15Jul2019 Midday Update: Wall Street Afternoon Trading Along The Unchanged Line, DOW Down 30 Points, Crude Slipping, US Dollar Showing Strength

Here is the current market situation from CNN Money

North and South American markets are mixed. The IPC is higher by 1.01%, while the Bovespa is leading the S&P 500 lower. They are down 0.22% and 0.14% respectively.

UAW head wants union to share in profits of U.S. automakers

The head of the labor union representing most hourly workers at the U.S. automakers struck an adversarial tone on Monday, vowing in likely contentious talks for new four-year deals that they want to share in the companies’ profits.

Charles Schwab in talks to buy USAA wealth-management, brokerage units: WSJ

Charles Schwab Corp is in talks to buy brokerage and wealth-management operations from USAA for about $2 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Russia’s Aeroflot plans to add nine Airbus A320 Neo to fleet-documents

Russia’s national flag carrier Aeroflot is planning to add nine medium-haul A320 Neo Airbus planes for about $870 million to its fleet next year, procurement documents show.

Retailers cash in on Amazon’s ‘free marketing’ on Prime Day

Amazon.com Inc’s Prime Day is now a major marketing opportunity and shopping event in the annual calendar for other U.S. retail companies, rivaling the Thanksgiving holiday’s Black Friday as a driver of sales.

Oklahoma at trial’s end says opioid ‘kingpin’ J&J fueled epidemic

Lawyers for the state of Oklahoma on Monday compared Johnson & Johnson to a drug cartel leader as they sought to hold the drugmaker responsible for fueling the U.S. opioid epidemic in the first trial to result from lawsuits over the crisis.

United Airlines extends suspension of Delhi, Mumbai flights to Oct. 26

United Airlines Holdings Inc said on Monday it was extending the suspension of its flights from the United States to Delhi and Mumbai in India until Oct. 26, citing continued restriction of Pakistani airspace.

LVMH pairs with Stella McCartney in ethical fashion bet

French luxury goods conglomerate LVMH said on Monday it was pairing up with British designer Stella McCartney to further develop her brand, just months after she ended a long-term partnership with the group’s arch-rival Kering .

Sports Direct delays results as House of Fraser deal backfires

British retailer Sports Direct has delayed publishing its annual results, warning problems integrating its purchase of House of Fraser stores and increased scrutiny of its accounts could affect the financial guidance it gave in December.

Citigroup profit beats estimates on gains in consumer lending

Citigroup Inc beat analysts’ estimates for quarterly profit on Monday as a tight lid on costs and strength in consumer lending helped the third-largest U.S. bank counter weakness in its trading business.

Epstein & The Explosive Crisis Of The Deep State

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Since the battle is for the legitimacy of the state, it must be waged at least partially in the open.

Speculations by outsiders must give Deep State insiders many opportunities to chuckle, “if only they knew.” We don’t know, of course, and public leaks are engineered to misdirect our attention from what’s actually going on or “frame” our understanding in a positive way.

Decades later, history reveals a very ordinary mix of great successes and horrific failure in secret operations, caused by errors of judgment, faulty intelligence, poor planning and so on. In other words, life isn’t tidy, either inside or outside the Deep State.

Nonetheless we can postulate a few things with some certainty. One is that the Deep State– the unelected, permanent government which includes not just the intelligence community but a vast array of agencies and institutions as well as the top-level structures of diplomacy, finance and geopolitics–is not monolithic. There are different views and competing camps, but the disagreements and bureaucratic wars are kept out of sight.

Two, we know that at critical junctures of history one camp wins the narrative battle and establishes the over-riding direction of state policy. Put another way, one camp’s understanding of the era’s most pressing problems becomes the consensus, and from then on disagreements are within the broad outlines of the dominant ideology.

The end of World War II was a critical juncture. The proper role of the U.S. in the postwar era was up for grabs, and over the course of a few years, the CIA and other intelligence agencies were established and the doctrine of containment of the Soviet Union became the dominant narrativ …

ECB Hires ex-Goldman Banker And Vatican Auditor As Watchdog

As one Goldmanite departs (i.e., Mario Draghi, whose term ends on October 31) another Goldmanite arrives at the ECB.

