Nothing needs be said. Still one of the most popular blog topics:





"It will take a rally of monumental proportions to save the penis of John McAfee" - Zerohedge, 2017
One valuation metric, the cyclically adjusted price-earnings or CAPE ratio for the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 stock index was originally developed by Campbell and Shiller (1998) to help judge whether the stock market is overvalued. The CAPE ratio is computed as the real, that is, inflation-adjusted, value of the S&P 500 divided by the real earnings of companies in the index averaged over the most recent 10 years. Campbell and Shiller found that higher values of the CAPE ratio predicted lower future real returns on stocks over subsequent 10-year periods.
A parsimonious set of macroeconomic variables can account for much of the movement in the CAPE ratio over the past five decades. These variables include the “natural” real rate of interest, the growth rate of potential GDP, and the core inflation rate. Reasonable projections for these same macroeconomic variables over the next 10 years can provide a prediction about future movements in the CAPE ratio, which, in turn, will influence the magnitude of future stock returns.
A simple regression model can be used to assess how well macroeconomic variables explain movements in the CAPE ratio. Specifically, the model regresses the quarterly average CAPE ratio on a constant, the Laubach-Williams (LW) two-sided estimate of r-star, the CBO four-quarter growth rate of potential GDP, the 20-quarter change in the LW r-star estimate, and the four-quarter core PCE inflation rate. The explanatory variables are each lagged by one quarter in the regression equation to help account for real-time data availability issues.
Figure 4 plots fitted values of the CAPE ratio from the regression model through 2017:Q3. The fit is quite good, accounting for 70% of the variance in the actual CAPE ratio over the past five decades.
Absent further changes in the ratio, stock prices can rise only as fast as earnings. Over the past 30 years, real earnings for the S&P 500 have grown at an average compound rate of about 4% per year. A decline in the CAPE ratio from current levels would imply that stock prices must grow slower than earnings.
Democrats have flipped another statehouse seat in deeply conservative Oklahoma amid growing frustration over years of state budget shortfalls and recent scandals that led to the resignation of Republican incumbents.
Democrat Allison Ikley-Freeman defeated Republican Brian O’Hara in Tuesday’s special election for a state Senate seat representing parts of Tulsa. Complete but unofficial election results show that Ikley-Freeman, who is a therapist at a nonprofit mental health agency, won by 31 votes.
The Legislature’s controlling party has failed during an ongoing special legislative session to push through tax increase plans that would bring new revenue to state coffers. Lawmakers now are considering bills that would balance the budget by raiding savings accounts and imposing cuts of about 2.5 percent to most state agencies.
Michael Whelan is a Democratic consultant who helped manage Ikley-Freeman’s campaign and the races of Democratic Reps. Karen Gaddis in Tulsa and Jacob Rosecrants in Norman, who both won Republican-held seats in special elections this year.
He attributes the Democrats’ success to a combination of factors that includes the state’s budget woes, voter dissatisfaction with President Trump and a series of scandals that have led to the resignation of four GOP incumbents this year.
“The formula has been very similar for each of these races,” Whelan said “There are a lot of Republicans out there with buyer’s remorse with President Trump, which naturally suppresses turnout.
“Then you’ve got scandal after scandal happening locally, and I think Republicans are losing faith in their brand a little bit.”
Russia's Ministry of Defence has posted what it called "irrefutable proof" of the US aiding so-called Islamic State - but one of the images was actually taken from a video game.
The ministry claimed the image showed an IS convoy leaving a Syrian town last week aided by US forces.
Instead, it came from the smartphone game AC-130 Gunship Simulator: Special Ops Squadron.
Some senators present said they were troubled about the president's latitude to launch a nuclear strike.
Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said: "We are concerned that the president is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic, that he might order a nuclear-weapons strike that is wildly out of step with US national-security interests."
One of the experts, C Robert Kehler, who was commander of the US Strategic Command from 2011-13, said that in his former role he would have followed the president's order to carry out the strike - if it were legal.
He said if he were uncertain about its legality, he would have consulted with his own advisers.
Under certain circumstances, he explained: "I would have said, 'I'm not ready to proceed.'"
One senator, Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, asked: "Then what happens?"
Mr Kehler admitted: "I don't know."
People in the room laughed. But it was a nervous laugh.
Brett J. Talley, President Trump’s nominee to be a federal judge in Alabama, has never tried a case, was unanimously rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Assn.’s judicial rating committee, has practiced law for only three years and, as a blogger last year, displayed a degree of partisanship unusual for a judicial nominee, denouncing “Hillary Rotten Clinton” and pledging support for the National Rifle Assn.
On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee, on a party-line vote, approved him for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.
Talley, 36, is part of what Trump has called the “untold story” of his success in filling the courts with young conservatives.
“The judge story is an untold story. Nobody wants to talk about it,” Trump said last month, standing alongside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in the White House Rose Garden. “But when you think of it, Mitch and I were saying, that has consequences 40 years out, depending on the age of the judge — but 40 years out.”
Civil rights groups and liberal advocates see the matter differently. They denounced Thursday’s vote, calling it “laughable” that none of the committee Republicans objected to confirming a lawyer with as little experience as Talley to preside over federal trials.
“He’s practiced law for less than three years and never argued a motion, let alone brought a case. This is the least amount of experience I’ve seen in a judicial nominee,” said Kristine Lucius, executive vice president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
The group was one of several on the left that urged the Judiciary Committee to reject Talley because of his lack of qualifications and because of doubts over whether he had the “temperament and ability to approach cases with the fairness and open-mindedness necessary to serve as a federal judge.”
Some conservatives discount the ABA’s rating. “The ABA is a liberal interest group. They have a long history of giving lower ratings to Republican nominees,” said Carrie Severino, counsel for the Judicial Crisis Network, which supports Trump’s nominees.