Rickards: The Fed Is “Triple Tightening” Into Crisis

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If you have defective and obsolete models, you will produce incorrect analysis and bad policy every time. There’s no better example of this than the Federal Reserve.

The Fed uses equilibrium models to understand an economy that is not an equilibrium system; it’s a complex dynamic system.

The Fed uses the Phillips curve to understand the relationship between unemployment and inflation when 50 years of data say there is no fixed relationship.

The Fed uses “value at risk” modeling based on normally distributed events when the evidence is clear that the degree distribution of risk events is a power curve, not a normal or bell curve.

The American dream shatters: The death of the middle class

Middle-class families, which used to be the backbone of the United States economy are becoming poorer. Despite the constant bombardment of news of a “healthy economy,” 62% of middle-class families struggle to afford a basic middle-class lifestyle.

Even though the unemployment rate that has reached a 50-year low of 3.7 percent, most jobs across the U.S. don’t support a middle-class or better lifestyle, leaving many Americans struggling, according to a new study. When factoring in both wages and the cost of living in the metro area where the job is located, 62% struggle to provide a middle-class lifestyle according to the study by Third Way, a think tank that leans center-left on the political spectrum.

America’s Social Depression Is Accelerating

It’s no question America is at a crossroads and could go the way of Rome. This why it’s noteworthy to point out that things turn violent towards the very end, which is what we see not only in America through demonstrations and the demonization of politicians at restaurants, etc…, but the growing thirst for blood sports such as UFC/MMA, as astutely observed in this article:

Does Society Turn More Violent During its End Times?

 

 

Beneath the rah-rah statistics of “the greatest economy ever,” the social depression is accelerating. The mainstream is reluctantly waking up to the future of the American Dream: downward mobility for all but the top 10% of households.

A 2015 Atlantic article fleshed out the zeitgeist with survey data that suggests the Great Middle Class/Nouveau Proletariat is also waking up to a future of downward mobility: The Downsizing of the American Dream.

People used to believe they would someday move on up in the world. Now they’re more concerned with just holding on to what they have.

Iran ‘REVOLUTION IS COMING’ as 100,000 rush to streets chanting ‘DEATH to dictator’

Iran news: An expert has warned Iran is on the brink of a revolution (Image: P.M.O.I.)

 

IRAN is on the brink of a “revolution”, an expert has warned, as furious protestors take to the streets in their thousands to chant “death to the dictator”.

Tensions have reached boiling point in the Middle East nation after US President Donald Trump slapped Iran with tough economic sanctions aimed at further undermining the Islamic fundamentalist republic

Measures which target cars, gold and other metals trading, as well as the government’s ability to buy US dollars, came into force on Monday.

Eurocracy

All roads continue to lead to Berlin, the powerhouse that runs and dictates Europe’s future. In this case, Berlin is spearheading an effort to keep Italy subjugated before an economic crisis (it’s already capitalizing off of) gets politically out of hand as it did in Greece, which is now a German vassal state. It’s Germany’s goal to create a United States of Europe and economic levers are but one tactic in harmonizing Europe how it sees fit in achieving that end.

 

 

ROME/BERLIN (Own report) – Following massive complaints from Germany, Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella blocked a euroskeptic from becoming his country’s finance minister, appointing an IMF man – favored by Berlin – to be prime minister. The democratically elected 5-Star Movement (M5S) and the far-right Lega Nord majority’s opportunity to form a government was thereby denied. Euroskeptic Paolo Savona, a renowned career economist, was rejected because he could not have insured the maintenance of the EU’s common currency. Under his administration, resistance to Berlin’s austerity dictate could have been expected, whereas the newly appointed Prime Minster Carlo Cottarelli passed the test a few years ago as the Rome government’s austerity commissioner (“Mr. Scissors”). Savona’s nomination is the result of Italy’s growing euroskepticism, which, in the meantime, is also shared by other economists. “Germany profits, Italy loses” through the introduction of the euro, concludes Savona’s alternative candidate to the post of finance minister.

Welfare by Another Name

 

One of the first things I learned as a registered Washington lobbyist, (yes, I admit it, I was a lobbyist in the 1990s), is “you can’t beat something with nothing.”

That’s a Washington insider’s way of saying that if you don’t like an opponent’s policies, it’s not enough to moan and complain about them and throw insults. You have to come up with a policy of your own that appeals to voters and can be offered to the public as an alternative.

This has been a problem for Democrats lately.

