11 Facts That Won't Be In Tonight's State Of The Union

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/20/2015 - 19:45 When President Obama ascends to the podium this evening to deliver his State of the Union address, he’ll undoubtedly shine a spotlight on the many strengths of America. The real issue, however, isn’t where the United States is today. The problem is where it’s going. And quickly...

Previewing Tonight's State Of The Union Speech (In 2 Cartoons)

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/20/2015 - 17:17 "make-or-break" again...

Investors Are Losing Faith And "Markets Will Riot" Warns Albert Edwards

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/20/2015 - 19:14 Global markets face three risks, according to Edwards: bearishness in the U.S. government bond market, a flawed confidence that the U.S. is in a self-sustaining recovery and undue faith in the relationship between quantitative easing (QE) and the equity markets. “It doesn’t matter how much QE is spewing out of the US,” he said. “The markets will lose confidence that the policymakers are in control of events, just as they did in 90's Japan. They lost faith that the policymakers were in control. This is the biggest risk out there.”

"This Is A Race To The Bottom Where No Fiat Currency Wins"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/20/2015 - 18:45 Following another frustrating year in the previous metals markets, 2015 is showing signs that change is afoot. As Santiago Capital's Brent Johnson notes in this brief presentation, while being 'wrong' for the last 2 years on gold has been painful, is it any less crazy to believe that it will turnaround that to believe the hype that The Fed will raise rates once again (just like it promised in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and now 2015...) - who is really losing their credibility? With the world's fiat currencies waging war and dislocations mounting, gold is no longer the 'David' underdog fighting against the 'Goliath' central banks... but is - as Alan Greenspan opined - "the premier currency. No fiat currency, including the dollar, can match it."

Nisman Murdered? Suicide Story Crumbles After No Gunpowder Found On Argentine's Hands

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/20/2015 - 18:15 When news broke of the death, by gunshot wound to the head, of Alberto Nisman - the prosecutor who was due within hours to deliver testimony implicating the Argentine President in covering up the investigation into a bombing in 1994 - it seemed oddly quick for police to rule it suicide within hours (especially after his earlier concerns that "I could end up dead because of this.") Today's news from The Buenos Aires Herald that the "unexpected result" of forensic analysis of Nisman’s body confirmed that there were no traces of gunpowder on his hands suggests (despite experts still proclaiming it does not rule out suicide) has prompted many questions over just how he died. Even the US has offered help... and protests are growing larger.

"Whiplash" & The Death Of The Last Industrialist

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/20/2015 - 17:45 The fix for low oil prices is... low oil prices. Past some point high-priced producers will naturally stop producing, the excess inventory will get burned up, and the price will recover. Not only will it recover, but it will probably spike, because a country littered with the corpses of bankrupt oil companies is not one that is likely to jump right back into producing lots of oil while, on the other hand, beyond a few uses of fossil fuels that are discretionary, demand is quite inelastic. And an oil price spike will cause another round of demand destruction, because the consumers, devastated by the bankruptcies and the job losses from the collapse of the oil patch, will soon be bankrupted by the higher price. And that will cause the price of oil to collapse again. And so on until the last industrialist dies...
 

For IBM The Buyback Frenzy Ends With A Bang As Q4 Revenues Plunge Most Since Lehman

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/20/2015 - 16:55 Unfortunately for IBM, it better resume its financial engineering fast because this is where the bang (not the whimper) comes into play: in Q4, IBM's revenue was a modest $24.11 billion, far below the Wall Street estimate of $24.8 billion, and a whopping 12% less than what IBM generated a year ago. In fact, as the following chart shows, the annual plunge in IBM Q4 revenue was the worst since Lehman. 

 
 

The "Deflationary Vortex": Global Dollar Economy Suffers Biggest Plunge Since Lehman, Down $4 Trillion

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/20/2015 - 16:28 One of the macroeconomic observations that has gotten absolutely no mention in recent months is the curious fact that while global economic growth has not imploded in recent quarters, it is because GDP has been represented, as is customary, in local currency terms. Of course, this comes as a time when local currencies (at least those which are not the USD) have been plunging against the greenback on the back of the expectations that the Fed will hike rates some time in the summer or later in 2015. Which also means that in "dollar economy" terms, i.e., converted in USD, things are not nearly as good.  In fact, as the chart below shows, the global dollar economy is not only shrinking fast, but it is doing so at the fastest pace since the Lehman collapse, having lost a whopping $4 trillion, or a whopping 5% drop,  in just the last 6 months!
 

Israel Joins Forces With ISIS? Tel Aviv Bombs Syria for Sixth Time in 18 months

from 21st Century Wire:
The Syrian conflict continues to develop into a proxy war, pitting various foreign ‘national interests’ against one another, including Iran vs. Israel.
Israel launched its sixth airstrike inside Syria in last 18 months, in what the local media are describing as a ‘targeted killing’ carried out  Sunday, killing at least 6 members of Hezbollah and the al Quds Iranian Guard who were fighting ISIS, al Nusra and other terrorist organizations operating in Syria.
Among those killed in the missile attack was Jihad Mughniyeh, son of the former Hezbollah head, Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated by the IDF in Damascus in 2008.
Read More @ 21stCenturyWire.com

Ben Fulford: Financial war coming to a head, Swiss join Pentagon/UK/BRICS alliance

from Ben Fulford, via The Event Chronicle:
The radical plunge in the Euro last week against the Yen, the US dollar and especially the Swiss Franc is a clear indication the battle over control of the financial system, and the world, is coming to a climax. The Swiss move to decouple their Franc from the Euro came one week before an elite summit meeting in Davos, Switzerland is due to kick off with a keynote speech by China’s number 2 Li Keqiang. This is the first time the Chinese government has sent any one significant to Davos in 5 years. The speech will focus on China’s take on the international situation and will offer possible solutions to various international problems. This Davos meeting is being called “A New Global Context” a name clearly meant to disassociate it with the fascist New World Order. In closed room sessions, Chinese government sources say Li will be discussing
Chinese/Swiss financial integration. What this clearly indicates is that the Swiss banking world, including the central bank for central banks the BIS, have joined the BRICS/UK/Pentagon alliance.
Read More @ Theeventchronicle.com

How Money Vanishes

by Steve Saville, Gold Seek:
Changes in asset prices or any other prices do not cause changes in money supply, although many of the people who comment on the financial markets and economics believe otherwise. We were recently reminded of this mistaken belief when reading an analysis of oil’s large price decline that included the assertion that hundreds of billions of dollars had been eliminated from the economy as a result of this price change.
Plunges in asset prices invariably provoke comments along the lines of “a huge amount of money has just been wiped out”. For example, when the US real estate and stock markets tanked during 2008 a popular line of argument involved comparing the Fed’s QE with the massive declines in market value to show that the amount of money added by the Fed was small in relation to the amount of money subtracted by the asset-price collapse.
Read More @ GoldSeek.com