THE ECONOMY & YOU # (Daily Updated Videos & Articles)

Abandoned Medieval Town Turned into Self-Sufficient Village
It's a utopian fantasy- discover a ghost town and rebuild it in line with your ideals-, but in Spain where there are nearly 3000 abandoned villages (most dating back to the Middle Ages), some big dreamers have spent the past 3 decades doing just that.

There are now a few dozen "ecoaldeas" - ecovillages - in Spain, most build from the ashes of former Medieval towns. One of the first towns to be rediscovered was a tiny hamlet in the mountains of northern Navarra.
CONTINUE: [link to www.youtube.com]

New Unemployment Numbers Are A Fraud
Gregory Patin
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Activist Post

According to a report released yesterday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were approximately 146,000 jobs added in the U.S. in November and the unemployment rate dropped to 7.7 percent, which would be the lowest since 2008. The report is based on a survey of households and employers, and does not accurately depict the reality of the jobless rate in the U.S. today.

The 7.7 percent rate is the government’s most widely publicized unemployment rate, known as the U-3, which takes into account only those who are collecting unemployment benefits and actively looking for work. It does not take into account those whose unemployment benefits have run out, those who have given up seeking work, those who are underemployed – desiring full time work but forced to work part time, or those who have dropped out of the labor force more than 12 months ago.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

The Coming Derivatives Panic That Will Destroy Global Financial Markets
Michael Snyder, Contributor
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Activist Post

When financial markets in the United States crash, so does the U.S. economy. Just remember what happened back in 2008. The financial markets crashed, the credit markets froze up, and suddenly the economy went into cardiac arrest. Well, there are very few things that could cause the financial markets to crash harder or farther than a derivatives panic.

Unlike stocks and bonds, a derivative is not an investment in anything real. Rather, a derivative is a legal bet on the future value or performance of something else. Just like you can go to Las Vegas and bet on who will win the football games this weekend, bankers on Wall Street make trillions of dollars of bets about how interest rates will perform in the future and about what credit instruments are likely to default. Wall Street has been transformed into a gigantic casino where people are betting on just about anything that you can imagine. This works fine as long as there are not any wild swings in the economy and risk is managed with strict discipline, but as we have seen, there have been times when derivatives have caused massive problems in recent years.

For example, do you know why the largest insurance company in the world, AIG, crashed back in 2008 and required a government bailout? It was because of derivatives. Bad derivatives trades also caused the failure of MF Global, and the 6 billion dollar loss that JPMorgan Chase recently suffered because of derivatives made headlines all over the globe. But all of those incidents were just warm up acts for the coming derivatives panic that will destroy global financial markets. The largest casino in the history of the world is going to go "bust" and the economic fallout from the financial crash that will happen as a result will be absolutely horrific.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

The “Fiscal Cliff” and the Dismantling of Medicare
By Kate Randall
December 10, 2012

It is becoming increasingly clear that any deal reached in the negotiations in Washington over the “fiscal cliff” will include a major expansion of means testing for Medicare, the federal health insurance program for seniors and the disabled. The introduction of increased fees based on income will signify Medicare’s transformation from a universal health care program for the elderly into a poverty program, the first step in its being starved of funds and ultimately dismantled.

In the ongoing deficit-reduction talks, leading congressional Democrats have suggested that they are open to means testing, beginning with the raising of premiums for higher-income beneficiaries. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the senior senator from President Obama’s home state and the second most powerful Democrat in the Senate, said Thursday that means testing for Medicare is “certainly consistent with the Democratic message that those who are better off in our country should be willing to pay a little more.”

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (Democrat of Montana) last week called the idea “somewhat attractive,” while Congressional Black Caucus chairman Emanuel Cleaver (Democrat of Missouri) suggested that means testing would be a good way to cut spending for Medicare, supposedly without reducing benefits.

President Obama has already given his stamp of approval. During the 2011 debt-ceiling negotiations, he proposed raising Medicare premiums for wealthy seniors. He commented in July 2011, “You can envision a situation where, for somebody in my position, having to pay a little bit more on premiums or co-pays or things like that would be appropriate.”

