Sheriff Candidate Jokes about Killing Defiant Gun Owners to Delight of Bloomberg Moms

“You’ve heard people say ‘You’ll have to pry my guns from my cold dead hands.’ OK.” Buncombe County Sheriff candidate R. Daryl Fisher.

“On Wednesday March 7, 2018, I was asked to address a group in West Asheville and relay information as it pertains to current gun legislation in NC.,” Buncombe County Sheriff candidate R. Daryl Fisher told visitors to his campaign Facebook page. “I took this opportunity to relay proposals on what I believe to be sensible gun legislation.

“A group”?  Why not just come out and say it was Michaels Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action?

“As a candidate for Sheriff, I cannot enact legislation,” Fisher goes on to deflect. “If elected Sheriff I cannot enact legislation. But as a candidate for Sheriff, I can propose what I believe to be sensible gun legislation. It is up to our legislators to determine what becomes law.”

What he’s obscuring is that law enforcement officials can be extremely influential in persuading lawmakers to act, and as sheriff, he would enthusiastically enforce citizen disarmament edicts. That he would take an oath to the Constitution seems not to trouble Fisher, as there are evidently no citizen disarmament laws he would refuse to issue to his subordinates or to obey himself.

He would enthusiastically enforce forbidding citizens old enough to serve in the military or the “unorganized militia” of U.S. Code from purchasing guns. He would ban standard capacity magazines for everyone (except the “Only Ones”), along with any firearm that has “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia [or] is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.”

How far would he go?

“There is one statement that many up to now have taken offense to,” Fisher notes, getting to the reason he felt compelled to post a Facebook clarification. “That statement starts out with language similar to, ‘Don’t believe the scare tactics,’ and I say that some gun enthusiast might say, ‘You will have to pry my gun from my cold dead hands.’

“This is also a movie quote. The crowd laughed and I made a joke. I admit the joke was a mistake and I should not have joked.”

He’s glossing it over. He’s taking heat because his “joke” involved killing gun owners who would not surrender their firearms. What good would the Second Amendment be if we did? See for yourself at @3:00 into the following video:

“What about people that already had weapons? Well, I’m gonna tell you now, don’t buy into the scare tactics, don’t believe the scare tactics, because you’ve heard people say ‘You’ll have to pry my guns from my cold dead hands,’” Fischer admonished.

“OK, he grinned and shrugged to delighted laughter and applause of the Bloomberg Moms.

So don’t believe your lying eyes and ears?

Fisher goes on to trivialize that “joke” by saying taking guns “would be unconstitutional because that would constitute what is called an ex post facto law” and that “responsible gun owners have nothing to worry about.”

What he’s not saying is that edicts could be passed, as they have in California, requiring gun owners to register the firearms he wants to see banned, and anyone who does not comply will be “fair game” for his shrug and “OK.” He also supports other prior restraint edicts that could order guns removed from citizens who have not been convicted of any crime. And face it, any official who would willingly and forcefully violate the Second Amendment is hardly a trustworthy arbiter of what’s Constitutional.

“Being downright rude, making false statements, making half-truths or being utterly disrespectful is unacceptable,” Fisher protests, like he’s the injured party, before urging voters to “properly voice your opinion … on election day.”

They will and whomever they pick will be predictably big on “gun control. ”  Fisher’s one of three Democrat candidates out of a field of seven, Buncombe County “is the only Democratic bastion in western North Carolina” and it went big for both Obama and Hillary.

They’ll be “OK” with a badged gun-grabber.

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If you believe in the mission of Oath Keepers, to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, please make a donation to support our work.  You can donate HERE.

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David Codrea’s opinions are his own. See “Who speaks for Oath Keepers?”

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Reporting on Nevada Gun Measure Lawsuit Perpetuates Key Misrepresentations

It’s fair to wonder if there’s an unstated political motive for a Bloomberg-backing “Second Amendment supporter” and a “gun safety advocate” to go after Adam Laxalt at the same time he’s announced his bid for governor. (Adam Laxalt/Facebook)

“Three Nevada residents are suing Gov. Brian Sandoval and Attorney General Adam Laxalt in Clark County District Court over what they allege is the state’s failure to implement a new law requiring federal background checks on private gun sales,” a Friday report by Andrew Craft of Fox News states. “The lawsuit claims the governor is stonewalling efforts to enforce it.”

So good so far. Fair and balanced as advertised. They report, we decide.

He even does a good job explaining why Nevada has not enforced the law. Nevada Firearms Coalition explained it at the time:

“[T]he recent passage of the Nevada legislation regarding background checks for private sales cannot dictate how federal resources are applied,” Kimberly Del Greco of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division informed the Nevada Department of Public Safety in a Dec. 14 letter, meaning the FBI would not allow intermediaries to run background checks as required by the Act. Based on a resulting department clarification request to Laxalt on how to proceed, the attorney general concluded “citizens may not be prosecuted for their inability to comply with the Act unless and until the FBI changes its public position and agrees to conduct the background checks consistent with the Act.” (See correspondence here, posted by the Reno Gazette Journal.)

