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With Syria making national headlines on a daily basis, it’s easy to forget about the Middle East’s other proxy war raging in Yemen. For months, a Saudi-led coalition has been battling Iran-backed militants for control of the country which was effectively wrested from Mansour Hadi earlier this year when the Sauid-backed President was forced to flee to Riyadh as the Houthis advanced on Aden. Sadly, Yemen has since descended into chaos, an embarrassment for the Obama administration which just a little over a year ago held the country up as an example of Washington’s successful counterterrorism efforts (no mention was...

"We’re not Bolivia for God’s sake"...

Yellen has inherited a complete nightmare. Thursday’s decision to delay yet again the long-awaited liftoff from zero interest rates is illustrating that the world economy is totally screwed. There is a lot of speculation about why the Fed seems so reluctant to “normalize monetary policy”. There are of course the typical domestic issues that there is low inflation, weak wage gains in the face of strong job growth, a hike will increase the Federal deficit and then there is the argument that corporations that now have $12.5 trillion in debt. All that is nice, but with corporate debt, our clients...

Yellen has inherited a complete nightmare. Thursday’s decision to delay yet again the long-awaited liftoff from zero interest rates is illustrating that the world economy is totally screwed. There is a lot of speculation about why the Fed seems so reluctant to “normalize monetary policy”. There are of course the typical domestic issues that there is low inflation, weak wage gains in the face of strong job growth, a hike will increase the Federal deficit and then there is the argument that corporations that now have $12.5 trillion in debt. All that is nice, but with corporate debt, our clients...

On Thursday evening, we detailed a Reuters report which suggested that the influx of Russian technical and logistical support to Bashar al-Assad’s depleted army at Latakia might have breathed new life into the regime as it seeks to rout Islamic State and a whole host of other armed groups fighting for control of Syria. “Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said on Thursday Russia had provided new weapons and trained Syrian troops how to use them,” Reuters said, before describing what certainly sounds like an invigorated air campaign against the de facto ISIS capital at Raqqa. Importantly, al-Moualem also indicated that Syria...

In the summer of 2014, a photographic exhibition on the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria appeared in Berlin and Brussels. Its advertising promised to present a “balanced, truthful picture.” The organizers meticulously disguised their identities. At the same time, they offered huge amounts of money to Western journalists without mentioning the conditions. The Kentrails research collective, an antifascist watchgroup, has researched the exhibition’s background and uncovered a propaganda network in which Russian right-wing extremists collaborate with the Kremlin-associated St. Petersburg “troll factory” in an attempt to impact the Western public.

Over the past several years, incidents involving fake gold (usually in the form of gold-plated tungsten) have emerged every so often, usually involving Manhattan's jewerly district, some of Europe's bigger gold foundries, or the occasional billion dealer. But never was fake gold actually discovered in the form monetary gold, held by a bank as reserve capital and designed to fool bank regulators of a bank's true financial state. This changed on Friday when Russia's "Admiralty" Bank, which had its banking license revoked last week by Russia's central bank, was reportedly using gold-plated metal as part of its "gold reserves." According...

Europe's handling of its refugee crisis has led to much criticism and left even more to be desired, but until now Europe's general population was largely on the side of the misplaced migrants who are trying to reestablish their lives away from the daily horrors of the middle east, all in the name of a Qatari gas pipeline. Just today, the Globe and Mail reported that French public opinion has swung dramatically to majority support for an intake of more migrants from war zones like Syria, a new poll showed as the country welcomed further busloads of asylum seekers...

Unequivocally apologetic... .

Tyler Durden 09/09/2015 Just over one month ago, when looking at the latest changes in registered gold held at the Comex ,we were stunned not only by the collapse in this series to a record low of just over 350k ounces or barely over 10 tons, but also by the surge in "gold coverage", or the amount of paper gold claims on physical gold, which exploded to a record high 124 per ounce. This is what we said on August 3: While on its own, gold open interest - which merely represents the total potential claims on gold if exercised...

Not to be outdone by his partner Charlie Munger (who offended many with his comments that "gold is a great thing to sew onto your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939,"), Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett - having already taken on Europe, comparing Greece to a "dog peeing on the carpet" of Europe, suggesting Germany stop "rewarding behavior you want to get rid of" - takes aim at the military. Speaking on Bloomberg TV, the octagenerian oracle of offense just unfriended every American veteran... "You want everybody educated to their potential. You want people to reach their...