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

Living with Austerity: Depression Hangs over Greek Islands’ Economy
By Chris Jones
December 10, 2012

Living with Austerity on Samos Island
Those of you who have been following my austerity diaries over the past year will know that I have recently emphasized the pall of depression that hangs over the island as austerity and economic disaster takes it toll on the well being of the people here.

The consequent stress, anxiety, and sheer shock of watching your life chances and well being dissolve as jobs evaporate, incomes shrink or disappear, and prices of everyday essentials remorselessly rise along with new punitive and regressive taxes have been painful to record.

Anyone with any shred of humanity, even if they still have a reasonable income such as myself, can never escape from the hurt and distress that is all around them. All of my friends and neighbours are facing difficulties and hardship. It is literally heart breaking to see this human catastrophe unfolding before your eyes: to see families split and smashed as more and more of the younger and middle aged men in particular, leave their homes and families in search of work and income. In the past month I have seen at least four men depart for the Congo (to work on the building of a new airport there) and there is much talk now of the opportunities for work in southern Africa as people realize that the traditional destinations for migrating Greeks in Europe and the USA can not be relied upon to provide much needed waged work.

Increasing numbers of small businesses which managed to withstand 5 years of economic decline are now failing with increasing rapidity. Stelios, an accountant who lives in Ambelos, told me last weekend that in the past month alone he has been wrapping up the affairs of 9 companies ( out of his portfolio of 160 businesses) and he expects this number to accelerate over the coming months. And it is no better in the public sector where the latest ‘deal’ with the troika spells the end for thousands of teachers, doctors and municipal workers. Giannis, a qualified teacher with 3 degrees (!) told me yesterday that he has absolutely no hope of finding a teaching job now, especially as the government is committed to closing small village schools and moving the children into schools in the main towns of the island.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

“Shadow Statistics”: More Phony Employment Numbers
By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research, December 10, 2012
paulcraigroberts.org

Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) calls the government’s latest jobs and unemployment reports “nonsense numbers.”

There are a number of ongoing problems with the released numbers. For example, the concurrent-seasonal factor adjustments are unstable. The birth-death model adds non-existent jobs each month that are then taken out in the annual downward benchmark revisions. Williams calculates that the job overstatement through November averages 45,000 monthly. In other words, employment gains during 2012 have been overstated by about 500,000 jobs. Another problem is that each month’s jobs number is boosted by downside revision of the previous month’s jobs number. Williams reports that the 146,000 new jobs reported for November “was after a significant downside revision to October’s reporting. Net of prior-period revisions, November’s seasonally-adjusted monthly gain was 97,000.”

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

10 Signs We Live in a False Economy
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Activist Post

It's time to admit that we live in a false economy. Smoke and mirrors are used to make us believe the economy is real, but it's all an elaborate illusion.

Out of one side of the establishment's mouth we hear excitement about "green shoots", and out of the other side comes breathless warnings of fiscal cliffs and the urgent need for unlimited bailouts by the Fed.

We hear the people begging for jobs and the politicians promising them, but politicians can't create jobs. We see people camped out to buy stuff on Black Friday indicating the consumer economy is seemingly thriving, only to find out everything was bought on credit.

The corporate media does their best to distract us from seeing anything real. We see the media glorify Kim Kardashian who got rich by being famous, and became famous merely by being rich. She got front page coverage on Huffington Post this week because her cat died. Enough said.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

The Mother of All Collapses: Wall St. Witches and Alice in Switzer-land
Max Keiser
Tuesday, December 11, 2012

We look at the latest BIS warning of a global credit bubble caused by zero percent interest rate policies meant to appease the angry hidden people in the shadow banking system. In the second half, Max Keiser talks to David Smith of GenevaBusinessInsider.blogspot.com about the Swiss currency peg, the global game of honesty limbo in the financial sector and hoping that midnight never comes for Alice in Switzer-land.

SOURCE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Waging War On US Workers
By Stephen Lendman
12-14-12

America's war on workers dates from the 19th century. Labor learned the hard way what it takes to win.

It requires organizing, pressing demands, taking to the streets, going on strike, holding boycotts, battling police and National Guard forces supporting management, as wells paying with blood and lives to get results.

They came. Workers got an eight hour day, a living wage, important benefits, pensions, and passage of the landmark 1935 Wagner Act. For the first time, labor could bargain collectively with management on equal terms.

