial recession has left us with no other choice but to make these difficult and unwanted moves and decisions.

   

  The fastest and biggest cure to the health of DXP is more sales. Your expectations and mine are that the sales management, sales professionals and everyone else that touches our customers is working smart and diligently as we are all counting on you! DXP has given you some great weapons to be successful with and we are supporting and counting on your efforts to win each order. I am not going to list all the tools you have to win with, you should know what they are and understand how to use them already, but to use the “Hunter” and “Farmer” label you have to do both. “Farm” existing accounts to capture more of each customer wallet/spend and “Hunt” for new customers. We have the customer value propositions to sell and you have the selling skills to succeed.

   

  Over the last several months, we have seen countless companies announce layoffs and in isolated incidents even bankruptcies. I point this out to try and put in context that the oil and gas depression is affecting more than DXP and is further reaching than many would have initially thought when this started over 2 years ago. The decisions we make are about preserving the future of DXP. DXP is a great company that is accustom to winning and we will win again. I can promise you that the leadership team will do all that we can to put us in a position to emerge stronger on the other side while staying true to our values and culture. Thank you for your understanding.

   

  Respectfully,

   

  David Little
  Chairman & CEO
  DXP Enterprises, Inc

  And here is some more context, courtesy of the WSJ

  

  

  

  

  

  

• An Establishment In Panic

  Submitted by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

  Donald Trump “appeals to racism.”

   

  “[F]rom the beginning … his campaign has profited from voter prejudice and hatred” and represents an “authoritarian assault upon democracy.”

   

  If Speaker Paul Ryan wishes to be “on the right side of history … he must condemn Mr. Trump clearly and comprehensively. The same goes for every other Republican leader.”

   

  “Maybe that would split the (Republican) party,” but, “No job is worth the moral stain that would come from embracing (Trump). No party is worth saving at the expense of the country.”

   

  If Republican leaders wish to be regarded as moral, every one of them must renounce Trump, even if it means destroying their party.

  Who has laid down this moral mandate? The Holy Father in Rome?

  No. The voice posturing as the conscience of America is the Washington Post, which champions abortion on demand and has not, in the memory of this writer, endorsed any Republican for president – though it did endorse Marion Barry three times for mayor of D.C.

  Anticipating the Post’s orders, Sen. Marco Rubio has been painting Trump as a “scam artist” and “con artist,” with an “orange” complexion, a “spray tan” and “tiny hands,” who is “unfit to lead the party of Lincoln and Reagan.”

  The establishment is loving Rubio, and the networks are giving him more airtime. And Rubio is reciprocating, promising that, even if defeated in his home state of Florida on March 15, he will drive his pickup across the country warning against the menace of Trump.

  Rubio, however, seems not to have detected the moral threat of Trump, until polls showed Rubio being wiped out on Super Tuesday and in real danger of losing Florida.

  Mitt Romney has also suddenly discovered what a fraud and phony is the businessman-builder whose endorsement he so avidly sought and so oleaginously accepted in Las Vegas in 2012.

  Before other Republicans submit to the ultimatum of the Post, and of the columnists and commentators pushing a “Never Trump” strategy at the Cleveland convention, they should ask themselves: For whom is it that they will be bringing about party suicide?

  That the Beltway elites, whose voice is the Post, hate and fear Trump is not only undeniable, it is understandable.

  The Post beat the drums for the endless Mideast wars that bled and near bankrupted the country. Trump will not start another.

  The Post welcomes open borders that bring in millions to continue the endless expansion of the welfare state and to change the character of the country we grew up in. Trump will build the wall and repatriate those here illegally.

  Trump threatens the trade treaties that enable amoral transnational corporations to ship factories and jobs overseas to produce cheaply abroad and be rid of American employees who are ever demanding better wages and working conditions.

  What does the Post care about trade deals that deindustrialize America when the advertising dollars of the big conglomerates are what make Big Media fat and happy?

  The political establishment in Washington depends on Wall Street and K Street for PAC money and campaign contributions. Wall Street and K Street depend on the political establishment to protect their right to abandon America for the greener pastures abroad.

  Before March 15, when Florida and Ohio vote and the fates of Rubio and Gov. John Kasich are decided, nothing is likely to stop the ferocious infighting of the primaries.

  But after March 15, the smoke will have cleared.

