Zero Hedge

China’s Official Press Agency Calls For New Reserve Currency, And New World Order – ZeroHedge

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/13/2013 14:32 -0400 We assume it is a coincidence that on the day in which we demonstrate China’s relentless appetite for gold, driven by what we and many others believe is the country’s desire to have a call option on a gold-backed reserve currency when the time comes, just posted in China’s official press…

“Stop Logic” Gold Slam Was So Furious It Shut Down CME Trading Again – ZeroHedge

It was precisely a month ago when, in “Vicious Gold Slamdown Breaks Gold Market For 20 Seconds [5]” we wrote: There was a time when, if selling a sizable amount of a security, one tried to get the best execution price and not alert the buyers comprising the bid stack that there is (substantial) volume for…

Economic Confidence Collapses At Fastest Pace Since Lehman – ZeroHedge

Published on Zero Hedge (http://www.zerohedge.com) By Tyler Durden  Last week we showed the cognitive dissonance [7], nurtured by a liquidity-providing Fed, that has growth this year between stocks and economic confidence. In the last week, fed by a diet of DC headlines, Gallup’s economic confidence index [8] has collapsed. In fact, this is the worst 3-week plunge since Lehman – worse than during the…

Treasury Warns Default Impact Could Last A Generation

By Tyler Durden Created 10/03/2013 The President warned yesterday that “this time is different,” and now the Treasury has weighed in with an even more ominous warning. In their statement, they note: *TREASURY OFFICIAL: CONGRESS ACTION ONLY WAY TO AVOID DEFAULT *TREASURY SEES ‘TENTATIVE’ SIGNS IMPASSE AFFECTING MARKETS *TREASURY SAYS BILL YIELDS MAY REFLECT `NASCENT CONCERNS’ *TREASURY:…

Gold And Silver Spike, Recover All Shutdown Losses As Stocks Tumble

Odd that the mainstream media is not discussing the 4% spike in precious metals this morning as vociferously as they discussed the imminent demise of gold and silver yesterday. With stocks having given back all the Shutdown gains, gold and silver prices are surging higher retracing all yesterday’s losses as Treasury yields fall and the USD weakens…

Government Workers Told Not To Work On “Any Projects, Tasks, Activities Or Respond To Emails Or Voicemails”

Dear government workers: welcome to the private sector. This is what it feels like to have job insecurity. For the past 7 hours, some 800,000 suddenly idle Federal workers received furlough notices but were told they will still have to report to work for about four hours Tuesday even though the government is shutting down.…

These Are The Ten “People” Who Run The World (For The Last 20 Years)

“When deep space exploration ramps up, it’ll be the corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks” – Narrator, Fight Club Everyone knows that politicians are merely muppets, controlled by financial and corporate interests, injected into an anachronistic legacy represenational system designed to give the person on the street some sense…

Has America Been Set Up As History’s Ultimate Bumbling Villain?

Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market blog [21], The high priests of academic and “official” history love a good villain for two reasons:  First, because good official villains make the struggles and accomplishments of good official heroes even more awe-inspiring.  And, second, because nothing teaches (or propagandizes) the masses more thoroughly than the social or political lessons inherent…

CFTC Concludes Long-Running Silver Manipulation Investigation, Finds Nothing Wrong

It is somehow fitting that on the day when even more undisputed evidence is revealed [6], surrounding the most brazen market manipulation scheme in history – one involving the “unmanipulable” Libor benchmark rate which serves as the foundation for hundreds of trillions in interest rate sensitive instruments – that the CFTC would also come out moments ago,…

Peter Boockvar: “There Is 0% Chance That This Ends Smoothly”

NOTE: Commentary by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge

CNBC just aired a fascinating segment that pitted anchors Mandy Drury and Brian Sullivan (squarely in the markets-are-going-up-and-the-world-must-be-rosy camp) against a more skeptical (“it’s all short-covering” – and he’s right at the margin) Herb Greenberg and an awfully fact-based reality agent – Peter Boockvar.

The entire 5 minutes were a perfect reflection of the battle in the markets of the last few years – that of market wisdom and the facts versus the blind optimistic ignorance of watching (and trusting) a ‘market’ number (in this case the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index) rise day after day and not caring why – until – as Peter Boockvar so eloquently notes you have your 401(k) cut in half twice in a decade.

Well worth taking the time to witness the cognitive dissonance of believing the market strength is unrelated to the Fed and yet a Fed unable to Taper even a few billion for fear of repercussions… as Boockvar notes, “there is 0% chance this ends well.”

Video Source: CNBC

An Alternative View Of Why The Fed Did Not (and Will Not) Taper

A few years back Chairman Bernanke was asked by a financial reporter how confident he was that the Fed could easily start the process of withdrawing from the accommodation of “unorthodox” monetary policy. Some might argue (ourselves included) that the answer ‘should’ be something like “very confident” or “We feel we have the right tools and…

Step Aside Trillion Dollar Coin, Here Comes The Trillion Dollar Bill -ZeroHedge

With just over a week left until a potential government shutdown, especially since the House just passed a stopgap funding measure which included an Obamacare defunding measure and which is dead in the Senate, the issue of a government shutdown with no counterproposal on the table is suddenly concerning to investors, as can be seen…

The Credit Bubble Is Not Only Back, It Is 94% Bigger Than In 2007

If the Fed was worried about ‘froth’ in the markets earlier in the year, then this chart should have them panicking. Of course, as Jim Bullard noted Friday, there is no bubble because everyone knows there is no bubble [7] but judging by the massive surge in covenant-lite loan issuance, there is a bubble in forced demand for…