07Dec2016 Market Close: Wall Street Records New Highs, Health-Care Stocks Tumble, Crude Prices Stall At $50 Handle, New Fears Of A Correction Are Looming

Wall St. run continues; Dow transports hit record

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street surged on Wednesday, with the Dow industrials and S&P 500 hitting fresh records, as equities continued their march upward after the presidential election of Donald Trump and a new high for transportation stocks added to the bullish tone.

AT&T touts Time Warner merger at U.S. Senate hearing

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – AT&T Inc’s planned $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc will increase innovation and bring “better-priced options” to consumers upset by high cable bills, AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson told lawmakers on Wednesday.

Exclusive: U.S. regulator set to fail Wells Fargo on community lending test – sources

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. bank regulator is ready to fail Wells Fargo on a national scorecard for community lending, sources familiar with the decision said on Wednesday, in a move that could limit near-term expansion for the bank.

Trump vows to bring down drug prices, doesn’t say how

NEW YORK (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump took aim at drugmakers on Wednesday by promising in a magazine interview that “I’m going to bring down drug prices,” sending shares of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies lower.

Exclusive: In mammoth task, BP sends almost three million barrels of U.S. oil to Asia

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Oil major BP is shipping almost three million barrels of U.S. crude to customers across Asia, pioneering a lengthy and complex operation likely to become more popular after OPEC last week announced deep production cuts.

Oil slips on bearish U.S. inventory report, doubts over OPEC cut

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Oil prices slid on Wednesday on bearish U.S. petroleum inventory data and doubts that production cuts promised by OPEC and Russia would be deep enough to end a supply overhang that has weighed on markets for more than two years.

Trump defends Boeing tweet, says companies shouldn’t worry

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday defended his direct interventions with companies, including making statements on Twitter, saying businesses will benefit from his actions and his upcoming term in office.

Ford releases for sale half of 10-speed F-150 stockpiled trucks

DETROIT (Reuters) – Ford Motor Co by Wednesday had released for sale more than half of the 15,000 F-150 pickup trucks with 10-speed transmissions that were held to ensure quality, a company spokeswoman said.

Airbus set to win Canadian deal for search-and-rescue aircraft: source

PARIS (Reuters) – Canada is set to select Airbus Group to provide search-and-rescue (SAR) aircraft, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, with Airbus beating Italy’s Leonardo in winning the deal.

If Trump’s Really A Populist, He’ll Fight Against The Destructive AT&T-Time Warner Merger

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Dangerous consolidation of the media is a trend that has been discussed by many people on many occasions, and many of us by now have heard the stat that in the U.S. just six media giants control 90% of all TV, news, radio and film. Now that Comcast is set to buy Time Warner, the situation is about to get that much worse.

Many people write about the struggle between “liberty” and “tyranny,” including myself, but these may not be the most effective terms to use in order to explain the troubling situation we face to a wider audience. Unfortunately, when people hear the words “liberty” the knee-jerk reaction for many is to associate it with right-wing “conspiracy theorists.” Of course, it is “conspiracy fact” that a small handful of corporations and the executives that run them control more and more of our daily lives. In other words, the forces of “tyranny” use “centralization” as their primary weapon of choice in order to control us. Those of us who long for “freedom” and “liberty” must use “decentralization” as our primary tool to fight back and win.

– From the 2014 post: The Comcast/Time Warner Merger and the War Between Centralizat …

FBI Probes HuffPo Editor After “Destroy Trump Ballots” Tweet

Huffington Post’s Senior Enterprise Editor, Nick Baumann, sent a tweet just over a month ago that he probably wishes he could take back…or maybe not, they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity after all.

The following tweet was sent by Baumann on Halloween and references destroying Trump ballots at a Washington D.C. polling station. Unfortunately, while Baumann said the whole thing was just a “joke about fake news,” the FBI took it a bit more seriously.

@lachlan i love my job working at a voting site in washington dc destroying trump ballots

— Nick Baumann (@NickBaumann) October 31, 2016

Just 4 days later, according to an article published by Baumann today on Huffington Post, he received a call from the FBI to followup on his tweet. While he dismissed the call as a “prank” by a disgruntled reader (of which we’re sure he has many), it turned out to be quite real.

On Nov. 4, I received a call from someone who said he was an FBI agent and wanted to speak to me. I figured it was a prank. I get a lot of hate emails and angry voicemails, and I dismissed the insane possibility that the FBI would investigate an obvious joke on Twitter. I would’ve called back anyway, just to be sure. But it was right before the election, and I forgot about it.

Then, on Monday, a month later, I received a followup message. It was the same person. I …

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins: An Idiot Or A Liar, You Decide…

Submitted by Thad Beversdorf via FirstRebuttal.com,

So today on CNBC Cisco CEO, Chuck Robbins explained that if they were to repatriate their offshore cash back to the US he would use the money to reward shareholders through buybacks and dividends and then do some M&A.

He claims cash distribution to shareholders in lieu of actual economic-stimulating investments creates jobs by way of mutual funds, which make the soon to be out of work Americans from his M&A activity feel good about their income….

I mean where does one even begin picking apart this absurdity of logic?? It probably is not even worthy of a detailed response. But I wanted to note, on record, that these are the type of moronic and asinine thought processes coming out of corporate America that are killing the American middle class and will destroy even most on top unless the bottom 80% are handed a stipend to go out and buy products produced by corporations. If Chuck truly believes what he says, well he is an idiot. If he has even a shred of economic acumen then he is a liar. I’ll leave it to you to decide.

But before you decide let me show you a few charts. First chart below depicts real total wages and salaries (i.e. labor income) as a multiple of real corporate dividends paid. You will notice the multiple peaks at 24x in 1975, averages 20x from1950 through 1990 and bottoms today at 8x.

What Quitters Tell Us About the Economy

More workers are willing to quit their jobs, but in the goods-sector leaving is still hard.

The Real Art Behind the Trump-SoftBank $50 Billion Deal

SoftBank’s big U.S. investment plan likely would have happened even without the input of the president-elect. Mr. Trump took credit anyway.

China’s Yuan and the Trillion-Dollar Numbers Game

There may be nothing significant per se about having more than $3 trillion in reserves. But markets have a way of getting antsy about these things.

October 2016 Consumer Credit Headlines Say Year-Over-Year Growth Rate Declined

Written by Steven Hansen

The headlines say consumer credit rate of annual growth decreased from last month. Our analysis suggests the rate of loan growth is unchanged.

Personal Finance Daily: What Michael Lewis wants to work on next and what it takes to be in the 1%

Wednesday’s top personal finance stories

Market Extra: Stock market’s record run signals that fighting the Trump rally is a losing battle

“Don’t fight the trend” is an often-used expression on Wall Street. Most recently, casting a dubious eye on what has amounted to a spectacular rise for equity markets since Donald Trump became president-elect in November has been a costly enterprise.

10 best companies to work for, according to employees

New Glassdoor study shows ratings based on company culture as well as benefits and compensation.