Via ChicagoStockTrading.com,
In December’s article “The Yellen that Stole Christmas”, the point was to show how buyers in the SP500 were caught above 2040, and needed a Yellen rescue. The market attempted to breakout to start December, however the rug was pulled from underneath as Yellen reiterated a rate cut later in the month. After bluffing the market for 2 years on this rate cut, the call fell on many deaf ears.
It appears by the total lack of coverage that the utter collapse of Europe's banking system is entirely irrelevant to the "fortress-like" balance sheets of US banks... but it is not. Once again today, US financials saw bonds dumped across the senior and subordinated segments...
...and while US financial stocks have fallen hard year-to-date, if credit is right - and it usually is on a cyclical basis - US bank stocks have a long way to go (as believe in book values is battered).
A Nobel prize winning economist, former chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank, and chairman of the President’s council of economic advisers (Joseph Stiglitz) says that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank loan money to third world countries as a way to force them to open up their markets and resources for looting by the West.
Do central banks do something similar?
One week before the BOJ shocked the world by adopting negative interest rates and unleashed the next leg lower in global risk assets, it warned everyone "please not to worry, all is under control"
Moments ago at least Yellen had the courtesy of "warning" market participants in general, and banks and savers in particular that legal, logistical or monetary concerns aside, the Fed is already evaluating the possibility of negative rates.
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
The key take-away: focus on owning income-producing assets, not a primary residence.
One truism of investing is to follow the lead of those who are building wealth. This chart reveals the foundation of the wealth of the top 1% and the next 9%; business equity, i.e. ownership of enterprises. Compare the assets boxed in red: