Luca Bindi, LL.M.

"A housing bubble, of course, is just a symptom of a bigger problem.   Easy money distorts the workings of a market economy by causing the prices of many assets to soar beyond all reason, enriching the owners and impoverishing the users. Typically, when housing reaches this point so have stocks and other financial assets,  CEO salaries , corporate concentration, political corruption and a long list of other evils that feed on low interest rates and lax lending standards. The confluence of resulting problems then brings the cycle to a noisy end. Housing says we’re getting close." Source: Housing Bubble Pathologies Start To Bite – Yet Another Sign The Cycle Has Peaked - Zerohedge

Source: Top Restructuring Banker: "We're All Feeling Like Where We Were Back In 2007" - Zerohedge

"The past week, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate increased from 4.61% to 4.66%, the highest level since May 2011, mortgage giant Freddie Mac said Thursday. The rate is up from 3.95% at the start of the year and a recent low of 3.78% last September. Thirty-year mortgage rates have risen in 15 of the first 21 weeks of 2018, the largest share since Freddie Mac began tracking the data in 1972. The healthy economy and prospects of higher inflation are pushing up yields on the 10-year Treasury bond to about 3%, and that rate directly affects mortgage rates." Source:  Mortgage interest rates 2018: Rates hit 7-year high, slow home sales - USA Today

#1  The “smart money” is  getting out of stocks  at a rate that we haven’t seen since just before the financial crisis of 2008. #2  Moody’s is warning that a  “particularly large wave”  of junk bond defaults is coming.  And as I have written about so many times before, junk bonds are often an early warning indicator for a major financial crisis. #3  According to the FDIC, a closely watched category known as “assets of problem banks”  more than tripled  during the first quarter of 2018.  What that means is that some really big banks are now officially in “problem” territory. #4  U.S. Treasury bonds are having the worst start to a year  since the Great Depression . #5  Mortgage interest rates  just hit a 7 year high , and they have been rising at the fastest pace  in nearly 50 years .  This is going to be  absolutely crippling  for the real estate and housing industries. #6  R...

Source: Venezuela's Annual Inflation Rate at 21.900% - Prof. Steve Hanke Twitter

Source: Venezuela's Annual Inflation Rate at 21.900% - Prof. Steve Hanke Twitter

  Source:  Italy Went Boom A Long Time Ago (And That's The Point!) - Zerohedge

2017: Bitcoin’s rip from $300 to $19,600 in 3 years made it the biggest bubble ever 2017: Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi sold for $450mn (would take average American 7,500 years to earn) 2017: Argentina (8 defaults in 202 years) issued a (oversubscribed) 100-year sovereign bond 2017: European high yield bonds were priced as less risky than US Treasuries 2017: the market cap of Facebook (25k employees) exceeded that of India (1.3bn people) 2018: US, UK, German, Japanese unemployment rates are at multi-decade lows 2018: the global stock of negatively-yielding global debt remains >$10tn 2018: S&P 500 trailing price-to-earnings ratio >20X…a level exceeded in just 12 of past 120 years 2018: S&P 500 price-to-book ratio >3X…a level exceeded in just 5 of past 70 years 2018: US tax cuts of $1.5tn will coincide with US corporate bond issuance of $1.5tn and US equity buybacks of $0.9tn 2018: QE “winners” (REITs, credit, EM assets) have started to underperform QE “losers” ...

Source: Why Argentina has returned to the IMF — in charts - Financial Times

  Source: Why Argentina has returned to the IMF — in charts - Financial Times

Source: Dolar Today