A prolonged bull market across stocks, bonds and credit has left a measure of average valuation at the highest since 1900, a condition that at some point is going to translate into pain for investors, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
“It has seldom been the case that equities, bonds and credit have been similarly expensive at the same time, only in the Roaring ’20s and the Golden ’50s,” Goldman Sachs International strategists including Christian Mueller-Glissman wrote in a note this week. “All good things must come to an end” and “there will be a bear market, eventually” they said.
As central banks cut back their quantitative easing, pushing up the premiums investors demand to hold longer-dated bonds, returns are “likely to be lower across assets” over the medium term, the analysts said. A second, less likely, scenario would involve “fast pain.” Stock and bond valuations would both get hit, with the mix depending on whether the trigger involved a negative growth shock, or a growth shock alongside an inflation pick-up.
Interesting. Couldn’t happen to a finer country nor a thuggier thug.
HARARE (Reuters) – Zimbabwe’s ruling party accused the head of the armed forces of treason on Tuesday as troops took up positions around the capital in an escalation of a dispute with 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe over political succession.
Just 24 hours after military chief General Constantino Chiwenga threatened to intervene to end a purge in the ruling party, a Reuters reporter saw six armored personnel carriers on major thoroughfares on the outskirts of the capital.
Aggressive soldiers directing traffic told passing cars to keep moving through the darkness.
“Don’t try anything funny. Just go,” one soldier said on Harare Drive.
The presence of troops, including the movement of at least six armored personnel carriers from a barracks northwest of Harare, sparked rumors of coup against Mugabe, although there was no evidence to suggest Zimbabwe’s leader of the last 37 years had been toppled.
The lead item on the ZBC state broadcaster’s evening news bulletin was an anti-military rally by the youth wing of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party.
The Southern African nation has been on edge since Monday when Chiwenga, Commander of Zimbabwe Defence Forces, said he was prepared to “step in” to end a purge of supporters of a sacked vice president.
The unprecedented statement represents an escalation of a rumbling political struggle over who will succeed Mugabe, who has been in power since the country gained independence from Britain in 1980.
Those things run on diesel. Who knew they had any left? REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo.
I know some (mostly idiot coastal academics) hold modern Rhodesia Zimbabwe and Mugabe in high esteem for Mugabe’s agricultural “reforms,” tolerant, open, and honest governance, and economic stabilization. I simply detest the senile bastard and weep for what the people lost (or gave away … took … whatever).
A week or so back I had drafted a comedy piece of sorts about Mugabe, based on his recent handling of a certain American college student (whose professors probably adore the warlord in chief). It needs a little tweaking but it’s pretty good. Coming soon! Yes, and if this rumor turns out true, I could perhaps append a very happy ending – maybe with a picture of Mugabe on a pike or the gallows or something.
We need car control and truck control – common sense vehicular controls.
Whether it’s the confused elderly, pizza-slicing soccer moms, “refugees,” terrorists, or the ordinary everyday insane, this motoring madness has gone far enough.
A driver ‘suffering from acute schizophrenia’ ploughed into a group of Chinese students leaving a college in the suburb of Blagnac, near Toulouse, on Friday.
Three people were injured, two gravely, in the smash at the exit of Saint-Exupéry high school, in south-west France, before being taken to the nearby Purpan Hospital.
The driver, 28, who deliberately committed the attack, is known to police but was not on a security watch list. While being arrested he admitted to hearing voices telling him to hurt someone.
A driver ‘suffering from acute schizophrenia’ ploughed into a group of Chinese students leaving a college in the suburb of Blagnac, near Toulouse, on Friday
The three victims are Chinese students – a 22-year-old man and two 23-year-old women.
This college campus comprises of several postgraduate courses including journalism, computer science, real estate and business.
The unnamed driver has been arrested following the incident.
Local media report the man is known to suffer from a psychiatric disorder.
Times have changed. The ultra-powerful, modern, assault-style cars and trucks of today barely resemble the simple, single-shot, muzzle-loading cars of yesteryear (yet all are really but another evil invention of white male privilege). If that parenthetical thought isn’t enough to warrant a full ban, I don’t know what is.
Assault-style Truck with Chainsaw Bayonet Hood Ornament. End the madness!