Now that Christine Lagarde (who had her share of run-ins with the French law especially her guilty conviction in 2016 over a 400MM payment to Bernard Tapie) has been picked to head Europe’s central bank, the European Central Bank has hired Elizabeth McCaul, a former Goldman Sachs banker who later led an audit of the Vatican’s scandal-ridden bank, as one of its top banking supervisors, the bank said last week.

She is one of three new ECB representatives on the Single Supervisory Board, which oversees the euro zone’s 114 largest banks according to Reuters.

McCaul will join the ECB from Promontory Financial Group, a prominent US consultancy firm – famous Wall Street “revolving door” which sends financial execs into positions of power – which agreed to pay $15 million to New York’s banking regulator in 2015 to settle accusations of whitewashing a report on Standard Chartered Bank

Even more curious is that during her stint at Promontory, now owned by IBM, McCaul helped audit the Vatican’s bank during a clean-up ordered by Pope Francis in 2013 and also did consultancy work for the ECB during the set-up of the Single Supervisory Mechanism. Before that, McCaul was Superintendent of Banks for the State of New York, having joined that department after a decade as a banker at Goldman Sachs.

And yes – there’s more – a mother of seven, McCaul is married to former Goldman Sachs partner Frank Ingrassia, who used to head the bank’s municipal finance group.

She will be joined on the Single Supervisory Board by Edouard Fernandez-Bollo, who currently works for the French banking watchdog, and Kerstin af Jochnick, until Thursday the first de …

Dem Rep: “We Don’t Need” Blacks, Gays, & Muslims Who Won’t Play Identity Politics

Amid racist accusations against President Trump following his tweet-tirade against various progressive Democrats, one of the more outspoken #Squad-members unleashed a torrent of what some might call racist, homophobic, islamophobic claims admonishing the deplorable Americans who refuse to firebomb ICE facilities, cry at parking lots, and denounce free speech…

Rep Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) “We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice. We don’t need Muslims that don’t want to be a Muslim voice. We don’t need queers that don’t want to be a queer voice” pic.twitter.com/2NIj5Vvcor

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) July 15, 2019

Rep Ayanna Pressley (D-MA):

“We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice.

We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice.

We don’t need Muslims that don’t want to be a Muslim voice.

We don’t need queers that don’t want to be a queer voice”

So, the message is clear – fall in line!

It seems the leftest of the left squad members are still shocked that under President Trump, there are still non-liberal, non-white, non-straight Americans daring to think for themselves in the land of the free.

Jim Rogers Warns: “Worst Bear Market” Is Coming

Via Money And Markets,

On a recent call with ETMarkets.com, no-nonsense economic guru Jim Rogers restated his concern that a bear market was on the way, and investors should be on the lookout for small signs to avoid another crisis like 2008.

The Budget numbers that don’t add up and the risks they hide

The Budget numbers that don’t add up and the risks they hide”Overall, how was Sitharaman’s budget? It was better than Arun Jaitley’s first budget. But is that praise?”

The simplest investing rule you must follow

The simplest investing rule you must followIn the case of personal finance products, simplicity is not just something useful, it’s absolutely necessary.

India, Russia find way to get around US threat

India, Russia find way to get around US threatIndia and Russia would pay through their currencies for the arms deal to avoid risks created by the US.

July 2019 Empire State Manufacturing Index Returns to Expansion

Written by Steven Hansen

The Empire State Manufacturing Survey index improved and returned to expansion. Overall this survey remains below values seen in the last 2+ years.

Cutting out just 300 calories per day from your diet can help reduce the risk of diabetes and heart disease

Instead of a bagel or a muffin, why not have an 80-calorie slice of toast.

The face of Britain’s new £50 note is Alan Turing, a WWII codebreaker considered the father of computer science

Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney reveals that computer science pioneer Alan Turing will be featured on the new polymer note by the end of 2021.

Need to Know: How investing in the stock market, like the Fyre Festival, could end up in disaster

Welcome to Wall Street’s version of the Fyre Festival. Or, as Vincent Deluard of INTL FCStone puts it, the “faking-it economy,” where you’ll find capitalism without capital” and “employers without employees.”