Grassroots struggles prevailed. Management and government give nothing unless forced to. Today, virtually everything gained was lost. Federal, state and local Republicans and Democrats wage war on worker rights.

Obama did straightaway in office. Serving business ahead of workers became policy. In March 2009, he told auto executives, "We cannot, must not, and will not let this industry vanish."

His message was clear. Business got bailed out. Labor got sold out. Rank and file members were forced to make painful concessions.

They include permanent job losses, temp or part-time employment in place of full-time work, lower wages, fewer benefits, gutted work rules, forfeited security through pensions and retirement benefits, as well as other sacrifices.

Obama showed Democrats can trash worker rights like Republicans. He wants them treated with 19th century harshness.

Organized labor is a shadow of its former self. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder delivered the latest blow. On December 11, he signed right-to-work legislation. It takes effect in April. More on Michigan below.

CONTINUE: [link to rense.com]

We Are Witnessing The Death Of Small Business In America
Michael Snyder, Contributor
Friday, December 14, 2012
Activist Post

Historically, small businesses have been the primary engine of new job creation in the United States. If the economy was getting healthy, we would expect to see the number of jobs at new businesses rise. Instead, we are witnessing just the opposite.

We are told that the economy is supposed to be "recovering", but the number of "startup jobs" at new businesses has fallen for five years in a row. According to an analysis of U.S. Department of Labor data performed by economist Tim Kane, there were almost 12 startup jobs per 1000 Americans back in the year 2006. By 2011, that figure had fallen to less than 8 startup jobs per 1000 Americans.

According to Kane, the number of jobs in the United States at businesses that are less than one year old has fallen from 4.1 million in 1994 to 2.5 million in 2010. Overall, the number of "new entrepreneurs and business owners" has fallen by more than 50 percent as a percentage of the population since 1977.

The United States was once known as "the land of opportunity", but now that is fundamentally changing.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Above the Law: Fraudulent and Criminal Global Banking System
By Barry Grey
December 14, 2012

In the latest scandal involving the criminal activities of major banks, the US Justice Department on Tuesday announced a $1.9 billion settlement with British-based HSBC on charges of money laundering on a massive scale for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels.

The deal was specifically designed to avert criminal prosecution of either the bank, the largest in Europe and third largest in the world, or any of its top executives. Even though the bank admitted to laundering billions of dollars for drug lords, as well as violating US financial sanctions against Iran, Libya, Burma and Cuba, the Obama administration avoided an indictment by means of a “deferred prosecution agreement.”

The agreement was in keeping with the policy of the US government of shielding top bankers from any accountability for illegal activities that led to the collapse of the financial system in 2008 and ushered in the global recession. Not a single leading executive of a major bank has been prosecuted, led alone jailed, for fraudulent activities that triggered the present crisis, leading to the destruction of millions of jobs and the decimation of working-class living standards in the US and around the world.

Under the protection of the state, the frenzied speculation and swindling continue unabated, underpinning record profits for the banks and bigger-than-ever seven-figure compensation packages for top bankers.

In a front-page article on Tuesday, the New York Times outlined internal discussions within the Obama administration that led to the decision not to indict HSBC. The Times reported that prosecutors at the Justice Department and the New York District Attorney’s office pushed for a compromise in which the bank would be indicted not for money laundering, but for the lesser charge of violating the Bank Secrecy Act.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

Sweetheart Settlement for HSBC Bank on Drug Money Laundering Charges
By Barry Grey
December 13, 2012

The US Justice Department on Tuesday announced a settlement with the British-based HSBC bank regarding charges of money laundering Mexican drug funds that allows the bank to admit to wrongdoing and pay a fine without being criminally charged.

In a lengthy front-page article Tuesday morning, before the settlement was announced, the New York Times reported that US authorities had decided, despite ample evidence that HSBC had laundered billions of dollars for major drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia, not to press criminal charges against the bank or any of its executives because the bank was “too big to indict.”

The Times article, citing government sources on internal discussions between the Justice Department, the Treasury and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, spelled out the rationale that has guided the response of the Obama administration to a host of bank scandals in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of September 2008. Not a single major institution or leading bank executive has been prosecuted for the pervasive fraud and swindling that led to the financial crisis and triggered the global slump — and continues unabated today.

