Submitted by Pepe Escobar, Op-ed via SputnikNews.com,
The World Economic Forum in Davos is submerged by a tsunami of denials, and even non-denial denials, stating there won’t be a follow-up to the Crash of 2008.
Yet there will be. And the stage is already set for it.
There’s a reason why none of us at TAC will endorse a candidate or tell you not to vote for a candidate, even though most of us have opinions about that. That reason is that we are a publication of a 501(c)3 non-profit institution, and we can’t do that without endangering our status. We can talk about candidates and causes, but we have to be careful about endorsing any of them, or appearing to do so.
As we head into the Iowa caucus, Americans are getting serious about the 2016 race for the White House.
After an extremely painful series of debates that pitted a dizzying array of GOP candidates against one another in a kind of soapbox free-for-all, the Republican field has for all intents and purposes been narrowed to two candidates: Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.
The Texas recession is only in its early innings, but we were pleasantly surprised to learn, courtesy of a reader, that it may not be as severe as some expect thanks to good samaritans such Houston-based Gramercy Cleaners on Richmond avenue whose compassion with the imploding energy sector is manifesting itself in service discounts.
When the shale crisis spills over to the banking sector, will we see New York cleaners likewise discounting services to laid off investment bankers? Somehow we doubt it.
Via Scotiabank's Guy Haselmann,
Markets need to retreat from dependency on central bank stimulus which they falsely believe provides the magical elixir that fixes all economic and financial market woes.
At some point during the past few years, central bank stimulus has gone from a net benefit to a source of financial market ailments. Investors who have rightly arrived at this conclusion have shifted from dip buyers in risk assets to sellers of up-ticks (see January 6th note ‘Down Side Up’).