OK, so he’s got the fact and the timing right. What’s the problem?

Two that I see right off the bat, and they’re not inconsequential. The go to the heart of how the gun-grabbers identify themselves and how a supposedly objective media helps them perpetuate it:

“Dale Zusi, Vicki Delatorre, and Sydney Gordon are the three plaintiffs in the case and were instrumental in getting the issue on the ballot,” Craft writes. “Delatorre herself is a gun owner and supporter of the Second Amendment.”

No, Delatorre claims she’s a supporter of the Second Amendment, the one that ends in “shall not be infringed.”  She’s actually one of those big “but” pseudo-supporters, as in “I believe in the Second Amendment but...”

And she’s advocating for prior restraints that can’t work without another huge and dangerous infringement. Per Greg Ridgeway, Deputy Director, National Institute of Justice, in his “Summary of Select Firearm Violence Prevention Strategies”:

“Effectiveness depends on the ability to reduce straw purchasing, requiring gun registration…”

Craft’s next bit of narrative parroting: Designating Elizabeth Becker “a local gun safety advocate.”

Some of us would argue the edicts she demands makes things a lot more dangerous, and just ceding to Delatorre or Becker their own characterizations without at least addng qualifiers like “self-professed” gives credence to their side. Because what they’re claiming to be is debatable.

If  “progressive” Bloomberg citizen disarmament apparatchik Becker has any credentials in actual gun safety training, it’s a remarkably well-kept secret. Instead she’s a flack for Moms Demand Action, seeking a way to save face for gun-grabbers who incompetently (and sneakily) crafted their Question 1 ballot initiative,  effectively blowing $20M in Astroturf funding.

It’s fair to wonder if the timing of this is meant as another sneaky way to publicly attack Laxalt’s just-annouced bid for governor.

And despite all the blathering about their citizen disarmament efforts being a “grassroots effort,” my analysis from a few years back showed “Nevadans for Background Checks” to be an Astroturf front group for Bloomberg’s Everytown.

Fox News has an unfair reputation for being “conservative,” presumably because most there (with a few notable exceptions) don’t wear “progressive” sympathies on their sleeves. When its reporters unquestioningly adopt the language of the left they cease being objective chroniclers and make it fair to wonder if it’s really unintentional because they just don’t kow any better.

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If you believe in the mission of Oath Keepers, to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, please make a donation to support our work.  You can donate HERE.

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David Codrea’s opinions are his own. See “Who speaks for Oath Keepers?”

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Newsweek Shows Continued Cluelessness with Call for ‘Action Hero” Gun-Grabbers

And Bill Hader says he knows what to do. It’s just that Newsweek thinks he’s not “action hero” material.

“Hollywood liberals can’t stop the NRA,” Newsweek’s “culture and entertainment reporter”  Emily Gaudette advocates. “We need Taylor Swift, country stars, action heroes.”

Typically, those who write editorials are distinguished from “reporters,” but if truth in labeling were really an issue, the publication would have to change its title to “’Progressive’ Opinionweek.” And if enough Americans valued those opinions, Sidney Harman (the late husband of my former anti-gun Congresswoman Jane) wouldn’t have been able to buy the whole rag for a dollar back in 2010.

What Gaudette is upset about is the lack of anyone “flyover country” Americans will care about featured in the latest Second Amendment hit piece video from Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown. The gaggle of virtue-signaling “celebrities” are reading from an ad agency-produced script urging viewers to text “#RejectTheNRA,” claiming that suppressor reform and concealed carry reciprocity would have somehow made Las Vegas more dangerous (Newsweek had to retract Gaudette’s claim that the Vegas killer used a silencer after enough readers screamed “Fake news!”) . What they’re doing is trying to halt any gun owner gains so that they can get back to the business of “slippery slope” rights evisceration.  Watch:

Is anyone surprised that “Comments are disabled for this video” and that the thumbs up/down counters aren’t working?

The indignant females are joined by a peppering of anti-gun males who, per Gaudette, just don’t satisfy the archetypal expectations of masculinity traditional “Deplorables” hold on to. If you think about it, she just dissed Bill Hader.

And if you think about it some more, she’s also admitting that the whole propaganda effort is based entirely on illusion, and relying on the elitist presumption that people who oppose “progressive” direction are dumb and impressionable enough to not be able to tell the difference between actors and the roles they play.

Does she really think going “country” means that segment of the populace won’t be able to distinguish between, say, Charlie Daniels and the Dixie Chicks? And as for using that as a ploy to appeal to the “Average Joe,” Bloomberg already tried that deception, and the only ones who didn’t see through it were smug urbanites who already agreed with him.

