October 12: Daily Contrarian Reads

Financial Engineering On Steroids—–$1 Trillion Of Dividends Plus Buybacks To Exceed Corporate Cash Flow By $115 Billion

Over the past several years, there have been two primary sources of upside for the stock market: trillions in corporate buybacks, as companies themselves engaged in record repurchases of their own stock, often at price indiscriminate levels in a bid to not only raise the stock price but also the stock-linked compensation of management , and a similar amount of dividend payments which in a time of negligible yields, became one of the main drivers for buyers to scramble into the “safety” of dividend paying stocks. Collectively these account for an unprecedented amount of payouts to shareholders.

Bubblevision In The Tank For The Dems—– Harwood’s Hillary Fanboy Notes Exposed By Wikileaks

The latest dump of the “Podesta Emails” exposed a very tight link between the “impartial” John Harwood of CNBC and the Clinton campaign.  In email after email, Harwood has been exposed constantly lavishing praise upon Hillary like a subservient puppy seeking his master’s love and affection.

How The “Perverse Economic Effects Created By ETFs” Are Setting Up The Next Crash

One of our favorite topics over the years has been observing the inversion of fundamental cause and effective, or rather, the reflexivity of synthetic, “passive” products such as ETFs and VIX, which in a normal world are driven by the value of their underlying securities, yet which in recent years have seen the direction of causality inverted, and where it is the value of the synthetic product that inluences the market price of its underlying constituents, or said simply, the “tail wags the dog.” We have observed this phenomenon in both ETFs and VIX, the result of which has been even more confusion about whether fundamental causal links are even applicable any more.

The Real US Election Hackers——Intelligence Agencies All-In For Hillary

The fact and evidence free statement by US intelligence that Russia was behind the DNC leak is an attempt to swing the US Presidential election in Hillary Clinton’s favour and amounts to the direct interference of US intelligence in a democratic US election.

Why the Feds Will Lose Their War on the Markets

The markets continue to dawdle. Not much conviction in either direction. We’ve already looked at the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. So let’s move on… using our new lens to look at another of the feds’ fake wars…..No war was ever officially declared against the markets. But for four decades the feds conducted covert operations… a dirty war in which they’ve tried to mislead, obstruct, and suppress market forces.

The Longest War In American History—-Does The Public Know The Dismal Truth About The Afghan War

Last week marked the fifteenth anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan, the longest war in US history. There weren’t any victory parades or photo-ops with Afghanistan’s post-liberation leaders. That is because the war is ongoing. In fact, 15 years after launching a war against Afghanistan’s Taliban government in retaliation for an attack by Saudi-backed al-Qaeda, the US-backed forces are steadily losing territory back to the Taliban.

Wikileaks Email Dump Reveals More Crooked Hillary Maneuvers

The latest email dump from Wikileaks includes a legal memorandum that provides a perfect example of how far Clinton campaign lawyers are willing to go in interpreting what may be considered illegal coordination with a super PAC.

The 2016 Election Is A Gift For Libertarians

Government depends upon on a massive amount of smoke and mirrors in order to garner sufficient belief in its legitimacy. If there’s one good thing that we can say about Donald Trump, it’s that his candidacy has exposed the mainstream media as a full-blown arm of the government and establishment elites. Of course, Ron Paul supporters already knew this to be the case for years now, but the media has now shown its cards to everyone. They are FCC licensed lapdogs of the state. 

US May Be Guilty Of War Crimes For Supporting And Enabling Saudi Mass Killings

As the US slams Russian bombing in Aleppo, accusing Putin of “crimes against humanity” and in the process sending US-Russian relations to levels not seen since the Cold War, it quietly sells billions in weapons and equipment to Saudi Arabia, a nation which as Hillary Clinton revealed in a “private setting” to the 2014 Jewish United Fund Advance & Major Gifts Dinner, has “exported more extreme ideology than any other place on earth over the course of the last 30 years.” It also happens to be one of the biggest state donors to the Clinton Foundation. Which may explain why as Reuters reported in an exclusive story today, the Obama administration went ahead with a $1.3 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia last year despite misgivings and warnings from some officials that the United States could be implicated in war crimes for supporting a Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians.

HILLARY: DECEIT, DEBT, DELUSIONS

The national debt was $4.2 trillion on the day he took office and $5.7 trillion on the day he left, a 36% increase, with no year where the national debt declined. Fake government accounting doesn’t trump the facts. But he did repeal Glass Steagall, allowing Wall Street banks free rein to pillage, steal, defraud, and destroy the global financial system. The $159 million in speaking fees (aka bribes/payoffs) siphoned from Wall Street banks and other corporate interests by Hillary and Bill were a great big thank you from the beneficiaries of their deceit.