sell! sell! sell!

[tiznow]

yeah there's a lot of good ideas but it's just gonna take 5+ years to implement them all and untangle a massive government/business entrenchment in the system.

The political will just probably isn't there. Big problem with our gov't is neither party will level with the people that things take time so you get all these bandaids and half assed policies rather than real long-term fixes.

And it's not just healthcare.. military industrial complex unsustainable.. social security.. all various way underfunded pensions.. decades and decades of kicking the can has finally caught up to us.. and now we have the baby boomers that want to sit around comfortably till they are 90 and have no savings..

baby boomers fucked this country up so bad.. what happens when one generations has power for too long..

things will get very interesting once the lastest fed induced bubble blows..

 

[tiznow]

https://mobile.twitter.com/hussmanjp/status/845305238567424000/photo/1

bubbles are very easy to see the tough part if the timing.. as there is no good way to gauage how big they will bubble before they inevitably pop..

 

[PatsFan1283]

I just finished reading Tyler Cowen's new book, The Complacent Class. He talks a lot of about societal stagnation and the reasons for it. Unfortunately it doesn't jibe with the techno-optimist perspective.

Jumps around a lot and not a ton of empirical data but a good read by him. His other stuff really good too.

https://www.amazon.com/Complacent-C...st-American/dp/1250108691/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

 

[tiznow]

I just finished reading Tyler Cowen's new book, The Complacent Class. He talks a lot of about societal stagnation and the reasons for it. Unfortunately it doesn't jibe with the techno-optimist perspective.

Jumps around a lot and not a ton of empirical data but a good read by him. His other stuff really good too.

https://www.amazon.com/Complacent-C...st-American/dp/1250108691/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Very little creative destruction and fairness to the system anymore..

anytime things get bad government or fed swoops in the bail out rather than letting a natural cleansing to take place where those that did wrong learn their lesson..

that said there is only so much you you can do and future generations will pay for the baby boomers mistakes/greed.. millenials worse off than parents financially as a generation saddled with hoards of expensive education and wages that haven't grown when adjusted for inflation for a long time..

 

[PatsFan1283]

Onto tax reform I guess? That one should be interesting, obviously much less disagreement across the board but still more complex than most people expect. Hasn't been tax reform in 31 years. Can't imagine they get too far on simplification with all the complexity and parasites there are in that system but good luck. I think reform probably just turns into mostly cuts.

The border adjusted tax is interesting. Basic a tariff on imports which the retailers and other importers hate. The big industrial exporters love it but I'd think the other countries just respond in kind. The type of policy that basically ends up in a zero-sum standoff leading to more inefficiency. But I'd have to read more analysis on it.

 

[tiznow]

Establishment can blame the bubble burst on the freedom caucus now.. they got their fall guy.. would be surprised if March 1st wasn't the top now.. it was popping eventually regardless but now they can blame the wrong people for what was already going to happen and was only a matter of when..

 

[PatsFan1283]

I'm not really sure if it is the top. Tax reform could get it back on track. I'm not sure the healthcare bill is dead either, congress will still work on it. They might be able to get something much better but it'll be tough if the White House isn't really behind it.

But I do think the HFC standing up to him over healthcare means that some of the other more ambitious government spending programs are probably in jeopardy.

Infrastructure mainly. Market addicted to deficit spending like it is heroin so not sure they will like that.

 

[eek.]

You're missing the gorilla in the corner chaps

Interest rates are a weapon which can change things on a global scale and if you want to make things difficult for competitors like China who have truckloads of dollar driven debt you hold them back by putting rates up

Taxes are an irrelevance. With high taxes the people who own everything take 3-6 years to hoover up all the cash in the system,
With low taxes they take 1-2 years, but at the end of the day taxes don't change anything.
That extra 3-4 years that the cash is sloshing in the system can be used for government spending and programs but apart from that taxes do nowt

Taxes do nothing more than a temporary diversion of money in the system

 

[tiznow]

I'm not really sure if it is the top. Tax reform could get it back on track. I'm not sure the healthcare bill is dead either, congress will still work on it. They might be able to get something much better but it'll be tough if the White House isn't really behind it.

But I do think the HFC standing up to him over healthcare means that some of the other more ambitious government spending programs are probably in jeopardy.

Infrastructure mainly. Market addicted to deficit spending like it is heroin so not sure they will like that.

We already clearly in a huge bubble.. what's done is done and nothing can be done.. fed kept QE/ZIRP bubble on too long and is now way behind the curve on the rate hike cycle as they always are.. tax reform and the trump bump.. just tricking average joe into piling in at the top., insiders have been dumping in big numbers for a while now., corporations are already leveraged like we already in a recesssion due to ZIRP for too long.. last 8 years a facade of economic normalcy as average joe on the street still not doing to well..

