Business

Crazy, right? Perhaps not. For the first time since the financial crisis credit conditions have tightened for two consecutive quarters, something which have never happened without preceding a recession. That's all well and good, however, most problematic is its extremely tight correlation to nonfarm payrolls through the cycle... and that is flashing the 'reddest' since 2009.

We have seen this pattern of last ditch desperation hiring before - at the peak in 2007...

Submitted by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,

Remember the mass layoffs of 2008-2009? The US economy shed millions of jobs quickly and relentlessly, as companies died and the rest fought for survival.

Just four days ago, on Monday afternoon, "legendary" oilman T Boone Pickens said that crude has hit bottom at $26 per barrel, and predicting that prices should double within 12 months.

Pickens then doubled-down on his wrong call from last year, telling CNBC's "Squawk Box" that oil prices will rise to at least $52 per barrel by the end of the year. That said, he was at least honest enough to admit that his virtually identical call from last year, when he thought prices would strongly rebound, was wrong.

The Washington Post sets the record straight:

Even as Hillary Clinton has stepped up her rhetorical assault on Wall Street, her campaign and allied super PACs have continued to rake in millions from the financial sector, a sign of her deep and lasting relationships with banking and investment titans.

In early December, Ding Ning and his girlfriend Zhang Min were planning to make a run for it.

The couple had come to the end of the road with the massive fraud they were running through P2P lender Ezubo, which bilked some 900,000 people out money making it the largest ponzi scheme by number of victims in history.