US Baits ISIS to Stage False-Flag Chemical Attack to Justify Greater US Attack against Syria

What could be smellier and more tempting bait to get ISIS to launch a chemical-weapon attack than a US guarantee that “any” chemical weapon attack in Syria will be automatically blamed on Assad’s regime and will automatically result in the US attacking Assad and all of ISIS’s other enemies?

Today the White House offered ISIS that ironclad guarantee.

 

White House issues preemptive warning to Syria on chemical attack

 

Today, the White House issued a carte blanc guarantee to ISIS, pledging that the Assad regime will pay a heavy price for any chemical weapon attack that happens inside of Syria:

 

The Trump administration issued a rare, preemptive warning to the Syrian regime against launching any chemical weapons attacks, warning Damascus will “pay a heavy price” if it refuses to heed Washington’s red line. (The Washington Times)

 

The use of the term “red line” makes this more than just another line in the sand because of its historic overtones. Assad and everyone else in the world remembers the political price Obama paid for stating that a chemical weapons attack would be a “red line” for the US that Syria dare not cross. When an attack did happen, which Obama doubted was due to Syria, he refused to cross that line and was criticized for cowardice for years. I think everyone knows that Trump is not about to repeat that kind of retreat from his threat.

To make it even more clear that the US will interpret a chemical weapon attack in Syria as justifying an attack against Assad’s regime, the statement continued as follows:

 

“the United States has identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack … similar to preparations the regime made before its April 4, 2017, chemical weapons attack.” (Italics mine.)

 

That statement ties the current threat to the last time the US attacked Assad based on the US government’s claimed belief that he used chemical weapons against the Syrian people, which set a precedent for future responses.

As the Washington Times article points out, the White House has revealed none of the particulars that it claims prove that preparations are being made by Assad’s military for such a chemical attack on the Syrian people. That is not unusual in that nations are reluctant to reveal their intelligence, lest it also provide clues as to how the intelligence was gathered; but it also calls to mind the unsupported claims made by the Bush regime that Saddam Hussein was making chemical weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam was not doing.

When evidence was provided before the entire UN for Saddam’s supposed weapons manufacturing, even I sat and thought, “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?” I could see leaps to conclusions in every statement that Colin Powell made, and I wanted to believe him because I knew we were going to attack and because I had voted for Bush and because I respected Powell and because and I hoped that our nation would never go to war for illegitimate reasons. So, I greatly hoped to see that Powell would prove the case. By the conclusion of Powell’s presentation to the UN, however, I was certain we were going to war for illegitimate reasons. The leaps of logic were glaring, just as they are now.

 

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley raised the specter of a wider war, threatening Syria’s allies in Moscow and Tehran.

 

Sounds like intended justification for a wider war to me! And the feared event hasn’t even happened yet. Since fear-mongering has always been a war-monger’s best tool, I have a question:

If this threat is so grave that it means we would have to take on the risk of a wider war that could involve Russia, and if our concern is humanitarian, why don’t we just selectively target the chemical preparations right now, blowing up the preparations facility where they claim the chemicals are being “mixed,” and, thus, save a lot of human suffering before it happens? Wouldn’t it be better, if our interests are purely humanitarian, to prevent the suffering, rather than put out a statement that could easily (even if not intentionally) bait ISIS into launching its own attack?

I’m sure we’ve thought all of this through because administration officials have even described the attack that hasn’t happened yet as ““another mass murder attack using chemical weapons.” (Hmm. We KNOW it is going to be another mass murder attack, but we’re going to let it happen?)

In other words, this attack that hasn’t happened yet (so does not yet even exist) is another one just like the last one that justified our strange attack against Syria, which seemed to accomplish nothing but distraction from the issues that were raging in the press about Trump colluding with Russia at the time. (What? We blew a tiny three-foot hole in a runway, and darkened some bunkers from which the planes had already been removed (but didn’t destroy either the bunkers or the planes). Much smoke, but not much fire? The problems were patched in half a day, and the airport was back up and running.)

