China’s Animal Apocalypse Spreads To Dogs

First it was floating dead pigs, then ducks, then black swans, then mass chicken exterminations, then fish, and now more pigs and also a brand new entrant to the Chinese animal apocalypse: dogs.

AP reports that hundreds more pigs have been found dead in China – this time together with dozens of dogs. “A total of 410 pigs and 122 dogs were discovered in homes and at farms earlier this week in a village that comes under Yanshi [...]

Shanghai Animal Apocalypse Accelerating: Pigs, Ducks, Black Swans, Chickens And Now Fish, 21 Confirmed Cases, 1 in 3 People Who Got Sick of This Flu Has Died, Gov’t Closing All Live Poultry Markets, Hong Kong On Standby For H7N9 Outbreak, MCD Slashing Chicken Prices in Shanghai on Birdflu… Shanghai Is The Largest City By Population In CHINA

Pigs, Ducks, Black Swans, Chickens And Now Fish: The Shanghai Animal Apocalypse Accelerates

Shanghai just can’t catch a break – first it was floating dead pigs, then ducks, then black swans, then mass chicken exterminations, and now fish. From the Telegraph: ” Just weeks after over 16,000 putrefying pigs were pulled from Shanghai’s Huangpu river, more than 250kg of dead carp had to be retrieved from a river in the city’s Songjiang district. Mystery still surrounds [...]

Dead Pigs, Ducks And Now Black Swans: China’s Animal Apocalypse Crosses Into The Twilight Zone

First it was thousands of dead pigs floating in the Shanghai water supply (at last estimate over 16,000), then a thousand dead ducks were pulled from a river in the Sichuan province, and now, pushing the meme beyond even its most grotesque boundaries, we learn that five black swans were found floating lifeless on the pond of Anhui University’s old campus in Hefei, traditionally inhabited by a bevy of black swans. From Danwei: “The [...]

Sterling crisis talk increasing

from Gold Money:

Are the markets at long last taking central banks at their word? This would appear to be the conclusion to draw from the continuing bullish action in stocks and commodities, as well as gold and silver, though there remain any number of black swans circling overhead. The euro and Aussie dollar are gaining while the US dollar is losing ground to other currencies – sure signs of bullish sentiment. [...]

Aegis Capital: 25% correction is coming as a “freckled swan” of powerful macroeconomic headwinds is building momentum

Renewed jitters over Europe, growing fears about China and the U.S’s precarious fiscal situation all bode poorly for the recent stock rally, which could correct as much as 25 percent in the coming months, an investment manager said Wednesday.

Market participants often refer to unanticipated occurences that rock the global economy as “black swans“. Yet Stanley Crouch, chief investment officer at Aegis Capital, told CNBC’s “Street Signs” that a “freckled swan” [...]

Doolittle says the S&P could fall 18 percent to as much as 44 percent.

Stocks are at their most oversold levels since the doom days of the financial crisis and may be due for a rally, according to one measure.

 

Though the relative decline seems tame in comparison, the 7 percent drop since early April in the S&P 500 index [.SPX  1295.22    -9.64  (-0.74%)   ] compared to recent trends is on par with tumbles during the financial crisis, as well as low points [...]

Keith Barron: Greek Situation Catastrophic, Expect More Black Swans

kingworldnews.com

Today one of the legends in the gold world told King World News the Greek situation will be catastrophic as it plays out over time.  Keith Barron is responsible for one of the largest gold discoveries in history and consults with major gold companies around the world as well as international brokerage houses.  Barron also said investors should expect to see more black swans on the horizon.  Here is how [...]

Erik Townsend: Expect A US Price Shock As Black Swans Come Home to Roost

by Adam

American investor (and longtime CM.com member) Erik Townsend has spent the past several years living internationally, with an eye to which countries may be good alternatives if economic crisis and/or Peak Oil start to materially impact life in the US.

His main observation as an expat? Through its misguided policies, the US has been exporting inflation to the rest of the world, raising prices all over the globe (as an example, he [...]

Report: Humans Are Done Trading, It’s Time For The Rise Of The Machines

by Linette Lopez

We know this from driving cars — human beings can only react so fast.

This fact also applies, obviously, to driving the market. Human beings can still only move so fast, but the financial industry is calling for vehicles that move faster and faster. A group of professors and researchers got together to think out exactly what that means.

Their findings were published in a paper called ‘Financial black swans driven [...]

This classic American book could be a useful guide for the “End of America”

From Economic Policy Journal:

Many people remember the book Walden as the story of a hermit living in a hut, who survived on twigs and berries in the Concord, Massachusetts woods. Its author, Henry David Thoreau, was no hermit, but a survivalist and philosopher who personified the best of American values of self-reliance, simplicity, love of the land, individualism, and defense of personal liberty against governmental overreaching.

He lived simply on Walden Pond from [...]