One cannot use a car to hunt. Sportsmen (and Sportswomen, Sportspersons, and Sportszirs) do not need cars. You are far more likely to run over yourself with your own car than to be run over by someone else’s. Criminals frequently use “innocent” people’s cars against them. Car show loopholes allow anyone, even terrorists, cripples, and the schizophrenic, to drive our streets with little more than a small operators “license.”
Face the truth: only the police, the military, other government agents, and the ultra-connected, wealthy, right-thinking, and jet set elite need automobiles. You? You’re just not good enough.
This school attack in France, and the 40 gazillion like it, each year, in America, Europe, and elsewhere, proves we need sensible car control to save our children, ourselves, our planet, maybe even our whales.
The blood is on the cash-soaked hands of the AAA, literally bribing Congress this very minute for more lethal death machines on our highways – all for their own selfish profits…
Write, email, or call your local political critters and fish wrapper opinion editors. Tell them enough is enough. The reign of automotive terror must end. Our children deserve better. No child should have to walk to school under a hail of hub caps or spark plugs.
Scream helplessly at the sky!
*This message brought to you by Citizens Against Car Violence, a division of Gun Control, Inc., in conjunction with the Southern Communism Bullshit Center.
The three richest people in the US – Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett – own as much wealth as the bottom half of the US population, or 160 million people.
Analysis of the wealth of America’s richest people found that Gates, Bezos and Buffett were sitting on a combined $248.5bn (£190bn) fortune. The Institute for Policy Studies said the growing gap between rich and poor had created a “moral crisis”.
In a report, the Billionaire Bonanza, the thinktank said Donald Trump’s tax change proposals would “exacerbate existing wealth disparities” as 80% of tax benefits would end up going to the wealthiest 1% of households.
“Wealth inequality is on the rise,” said Chuck Collins, an economist and co-author of the report. “Now is the time for actions that reduce inequality, not tax cuts for the very wealthy.”
The study found that the billionaires included in Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 richest people in the US were worth a combined $2.68tn – more than the gross domestic product (GDP) of the UK.
“Our wealthiest 400 now have more wealth combined than the bottom 64% of the US population, an estimated 80m households or 204 million people,” the report says. “That’s more people than the population of Canada and Mexico combined.”
The report says the “billionaire class” continues to “pull apart from the rest of us” at the fastest rate ever recorded. “We have not witnessed such extreme levels of concentrated wealth and power since the first gilded age a century ago.”
David McNew/Getty/The Guardian.
This isn’t a piece on class envy – at least not mine is not. Who knows what the trained squirrels at the Guardian were up to. If this money were earned honestly, then there would be no problem, regardless of any “inequality”, real or fancied.
Some, many of whom are hoarse from howling at the moon last night, might propose to seize all of this wealth and redistribute it. Unlike Scrooge McDuck, these three real characters do not have $250 Billion in gold coins and cash in the basement of some mega mansion. It’s (almost all of it) invested in their companies and earning more money while created goods, jobs, and services. It’s not liquid. Taking it would collapse a sizable portion of the economy. Killing the goose … all for $1,500 per poorer half class member. Once…
Stick to the helpless screaming, SJWs.
The rest of you know I am (mostly) concerned with the truth. So, what is the truth behind Gates, Bezos, and Buffett?
Bill Gates became filthy rich by selling software. My perspective dictates the products are second-rate at best, a bill of goods bought from a high-class carny. Yet they remain extremely popular. The people get what they think they want. Gates gets richer. Okay.
Bezos runs Amazon. Some say this business is a modern monopoly, responsible for killing all the bookstores of the world. I have a vested interest here. Periodically Amazon sends me money for book sales. The checks are small but they do come. Thus, in my view, Saint Bezos and his beautiful creation can do no wrong. I wish them success as this directly benefits me. If you don’t like that, then you probably don’t read and, therefore, don’t really have a dog in the fight. Bugger off.
Buffett is held forth as the ultimate investor. Making and creating Billion$ while humbly living in the same small house for 50 years, the paragon of Wall Street virtue. That’s part of the truth.
The other part involves his direct manipulation of the economy. Watch the following video for a funny analysis of how this works (a cartoon, no less – for the people!):
Malekanoms/YouTube.
First, for the ardent pendatrists, consider the cloud cover in the cartoon. How is that consistent with the digital trees??? What say your television shows?
