Lets see how well they like dumping US Treasuries and dollars for Euros. Talk about a bad trade. The simple fact is the US dollar will still be the most powerful unless the Euro Dollar and Saudi Arabia currency for oil goes bad.

The war over currency will not be fought with gold but over oil. The US has done well to develop its oil production as the petro dollar tie is weakening.

The author is right that China buying back its currency and trying to prevent free currency and free currency pricing undermines its efforts to be a bigger player in the global financial world.

As for the big unwind as people have been speculating for a while. So far QE reversal although slow and sleepy is happening for the US. This is more important than rate increases and I suspect the Fed will first slow or stop rates before turning down the QE reversal dial as they should. I applaud their moves, although they are a bit late and probably should have never happened in the first place. So far, so good, however they need to be careful now as so much other destabilizing factors take shape namely mid-east instability and trade war/tariff issues.

What they need to do is maybe cut a deal that if Trump stops jumping on tariff levers then they will tone down the rate increases. This would be good for the economy and the world.

Mark Lundeen did? Is he a gold bug?

This is interesting and points out many problems, but is not as dire as the article implicates right now. The issue is the continuation and exacerbation of existing trends. As we can see in the US, be it Democrats or Republicans, without both to keep them in check they both inflate the deficit in different ways. This may be one reason mid term elections will put Democrats back into the House. Sadly, the Republican's argument that they are fiscally prudent has failed miserably under Trump who advocated getting rid of deficit spending if elected.

Europe is even worse with Greece and Italy ruining their concept of fiscal prudence, but even then, it looks like they will wallow along for a few more years until no one can save them.

On the energy front, oil prices have risen enough for the big companies to increase production in the US again. The smaller indebted oil companies will eventually need to be bought out to cover their debt loads which would have been tolerable if they built now instead of 3 years earlier. There is certainly fiscal solvency in big oil, especially Exxon. So I am not as concerned as the author about oil drilling growth coming to a standstill. I am more worried about the issue of the Middle East which is as unstable as it always led by Iran. This is the biggest worry on the global energy front and is the major reason why other fuel sources need to be developed today.

Long term, climate change and the fact that the Mideast doesn't have unlimited suppliers of oil will come into play. Thus, owning Exxon or Chevron makes sense today. I am glad both are getting into other energy plays and will inevitable be the biggest power companies, no matter what power is used in 10 years from now.

Sadly the US needs to start building for hurricanes. This means more costly structures and building farther from beaches and not on low lying ground. Insurance companies are going to force this using the extreme measure of just refusing to give insurance in some areas making the recovery of some people a living nightmare. Something should be done to prevent this from being increasingly disastrous for Americans.

I do not view the recent decline as any indication that we are in or about to enter a bear market. In fact, so far it seems to be rotation and letting off steam at a slightly alarming rate. The only major concern I see is that semiconductors seem to be in a semiconductor cycle end not because demand is dead but because too many people are entering into the low end CPU market and everyone is trying to grow and step on each others feet.

"But I fear that the coming bear market is going to make history, possibly taking out the Great Depression Bear Market’s decline in the Dow Jones.", this may be true, but the market cyclical downturn seems a bit out in the distance unless it is sparked from China due to the trade war. I don't see it starting from the US this year.

It is good to be cautious of a downturn, but screaming fire every time a match is lit in a restaurant is not a good or effective solution. If anything, this downturn looks like it was exacerbated last week by program trading taking out all the auto sells which means bargains late Friday and Monday.

It's amazing to continue to see consolidation in the defense industry.

It is easy to see why they don't. They are cash flow negative. they also have a boat load of debt. Also, in a rising interest environment their financing costs go up. If they want to stick around as a viable entity they better not pay dividends.

The last issue is competition. It is heating up and chock full of heavyweights who can burn cash and don't need their services to be profitable for years. This industry is increasingly becoming a game of monetary chicken.

Hmmm the links didn't appear that right. Here they are again.

www.theverge.com/.../google-plus-vulnerability-privacy-breach-law

slate.com/.../...le-plus-vulnerability-breach.html

As I mentioned, the semi sector has sold off over a semi downturn. It is natural the tech sector continues to feel pressure, although the tech sector is now so broad it should not hit the whole sector as severely as in the past. There is concern over Trumps expansion of Chinese tariffs onto the tech sector. This sector can not switch to other suppliers instantly or easily and the tech companies will probably have to eat most if not all the cost increases. That said, I hope the tech sector can shake it off and hopefully someone can stop the tariff train or at least slow it down. Moving too quickly creates too much disruption.