Global Market Slump Spreads - Greece Markets Hammered "Down 23%", More Top Insights

Greece debt crisis: Athens stock market falls 23% as manufacturing plunges 

Heavy losses in Athens as trading resumes

The market has opened and it’s not pretty. The Athex Composite has plunged more than 20%, to 615.12. The falls are even deeper in financials, with banking shares down by as much as 30% – the maximum allowed. Market observers caution, however, that we will not know the true picture until things settle down a bit in a few hours’ time.

The Economic And Financial Problems In Europe Are Only Just Beginning…

Right now, the financial world is focused on the breathtaking stock market crash in China, but don’t forget to keep an eye on what is happening in Europe.  Collectively, the European Union has a larger population 

than the United States, a larger economy than either the U.S. or China, and the banking system in Europe is the biggest on the planet by far.  So what happens in Europe really matters, and at this point the European economy is absolutely primed for a meltdown.  European debt levels have never been higher, European banks are absolutely loaded with non-performing loans and high-risk derivatives, and the unemployment rate in the eurozone is currently more than double the unemployment rate in the United States.  In all the euphoria surrounding the “deal” that temporarily kept Greece in the eurozone, I think that people have forgotten that the economic and financial fundamentals in Europe have continued to deteriorate.  Whether Greece ultimately leaves the eurozone or not, a great financial crisis is inevitably coming to Europe.  It is just a matter of time.

In many ways, the economy of Europe is in significantly worse shape than the U.S. economy.  Just recently, the IMF issued a report which warned that the eurozone is “susceptible to negative shocks” and could be facing very tough economic times in the near future. 

Supply and Demand in the Gold and Silver Futures Markets

The bear market in bullion is an artificial creation.

India set to overtake China as world's most populous country by 2022

Populations in many regions are still young. In Africa, children under 15 account for two fifths of the population.

Debt Slaves: 7 Out Of 10 Americans Believe That Debt ‘Is A Necessity In Their Lives’

debt is considered to be just part of normal life.  We go into debt to go to college, we go into debt to buy a vehicle, we go into debt to buy a home, and we are constantly using our credit cards to buy the things that we think we need. 

Exxon Earnings: Carnage 

Moments ago energy titan Exxon Mobile, which not too long ago was bigger than AAPL by market cap, and is now roughly half the size of the phone maker, reported earnings which were, in a word, carnage. Starting at the bottom, EPS of $1.00 was not only a big miss to already reduced expectations of $1.11, but also the worst quarter since 2009.

Home Capital scandal may presage a slowdown: Don Pittis 

On a conference call yesterday Home Capital CEO Gerald Soloway insisted that the problem with its brokers was not an indication of a mortgage fraud crisis across Canada. Home Capital's delinquencies remain low, and the company says it has stopped doing business with the brokers that investigators had shown to be pretending customers' income qualified them for mortgages.

The War On Cash & Your Freedom – Mike Maloney 

“It’s the first step in the government being able to just turn you off if they don’t like you for some reason.”

“If we go 100% electronic, the banks can decide to charge you whatever you want in each transaction, the government gets to tax every transaction immediately.”

The Investment Legends Are Warning of a Systemic Event 

Seth Klarman used to manage the fourth largest hedge fund in the US. A legendary value investor (copies of his book Margin of Safety sells for over $1,500 on Amazon), Klarman returned billions in assets under management to outside investors citing “too few” opportunities in the market (again, a legend stating that the market was overvalued).

Warren Buffett, perhaps the single biggest cheerleader for stocks in the last 100 years, is sitting on a record amount of cash. The reason is obvious: the market is dangerously overpriced.

Learning Success: 

APPLY Tips From The Best

Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway – He is a deeply conservative trader during the times that everyone around him is moving from one extreme to the other to the tune of huge losses and gains. Warren Buffett is a perfect example of patience, proving that slow and steady generally wins the business race. (Although I continue to press my own desire to spur Fishbowl’s inventory software business to race!)

Top Weekly Ideas and Insights

An Inconvenient Truth:

What Happens When Top Economists Realize Physical Growth Constraints?

 EXISTENTIAL REALITY 

"Humanity's Coming of Age"

 - The Last Days of Economic Growth -

Toshiba Japan's Enron - "Leading Innovation In Fraud" & More Top Insights

They're Back!

Toshiba inflated profits by £780 m with bosses' knowledge investigation finds

Disclosure of Japan’s biggest corporate scandal in years could lead to restatement of earnings at computers-to-nuclear firm, plus a board overhaul and big fines.

Toshiba overstated its operating profit by 151.8 bn yen (£780m) over several years in accounting irregularities involving top management of the Japanese technology company, independent investigators said.

The disclosure of the country’s biggest corporate scandal in years could lead to the restatement of earnings plus a board overhaul and potentially hefty fines at the computers-to-nuclear conglomerate.