Now. If you happen to consider the substance, then know this: what Buffet and a few others do is not technically illegal. It should be as should be the whole central banking scheme. However, since we’re past the days of the law, why not make money (take money) from the existing corrupt system?
That’s where the problem lies. And howling at the moon, beating the bongos, and voting will not fix it.
The Pentagon separately disclosed that it had failed to furnish information about the gunman’s criminal record from his U.S. Air Force service to a national database that should have prevented him from legally purchasing the firearms he bought.
Failed. Should have. Legally. Tell me more about your government.
Now, Mr. Willeford:
Stephen Willeford is the man who shot and chased the Texas gunman who killed 26 people in a Texas Baptist church on Sunday. Mr. Willeford shares the story of what took place during an interview with 40/29 News in Texas. Mr. Willeford tells what happened in one of the most riveting accounts ever. I have […]
This must be just like bankin’ in paradise And I don’t send the taxes home.
-My apologies to David Lee Roth…
The second largest data leak in history, the Paradise Papers, shows how the truly wealthy avoid paying taxes.
The world’s biggest businesses, heads of state and global figures in politics, entertainment and sport who have sheltered their wealth in secretive tax havens are being revealed this week in a major new investigation into Britain’s offshore empires.
The details come from a leak of 13.4m files that expose the global environments in which tax abuses can thrive – and the complex and seemingly artificial ways the wealthiest corporations can legally protect their wealth.
The material, which has come from two offshore service providers and the company registries of 19 tax havens, was obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with partners including the Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times.
The project has been called the Paradise Papers. It reveals:
Millions of pounds from the Queen’s private estate has been invested in a Cayman Islands fund – and some of her money went to a retailer accused of exploiting poor families and vulnerable people.
Extensive offshore dealings by Donald Trump’s cabinet members, advisers and donors, including substantial payments from a firm co-owned by Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law to the shipping group of the US commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross.
How Twitter and Facebook received hundreds of millions of dollars in investments that can be traced back to Russian state financial institutions.
The tax-avoiding Cayman Islands trust managed by the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s chief moneyman.
A previously unknown $450m offshore trust that has sheltered the wealth of Lord Ashcroft.
They reveal how Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its controversial Irish tax practices by actively shopping around for a tax haven.
It then moved the firm holding most of its untaxed offshore cash, now $252bn, to the Channel Island of Jersey.
Apple said the new structure had not lowered its taxes.
It said it remained the world’s largest taxpayer, paying about $35bn (£26bn) in corporation tax over the past three years, that it had followed the law and its changes “did not reduce our tax payments in any country”.
One assumes that these elites and giant organizations earned the money, most of it. It’s theirs. Wanting to keep as much as possible is understandable: 1) it’s theirs, and 2) they can use the money to grow the economy. Otherwise, if taxed, the money gets spent on subsidies to ag. companies, bombing brown people, and compensating bankers for the most important kind of nothing.
The hypocrisy (and shock) comes in when one realizes these are usually the same types that rig the system for their own benefit, leaving the rest of us to pay the bills. And our paying isn’t enough. They lecture us. Regulate us. Rule us.
Carlin, Carlin, Carlin, Carlin: “It’s a Big Club. And You ain’t in it! You and I are not in the Big Club.”
I foresee this changing little, if anything. Heck, forget I brought it up. And God help whoever brought this to light. The last such intrepid reporter was car-bombed.
Devin Patrick Kelley is said to be the POS who murdered 26 people at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, TX. Rumors circulate he was an Antifa sympathizer. It could be that, with the time change and all, he was mixed up about protests on November 4th. A day late and 2-3 SD short?
Friendly atheists, psychics, and CNN… Facebook.
Also, as seems to be the new normal with these new normal stories, the official narrative has changed several times already. First he was neutralized by police, impliedly on-scene. Then he was stopped by police after a short car chase. Now we know, as in a million other cases each year, he was stopped by an armed citizen.
Today’s mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, was only halted after an armed Texan “engaged” the killer and put an end to the rampage, the Texas Rangers reported.
Freeman Martin, a major in the Texas Rangers and a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, says the suspect dropped his rifle and fled after being confronted by a local man who had grabbed his rifle.