  If Trump has fallen short of a glide path to the nomination, the war goes on. But if Trump seems to be the near-certain nominee, it will be a time for acceptance, a time for a cease-fire in this bloodiest of civil wars in the GOP.

  Otherwise, the party will kick away any chance of keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House, and perhaps kick away its future as well.

  While the depth and rancor of the divisions in the party are apparent, so also is the opportunity. For the turnout in the Republican primaries and caucuses has not only exceeded expectations, it has astonished and awed political observers.

  A new “New Majority” has been marching to the polls and voting Republican, a majority unlike any seen since the 49-state landslides of the Nixon and Reagan eras.

  If this energy can be maintained, if those throngs of Republican voters can be united in the fall, then the party can hold Congress, capture the While House and reconstitute the Supreme Court.

  Come the ides of March, the GOP is going to be in need of its uniters and its statesmen. But today, all Republicans should ask themselves:

  Are these folks coming out in droves to vote Republican really the bigoted, hateful and authoritarian people of the Post’s depiction?

   

  Or is this not the same old Post that has poured bile on conservatives for generations now in a panic that America’s destiny may be torn away from it and restored to its rightful owners?

  

  

  

  

  

• The Last Time The Market Was So Overbought, This Happened

  The last 3 weeks have been a near unprecedented rip higher in stocks… as markets anticipated G-20 cooperative actions (and then BoJ and ECB follow-through) creating a vicious short-squeeze bounce..

  

   

  This has sent The McClellan Oscillator to its most overbought since January 2009…

  

   

  What happened then?

  The Group of 20 leaders from major developed and emerging economies had pledged on their meeting on Saturday short-term measures such as fiscal stimulus in order to try to keep the global economy from falling into a deep slump and promised to look at ways to tighten regulations to prevent future crisis.

  Which sent stocks soaring in another major short-squeeze hope bounce…

  

   

  That did not end well!

  

  

  

  

• Gallup: "The Amount Of Debt Americans Carry Is Staggering And Grows Every Day"

  And the revelations just keep on coming.

  One day after the St. Louis Fed spent thousands in taxpayer funds to “discover” that, gasp, “consumers across the country are borrowing more to buy cars and go to school“, yes really…

  Consumers across the country are borrowing more to buy cars and go to school https://t.co/mkKAoVya2o pic.twitter.com/DxMiHo7kki

  — St. Louis Fed (@stlouisfed) March 3, 2016

  … today it’s Gallup’s turn to point out what has been abundantly clear to all non-economist types, and is the reason why the so-called recovery remains nothing but a myth, namely that “Americans Are Buried Under a Mountain of Debt.”

  More from John Gleming:

  • Americans who don’t have enough to live comfortably carry higher credit card balances
  • Those who enjoy spending money more than saving money carry more credit card debt
  • Student loan debt associated with highest level of indebtedness

  The amount of debt Americans carry is staggering and grows every day.

  A prior article explored the kinds and amounts of consumer debt that Americans carry, other than mortgages. Gallup found that only a subset of Americans carries the bulk of consumer debt. This article examines how consumer debt affects different groups of Americans, especially millennials.

  Those Without Enough to Live Comfortably Are Using Credit Cards to Supplement Their Resources

  Two-thirds of Americans say they have enough money to live comfortably, with more traditionalists (76%) and baby boomers (67%) saying they do than millennials (62%) and Gen Xers (61%).

  

  Those who say they don’t have enough money to live comfortably appear to be using their credit cards to supplement their available resources with high-interest credit. It seems that though their total consumer debt balances are 17% lower than those of Americans who say that they do have enough money to live comfortably, across all generations except traditionalists, Americans who say that they don’t have enough money to live comfortably carry 36% larger credit card balances than those who say that they do have enough money.

  The difference is particularly acute among millennials, where those who say that they don’t have enough money to live comfortably carry three times more credit card debt than those who say they do have enough money. Millennials who say they don’t have enough money to live comfortably also carry more auto loan debt and personal loan debt than millennials who say they do have enough money. Millennials are the only generation where those who say that they don’t have enough money to live comfortably carry 8% more total consumer debt than those who say they do have enough money.

  Do Americans Enjoy Saving Money or Spending Money More?