Capital Account: Gonzalo Lira tells us how Americans are Escaping from the USA

Uploaded by CapitalAccount on Jan 9, 2012

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Merkozy reunites and turns up the heat on Greece to reform and cut the national debt, as markets fear the Greek bailout is unraveling. And signs of paranormal activity continue as investors pay Germany to lend the government money. The interest on 6-month German Bills — close to 5 billion dollars worth — were auctioned at a negative yield. We’ll talk about [...]

The Circling Black Swans Of 2012

by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds.com

The Circling Black Swans of 2012   (January 2, 2012)

The Imperial hubris of America’s Elites offers up a tempting target for black swans, as suppressing the sources of instability only increases the odds of disruptive instability.

Longtime correspondent (and Oregon resident) R.S.D. recently made this observation about black swans:

I notice that a number of predictors for 2012 never mention the flock of black swans that are currently circling in [...]

Words and Phrases We Hope Not To See Or Hear In 2012

Via Peter Tchir of TF Market Advisors,

Rather than making some predictions, here is a list of words and phrases that were popular in 2011 that just annoy me.  It would be nice if they become less popular in 2012, but I predict they will remain in use.

 

Bazooka

No self-respecting videogame would have a “bazooka” as the ultimate weapon.  Bazookas just aren’t that powerful.  Maybe Europe needs to search for a “nuclear” option, [...]

Saxo Bank’s list of “Outrageous Predictions” for 2012: THE PERFECT STORM

From Saxo’s Chief Economist Steen Jakobsen

2012: THE PERFECT STORM

Generating this year’s Outrageous Predictions has been even more of a pleasure than usual, as it seems that never before have there been so many path uncertainties for the future, so we have had an infinite variety of scenarios to draw on. As usual, we try to keep at least a measure of consistency across the predictions by using a unifying theme. [...]

Jim Lewis: Nassim Taleb is wrong about the financial crisis and black swans

Black Swans And Complexity

Submitted by Jim Lewis

Nassim Taleb is wrong about the financial crisis and black swans.

The ongoing financial crisis is not the result of a perplexing phenomenon of complexity. It is the beginning of a train wreck we have seen for decades. We are not wandering into a surprise or horrified by the dark specter of a Black Swan rearing its long tailed head; this macro crisis appeared on [...]

Rick Rule – Many Black Swans that Could Hit This Market

kingworldnews.com

With stocks turning higher, gold near $1,625 and silver at $30, today King World News interviewed one of the most street smart pros, Rick Rule, Founder of Global Resource Investments, which is now part of the $10 billion strong Sprott Asset Management.  When asked about the tremendous volatility and wild swings in all of the markets, Rule responded, “What I see happening is a crisis [...]

Three Charts Explaining the Financial Crisis

By www.thetrader.se

So what is going on in the markets? We had Fukushima, but that was all good for the economy, because we had to rebuild Japan (with printing money).Then those guys in MENA wanted freedom (and lower food prices). NATO started Operation bomb Libya to stone age, but that was all good, that needs rebuilding too. Greece suddenly discovered it had no money left. Ireland [...]

Black swans, white swans and Red China

Many Americans are already concerned about China’s growing economic challenge to the United States. Indeed, the challenge itself is hardly news anymore. But a new book, Red Alert by Stephen Leeb, argues that Americans have radically misunderstood just what this challenge consists of.

Easy to read piece in the Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/how-china-plans-to-leapfr_b_866576.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=052511&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

Well, well. It seems the decolonisation of Africa has been for naught. The west stepped out and China moved [...]

Migration Of The Black Swans

by Giordano Bruno of Neithercorp Press

Migration Of The Black Swans

The phrase “Black Swan” is really making the rounds these last few months. Uttering the term a year ago would have earned you a collection of confused looks and a general attitude of disinterest. Now, people behave as if they had learned about economic shockwave events and the global domino effect when they were in [...]

The bears are back, discussing the usual topics du jour, which in this case is a rather humorous listing of the most recent 99 black swans year to date in 2011, and their impact on silver

….. love the bears …… love xtranormal …..

CPI: US Inflation On Track To Hit 8.3% In 2011

by ZH

Chasing all the fluttering glow in the dark swans over the past month has put some of the key issues facing the US economy on the backburner. But just like today’s surging inflation update in the UK confirmed, there is only so long that any given crisis can be used a distraction from the real problems at hand. And here is where we stand: per [...]

It’s a whole clusterflock of Black Swans these days…

Getting a few reports — http://www.examiner.com/environmental-ne… — of a major oil spill in the GoM.

The U.S. Coast Guard is currently investigating reports of a potentially massive oil sheen about 20 miles away from the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion last April.

According to Paul Barnard, operations controller for the USCG in Louisiana, a helicopter crew has been dispatched to the site of the Matterhorn [...]

Potential Black Swans that can happen at any time;

1. Iran detonates a nuclear device (test). The Obama admin is playing with a very dangerous fire here!

2. A major nation is downgraded, such as Spain, Ireland, Great Britain, or possibly even Japan. Look at the carnage when Greece was downgraded, now imagine a larger nation.

3. A major bank is closed (on FDIC Friday?). The weekend probably would not mitigate the damage.

4. Oil over $100 a barrel.

5. A successful terrorist [...]