Business

From Gary Evans of Global Macro Monitor

Politico out with a piece tonight citing souces that National Economic Council Director and Goldman alum, Gary Cohn, is the leading contender to replace Janet Yellen next January. Interesting timing as it comes on the eve of Janet Yellen’s two-day semi-annual testimony before Congress.

We have heard rumors, but our priors were that Trump would pick a more rules-based chairmain, such as John Taylor of Stanford. Kind of surprising, but most presidents prefer easy money policies.

Two-and-a-half years after the collapse of Mt. Gox ushered in a multi-year bear market in the world of digital currencies, the trial of former Gox chief executive officer Mark Karpeles began Tuesday in Tokyo.  Karpeles pleaded “not guilty” to charges of embezzlement and fraud stemming from the collapse of what was once the world’s most-active platform for buying and selling digital currencies. Some 850,000 bitcoins - then worth around half a billion U.S.

Authored by David Stockman via The Daily Reckoning,

The overwhelming source of what ails America economically is found in the Eccles Building. During the past three decades the Federal Reserve has fostered destructive financial mutations on Wall Street and Main Street.

Bubble Finance policies have fueled an egregious financial engineering by the C-suites of corporate America. This bubble has skyrocketed to the tune of $15 trillion of stock buybacks, debt-fueled mergers deals and buyouts of the last decade.

We've spent a lot of time of late discussing the precarious financial positions of states like Illinois, Connecticut and New Jersey which each suffer from their own myriad of financial threats including massive budget deficits, monstrous unfunded pension liabilities, pending debt downgrades, etc.  In case you've missed those notes, here is a recap for your amusement:

One week ago, Illinois passed its three year-overdue budget in hopes of avoiding a downgrade to junk status, however in an unexpected twist, Moody's said that it may still downgrade the near-insolvent state, regardless of the so-called budget "deal." In fact, a downgrade of Illinois may come at any moment, making it the first U.S. state whose bond ratings tip into junk, although as of yesterday, credit rating agencies said they were still reviewing the state's newly enacted budget and tax package.