Toshiba president and chief executive Hisao Tanaka and his predecessor, vice chairman Norio Sasaki, were aware of the overstatement of profits and delay in reporting losses in a corporate culture that “avoided going against superiors’ wishes”, the investigating committee said in a report filed by Toshiba to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

The overstatement was roughly triple Toshiba’s initial estimate. Sources have said Tanaka and Sasaki would resign in the coming months and most of the board would be replaced.

How Low Can Gold And Silver Go?

On Sunday afternoon, I published a viral piece called “Did A Major Gold And Silver Breakdown Just Begin?” in which I explained that gold and silver may be on the verge of an imminent sell-off if key technical levels were broken. I showed that wedge patterns had formed in gold and silver for the past two years, and these patterns may indicate the resumption of the 2011 to 2013 bear market when broken. Amazingly, when gold and silver opened for trading on Sunday night, they experienced stunning flash crashes that caused them to slice clearly below the $1,130 and $15 technical levels I showed in the piece.

A $2.7 billion notional sell-order in gold futures caused the yellow metal to plunge 4.2 percent or $50 to nearly $1,086 per ounce in just a few minutes, dragging down other precious metals with it. The sell-off originated in the New York and Shanghai markets and was exacerbated by the lower-liquidity conditions due to Japan’s market holiday. 

The weekly gold chart below shows the wedge pattern that formed in the past two years. The key $1,130 level formed the bottom of the wedge, and is now a resistance level since gold fell beneath it on Sunday. The technical breakdown is valid as long as gold is under this level.

How artificial intelligence is changing economic theory 

Machina economicus might better fit the typical economic theories of rational behavior, but we don't believe that the AI will be fully rational or have unbounded abilities to solve problems. At some point you hit the intractability limit—things we know cannot be solved optimally—and at that point, there will be questions about the right way to model deviations from truly rational behavior.

Robots pass 'wise-men puzzle' to show

 a degree of self-awareness 

With the robots, instead of hats, the roboticists programmed the three humanoid robots to "believe" that two of them have been given a "dumbing pill" causing them to become mute, but they did not "know" which of them it was. In actuality, two of them were made mute by pressing a button on their head. The three robots were then asked which of them had not received the dumbing pill. All three robots attempted to respond with an answer of "I don't know" but only one was able to do so, which meant it was the one that had not been muted. Upon hearing itself audibilize a reply, it changed its answer, declaring that it was the one that had not received the dumbing pill.

Pension Shocker: Plans Face $2 Trillion Shortfall, Moody's Says 

In short: America is facing a fiscal crisis at the state and local government level and it appears as though at least one ratings agency is no longer willing to suspend disbelief by allowing officials to utilize profoundly unrealistic return assumptions in the calculation of liabilities.

China Ends Mystery of Gold Hoard to Top Russia’s Holdings 

Gold remains a large part of many central banks’ reserves, decades after they stopped using it to back paper money. Stockpiles of the metal help China to diversify its foreign-exchange holdings as the world’s second-largest economy seeks to raise the international profile of its own currency. The disclosure on gold reserves also assists in that goal.

“China is still pushing for a greater role for its currency globally by having full transparency,” Fu said.

Crushing pension obligations are pushing stressed governments 

What Money?

And the Quakertown Community School District said in June that it would go on a payment strike, of sorts, delaying its next $1.25 million quarterly contribution to the state school retirement system. The goal is to force the state to stop what the board president called an "unjust" rise in districts' pension payments. Pennsylvania school pension payments quadrupled from 2010 to 2014, and are scheduled to double again by 2019, under a law designed to make up for years of underpayment.

#Trumpisms Save The Day

Coming Soon...

More Leading Headlines

1.       New Chicago school leaders to tackle fiscal woes.            
   Bank of Canada seen pushing on a string with rate cuts
        
   .           What does Wayne County's fiscal crisis mean for the rest of the state? 
             
   .           Bond Liquidity Vacuum Spurs Europe’s Investors to Shrink Trades
               
   .           Fed's Fischer says U.S. inflation still too low   
   
   
2. Shadow Lenders Are Pushing IntoRisky Real Estate Deals

Top Weekly Ideas and Insights

An Inconvenient Truth:

What Happens When The Fossil Energy Age Ends?

 EXISTENTIAL REALITY 

End Of Fossil Energy or Archaic Fabrications?

Australian Stocks Plunge - With China / Greece Fears, & Top Buffet Insights

Australian stocks fall steeply on Greek worries, China share crash

Australian shares have closed down more than 1 per cent as traders cut their exposure ahead of this weekend's Greek referendum and as China's stock market crash worsens.

The benchmark ASX 200 index finished off 62 points, or 1.1 per cent, to 5,538, while the broader All Ordinaries index was off 60 points at 5,528.

