22Aug2016 Market Close: US Stocks Were Little Changed Today, Crude Prices Fell By 3%, Short-Term Indicators Mildly Bullish As Investors Look For A Up Beat Report From Yellen

Wall St. flat as biotechs offset energy

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stocks were little changed on Monday as a drop in oil prices that weighed on the energy sector was offset with a strong showing by biotech stocks.

Federal Reserve under growing pressure to reform system, goals

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Reserve has two guiding goals when designing monetary policy: maximum employment and stable inflation.

U.S. clearance of ChemChina’s Syngenta deal removes key hurdle

(Reuters) – A U.S. national security panel has cleared ChemChina’s $43 billion takeover of Swiss pesticides and seeds group Syngenta , the companies said, boosting chances that the largest foreign acquisition ever by a Chinese company will go through.

Exclusive: Former Fannie Mae CEO settles crisis-related lawsuit with SEC

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – In one of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s biggest cases tied to the 2008 financial crisis, former Fannie Mae Chief Executive Daniel Mudd has reached a settlement for $100,000, according to court papers filed on Monday.

Pfizer boosts cancer drug roster with $14 billion Medivation deal

(Reuters) – Pfizer Inc , beating out numerous other bidders, said it would buy U.S. cancer drug company Medivation Inc for $14 billion in cash, adding its blockbuster prostate cancer drug Xtandi to the company’s growing oncology roster.

U.S. appeals court declines to reconsider Bank of America ruling

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court refused on Monday to reconsider its decision to overturn a $1.27 billion penalty against Bank of America Corp and a jury verdict finding it liable for mortgage fraud leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.

GM asks judge to throw out ignition switch case over ‘fabricated’ key

NEW YORK (Reuters) – General Motors Co on Monday asked a Texas judge to throw out a lawsuit over a fatal 2011 crash blamed on a faulty ignition switch, accusing plaintiffs and their lawyers of fabricating evidence about the vehicle’s key during the ongoing trial.

U.S. banks want to cut branches, but customers keep coming

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Despite banks’ nudging toward online tools, many U.S. customers are not ready to give up regular visits to their nearest branch, complicating the industry’s efforts to slim down.

U.S. appeals court strikes down Ernst & Young class action waiver

(Reuters) – Ernst & Young LLP [ERNY.UL] cannot require its employees to give up their rights to pursue work-related claims together, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday, giving a major boost to the U.S. National Labor Relations Board’s campaign against so-called class action waivers.

Congress Demand An Explanation For Epipen Price Increases; Mylan Slides

In a rerun of last summer’s political interference in pharmaceutical pricing spearheaded by both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, which initially focused on Martin Shrekli’s price hike of the Turing Pharmaceuticals Daraprim drug, then shifted to Allergan (and everyone knows what happened after), over the past few days much of the media’s attention has focused on the ongoing cost increases of Mylan’s Epipen.

As NBC wrote last Friday, a growing chorus is calling on the Mylan pharmaceutical company to justify its price hikes on EpiPens, a potentially life-saving medication for children and others facing fatal allergies that has little real competition.

In 2007, a two-pack of the epinephrine-filled devices went for $56.64 wholesale, according to data gathered by Connecture, a health insurance technology and data analytics company. Now it’s jumped to $365.16, an increase of 544.77 percent. Since the end of 2013, the price has gone up by 15 percent every other quarter.

And, echoring the public outcry following Turing’s 2015 price increase for its toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim, doctors, parents, patients, and a former presidential candidate are speaking out on social media — and negative comments are filling up Mylan’s Facebook page following an NBC story.

Ironically, even Martin Shkreli has …

The Collapse Of American Free Press: Martin Armstrong Rages “It’s Just Over”

Submitted by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics.com,

There is the greatest conspiracy of all time. The corrupt politicians have completely corrupted mainstream media. They even organized the overthrow at Fox News because that was the only station they could not take over. Everything from CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and countless newspapers are all out for a coronation of Hillary at the complete expense of the free press. We may never again be able to trust anything they say or print and this is becoming so blatant and in your face, even the New York Post, long on the fringe, has come out with the bold headline: American journalism is collapsing before our eyes. They are too greedy for power to know what they do, but that is no excuse for the treason they are carrying out against the American people.

Indeed, this is part of the end times. Government is turning against the people and the free press, which was suppose to defend our liberty, has join the conspiracy and are now on the side of government against the people. That peak in the Economic Confidence Model 2015.75 was the peak in government. They now

Fed Admits Another $4 Trillion In QE Will Be Needed To Offset An “Economic Shock”

In a Fed Staff working paper released over the weekend titled “Gauging the Ability of the FOMC to Respond to Future Recessions” and penned by deputy director of the division of research and statistics at the Fed, the author concludes that “simulations of the FRB/US model of a severe recession suggest that large-scale asset purchases and forward guidance about the future path of the federal funds rate should be able to provide enough additional accommodation to fully compensate for a more limited [ability] to cut short-term interest rates in most, but probably not all, circumstances.”

So far so good, however, there are some notable problems with the paper’s assumptions, as Citi head of G10 FX, Steven Englander, observes.

He writes that the paper’s basic framework is to take the standard US economic model used by the Fed, give it a negative shock big enough to push the unemployment rate up by 5 percentage points (big but not unprecedented over the last 50 years) and deploying the Fed’s policy rate, QE and forward guidance tools to see if they are adequate to get the economy back on track. Negative rates and helicopter money are not used.

The two simulations assume:

1. the economy is in equilibrium initially with inflation at 2%, r* at 1%, so equilibrium nominal fed funds is 3%

   the economy is in equilibrium initially with inflation at 2%, r* at zero (secular stagnation) and equilibrium nominal fed funds at 2%

He compares three policy approaches. The first assumes a linear world where fed funds can go into negative territory but there is no breakdown in the structure of economic relationships. It is probably not a realistic view of policy ineffectiveness at negative rates, but it is mean to be a baseline. The second just takes fed funds down to zero and keeps it there long enough for unemployment to return …

Whirled Politics: Would you rather be Trumped or Pillaried?

This article by David Haggith published first on The Great Recession Blog.

I’ve never seen anything so surreal as the United States’ current political circus of unelectable and undelectable candidates offered as each party’s top of the crop. I can’t stop wondering if the Trump is Clinton’s decoy, gathering all the Republiducks into one place so the Democats can slaughter them. Yet, as surely as Trump looks like he’s trying to throw the election,& …

A Window of Opportunity Cracks Open at Valeant

Easing financial conditions could give Valeant’s new finance chief an assist.

Stacking More Chips on Applied Materials

Shares of the chip-gear maker are running high, but probably aren’t at a peak.

Medivation Ovation: Pfizer Pays the Price for Growth

Pfizer’s $14 billion acquisition shows quality midsize biotechs are in short supply.

Bond Report: Treasury yields drift lower as investors look for Fed clues

Treasurys strengthen slightly, putting pressure on yields, as investors look to Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s Friday speech for clues on the timing of the central bank’s next rate rise.

Amy Hoak’s Home Economics: What house styles and types define your town?

Your idea of the typical house depends largely on where you live, or possibly where you grew up.

The Wall Street Journal: Apple buys medical-records startup Gliimpse

Apple Inc. quietly purchased Gliimpse Inc., a three-year-old startup that aims to help patients make sense of their medical records.