NC Renegades

Did you know that 15 trillion dollars of global stock market wealth has been wiped out since last June?  The worldwide financial crisis that began in the middle of last year is starting to spin wildly out of control.  On Friday, the Dow plunged another 390 points, and it is now down a total of 1,437 points since the beginning of this calendar year.  Never before in U.S. history have stocks ever started a year this badly.  The same thing can be said in Europe, where stocks have now officially entered bear market territory.  As I discussed yesterday, the economic slowdown and financial unraveling that we are witnessing are truly global in scope.  Banks are failing all over the continent, and I expect major European banks to start making some huge headlines not too long from now.  And of course let us not forget about China.  On Friday the Shanghai Composite declined another 3.6 percent, and overall it is now down more than 20 percent from its December high.  Much of this chaos has been driven by the continuing crash of the price of oil.  As I write this article, it has dipped below 30 dollars a barrel, and many of the big banks are projecting that it still has much farther to fall.

The other night, Barack Obama got up in front of the American people and proclaimed that anyone that was saying that the economy was not recovering was peddling fiction.  Well, if the U.S. economy is doing so great, then why in the world has Wal-Mart decided to shut down 269 stores?…

Walmart (WMT) will close 269 stores around the world in a strategic move to focus more on its supercenters and e-commerce business, the company said Friday.

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Does anyone agree with their assessment?

David DeGerolamo

For the first time ever, the Baltic Dry Index has fallen under 400.  As I write this article, it is sitting at 394.  To be honest, I never even imagined that it could go this low.  Back in early August, the Baltic Dry Index was sitting at 1,222, and since then it has been on a steady decline.  Of course the Baltic Dry Index crashed hard just before the great stock market crash of 2008 too, but at this point it is already lower than it was during that entire crisis.  This is just more evidence that global trade is grinding to a halt and that 2016 is going to be a “cataclysmic year” for the global economy.

If you are not familiar with the Baltic Dry Index, here is a helpful definition from Wikipedia…

The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is an economic indicator issued daily by the London-based Baltic Exchange. Not restricted to Baltic Sea countries, the index provides “an assessment of the price of moving the major raw materials by sea. Taking in 23 shipping routes measured on a time charter basis, the index covers Handysize, Supramax, Panamax, and Capesize dry bulk carriers carrying a range of commodities including coal, iron ore and grain.”

The BDI is one of the key indicators that experts look at when they are trying to determine where the global economy is heading.  And right now, it is telling us that we are heading into a major worldwide economic downturn.

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From Stilton Jarlsberg

Yes, we received this email from Hellcare.gov today AFTER submitting our tax records three times and copies of every bit of documentation (1099 forms, bank statements, etc) we could lay our hands on. And still they’re threatening to kill our coverage (not to be confused with killingdaughter Jarlsberg’s insurance, which has been a separate fustercluck).

So we had to call Healthcare.gov yet again today, made our way through the telephone maze to rout our call, then gave enough highly personal information for the computer to research our records and say “we have no record of you having ever applied for insurance.”

Eventually (we spent our 15 minute hold time on doing the graphic above), we spoke to a very nice young woman who apologized profusely for all of the screw-ups and wasn’t entirely sure how they could be fixed. After reviewing everything for about 45 minutes she suggested that we write a detailed letter and submit it electronically to the Marketplace website…and include with itanother copy of our taxes and another copy of more documentation than Barack Obama ever produced to prove presidential eligibility or college attendance.

And here’s what we finally saw at Healthcare.gov when we tried to give them the documents they’re demanding:

Note to Nikki Haley;  this is why “angry voices” are exactly what America needs more of.

Source

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Healthcare.gov was never fixed. The media is covering up another massive Obama failure/scandal. How much longer before this pressure blows? Not too much.

With $10,000 or more deductibles that will never be met by most people, people are resorting to paying in cash for the 25% discount. So the “regulations” imposed on the medical industry represent 25% (at a minimum) of the cost for treatment and medicine? If we want to reduce medical care costs in the country, the answer is simple: get government out of health care.

But why stop there?

David DeGerolamo

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Judge orders production of ‘treasure trove’ of Hillary docs

State Department documents connected to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have become fodder for scandal, from classified emails sent through an unsecured personal server to her disclosure to her daughter that the Benghazi attack was an act of terrorism, even while she publicly blamed an obscure YouTube video.

Now there’s a whole new pile of State Department documents that are being looked through, and no one knows for sure what’s there.

The revelation came on Monday when attorney Larry Klayman, of Freedom Watch, engaged with U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper and Department of Justice lawyers.

Klayman has pending multiple actions concerning the Clinton documents, the National Security Agency’s spy-on-Americans program, even the Stuxnet virus, and had a routine hearing.

Then DOJ attorney John K. Theis asked for more time, since a new cache of State Department documents, which may or may not be applicable to the case, had been discovered.

As of the hearing, no one knew exactly what they contained. They could be entirely new revelations or they could be copies of documents of which the public already is aware.

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