Kerry Lutz's--Financial Survival Network

Ned Schmidt, one of the foremost agricultural commodity and stock analysts is extremely skeptical about plant-based burgers. They've been around for a long time but only recently has their taste improved. While Ned believes that eventual human demand for grains will put a major damper on beef production, we're not there yet. Could these fake meats just be another Millennial corporate scam? 

Something crazy is hitting the markets. Why can't Johnny sell repos anymore. Has QE4 already started? Has the Fed lost control? Lot's of questions and not many answers. But we do know that gold's quantity is physically limited, while fiat currency knows no such boundaries. The world's awash in sovereign debt with no end in site: until fiscal sanity again prevails, if ever. Things have been working so well, why change them?  

Houston we have a problem. Chinese and Hong Kong banks are running out of dollars. But I thought we had too many of them floating around the world. Guess not. There's plenty more where they came from. It's just another example of the glue that holds together the world financial system coming apart at the seams. First it was the staid repo market. Now it's foreign banks running out of the reserve currency. As Martin Armstrong often explains, 70% of the 100 dollar bills in circulation are held overseas. So much for the immediate demise of the reserve currency. 

Special shout-out to my son-in-law's father, John Kirby, who passed on last week. A prince among men and one of those important people you've never heard of. 

Leftist conspiracy-monger Adam Schiff was aware of select details of the Ukraine-Biden allegations against President Trump before a lying CIA snitch reportedly involved in the case filed a complaint under a whistleblower law, according to the intermittently reliable New York Times. It has been widely reported that the CIA official’s complaint was based on a July 25 telephone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the said stoolie somehow learned about. Trump stands accused by Democrats without any credible evidence whatsoever of trying to muscle the government of Ukraine into investigating a potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, in order to discredit his campaign. This, of course, is the exact opposite of what actually happened.

Emerging markets have had their own impeachment episodes in the likes of South Korea, South Africa and Brazil. Amid mounting talk of the potential impeachment of U.S. President Donald Trump, one analyst said investors may want to look abroad to gain insight into the market implications of presidential impeachments.
 
Craig Botham, senior emerging markets economist at U.K. asset manager Schroders, said one problem with studying how markets responded to a presidential impeachment was the lack of data, as the U.S. having seen only one successful impeachment out of four attempts. Wall Street could therefore supplement their research with case studies from emerging markets such as South Korea and Brazil, whose heads of state have been ousted in the past decade.
 
Investors are in a tizzy over what impeachments have historically spelled for Wall Street, after House Democrats opened up an impeachment inquiry against U.S. President Donald Trump. A whistleblower complaint accused Trump of withholding military aid to the Ukraine to pressure it into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s dealings with Ukraine.
 
Yet even a larger data set that encompassed examples in emerging markets did not yield any easy conclusions, said Botham, citing a paper he wrote on the topic in 2017.
 
“In general, there is no direction basically. A priori you cannot say impeachment is going to be good or bad for markets,” said Botham.
But he added impeachment could set off prolonged periods of heightened market volatility.
 
In the table below, he shows that major stock-market benchmarks tended to show outsized moves during impeachment proceedings. During the impeachment investigations into Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, annualized volatility for the S&P 500 (SPX) with historical levels.
 
Botham cautioned, however, that even if impeachment sagas do “make markets more skittish, but it can be hard to disentangle with the events of the day.”
 
For example, impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton coincided with a surge in volatility in stock and bond markets, overlapping with the Russian debt crisis and the collapse of hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management. It was therefore unclear if the market jitters were sparked by political uncertainty or heightened global economic growth concerns.
 
Another lesson that could be gleaned from previous impeachment proceedings was that the market impact was often tied to expectations of policy change. If a new head of state didn’t break away from past policies, speculation of a looming impeachment was unlikely to spur turbulent trading in markets.
 
“The first question you ask is how likely is impeachment anyway? The second question is what does it change relative to market expectations compared with policy,” said Botham.
 
In Brazil’s case, President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment was eagerly awaited by investors as her successor, Michel Temer, was considered a more business-friendly candidate who would reform a sclerotic public pension system, and shift the country away from left-wing populist policies that had been blamed for bringing Brazil’s public finances to its knees.
 
Yet in South Korea, market volatility was suppressed during Park Geun Hye’s impeachment in part because there was “less anticipation of a big change in economic policy,” said Botham.
 
As for the U.S., investors may not react much to Trump’s impeachment inquiry as both Republican and Democrats have a mutual desire for a more confrontational approach with China’s trade practices.
 
In the outside chance there was a change of Presidency, Botham said Trump’s successor may pursue a more conciliatory approach to the U.S’s major trading partners, who may share similar grievances against Beijing and may be willing to form a united front against China.
 
