"The pension crisis is inching closer by the day... Cities point to possible insolvency if payments keep rising but CalPERS is near insolvency itself. It may be reform or bailout soon."
With the "most ubiquitous fast food chain in the US," facing the largest sales slump in its history, Subway is now offering steep discounts on meals...
"...a solid majority of the American population feels no direct impact from stock market performance. The inverse is different. Long-term stock market performance depends heavily on the US population’s economic health. Stocks are businesses that need customers, so how are the customers doing?"
"The format of that opening paragraph has been standard for 30 years. But 2017 was far from standard: A large portion of our gain did not come from anything we accomplished at Berkshire... we liked loads of Treasury Bills... to comfortably withstand economic discontinuities, including such extremes as extended market closures."
"I’ve never been to Russia. I’ve never been to Moscow. I’ve never met a Russian operative or agent. I’ve never done business in Russia. I’ve never taken money from Russia....but I may be guilty of drinking the odd Russian vodka..."
Latvian bank run fears spread on Saturday after the ECB said ABLV Bank’s liquidity had deteriorated significantly, declaring it "failing or likely to fail" and instituting a bail-in on its depositors.
"Predicting a regime change to much higher GDP growth, and hence higher inflation, could simply be a case of looking for, and then seeing, something that isn’t there..."
"Some Coral Springs police were stunned and upset that the four original Broward County Sheriff's deputies who were first on the scene did not appear to join them as they entered the school..."
A person close to Nikolas Cruz, the teenager who killed 17 people at a Florida high school on Valentines day, warned the FBI that Cruz "is going to explode" and would "get into a school and just shoot the place up."
"... the force needed for this concept of 'America First!' – one that focuses first of all on defending our territory and people – could only be a fraction of what we spend now. Wouldn’t it be great to finally get that 'Peace Dividend' we were promised until George H.W. Bush decided he’d rather build a New World Order starting in Kuwait?"
"So, while millions of Americans will learn the lie, that (and here is the regime’s basic message) internationally ‘we’re the good guys against the bad guys’, there’s no more reason to trust that, than there was when the same lies came from Joseph Goebbels’s shop..."
"Liu and Xi have been friendly since their teens, and have always kept in touch... and he currently heads a government office in charge of preserving financial stability..."
"...it is illegal to sleep in a car or RV that is parked in a residentially zoned area from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. Areas within one block of a park, daycare, or school are entirely off limits."
"...when I look through the prism of risk for our organization, I find the number one risk for our organization is losing the faith and confidence of the American people."
Ten days after the reality of "rampant manipulation" in VIX was exposed yet again, perhaps because this time the market went down, US regulators are reportedly escalating their investigations into whether any wrongdoing occurred within VIX ETPs.