The financial mafia that bestrides the American economy and controls the political system is, in practice, above the law. The government and the various financial regulatory agencies are its protectors, making sure that no leading banker or institution is held accountable for violations of the law and social crimes against the people.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

The Fiscal Cliff Is A Diversion: The Derivatives Tsunami and the Dollar Bubble
Paul Craig Roberts, Contributor
Monday, December 17, 2012
Activist Post

The “fiscal cliff” is another hoax designed to shift the attention of policymakers, the media, and the attentive public, if any, from huge problems to small ones.

The fiscal cliff is automatic spending cuts and tax increases in order to reduce the deficit by an insignificant amount over ten years if Congress takes no action itself to cut spending and to raise taxes. In other words, the “fiscal cliff” is going to happen either way.

The problem from the standpoint of conventional economics with the fiscal cliff is that it amounts to a double-barrel dose of austerity delivered to a faltering and recessionary economy. Ever since John Maynard Keynes, most economists have understood that austerity is not the answer to recession or depression.

Regardless, the fiscal cliff is about small numbers compared to the Derivatives Tsunami or to bond market and dollar market bubbles.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Be Warned: False Flag Cyberattack Planned on Banks Will Steal Your Money
Susanne Posel, Contributor
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Activist Post

McAfee Labs warns of a cyber-attack planned for the spring of 2013 that will steal millions of dollars from customer accounts. Thirty US banks have been targeted by a nameless, faceless band of “criminals” who have released a Trojan virus that will remove digital currency from accounts at banks like:

• JPMorgan Chase & Co
• Wells Fargo
• Citibank
• PayPal/eBay
• Fidelity
• Charles Schwab
• Wachovia
• Capital One
• Bank of America
• Suntrust
• eTrade
• Ameritrade
• Navy Federal Credit Union

The scheme is referred to as ‘Project Blitzkrieg” (PB). In a beta-testing of the assault, it is reported that 300 bank accounts were affected in the United States. The recruitment for PB is being linked to Russian cyber-criminals and an alleged cyber-mafia headed by an anonymous NSD. Those who enter into PB are tasked with infecting specified US computers with predetermined malware, cloning, syphoning passwords and login information, transferring digital information from customer accounts.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

75 Economic Numbers From 2012 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe
Michael Snyder, Contributor
Friday, December 21, 2012
Activist Post

What a year 2012 has been! The mainstream media continues to tell us what a "great job" the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are doing of managing the economy, but meanwhile things just continue to get even worse for the poor and the middle class. It is imperative that we educate the American people about the true condition of our economy and about why all of this is happening. If nothing is done, our debt problems will continue to get worse, millions of jobs will continue to leave the country, small businesses will continue to be suffocated, the middle class will continue to collapse, and poverty in the United States will continue to explode. Just "tweaking" things slightly is not going to fix our economy. We need a fundamental change in direction.

Right now we are living in a bubble of debt-fueled false prosperity that allows us to continue to consume far more wealth than we produce, but when that bubble bursts we are going to experience the most painful economic "adjustment" that America has ever gone through. We need to be able to explain to our fellow Americans what is coming, why it is coming and what needs to be done. Hopefully the crazy economic numbers that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Fiscal Cliff Reality
By Stephen Lendman
12-22-12

Political Washington theater continues. Republicans and Democrats agreed years ago to erode America's social contract en route to eliminating it altogether.

Crisis conditions create opportunities. Former White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, explained.

"You never want to let a serious crisis go to waste," he said. "What I mean by that is that's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before."

He didn't mean populist ones. He had harsh neoliberal ones in mind. They're institutionalized. Ordinary people and America's most disadvantaged suffer most. The worst is yet to come.

Both sides agree. They're on board to give bankers, warmakers, other corporate favorites, and super-rich elites a bigger piece of the pie. Getting it depends on stealing it from most others. It's happening in real time. Grand larceny writ large looms.

Washington scoundrels also want more money for corporate America, for super-rich elites, to militarize space, fund America's imperium, and wage global wars on humanity. Fiscal cliff hype hides their real agenda. It's hugely ugly, destructive and repressive.

