The Russian-Saudi Oil Rigging Rumor Turned Out to Be Trickery

Deep down, Putin hates the ground the Sauds walk on. Once again, these fuckers issued false, misleading, news in order to juice crude.

Nothing changed. There will be no oil freeze. Instead, both countries will pump oil as fast as fucking possible, like craven lunatics, fucking each other with a smile.

But, they did hold a press conference, which is an accomplishment unto itself.

While talks in China between Russian and Saudi Arabian energy ministers fell short of a freeze on output, causing oil to pare its gains on Monday, the two addressed the press at a rare joint press conference. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said the two countries have a “number of tools” at their disposal for joint actions. Oil revenue drives most government spending in Saudi Arabia, which is struggling to plug a widening deficit following Brent crude’s more than 50 percent drop in the past two years.

“Having a meeting is a milestone, regardless of the outcome,” said Tariq Qaqish, the Dubai-based head of asset management at Al Mal Capital PSC. “The advance of talks between Saudi Arabia and Russia is positive news for oil exporting countries. Higher oil prices will enhance investor sentiment, therefore we expect to see the equity market follow.”

Crude is up 2% and dropping, down from gains of nearly +5%.

There are reports out from Saudi’s Energy minister that the Kingdom will make a significant announcement today. Other reports indicate Russia will cooperate with OPEC to fuck the world, rigging markets to support higher crude prices.

The cannibals in Venzeula must be pleased with these developments.

Crude is ringing higher, more than 4%.

Warning: over the years, there have been many bullshit Russian-OPEC cooperation stories that eventually proved to be false.

Seriously, you didn’t think BREXIT would ever happen, did you? I mean, it might happen, but not exactly how all the the people who voted for it intended. Nigel Farage resigned from party leader of UKIP, trusting that he had won the day. Another BREXIT agitator, Boris Johnson, was co opted by the May regime and has quieted down since then.

Today, Prime Minister May rejected the notion that Britain would adopt an Australian type points system for immigration, saying Britain instead voted for better control.

Theresa May has cast doubt on whether Brexit will lead either to a points-based immigration system or an extra £100m a week for the NHS – two central promises made by the successful campaign to leave the European Union.

The prime minister declined to endorse pledges made by the official Vote Leave group as she headed to China for the G20 summit, where Japan and the US have issued strong warnings about the consequences of exiting the EU.

In an unprecedented set of demands over the terms of Britain’s exit, Tokyo said Japanese firms could move to other parts of Europe unless many of the current privileges of membership were maintained.

Speaking from her prime ministerial plane, May questioned whether the type of system that admits migrants based on their skills was effective, and did not rule out retaining preferential access arrangements for EU citizens. “One of the issues is whether or not points-based systems do work,” she said, stressing that there was “no single silver bullet” on reducing immigration.

May also refused to commit to working towards the promises made by Vote Leave of an extra £100m a week to the NHS, scrapping VAT on fuel bills or ending contributions to the EU budget.

She would only say: “I’m going to work for what I just said I’m going to work for: the best possible deal for the UK in terms of the relationship that we would have with the EU, following us leaving.”

Her decision not to endorse the key planks of the Vote Leave manifesto may anger some of the electorate who thought they were voting for firm pledges made by politicians now senior in May’s government, such as Boris Johnson.

The globalists win, even when they lose.

Farage took to Twitter this morning to voice his dismay, warning that failure to cede to the will of the people will have lasting electorate ramifications.

“Japan is your future”. These words were uttered to me back in 2009, at the Four Seasons restaurant, when I was wooing Scott Bleier to write for the site. At the time, I didn’t give it much thought. With the benefit of hindsight, he was exactly right.

Japanese QE has resulted in sharply lower equity markets, but relatively decent unemployment numbers for the past 30 years. It is stagnation, personified.

Without QE, Godzilla would’ve eaten Tokyo a long time ago. But, it’s worth noting, there isn’t anything exciting about 250% debt to GDP either and Japan’s fate has never looked more doomful.

That being said, Japan’s BOJ Chief, Kuroda, says he’s gonna a lotta more for you NIKKEI haters. Lots of moar tools in his tool bag.

“Even within the current framework, there is ample room for further monetary easing … and other new ideas should not be off the table,” Kuroda said in a seminar.

“There may be a situation where drastic measures are warranted even though they could entail costs,” he said. “The central bank should always prepare policy options to address such situations.”

Kuroda said he does not share a growing market view that monetary policy has reached its limit, saying that the key would be to weigh the costs and benefits of each policy option.

“There is no free lunch for any policy,” he said. “That said, we should not hesitate to go ahead with (additional easing) as long as it is necessary for Japan’s economy as a whole.”