 

Evidence that the White House is baiting ISIS into making a chemical weapons attack

 

Here is where it gets really interesting … and evil.

As if all the above were not suspicious enough, let’s look at another article that adds some clarity as to what the US ambassador to the UN pledged in advance of the attack that Assad is supposedly preparing:

 

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley in a tweet added that Assad’s allies would be responsible too.

“Any further attacks done to the people of Syria will be blamed on Assad, but also on Russia & Iran who support him killing his own people,” she tweeted. (CNS News)

 

Whoa! Notice the use of the word “any.” Surely, US ambassadors choose their wording carefully, knowing full well the entire world will parse every word for its significance in trying to discern what the US will really do when the US promises to intensify its war. “ANY” further attack “WILL BE BLAMED ON ASSAD!”

This is the part that I said becomes a carte blanc promise to ISIS that any false-flag event it creates will be used as an excuse to attack Assad. The White House has already promised that it will attack Assad for “ANY” attack that it sees happen — presumably meaning any chemical attack, but even that isn’t clear. Just “any” attack. So, launch an attack, ISIS, because we are ready with a hair trigger to respond directly against Assad for anything we see!

Could the US offer smellier bait to ISIS than that if it tried? Even if you want to assume the cleanest of humanitarian motives on the part of the US regime, you would have to, in that case, assume an incredibly inept and fully stupid US administration because anyone can figure out that ISIS will smell this bait and do all it can to hit on it and bring about the promised response. If the Trump administration did not intend to bait ISIS, then they surely have to be stupider than any of the rest of us to not have seen that ISIS will now do everything it can to draw the US into a more direct confrontation with the Assad regime.

BUT THIS DOESN’T EVEN STOP THERE. Look at the all the rest of what the US ambassador said! She stated outright — no holds barred — that both Russia and Iran will also be held directly responsible for “ANY” attack that the US sees happen. This is a pledge to ISIS that, if they can pull this off, the US will also strongly attack their other greatest enemies, Iran and Russia!

The US ambassador even has the affront to say that Russia supports Assad in his efforts to kill his own people. It’s one thing to say that Russia supports Assad’s fight against ISIS, which they surely and unreservedly do, but she has claimed that Russia supports Assad’s goals of killing his own people. She states that the US will hold Russia and Iran, which we know the Trump regime is gunning for, as equally responsible for “any” attack that happens (presumably any chemical attack).

Could ISIS possibly be given stronger bait to launch its own false-flag attack than a promise that “the Great Satan” will go after Assad, Iran and even Russia if we see any attack happen against the Syrian people! This is an ISIS dream! The Trump administration has endangered the Syrian people by making such a brash promise that virtually assures ISIS will do everything it can to murder them. The event hasn’t even happened, and we’ve decided it’s another “another mass murder” just like the last one.

 

Iran, Russia and Syria respond

 

CNS News reported Iran’s response as follows:

 

Iran’s state-funded Press TV commented that the U.S. warning “risks sparking a major confrontation between parties to the Syrian conflict and complicating efforts aimed at resolving it.”

 

I hate to ever be on the side of saying Iran is right, just as I hated to be on the side of saying Iraq’s ambassador was right when he called Powell’s presentation to the UN “a dog and pony show,” but Iran is right. Of course the White House’s statement risks sparking a major confrontation. In fact, “sparking” is far too week of a word as is “risks.” It guarantees that ISIS will do all it can to create a major conflagration between the US and Russia and Iran — all of whom are its sworn enemies and all of whom it would LOVE to see embroiled in a hot war with each other!

Russia responded by calling the US statement what it is:

 

“White House Threatens to Murder More Syrians Over Imaginary ‘Chemical Weapons Attacks’”

 

Yes, it is the US that in encouraging the “murder of more Syrians.” How can any administration be so blatantly dumb as not to see that they have just given the ultimate pledge of support to ISIS if ISIS will just attack more Syrian people! Yes, the US has just officially pledged full-on military support to ISIS if it will murder the Syrian people by promising that “any” attack will be blamed on Assad, Iran and Russia!

