Juggling Dynamite

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate economist who called for a tax on high-frequency trading, discusses how he was blocked from a regulatory reform panel by the financial lobby. Here is a direct video link.

This cannot come soon enough!! Passwords be damned!

2014 was the year of the hacker, and a number of companies at CES 2015 want to replace your highly insecure passwords with something much more difficult to steal: your biometrics. Here is a direct video link.

As energy prices, shares and high yield risk corporate bonds continue their freefall today, the US dollar and US Treasuries are receiving strong ‘safe haven’ inflows.  The North American yield curve is flattening in a bearish read on 2015 growth prospects.

Today the 10 year yield (shown below) has broken back below 2%, while the 30 year flirts with 2.5%.
Although the US Fed no doubt wants to raise interest rates in 2015 and declare desperate measures at an end, the weight of global debt, overcapacity and aging demographics is proving a crushing weight on inflationary dreams.  Our insanely levered financial system is now reaping what reckless policies have sown.  Stock and corporate bond prices are experiencing the sucking sound of inevitable capitulation in a de-leveraging world.

See:  Banks-stock hopes must yield to bond-market reality for a good overview of the earnings compression all of this suggests for congenitally optimistic bank shares.