One has to presume this could go on indefinitely. I see no reason to suggest otherwise.

Note: Japanese QE has resulted in massive manipulation of their markets, also acceptable practice today.

It’s all the rage on social media. Our beloved President, Barack Obama, is wrapping up his tenure as ‘leader of the free world’ by repairing the damage the half-ape George Bush caused, who set off a sequence of events that racked the world with war and debt ever since 9/11, was greeted in China like a vagabond beggar, forced to disembark from his plane from its ass, without the pageantry of a red carpet.

A Chinese official brazenly approached Obama’s plane on the tarmac, talking extreme shit.

“This is our country! This is our airport!” a Chinese official shouted after US handlers expressed anger at the absence of a suitable stairway off the government plane, forcing Mr Obama to leave the plane from “the ass of Air Force One” as one American journalist tweeted.

The result of this, and the lack of proper decorum afforded to the ‘leader of the free world’, by savage Chinese, will be recorded in the annals of time as one of the singular embarrassing moments in the history of mankind.

Our King walked down naked airplane stairs.

BEHOLD the imagery. It’s quite the spectacle.

Britain’s May

Germany’s Merkel (bitch)

India’s Modi/ISIS’s Obama

Russia’s Putin

This is a very important development in German politics: the downward spiraling popularity of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Today her party suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of  an anti criminal immigration party, often referred to as ‘the super right wing party’ in Germany by demented liberal reporters. Such immigration policies have caused raping and pillaging across genteel European cities, all thanks and praise to Frau Merkel.

Bear in mind, the entire QE program in Europe is contingent upon German approval. Should Merkel fail to secure her role in this grande experiment in economic fuckery, markets will be exposed to a reality that it has not faced since 2011.

“This isn’t pretty for us,” said Michael Grosse-Broemer, one of Merkel’s top deputies in parliament in Berlin in a ZDF TV interview. “Those who voted for the AfD were sending a message of protest.”

Merkel’s approval rating has plunged to a five-year low of 45 percent, down from 67 percent a year ago, due to spreading disenchantment with her open-door policies on refugees.

According to a Der Spiegel magazine report, Merkel wanted to announce her intention of running for a fourth term this year but put that on hold due to resistance from her Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. The arch-conservative CSU has demanded that Merkel put limits on the numbers of refugees.

“This was a dark day for Merkel,” Thomas Jaeger, a political scientist at Cologne University, told Reuters. “Everyone knows that she lost this election. Her district in parliament is there, she campaigned there, and refugees are her issue.”

The election took place exactly a year after Merkel’s decision to open Germany’s borders to hundreds of thousands of refugees and the discontent in the state was palpable.

“This is a slap in the face for Merkel — not only in Berlin but also in her home state,” said Frauke Petry, co-leader of the AfD. “The voters made a clear statement against Merkel’s disastrous immigration policies. This put her in her place.”

The AfD’s win was cheered by the leader of France’s far-right National Front party, Marine Le Pen, who posted on Twitter: “What was impossible yesterday has become possible: the patriots of AfD sweep up the party of Ms Merkel. All my congratulations!”

An awaking is happening, globally.

I haven’t done one of these updates in a month, because tight trading ranges are the sandboxes of imbeciles. Having said that, a fortnight ago, I went long gold with 26% of my assets. Last week, although uneventful, I did receive my monthly dividend in TLT, which reduced my basis to $118.6.

For the month of August, my short in FCX traded down 15% and TLT was flat. Overall, the SPY was about flat for August.

There weren’t many notable readings from the algos last week, aside from them hating on the fucking French. EWQ is flagged as overbought.

Let’s hope for a more eventful September and the complete and utter destruction of French markets–just for the novelty and fun of it all.

I’ve never met a theory that I didn’t enjoy entertaining.

The going theory in the social media world of pseudo-scientists is the SpaceX explosion was caused by some angry fucking aliens, who thumbed down on asshole CEO Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook.

Now I slowed down this video to 0.25x normal speed, so you could see what’s causing the hysteria. Obviously, there’s something zooming around that piece of shit rocket, meandering about, and then BOOM–to smithereens. Calmer heads say it was a bird or insects. Judging by the 12 second time delay of the explosion, extrapolating out the speed of sound at 1,125 feet per second, this camera was about 2.5 miles away from the rocket. As such, any object flying closer to the lens will appear to much faster, when in fact it was just a stupid ass bird.

You be the judge.