This administration is either stupid beyond belief or evil beyond belief. They could not possibly have made any statements that would be more likely to cause the death of Syrian people than these. That presses me to conclude this administration has completely sold out to the neocons and the US military-industrial establishment by pledging itself to a more intense war with Russia and Iran if chemical weapons are used on the Syrian people. EVEN IF ASSAD IS PLANNING TO ATTACK HIS OWN PEOPLE WITH CHEMICAL WEAPONS, WE HAVE VIRTUALLY ASSURED THAT ISIS WILL DO ITS BEST TO DO THE SAME!

This is an administration that wants a wider war with Iran and Russia! That is why Iran and Russia responded as they did.

Russia and Iran had already stated that any further strikes like the one that the US claimed was retaliatory last time would cross their own “red lines.” While Iran could easily be taken as mere saber rattling, that is not usually Russia’s approach. It’s a little more adult than that. As the CNS article reminds everyone, Russia already stated,

 

From now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines from whoever it is and America knows our ability to respond well.

 

Russia has also warned that any US aircraft operating west of the Euphrates river will be treated as targets.

Syria has, naturally, denied that it is preparing a chemical weapons attack against its own people and just stated that this is an attempt by the US to initiate a broader diplomatic attack against Syria and possibly a military attack.

 

Frants Klintsevich, first deputy chairman of the defense and security committee in the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, accused the United States of “preparing a new attack on the positions of Syrian forces.”

The Kremlin also dismissed the White House statement, which had warned that Assad and his military would “pay a heavy price” if it goes ahead with the attack. Russian  President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov … also criticized the Trump administration for using the phrase “another chemical weapons attack,” arguing that an independent investigation into the April attack was never conducted despite Russia’s calls for one. (Zero Hedge)

 

In a word, Iran called the US warning an “escalation” and Russia called it “provocation.”

In an earlier article titled “Getting Trumped and Thumped in Syria,” I highlighted a few of the numerous reasons to doubt that any of the chemical attacks in Syria (even during the Obama administration) were orchestrated by the Assad regime:

 

Dr. Theodore Postol has won many awards as a professor of science, technology, and national security policy at MIT. He specializes in ballistic missiles and chemical dispersion clouds. He helps the US government with its weapons program and trains other scientists in weapon technology. Postol debunked the 2013 claims that a chemical incident was caused by one of Assad’s missiles. Briefings, such as his, that countered initial information linking the chemicals to Assad are why Obama did not follow through with his red-line threat.

… Postol does not believe this year’s incident was a missile sent in by Assad, and he believes the site shows evidence of tampering. He notes many stunning errors in the reports that have tried to link both the 2013 chemical incident and the 2017 one to Bashar Assad: “the government’s new report [is] obviously false, misleading and amateurish…. What the country is now being told by the White House cannot be true.”

 

That article cited several other analysts and their reasons for disbelieving that any chemical weapons attacks were carried out by Assad’s forces.

 

Why does the US want a broader conflict with Iran and Russia so badly that it seeks to elicit one?

 

We all can remember how well an attack against Syria back in April worked to terminate the national conversation in the press about Trump’s collusion with Russia when the US attacked Assad. That attack boldly proved Trump was willing to challenge Russia and proved Trump was militarily mighty … like Putin. As a result, the collusion conversation ended instantly (though Trump, true to form, couldn’t resist re-igniting the conversation with his tweets a few days later because he seems to thrive on chaos and lots of chatter about himself).

Also true to form this time around, and not at all surprising,

 

The overnight White House threat caught many in Trump’s own administration by surprise. Several State Department officials typically involved in coordinating such announcements said they were caught off guard, and it appeared the underlying intelligence information was known only to a small group of senior officials. Typically, the State Department, Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies would all be consulted before a White House declaration sure to ricochet across foreign capitals. (AP)

 

Why break with tradition? Especially when the element of surprise is key to military attacks, though usually it is used against the enemy and not against one’s own.

