While the big news last week was that Italy's third largest bank, Monte Paschi, had been nationalized after JPM destroyed the bank's chances of securing a private-sector rescue, and that Italy would issue up to €20 billion in public debt to fund the bailout of this, and other insolvent Italian banks, it appears there may be more moving parts to the story.
Submitted by Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk via Bawerk.net,
In our latest Toward a New World Order, Part III we ended by promising to look closer at investment implications from the political and economic shift we currently find ourselves in; and that story must begin with the dollar. While known to the investing public for years, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) recently acknowledge that the real risk-off / risk-on metric in global markets is the dollar and nothing else.
Submitted by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,
The U.S. is beginning to wind down one of the core energy security policies of the past half century as the boom in domestic drilling eases concerns about supply.
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The big theme for 2017 will be Cash… not a pro-deflationary “time to own cash” theme… but a “let’s ban it as quickly as possible” theme.
Let’s review.
In 2016:
1) Former Secretary of the Treasury, Larry Summers, called for the US to do away with the $100 bill.
2) Former Chief Economist for the IMF, Ken Rogoff, published his book The Curse of Cash.
3) The New York Times and Financial Times publicly endorse a ban on cash.
One year ago, the airplane market was spooked by reports of "market tests" for Boeing 777 plane prices, when according to the CEO of Delta the company had acquired a used 777s for a paltry $8 million, a 97% discount from new Boeing 777-ER prices!
Prior to this report, in October, Delta CEO Dennis Muilenburg raised more eyebrows when he said there was a “huge bubble” in used widebody aircraft, and that as a result the market was “ripe” for Delta to buy used 777s, as he subsequently did for an unprecedented 97% price reduction.