We’ve also had plenty of “action heroes” who have made big names for themselves and millions of dollars starring in shoot ‘em ups reveal themselves to be total frauds when it comes to respecting the rights of the people who pay to see them.

“Until America, door to door, takes every handgun, this is what you’re gonna have,” Sylvester Stallone of “Rambo” fame notoriously said. He’s been joined in citizen disarmament advocacy by a slew of “action heroes” I’ve written about over the years including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Liam Neeson, Matt Damon, Daniel Craig (and a bunch more Bonds), Michael Douglas, Mark Wahlberg and plenty more.

Unlike “progressives” who stoke their own egos pretending they’re more sophisticated than the “red state” Americans they like to call “racist” and “ammosexuals,” most of us know an actor is a professional pretender, and not necessarily the same in prowess, intellect and character as the fictitious persona he assumes for the camera.

That’s not how I determine my heroes.

Movies have been hurting of late, what with the Weinstein scandal, “blockbusters” that tank at the box office, and significantly, from many of us who are unwilling to pay exorbitant prices to enrich people who despise us while putting ourselves at risk in “gun-free” theaters. Calling on more “beloved stars” to publicly advocate for disarmament edicts and further alienate a large segment of the theater-going audience not only won’t work, it will drive even more gun owners away.

And truthfully, that’s fine by me…

What would happen if you texted ACCEPT? For one thing, you’d still be added to their spam list.

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If you believe in the mission of Oath Keepers, to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, please make a donation to support our work.  You can donate HERE.

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David Codrea’s opinions are his own. See “Who speaks for Oath Keepers?”

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'Shocker' Of The Day: 'Tech' Company That Buys Movie Tickets For $10 And Sells Them For $0.33 May Not Survive

Over the past 4 weeks, the stock of a tiny New York based "IT service management" company, Helios & Matheson Analytics, Inc., has surged just over 1,300% after announcing plans to purchase a majority stake of an "innovative and disruptive technology company" called MoviePass at a $210 million valuation.

So how exactly does MoviePass, the "innovative" and "disruptive" tech powerhouse that it is, plan to change the entertainment world forever, you ask?  Well, apparently by paying movie theaters $10 a pop for movie tickets and then re-selling them to their own monthly subscribers for a small 97% discount, or roughly $0.33 each (in the worst case scenario). Per Bloomberg:

The company sells a monthly subscription that gives moviegoers a daily pass to movie theaters for $10 a month - though MoviePass is paying theaters full price for tickets, which can cost $10 apiece or more.

Genius plan, right? 

And while the company planned to supplement its top line with advertising revenue and deals with theater chains to share in concession sales, at least according to Bloomberg, a problem developed when its subscriber base ballooned from nearly nothing to 400,000 in a matter of weeks.  Unfortunately, at least when you"re business model is dependent upon selling your primary product at a 97% loss, the more "successful" you are the more money you lose.

And while the ending of this particular movie seemed obvious from the start, it apparently eluded Helios investors until today when the company announced that the business they just purchased 4 weeks ago may not survive...all of which sent their stock plunging by 40%. 

Helios & Matheson Analytics Inc., the backer of the controversial $10 MoviePass subscription, fell as much as 21 percent after warning the money-losing cinema service may not make it.

Helios boosted its support for MoviePass to $11.5 million from $5 million as part of an August deal to acquire a majority stake, according to a regulatory filing. At the same time, Helios said MoviePass’s auditors are expected to warn of substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.

Who knew that massive cash losses could be considered detrimental for a tech company?

Just to put this problem in perspective, lets apply some math to this case study on how not to run a business.  Lets assume that each of MoviePass"s 400,000 subscribers decide to see 2 movies each week (they"re entitled to one movie pass a day...but lets just assume they only use 2 per week) at a cost of $10...that"s a total cost of $32 million each month.  Now, each of those subscribers are paying $10 per month for their service which means MoviePass is collecting $4 million in revenue and burning $28 million every single month or $336mm per year...and that doesn"t even count their staff and other overhead expenses which we"re sure are considerable.  Does that sound like a business plan that might be of interest to you?

Meanwhile, even AMC, undoubtedly one of the biggest beneficiaries of the bizarre MoviePass business model, said that the company was "unsustainable."

MoviePass sparked an outcry in the movie business after cutting the price of its movie subscription plan to just under $10 from $30. That led to a flood of sign-ups that the company struggled to keep up with. The biggest movie-theater chain in the world, AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., has said the plan is unsustainable -- because MoviePass is paying exhibitors full price for tickets -- and was looking to block the deal.

Sorry guys, only Bezos and Musk are able to sell products at a massive loss, in perpetuity, without investor backlash...