After the Fed admitted over a year ago that the US unemployment rate (which in 2012 was supposed to be a rate hike "threshold" once it hit 6.5% and is now at 5.1%) has become irrelevant in a country where a record 94 million people have left the labor force, and with the Fed poised to hike rates even though US hourly wages have not only not increased for the past 7 years, but for the vast majority of the labor force continue to decline, some have asked - is there any labor-related chart that matters any more?The answer:...

698K Native-Born Americans Lost Their Job In August: Why This Suddenly Is The Most Important Jobs Chart After the Fed admitted over a year ago that the US unemployment rate (which in 2012 was supposed to be a rate hike "threshold" once it hit 6.5% and is now at 5.1%) has become irrelevant in a country where a record 94 million people have left the labor force, and with the Fed poised to hike rates even though US hourly wages have not only not increased for the past 7 years, but for the vast majority of the labor force continue...

If you’re planning on travelling to China, we have two pieces of advice: Do not look like a short sellerDo not go near any chemical factories Failing to heed the first tip there could get you thrown in jail (or, as Man Group’s China chief Li Yifei calls it, sent on a "short vacation"). The consequences of failing to follow the second piece of advice above could be, how should we put this... explosive. With Beijing still scrambling to contain the fallout (both figuratively and literally) from the devastating blast at Tianjin which killed some 160 people and injured more than...

Shortly after the PBoC’s move to devalue the yuan, we noted with some alarm that it looked as though China may have drawn down its reserves by more than $100 billion in the space of just two weeks. That, we went on the point out, would represent a stunning increase over the previous pace of the country’s reserve draw down, which we began documenting months ahead of the devaluation (see here, for instance). We went on to estimate, based on the projected size of the RMB carry trade unwind, how large the FX reserve liquidation might need to be to...

Earlier this year, the Mirror published an article all about this entitled “Panicked super rich buying boltholes with private airstrips to escape if poor rise up“. Here is a brief excerpt… Robert Johnson, president of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, told people at the World Economic Forum in Davos that many hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. He said: “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.” Keep in mind that these are not just some rumors that...

A few months ago, a hurt Ben Bernanke put on his blogger hat and set out to explain why, in his mind, the unconventional policies undertaken by the Fed in the post-crisis years have not contributed to record income inequality. As we noted at the time, epic hilarity ensued. Bernanke’s explanation went something like this: while QE does indeed inflate asset prices, poor people have been getting poorer for quite some time, so sure, maybe the Fed contributed a little bit, but probably not a whole lot and besides, the more Keynes the better when it comes to smoothing out...

While many continue to debate if what with every passing day increasingly looks like a global recession, one from which the US will not decouple no matter how many "virtual portfolio" asset managers claim the contrary, there are those who without much fanfare are already taking proactive steps to avoid the kind of fallout that the markets have hinted in the past month of trading, is inevitable. Some such as Calstrs: the nation's second largest pension fund with $191 billion in assets (smaller only than Calpers), which as the WSJ reports is "considering a significant shift away from some stocks...

One month ago, when everyone suspected that the PBOC's dramatic, 57% jump in gold holdings after a 6 year silence, to a "record" 1658 tons would be a "one-and-done" event, meant to facilitate China's admission into the SDR, we disagreed. This is what we said: ... now that the seal has been finally broken after so many years, and since today's update indicates that Chinese gold numbers are clearly goal-seeked with a specific policy purpose - to boost confidence - we await for the PBOC to start leaking incremental gold holding data every month (and especially in months when...

When Zero Hedge first reported ten days ago that Russian troops, in their bid to support the Assad regime in its ongoing confrontation with various ISIS, Al Nusra, and other US-supported groups in what has become the proxy war of 2015 (one which even comes with thousands of refugees for dramatic media impact) had been quietly massing in Syria and have set up a forward operating base near Damascus, there were those who were openly skeptical. Then, just a few hours ago, Bloomberg finally confirmed that "top officials were scheduled to meet at the National Security Council Deputies Committee level...