So-called negotiations, headlines, and hype are noise. Both sides will choose their time, place, and explanations to announce final deal terms.

December 31/January 1 are fictitious deadlines. Cuts can come any time. They can be made retroactive to yearend. One deadline alone matters.

CONTINUE: [link to rense.com]

“Conspiracy Theories” vs. the Real World of Financial Crime: Bankers Face Prosecution For Conspiracy
By Danny Schechter
December 23, 2012

When most mainstream media outlets discuss conspiracy theories, it is usually to debunk the views of dissenting and critical thinkers who are routinely denounced as simplistic, paranoid or worse.

You have frequently seen the mantra questioning their motives and conclusions as if the idea of people or officials acting together covertly to advance their interests in illegal ways is something new in history.

Until recently, US press outlets characterized conspiracy arguments as rants that lacked any factual basis, engaged in guilt by association and stretched the facts.

The only conspiracy charges they tended to look at uncritically were criminal complaints against the Mafia under anti-racketeering statutes like the RICO statutes. Prosecutors loved these cases because normal concerns with protecting the rights of defendants didn’t apply when hearsay evidence was permitted.

But now, four years after the financial crisis, prosecutors have finally discovered what critics have been alleging repeatedly: that big banks were crooks, engaging, engaging among other illicit practices, in secretive, illegal and conspiratorial schemes to rig baseline interest rates and manipulate credit markets,

It has now been admitted that traders at two major financial institutions were fixing LIBOR—the London Interbank Offered Rate, used to set the interest rates of $800 trillion worth of financial products, including credit cards and mortgages.

That figure again: $800 trillion!

The banks: Barclays and UBS. At first, regulators got them to agree to pay fines in so-called “settlements,” which are viewed by these institutions as a cost of doing business.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

Berlin: A Grim Christmas for Many. Urban Poverty in Germany. Homelessness in the Inner City
By Ernst Wolff
December 25, 2012


Winter exposes the social decline in Berlin more revealingly than any other season, especially around Christmastime. Bitter conditions drive the homeless into the inner city to seek shelter. Special “winter buses”, operated by aid agencies, search the streets, bridges and back courtyards to offer relief to the needy. The number of starving, freezing people increases outside the city’s soup kitchens.

“I never thought I’d be standing here”, says a man in his mid-fifties, as he joins the soup kitchen queue at the Berlin Zoo railway station. He lost his job five years ago and initially took on odd jobs, before finding himself no longer able to compete with younger low-wage workers.

“If you can’t keep up with the young’uns any more, you’re a goner”, he says bitterly, but resigned. A bystander of about the same age agrees, adding, “And then you have to fend for yourself. None of the public departments or authorities provides any help”.

A gaunt man in his early thirties pushes a shopping trolley full of plastic bags. At first he is reluctant to answer any questions and just shakes his head in resignation. Then he falteringly admits that he has been living on the street for the last two years, having previously lost his job and his home. “The worst of it is”, he mutters without looking up, “you’re dependent on charity for your survival”.

A pensioner in his early seventies, better dressed than most in the queue, has made a point of coming specially to the Zoo railway station from another part of the city. He wants to avoid the shame of being seen by a neighbor or a friend when he lines up at the food counter. “I’ve worked all my life, but now I have to make do with a pension of €810 a month”, he says indignantly. “How am I supposed to do that when my rent has increased again this year, and electricity and gas are getting more and more expensive?”

The difference between the rich and the poor is most striking on Berlin’s grand boulevard, the Kurfürstendamm, not far from the railway station. During the day, sheer penury drives many people into placing begging notices on the walls of buildings, and forces them to seek refuge from the freezing night wind by huddling in sleeping bags in shop entrances. At the same time, the posh stores, guarded by security personnel and radiating bright light, entice their affluent clientele with luxury products.

CONTINUE: [link to www.globalresearch.ca]

I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave - My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine.
By Mac McClelland
March/April 2012

"Don't take anything that happens to you there personally," the woman at the local chamber of commerce says when I tell her that tomorrow I start working at Amalgamated Product Giant Shipping Worldwide Inc. She winks at me. I stare at her for a second.
"What?" I ask. "Why, is somebody going to be mean to me or something?"

