As noted earlier, today’s payrolls report was a far stronger than expected 128K (exp. 85K), even with the negative impact of the GM strike and the unwind of census hiring, which subtracted 41,600 and 20,000 workers from the headline print. In any case, October marked the 109th straight month of U.S. job growth, the longest…
The nation’s unemployment rate sank in April to the lowest rate since December 1969, but the milestone comes with a big caveat: The decline stemmed from more people quitting their search for work. The jobless rate slipped to 3.6% last month from 3.8% in March, continuing a long downward arc from a 27-year high of…
Things keep getting worse for pensions… If you’ve read Notes recently, you know the pension fund crisis is one of our major themes. Simply put, these giant pools of capital responsible for paying out retirement benefits to workers are BROKE. According to the World Economic Forum, pension funds around the world are short around $70 TRILLION. State,…
In today’s United States, the term “espionage” doesn’t get too much use outside of some specific contexts. There is still sporadic talk of industrial espionage, but with regard to Americans’ own efforts to understand the world beyond their borders, they prefer the term “intelligence.” This may be an intelligent choice, or not, depending on how…
Here’s the perfect example of the difficulty in understanding President Trump when it comes to him being either pure genius or just having dumb luck. Last week, we all know what the President said – I think I wrote up three articles on it because I felt it was that important. For those who don’t…
The Big Short ~ True Story June 20, 2018 “Every dip is met by a wall of buying, ramping the market ever higher, and ever more ignorant of the increasingly…” Editor’s Note Markets 101: If you “short” a stock, that means you sell a stock you don’t own. You do that because you think the…
“the House Administration Committee allocated $25,000 to each member in 2017 and again in 2018 to beef up their personal and office security…” Threats against politicians have been skyrocketing lately. Many in Congress are now living in fear, purchasing body armor and hiring armed guards to protect themselves against the people they should be serving rather than…
There is a quiet revolution taking place in the monetary vacuum that’s developing on the back of the erosion of the dollar’s hegemony. It is perhaps too early to call what’s happening to the dollar the beginning of its demise as the world’s reserve currency, but there is certainly a move away from it in…
Inflation enters the economy in stages. It’s not as though the Fed begins to print money and POOF! inflation appears. It takes time. The first stage occurs in the manufacturing/ production segment of the economy when you see producers suddenly paying more for the raw goods and commodities they use to manufacture/ produce finished goods. You…
The plotline of the recently-aired season finale of the fifth season of Silicon Valley eerily came to life this past week when nearly $20 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from online exchanges. Crypto-mining thieves reportedly took over the digital currency platforms and proceeded to claw whatever they could from user accounts, capturing tens of…
Italian President Sergio Mattarella just blew up the European Union. His refusal of the coalition agreement between The League and Five Star Movement threw the best chance for the EU to face its burgeoning political crisis before it became a full-blown sovereign debt crisis. With U.S. and U.K. markets closed today the full force of…
As you probably know by now, President Trump backed out of the nuclear deal with Iran and is re-imposing harsh sanctions. And just this morning, Trump announced that he’s canceling the much-anticipated nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un because of Kim’s recent belligerent comments. What does that mean, aside from the…
2018 Over the last two years, you have been witnessing an attempted deep state coup against the United States of America, carried out by what can only be called an organized crime ring of treasonous criminals like Robert Mueller, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, John Brennan and Hillary Clinton. Now, fearless independent journalism Sharyl Attkisson has…
Jim Rickards explains the next event that will cause gold & silver to turn up again. Here’s the details… June 12 is just three weeks away. That’s when the Federal Open Market Committee, FOMC, the Fed’s interest rate policy arm, will in all likelihood raise interest rates another 0.25%, the seventh such rate increase since…
May 5th marked the 200th Anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth, and in spite of inspiring a wide variety of political movements that have caused countless human rights disasters, Marx continues to be an object of admiration among many intellectuals and artists. One such example can be seen in Raoul Peck’s new film The Young Karl Marx which portrays…
