Keep your eyes on Venezuela Things are ramping up quickly

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Welcome to the Jungle. COLD WAR II: Pence intensifies warnings about China. Venezuela is Exhibit A. In a speech Thursday to the Hudson Institute, Pence charged Beijing with wanting a new American president and actively interfering in the domestic and foreign affairs of the United States. “Beijing also aims to extend its reach across the wider … Read more

Stagnant Wages, Yet Increasing Household Income…What Gives?

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Every month for the last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ wage data releases have continued to demonstrate that workers simply aren’t getting ahead. Despite some nominal growth, real wage growth has been consistently hovering around zero (rising at just a 0.2 percent annual rate from 2016-2017). At the same time, this year’s annual data release from the Census Bureau showed us that the median household income has risen to $61,370 in 2017, a 1.8 percent increase even after … Read more

Mattress Firm files for bankruptcy, will close up to 700 stores

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Mattress Firm, which has been grappling with declining sales following an overexpansion and a scandal at its parent company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Friday. The nation’s largest mattress retailer has been ailing amid a surge of bed-in-a-box online retailers, too many physical stores and an accounting mess at its parent company, Steinhoff International. Houston-based Mattress … Read more

The Last Time Interest Rates Spike Like This Was February, and Stocks Fell 12%

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Last time rates soared like this, the stock market dropped double-digits from CNBC. via CNBC: Interest rates are surging in the U.S. and around the world, sending shock waves through equity markets. The last time this kind of breakout in bond yields struck, U.S. stocks tumbled more than 10 percent. When the 10-year Treasury note yield broke … Read more

Elon Musk Mocks SEC, Calls for Short-Selling to Be Made Illegal

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“At the very the least, they can read the riot act to Musk’s lawyer,” said Stephen Crimmins, a former SEC enforcement lawyer who’s now a partner at Murphy & McGovern. “Beyond that, if they feel he hasn’t lived up to his deal, they can theoretically seek to pull the settlement.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-04/unrepentant-musk-calls-sec-shortseller-enrichment-commission?srnd=premium

If the only reason you pay for Amazon Prime is because of 2-day shipping, there is a good chance it’s a smarter financial move for you to cancel it than continue.

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by 83wonder I’ve paid for prime since it was available, and lately I’ve noticed it’s gotten increasingly worse with shipping. FYI – Prime doesn’t mean you will get an item in 2 days, it means you should get the item 2 days after it ships, and there will often be multiple days between order and ship date meaning a $119 prime … Read more

Verizon to cut 44,000 workers and shuffle a bunch of IT workers to Indian Oursourcing Giant

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Verizon Communications offered voluntary severance packages last month to roughly 44,000 employees.That comes to more than a quarter of the carrier’s workforce. A spokesman for the company confirmed the scope of the offer, which was previously reported by The Wall Street Journal. The severance packages will give Verizon “an opportunity to find more efficiencies in the size and … Read more

Danish bank shares fall sharply

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by Lass3BTC Danish Bank shares fall sharply on Friday morning. At 04.10, the value dropped by 10.6 percent after the stock market opened at 9:00 this morning. Overall, shareholders have lost nearly 40 percent this year, the money laundering case in Estonia has taken the headlines. Financial Times writes Friday how Danish Bank Estonian branch in … Read more

Former Barack Obama operative John Burton has a team of 16,000 who are seeking to uncover dirt on key Republican candidates up for re-election.

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A former Barack Obama operative has amassed a team of 16,000 ‘amateur sleuths’ who are seeking to uncover dirt on key Republican candidates up for re-election this November. John Burton is his name, and he’s an angry 38-year-old former JP Morgan employee and Barack Obama opposition research guru. Starting shortly after President Trump was elected … Read more

Return of volatility: more short term weakness for stocks ahead

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by Troy As you would recall, I said in late-September that the stock market’s volatility would probably spike in October. Volatility was extremely compressed, which set the stage for an expansion in vol. Yesterday, the stock market went down and volatility spiked a little. Spikes in volatility are usually larger than this, so perhaps the stock market … Read more

40% of millennial men identify as socialist

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A new poll examining the political leanings of the next generation of leaders found 31 percent of millennials identify as “democratic socialist” or “socialist” while 40 percent of men in that age group say the same. The study by Maru/Blue and BuzzFeed News released Thursday, reported by the Daily Caller, asked 1,006 randomly selected 22- to 27-year-olds to … Read more