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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: carranza2 who wrote (149985)8/12/2019 10:21:08 AM
From: TobagoJack  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 217541
 
Old paradigm is pick a business sort to be chief executive of hk. Did not work out well but no particular disaster, as business sort is generally more astute.

Then tried a civil servant sort - turning out to be big mistake, for civil servants are not qualified to lead.

Maybe try a financial sort, or historian or engineer.

Let’s see.



To: carranza2 who wrote (149985)8/12/2019 10:22:08 AM
From: marcher2 Recommendations

Recommended By
abuelita
ggersh

  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 217541
 
--Freedom is a drug, the strongest one. Once it becomes a habit, it cannot be taken away, except at great cost.--

cost analysis--what's left:

"...Both the working class and the liberals will be sold out. Our rights and opinions do not matter. We have
surrendered to our own form of wehrwirtschaft. We do not count within the political process. This truth,
emotionally difficult to accept, violates our conception of ourselves as a free, democratic people.

... Magical thinking has gripped societies in the past. Those civilizations believed that fate, history, superior
virtues or a divine force guaranteed their eternal triumph. As they collapsed, they constructed repressive
dystopias. They imposed censorship and forced the unreal to be accepted as real. Those who did not
conform were disappeared linguistically and then literally.

The vast disconnect between the official narrative of reality and reality itself creates an Alice-in-Wonderland
experience. Propaganda is so pervasive, and truth is so rarely heard, that people do not trust their own
senses.

... The powerful web of interlocking corporate entities is beyond our control... Our elderly and poor are
abandoned and impoverished. Young men and women are crippled by unemployment or
underemployment and debt peonage. Our for-profit health care drives the sick into bankruptcy..."

truthdig.com



To: carranza2 who wrote (149985)8/13/2019 9:04:01 PM
From: TobagoJack  Respond to of 217541
 
am officially back at work life, and shall reinvent self once again now that my earlier work has been handed off, and just in time, so as to focus on the macro and maybe machinate some cloud-atm protocol whilst pondering what the coconut terms, the gig-economy.




To: carranza2 who wrote (149985)8/14/2019 8:48:29 AM
From: TobagoJack  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 217541
 
Good news, sort of, for consolation prize ...

I could idiotically intone that the people democratically chose to have their paper savings put to waste, be forced to speculate w/ hard earned dollars per freedom of choice. I do not do so because I know the people did not elect such w/ full knowledge of what they are doing or aware of what would be done to them, and how harshly

Am thinking, given that the big 3 of NIRP bonds issuers are Japan, France and Germany, then should the trade war push team China to rare-earth option, that which should crater Japan and Germany, then ... just a thought that interest rate can rise preciously unless global printathon goes to new level higher, much higher, as printing loses efficacy, and

gold be either unobtainium, or severely suppressed.

marketwatch.com

Ex-Fed boss Greenspan says ‘there is no barrier’ to Treasury yields falling below zero

Mark DeCambre

Getty
Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan.‘There is no barrier for U.S. Treasury yields going below zero. Zero has no meaning, beside being a certain level.’Alan GreenspanThere is some $15 trillion in government debt that now yields less than zero, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan believes there’s no reason why U.S. government bond yields couldn’t join much of the developed world in the subzero world.

Greenspan, during a phone interview with Bloomberg News on Tuesday, said “zero” has no real meaning for the U.S. bond market and that a slide below that psychological level, already traversed by many others countries, wouldn’t be inconceivable for U.S. paper.

The 93-year-old economist’s comments come as more Wall Street participants contemplate the very real possibility of negative Treasury rates.

In a blog post dated Aug. 6, Joachim Fels, a global economic adviser for Pimco, said escalating trade tensions between the U.S. and China could be a spark for U.S. Treasurys slipping to rates that are less than zero.

Current estimates hold that some $15 trillion in debt bears a negative yield, which means that investors get back less than their original investments for the privilege and perceived safety of owning government-backed debt.

The negative-yield dynamic in the market has proliferated after more than a decade of monetary-policy unorthodoxy intended to juice stubbornly low inflation and anemic growth in Europe and parts of Asia.

Deutsche Bank Securities’ Chief Economist Torsten Sløk on Tuesday noted that some 42% of negative-yielding debt is from Japan, known as JGBs TMBMKJP-10Y, +6.12% :


All maturities of German government debt are yielding negative, headlined by near-record lows for 10-year German benchmark bonds TMBMKDE-10Y, -5.90% , known as bunds, which yield minus 0.605% (see chart attached):


Greenspan said he agreed with one theory espoused by Fels, which says that investors are more willing to hold on to negative-yielding debt because they have much longer time horizons.

“Why people continue to buy long-term Treasuries at such low yields may be also due to forces having altered people’s time preferences,” Greenspan told Bloomberg. “But there is hundreds of years of history showing the long-term stability in time preference, so these changes won’t be forever.”

As of late Tuesday, 10-year U.S. benchmark debt TMUBMUSD10Y, -5.60% was yielding 1.678%, not far from its lowest levels since 2016, with Wall Street anticipating nearly a 100% chance of a 25-basis-point cut in September, following a rate reduction of a similar amount on July 31 by the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee, based on federal-funds futures, according to CME Group data.

