What is Coming? Elite Feverishly Building Survival Bunkers: "Fear Of Uprising From The 99%"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 - 21:00
It certainly says something when the individuals with wealth continue to plot their escape from society. Are things crumbling? Teetering on edge? The smart money says get ready to get out.

The Curious Story Of The Chinese Tycoon Found "Chopped Up Into 100 Pieces" In A Vancouver Mansion

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 - 18:58 Two days ago we introduced you to "the rich kids of Vancouver." We now introduce you to someone who may be one of these rich kids' dad. Or rather was, because Gang Yuan, a 42-year-old mining tycoon is no longer alive. His corpse was found chopped into 100 pieces in his Vancouver home.

Deutsche Bank Admits It Rigged Gold Prices, Agrees To Expose Other Manipulators

Well, that didn't take long.

Fed Cornered: Stocks Slump As "Everything Is Awesome" In China: GDP Meets, Rest Of Data Beats

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 - 22:12 Heading into tonight's datagasm from China, SHCOMP tumbled and Yuan was strengthening (while money-market rates were ticking higher). Then it began... Retail Sales BEAT (+10.5% vs. +10.4% exp), Industrial Production  BEAT (+6.8% vs. +5.9% exp), Fixed Asset Investment BEAT (+10.7 vs. +10.4% exp) and last - but not least - GDP MEET (+6.7 vs. +6.7% exp) - though still the weakest since Q1 2009. The post-data reaction was initially opsitive but then faded fast as reality hit on the lack of stimulus coming. Now The Fed has a problem - solid inflation, solid wages, solid jobs, and no global turmoil - we are going to need some turmoil soon or rates are going up.

The Weirdest Possible Outcomes For The Strangest Election In U.S. History

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 - 22:00 Elections have entered the world of the weird because America itself is on the edge of something that will shake its very core. What that event will be is hard to say because there are so many possibilities, but tensions of this caliber usually escalate to crisis before they deescalate, and tensions today are surely escalating. The elections only serve as a gauge for how close to the bottom of the abyss we actually are.

Why Young Arabs Are Joining The Islamic State

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 - 21:30

Live Feed Of New York's Democrat Debate... And More Bad News For Hillary

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 - 21:10 As Hillary and Bernie launch this evening's "critical", according to CNN, debate in Brooklyn, the tide has shifted somewhat for both candidates and especially for Hillary the news is not good. According to newly released favorability ratings from Gallup, Hillary's image is at an all time low. And in even worse news for Hillary, the latest Fox News poll shows Clinton's national lead imploding and after having a comfortable +13 digit lead in March, she is effectively tied with the socialist, as her lead in April has plunged to just 2 points, a 48%-46% split which falls within the margin of error.

US Judge Rules Sandy Hook Victims Can Sue "Military-Style" Gun-Maker

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 - 20:35 In a somewhat stunning decision, SkyNews reports that a US judge has ruled that the families of victims in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School can sue the maker of the weapon used in the attack, arguing the Bushmaster rifle is a military weapon that should not have been sold to civilians.

Why For Japanese Traders "Every Day Is Like Being Alice In Wonderland"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 - 20:30 "If the money market dries up, if there is an event like the Lehman crisis, there won’t be the infrastructure for banks to raise capital... Every day is like being Alice in Wonderland... interest-rates levels are having no effect on credit demand, the market function is declining. You can’t expect everything to go according to plan."

Japanic Buying

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 - 20:24 Because - absent any data whatsoever and nothing but a headline about Aso and Lew having a cozy chat about FX manipulation and The BoJ's "receptiveness" to buying more ETFs - USDJPY spiked 30 pips at the open, and drum roll please, Nikkei 225 futures went 200 points vertical without blinking an eyelid.

Peter Schiff Slams Managers' "Denial... And Mindless Optimism"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 - 20:00 The Winter of 2015-2016, which came to an end a few weeks ago, has been officially designated as the mildest in the U.S. in 121 years according to NOAA. While this fact will certainly add a major talking point in the global warming debate, it should also be front and center in the current economic discussion. The fact that it isn’t is testament to the blatantly self-serving manner in which economic cheerleaders blame the weather when it’s convenient, but ignore it when it’s not.