She smiles. "Oh, yeah." This town somewhere west of the Mississippi is not big; everyone knows someone or is someone who's worked for Amalgamated. "But look at it from their perspective. They need you to work as fast as possible to push out as much as they can as fast as they can. So they're gonna give you goals, and then you know what? If you make those goals, they're gonna increase the goals. But they'll be yelling at you all the time. It's like the military. They have to break you down so they can turn you into what they want you to be. So they're going to tell you, 'You're not good enough, you're not good enough, you're not good enough,' to make you work harder. Don't say, 'This is the best I can do.' Say, 'I'll try,' even if you know you can't do it. Because if you say, 'This is the best I can do,' they'll let you go. They hire and fire constantly, every day. You'll see people dropping all around you. But don't take it personally and break down or start crying when they yell at you."

CONTINUE: [link to www.motherjones.com]

The Economics of Extinction
In this episode, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss the economics of wealth and wage extinction. They talk about hunger wages, household income and the hedge funds reaping huge profits off this wealth and wage extinction.

Economic Bubbles About to Burst
Dean Henderson
February 11, 2013

Insider stock selling by billionaires – including Warren Buffett and John Paulsen – this week indicate something big is about to happen, something that may make the 2008 credit crisis seem rather benign. Last week the governments of Russia and Germany called in their gold being “held” by the New York Federal Reserve.

A couple of years ago the IMF announced that it would begin liquidating its gold holdings - the world’s 3rd largest stash after the US and Germany. Buyers included the governments of India, Sri Lanka and Mauritius. Do you think the IMF would be selling gold at a market bottom? Bubble #1 about to burst – Gold.

Both Venezuelan and Vietnamese governments announced devaluations of their currencies, striking fear into the hearts of Southeast Asian governments, who fear a repeat of the 1997 Asian Crisis. Vietnam has benefited from the highly speculative dollar carry trade, through which investors borrow US dollars at near 0% interest, then reinvest those free dollars in 12-13% Vietnamese bonds. Much of the money which we forked over to Wall Street banks via QE 1-3 has made it’s way into these speculative markets, rather than being loaned to US home buyers, for example. Bubble #2 about to burst – The US Dollar Carry Trade

CONTINUE: [link to deanhenderson.wordpress.com]

Amazon's New Virtual Currency
J.P. Hicks, Contributor
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Activist Post

Last week Amazon announced a new way for customers to buy and sell goods on its massive online retail platform: a new virtual currency called Amazon Coins.

Coming in May, Amazon Coins is a new virtual currency for purchasing apps, games, and in-app items on Kindle Fire.

Amazon Coins is an easy way for Kindle Fire customers to spend money on developers’ apps in the Amazon Appstore, offering app and game developers another substantial opportunity to drive traffic, downloads and increase monetization even further.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

$11,250,000 bet that the VIX will move over 20 over the next 60 days...

Last week the head of floor trading operations at the NYSE wrote this in his daily report sent out to UBS traders.

"A Very Big Bet In A Somewhat Unlikely Instrument – My friend, Jim Brown, the ever-alert consummate professional over at Option Investor pointed us to a rather unusual trade. Here's what he wrote in the February 7 edition of his valuable newsletter:

In past years I have reported on trades that were so large it appeared someone had inside knowledge of a pending event. Sometimes those were massive put positions on the S&P. A new trade just appeared that suggests there will be a market event in the near future. Last week somebody put on a call spread on the VIX using the April 20 and 25 puts. They bought 150,000 contracts for a net of $75 per contract. That is an $11,250,000 bet that the VIX will move over 20 over the next 60 days. You would have to be VERY confident in your outlook to risk $11 million on a directional position with the VIX at five year lows and the markets trying to break out to new highs.

Jim then goes on to list some of the scheduled events and deadlines visible over the next 60 days (mostly in Washington). When you add in the broad variety of geo-political possibilities, it's a decent reason to stay extra alert.

Hopefully, this person is wrong."

[link to www.optioninvestor.com]

NB: This means that the s&p 500 could go up, down or stay relativity stable for this investor to make money, so as long as the volume of trading starts to increase.

This does not necessarily mean the investor in question is betting on the stock market to tank.

Last Edited by RoXY on 02/12/2013 01:56 PM