 

[tiznow]

[h=1]Company insiders are dumping stock at levels 'rarely seen,' report indicates[/h]John Melloy | @johnmelloy
Tue, 28 Feb '17 | 12:40 PM ET
[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65098)]

[/COLOR]
Chief executives may profess loving a pro-business president in the White House, but they are saying something else with their money, and that could be a worrisome sign.
Chief executives and other corporate insiders are selling stock hand over fist now that the quarterly earnings season is over, a report from Vickers Weekly Insider shows. Transactions by insiders are restricted around a company's report.
"Insider selling has jumped again, and this time to levels rarely seen," analyst David Coleman wrote in Monday's note.
In the last week, insiders' sale transactions on the NYSE outnumbered their purchase transactions by more than 11 to 1, according to Vickers, a publication of Argus Research. The 11.47 reading is 3.5 standard deviations above the mean, according to Coleman.
The report gives context on the historical relationship between the market and its insider readings:

"The last time we saw both reading at such elevated levels was in early 2014, when the total reading hit 8.3 and the NYSE/ASE reading was 6.16. In response, the S&P 500 fell from 1844 to 1741 between 1/22/14 and 02/03/14. On February 14, 2007, the NYSE/ASE reading was 11.77 and the Total reading was 7.99 Again, the S&P 500 fell — this time from 1455 to 1387 within a matter of days."
​

Vickers tracks its sell/buy ratio over a period of varying time lengths in order to get a better idea of whether one week is part of a bigger trend. Its longer-term eight-week ratio for all U.S. stocks shows this is not just a short-term trend, with 5.98 buy transactions for every sale over the last two months. On the chart below, the eight-week sell/buy ratio is tracked inversely on the right scale, with the stock market on the left scale. The research shop does it this way to illustrate the divergence between insiders and the market: The Dow Jones industrial average keeps going higher, yet insiders keep dumping stock.

Source: Vickers Weekly Insider
Writes Coleman: "The number of insiders participating in the selling is significant. That would seem to imply that equities might be ripe for some level of correction."

 

[tiznow]

As usual large majority of our problems are within not some external enemy...

-------------

[h=1]As more Americans fail drug tests, employers turn to refugees[/h]Story by Dan Lieberman, CNN Video by Matt Gannon, CNN

Updated 7:57 AM EDT, Mon March 27, 2017

Story highlights

• Percentage of American workers testing positive for illegal drugs is at highest level in a decade
• Failed drug tests have real consequences for the economy

(CNN)Inside a factory near this lakeside city, a man holding a blowtorch is putting the finishing touches on a plastic rain barrel that will soon make its way to a home and garden section somewhere in America.
He is Talib Alzamel, a 45-year-old Syrian refugee who arrived here last summer with his wife and five children. He can't speak much English, but neither can most of the 40 refugees who work at Sterling Technologies, a plastic molding company based near the shores of Lake Erie. They earn $8-14 an hour.

