Total Household Net Worth Rises About 3.5% In Real Terms Since April 2007 Through The Last Quarter Of 2013

I used all items CPI of about 13.17% from April 2007 to date, not seasonally adjusted, on April 2007 peak household net worth of $68.82486 trillion.

This yields $77.889 trillion to record date in Q4 2013, meaning the current dollar figure of $80.66 trillion of household net worth represents a real gain, that is an inflation adjusted gain, of about 3.5% in household net worth since April 2007, over six years ago. That's not really saying very much.

The Fed is cited here as saying the vast majority of the increase in household net worth is attributable to rising stock prices, which rose in value by a factor of 2.4 times the rise of housing values, owing to the nearly 30% rise in the stock market in 2013:

The Fed said household net worth rose 14 percent in the full year, driven by a $5.6 trillion rise in the value of shares and a $2.3 trillion increase in the value of real estate.

Using the Wilshire 5000, total stock market capitalization increased $5.65 trillion in nominal terms in 2013. But a mere 20% correction to today's market would wipe out over $4.8 trillion in an instant, and a 40% crash would annihilate over $9.5 trillion.

Housing prices overall have reached a valuation nearly 20% above the long term mean level, which means to some that we are in a reinflated housing bubble. The Case Shiller Home Price Index is up almost 10% just in the last year. The high end of normal on the index used to be 140. Today we are in excess of 150. So reversion to the mean could easily wipe out the $2.3 trillion increase from 2013, and then quite a bit more.

The real increase in net worth may be nothing more than a Fed induced mirage based on artifically cheap money and grotesquely punitive rates of return on same which encourage speculation in asset classes like stocks and real estate.

Wise men know what wicked things are written on the skies.

Among Other Things Henry Kissinger Reminds Us That The EU Shares Much Of The Blame For The Ukraine Fiasco

Here in The Washington Post, after which he admonishes the neocons that Ukraine must not become a part of NATO and posits other principles to defuse the situation:

The European Union must recognize that its bureaucratic dilatoriness and subordination of the strategic element to domestic politics in negotiating Ukraine’s relationship to Europe contributed to turning a negotiation into a crisis. Foreign policy is the art of establishing priorities.

Say what you will about Henry Kissinger, but he was a Secretary of State of the highest caliber and remains a statesman we should listen to, unlike the Hillary Clintons of the world who go shooting off their mouths in the teeth of a crisis comparing Vladimir Putin to Adolph Hitler.

If anyone should never be president it's Hillary Clinton. At least Democrats got that right in 2008. Ambassador Christopher Stevens is proof enough of that.

Jeb Bush Still Has A Flip-Flop Problem: "I Used To Be A Conservative"

Jeb Bush, quoted here in February 2012:

"I used to be a conservative and I watch these debates and I'm wondering, I don't think I've changed, but it's a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people's fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective and that's kind of where we are," said the former Florida Governor. "I think it changes when we get to the general election. I hope."

---------------------------------------------------

How can you "used to be" something but say you haven't changed?

Easy: the same way you can be for a pathway to citizenship and then be against it and claim you haven't flip-flopped:

"Where the hell was this Jeb Bush during the campaign?" the [Romney] advisor said. "He spent all this time criticizing Romney and it turns out he has basically the same position. So he wants people to go back to their country and apply for citizenship? Well, that's self deportation. We got creamed for talking about that. And now Jeb is saying the same thing."

Liberal Republicans: making suckers of conservatives since . . . well, forever!

Crimean Regional Parliament Votes Unanimously To Join The Russian Federation

So reports the BBC here (you wouldn't know it was unanimous from US news stories):

11:27: To recap:

• Members of Crimea's regional parliament have voted unanimously to make Crimea part of Russia
• The plan will be put to a referendum on 16 March, when the majority Russian-speaking population is expected to approve it
• The parliament does not officially have power to do this, but the peninsula is still in effect under Russian control
• An advisor to the Russian government has told the BBC the Kremlin is unlikely to stand in the way of a referendum

Giving USA Puts 2012 Charitable Giving At $316 Billion: Still In Depression In Current Dollar Terms

Reported here. Chart here.

Just 32% of the total contributed in 2012 went to religious organizations, less than $102 billion.

Drudge Can't Spell "Evangelist"

Flashback August 1974, Cover Of Time Magazine: The Coming Ice Age

The Great Lakes Are 91% Ice Covered, Second Highest Percentage Since The 1979 Record Of 94.7%

Story here.

Is Crimea Payback For Cyprus?

I haven't heard anyone say this yet, but Russians lost a lot of money when the EU "bailed out" Cyprus by bailing it in. More to the point, the EU confiscated 40% of deposits in Cyprus banks in excess of 100,000 euros, which hit a lot of rich Russian depositors pretty hard. It was another example of EU overreach in the opinion of Russians, something of which the West has been very dismissive but which Putin has indicated will not fly anymore as early as 2008, and proved it when he annexed South Ossetia during the Olympic Games in China.

Crimea was a perfect opportunity for a little payback for Cyprus, considering that the US has been trying to push Ukraine into the arms of the EU, most recently when Senators John McCain and Chris Murphy visited Ukraine in December and threatened the country with sanctions if it did not ally with the West.

From Putin's perspective, the EU means losses for Russia. American policy isn't taking that seriously enough, because if it were Putin wouldn't need to resort to arms.

S&P500 Vaults 14 Points Above The Last High One Day After Crimean Invasion By Russia

War is the father of everything.

