Business

Until yesterday, Peer2Peer leader LendingClub was the darling of the sellside industry, with 12 buys, 7 holds and just 2 sells.

And as is usual on Wall Street, what a different 1 day makes because just hours after a major internal scandal was revealed that saw the CEO getting kicked out, and potentially implicating none other than LC board member John Mack, this morning it has been a relentless barage of negative notes from all those who until recently loved the stock.

Some examples, first from CRT which just cut LC to sell with a $5 price target...

Remember how the Fed claimed it was embarking on a tightening cycle?

Well, the Fed failed to hike interest rates in January, March AND April despite the “data” hitting levels at which the Fed said it would hike. There is now talk of a potential hike in June… but the Fed futures indicate less than half of traders expect another hike before February 2017.

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

Donald Trump says a lot of whacko things, and his recent wild pitches about defaulting on the national debt and replacing Yellen because she is not a Republican sound as if they were coming right out of his wild man wheelhouse. Certainly these statements have gotten mainstream financial journalists and editorial writers in high dudgeon.

Said the NYT editorial page about Trump’s observation that if things got bad enough he’d seek to negotiate “discounts” on Uncle Sam’s towering debt,

Exactly one week ago, when looking at the record 14 consecutive weeks of selling by the "smart money" clients of BofA, i.e., hedge funds, institutions and private clients, we said that "maybe next week, which would mark a historic 15 weeks of consecutive smart money outflows, is when the tide finally turns, assuming the market slides here. Or perhaps, due to accelerating redemptions, it won't, and the ongoing selling deluge will continue indefinitely. Find out one week from now."

Overnight BofA revealed the answer, and as it turns out, it was the latter:

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

The promises made when there were 7 workers for every retiree cannot be kept when there are only 2 workers for every retiree.

In an auto-mechanic analogy, the Powers That be are assuring us those grinding noises under the hood and the black smoke chugging out of the tailpipe are no big deal and can be fixed with a minor tuneup. They're wrong; we need a total overhaul to avoid a total system breakdown.