​

The refugees at Sterling come from all over the world, from Syria to Sudan, Chad to Bhutan. And they've all passed the company's standard drug test.
"In our lives, we don't have drugs," said Alzamel, who was hired within three months after arriving in Pennsylvania. "We don't even know what they look like or how to use them."
But for an increasing number of American-born workers, passing drug tests is a big problem.
The percentage of American workers testing positive for illegal drugs has climbed steadily over the last three years to its highest level in a decade, according to Quest Diagnostics, which performed more than 10 million employment drug screenings last year. The increase has been fueled in part by rural America's heroin epidemic and the legalization of recreational marijuana in states like Colorado.
With roughly half of US employers screening for drugs, failed tests have real consequences for the economy.
More than 9% of employees tested positive for one or more drugs in oral fluid screenings in 2015, the most recent year for which data was available. And the problem is even worse at places like Sterling Technologies.
"Twenty percent of the people are failing," said Cary Quigley, the company's president. "We're seeing positive tests anywhere from marijuana through amphetamines, right all the way through crystal meth and heroin."
Which is why refugees like Alzamel, despite some language barriers, are quickly snapping up jobs.
"The big factories ... they have a problem with the drugs, so like every time they fire someone, they replace him with the refugee, to be honest," said Bassam Dabbah, who works at a US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants field office in Erie. "The only barrier is the language, but they are picking it up very quick."
[h=3]'It's like the United Nations'[/h]The status of refugees in the US has been under scrutiny since President Donald Trump's executive orders limiting the number of immigrants to the country. On March 6, Trump signed a new order that bans immigration from six Muslim-majority nations and reinstates a temporary blanket ban on all refugees.
But because of the increase in positive drug tests, the refugees who have reached America in recent years are finding a more welcoming hiring climate, at least for menial manufacturing jobs.
Nearly 6,000 refugees have settled in the last five years in Louisville, Kentucky, helping companies hire workers for jobs that had gone unfilled. Methamphetamine use is so high in Louisville that the number of people testing positive for meth in workplace drug tests is 47% higher than the national average, according to Quest Diagnostics.
Inside the White Castle food processing plant, where they make 50,000 hamburgers per hour, "it's become like the United Nations," says Jamie Richardson, a company vice president.
Antigona Mehani, employment services manager at Kentucky Refugee Ministries, says she can usually find a refugee a job within three days.
Employers tell her, "send us as many as you can," she said. "I hear this every single day."
CNN's reporting discovered a similar dynamic in many parts of the country, from Columbus, Ohio, to Albany, New York, to a company in Indiana that supplies parts for Ford cars.
While many employers insist that drug testing keeps the workplace safe and ensures a productive and stable work environment, there is no conclusive evidence that it's necessary for all jobs or that it lowers risks or reduces drug use.
And workers flunking drug tests is not a new problem, said Calvina L. Fay, executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation.
But it's a problem that is getting worse, she said.
Fay said employers are especially concerned about the increasing failure rates in "safety sensitive" workplaces, where a lapse by a employee under the influence of drugs could cost lives.
"They're frustrated for a number of reasons. In some cases they are having trouble hiring drug-free workers," Fay said. "They can't drug-test people every day, so there will be people who slip through the cracks."
In Colorado, where marijuana is legal, some businesses have told Fay, "they see employees smoking pot on their lunch break and then going back to work."
One oil and trucking company in Colorado did random drug screening last year and flunked 80% of their employees, mostly for marijuana, Fay said. Colorado's Supreme Court has ruled that companies may fire employees who smoke pot, even if legally.
"They had to replace everyone," she said. "The employer was glad he found the problem because his employees do extremely dangerous work. He was shocked and disturbed."
[h=3]'A really good source of labor'[/h]In the last five years, nearly 4,000 refugees have resettled in Erie, PA, a city that has struggled economically in recent decades.
Locals say the area also is dealing with a drug epidemic.
"'Right now around here, heroin's big, sad to say," said Sterling Technologiesfloor manager, Marty Learn, who has seen four or five workers in his department fail drug tests in recent months.
"I've had no refugees fail it," he added.
"In the Sunday newspaper there was a four- or five-page spread for employment advertisements and almost every one of them said, 'Must pass a background check and a drug screen.' So there's a lot of people who are unemployed as a result," said Amanda Milleren, a drug-addiction counselor at Cove Forge Behavioral Health System in Erie.
Erie has lost over half its manufacturing jobs since the 1980s, says Shannon Monnat, a rural studies professor at Penn State University. Meanwhile the city has faced rising rates of drug overdoses, alcohol-related deaths, and suicides.
"When business owners are telling you that they can't find native residents who will do these jobs, or they can't find enough people in the community to pass a drug test, what are they to do?" said Monnat. "They need to seek out employees somewhere. And for now, immigrants are a really good source of that labor."
Companies and staffing agencies in Erie and other cities have come to see refugee resettlement agencies as good partners to help expand the local labor pool.
And recovering drug addicts in Erie told CNN they can see why employers have had to look elsewhere for workers.
But some still think they deserve a second chance.
"I know that refugees need an opportunity when they come here, and employers give them the opportunity. But people like us that live here also need an opportunity," said Bethany Kaschak, 34. "I'm not saying they don't deserve it. But we deserve it as well."
Trump won Erie County in November, the first time it had gone for a Republican presidential candidate since 1984.
Sterling Technology's management voted for Trump and hopes he will push for tax cuts that will allow them to reinvest in their business. But at the same time, they don't want to see their refugee-powered workforce go away.
"Do I want to see all of my people deported?" asked Quigley, the Sterling Technologies president. "Absolutely not. They're a part of this company. They've helped build this company," he said.
"Our goal is to continue to grow the company. We can't grow the company without people that want to do the work."

 

[PatsFan1283]

We already clearly in a huge bubble.. what's done is done and nothing can be done.. fed kept QE/ZIRP bubble on too long and is now way behind the curve on the rate hike cycle as they always are.. tax reform and the trump bump.. just tricking average joe into piling in at the top., insiders have been dumping in big numbers for a while now., corporations are already leveraged like we already in a recesssion due to ZIRP for too long.. last 8 years a facade of economic normalcy as average joe on the street still not doing to well..

