The contagion of the record low 10-year Treasury yield of July 2016 has spread to the 30-year in August 2019

U.S. 10-Year Treasury Yield Closes at Record Low:

The yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury note settled at 1.367% Tuesday, breaching the previous close low of 1.404% set in July 2012 when investors rushed into haven debt amid the depth of the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis. Yields fall as bond prices rise. ...

On an intraday basis, the U.S. 10-year yield touched as low as 1.357%. It was 1.446% Friday and 2.273% at the end of last year. The U.S. bond market was shut Monday for a holiday.

Traders say the 10-year yield still has room to fall. Investors and analysts say bond yields are in uncharted waters now and that it is hard to predict how low yields could go in this environment.

Few in the financial markets have foreseen a period of negative interest rates touching off globally. The total of sovereign debt with negative yields jumped to $11.7 trillion as of June 27, up $1.3 trillion from the end of May, according to Fitch Ratings.

The pool is likely to expand further in the months ahead due to ongoing purchases of government bonds by the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan. ...

The 30-year Treasury bond has been the market darling, and the buying spree has pushed down its yield to record lows lately. The 30-year bond’s yield settled at 2.138%, falling below its record close low of 2.226% Friday.

The 30-year bond was usually the playground for pension funds and insurance firms. But it is now being bid up by a broader investor base due to the global hunger for income. Analysts say it wouldn’t surprise them if the 30-year yield falls below the 2% mark in the weeks ahead.

Three years later:

U.S. 30-year bond yields hit record low, curve inversion grows:

In late Wednesday trading, the yields on 30-year government bonds were 1.939%, down 2.2 basis points from late Tuesday. They hit an all-time low of 1.905% earlier Wednesday.

Reuters headline, and I quote: "S.African township squalid despite 25 years of black rule"

S.African township squalid and neglected despite 25 years of black rule:

The shocking conditions in which people like Ditsela live are a big problem for the governing African National Congress (ANC), which faces mounting public anger over its failure to improve the lives of millions of the poorest citizens, 25 years after the end of white minority rule.

 

47-year-old Italian citizen of Senegalese origin torches school bus, tries to kill kids in retaliation against Matteo Salvini

Driver hijacks, sets ablaze school bus in Italy, children flee unharmed:

An unnamed girl was also quoted as saying that Sy blamed deputy prime ministers Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio for the deaths of African migrants at sea.

 

Beto, your next president, had a pretty sick imagination about mowing down kids with his car when he was a teenager

Beto's got a car thing going. Car as a weapon (Jihadi much?). DUI. Driving around with the window open, looking for himself. Asking for gas money for the minivan campaign.

I don't want this guy driving anything, especially the country.

Beto O’Rourke’s secret membership in America’s oldest hacking group:

Another t-file from O’Rourke, written when he was 15, is a short and disturbing piece of fiction. “One day, as I was driving home from work, I noticed two children crossing the street. They were happy, happy to be free from their troubles…. This happiness was mine by right. I had earned it in my dreams.

“As I neared the young ones, I put all my weight on my right foot, keeping the accelerator pedal on the floor until I heard the crashing of the two children on the hood, and then the sharp cry of pain from one of the two. I was so fascinated for a moment, that when after I had stopped my vehicle, I just sat in a daze, sweet visions filling my head.”

Laugh of the Day: German industrial production tanks 4.7% in November, Reuters calls it a tentative sign of slowing growth momentum

The signs were tentative in H1 and worrisome since then. November was a disaster.

Global economy is headed for recession:

[T]here were tentative signs of slackening momentum in the United States and Germany in November.

State elections board still refuses to certify Republican Mark Harris the winner in NC-9

North Carolina seat in U.S. Congress likely to stay vacant as fraud controversy intensifies:

Harris filed an emergency petition earlier on Friday to be certified as victor of last month’s election for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. His request was rejected by a state elections board reviewing whether mail-in ballots were illegally handled in some rural counties.

But the future of that investigation was thrown into doubt by a state court ruling and newly passed law. The state elections board was disbanded on Friday, after a state court on Thursday declined to extend a stay on a previous order declaring the composition of the board unconstitutional.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said he would immediately appoint an interim board to continue the investigation until a restructured elections board was due to begin operating at the end of January under a new state law.

CNBC/Reuters can't decide if the socialist spokesman for France's government is a man or a woman

How does anyone think someone named Benjamin is a woman, especially when he clearly needs a shave?

France mulls state of emergency after Paris riots, won’t change policy:

“We have to think about the measures that can be taken so that these incidents don’t happen again,” government spokeswoman Benjamin Griveaux told Europe 1 radio. ... When asked about imposing a state of emergency, Griveaux said it would be among the options considered on Sunday. “It is out of the question that each weekend becomes a meeting or ritual for violence.” Griveaux urged the yellow vest movement to disassociate itself from the radical groups that had instigated the violence, organize itself and come to the negotiating table. However, he ruled out a change in government policy. “We won’t change course. It’s the right direction. We are certain of that,” he said.

