United States

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s seminal masterpiece Crime and Punishment is often thought of as one of the longest classics at more than 200,000 words.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016, which was signed into law on Friday, is nearly twice as long.

In case you’re not familiar with the background, the author was once quite wealthy.

But through years of reckless, irresponsible behavior, he gambled away his wealth until he was impoverished and unable to pay his creditors.

Submitted by James H Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

As a result of the Fed's balance sheet expanding to $4.5 trillion over the past 7 years, the most direct consequence has been the increase in excess reserves held at various banks to just over $2.5 trillion. This, as we have shown before using the Fed's H.8 data, means that cash held by various commercial banks has risen proportionately, and as shown in the chart below, there has been a direct correlation between the amount of excess reserves in the system (shown by the black line) and bank cash holdings.

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Gold & Silver Prices Will Surge On Fundamentals Not Technical Analysis

Posted with permission and written by Steve St. Angelo, SRSrocco Report (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)

In a weekend of little macro newsflow facilitated by the release of the latest Star Wars sequel, the biggest political and economic event was the Spanish general election which confirmed the end of the PP-PSOE political duopoly at national level, with Rajoy's leading block losing the absolute majority it had enjoyed since the last elections while rewarding the anti-austerity Podemos and the liberal Ciudadanos party, who between them took 109 seats in the 350-member parliament. As a result no clear governing majority emerged.