NYC Prisons Face Crippling Staff Shortages As Thousands Defy Mayor’s Vaccination Mandate Outgoing NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has been widely criticized for seeming and acting out of touch with New Yorkers. And during his final weeks in Gracie Mansion, the intensely unpopular Democratic candidate may unwittingly handicap the already struggling NYC jail Riker’s Island. To wit, the AP reports that hundreds of city department […]

Satyajit Das Exposes Fintech’s “Flim-Flam” Innovation Games Authored by Satyajit Das via NakedCapitalism.com, Investment in fin-tech (the untidy agglomeration of finance and technology) has reached a record $91.5 billion, double that of 2020. In the last quarter, there were over 40 fintech unicorns (start-ups valued at over $1 billion). The sector now attracts around 20% of all venture capital. But its looks remarkably like a repeat […]

JPM’s Kolanovic Suggests Omicron Could Be Positive For Risk And “End The Covid Pandemic” Two days ago, amid one of the biggest market routs since March 2020 and following the worst Black Red Friday for markets in history sparked by the panic and chaos over the brand new Omicron variant, we asked a simple, contrarian question: “Will The Omicron Virus Turn Out To Actually Be […]

Erdogan Fires Turkey’s Finance Minister, Replaces Him With Rate Cut-Friendly Puppet In retrospect, it should have been obvious that something big is coming out of Turkey today when overnight the central bank intervened in the FX market (both spot and futures) for the first time since 2014 to halt the ongoing rout in the Turkish lira. Well, that something was revealed just around midnight Turkish […]

Kremlin Says Half Of Entire Ukrainian Army Is In Donbass As Blinken Warns Putin: US “Prepared To Act” A Wednesday statement out of the Russian Foreign Ministry has charged Kiev with stoking tensions along the Ukrainian border. The statement alleged that over 100,000 Ukrainian troops and military hardware have been moved into the restive Donbass region, where the national forces have been in a stalemate […]

WHO Recommends People Aged 60 & Above Postpone Travel Due To Omicron Variant Concerns Authored by Isaac Teo via The Epoch Times, The World Health Organization is recommending people 60 and older to postpone their travel plans over Omicron variant concerns. The WHO, which named Omicron as a variant of concern (VOC) on Nov. 26, says it is monitoring the spread of the variant, and advised certain travelers to […]

The Long Cycles Have All Turned: Look Out Below Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, But alas, humans do not possess god-like powers, they only possess hubris, and so all bubbles pop: the more extreme the bubble, the more devastating the pop. Long cycles operate at such a glacial pace they’re easily dismissed as either figments of fevered imagination or this time it’s different. But […]

Trump Social Media Venture Soars: In Talks Over $1 Billion Raise At Much Higher Valuation Markets may be crashing, but not every stocks is getting smashed into the close and one notable outlier is blank check firm Digital World Acquisition Corp (ticker DWAC) better known as Donald Trump’s new social media venture, which according to a late day report from Reuters is seeking to raise […]

Having Abandoned TWTR, Jack Dorsey Goes All-In On Crypto, Renames ‘Square’ Well that didn’t take long… Less than a week after Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO of the angry screamfest known as Twitter, it appears he has moved all-in on crypto by renaming his other company from Square to Block. As Dorsey says, The change to Block acknowledges the company’s growth. It’s now clear […]

The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com, “Sometimes I wonder if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it” – Laurence Peter After months and months of sticking to a transitory narrative despite ever rising inflation data Jay Powell finally caved yesterday and retired the word transitory. […]

Guess Who’s Seated Next To Anderson Cooper For CNN’s On-Air Cuomo Suspension Announcement When CNN’s Anderson Cooper uncomfortably informed the network’s audience yesterday that Chris Cuomo has been suspended indefinitely following the release of new documents revealing he leveraged media sources to help dig up dirt on his brother’s sexual misconduct accusers, Cooper was seated right next to the man who as everyone knows was literally caught in an embarrassing act of sexual misconduct […]

Omicrysteria & Powellocalypse Slam Stocks, Bond Yields & Black Gold The market peaked intraday just ahead of Powell and Yellen’s hearing as it became clear that the Fed Chair was not going to walk-back his hawkish position. Things escalated from there with stagflationary-fear-inducing comments from Fed’s Williams. And then the big kahuna ‘Omicron in the US’ headline took stocks down again. Small Caps were the […]

How To Spot A Carbon-Free Con By Leonard Hyman & William Tilles of OilPrice.com Nearly every company on earth seems to be setting themselves net-zero targets, but a majority of those pledges have very little substance behind them One major issue is that companies set these targets so far in the future that there is next to no accountability for those in charge Another thing […]

Chinese Researchers Claim To Have Found Antibody ‘Cure’ For COVID Have the Chinese been sitting on the secret cure for COVID this entire time? One could be forgiven for harboring suspicions – especially now that a team of Chinese researchers has purportedly found the human antibody that helps the human body suppress the virus. This could lead to a widely effective cure for COVID. In […]

What Happens When Omicron Meets Powell By Steve Englander, head of global FX research and North America macro strategy at Standard Chartered Bank, NY Branch 30 November FX moves most likely reflect position and G10 commodity currency unwinds Weakest currencies of the past two months were best performers as Fed and Omicron fears ramped up G10 currencies other than safe havens were weak, especially oil […]

Record Retail BTFDers Rescue Stocks From Past Week’s Omicron/Powell Rout Morgan Stanley’s Michael Wilson is going to be upset again. Having seen retail investors BTFD in size during October’s stock market hiccup – dashing his vision for a “fire and ice” market dump – the last few days of Omicron-induced and Powell-expanded panic in markets have seen an even bigger surge in retail investor buying […]

Stocks, Bond Yields Suddenly Puke After Fed’s Williams ‘Stagflation’ Hints It’s unclear what the immediate catalyst for this move is (Biden repeating the same “Omicron is cause for concern, not panic” and Powell following same hawkish path as yesterday), but as European markets close, US equity indices and bond yields started to tumble. Some traders are suggesting that comments from Fed’s Williams are a catalyst […]