Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday that monetary policy has reached the outward bounds of its effectiveness without another round of quantitative easing. 

“Monetary policy … has done everything it can unless you want to put additional QEs on. They’re not helping that much in the sense that ultimately determines whether or not you’re getting an effect from the QEs” beyond increasing price-to-earnings ratios in the stock market, he said during an interview on CNBC.

….read or listen to more HERE

also:

Marc Faber on Terror’s Effect on Markets

Sometimes the brain-dead decision of one person can set off a contagion that sweeps the world. Merkel’s open invitation to the Muslim, pretend refugees has been tearing Europe apart. The majority are not even from Syria. European states will raise their borders and require a passport because so many of these Muslim “refugees” are unaccounted for, especially after the Brussels attack.

Ted Cruz had to respond to the rising support for Trump over this immigration issue, as it is also becoming the main focus in Britain. Cruz said Trump cannot block Muslims, so he proposed the politically correct version: all Europeans must get a visa to enter the USA. Now Europe is responding as nations always do and the European Union (EU) is currently considering requiring U.S. citizens and Canadians to apply for visas before visiting the country of their choice, even if it’s for a short vacation. Currently, visitors to the U.S. from Poland, Croatia, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and Romania all need a visa. Romanians and Bulgarians also need visas for Canada. The European Commission claims it is trying to achieve a full visa waiver for all member states, but in reality, this is a standard response to Cruz’s statement that he would introduce legislation to impose a visa requirement on all Europeans. The fear is that the Muslims who are interested in terrorism can get into the USA easily via Europe because of what Merkel has done. So we face the problem of closing borders within the EU because the refugees will spread, and that, unfortunately, becomes only logical. It does not appear to be reversible.

….related: DemocracySpring Protest Against Corporate Ownership of Politians

At Financial Sense, we don’t pick guests for our podcast based on whether they are bullish or bearish on the market. Really, our goal is to have well-respected and sometimes unique individuals to explain why they are bullish or bearish to better understand their reasoning and assumptions.

So, with that said, we welcome your feedback on Dan Wantrobski’s comments from our Saturday broadcast that the US economy is going to see explosive growth in the future based on the very large Millennial generation, which, as he points out, is slowly working its way toward that key “household formation stage.”

Here’s what he had to say.…continue reading HERE

In Naples, riots against Renzi resulted in clashes between police and demonstrators. On Wednesday, Italy’s government had to address the plight of Italian banks which now seems to be significant as both houses of parliament blessed in a crisis meeting, voted to create a state fund for bad loans from. Resistance to Renzi’s idea was very limited. In Naples there were serious riots against it. In reality, Italy’s government has survived a vote of confidence in this decree involving a bank rescue. The Senate rushed together late on Wednesday afternoon. In the House of Lords, the vote was 171 for the plans, 105 against. This is now all about state guarantees for banks that could collapse under the weight of bad loans and that day is coming rapidly as all the QE efforts of the ECB do nothing to reverse the crisis in banking or the economy. Nonetheless, the House of Representatives had already passed the decree while Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had only a very thin majority in the Senate. The crisis appears to force the measure through demonstrating how bad the banks really are in Italy.

The new plan envisages that banks can bundle their bad loans into new financial products, and then sell them. But who will buy them? On Tuesday it was announced that the government plans to fund the money houses buy the bad loans. The decree also provides for the formation of a holding company to merge the 371 small credit unions. Therefore, it is placing the bad loans outside the banking system. The EU rules for bail-ins are breaking down. Each country is beginning to ignore Brussels and proceed in their own manner demonstrating that the ECB is really losing control.

Meanwhile, the ECB Chief Economist Peter Praet spoke at a conference in Frankfurt on Thursday. Effectively, the message was that the ECB is ready and willing to do “whatever is needed” to return inflation to target. Instead of looking at the current negative interest rate policy, they continue to see the solution to just be more of the same. Obviously, as banks continue to implode in Europe and smart capital flees to the USA, the ECB is incapable to reversing the trend. The cycle will play out and the look very bleak at least into 2018 for Europe.

This is the biggest document leak in history and it is exposing world leaders and their secretive, offshore financial dealings. Some 11.5 million documents have been leaked from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, which has offices in 35 countries. This leak has exposed a trove of confidential financial dealings by the elites and spans to aides of Russian President Vladimir Putin all the way to relatives of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Naturally, the press likes to focus on Putin. There is much more hidden behind the press curtain.

….read more HERE