Speaking of past precedence, who cannot hear in the White House’s current warnings an echo of Trump’s words back then when he justified the airstrike he was about to launch in April:

 

When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal – people were shocked to hear what gas it was. That crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line, many, many lines.

 

We can also all remember how much Trump relished telling the story about how he was dining on scrumptious chocolate cake with the president of China when he informed President Xi Jinping in the middle of a mouth-stopping bite about how he was, at just that moment, attacking Syria.

The US president practically salivated as he artfully described the encounter. That “retaliatory” attack immediately became the high moment in Trump’s career as US president because even his loudest critics (wholly owned by the military-industrial complex as the mainstream media is) praised him for finally rising to become “presidential.” Nothing like a strong military attack to make you look presidential.

What a beautiful way to remove the heat of the press … then … and now.

Now that special investigator Robert Mueller is climbing all over Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — digging into every new hole he can think to explore, given his broad scope for investigation — Trump has more need than ever to create a more potent story to distract the press. However, he needs justification for taking bigger military action. Why not revert to what worked so well the last time?

Who cannot hear in the following words at the close of the Zero Hedge article an echo of that earlier event with President Xi Jinpeng?

 

As AP adds, also on Monday, Trump had dinner with Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and other top officials as he hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House.

 

I wonder if they were dining on chocolate cake.

Speaking of cake, the Pentagon is again bringing out the term “weapons of mass destruction” in describing what it believes Syria is about to do. Doesn’t that bring to the olfactory memory the delightfully fresh smell of yellow cake for you?

And the nice thing about retaliating against an actual chemical weapons attack — should one be successfully enticed into being — is that it provides US international cover for broadened military action against Iran and Russia because use of chemical weapons is banned under UN treaty. And you can say you did all you could to warn them not to do this!

Intriguingly, the new preparations for a chemical-weapons attack are taking place at the very same airport the US so strategically destroyed two months ago. Maybe that’s why we did so little real damage at that airport, even though we used up almost $50 million worth of our finest cruise missiles. We wouldn’t want to risk taking out the actual chemical-weapons plant or depot. We knew we would need that facility for a further excuse later on. So, don’t take out their capacity to use it.

For some reason, we did not take out the actual chemical-weapons production facility last time but just smoked a few bunkers that had been holding some jalopy fighter jets prior to our peculiar advance notice that we were sending our own missiles to strike the facility, thus allowing the museum-grade fighter jets to be lofted safely into the air prior to the arrival of our missiles. We didn’t want to needlessly snuff out any relics. That, and we made a chuck-hole in … not an actual runway, but a taxiway. Useful only as a photo-op and not a very impressive one at that!

For its part, the US military-industrial establishment — by which I include the Wall Street financiers, as well as the manufacturers of weapons — always wants a larger war to heat up its corner of the economy. However, I have never seen such a blatant attempt to create a “pre-emptive” excuse to broaden a conflict. Apparently, we are going to war with Russia and Iran in Syria where the war is safely off of US soil but can create a lot of demand for new US military hardware. (After all, even the war mongers don’t want to lose their own houses and factories.)

The battle is virtually assured. We just need to create sufficient cause. And, so, we wait only for ISIS to act now that we’ve assured them our retaliation will all be directed at their enemies!

We are either incredibly stupid … or incredibly evil!

Is not all of this another betrayal by Trump on his promises to his supporters, but will they care? As Michael Krieger has said on his Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

 

Part of Trump’s appeal to many of his voters was, at least ostensibly, the idea that he would employ a less hawkish/neocon foreign policy than his opponent Hillary “We Came, We Saw, He Died” Clinton…. The lobbing of tomahawk missiles into Syrian based on the fairytale that Assad launched a chemical weapons attack was the first sign that Trump is easily manipulated and impulsive. In fact, the episode bothered me so much I wrote a post detailing the dire ramifications titled, Prepare for Impact – This is the Beginning of the End for U.S. Empire.

