Juggling Dynamite

Want meaningful reform? Don’t elect Wall Street’s hired guns.

Watch  These Presidential candidates depend on Wall Street the most:

 “With most of the Republican and Democratic candidates lambasting Wall Street and seeking to capitalize on public animosity toward bankers, Yahoo Finance analyzed the percentage of each candidate’s funding that comes from the financial industry. Cruz ranks fourth out of 16 major candidates, with nearly 19% of the funding for his campaign coming from Wall Street donors. Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham draw a larger percentage of their money from Wall Street, but none have thrashed the financial industry as robustly as Cruz, who said in the latest Republican debate that if the biggest bank in the country were about to go under, he’d allow it.”

As we have been reporting on for many months now, the melt in Dr copper–economic barometer to global growth–continues to fresh lows this morning.  Now at 2.08 and well below the 2.75 support range (green line below as charted by my partner Cory Venable in October 2014) there is little to buoy price between here and the .95 to 1.50 area (purple band).  And that would be the top range of previous expansion cycles.  The bottom of those cycles was in the .67 a pound range.  And this latest cycle has been dominated by unprecedented manipulation, stockpiling and mal-investment in the space thanks to runaway financial intermediaries.  For a refresher watch:  Are the markets rigged?  Stay tuned.  Also see:  Taking a good long look at Dr Copper:

At the same time, price fixing and illegal manipulation by ‘market makers’ became a widespread practice across a range of asset markets.  As a result, over the past 4 years, even as global demand weakened and copper inventories piled up, copper prices– historically monitored as a global growth barometer–managed to magically levitate north of $3.00 a pound.

Further to my recent post Oil industry has made smokers of us all, North Vancouver city counsel voted unanimously Monday night, to start labeling gas pumps with warnings similar to those mandated on Canadian cigarette packs.  See:  Climate change stickers mandatory on North Vancouver gas pumps.

Along with captivating pictures (three of the samples being considered are shown below), a staff report has recommended call to action messages on the labels such as:

Electric vehicle incentives: “Get $5,000 toward a purchase of a new electric car.”
The B.C. Scrap-It program: “Trade in your clunker for a transit pass worth $1,360.”
Fuel-efficient driving tips: “Save fuel through properly inflating your tires.”
“Idling your vehicle for more than 10 seconds wastes more gas than restarting your engine.”