Today's fake news discourtesy of Reuters and CNBC: Republican proposes taxes on retirement plans

Top US House tax writer floats a tax bill on retirement plans and the IRS

The article says no such thing.

As long as South Africa legalizes theft of farm land owned by whites, the IMF and the UK's Theresa May are all for it

Reuters reports here.

South Africa was ruled by Britain for a hundred years between 1806 and 1910. White Europeans swelled population through immigration, peaking above 5 million in the mid 1990s. They carved civilization out of a savage environment, for which they get no thanks now because savagery is all the fashion again.

Legalized theft takes different forms in different places at different times, for example through government exercise of eminent domain, or through imposition of an income tax.

In South Africa the plan is to take without compensation, but perhaps with murder thrown in for good measure if Julius Malema gets his way. 

Wells Fargo sets aside $8 million to compensate about 400 homeowners foreclosed from 2010-2015 due to computer glitch

Well whoopdedoo. That's about only $20,000 a pop.

Sorry you lost your job. Here's a sandwich.

Story here.

China intends to go to war to defend its claim to the South China Sea, ready to base its version of B-52 in Spratly Islands

It's like the Japs in WWII all over again.

China air force releases statement, reported here:

“A division of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) recently organised multiple bombers such as the H-6K to conduct take-off and landing training on islands and reefs in the South China Sea in order to improve our ability to ‘reach all territory, conduct strikes at any time and strike in all directions’,” it said in the statement issued on Friday.

It said the pilot of the H-6K bomber conducted assault training on a designated sea target and then carried out take-offs and landings at an airport in the area, describing the exercise as preparation for “the West Pacific and the battle for the South China Sea”.

Just a reminder: North Korea wants US troops out of South Korea

A bad idea shared by many, not the least of whom is Pat Buchanan.

Reuters reports, here:

The North has long said it is open to eventually giving up its nuclear arsenal if the United States withdraws its troops from South Korea and ends its “nuclear umbrella” alliance with Seoul.

Smoking pot increases blood pressure and risk of death from hypertension

Story here.

Oh yeah? Bring me his head on a platter

Emmanuel Macron doesn't know how to speak of France, only of Europe and its citizens

Emmanuel Macron, the new president of France, quoted in the story here:

"I know the anger, the anxiety, the doubts that very many of you have also expressed. It's my responsibility to hear them," he said. "I will work to recreate the link between Europe and its peoples, between Europe and citizens." ...

[Marine Le Pen's] tally was almost double the score that her father Jean-Marie, the last far-right candidate to make the presidential runoff, achieved in 2002, when he was trounced by the conservative Jacques Chirac. ...

[A]ny idea of a brave new political dawn will be tempered by an abstention rate on Sunday of around 25 percent, the highest this century, and by the blank or spoiled ballots submitted by 12 percent of those who did vote.

Reuters/CNBC oil headline says Russian production cuts stall, when the truth is Russia is cheating

So who's working in sympathy with the Russians now, huh?

"US oil settles at $52.61 a barrel, down $1.22 after Russian output cuts stall" says the headline.

"Russia's February oil output was unchanged from January at 11.11 million barrels per day (bpd), energy ministry data showed, with cuts remaining at 100,000 bpd or just a third of the levels pledged by Moscow under the agreement with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries" says the story, here.

Headline should have read: "Russian oil output cuts fall 66% short of those promised two months in a row".

John McCain calls for lethal aid to Ukraine

Major Kong rides again

Story here.

Reuters and CNBC call the dollar at 100 "wallowing" when 5 years ago it was a hog in slop below 80

Another Obama lie from 2013: We aren't rifling through ordinary emails of American citizens . . . right now

The Guardian had the quote here:

He added: "This is not a situation in which we are rifling through the ordinary emails of German citizens or American citizens or French citizens or anybody else. This is not a situation where we simply go into the internet and start searching any way that we want. This is a circumscribed, narrow system, directed at us being able to protect our people and all of it is done with the oversight of the courts."

But by 2015 they were, at Yahoo.

I guess they wanted in on the action, since 500 email accounts had been hacked the year before. 

Yellen is political, talk of a future put in the form of the Fed buying stocks last week was intended to backstop the market this month

And a buoyant market in October 2016 will only help Clinton.

Yellen should be impeached immediately.

Reuters reported here last Thursday, but no one is touching this story with a ten foot pole because they all want Hillary elected:

"It could be useful to be able to intervene directly in assets where the prices have a more direct link to spending decisions," she said, adding that buying equities and corporate bonds could have costs and benefits.