 

According to Krieger,

 

On April 6, United States President Donald Trump authorized an early morning Tomahawk missile strike on Shayrat Air Base in central Syria in retaliation for what he said was a deadly nerve agent attack carried out by the Syrian government two days earlier in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Trump issued the order despite having been warned by the U.S. intelligence community that it had found no evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon…. Some American military and intelligence officials were especially distressed by the president’s determination to ignore the evidence. “None of this makes any sense,” one officer told colleagues upon learning of the decision to bomb. “We KNOW that there was no chemical attack … the Russians are furious. Claiming we have the real intel and know the truth … I guess it didn’t matter whether we elected Clinton or Trump.

 

As I revealed on this blog, in an article titled “Hillary’s Wars,” attacking Syria was Killary Klinton’s plan from day one. It was, in fact, why we went to war to oust the Kadaffi regime from Libya as plainly revealed in Wikileak’s documents from Hillary’s state department. It was why the whole Benghazi thing happened and was covered up by Killary. (The embassy in Benghazi was attacked by Libya BECAUSE it was being used by the US as headquarters for US efforts to overthrow Libya’s government. That made the embassy a legitimate war target. All laid out in “Hillary’s Wars.”)

Attacking Syria is a masterplan of the military-industrial complex that goes back a long way. From the beginning, as I pointed out in that article, the Libyan and Syrian wars were all about Iran. Hillary, in her own delusional way, believed Russia would stay out of the conflict. Now, it appears we actually want a proxy war with Russia, too. What better way to use up a lot of military hardware and show our strength against Russia over someone else’s soil?

The US military-industrial complex needs to reposition from the tattered, dated and wearying war on terror to a new cold war with Russia. Better yet, a hot war with Russia on foreign soil, as neither nation will want to encourage the battle to come onto their own soil. At the same time, what better way for Trump to prove he is not a Russian collaborator and silence those endless accusations while moving the conversation to something more praiseworthy? Everyone wins. Well, everyone in the administration.

Looks like, no matter who you voted for, Killary Klinton or Trojan Trump, you ultimately get the same military-industrial establishment! Trump’s weakness has been found and is now being exploited by the deep state. Trump needs praise. It is his constant fuel. In the very least, he needs constant attention. To that end, even negative press is better than none at all. Thus, he reignites fires as quickly as he puts them out because he cannot handle more than one day’s silence about himself. Anyone who must have continual praise or attention is easy to exploit. As with many caesars of the past, the need for praise and attention is one of the worst weaknesses an emperor can have.

As Krieger quoted in is article on the end of American empire,

 

Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

 

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93 Comments

  1. Ping from vox kadavergehorsamkeit:

    Greetings Mr. Haggith,
    i have been brought here by a smear campaign launched by Mr. Auldenemy. It is his profoundly delusional belief that i am also posting under the names of Spatial Memory and Santini Brothers. i strongly believe his delusion is based upon his oft repeated claim of “deeply despising’ me. He seems to be labouring under the exceedingly egotistical notion that only i would be so obtuse as to disagree with him when a great many of his opinions expressed over the years have been based on “facts” of his own creation. (The false “fact” that he has made here to substantiate his absurd claim is that both SM and SB have the same writing style as myself.) For occasionally pointing out the errors in his posts, i have been subjected to his endless, childish name calling.

    That aside, you are rather uniquely placed to disabuse Mr. Auldenemy of his ridiculous notion. If you would be so good, please take a moment, review the evidence and present your findings in a reply to Mr. Auldenemy. Perhaps that will cause him to cease and desist. But it might not. i mean, his hatred for me knows no bounds.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      I’ve never seen Auldenemy hate ANYONE here, which is why I gladly call him Auldfriend, and I would love to visit him someday if I ever make it up to Scotland for tea or beer or anything but Scotch. So, I have to wonder what you did to him to get such a bright fellow to hate you so. Anyway, please don’t bring arguments from another site here.