Obviously we're in a bubble but I'm just talking short-term I'm not sure 3/1 was the top. A lot of optimism out there, could have a little more to run if certain policies get through. There have been a lot of times over the last 7-8 years that it looked like the top. And articles about insiders selling come out every few months it feels like, I've read that same article you just posted like 50 times. I'm not saying it is wrong, but I really have no clue. I was confident 2k was the top in Aug '15. Who knows...

 

[PatsFan1283]

You're missing the gorilla in the corner chaps

Interest rates are a weapon which can change things on a global scale and if you want to make things difficult for competitors like China who have truckloads of dollar driven debt you hold them back by putting rates up

Taxes are an irrelevance. With high taxes the people who own everything take 3-6 years to hoover up all the cash in the system,
With low taxes they take 1-2 years, but at the end of the day taxes don't change anything.
That extra 3-4 years that the cash is sloshing in the system can be used for government spending and programs but apart from that taxes do nowt

Taxes do nothing more than a temporary diversion of money in the system

I wasn't talking about tax cuts as a panacea to rid us of all the excess issues in the system, just that it will potentially help the short-term machinations of the US stock market.

What do you think about the brexit finally being here? Markets don't seem like they care at all. Shrugging it off.

 

[tiznow]

Obviously we're in a bubble but I'm just talking short-term I'm not sure 3/1 was the top. A lot of optimism out there, could have a little more to run if certain policies get through. There have been a lot of times over the last 7-8 years that it looked like the top. And articles about insiders selling come out every few months it feels like, I've read that same article you just posted like 50 times. I'm not saying it is wrong, but I really have no clue. I was confident 2k was the top in Aug '15. Who knows...

Yeah challenge is always the timing.. optimism tends to be at its highest at the peaks.. heaviest short position I've had since last time everything blew up... will lighten up if they take out the 3/1 highs..

 

[PatsFan1283]

Why do you like the Canadian trust goldmining stock and then the ETF? The ETF has a pretty big expense ratio for my liking.

But I think I'm gonna buy all 3 and split them up equally sometime soon. Unless you would suggest a different weighting.

 

[tiznow]

0.5% expense isn't that high.. I mean vs major index fund etf I guess..

btg the only miner I really really like individually in the gold miner space.. management very sharp.. they started one up back during the early 2000 boom and eventually got bought out by a big producer.. tons of production coming online in 2018... if gold takes flight and approaches 2k again.. btg should be double digits easy...

gdxj just doing the lazy basket of junior miners that will have higher risk/reward than GDX (the bigger established gold miners)

cef audited gold/silver in a vault in Canada.. will have much lower volaitilty than the miners

Up to u on percentages.. higher your btg + gdxj/cef ratio the higher the risk/reward...

remind yourself your taking advice from some random ranter on a gambling forum.. do your own DD ha

 

[eek.]

What do you think about the brexit finally being here? Markets don't seem like they care at all. Shrugging it off.

No-one really knows what's happening next and since they all got their asses handed to them on a plate last summer they are all a bit smarter and more canny, using a wait-and-see approach instead of that gambling-on-a-cert bs which got them creamed last year.

 

[eek.]

Are you On holiday in Germany at the moment Tiz?

-------------------------------
A giant gold coin bearing the Queen's image, and worth $4m (£3.2m), has been stolen from a museum in Germany.
The Canadian coin, nicknamed the "big maple leaf", has a face value of $1m - but because it is 100kg (220lb) of pure 24-carat gold, its value is much higher at today's price for gold bullion.
It was taken during the night from the Bode Museum in Berlin.
It is not clear how the thieves evaded the alarm system or carried the heavy, half-metre (20.9 in) coin away.
The theft is believed to have happened at around 03:30 Monday morning (01:30 GMT).
The coin is thought to be too heavy for a single person to carry, and police believe the thieves entered through a window.
A ladder was found on the train tracks nearby.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39409754

 

[PatsFan1283]

You think Le Pen has a shot?

She wants to leave EU, with all the pension debt obligations France has that could get interesting. People say she has no shot in the 2nd stage when votes consolidate, but we've kinda heard that before, lol. Betting markets saying 20%.

Greece payment due in June and they seem to be just as broke as ever as well.

Lot going on over there.

 

[eek.]

The two buddies who "run Europe" are Germany and his little brother France

The amount of welfare France gets from the EU is staggering, I just can't see them ever leaving the EU or ever even getting close to that stage
They would lose a front seat on the mega-handouts EU gravy train

Makes good copy for the press though