Stocks, meanwhile, have been rallying on the prospect of cheap debt that is being proffered by global central banks, though the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.44% , the S&P 500 SPX, +1.48% and Nasdaq Composite indexes COMP, +1.95% have seen volatile trade on the back of fears about international trade disputes between Beijing and Washington and the impact of that tiff on the global economy.



To: carranza2 who wrote (149985)8/15/2019 6:36:30 PM
From: TobagoJack  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 217541
 
Positively bullish trending towards negative, and interesting for future historians...

Am wondering, why 1600? What makes the number so special? It is not as if gold is more useful today than yesterday, and tomorrow than today.

kitco.com

Gold At $1,600 Likely As ECB Primes Monetary Policy Bazooka – Analysts



( Kitco News) - It is now a fight to the bottom in interest rates and the European Central Bank is packing a monetary policy bazooka that could push gold prices above $1,600 an ounce, according to analysts.

Gold prices are back at session highs and are within striking distance of the week’s earlier six-year high following speculation that the ECB is looking at releasing a significant easing package at next month’s monetary policy meeting.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Finnish central bank governor Olli Rehn raised the prospect of new easing measures.

“It’s important that we come up with a significant and impactful policy package in September,” said Rehn from his office in Helsinki, Finland. “When you’re working with financial markets, it’s often better to overshoot than undershoot, and better to have a very strong package of policy measures than to tinker.”

The comments have renewed bullish momentum in gold as investors see the potential for lower interest rates around the world. December gold futures last traded at $1,532 an ounce, up 0.27% on the day.



“Everyone is now cutting interest rates aggressively and in a race to the bottom gold wins,” said Ira Epstein, director of the Ira Epstein Division of Linn & Associates, Inc.

Epstein added that investor should be looking to buy gold on dips because it appears that the precious metal’s bull market is not going to end anytime soon.

“The environment that drove gold prices to these levels is still getting worse,” he said.

Charlie Nedoss, senior market strategist with LaSalle Futures Group, said that he also sees gold prices going higher as investors continue to jump into safe-haven assets.

Both Epstein and Nedoss brushed off currency concerns hurting gold prices. Potentially, aggressive ECB easing would drag down the euro, boosting the U.S. dollar and in turn weigh on gold prices.

“I don’t think investors are paying much attention to interest rate differentials right now. Investors are reacting to all the fear that growing in the marketplace,” said Nedoss. “Bottom line is that interest rates are falling and that will push gold prices higher.”

Phillip Streible, senior market analyst at RJO Futures, said that in this environment he sees gold prices going to $1,600 an ounce.



To: carranza2 who wrote (149985)8/16/2019 7:37:55 AM
From: Pogeu Mahone  Respond to of 217541
 
Madoff whistleblower claims General Electric is committing fraud ‘bigger than Enron and Worldcom combined’



ETHAN WOLFF-MANN
Aug 15th 2019 9:44AM

The accountant who blew the whistle on Bernie Madoff’s scheme is blowing the whistle again with a new report attacking GE’s ( GE) accounting practices.

In a 175-page report posted online, forensic accountant Harry Markopolos and his fraud team allege that GE is committing $38 billion in accounting fraud.

“[I]t’s the biggest, bigger than Enron and WorldCom combined,” he wrote. “In fact, GE’s $38 Billion in accounting fraud amounts to over 40% of GE’s market capitalization, making it far more serious than either the Enron or WorldCom accounting frauds.”

Markopolos is calling GE “GEnron,” because the company appears to be “using many of the same accounting tricks that Enron did.”

At the center of his investigation are eight long-term care insurance deals that GE executed. The report alleges that the GE has been hiding “massive loss ratios” and “exponentially increasing dollar losses.”

Markopolos warns that GE losses are about to spike. The report says that GE needs $18.5 billion in cash immediately to deal with a wave of impending claims in the insurance unit. Further, it will need another $10.5 billion to address a non-cash charge that will come due by 2021.

However, Markopolos doubts GE will be able to fulfill that cash need in a timely manner.



“These impending losses will destroy GE’s balance sheet, debt ratios and likely also violate debt covenants,” Markopolos wrote. “After we accounted for the $38 Billion in accounting fraud GE’s debt to equity ratio goes from the 3:1 ratio it reported at the end of the 2nd quarter 2019 to a woefully deficient 17:1.”

All of this, the report says, makes it very unlikely that GE can become cash-flow positive by 2021. Markopolos told the WSJ that he is working with an undisclosed hedge fund, which has a short position, betting the stock will fall.

“We have never met, spoken to or had contact with this person,” a GE spokesperson said of Markopolos. “While we can’t comment on the detailed content of a report that we haven’t seen, the allegations we have heard are entirely false and misleading.”

“GE stands behind its financials,” the spokesperson added. “We operate to the highest-level of integrity in our financial reporting and we have clearly laid out our financial obligations in great detail.”

-

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumer issues, personal finance, retail, airlines, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.