OMG...Trump picks John Paulson to be on his economic team. JOHN PAULSON!!!

This takes the cake.

Trump picks John Paulson to be on his economic team. Paulson? Economics???

Paulson's the guy who bet big on gold--and lost--because he thought that Fed monetary policy owuld result in hyperinflation. He's like Peter Schiff.

The only reason anyone even knows about Paulson is because he made a ton of money shorting subprime back in 2007. But that's only because he got Goldman Sachs to create a RIGGED TRADE that was guaranteed to make money.

That was the infamous "Abacus Deal" and Goldman eventually admitted to fraud on that and paid a fine. (Of course, a fine, no jail for anyone.)

Trump's a clown. I only support him because I think that is our only chance of keeping out of a war with Russia, however, I am resigned now to the idea that Hillary will be our next president. I only hope she doesn't start World War 3.

The Hidden Billionaires behind Trump The Foreclosure King, The Three-Headed Dog From Hell and Goldman Sachs — Dennis J Bernstein interviews Greg Palast

Palast drags Donald Trump and John Paulson through the mud of their own creation.

Greg Palast
The Hidden Billionaires behind Trump The Foreclosure King, The Three-Headed Dog From Hell and Goldman Sachs

Dennis J Bernstein interviews Greg Palast for Nation of Change

Update:

The above link no longer works. Here a link to the podcast without transcript.

I have yet to see a hedge fund operator who knows anything about economics or the monetary system

This should be no surprise. I have been documenting how clueless these guys are for a long time here on this blog.

Whether it's Kyle Bass or David Einhorn or Bill Ackman or John Paulson or even Bill Gross or any of them, they don't know what the fuck they are talking about.

They got everything wrong: monetary operations, inflation, the dollar, interest rates, commodities, "stimulus," etc.

On the other hand, I (we) got everything right because of our understanding of flows and MMT.

(Which begs the question: why am I not managing $15 billion? Go ahead and ask, it's a good question. Probably because I suck at marketing myself.)

Anyway, you can do better than them. Start by signing up for a 30-day free trial to my weekly report, MMT Trader. Take the money from these loser hedgies.

Hedge fund parasite and scammer, John Paulson, going after Puerto Rico now.

John Paulson is at it again. He's the guy that no one knew until he got the brilliant idea of getting Goldman Sachs to construct a rigged trade for him in the subprime market. Remember that? He went from nobody to billionaire overnight as a result of this fraud. (And let's face it, that's the way most of Wall Street operates.)

With that "success" under his belt he got lots of new clients and billions in new funds to manage so what did he do with the money? He turned around and ploughed a big chunk of that dough into gold because he was afraid of hyperinflation because of QE and other Fed monetary operations.

Hahahaha. Idiot.

Not surprisingly, he got spanked pretty hard by the markets and by his own dumb as shit ignorance. (Probably was reading Peter Schiff, but I digress.)

Since then he's had a spotty record, proving, like most of these hedge fund honchos, they're more lucky or connected than smart.

So now we find out that he is setting his parasitic sights on Puerto Rico. That poor (literally and figuratively) commonwealth of the U.S. is deeply in debt--loaded up by, you guessed it, Wall Street. This was without a doubt debt that they would never be able to repay, but that's the scam they use every time.

They're just employing their tried and tested model, people. Load the patsies up on debt that they can never repay, then move in have them declare bankruptcy or impose severe austerity, sell off assets that have been paid for 50 times over by the citizens' taxes, take those assets, charge for their use, steal pensions, fire people, close schools and other public facilities, take over agricultural, mining and physical plant, etc.

John Paulson bought some distressed bonds. Of course, being not too bright, these were bad investments to begin with, but guys like Paulson are too stupid or, they don't care because they will get their political hacks and other cronies to make sure that WE the PEOPLE pay them back for their losses every time. That means, fire teachers, close schools, take pensions, cut spending and social programs, etc.

Obama has ruled out a bailout. (What else is new? He's in Wall Street's pocket, what do you expect?)

Puerto Rico will be decimated. The next Greece. Meanwhile Paulson is building a luxury resort on the island for his billionaire friends, probably with tax breaks from the Puerto Rican government: tax breaks the island can't afford.

Hedge fund idiocy. State sanctioned theft. Massive hypocrisy. All rolled up in one.

Wall Street "star" Meredith Whitney blows up and is back giving interviews to Fox News.

"Famed" Wall Street, "star" Meredith Whitney is back to where she started--with nothing, and doing interviews with Fox Business after she swore she'd never go on Fox again. (She considered Fox to be too lowly a network for her highly important stature.)

Say what you want, but I guess this proves what I said right from the very start: that this woman's fame always befuddled me. I worked alongside her for years at Fox News, where she was a business contributor, like me, and never found anything she said to be all that insightful or intelligent. For sure I don't think she had much of a grasp on the markets or, the economy.

I remember back in 2009 when the fiscal stimulus was announced, she said it wouldn't do much because it was a "hodgepodge." (A fucking hodgepodge? Seriously? And she was already big-time famous by then.)

