Business

We've frequently argued that public pension funds in the U.S. are nothing more than thinly-veiled ponzi schemes with their ridiculously high return assumptions specifically intended to artificially minimize the present value of future retiree payment obligations and thus also minimize required annual contributions from taxpayers...all while actual, if immediately intangible, underfunded liabilities continue to surge. 

Documents released yesterday in a lawsuit against Monsanto have resulted in new questions about the company’s efforts to influence the news media and scientific research and revealed internal debate over the safety of its highest-profile product, the weed killer Roundup. 

As the New York Times notes today, new internal emails, among other things, reveal ethical objections from former employees to "ghost writing" research studies that were pawned off as 'independent' analyses.

The Chinese government’s latest crackdown on capital outflows and corporate leverage is intensifying, and that’s bad news for Manhattan’s property market.

According to a report by Morgan Stanley cited by Bloomberg, new restrictions being imposed on the most acquisitive Chinese companies will likely lead to an 84% drop in Chinese overseas property investment this year, and a further 18 percent drop in 2018.

The markets most vulnerable to this slowdown, according to MS, are the US, UK, Hong Kong and Australia, with commercial properties the most vulnerable.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson penned an op-ed in the USA Today warning Republicans that they have about 4 months left to pass tax cuts or suffer the inevitable consequences of massive losses in the 2018 mid-terms that will return control of Congress to Nancy Pelosi.

The specter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is looming.

 

Excerpted from John Hussman's Weekly Market Comment,

For context, John offers a brief history lesson for the goldfish-like memories of Wall-Street-wannabes and head-in-sand home-gamers who have forgotten what it was like in 2000 and 2007...