A blizzard is descending upon NYC as I write these insane ramblings tonight. My first random thought is why are we poking the Russian Bear? I have come to believe that the people running the State Department are essentially psychopaths. Why else would they implement a regime change in Ukraine and install Neo-Nazis. One of the key guys in the new Ukraine Government is Oleh Tyahnybok. He is pictured below giving his parties salute which curiously resembles another salute from a certain Nazi dictator in Germany from WWII. I guess that fits since he is a Neo-Nazi. The other picture is the picture of McCain giving support to these lunatics. Apparently this man has a problem with the Jews. In a speech he gave in 2004 he mentioned kicking out the Moscow Jewish Mafia from Ukraine. You won’t find mention of this this man or his Neo-Nazi brethren in the MSM because it does not fit the narrative of USA good and Putin bad.
I bring this up because I have been watching this situation with great interest. Over the weekend there was a bombing of Mariupol in Ukraine where 30 civilians were killed. What was interesting is that there were ample amounts of you tube videos that I initially thought were randomly filmed and retweeted out. Later as reports came out that both sides denied the attacks I then thought about the convenient dash cam footage that captured the bombings so well. It dawned on me that Kiev likely staged these attacks to prompt an excuse for more sanctions against Russia and depict the Rebels and Russia as murderers of civilians. Obama immediately on cue issued a statement condemning the bombings and said that more sanctions were coming. By the way Obama has nothing to do with this whole operation. It has become apparent to me that the Commander in Chief is really checked out. They wake him up and put him in front of a teleprompter and he reads from the script. He just can’t even muster the energy to play the part. Just watch him closely the next time he says anything on TV. It is really sad.
What the hell is the end game here? I would like to remind the deep state psychopaths in charge that Russia is not Libya! They have nukes and a former KGB leader at the helm. They are not amateurs!
Then today we have the news story about the FBI arresting Russian Spies who were trying to get info from Wall Street on ETFs and HFT’s. I am sorry but this is a completely bogus story. The dopes at the FBI have been watching the Russian Spy movie “Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit.” Clearly the war propaganda machine is beating a louder and louder drum. I fear we are about to go from a proxy war to something else. Please be prepared for this Black Swan rather than the Greek Kabuki Theater side show. If we try to cut the Russians out of the SWIFT payment system one of Putin’s lackeys said that would likely be an act of War. If you hear Obama mention this as a sanction then hit the bid and lighten up on risk assets. Please don’t leave comments about this being conspiracy theory. I have read a lot of non MSM material and everything I say is closer to the truth than the nonsense MSM narrative that the US is good and Russia is bad. I am trying to figure out what our motivation is for toppling the previous regime and setting up our puppet government in Kiev and how far we are willing to take this. I fear Putin is playing chess while we are playing checkers.
My second rambling thought is focused on earnings and the Market. Earnings season is coming in sub par so far. Financials have not impressed, energy is essentially out of the game, retail is very spotty and tech earnings are underwhelming. Consensus Earnings Estimates for 2015 have fallen 10% since August 2014. So my philosophical question is do you really think the market can go up from here this year with earnings coming down? To assume that you must get multiple expansion from the ECB and BOJ QE efforts. The question that must be asked is this non-reserve currency QE as effective as Fed QE to our stock markets. In addition to this philosophical question, we have currency mayhem, widening credit spreads, deflationary moves in bond yields and potential geopolitical back swans everywhere. My guess is that positive gains for the market will be hard to come by this year unless we get QE4.
The Fly has accused me of being insane. I like being insane otherwise why would I live on the side of a Volcano? Plus, to be in this business of picking stocks and navigating the markets one has to be a little off their rockers. Enjoy your snow day New Yorkers!
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You live on the side of Haleakala? I didn’t think it was active.
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/russias-plans-arctic-supremacy#axzz3PMtY6OsF
sociopaths create color in the world..
not so insane musings, me thinks.
You have enough here for four blogs.I
have to digest this before I can coherently
add to the conversation.
I too have been following this Russia/Ukraine situation. I find the situation completely baffling and mindless. It’s almost as if we feel the need to create enemies and we’ll stop at nothing to do it.
For anyone who cares, the following link to an article did a nice job showing the series of events, as they progressed, leading up to now.
http://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/91007/road-war-russia?
I remember having a conversation with
my kid a few years back saying that
American needs an enemy or bad guy
in order to sell policies and spend money. It has to be against that backdrop. It is not enough that a given policy will be great for Americans, but it
has to also provide defense against X,Y or Z. It’s the best way to get shit done.
Amazing how weather events or should i say potential weather events have become the new power tool for the media. Screw the economy and people working, if they can drum up enough panic by choosing the worst case scenario and of course the government has to give in to that cause what if by some chance in hell they call one of these things correctly…. Oh well its tough watching your country devolve into a nation of dancing fools.
Unfortunately, I’m with you on these musings. When this financial thing blows up; you’ll be much better on the side of that volcano than the East coast.
Asset forfeiture: serious comedy 16 mins http://www.tubechop.com/watch/4515423
One way to evaluate policies is to simply reverse them and then see what you think. In other words, if others had these policies, how would we like it?
Eg
Ukraine – Cuba
world-wide droning
torture
Why they don’t arrest guys front
running trades gets me.
No earnings no new jobs.
That’s a problem for me and my portfolio. It’s possible all the job stats are
doctored, but you have to believe something or well just go all zerohedge,
and there is no money there.
There seems to be a bit of a pushback
against buybacks vis a vis investing
in your business-IBM- being a poster
child for this line of thinking. Could
be excellent for job expansion which
leads to stable S&P 500. No broad
based bear market yet.
About QE 4. They don’t want to do it. Rates are already low so QE 4 does very little . If they go it will be
a Hail Mary pass and they only go
on a major jobs report reversal
Blue on a more hopeful note check out this wild video courtesy Mr. Musk.Reminds me of the excitement generated during the moon shot when we were tech beasts of the world. Screw the iwatch.http://t.co/YiHYYMmYsg
And on a less hopeful subject, do you give any credence to Martin Armstrong’s cycle research.He says we are due for some bad mojo around Sept.He has made many good calls.And cycles make sense to me.Now if only the government could resign so we could elect a new one.
BlueStar,
The comment about …the most vial people…is offensive. I hope this is not your view or others here.
Keep one thing in mind. These corporations who are borrowing money (or spending their cash on hand) to purchase their stock in the open market near all time high prices, you need to ask yourself a question. Where were all these buy backs in March of 2009? Those were bargain prices. OK how about March of 2010 or maybe March of 2011? After a six year bull market and many of their prices are at near all time highs they want to buy it now? Talk about odd lotters! Instead of investing it or retaining it for future investment they now choose to buy back their stock. Are they not essentially ‘eating their seed corn’?
Many of us are a little jumpy
these days.For a little levity try
–CBC.ca and watch Schitts creek__
Start at epsiode 1 .About rich Cityidiots
who lose it all and have to live in
Schitts creek. Good fun
IW40,
Not my views. I never refer to a people as vile. There are vile individuals but not groups IMHO.
Juice,
Its not active but still a Volcano. Dramatic license. 😉
I come here to make sure I am not insane, that I am actually seeing the things I think I am seeing. The fact that you see them too gives me the confirmation bias I require to feel somewhat secure, lol.
Great piece.
That is a really good tip especially to those fresh to the blogosphere.
Short but very accurate information… Thank you for sharing this one.
A must read post!