Flatliners - Dead Market Walking

Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com,

In the movie Flatliners aspiring medical doctors tried to unlock the mysteries of death by, well, killing themselves. It was meant to be a controlled death of course, to flat line on the heart rate monitor for a few minutes to find out what wonders where to be found “on the other side” only to then return safe & sound thanks to medical intervention. Well, they soon found out the other side wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be and the main character soon got regular beatings as the sins of his past came back to haunt him.

In my view markets find themselves in a very similar script. The promise of investor nirvana where the pains of real life no longer matter. If you only pay attention to the record highs headlines it all looks rather fantastical these days.

Prices only go up no matter what time frame you look at.

Annually:

Quarterly:

Monthly:

And still central bankers can’t find any evidence of inflation. Funny.

Indeed all risk has been flat-lined in this grand central bank experiment as the following chart of the $VIX shows:

Oh I’m kidding of course, but any trader staring at the tape knows that we find ourselves in the most compressed price environment in history.

This is not normal, there’s no heartbeat:

As I’m writing this I’m fully aware I may be viewed as the bear who cried wolf. After all I’ve been outlining structural risk factors for a while and markets have moved past my technical risk zones of 2450-2500 and most recently 2530. That’s what bubbles do. They blow past anyone’s expectations, they make believers of the unbelievers, make bears look like idiots and the most reckless look like geniuses.

But an extreme market that only becomes more extreme is not any less extreme, it is just more extreme. As no risk is apparent these extremes are then dismissed as the new normal.

Yet momentum driven price appreciation has absolutely zero predictive value of future price appreciation, it only appears as such at the time.

Here’s the $NDX leading up to the 2000 top:

It looked fantastic.

It meant absolutely nothing:

For traders of course the key is how to trade set-ups (I’ll post more on this in the near future, but I’ve talked a bit about it in The Relevance of Technical Charts) and for investors it is a matter of how to take advantage while at the same time know when things change.

At this time I want to document a bit of what I see here in markets and the structural world as I don’t want anyone to be surprised when the flat risk line we currently see brings about those nasty consequences.

Let’s be clear.

We find ourselves in a very unique point in history and in a world dominated by false narratives. It is a challenge to keep an analytical grip on reality, but I’ll try to tie a few threads together here to put everything in a macro context.

Firstly the underlying base reality: Free money, easy money, whatever you want to call it, permeates everything we see in financial markets. Indeed I would argue price appreciation has been paid for with unprecedented and, in my view, unsustainable volatility compression.

A couple of charts really highlight this.

Most clearly perhaps is the precise trend line tagging we can observe in the correlated picture of price appreciation and volatility compression since the February 2016 lows:

The $VIX’s corollary, the inverse $XIV, embarked on an explosive near one way journey since the US election coinciding with over $2 trillion central bank intervention in just the first 9 months of 2017:

And it has continued to this day and just made another all time high this past week on a massive negative divergence. It is the magnitude of this volatility compression that explains the current trading environment we find ourselves in.

Aside from the obvious artificial liquidity avalanche we’ve had speculated about the driver of all this and the answer may simply be the promise of even more free money, specifically tax cuts.

As some of you may recall from my analysis over the past year  I’ve been very clear that math ultimately will bring out truth in any narrative. In this case that notion that tax cuts pay for themselves is a fantasy. It always has been. Can it result in a short term bump in spending or even growth? Yes it is possible, especially if structured right. But any historical analysis will show you that tax cuts, especially already coming from a relatively low base, will just add to debt via larger deficits.

Recently the White House budget director finally acknowledged this very reality:

“a tax plan that doesn’t add to the deficit won’t spur growth”

My criticism has been that all this marketing talk is simply a lie and will structurally put the country further at risk of trillion dollar deficits and a massive debt explosion that is already baked in even without tax cuts.

Indeed the further one digs through the details the bigger the expense of these tax cuts become:

“We have a lot of businesses… I don’t think any of them are non-competitive in the world because of the corporate tax rate,” Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc told CNBC.

Fink said a corporate rate as high as 27 percent could satisfy U.S. businesses’ need for tax relief, while avoiding an increase in the federal deficit.

“What is being proposed is a pretty large expansion of our deficits,” Fink told Bloomberg TV. The plan contains up to $6 trillion in tax cuts, according to independent analysts.”

I bet you if you ran these tax cuts through a budget that accounts for a recession case somewhere in the future this entire budget would be an utter disaster and they could never sell it. And this is why you won’t see a stress tested scenario, all you will see is happy steady 2.9% growth projections in perpetuity. Nonsensical. Unrealistic. And frankly intellectually insulting to anyone that insists on any base line of intellectual veracity to any budget process.

Running the numbers it’s clear who actually benefits:

So I ask, how will any of this change this trend?

The answer is it won’t despite public narratives to the contrary. People will choose to believe what they want, but math is independent of beliefs and the math is very clear on this.