  Gallup has been tracking whether Americans enjoy saving money or spending money more since 2001. In 2001, 48% of Americans enjoyed spending money more than saving it. The preference for spending money remained at 48% in 2005 and then began a decline, which accelerated during the Great Recession.

  At the height of the Great Recession in 2009, just 39% of Americans enjoyed spending money more than saving it. The low point for a preference to spend came in 2014, when just 35% said they enjoyed spending money more than saving it. In 2015, the spending preference crept back up to 37%. In the current research, 39% of Americans said they enjoy spending money more than saving it, while the remaining 61% enjoy saving money more. Neither of these percentages differs appreciably by generation.

  

  Those who say they enjoy spending money more tend to earn more but also carry more debt.

  Among the generations, those who enjoy spending money more includes a higher proportion of those making $48,000 per year or more than does the group of those who prefer saving money, who include a larger share of those making less than $48,000. The average annual income for spenders is just over $78,500, 9% higher than it is for savers at just over $72,000.

  The exception is millennials, where the pattern is reversed. Among millennials, savers have a higher proportion of those making $48,000 per year or more than spenders, who have a larger share of those making less than $48,000. Even with this annual income pattern, however, the average annual income of millennial savers is 5% lower than that of millennial spenders.

  

  In general, those who enjoy spending money more carry more credit card debt (81% more), more student loan debt (4% more), more auto loan debt (6% more) and more personal loan debt (37% more) than those who prefer saving it.

  Generationally, the only exceptions to this pattern are among Gen Xers and baby boomers. Gen Xers who enjoy spending money more carry less student loan (24% less) and less auto loan debt (11% less) but double the credit card debt (102% more) and significantly more personal loan debt (75% more) than savers. And baby boomers who enjoy spending money more carry significantly less personal debt (23% less) than those who prefer saving it.

  Among millennials, those who enjoy spending money more carry more credit card debt (58% more), more student loan debt (23% more), more auto loan debt (26% more) and more personal loan debt (18% more) than millennials who prefer saving.

  When Gallup compares the differences in income and total consumer debt between those who enjoy spending money more and those who prefer saving it, Gen Xers, baby boomers and traditionalists who enjoy spending money more carry their income difference in additional consumer debt. In other words, the ratio of the difference in total consumer debt divided by the difference in annual income between these two groups is approximately 1.1-to-1 for members of these generations who enjoy spending money more.

  For millennial spenders, however, the ratio is 2.5-to-1. In other words, millennial spenders carry 2.5 times more consumer debt than the difference in their annual income compared with savers.

  

  Student Loan Debt Associated With Highest Level of Indebtedness

  Almost four in 10 Americans enjoy spending money more than saving it, and they carry a larger debt load across the board though their annual income is higher than those who enjoy saving more. And even among individuals who say that they do not have enough money to live comfortably, almost one-third (32%) still enjoy spending money more than saving it, even if it means piling on more debt, especially credit card debt. This group has among the highest levels of credit card debt — 60% higher than everyone else.

  Student loan debt — though not extremely widespread — is associated with the highest levels of indebtedness for all generations, but especially for millennials. And as the data illustrate, those with student loan debt are also more likely to take out a car loan, adding to their already-large debt burden.

  For those with student loans, that debt accounts for an average of 36% of the person’s annual income, the largest percentage among all types of consumer debt. On average, total consumer debt accounts for 37% of annual income — but it accounts for 57% of annual income among those with student loans. This is a staggering percentage when considered against all other personal financial demands, such as mortgage or rent, food, telecommunications (including Internet and cable), insurance, savings and investments, and fuel and auto maintenance, among other expenses. Precious little is left over for discretionary spending, and until only recently, discretionary spending in America had been shrinking.

  Except for millennials, those who enjoy spending money more than saving match the difference in their annual income (over savers) with the additional consumer debt they carry (over savers). Millennial spenders, though, carry 2.5 times more debt than their income difference over savers.

  These data suggest that a significant portion of every generation is buried under a mountain of several different kinds of consumer debt. Though sizable slices of each generation carry no debt, the sheer magnitude of how much Americans with debt do owe is a cause for concern.

  

  

  

  

  

• Weekend Reading: Is The Bear Market Over Already?

  Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

  “The Bear Market Is Dead, Long Live The Bull.” 