They can’t stand Donald Trump and insult him all day long, but they won’t prevail in major elections scheduled in 2018 and 2020 unless they offer the voters something other than constant ridicule of Trump.

The Forgotten Depression of 1920–1921

 

The year is 1921…

America is less than three years removed from triumph on the Western Front. It’s the dawn of the Roaring Twenties… and the Jazz Age.

Warren Gamaliel Harding is America’s czar.

And the nation is sunk in depression

The Real Unemployment Number: 102 Million Working Age Americans Do Not Have A Job

 

Did you know that the number of working age Americans that do not have a job right now is far higher than it was during the worst moments of the last recession?  For example, in January 2009 92.6 million working age Americans did not have a job, but we just found out that in May the number of working age Americans without a job increased to just a shade under 102 million.  We’ll go over those numbers in more detail in a moment, but first I want to talk a bit about the difference between perception and reality.  According to the bureaucrats in the federal government, the “unemployment rate” in May was the lowest that we have seen in 16 years.  At just “4.3 percent”, we are essentially at “full employment”, and so according to them anyone that really wants a job should be able to find one pretty easily.

The French Elections – What Now?

 

Macron won about 65% to Le Pen 35%. Even Obama came out in support of Macron which clearly confirms he is the supporter of the establishment. The bias of the press is clear in their labels. The label Emmanuel Macron as the “independent centrist” and Marine Le Pen as the “far-right” applied by CNN – and we all know they are always for the establishment and against the people. Indeed, CNN seems to play the roll of Marie Antoinette who journalists reported she said “Let them eat cake” or in French “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” upon learning that the peasants had no bread to eat, which back then was enriched with eggs and butter. Mainstream media has no regard for the people and only attempt to manipulate the people to maintain the status quo.

India’s Gold Confiscation & Turkey’s War on Currency

QUESTION: Marty; You have been emphasizing not to buy gold bullion but US gold coins such as the $20. You have said that the last time they confiscated gold coin collections were exempt. With the drastic action in India, and the war on currency in Turkey, is this why you have said stocks and collectibles are a safer bet?

World Is Out of Weapons

Satyajit Das has written an excellent article in Bloomberg which clearly details the risks facing the global financial and monetary system and how central bankers are out of monetary ammunition and weapons.

Excerpt:

“No one likes to admit defeat. But global policymakers, who continue to insist that there’s more they can do to revive growth and inflation, are starting to sound like Monty Python’s Black Knight (click link to see video), the limbless and mortally wounded warrior who threatens to bleed on his victorious opponent. The truth is that governments and central banks have very few weapons left — and have probably lost any chance they once had of averting a prolonged stagnation.

Juncker issues WARNING SHOT to Spain: There will be NO MORE funds if debt isn’t controlled

SPAIN has been warned by Brussels it could be refused a huge amount of financial support if it fails to get its budget deficit under control.

The European Commission has to re-rule on the possible freezing of funds for Spain, after consulting the European Parliament later this month or in early October.

It’s thought president Jean Claude Juncker is in favour of applying the first sanction if the Spanish government fails to fulfil its commitments to start taking measures to reduce the deficit in the second half of 2016 and in their draft budgets for 2017.

Now or never: European Central Bank chief orders nations to fix EU problems or FALL

In the face of social, economic and cultural inconpatability, the only solution European leaders have ever had is further integration as a means to achieve the United States of Europe.

 

THE EUROPEAN UNION is deepening discontent across all member states with its failure to tighten external borders, co-ordinate defence policies and tackle inequality, according to European Central Bank President.

Mario Draghi said EU leaders are reversing progress made in recent years with policies which “have at times been reminiscent of the interwar period: isolationism, protectionism, nationalism”.

Mr Draghi called European policies such as Schengen “incomplete” and plans for integration “dangerous”.

Fading College Dream Saps U.S. Economy of Productivity Miracle

 

For decades, a growing pool of college graduates poured into the U.S. labor market, boosting productivity and shaping America’s status as the world’s dominant economic power.

That driver of growth is diminishing. Enrollment has declined every year since peaking in 2011, according to the Census Bureau and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The reasons include an aging population, rising tuition costs and a healthy rate of hiring that lessens the demand for learning.

Italian economy shattered as one in three jobless GIVE UP searching for work

A THIRD of jobless Italians gave up looking for work at the start of the year, amid rising fears for Italy’s economy.

A whopping 37.1 per cent of unemployed Italians joined the ranks of those who have stopped looking for a job altogether between the last three months of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016, according to Eurostat data.

The number of those now classed as inactive is double the European average of 18.9 per cent.