“If markets do move on the impeachment talk, people might start to price in a better trade-related outcome for the EU and NAFTA countries,” said Botham.

The recent economic numbers are starting to have a decidedly negative bent to them. Manufacturing is down, the stock market is heading down and nobody knows where it will stop. Trump has been haranguing the Fed to rapidly lower rates and now it appears that he'll have his wish. Another rate cut is in the offing. Will we go totally negative or just hit zero? That's the question. 

David Erfle is extremely encouraged about the recent price movements of the yellow metal. He believes it was due for a breather and it appears to be getting one. After all, the tree does not grow to the sky. $1450 has become support and $1550 has become resistance. Probably later in the year, late Q4, he expects to see a resumption of the bull move and that it's anyone's guess where it will wind up. 

In what looks like another trade-deal victory for the Trump Administration, Apple announced on Monday that it would manufacture its Mac Pro Desktop at a factory in Austin, Texas.

After the US government approved tariff waivers on 10 key components for the Mac Book Pro that the company sources from China.

"Manufacturing of the new model was made possible after the US government approved on Friday Apple’s request for a waiver on 25% tariffs on 10 key components imported from China."

Some analysts have warned that key components will still be made in China and exported to the US for final assembly in Austin, but the number of components for the new desktop increased by 2.5 times from the previous model.

In an interesting about-face for Trump, the president had previously signaled that he wouldn't grant the waivers, but has apparently decided to cave. We imagine the softening in his approach is related to the tit-for-tat pre-trade-talk detente going on new between Washington and Beijing.

Trump had previously signaled that relief from tariffs on the Mac Pro would be rejected, saying in a July 26 tweet that “Apple will not be given Tariff waiver, or relief for." Mac Pro parts that are made in China. Make them in the USA, no Tariffs!" However, the president later told reporters that the two families “we’ll work it out.”

Still, with five other requests pending before the DoC, Apple has plenty of reason to be anxious. So far, Cook has been spared from most duties. But products such as the Apple Watch, AirPods and iMac computers were hit by 15% tariffs earlier this month, while the iPhone, iPad and other major Apple products are set to be impacted later in December.

Apple said construction for the new desktop will begin "soon," which roughly equates to: "Before the holiday shopping season ends." Meanwhile, the revamped model was announced in June at the company’s annual conference for developers, with a starting price of $6,000. Compared with the previous version, the new model is far more customizable and integrates with a new high-resolution external monitor.

TG Watkins was first exposed to the stock market when his dad brought him to a two day seminar when he was just 12 years old.

The current low rate environment is creating malinvestment and economic anomalies wherever you look. From 8-9 year auto loans, to distorted real estate markets, it's all over the economic landscape. The cure is coming and it may well be worse than the disease, at first anyway. Transitions to new economic systems are always disruptive and often unpleasant. But change is coming and you can either go with it and prosper or go down fighting it. The choice is yours.

Reclaiming Common Sense: Finding Truth in a Post-Truth World is the one book every American patriot should read - both Democrat and Republican. Robert Curry's new follow-up to the great "Common Sense Nation" is an urgent reminder that we all need to rethink our positions in the 21st Century and know our history.

Stock markets continued their upward trajectory in September with DJIA up almost 2%. Dollar was way up getting to 99.4. Euro down to 109. Bitcoin crashed to 8625. Metals were down with gold losing 3.3% and silver losing 17.4%. Palladium shot up to 1655. WTI down 2%. Uranium basically flat. Pt to Pd at an all time low of .53. Gold to silver back up to 86.7. Till next month!

The Repo Market has been distressed for two weeks now. The Fed keeps on injecting more money to keep it liquid. Why? They're just going to have to keep on doing it until something else happens.

Don't impeachment. It's not going anywhere. And it can't. But that's not going to stop Pelosi and the wicked out Squad. Humiliation is there's.

State pension funds going bust. 10 are good. Another 12 are okay and the rest are toast, especially NJ, Kentucky, Illinois and 7 others.

On October 26-27 Jason Hartman will be holding another Profits in Paradise in Orlando Florida. This is must see event. Along with Jason's usual all-star cast of guests, he'll be introducing new opportunities for new and current investors. The future of turn-key cash-flowing single family homes has never been brighter. We are giving away 2 pairs of tickets to the 3rd and 6th email respondents. So write us soon at kl@kerrylutz.com. Otherwise go to JasonHartman.com and sign up now! See you in Orlando. 

The nation's trial lawyers are in control and protecting you from harmful vaping companies like Juul. No matter that 8 million people have quit smoking using this device. I guess they'd be better off smoking tobacco, after all you might only get lung cancer. 

And the Trump Impeachment saga gets a new lease on life. Thank you all whistleblowers. We hear you!