Business

Just hours after Equifax CEO Rick Smith wrapped up his testimony before the House Energy and Commerce committee – the first in a series of Congressional “fact-finding missions” about the hack - Politico reported that the IRS last week awarded the disgraced credit monitoring bureau with a $7.25 no-bid contract even as the company struggled to address suspicions that it mislead investors and customers by withholding information about one of the most damaging data breaches in US history.

Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist,

The current front-runner for the next Fed Chair is Kevin Warsh. He seems to have all the prerequisites that Trump idolizes. He’s connected. He’s not an academic. He has conservative leanings.

But most important, he’s rich. I mean really rich.

You see, Kevin married the granddaughter of the founder of the Estee Lauder company.

There was a brief period of sober rationality during the current central bank-facilitated, market reflation phase, when Private Equity shops decided they had no desire to chase artificially inflated valuations, especially since their currency - cash - did not benefit in the same was a strategic acquirors did, whose own stock had increased alongside that of the target company.

Originally published The Birch Gold Group, via Alt-Market.com,

As stocks continue to climb and the U.S. economy sustains its third longest period of expansion in history, market forecasters are seeking clues for when our next crisis may strike. So far, three uncommon signals have them worried.

Here’s an explanation of the three uncommon signs causing alarm, and what they mean for your savings…

Sign #1: Resurgence of Synthetic CDOs

While the world desperately tries to shrug off the implications of Catalonia's independence vote (and Rajoy's warnings of potential reactions), investors are rapidly exiting positions in Spanish stocks and bonds...

IBEX (the main Spanish stock index) just plunged to its lowest level since March (as European stocks - Stoxx 600 - hits a 4-mointh high)...

And Spanish sovereign bonds are getting clobbered...