Put this proposal in context of standing trends:

Real disposable personable income growth remains meager at best:

Debt expansion at low rates continues to sustain the illusion of real prosperity for the 90%:

A meager set of rate hikes is already putting pressure on revolving credit obligations and personal interest payments:

Why does all this matter for us here?

Look no further than to the earlier quoted Warren Buffett who may have explained much of the reason we see no sellers in these markets currently:

“Buffett also said he would wait to see how the tax push played out before doing any significant selling of Berkshire Hathaway stock to avoid paying unnecessary taxes on his gains.

“I would feel kind of silly if I realized $1 billion worth of gains and paid $350 million in tax on it if I just waited a few months and would have paid $250 million,” Buffett said.”

I get it, why sell anything if you can save on taxes and while central banks keep pushing markets higher with record liquidity? Steady as she goes after all.

And we have to acknowledge that the combined effect may be here to stay until clarity has emerged. If current legislative efficiency is any indicator then this may drag on for months with perhaps nothing accomplished.

Health care? Still nothing has happened. And let’s be clear: Not a single health care proposal (and there have been multiple efforts) have had anything to do with health care. They have been proposals that would have knocked millions off health care coverage and financially benefitted the 1% in form of tax reversions. That’s the analytical reality.

I don’t know why anyone still believes this administration will implement anything substantive to help the middle class. Previous administrations (both Democrat & Republican) have failed miserably on the wealth inequality front. And this administration looks no different and perhaps only worse. Every proposal looks to disproportionally benefit the top 1% and this latest tax cut proposal is no exception. Every analysis I have seen shows disproportionate benefit going to the wealthy. And how will that stimulate growth for the middle class? Or the bottom 50%?

And don’t think I’m alone bemoaning wealth inequality & associated inbred dynastic economic structure as an increasing drag on society and its future prospects.

Here’s Buffett himself again:

Ironically it is those 400 that would benefit the most by getting rid of the estate tax that is currently proposed as part of the tax cut package.

Bottom-line, it’s all tied together in a package that promises more and more debt.

Central banks do whatever it takes to keep reality at bay:

And hence I’ve called this entire central bank talk of “normalization” a fantasy. They can’t do it, they’re trapped and even the quants at JPM are out in force warning of it:

As central banks begin shrinking their balance sheets, they risk triggering another financial crisis, something that may be sharpened by the shift away from active investing, JPMorgan’s top quant strategist has warned.

“Such outflows (or lack of new inflows) could lead to asset declines and liquidity disruptions, and potentially cause a financial crisis,” said Mr Kolanovic (who, it is worth noting, has issued such warnings before). “The timing will largely be determined by the pace of central bank normalisation, business cycle dynamics and various idiosyncratic events, and hence cannot be known accurately.” Mr Kolanovic pointed out that “this is similar to the 2008 [Great Financial Crisis], when those that accurately predicted the nature of the GFC started doing so around 2006.”

“The shift from active to passive assets, and specifically the decline of active value investors, reduces the ability of the market to prevent and recover from large drawdowns,” Mr Kolanovic said. He added that the move towards passive and momentum strategies, where traders chase market cues as opposed to company fundamentals, has “eliminated a large pool of assets that would be standing ready to buy cheap public securities and backstop a market disruption.”

And this is precisely why we won’t see any real normalization ever again. Or perhaps only after a massive reset in the financial system.

This new administration wants massive tax cuts. This year the military budget was already increased by $80B to $700B. The costs of the recent hurricanes are providing the perfect excuse for running larger deficits and you can already see the narrative creeping in:

“I hate to tell you Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack,” said Trump as he introduced his budget director Mick Mulvaney.

Not the $80B increase in military spending of course.

Look, I can read between lines with the best of them and the message is clear.

Low rates are here to stay and the administration needs low rates to keep it all going and justify tax cuts.

The writing is on the wall, no, actually it is coming to you courtesy Jeffrey Gundlach:

“Bond King” Jeffrey Gundlach has an unusual pick for who President Donald Trump will choose to be the next Federal Reserve chief.

“I actually have a very non-consensus point of view. I think it’s going to be Neel Kashkari,” the the CEO of DoubleLine Capital told the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit on Tuesday in Los Angeles. “He happens to be the most easy money guy that’s in the Federal Reserve system today and that’s why he may win.”

Kashkari is the president of the Minneapolis Fed and happened to say Monday that the central bank is making a mistake by continuing to raise rates, comments Gundlach referenced as helping him possibly get the job.

“I think there is no chance that she wants to be chairwoman, nor do I think the president wants her to be,” said the manager of $109 billion.

Gundlach said that Trump needs someone who will keep rates low in order to keep his populist reputation and help his base voters and that’s why he’ll pick Kashkari.

“A stronger dollar is not good for achieving that agenda,” he said.

And there you have it. We need an easy money guy. Now I don’t know if Kashkari will be it, but it’s pretty clear Yellen is toast and some version of an easy money guy is coming and the Fed’s balance sheet reduction plan may be out the window shortly after February.