  You could almost hear the chants from the always bullish biased media this week as the markets ripped higher on “first day of the month” portfolio rebalancing and short-covering by fund managers.

  The rally, as discussed this past weekend, was not unexpected:

  “The good news is that the market was able to break above 1940, and the 50-dma, which now clears the way for a push to the 1970-1990 where the next levels of resistance will be found.

   

  The bad news is that the markets are once again extremely overbought and still confined inside of an overall downtrend.”

  (Chart updated through Thursday close)

  

  Is this rally, which looks a whole lot like other rallies we have seen repeatedly in recent months, a true return to a bull market? Or is this another trap being set by the bears?

  While it is too early to know for sure, with risks still mounted to the downside a little extra caution might not be a bad idea.

  This week’s reading list takes a look at various views on the market, economy and what to expect next. What is interesting is that being overly bullish at the moment carries more portfolio risk (loss of capital if you wrong) than being bearish (missing out on early gains).

  ---

  1) This Is A Suckers Rally by Michael Kahn via Barron’s

  “Chip Anderson, president of StockCharts.com, wrote in a recent newsletter to users that current “emotional short-term reactions are really just part of a larger pattern.” According to his analysis, “The market has topped and is generally moving lower based on a rounding top pattern and the downward movement of the 40-week (200-day) moving average.“

  

  But Also Read: Bears Have Their Backs Against The Wall by Avi Gilburt via MarketWatch

  And Read: Top 10 Reasons Investors Should Sell Now by Doug Kass via Real Clear Markets

  2)  March Is Best Chance For Market Rally by Sue Chang via MarketWatch

  “March may be the best chance yet for an S&P 500 rally if you ask Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist at Raymond James. History and an energy shift at the market’s gut level could be the triggers.

   

  Saut believes the stock market bottomed in February. ‘The first week of March should see the market’s ‘internal energy’ rebuilt for another try on the upside,’ he said in a report.”

  But Also Read: March Madness by Lance Roberts via RIA

  

  3) Weak Economic Data Aligns With Market by Chris Ciovacco via Ciovacco Capital

  “The shorter-term data tracked by our market model has seen noticeable improvement over the past two weeks. The longer-term picture, looking out weeks and months, continues to be concerning. Therefore, until more meaningful improvement starts to surface, our allocations will continue to have a defensive slant.”

  Also Read: Two Reasons Stocks Are Headed Higher by Anthony Mirhaydari via Fiscal Times

  But Don’t Miss: 2008 Revisited by Nouriel Roubini via Project Syndicate

  4) Three Weeks Later, Gundlach Cashes Out Of Rally by Tyler Durden via Zero Hedge

  “In an interview with Reuters Jennifer Ablan after DoubleLine Capital’s February flow figures were released (it was a $2.2 billion inflow) , Gundlach said the firm is now considering closing out some of its long positions in the stocks that they purchased three weeks ago.

   

  Is the bond trader now just a closet equities daytrader? We wond’t know, but since the S&P 500 has jumped 8% in that period, why not takes some profits.

   

  “That’s what we’re talking about,” Gundlach said about booking some gains after their short-term rally.

   

  Gundlach still maintains that the U.S. stock market is in a bear market but had made those equity purchases because the conditions in the second week of February with “wickedly negative equity sentiment were such that risk/reward favored a potential tradable rally and also made such a low allocation less advisable.”

   

  The time to buy the dip, however, has passed: “I am bearish. There are just wiggles and jiggles in the markets.“

  Also Read: The Best Offense Is A Good Defense by Adam Koos via MarketWatch

  ---

  CHART OF THE DAY: McCellan Oscillator Over 90 by Northman Trader

  

  ---

  5) Sunshine, Lollipops And… by Bill Gross via Janus Capital

  “If negative interest rates fail to generate acceptable nominal growth, then the Milton Friedman/Ben Bernanke concept of helicopter money may be employed. How that could equitably be distributed nationally or worldwide I have no idea, but the opinion columns are mentioning it more and more often, and on Twitter, the “Likes” are increasing in numbers. Can any/all of these policy alternatives save the “system”? We shall find out, but current evidence of the past 7 years’ experience would support only a D+ report card grade. Barely passing. As an investor though – and as a citizen in this election year – you should be aware that our finance based economic system which like the Sun has provided life and productive growth for a long, long time – is running out of fuel and that its remaining time span is something less than 5 billion years.