      His own writing has been quite astute, and others here have praised him for it; so he can probably judge writing styles about as well as I can if that is the basis for his claim that you are Spatial Memory. He is clearly an avid reader with a strong literary mind, which means I cannot disabuse him of the notion that you are not just one of Spatial Memory’s alter personalities unless you show me the connection by which Spatial informed you you were being talked about here because there is not likely any other way you’d know the conversation was going on … unless you obsessively Google everything to see what Auld is saying or track his Disqus account; but that would practically be stalking him.

      In which case, stop obsessing about him, and you’ll be fine.

      • Ping from vox kadavergehorsamkeit:

        Thanks for your response Mr. Haggith, disappointing to me as it was. Briefly speaking, as you must surely be aware, i was not the one to bring our disputes here in the first place. After our latest exchange of unpleasantries on Silverseek, i thought to check his Disqus account and saw that he was bad mouthing me here, hence my initial post. My hope was not that you would judge the accuracy of his claim by comparing my writing style with that of SM, rather that you would look at the metadata available only to you and from it conclusively determine that i am not SM and SM is not me. However, if you do not wish to discover the truth of this matter and present it for all to see, so be it. i understand the desire to protect a friend, even when they are wrong.
        Best wishes to you,
        Vox

        • Ping from Knave_Dave:

          I’m not an IT person, so cannot verify the metadata of anyone. I do know that anyone can sign on with a different device that shows different metadata, so it wouldn’t prove a thing; but I don’t ever look at that kind of metadata on my site.

          Anyway, you needn’t worry about it. I’ve already decided to delete posts that are off topic by SM, so Auld will have no reason to ever bring you up again. He never brought you up before until SM proved himself to be a highly inaccurate stock pro today. Besides, if he hates you so much, why stock his Disqus account? Just ignore him.

          However, doesn’t your name mean either “voice of cadaver obedience” in Latin-Germanic or “voice of dead horse shit” in pig German? So, I’m thinking this whole thing is the latter.

          • Ping from vox kadavergehorsamkeit:

            While i suppose that you are correct about different devices used by the same person revealing different metadata, a point i had not considered, i am rather certain that the metadata from each would show the location of each and while possible that both SM and me are located in the same geographic region, i would not think it very likely.

            As for your undignified comment about my user name, it was uncalled for. i have been nothing but polite with you.

            • Ping from Knave_Dave:

              Hang around, play nice, and don’t be Spatial, and you’ll receive nothing but fair and kind treatment from this point forward, Vox; but act Spatially, as you were accused of doing, and any off-topic or bullying comments will be deleted.

            • Ping from vox kadavergehorsamkeit:

              You know Mr. Haggith, while i would like to believe you, your own actions directly after penning your reply to me (“you’ll receive nothing but fair and kind treatment from this point forward, Vox….”) showed just how empty your words were. It took you all of 7 minutes to suggest to Mr. Fortin that i may be suffering from multiple personality disorder and not know it. And then 6 minutes after that you wrote to SM saying “There is nothing more funny than watching someone have a conversation with himself! Oh, my gosh, I’m cracking up right now.” You would appear to have a most warped understanding of how to treat someone with fairness and kindness.

              Sir, i came to you for some help in dealing with a cyber bully, at least with respect to the false meme that i am using multiple accounts. All you needed to do to verify the truth or falseness of my claim was log in as the moderator (something you quite obviously know how to do) and look at the metadata. But you claimed that you do not know how to do it. i strongly suspect that you did check the metadata, saw that SM and me are 2 quite separate individuals, probably living thousands of miles apart and then in an attempt to protect Mr. Auldenemy, you feigned technical ignorance. Certainly, i could be mistaken about that, but it is what i believe.