Drudge Is Just A Sensationalist Tabloid, Not In The Grocery Story Aisle But On The Internet

Everyone who reads the stories Drudge links to can perceive instantly that Drudge's headlines often are purely sensationalist and sometimes down right misleading, often in the extreme.

Today is a good example.

The story Drudge links to here via Reuters clearly states up front in the second paragraph that the US knew in advance of today's test. The test was not an exclamation point added at the end of the sentence about the Crimean invasion:

A U.S. official said the United States had received proper notification from Russia ahead of the test and that the initial notification pre-dated the crisis in Crimea. The Russian Defence Ministry could not be reached for comment.

Russia performs due diligence and informs us of these tests well in advance. Today's test was a good example. But Drudge plays it up differently nevertheless, as if Russia were sending us a message.

Wikileaks proved Russia has been warning the West about expanding NATO too closely to Russia's borders since at least 2008. Russia's action in Crimea should not have come as a surprise to anyone who has a sense of history or pays attention to the long record of Russian protests against European encroachments on its borders since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The sad part of this is that the radio talkers like Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and even Michael Savage take their lead from Drudge's headlines. At least Savage often brings a critical perspective to bear upon these stories, as does Ingraham to a lesser extent. But overall the tyranny of Drudge over the news cycle on the right is plain for anyone to see. Its memes become the fodder of the juggernaut of uninformed opinion to which we are all now hostage in the age of instant everything.

Stock Markets Are Casinos Of Sentiment Easily Swayed By Important Global Events Like The Crimean Invasion

Markets tank less than 1% on Russia's Crimean invasion . . .

. . . then they recover all that and then some the day after.

Separated At Birth: Hillary Clinton Looks Strangely Similar To . . .

The Russian Invasion Of Georgia In 2008 Was A Warning To The West To Stop Expanding NATO Into Russia's Backyard, But We Ignore This Up To The Present Day

US foreign policy under Bush and Obama has ignored Russia's intentions to reassert its influence and control in regions populated with Russians.

Bloomberg reports here:

Putin has been warning the U.S. and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization states for at least six years not to impede Russian interests in Ukraine, particularly in Crimea, where the Black Sea Fleet has been based since its founding by Catherine the Great in 1783 after the Ottoman Empire ceded the peninsula.

Putin told a closed NATO summit in Romania in 2008 that the military alliance was threatening Ukraine’s very existence by courting it as a member, according to a secret cable published by Wikileaks. Putin said Ukraine’s borders were “sewn together” after World War II and its claims to Crimea, which belonged to Russia until Nikita Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine in 1954, are legally dubious, Kurt Volker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO at the time, said in the cable.

Four months later, Putin demonstrated his willingness to back up words with actions by sending Russian troops to war against Georgia, another former Soviet state, over two Russian-speaking regions seeking independence.

Cold Temps Plunge South Into Texas To Start The First Full Week Of March 2014

The coldest temperature of the winter so far in Grand Rapids, Michigan was -12 degrees F on February 28th, and today Dallas, Texas at 21 degrees F was just 4 degrees warmer than Grand Rapids at about the same hour.

Story here.

Sarah Palin Blames Obama Indecision For Russian Invasion Of Ukraine When She Should Be Blaming Bush

Sarah Palin thinks she's making "I told you so" news, quoted here criticizing Obama in October 2008 when it was already clear George Bush was never going to do anything to stop Russia in Georgia:

"After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence – the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next," she said in Reno, Nevada on October 21, 2008.

George W. Bush did nothing but talk at the time when Russia invaded and occupied South Ossetia in August 2008, which did more to encourage Russia to invade Ukraine next than anything Senators Obama or McCain might have said or not said at the time or now:

"Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century."

"Russia has invaded a sovereign neighbouring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people."

"Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century."

Six years later Russia remains in South Ossetia and America has had to accept it, just like it will have to accept the occupation of Ukraine. America looks stupid and weak when it doesn't back up its words with actions. George Bush made us look stupid then, and Obama is doing it now.  

Scholar Who Sniffed Out The Libor Scandal Now Smells Manipulation In $20 Trillion Gold Market

Bloomberg reports here:

Unusual trading patterns around 3 p.m. in London, when the so-called afternoon fix is set on a private conference call between five of the biggest gold dealers, are a sign of collusive behavior and should be investigated, New York University’s Stern School of Business Professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz and Albert Metz, a managing director at Moody’s Investors Service, wrote in a draft research paper. “The structure of the benchmark is certainly conducive to collusion and manipulation, and the empirical data are consistent with price artificiality,” they say in the report, which hasn’t yet been submitted for publication. “It is likely that co-operation between participants may be occurring.” ... Abrantes-Metz advises the European Union and the International Organization of Securities Commissions on financial benchmarks. Her 2008 paper “Libor Manipulation?” helped uncover the rigging of the London interbank offered rate, which has led financial firms including Barclays Plc (BARC) and UBS AG to be fined about $6 billion in total. She is a paid expert witness to lawyers, providing economic analysis for litigation. [Albert] Metz heads credit policy research at ratings company Moody’s.

Bank Failure Friday: Vantage Point Bank, Horsham, Pennsylvania

Vantage Point Bank, Horsham, Pennsylvania, failed today, the fifth bank failure in 2014, costing the FDIC $8.5 million.

Bank Failure Friday: Millennium Bank, National Association, Sterling, Virginia

Millennium Bank, National Association, Sterling, Virginia, failed today, the fourth bank failure of 2014, costing the FDIC $7.7 million.

S&P500 New High Today At 1859.45