   

  Investment implications? Do not reach for the tantalizing apple of high yield or the low price/ book ratio of bank stocks. Those prices are where they are because of low/negative interest rates. And too, do not reach for the seemingly momentum driven higher prices of Bunds and Treasuries that negative yields have produced. A 30 year Treasury at 2.5% can wipe out your annual income in one day with a 10 basis point increase. And no, you can’t go to a bank and demand your cash for a fear of being labeled a terrorist. Seems like you’re cornered, doesn’t it?“

  Also Read: This Is Nuts, When’s The Crash by David Keohane via FT Alphaville

  ---

  OTHER GOOD READS

  • Do You Have Enough To Retire by Paul Merriman via Retirement Mentors
  • Dividends Say Economic Contraction Deepens by IronMan via Political Calculations
  • Don’t Ignore The “Bezzle” by Satyajit Das via FT
  • Who’s Afraid Of Negative Rates? by Danid Ranson via Real Clear Markets
  • Stopping America’s Debt Explosion by Martin Feldstein via Project Syndicate
  • Here’s The Problem With Index ETF’s by Michael Farr via CNBC
  • Things To Avoid When Investing via ValueWalk
  • Fear & Loathing On The Market Trail by Joe Calhoun via Alhambra Partners
  • The Courage To Fail by Jesse Felder via The Felder Report
  • Large Cap Stocks At Pivotal Level via Dana Lyons via Tumblr
  • A World Deep In Debt by David Merkel via Aleph Blog
  • Red Swans & Other Reasons To Be Afraid by David Stockman via ContraCorner

  ---

  “Bull markets die with a whimper, not a bang.” – Anonymous

  

  

  

  

  

• HY Credit Spreads Have Never Been This High Outside Of A Recession

  Today marked the 13th consecutive day of positive HY fund flows (bringing total to $8.6bn)…

  

   

  But as Credit Suisse explains, the nature of this demand is 'different'…

  Investors likely using the ETFs as a placeholder for cash in the absence of new supply, with HY issuance down ~74% year on year.

   

  With ballooning ETF inflows the past few weeks, the liquid sector has become increasingly vulnerable to ETF cash rotating out upon the availability of new supply.

   

  This is particularly a concern now as the visible issuance calendar for the next few months has grown sizeably (~$35bn)

  So put another way – given that the calendar is set to pickup, this huge inflow of 'placeholder' cash will flow out of high yield ETFs (pushing prices lower) and into the new issuance.

  But, as Edward Altman warns Goldman Sachs, however, that we are already at the end of the benign cycle or nearing it.

  We are in the bottom of the 8th or 9th inning, and unless the Fed steps in to add liquidity to the market, which seems unlikely, I don’t expect extra innings.

   

  I define a benign cycle as having four ingredients:

  1. default rates below their historical average,
  2. relatively high recovery rates in the event of defaults, making the loss given default low,
  3. low yields, giving borrowers incentives to utilize debt financing, and
  4. ample liquidity. Liquidity is difficult to measure, but in benign cycles, firms of almost any credit quality are able to borrow easily.

  Looking at those four factors, three are pointing toward the end of the benign cycle. Recovery rates are below their historical average, mainly driven by the oil and gas sector. Spreads are above their historical average—currently around 750bps in high yield vs. a historical median of about 520bps—meaning that investors are no longer providing capital at cheap rates; and liquidity is much more restricted than even a few months ago, with the marginal company having all sorts of problems raising capital at low interest rates. The only indicator that isn’t implying a complete end of the cycle is the default rate on high-yield bonds or leveraged loans, which remains below the historical average. However, it is climbing and—according to my forecast and most economists and market observers—likely to rise above the historical average this year for the first time since 2010.

   

  Therefore, by just about any metric, the benign cycle seems to be over, so we are entering more of a stressed cycle. We are not yet at point of crisis or distress, though, and it remains to be seen whether we will get there.