But that’s the combined message, massively more debt is coming, normalization is at best a marketing ploy, and easy money will continue to be part of the equation with perhaps more coming in form of tax cuts.

So yes, I get and receive comments about how it’s different this time, how price discovery as we know it may be a thing of the past.

An asset price inflation world, without core inflation, where valuations don’t matter and debt flows continue unabated and consequence free…

…and market caps rise in asymptotic fashion every quarter, month and week:

The end result: The $SPX is now 18.8% above its annual 5 EMA:

As far as I can tell this is the largest, or one of the largest disconnects ever.

And I’ve shown the chart of $MSFT as an individual stock example of how historically extreme the current disconnect is:

$MSFT is now 35% above its annual 5 EMA. There’s been only 1 year prior to 2017 when it did not touch its 5 EMA: 1999. Did it have any predictive value of future price appreciation? Nope.

Speaking of 1999: Greed is back with a vengeance.

It is all around us:

Central bankers have flat lined risk and investors have crossed to the other side expecting nirvana & free money forever.

So far so good it seems. Just remember in Flatliners the allure of nirvana turned into a running nightmare:

What would be signs of nirvana turning into a nightmare?

Keep an eye on this thin red line:

It will get tested again. Currently the trend line is barely 2% below current prices and it is rising steeply.

When price breaks below this line it’s time to return to real life.

After all you do want a heart beat:

Don’t you? I know I do.

Former BIS Chief Economist Warns "More Dangers Now Than In 2007"

Having warned in the past that "the system is dangerously unacnhored," former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements, William White, told Bloomberg TV overnight that the current situation "looks very similar to 2008," adding that OECD sees "more dangers" today than in 2007.

The chairman of Economic and Development Review Committee at OECD, warned that prices are very high - in particular for high yield assets, VIX is very low, house prices are rising strongly, equity markets rising, and all these are a source of concern.

Additionally, White noted:

• India’s debt problems go back a long way, and there are significant governance issues, including at state-owned banks.


• China’s debt situation isn’t a lot different to India’s, but the acceleration of loans and credit growth in China is very fast


• It’s not just the debt level in China that is worrisome, but the speed that it’s accumulating; maybe some of these loans won’t be repaid or serviced.


• We don’t have a liquidity problem that central banks can solve - if we have too much debt, we have a debt resolution or insolvency problem and only governments can address problems like that.


• World needs more fiscal expansion, structural reforms, and also have to look closely at debt write-off some of it and maybe recapitalize financial institutions.


• We have got the mix of income that goes to capital versus labor wrong in many countries, and we need to look at that.


• Central bank tightening is inevitable, but have to be careful.

As White concluded previously,

"it is every man for himself. And we do not know what the long-term consequences of this will be,"

and it appears to be getting worse.

For The First Time In Its History, Subway Shutters Hundreds Of US Stores

For the first time in its 52 years of operation, Subway announced that it contracted in 2016, shuttering 359 US locations which as Bloomberg described was the "biggest retrenchment in the history of the restaurant chain" whose total store count dropped 1.3% from 27,103 in 2015 to 26,744 even as it remained the most ubiquitous fast-food eatery in the US, although McDonalds still tops if by sales.

“Sales for 2016 reflect our focus on international growth,” the Connecticut-based company said in a statement. “We are undertaking an exciting transformation that includes introducing new and improved products, creating an even greater customer experience, refining operations, and positioning Subway franchisees for continued success.”

Confirming that the domestic sales slowdown has continued into 2017, even as the Sub-par chain has been competing with dozens of newer, more exciting fast food eateries, U.S. same-store sales continued to slide during March, dropping 0.6% in the fourth straight month of decreases, according to MillerPulse data cited by Bloomberg.

The good news is that despite the domestic contraction, Subway is still growing internationally with sales outside the U.S. rising 3.7% to $5.8 billion as it continued to open locations.

The private company has been pressured not only by a sharp recent decline in US restaurant traffic and sales  - an industry which as we reported recently suffered its worst collapse since 2009 - but by the industry’s heavy reliance on discounts and promotions. Subway also has lost some of its luster as a healthier-food option, Bloomberg notes as it has been working to restore its status by eliminating antibiotics from its chicken and switching to cage-free eggs.

In another bid to revive growth, Subway is adding delivery services -- a strategy that’s also been embraced by McDonald’s. And it even unveiled a new, more contemporary logo. But so far, the changes haven’t helped much: Sales fell 1.7 percent last year to about $11.3 billion.

As Bloomberg adds, the sandwich chain, which infamously lost its iconic spokesman Jared Fogle in 2015 under humiliating circumstances, has also been overhauling its management team. On Wednesday, the company said it’s bringing on former McDonald’s executive Karlin Linhardt to lead marketing for the more than 30,000 Subway stores in the U.S. and Canada.