The Government Breaks Through On Deficit Reduction, Will Lower Social Security Payments

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 - 19:30 It's well known that the US government is broke, and if it used accrual accounting instead of cash accounting it would be staggeringly worse, as all of its future liabilities would be shown. Knowing this, government officials are working tirelessly (and even on some weekends, much to the dismay of Jack Lew) to find ways to reduce spending.  Thanks to all of those long nights scrubbing the budget line by line, a way to save costs has finally been found...

"Fundamentally Transforming America"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 - 18:35 Make America Un-transformed again...

Former Fed Advisor Asks "Has The Fed Bankrupted The Nation"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 - 18:10 In 1977, the total indebtedness of U.S. government, corporate and household borrowers was $323 billion. By 1985, that figure had grown to $7 trillion. Volcker left the Fed in August of 1987 after handing the reins over to Alan Greenspan. By year’s end 2015, U.S. indebtedness had swelled to $45.2 trillion. Tack on financials, which few do, and it’s $64.5 trillion and unabashedly growing. We are a nation transformed. What has today’s vast store of debt purchased? Certainly not freedom.

Let Them Eat... Out

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/14/2016 - 17:45 It has never - ever - been more expensive to "dine out" relative to "eating at home."

To Protect Hillary Clinton, Democrats Wage War on Their Own Core Citizens United Argument

by Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept:
FOR YEARS, THE Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizens United was depicted by Democrats as the root of all political evil. But now, the core argument embraced by the Court’s conservatives to justify their ruling has taken center stage in the Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders — because Clinton supporters, to defend the huge amount of corporate cash on which their candidate is relying, frequently invoke that very same reasoning.
The crux of the Citizens United ruling was that a legal ban on independent corporate campaign expenditures constituted a limit on political speech without sufficient justification, and thus violated the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee. A primary argument of the Obama Justice Department and Democrats generally in order to uphold that campaign finance law was that corporate expenditures are so corrupting of the political process that limits are justified even if they infringe free speech. In rejecting that view, this was the key argument of Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the five-judge conservative majority (emphasis added):
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Syria Elects Parliament, US Dismisses Democracy and Demands Control

from Hang The Bankers:
As a new round of Syria peace talks kicks off in Geneva, Syrians in government-controlled areas head to polling stations to elect a new parliament. Washington has dismissed the poll out of hand saying it doesn’t reflect “the will of the people.”
The High Judicial Committee for Elections in Syria has made a decision to extend the deadline until midnight local time due to the remarkably high turnout, the official SANA news agency reported on its Twitter account, quoting a committee statement. Initially, the polling stations were supposed to be open from 7am till 7pm.
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Obama Damns Hillary With Faint Praise

by Andrew P. Napolitano, Lew Rockwell:
President Barack Obama’s recent remarks to my Fox News colleague Chris Wallace about Hillary Clinton’s email issues were either Machiavellian or dumb. It is difficult to tell them whether he wants the mountain of evidence of her criminal behavior presented to a federal grand jury or he wants her to succeed him in the White House.
He cannot have both.
His efforts to minimize his former secretary of state’s diversion of emails from government-secured servers to her own non-secure home server by calling it “careless” may actually harm her in the eyes of the public or even serve as a dog whistle to the FBI. That’s because carelessness is a species of negligence, and espionage, which is the failure to safeguard state secrets by removing them from their proper place of custody, is the rare federal crime that can be proved by negligence — to be precise gross negligence.
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Minimum Wage is a Curse, Not a Blessing

by Nathan McDonald, Sprott Money:
Central planners and politicians have no clue when it comes to creating wealth. They are incapable of creating growth and a productive economy, despite what they would have you believe.
The government cares about one thing above all else: expanding itself and its power. One of the methods in which they have done this through history, up until the point in which it becomes so bloated it implodes on itself, is through the expansion of social welfare programs.
In the West, a large portion of the population now finds itself stuck in this very cycle, the social welfare cycle, which is the doom of all established economies – the cycle of “why should I work if I can make more money sitting at home?”
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