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After reporting last month that Wells Fargo’s foreign-exchange unit was being investigated by regulators and that the bank had fired four employees – and demoted another – after discovering certain unspecified improprieties in its FX shop, more details about the exact nature of the bank’s latest scandal – which follows revelations that the bank’s retail division created millions of fake customer accounts, and its auto lending unit overcharged borrows – have finally been unearthed by the Wall Street Journal.

Authored by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

We have previously noted the massive market cap inflation and then stupendous collapse of the Delirious Dozen of 2000.

The latter included Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, Intel, GE, Yahoo, AIG and Juniper Networks - plus four others which didn't survive (Lucent, WorldCom, Global Crossing and Nortel).

Yesterday we laid out the reasons why French bank SocGen unveiled a surprisingly contrarian forecast, according to which the S&P would tumble from its current level over 2,600 to 2,000 in 2018, representing a more than 20% bear market drop...

... the drop catalyzed by rising interest rates pressuring P/E multiples, a late cycle economy nearing recession, equities trading at record valuations, and with everyone short vol begging for a vol short squeeze. Not surprisingly, SocGen's unspoken advice was to get out now.

Zhou Xiaochuan’s long reign as PBoC Governor is drawing to a close. He signaled his impending retirement last month and will be seventy years old In January 2018. Zhou has headed up China’s central bank from the early days of China’s “growth miracle” in 2002 and successfully – thanks to massive credit creation - steered China’s economy through the 2008 crisis.

Since then, he’s kept China’s horrendous credit bubble on the rails, while warning of the risk of a “Minsky moment” at the recent Party Congress.

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

To paraphrase one of the great gems of Wall Street wisdom, “Nothing infuriates a man more than the sight of other people making money.”

That’s a pretty good description of what happens during the late stage of a stock market bubble.

The bubble participants are making money (at least on a mark-to-market basis) every day.