              In closing let me say that i find the manner in which you have dealt with this to be shameful. i came to you for help and what i got was your piling on, even stooping so low as to make up your own translation of my user name: “voice of dead horse shit.” You could have stopped a cyber bully, at least in this single respect, but chose instead to have some fun at my expense. i am sure your parents must be very proud of you.

              Good day to you.

            • Ping from Knave_Dave:

              Don’t leave mad. Just leave. I’ve seen your own cyber bullying on other sites where it has been extremely bad. So, get off your high cadaver horse. Neither yours nor SM’s will be tolerated any more here.

        • Ping from Spatial Memory:

          Why thank a pathological liar for clinging to the other pathological liar for support and validation rather than “wish to discover the truth…”?

          • Ping from Spatial Memory:

            Unauthorized access and unauthorized delete data, not limited to- commenced full legal redress. Govern yourself accordingly. 🙂

        • Ping from steven Fortin:

          OK, this just got really funny!! “i thought to check his Disqus account” who does that?? In addition you just happened to check his Disqus account right at the exact moment you were mentioned?? Maybe I’m wrong, but didn’t you just prove you were him?

          • Ping from Knave_Dave:

            Hilariously suspicious for sure! It just gets richer by the moment. But, if he’s an alter personality, maybe he doesn’t know it. Might be he’s the one who signs in from his computer at work. Sometimes one personality controls the body by night and another by day, and the two don’t know each other. It gets even richer when they argue with each other, as below. Makes me think of “Me, Myself and Irene.” (Which, if you haven’t seen it, is hilarious.) So long as Vox doesn’t act Spatial, however, he’ll be O.K.

    • Ping from Spatial Memory:

      Doubtful it’s hatred toward you or anyone else – seems more like many of the rubes that bought into the carnival barkers lunacy THOUSANDS of DJIA points lower are now decimated and randomly lashing out with misplaced anger towards any and all that have participanted and BENEFITED tremendously by the GREAT ECONOMIC EXPANSION. The nut case foists LUDICROUS disparaging remarks about the Chairwoman of frb, the POTUS and has literally written what I’d consider seditious uprisings.

      Even his use of profanity directed towards you or mocking your moniker was repulsive. He’s PROVEN ABSOLUTELY CLUELESS and HORRENDOUSLY INACCURATE – IMHO

      • Ping from Knave_Dave:

        I love being me in the morning and waking up to this. This was hilarious. There is nothing more funny than watching someone have a conversation with himself! Oh, my gosh, I’m cracking up right now. This is a truly Spatial moment! Thanks, Spacey.

        • Ping from Spatial Memory:

          Thank you as well knaive. Your public domain material provides exceptional PROOFS that proverbial knaives can be led to PRECISE specific tradable occurrences – and not only can you not make them think – their idiosyncrasies REJECT empirical data and foist LUDICROUS reductio ad absurdum mischaracterzations.

          Should be funnier to watch as the EXACT forecasts and each confluence target and CONFIRMATION occurred juxtaposed to the pathological compound lies accompanying the occurrences.

          Truly an excellent instructional opportunity – in proper forum(s)

          Meanwhile my spot on analysis holds. Looking for third black crow on SPX – watch and learn – if you can.

          Thanks again for the GREAT RUBESESSION parody material – a spatial moment 🙂

          • Ping from Knave_Dave:

            Oh, you’re looking for a bear market now? Fascinating how quickly you’ve revised your position to get in line with my market-crash beliefs that you so strongly criticized the last few weeks.

            • Ping from Spatial Memory:

              Your denial is fascinating. After I precisely forecasted each confluences and confirmation from price action thresholds to the term structure on Treasury debt markets to the term structure and slope of the skew on implied volatility and resultant spike higher resolution.( Classic near term tradable low signal – especially moments from window dressing)

              UVXY only ~25% intraday spike

              Meanwhile your mischaracterzations of volume reversal test thresholds and corresponding signals are LUDICROUS – juxtaposed to the ignorance of the comments refrences to interconnected broader market indicies in totality add your idiosyncratic compound lies and your comments and replies replicate your DELUSIONAL great RUBESESSION parody.

