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| | Tavakoli Structured
Finance, Inc. |
| | "Of
course, there is still much work to be done. That means honestly confronting
the crisis of Islamic extremism and the Islamists and Islamic terror of all
kinds." -- President Trump in Riyadh
"Where are you headed, Europe? Rise from your knees
and from your lethargy, or you will be crying over your children every
day." -- Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo
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| | | Portfolio Growth in 2018?
No one can time the market, and given the persistent decline in what the dollar buys, everyone's portfolio needs real growth. Morgan Stanley is predicting three Fed rate hikes in 2018, but nothing close to where real rates, much less nominal rates, would be in a fair market. In a manipulated rising stock market, we all look as if we're investment geniuses, even though bubblenomics drives the S&P. Where we'll end up is anyone's guess. Today's investment landscape looks very far away from value investing.
Look up! January is Great for Moon Gazing
Today, we'll see a supermoon, when the full moon draws closest to the earth and appears 14% larger and 30% brighter.
Jan 31: Full Moon, Supermoon, Blue Moon & Blood Moon
January 31 will bring us a Blue Moon (the second full moon in one month). It will also be a blood moon, since there will be a lunar eclipse that will make the moon appear red. It will also be a supermoon, since the full moon's position in its orbit will be closest to the earth.
The best time to see this is at moonrise and just before sunrise. Check for moonrise times in your area.
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| | Apple Again
There's nothing like a lawsuit to make a company admit it was slowing down phones chiefly to avoid warranty repairs, and secondarily to get customers to upgrade.
BTW, Apple's new Chicago flagship store opened in the Fall with the usual MSM gushing about what a marvel it is. Apple's architects apparently are in love with the Global Warming meme, and completely forgot about Chicago winters. Now a wall seems to be partially succumbing to stress, and the roof design, based on a fake Mac, has created a snow and ice hazard.
Will this have a material effect on Apple stock prices? MSM has chiefly buried this story, along with the serious security and invasion of privacy issues Apple has baked into its iPhones.
Buffett has publicly said he's never sold a share of Apple, added to his position, sold IBM, and MSM touts how right he is. Tepper, Soros, others are big Apple fans. It's a stock that has made a lot of money for a lot of people.
Let's see what happens next.
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| | Apple
The Chicago Sun Times reported on Dec 21
that Apple is being sued in Chicago for slowing down older iPhones: “The suit was filed Thursday by two
Illinoisans along with Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina residents, who had a
range of models from the iPhone 5 to the iPhone 7.”
Scott
Adams weighed in on Apple (December 21): “Reputation suicide: Apple confirmed a
conspiracy theory and gave regular customers a big reason to distrust it” Despite
apparently using unethical practices to push customers to upgrade, analysts are
forecasting that Apple's iPhone
X sales could fall short of demand projections. |
| | Decisions: Life and Death on Wall Street
Amazon has again chosen Decisions for its Prime Reading program. Members of Amazon Prime read it for free. Tell your friends!
Janet Tavakoli's brief Wall Street memoir of personal and professional decisions that reshaped financiers' lives, drove some to suicide, and changed the landscape of global finance.
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| | It's the Law
The biggest threat to the U.S. Republic has been the politicization of our anti-democratic, despotic judiciary. The Supreme Court is not exempt from this problem. The only solution, according to Robert LaFollette and Robert S. Bork, is “amending the Constitution to allow the Senate by a two-thirds vote to override Supreme Court decisions.” The process for amending the Constitution is difficult. Meanwhile, President Trump has done the next best thing.
President Trump’s Greatest Achievement
In 2013, then Senate Majority Leader (Democrat) Harry Reid forever killed the filibuster rule for judicial nominees, so that Republicans couldn't stop President Obama's judicial nominees from being appointed. But in the 2014 election, Republicans took control of the Senate, and they blocked President Obama’s politicized would-be appointees, including one nominee for the Supreme Court.