Freeman provided a timeline of the tragedy in a press briefing Sunday evening.
“At approximately 11:20 this morning a suspect was seen at a Valero gas station in Sutherland Springs, Texas,” Martin said. “He was dressed in all black. That suspect crossed the street to the church, exited his vehicle and began firing at the church.”
“That suspect then moved to the right side of the church and then continued to fire,” he continued. “That suspect entered the church and continued to fire. As he exited the church, a local resident grabbed his rifle and engaged that suspect. The suspect dropped his rifle, which was a Ruger AR assault-type rifle and fled from the church.”
“Our local citizen pursued the suspect at that time,” Freeman went on. “A short time later as law enforcement responded that suspect right at the Wilson/Guadalupe County line crashed out and was found deceased in his vehicle. At this time we don’t know if it was a self-inflicted gunshot wound or if he was shot by the local resident. We know he’s deceased in the vehicle. “
Let’s hear it for that local citizen! (You probably won’t from CNN). This episode had the same ending as the last mass church shooting. Funny how the MSM kind of dropped that story. Carry! Carry! Carry! Carry!
Story still developing. The same communists who said nothing about truck control last Tuesday call for more gun control today. If the Antifa angle is substantiated, look for this one to go down the Nashville-LV hole.
God Bless and heal the afflicted and the survivors. God Bless that local citizen. And God Bless Texas.
Drudge.
Update: It was two hero locals – two “rednecks,” a truck, and a rifle saved the day. Put that in your gun control bath salts and smoke it.
It is being reported that multiple people have been killed after a gunman opened fire in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, at approximately 11:15am (local time). According to media reports, a single shooter walked into the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs and opened fire, Wilson County Commissioner Albert Gamez Jr. told NBC News. […]
Imagine you’d just sunk $2.5 Million for a luxury condo – only to discover its in the leaning tower of San Francisco. Literally leaning over and sinking into the ground.
As the cracks in its basement walls slowly widen, a visual clue to the slow sinking of the 645-ft. skyscraper, the residents of Millennium Tower file lawsuits and wonder how far their homes – and their investments in those homes — will sink. Jon Wertheim went to San Francisco to report on the building that’s become the most infamous in the city’s skyline for a 60 Minutes story to be broadcast Sunday, Nov. 5 at 7:30 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. PT.
millennium.jpg
Since its foundation was poured in 2006, the Millennium has sunk 17 inches and tilted 14 inches to the northwest. The posh residence was once touted as the best in the city and its units commanded millions from the likes of tech titans and the city’s former pro quarterback, Joe Montana. Pat and Jerry Dodson were enthusiastic buyers. They tell Wertheim they were euphoric over their new home until the news broke about the sinking. Jerry, a lawyer and engineer, now makes a daily trip to the basement to check on the spread of cracks in the walls. “There’s enough of them, a spider web of cracks… that you have to be concerned about what’s going on underneath…I’ve been told by structural and geotechnical engineers that I should be watching.”
The trouble at the Millennium Tower has spawned numerous lawsuits — to which there are some 20 parties so far. But some residents have already sold their units. “We don’t know if this building’s going to stand up in an earthquake,” says Frank Jernigan. “And so I became severely frightened of that.” His husband, Andrew Faulk, adds, “And we got out. We left really most all of our belongings. We just left,” he tells Wertheim. They say they lost between 3 and 4 million dollars when they sold their apartment earlier this year. “We sold it for approximately half of what it was valued at before this news came to light,” says Jernigan.
Millennium Tower was built to code, but some engineers now say that because the building is made of concrete and heavier than a steel building, its foundation should have been driven deeper, all the way to bedrock, to prevent sinking. An interesting array of suggestions about how to fix the tower have been floated around town; they include freezing the ground beneath in perpetuity or lopping off the top 20 floors to decrease its weight. More likely, say engineers, the foundation will have to be strengthened by new piles that reach down to bedrock.
CBS News.
Who would have ever thought of supporting a 58-story, heavy concrete building on bedrock?? Built to code after all – with city hall’s blessing.
Sure, it can be fixed – at a cost. Will it be? Will they let it settle or collapse? Tear it down? Could this be the new math at work? The new IQ?
If you’re looking for a home by the Bay, I’d keep looking.
PERRIN LOVETT 
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