Last year, Subway hired Katie Coleman to handle global public relations. She was tasked in part with helping the chain recover from a scandal involving former spokesman Jared Fogle. He pleaded guilty to child pornography charges and was sentenced to prison in 2015.

Subway, owned by Doctor’s Associates Inc., was founded about 52 years ago by Fred DeLuca and Peter Buck. DeLuca died in 2015, leaving the company in the hands of his younger sister, Suzanne Greco, who became chief executive officer. The chain’s restaurants are entirely owned by franchisees.

Meanwhile, as US eaters seemingly grow tired with Subway"s choices, UBS was out with the following report...

‘Progressive’ Homosexual Activists Say ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’ Doesn’t Matter, It’s the Guns

Why not redouble efforts to focus on more devasatating and self-inflicted threats?

“Don’t Take Your Eyes Off the Issue of Our Time – Gun Control,” The Advocate, self-identifying as a “the world’s leading gay news source” urges. Springboarding off the massacre at the “gun-free” Pulse nightclub by a bigoted Islamist (who some reports have identified as a club patron who had hookup sex with men, and whose former wife claimed the FBI tried to bury that information), authors Igor Volsky and Mark Glaze unintentionally do gun owner rights supporters a service. That’s because by taking off the mask, they show the “common sense gun safety laws” they demand resemble nothing so much as the state monopoly of violence needed to rule with an iron fist.

Understanding who the authors are helps in understanding how their article advances their agenda. Both are homosexual activists and “progressive” gun-grabbers. Volsky is “Deputy Director for the Center for American Progress Action Fund and former LGBT Editor for ThinkProgress.” Glaze is former executive director of Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown, a senior adviser to GunsDown, and interestingly, the son of a licensed gun dealer.

“LGBTQ people must fight for their safety against the epidemic of gun violence, just as hard as they have fought for equality,” they insist, citing a Southern Poverty Law Center anecdotal “report” on alleged harassment that says nothing about guns, but instead quotes from a handful of unsubstantiated and subjective accounts to smear Donald Trump supporters as intimidating haters.

That’s pretty much SOP for SPLC.

“Already at least seven transgender people have been killed this year — six of whom were killed with a firearm, according to media reports,” Volsky and Glaze continue. “This puts 2017 on a pace to exceed 2016, when at least 27 transgender people were killed. And just like in previous years, the violence has fallen disproportionately on trans women of color.”

Unexamined beyond the listing of names are issues of high-risk associations or that anti-“LGBTQ” hatred has not been proven as a motivating factor.

And instances of killers being “prohibited persons” also means total ban “gun control” edicts were already being violated. That doesn’t matter to Volsky and Glaze.

“Legally obtained or not, whether by ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys,’ guns are the problem,” they insist. “If we’re serious about saving lives, we need to build a bolder, broader movement that finally tackles the problem at its core. We need to go after guns themselves.”

Actually, if they were serious about saving lives, they’d be out there warning that the greatest threat to health and life among the various sexual practitioners they claim to care about is behavioral and self-inflicted.

“Donald Trump won’t stand in the way. Congress won’t stand in the way,” Volksy and Glaze  promise, casting blame everywhere but on choices and actions. “We can. And together, we must.”

What they plan on doing to the rest of us “standing in the way” is left unsaid, but chances are they’re expecting armed men who took an oath to support the Constitution to carry out their disarmament fantasies for them.

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Och Ziff In Trouble: AUM Plunges After A Record $4.8 Billion In January Redemptions

One of the world"s largest, public hedge funds, Och Ziff, gave active managers around the globel more reasons for concern this morning, when it reported results today which showed distributable earnings of $7.5 million, or one cent a share, in the quarter compared to a loss of $36.1 million, or 7 cents, a year earlier. For the full year, the company reported a loss of $121.3 million from a profit of $251.9 million in 2015. Revenue tumbled from $342.8mm to $281.3mm. However, the flashing red headline is just how much AUM the recent underperformance and legal problems by Daniel Och"s investment vehicle have cost him.

As Bloomberg reports, Och Ziff suffered withdrawals of about $13 billion over the last 13 months as the company settled a five-year bribery probe and saw its founder Dan Och singled out by regulators for ignoring red flags and corruption risks.

Clients redeemed $8 billion in 2016 with an additional, and very concerning, $4.8 billion in the month of January. The outflows were concentrated in the multistrategy funds, the company said Wednesday in a statement. Some of the asset declines were offset with performance gains, including a 3.8% return for its biggest multistrategy fund last year. Assets under management for the firm decreased to $33.6 billion as of Feb. 1 from $43.7 billion a year earlier. The hedge fund had peaked at the end of 2014 with nearly $50 billion in AUM.