President Donald Trump won the 2016 election (to the utter shock of the Democrats). But there was still one obstacle to be removed. Just over two weeks ago, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley ditched an outdated Senate tradition of clearing judicial nominees with their home state Senators. The rule harkened back to a time when state senators likely had more information on nominees than the rest of the Senate. This is no longer true in today’s information age.
President Trump has twice as many vacancies to fill as President Obama did in 2008. He is filling the seats with justices who are both young and conservative. Congress has confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, “eight new federal appeals court judges, and four new U.S. district court judges. President Trump has now already surpassed the last four presidents’ records for first-year judicial confirmations.”
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| | Uranium One: The most important question
How quickly can the Trump Administration nullify the deal Clinton struck to give Russia control of 20% of USA uranium?
As important, but not as urgent, is prosecution of the Clinton Gang. Recall that it is possible to engage in technically legal activities and still commit treason. In the case of the Clinton Gang, RICO charges will be an excellent place to start.
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| | FBI uncovered Russian bribery plot before Obama administration approved controversial nuclear deal with Moscow
Read more via The Hill.
Here's the Rudy Giuliani / Eric Bolling interview wherein R.G. said the Clinton Foundation is a classic RICO enterprise. Giuliani disappeared from the airwaves for a while, and when he came back there was no more RICO talk.
Eric Bolling was recently fired from Fox for alleged sexual harassment. The same day he and his wife learned his only son was found dead of an apparent drug overdose.
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| | Citi Resurrects Synthetic CDOs, Bane of the Credit Crisis
Sridhar Natarajan, Dakin Campbell and Alastair Marsh of Bloomberg authored an excellent take on Citi's claims (September 26, 2017) "Citi is Bringing Back One of the Most Infamous Bests of the Credit Crisis." The bottom line is that the risk is mispriced. Oh, but Citi claims this structure is safer.
Here's an excerpt:
“There is a whole generation
of people in finance who never knew or forgot what the problems were with synthetic CDOs,” said Janet Tavakoli, a 30-year veteran of the financial markets who runs a consulting firm and has written books on structured credit and CDOs. “Just as derivatives can lever up the upside, they can lever up the downside.” |
| | USA's Constitutional Crisis of the Century
The Wall Street Journal's editorial board wrote a mea culpa,
admitting it was wrong to criticize President Donald Trump when he made
the shocking allegation that his campaign had been wiretapped by the
Obama administration. It turns out that President Trump was correct, and
this is the Constitutional Crisis of the century.
In an unprecedented abuse of power, the Obama administration abused government power and resources, spied on its political opposition, and apparently manufactured a ludicrous fake report as the pretext for getting a FISA court warrant to do it.
WSJ is now demanding answers.
You'll recall that many people spoke up to deny President Trump's allegation. Either they didn't know what they were talking about—yet tried to undermine the President, anyway—or they lied, hoping their lie would never be revealed for what it is. These people all owe President Trump an apology and some of them may deserve to be prosecuted. They include (I'm probably missing many): Speaker Paul Ryan (third in line to the presidency), Senator Richard Burr, Senator Mark Warner, former CIA Director James Clapper, Senator Kamala Harris, former U.S. Attorney General loretta Lynch, and former FBI Director James Comey. The latter lied under oath.
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| | Equities, Derivatives, and Leverage
Wall Street would like you to borrow more against your stock, even though margin is at all-time highs. Meanwhile, banks are increasing their revenues due to equity derivatives trading. What a beautiful bubble!
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| | Better Than Money
If you want to help your country, instead of contributing money to politicians, why not contribute a solution to one of your country’s problems?
I sent my paper, “Importance of Data Preservation in the Application of Set Theory to Counterterrorism,” to a former instructor at the National Defense Intelligence College who subsequently forwarded to colleagues. (This paper is not available to the public.)
My method compares lists of associates of organizations to quickly identify high probability persons of interest using set theory techniques. There is no need to know in advance whether alternate spellings of targets’ names or aliases exist, as long as association records are kept as complete as possible. A subsidiary goal was to support efforts to gain inter-agency cooperation in the compilation and preservation of data, since operatives of the Obama administration actively destroyed useful records.
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