Even the whole, Citi "call," seemed like a sham to me, too. Fadel Gheit, who is an Oppenheimer (where Whitney worked) Managing Director and senior oil and gas analyst once told me that Whitney ripped off that call from her former boss.

Anyway, the media went crazy over her and that made her a star and rich, but then she proceeded to fall flat on her face with a series of blunderous calls. (More hodgepodges, I guess.)

It wasn't long before her research firm had to close its doors because of client defections. At one point she even had John Paulson as a client. Remember Paulson? The obscure money manager who nobody knew for years, but then he rocketed to massive fame and fortune with that rigged, subprime trade that Goldman structured, which was ultimately deemed an exercise in fraud?

Did Whitney also advise Paulson to buy gold? Remember that one, too? Paulson thought that ZIRP and QE would lead to hyperinflation. The "genius" was just another Schiff. Only richer.

There were other terrible calls, too. Like the one where she said that hundreds of municipalities were going to go bankrupt.

When her research firm closed, she moved to Bermuda and started a hedge fund and got some other hedge fund clown to "gift her" $50 million in seed capital, which she proceeded to blow out. Finally the guy couldn't take it anymore and sued to get his money back, but only after she refused to return it.

Wow. You can't make this shit up even if you were writing a script for some crappy Hollywood B movie.

The funniest thing about Whitney, though, is how she married this gung-ho 'murica, cowboy-wrestler, John Layfield, who still, I think, is a regular on Fox's Saturday morning business block. As an aside, you gotta love that about Fox News...they don't give a shit who they put up there as long as it helps ratings. Do you believe anyone would take investment advice from this dude?

And now she, too, is back giving interviews at Fox. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. (Some of them, anyway.)

P.S. There's a lot more about Whitney that we posted up over the years right here on MNE. Check it out.

Today's podcast

Today, Goldman Sachs, my eye opening stint at Standard & Poor's, China's economy surpasses U.S, parasitic financial sector.

John Paulson finally stops buying gold. But he doesn't even know why.

Yesterday, billionaire hedge fund manager John Pauslon told his clients that he will not be adding anymore gold to his holdings. No wonder, Paulson has gotten slaughtereed in gold. And the reason he's not buying anymore is not because he has come to understand monetary operations, but because he's gotten so destroyed in gold that now he's gun shy. As a trader I've seen many other traders go through this, I know what it's all about.

Paulson is gun shy. He's been so brutalized in gold because of his simplistic, unsophisticated and ignorant views with respect to moentary policy and inflation that he can't touch another ounce.

Paulson should have listened to MMT. MMT got it right. MMT explained many, many, times that QE, interest rate setting, etc, only changes the composition of the financial assts held by the public, it does not put any new money into anyone's hands. Moreover, QE, with its strong interest income reducing effects, is more deflationary than inflationary.

John Paulson didn't understand this and he still doesn't. He's clueless. Maybe he takes his advice from another idiot by the name of Peter Schiff, who knows? But one thing is for sure, Paulson is, each and every day, looking more lucky than smart.

The "Japan is going to have a debt crisis" man, Kyle Bass, now taking a position in JC Penney

Bill Ackman is out, after his disastrous foray into JC Penney (and before that, Herbalife) where he took major losses and contributed nothing of value or fresh perspective to the embattled retailer.

So now a new group of clueless hedge fund morons comes in, this time headed by none other than "Japan is going to experience a debt collapse," Kyle Bass. Bass has been putting on quite the dummy show in the past ten months telling everyone who would listen (mostly CNBC) that Japan won't be able to find enough "external funding" to pay its debts (which are in yen and which, last time I checked, are created solely by the Japanese government).

I guess Bass has now decided to focus his Einstein-like intellect on the retail sector and, seriously, that ought to be fun to watch.

I'm wondering if Bass might decide to take some cues from a fellow "genius" hedge funder, Eddie Lampert, you know, the Libertarian, Ayn Rand espousing, CEO of Sears Holdings (Sears, K-Mart), the American retailing icon that he has been phenomenally successful in destroying?

Line 'em up, folks. Whether we're talking about Bass or Lampert or Ackman or Paulson or Cohen or even Jamie Dimon and Goldman, this is what American capitalism has devolved into. A bunch of privileged, whiny, egotistical, arrogant, sociopathic jerks playing casino games with vast amounts of chips who leave a path of destruction in their wake everyhwhere they go that the rest of America has to swim through.

John Paulson, Kyle Bass, two "genius" fund managers who are long gold, short Treasuries. LOL!!!

The markets are proving once again that most hedge fund managers are more lucky (or fraudulent) than smart and that's if they made any money at all.

John Paulson's greatest trade (shorting the subprime market) was an exercise in fraud with the help of Goldman Sachs.

Since that rigged trade, Paulson's "genius" bet was to load up on gold and short the Treasury market because he believed that Fed "money printing" was going to create hyperinflation. (Obviously taking his cues from that moron Peter Schiff now.)

