Thursday, January 12, 2017

The Peanut Gallery

Statements, comments and forecasts that have no substance, but just might turn out to be relevant.

1.John Mauldin: "Canada also has a housing bubble that looks increasingly ready to pop. Home prices in Vancouver are unbelievable, and Toronto is not far behind. These prices have little to do with oil and everything to do with Hong Kong Chinese and other Chinese buying property. Wealthy Chinese, eager to evade their own country’s capital controls, are buying homes as offshore savings accounts. What happens in Canada will tell us something important about China and vice versa. Anything that keeps Chinese money from leaving the country will raise the odds of Canada’s bubble popping." COMMENT: Funds fearful of a Chinese debt meltdown, a potential US China trade war, a powerful US Dollar puncturing the world credit bubble and the potential disintegration of the European Union are pouring into North America. More specifically they are pouring into Canadian real estate. Its not only Canadians who believe that Canada (and Australia) are the last safe havens on the planet.

2.An ex-MI6 officer who is believed to have prepared memos claiming Russia has compromising material on US President-elect Donald Trump is now in hiding, the BBC understands. The US president-elect said the claims were "fake news" and "phoney stuff".
COMMENT: Trump, the king of fake news and its main beneficiary, had better succeed as president otherwise the swamp quicksand will drain him.

3.Russia denied unverified reports that it has compromising information about the president-elect, dismissing the claims as 'absolute fabrication and utter nonsense' on Wednesday. Earlier, two U.S. officials told NBC News that briefing materials prepared for Trump included damaging allegations, which have not been verified by American intelligence agencies, about his dealings with Russians. Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Vladimir Putin's government, said: 'The Kremlin does not collect compromising information.' COMMENT: LOL...Really? I thought the Russians would immediately verify! 

4. Three US senators have introduced legislation that would commit the United States to moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move US presidents have opposed for decades but which President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly signaled he is willing to do. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R), Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) and Nevada Sen. Dean Heller (R) proposed the Jerusalem Embassy and Recognition Act on Tuesday, the first day the new Congress convened on Capitol Hill as Republicans prepare to control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives for the first time since 2007. COMMENT: After the Obama betrayal of Israel, the time is finally right to make this move.

5. An annotated edition of "Mein Kampf," Adolf Hitler's notorious manifesto, has become a non-fiction best-seller in Germany. News agency dpa reported Tuesday that 85,000 copies of the book have been sold since it was first published a year ago. Despite its incendiary and anti-Semitic content, the book wasn't banned in Germany and could be found online, in secondhand bookshops and in libraries. COMMENT: A sign of the times

6.The Turkish lira continued to depreciate Jan. 11, dropping by nearly 2.7 percent on the day and hitting an all-time low of around 3.93 liras to the dollar, Bloomberg reported. The lira has already fallen by nearly 9 percent since the start of 2017 after dropping by nearly 17 percent in 2016. COMMENT: The Turkish currency is not alone in this pre-Trump era. The Japanese Yen, the Euro, the Chinese Yuan, the Mexican Pesos and many others are compensating for possible US Tariffs and/or political upheaval.

7.Stratfor: Though Netanyahu's government does not have complete control over the Israeli settlements proliferating in the contested West Bank, it has no intention of amending its settlement policy. Holding the territory between the borders established after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and those drawn after 1967's Six-Day War is part of Israel's defensive strategy.  As for the rights of generations of Palestinian refugees, a unifying cause for the Arab states since 1967, new refugee populations in the Middle East have pushed the issue to the backburner. COMMENT: The two-state solution died when the Obama inspired Arab spring began. 

My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them-Mitch Hedberg


The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made- Groucho Marx

“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” ― George Bernard Shaw

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