  And the bubble has plenty of room to burst…

  To some extent, this bubble reached a high point in the third quarter of 2015. Starting in the fourth quarter, new issuance dropped and very risky companies, B- and CCC companies with very low Z-scores and very high yield spreads, were no longer able to raise money at almost any rate. As a result, new issues since then have not been as poor in credit quality. But the bubble is still sitting there—even if it isn’t getting bigger—and is pretty inflated, though not necessarily ready to burst unless we have a recession. People say that as long as the economy remains relatively robust, we don’t have to worry about a bubble. I am not quite as confident. But if we do have a recession in the US or a very major downturn in China in the next 12-18 months, there is no question that the bubble will burst, resulting in a mini or not-so-mini credit crisis.

  And the corporate bond market is not small…

  

  Recent improvement notwithstanding, IG and HY net leverage ratios remain above the medians of the last three decades… and high yield bond spreads have not traded at these levels outside of a US recession…
   

  

   

  And even with recent strength, levels remain extreme…

  

  

  

  

  

  

• Stocks Tumble After Fed Plans Too-Big-To-Fail Bank Counterparty Risk Cap

  US financials are tumbling after The Fed proposed a rule that would limit banks with $500 bln or more of assets from having net credit exposure to a “major counterparty” in excess of 15% of the lender’s tier 1 capital. Bloomberg reports that The Fed's governors plan to vote today on the proposal. The implications of this are significant in that it will force some banks to unwind exposures and delever against one another (most notably with potential affect the repo market which governs much of the liquidity transmission mechanisms). Guggenheim's Jaret Seiberg warns the proposal is likely to be "stringent," though less onerous than the Dec 2011 proposal.

  • *FED ISSUES PROPOSAL ON BANK INTERCONNECTEDNESS IN STATEMENT
  • *FED TO PROPOSE BIG BANKS CAP CREDIT RISK TO EACHOTHER AT 15%
  • *BANKS WITH $500 BLN OF ASSETS WOULD FACE 15% LIMIT UNDER RULE

  JPMorgan is tumbling…

  

   

  As Bloomberg reports,

  Wall Street giants such as JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc. would face new limits on credit exposure to any other large financial company under a Federal Reserve proposal set for a vote Friday.

   

  The rules, which would limit such exposures to 15 percent of a lender’s Tier 1 capital, are meant to ensure megabanks won’t take others with them if they fail. The Fed is making a second effort after abandoning a 2011 proposal that called for a cap at 10 percent. Even so, the central bank estimates the largest institutions would have to dial back their exposures by almost $100 billion to get below the 15 percent mark.

   

  “The credit limit sets a bright line on total credit exposures between one large bank holding company and another large bank or major counterparty,” Fed Chair Janet Yellen said in a statement. The proposal targets the problem of big-bank connectedness that magnified the 2008 financial crisis, she said.

   

  The earlier proposal was shelved after the Fed received strong criticism from the banking industry, and the new version more closely matches an international agreement on a 15 percent cap for the biggest institutions. The strictest limits affect only the U.S. banks deemed systemically important and foreign banks with more than $500 billion in the U.S. Two lower tiers of banks would face lesser limits, with lenders between $50 billion and $250 billion in assets facing the 25 percent cap outlined in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.

   

  …

   

  “While regulatory reform and better risk management practices have reduced interconnections among the largest financial firms by roughly half from pre-crisis days, it is important to put safeguards in place to help prevent a return to those prior practices,” said Daniel Tarullo, the Fed governor in charge of regulation.

   

  JPMorgan, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley argued that the earlier proposal overstated risk and would hold back the economy. Goldman Sachs more specifically warned that it could destroy 300,000 jobs. The Bank of Japan said a similar rule affecting foreign firms could hurt liquidity of high-quality sovereign debt.

  The Federal proposal on single-counter-party credit limits for SIFI banks, due later, likely to be “stringent,” though may be less onerous than Dec. 2011 proposal, Guggenheim’s Jaret Seiberg writes in note.

  The Fed is holding an open board meeting to discuss the proposal:

  

  

  

  

  

• The Only Chart That Matters For The Fed In March

  "Uncertainty" exploded in January for The Fed, and after today's "great" (surging job gains) and "terrible" (plunging wages) jobs data (as well as surging current inflation and plunging inflation expectations), we can only imagine Yellen will be even more confused at March's meeting.

   

  

  Source: @Not_Jim_Cramer

  Time for a stock market selloff to force The Fed to back off its tightening bias once again…

  

   

  With Dec rate hike odds now above 70%…

  

  

  

  

  

  

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