Trump Aide "Spills The Beans" On Heidi Cruz As Media Goes Crazy Over #CruzSexScandal

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 16:28

Civil War Looms As 'GOP Insiders' Tell Trump: "No Majority, No Nomination"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 14:05 “Rules is rules. You have to get a majority...I'm firmly in the ‘Never Trump’ camp... The GOP gets killed if he's the nominee. We probably get killed if he doesn't support a different nominee anyway."

Easter Weekend Reading: Bears Battered But The Buyback Bounce Is Over

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 17:30 With April wrapping up the seasonally strong period of the year, the seasonal adjustment boost to economic data coming to an end, and earnings growth remaining elusive – the summer months could prove to be problematic.

Foreigners Dumped More Japanese Stocks This Week Than Ever Before

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 18:00 USDJPY just had its best week in 2 months, funding bullish momentum and carry trades around the world in the midst of dismal economic data everywhere and tumbling earnings expectations. This "bullish" Yen strength, however, amid China's biggest weekly devaluation in almost 3 months, was ironically driven by drastic investment outflows - record sales of Japanese stocks by foreigners (sell JPY), and record purchases of foreign bonds by Japanese investors (sell JPY). Sooner, rather than later, it is obvious that the investment outflows will dominate the carry trades (see Thursday and Friday) and Kuroda and Abe will have a major problem.

Deutsche Bank's Dire Warning On Global Trade: "The Currency War Is Futile"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 17:01 "There is a concern that this competitive devaluations channel (the first link) may have broken down (to a large extent) because of the collapse in global trade. Global growth today is generating much less trade growth than in the past (chart below). As a result, currency adjustment is not enough to spur growth significantly because global trade is increasingly less important to the overall makeup of GDP. This raises the possibility that the currency war is largely futile."

Belgium May Make Major Shift Toward Fascism In Wake Of Brussels Terror Attacks

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 12:22 Just one day after the coordinated attacks in Brussels, the resounding cry from governments, media, and national security experts is that we need less freedoms and more security. “Our tolerance of electronic surveillance... seems a small price to pay for some measure of security against threats that nobody - today of all days - can doubt are real.”

Caught On Tape: State Dept. Says Maybe Russia, Syrian Army Shouldn't Take Palmyra From ISIS

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 11:46 "You know I mean look... broadly speaking .... you know... it's not a great choice... an either/or... but... you know..."

If Your Country's Broke, Don't Hold All Of Your Savings There

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 13:30 Almost exactly three years ago, people across the entire nation of Cyprus went to bed believing that everything was OK. The next morning they woke up to a different reality... People realized immediately that just because you can log in to a bank’s website and see an account balance printed on the screen that doesn’t actually mean that the money is there. This is precisely the sort of thing that happens when a poorly structured banking system meets an insolvent government.

Thanks Obamacare: This Is What Americans Spent Most Money On In 2015

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 09:46 We have been covering the consumption tax, pardon, endless spending black hole that is Obamacare for over a year, so we doubt it will come as a surprise to anyone that in 2015 healthcare was the second biggest use of US consumer funds, soaking up a record $1.9 trillion in real dollars, and more importantly for US economic "growth", the single biggest source of incremental spending by nearly a factor of two.

Is ISIS Faithful To Islam?

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 16:00 “We are not at war with Islam,” said John Kasich after the Brussels massacre, “We’re at war with radical Islam.” Kasich’s point raises a question: Does the Islamic faith in any way sanction or condone what those suicide bombers did?

"There Is No Word To Describe This" - The Energy Forward P/E Multipe Is Now Off The Charts

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 15:31 As of this moment, the forward P/E of the Energy sector is no longer "an absolutely ridiculous and mindblowing 23x".... it is, in fact, more than double that at 58.7x, which also happens to be more than four times higher than the 15 year average. There is no longer a word to describe the lunacy where the forward P/E multiple was literally "off the chart" until the Y-axis was doubled.

Who's Anti-American?

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 15:00 The system is rigged... and rotten. Elections are exercises in solemn deceit. And the Fed’s management of the economy is a mixture of delusion and self-serving scam. We don’t have much doubt about it. That’s just the way it is. But that honesty is "cynical" and "anti-American," according to some. However, we’re not alone in our skepticism. Apparently, about half the country is “anti-American.”

