Business

The writing for John Burbank's Passport Capital was on the wall back in August, when as we reported, in his latest letter to investors Burbank reported that at what was once a multi-billion fund, total firm assets at Passport had shrunk to just $900 million as of June 30 as a result of net outflows totaling a whopping $565 million, or a nearly 40% loss of AUM due to redemptions. The collapse in assets took place just a few months after Passport announced it was liquidating its long/short strategy in April.

First, the facts:

At Powell's Nov 28th 2017 testimony to Congress, Powell said that as the Fed allows its 4 trillion dollar balance sheet to wind down, the US Treasury would issue new bonds to the market to replace them (so, technically, US notional debt will neither increase nor decrease as a result of QE).

Yesterday, we highlighted a one-page report prepared by the Treasury Department which claimed that – in what was perhaps one of the most unrealistically optimistic budget projections to ever be produced by the US government agency - the Senate’s version of the Republican tax plan would, somehow, bolster GDP to a 2.9% real growth rate over 10 years.

Isn’t the Whole Idea to Buy Low and Sell High?

Authored by Adam Baratta

When it comes to the gold market, perhaps the old saying should be changed to “buy low and sell high-if ever.” That is likely the mentality behind gold investors at this point, as the yellow metal remains stuck in a trading range.

Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,

But savers are still getting shafted.

Outstanding “revolving credit” owed by consumers – such as bank-issued and private-label credit cards – jumped 6.1% year-over-year to $977 billion in the third quarter, according to the Fed’s Board of Governors. When the holiday shopping season is over, it will exceed $1 trillion. At the same time, the Fed has set out to make this type of debt a lot more expensive.