IG Markets institutional trader Chris Weston said the fall reflects "gap risk" around the Greek vote, which takes place on Sunday, meaning that traders cannot react immediately, but could be queuing sell orders on Monday morning, with few willing buyers.

"You can't deal when the market's closed but, when it does open, you get a situation where the market could open 3 per cent lower for example," he said.

"Depending on what you're in, that stock will open potentially 2 to 10 per cent lower."

Mr Weston warned that US Dow Jones Industrial Average futures could be down 400-500 points on a "no" vote, a fall of 2-3 per cent, and there is not a lot of upside to be had.

50 best things Warren Buffett told investors over past 50 years

It’s been 50 years since Warren Buffett — a.k.a. the Oracle of Omaha — took control of Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A, -0.21% BRK.B, +0.07%   and turned a sleepy textile company into a powerful conglomerate with multiple businesses and investments. And that means it’s been 50 years since Buffett started writing his annual letter to shareholders.

The 2014 edition — the epistles always refer back to the previous year — gives us the perfect excuse to review all 50 letters and find 50 of the most memorable quotes from them.

Keep in mind that Buffett’s early letters — some of which were not actually signed by him — featured little more than straightforward accounts of Berkshire’s finances. But by the late 1970s, the oracle started, well, oracle-ing, offering pointed, humorous and sage-like commentary on the markets. And along the way, the cost-conscious billionaire wasn’t afraid to make fun of himself (and his one indulgence — namely, a private jet).

Read and enjoy.

Who Will Be The Last To Crash?

US debt is north of $18 trillion. (Amazingly, *cough*, it hasn’t changed in months *cough*.) Forward promises are north of $200 trillion, meaning that a child born today is responsible to repay $625,000. And since roughly half the US population pays no income tax… and presuming that this newborn will be a member of the productive half… he or she is born $1.25 million in debt. Such repayments will never happen. Most of those debts will not be repaid.

Why You Should Ignore the Grexit Panic 

It did so for all the reasons that I’ve mentioned before — namely that Germany cannot allow a Grexit from the euro zone without ultimately destroying the German economic miracle of the last few decades … and the Greeks outside the euro would see their modern lifestyles crumble in the face of sharp inflation and radically reduced access to the imported goods they take for granted today

Bank closures taking their toll on businesses across Greece 

The confederation, which represents some 280,000 small and medium-sized businesses, has been badly hit by capital controls. More than half of Greece’s food and raw materials are imported, but without a functioning banking system there was no way to wire money abroad and pay for supplies, said Korkidis.

“Multinationals can, but local companies can’t,” he sighed. “Shortages are manageable this week because traders have stock, but next week that won’t be the case. We are experiencing things we never thought we’d see.”

Silver About to Turn More Volatile 

To quantify the volatility the following chart shows the (absolute value of) percent deviation from silver’s 200 day moving average. A spike higher or lower is volatility. The six spikes in volatility above 40% deviation from the 200 day moving average are quite large.

Eurozone inflation eases, reviving deflation fears

Eurozone consumer prices rose for the first time in six months during May, a victory for the ECB in its campaign to avoid a debilitating period of deflation, during which businesses and households might hold back on spending in the expectation that they will get better deals in the future.

Lawmakers 'no closer' to deal hours away from state budget, CPS deadlines 

Tuesday is the final day of the state's current budget year, and top officials turned to planning for a Wednesday in which Illinois government has limited authority to spend money. It's also the day a cash-strapped CPS is due to make a $634 million pension payment

Households' financial soundness worsens on rising debt: central bank 

Financial soundness of South Korean households worsened in the first quarter as their debts snowballed on the back of low interest rates, a report showed Tuesday, adding to persistent concerns that a looming U.S. rate hike may unleash credit risks.

What Choice Do We Have?

As systemic solutions fall short, we must grasp the nettle of making our own arrangements in a time characterized by burgeoning demands and diminishing resources, capital and security.

The idea that our large-scale problems could be fixed with systemic reforms is enticing: replace the thousands of pages of tax code with a simple flat tax without deductions, for example, or the replacement of too big to jail/fail banks with community-owned banks that served the public, not shareholders.

But the attraction of reforms is a siren song, because our system is run by vested interests for vested interests, period. Any real reform is Dead On Arrival (DOA) because any real reform threatens the swag and security of vested interests.

More Leading Global Headlines

Here’s where some Greeks are stashing their cash — in gold sovereigns

Why Hardly Anyone Dies From a Drug Overdose in Portugal

A potential bull market in cattle doesn’t care about Greece

India Just Upped Its Solar Target Five-Fold, Will Install More Solar This Year Than Germany

Egypt’s Quiet Social Revolution

Top Weekly Ideas and Insights

Peak Everything Lecture

Cornell University