One of the tenets of Donald Trump’s candidacy is to favor U.S. steel producers and to protect their markets via tariffs. This, of course, is common sense. Globally, leaders are pissed off at China for flooding markets with their cheap, fucking, steel. However, China is simply blowing them off, declaring that the real issue has to do with demand and not supply.

What? Does that make any fucking sense at all?

“We recognize that the structural problems, including excess capacity in some industries, exacerbated by a weak global economic recovery and depressed market demand, have caused a negative impact on trade and workers,” G-20 leaders will say, according to the communique. “We recognize that excess capacity in steel and other industries is a global issue which requires collective responses.”

China has said the steel issue is one of demand rather than supply. Cutting overcapacity requires global action, China Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao said Friday at a briefing in Hangzhou. Fewer accusations and more cooperation on the matter would benefit the global economy, Zhu said, adding China had been first among the major economies to take action in reducing overcapacity.

“There are concerns on specific issues like steel production, which today is excessive,” said Brazil’s Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles. “That will be a theme,” he said in reference to discussions at the G-20 summit.

The global flood of Chinese steel is stoking trade tensionswith nations from India to Europe, and U.S. lawmakers have asked President Barack Obama to raise the issue with his hosts at the G-20. President Xi Jinping has ordered as much as 150 million metric tons, or about 13 percent, of annual capacity to shut by 2020 as part of the Communist Party’s plans to address industrial overcapacity amid slowing demand for basic materials. China makes about half of the world’s steel.

Earlier this year, a group of 25 nations, including the U.S., said they were unable to persuade China to take greater accountability for the overcapacity in steel production. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for U.S. president, vowed that if he is elected, his administration would ensure “American steel for American infrastructure” in a June speech outside of Pittsburgh.

The draft communique warns that financial market volatility is a downside risk to growth, and says G-20 members will use all tools available to boost their economies. Monetary policy alone cannot spur balanced growth, the statement says, another nod to the potential need for greater fiscal action on the part of governments.

“We reaffirm our previous exchange rate commitments, including that we will refrain from competitive devaluations and we will not target our exchange rates for competitive purposes,” according to the draft.

This year could be the lowest growth year since the global financial crisis, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde separately told business leaders earlier Saturday at a panel in Hangzhou.

“So while the recovery’s under way, it’s not moving very fast, and it’s only moving because of one critical tool being used by central banks and that is monetary policy,” she said. “Growth in 2016 and possibly in 2017 is yet again going to be a year of growth below 3.5 percent. Way below that.”

Okay, the ‘recovery’ has been underway since 2009. Are these people fucking nuts? I love how they keep making excuses for their failed policies by saying ‘the recovery is under way.’ The world wants less steel from China. The Chinese leaders want an OPEC like structure to control and rig the fucking markets.

As you were.

Most people I know are outraged over the EU fining Apple for back taxes. But there’s another side to the story, one that involves insidiously fucked up global titans who slosh money around from country to country, never repatriating back to their home country, all in an effort to avoid paying any taxes. While the EU decision was stupid and punitive, the action by Apple to keep over $200 billion overseas in order to AVOID paying U.S. taxes is equally stupid and also absurd.

The Chancellor of Austria unleashed a tirade against a handful of American companies, who are profiting handsomely in his country, tax free.

Multinationals like coffee chain Starbucks (SBUX.O) and online retailer Amazon (AMZN.O) pay less tax in Austria than one of the country’s tiny sausage stands, the republic’s center-left chancellor lamented in an interview published on Friday.

Chancellor Christian Kern, head of the Social Democrats and of the centrist coalition government, also criticized internet giants Google (GOOGL.O) and Facebook (FB.O), saying that if they paid more tax subsidies for print media could increase.

“Every Viennese cafe, every sausage stand pays more tax in Austria than a multinational corporation,” Kern was quoted as saying in an interview with newspaper Der Standard, invoking two potent symbols of the Austrian capital’s food culture.

“That goes for Starbucks, Amazon and other companies,” he said, praising the European Commission’s ruling this week that Apple (AAPL.O) should pay up to 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) in taxes plus interest to Ireland because a special scheme to route profits through that country was illegal state aid.

Kern criticized EU states with low-tax regimes that have lured multinationals – and come under scrutiny from Brussels.

“What Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg or Malta are doing here lacks solidarity towards the rest of the European economy,” he said.

He stopped short of saying that Facebook and Google would have to pay more tax but underlined their significant sales in Austria, which he estimated at more than 100 million euros each, and their relatively small numbers of employees – a “good dozen” for Google and “allegedly even fewer” for Facebook.

“They massively suck up the advertising volume that comes out of the economy but pay neither corporation tax nor advertising duty in Austria,” said Kern, who became chancellor in May.