America’s Laughable ‘News’ Media

from Washington’s Blog:

As of Friday March 4th, democracy ended in Turkey, but you’d hardly have known it by reading the international ‘news’ at the major (and at most of the minor) U.S.-based ‘news’ sites, as of around 4PM Eastern time in the U.S., nearly a day after the event. Nor has it been announced even now, ten days after that historic event occurred.

Here was the ‘news’ coverage the next day, March 5th, 24 hours after the event:

The New York Times World News section online buried nearly a third of the way down the main page, “Turkey Seizes Newspaper, Zaman, as Press Crackdown Continues,” immediately below “Gunmen Kill 16 at Nursing Home in Yemen.”

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US Kills ISIS Second-In-Command For 3rd Time In 2 Years

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 14:38 A physics teacher by trade, Mosul-born al-Qaduli was ISIS before ISIS was ISIS. He served as a deputy to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Islamic State’s “godfather”) and was jailed by the US in Iraq in 2012. Upon his release, he joined ISIS and reportedly was Bin Laden’s choice to lead the group after Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri were killed in 2010. And he's no stranger to being dead...

Treasure "Trove" Of ISIS Documents Detail Secret Oil Trade With Turkey

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 14:30

Presenting The Complete Global Currency Swirlogram

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 12:57 Efforts to make sense of why various FX crosses trade like they do these days are complicated immeasurably by the ongoing global currency wars and an EM complex that's plagued by fear of a strong USD and a long list of idiosyncratic domestic factors. For those interested in a 30,000 foot view of what's overvalued and what's not, here's Deutsche Bank's take.

Peddling Fiction After All - Job Growth Doesn't Mean We're Getting Richer

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 11:11 In response to recent claims by the Obama administration and others that “millions of jobs” have recently been created We 'skeptically' examined the data to see if the claims were true. It turns out that job growth since the 2008 recession has actually been quite weak, and hardly something to boast about. Nevertheless, our conclusions from these analyses tend to rest on the idea that job growth is synonymous with gains in wealth and economic prosperity. But is that a good assumption?

Trump Is Right - Dump NATO Now

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/25/2016 - 10:18 If you want to know why we have a $19 trillion national debt and a fiscal structure that will take that already staggering figure to $35 trillion and 140% of GDP within a decade, just consider the latest campaign fracas. That is, the shrieks of disbelief in response to Donald Trump’s sensible suggestion that the Europeans pay for their own defense.

Your Crash Warning Alert System

from The Sovereign Investor:

September 11, 2001. I was on the F train going from my home in Brooklyn to my Manhattan office. When I got in, someone told me one of the towers had collapsed. People were crying — their friends were in those towers.
My office was uptown on Park Avenue about three miles from where the planes had hit. Was another plane coming to hit us too?
I don’t panic in these kinds of situations. Since the markets were closed, I left the office, went to an ATM and took out as much money as I could. Then I started walking to a friend’s house to call my mom to let her know I was OK.
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Oh What a Tangled Web…

by Greg Canavan, Contra Corner:

This is interesting…
This morning, ANZ Bank [ASX:ANZ] warned that loan defaults would be ‘at least’ $100 million more for the first half of the year than it flagged just a few weeks ago. The charge will now be over $900 million.
The increase in bad debts relates to ongoing weakness in its resources loan book. That’s not really surprising when you consider the prolonged commodity bear market.
What is surprising is that you haven’t seen the banks take more of a hit from their exposures.
Read More…

After Brussels, State Dept. Declines to ‘Give Europe a Grade’ For Counterterror Cooperation

by Patrick Goodenough CNSnews:
Homeland As questions swirl around self-admitted “errors” by authorities in the lead up to Tuesday’s terror attack in Brussels, the State Department on Thursday declined to “give Europe a grade” on its counterterror cooperation within the bloc or with the U.S.
But spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. prior to the attack had “already seen a significant increase in coordination with our partners in Europe,” including information-sharing and adding suspects to watch lists.
Read More…

Hackers Robbed the U.S. Government…Are You Next?

by Justin Spittler, Casey Research:

The U.S. government was robbed.
Last month, hackers stole $100 million from the Federal Reserve. Authorities recovered $19 million, and the hackers got away with $81 million.
It was the largest bank robbery in history.
Nick Giambruno, editor of International Man, explains what happened.
Last month, an international group of hackers robbed Bangladesh’s account at the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the U.S.
Read More…

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