That said, last November, OZ did want that it expected fourth-quarter redemptions to be higher than usual because of the settlement "and the general exodus of institutional investors from hedge funds." Pensions for Rhode Island, New Jersey and Goldman Sachs are among those that trimmed or exited their investments in Och-Ziff last year. However, the unexpected, record surge in January redemptions prompted some market watchers to wonder if the accelerating withdrawals may not prove terminal for the once iconic hedge fund.

Adding insult to inury, Och Ziff also saw its bond rating cut to junk on the back of the withdrawals and a reduction in management fees for clients to an average of 1.01% from 1.23%.

All this has slammed the stock: the publicly-traded firm lost almost half its value in the stock market in each of the last two years. The shares closed at $3.63 on Feb. 14.

Keep a close eye on ongoing OZ redemptions: as Bloomberg concludes, the combination of lower assets and revenue led to an unexpectedly high leverage ratio for Och-Ziff, which "could see another ratings downgrade this year if outflows continue and its debt ratio edges higher, S&P Global Ratings said Jan. 5."

Is the mainstream media relevant anymore?

Years ago the number of ad dollars spent on online advertising overtook the amount spent on offline advertising (TV, print, radio).  This demographic shift was presented as form, not essence.  It was presented as the evolution of media, firms were adapting and changing.  But something much deeper was happening, it"s the end of an industry cycle called "media" which is being replaced by "independent online media" like Zero Hedge for finance, and thousands of other sites for their respective topics.  Although the MSM (Main Stream Media) fights this, it"s bigger than them, it"s not something they can control.  People who are holding on to their newspapers are old and dying (no offense, Grandpa).  Cursive writing is no longer being taught in schools - and why should it?

Along with this shift comes a new host of problems as well, children addicted to social media oblivious to the "real world" - but in the context of the MSM, it"s just a swan song they are singing loudly "we are still relevant! we are still relevant"  The fact is the old MSM model doesn"t work.  State sponsored media like the BBC and PBS has always been at the core of investigative journalism, anyway.  WaPo is losing money at an alarming rate.  From 2013 we"re talking 85% drop in profit:

The Washington Post Co. on Friday reported bad news for its newspaper division, with revenue totaling $127.3 million for the first quarter of this year — down four percent from 2012 — and an operating loss of $34.5 million.  Overall, the company posted a profit of just $4.7 million, an 85 percent drop in earnings from the net income of $31 million for the first quarter of last year.

But what are we talking about?  WaPo is a big example but there are many.  Exceptions such as Bloomberg are different because, they are not supported by media.  Bloomberg never was a media outlet, Bloomberg provides an information service to traders and technology - and charges ALOT for it.  Central banks trade on Bloomberg Terminals.  The news division is something they do in order to advertise their core business.  This model is sustainable.  WaPo, NYT and others, will likely not exist in the years ahead - in the best case they will *really* evolve into a different model.  

The fact that the MSM missed the election to such a large degree was akin to a "nail in the coffin" signaling the end of the MSM completely.  

Independent blogs, resources, and other sites will be the center of a new online media ecosystem.  Checkout one example - www.globalintelhub.com

As a loyal ZH contributor, we"re happy to be a part of this shift. 

We are often reminded of systems used in times past, as we will one day remember about the days of CNN and New York Times:

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Yuan Is Crashing (Again)

The volatility in the Chinese currency has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. After exploding 21 handles stronger in the biggest PBOC-engineered short-squeeze in history - erasing the entire post-election sell-off - offshore Yuan is now collapsing once again, down 350 pips tonight (and over 10 big figures from Thursday"s highs). While interbank rates have calmed down, the rush to exit the currency has not...

The last two days are the biggest drop in offshore Yuan since Aug 2015"s devaluation... as PBOC weakens its fix by the most sine June 2016.

Pushing historical volatility to its highest since the Aug 2015 devaluation...

For some context, this level of volatility is over 10 standard deviations away from the pre-Aug 2015 norms.

Notably the moves accelerate afterPBOC Advisor Fan Gang told Bloomberg TV...

• *PBOC WANTS TO SEE FX RESERVES REDUCE SMOOTHLY, GRADUALLY: FAN


• *CHINA POLICY MAKERS NOT LIKELY GO FURTHER ON OUTFLOW CURBS: FAN


• *YUAN OVERVALUED IN PAST 3-4 YEARS AGAINST DOLLAR: FAN


• *CHINA POLICY MAKERS NOT LIKELY TO DROP INTERVENTION: FAN


• *USE OF YUAN HAS INCREASED DESPITE RECENT DEPRECIATION: FAN


• *CHINA NEEDS LESS FX RESERVE AFTER YUAN"S INCLUSION IN SDR: FAN

Which was followed by the state-run Global Times newspaper says in an English-language editorial, saying that the Chinese people will demand its government to “take revenge” if Donald Trump reneges on the one-China policy after becoming U.S. President.