And Kyle Bass has been telling us for three years running how the Japanese bond market is going to implode. He keeps betting against the Japanese bond market and, not surprisingly, he loves gold.

And let us not forget some of the other prominent morons like Jim Rogers, Nassim Taleb and of course the biggest loser of them all, Peter Schiff.

These guys are useless, like most of the entire hedge fund community, but we told you that here at MNE a long time ago.

Gold falls below $1500

Gold continues its free fall, but don't worry all you Peter Schiff fans, we're about to experience hyperinflation any minute now. Keep buying!!!!

Me against Jeffrey Gundlach

I gotta confess, I'm long the yen. I know I'm crazy, but I'm long the yen.

You may have seen this: Jeffrey Gundlach is killing it being short yen.

So why am I going against this guy who's one of the world's best known money managers and who's currently, "killing it" being short the yen?

Here's why...

I'll start by saying that besides Gundlach, there are several other "well known" people who are short yen or who have been advising people to short the yen. They are people like Peter Schiff, Axel Merk and Kyle Bass. I'm sorry, but when those three stooges get together on a theme, wild horses can't keep me from betting against them. All I need now is for John Paulson to say he's going short the yen and I will mortgage everything I have to add to this position. By the way, they're all short because of...you guessed it...fears of BoJ "money printing" and insolvency.

And the three stooges have a lot of company. Open interest and short positions by speculators (including small specs, who are considered the dumb money) is just off record levels. Commericals are long.

Since the election the yen has sold off something like 500 basis points against the dollar, or about 6%. That's all been due to aggressive yen shorting.

The new government believes it is "out of money," so an outright fiscal expansion underpinned by printing yen, is out of the question.

Prime minister Abe has been pressuring the BoJ and the BoJ has responded by saying it will "buy more assets." Great...more QE, that is just an asset swap and does nothing to weaken the yen.

The new government is also very close to the corporate sector and it is believed that it will soon give the ok to restart the nuclear reactors, which have been shut down since the quake. If so, this will go far to reverse Japan's current trade deficit, which came about solely as a result of massive oil imports to meet energy needs.

The markets believe this to be true and imminent, as shares in Japanese power companies have been surging.

So...Japan and the BoJ are doing nothing to create net new yen financial assets. The nukes will be restarted soon and the dumb money is shorting the yen like crazy.

If that's not a prescription for a yen rally, a big, big, BIG, one, I don't know what is.

John Paulson...rapidly going back from whence he came

Before he made his multi-billion dollar score on that totally rigged subprime bet, John Paulson was an aging, unknown, money manager with nothing more than a little pittance of money under management. Now it appears he is wasting no time going back there.

Back in April I wrote about Paulson's disastrous and highly misinformed "post-rigged-bet" market exploits, like buying gold because he feared hyperinflation from Fed "money printing" or, shorting US Treasuries because he feared hyperinflation from Fed "money printing" (or US bankruptcy...who the hell knows?) or losing half a billion dollars in less than 24 hours on some crappy Chinese stock. All told, this market "genius" lost about 50% of his clients' money last year (which he called an aberration!) and he's adding to those losses as we speak.

It now can be revealed that he is down about another 8-percent in June alone on bets against the euro and European bonds.

Here was Paulson's rationale for this trade

“The plans announced at the end of June will prove insufficient in solving the structural problems of the euro zone,” Paulson wrote in the letter. “Like the passage of the Greek bailout plan in March, the plans’ impact on the markets will prove temporary and short-lived. These plans do not solve the productivity gap among euro-zone countries, current account deficits, government deficits, unemployment, and capital outflows.”

This is some of the most naive and unsophisticated "analysis" (and I am even making a stretch to use that term) I have ever heard. "Solve the productivity gap?" "Capital outflows?" Hilarious. No clue about the ECB buying bonds or supplying liquidity to banks. Basically just throwing around a bunch of buzzwords to hide his ignorance, while at the same time I can envision so many of these self important pension fund officials nodding their heads in agreement and believing that their Wonder Boy will get back on track and perform again as the market genius he really is. At least that's their hope. At the very least I'm sure they're thinking Paulson better do something soon because the pensioners who these guys represent have just lost a big chunk of their savings thanks to this guy.

Let us not forget, too, the fact that Paulson ripped into Occupy protesters last year for even suggesting that a guy like him shhould be taxed at a higher rate than, let's say, some secretary, because he...JOHN PAULSON...is a Job Creator who hired 100 people. That's right...100 people!! Do the math: he made a $20 BILLION profit and he hired 100 people. That breaks down to one hire for every $200 million in profit. Now THERE'S a job creator if I ever saw one!!

Bottom line...Paulson and others like him are more lucky than smart. The irony is, he could have saved himself and his clients a ton of money, billions in fact, if he took just five minutes a day to read Warren Mosler's FREE blog. Warren and MMT got everyting right...EVERYTHING. Or he could have read this blog, which I am sure he would never do. Too much arrogance. They're all the same, this crowd. They can only make money by cheating, by rigging the game. No wonder the public is fed up, but the public will continue to be powerless as long as these guys own the system, which they do.