              Nonetheless thanks for the laughs.
              In time I’ll debunk most – if not all – of your delusions easily now with that precise correlated price action – gonna be GREAT for laughs 🙂

            • Ping from Logan D'Alessandro:

              Just ban him Dave. At this point he is negatively impacting your blog. The guy is seriously emotionally unstable to the point where he needs to feed his ego on a blog that he disagrees with. It’s one thing to have a debate, but his tone makes it obvious he just wants to antagonize people. He doesn’t belong here. Don’t respond to him: he’s just trying to rile you. The definition of a troll.

            • Ping from Knave_Dave:

              Today was another head-banger for you:

              “Meanwhile my spot on analysis holds. Looking for third black crow on SPX – watch and learn – if you can.”

              Oh, I’m learning! Learning with considerable amusement what it must be like to be you! Maybe you forgot what that jargon means, so I’d better start by refreshing your memory:

              “Three black crows is a term used by stock market analysts to describe a market downturn. It appears on a candlestick chart in the financial markets. It unfolds across three trading sessions, and consists of three long candlesticks that trend downward like a staircase. Each candle should open below the previous day’s open, ideally in the middle price range of that previous day. Each candlestick should also close progressively downward to establish a new near-term low. The pattern indicates a strong price reversal from a bull market to a bear market.” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Black_Crows )

              You got the first part of that right on the money. The SPX did open today lower than it opened the day before. So, the day appeared to start off nicely for your prediction. Of course, you made your prediction after the fact on that part because the opening was already in just minutes before you posted; but you did great on looking backward to see how the day was beginning! Once again when you leaned forward from there to try to make a prediction out of that, you banged your head on the wall just like yesterday! (If you keep doing that, you’re not going to have any space left in your spatial head.) The SPX actually closed up 3.71 from yesterday’s close! Went the opposite of what you thought was going to happen! Just like yesterday, it made that turn right after you got all smarmy about how things were going your way.

              Spot on, Spacey! Spot on! (Well, I mean by your standards of “spot on.” By anyone else’s, it really sucks to be you this week.)

              I was glad to have you finally join me in declaring an event was going to happen exactly on the close of the second quarter that is considered by many to be a strong “price-action” reversal from a bull market to bear market; but, dang, even trying to jump last minute on the band wagon with me didn’t work out for you. You fell of the wagon, trying to get on. Of course, you were way off on the jargon, too, because to put in it’s “third black crow,” it would have had to have had the first two, unless counting works differently in Spacey world. While yesterday fit the pattern, the day before that did not! It opened higher than its previous closing and closed higher than it opened! (Maybe the first in your predicted series of three black crows was an upside-down black crow.)

              As if that wasn’t bad enough for you today, you also predicted yesterday that, “maybe tomorrow afternoon low volume can make fresh highs on Russell 2000 – think 142.90.”

              By which I had to decipher you meant 1,429, since the Russel hasn’t hit a low like 142.90 in I don’t know how long — a very long time.

              Dang it! Nothing worked out for you today as planned. The Russel 2000 actually closed lower today — for the second day in a row, ending at 1,415.

              Wow, it sucks to be you this week, Spacey. Sucks to be you.

            • Ping from Spatial Memory:

              Again your LUDICROUS reductio ad absurdum constructive deception and compound lies are easily debunked by anyone reading the comments which have been consistently forecasting the price action within fraction of percent as well the rolling 3% pullbacks occurring in key indicies- and implied volatility skew kurtosis event – all which you remain oblivious – ROFLMAO or discount with half crazed delusions of evil banksterism and next year “big picture – total financial end” rotflmao! Nonetheless the three black crow pattern obviously had two going into the day and obviously by my comments up to and through the end of qtr event today’s price action was 100% expected and written in advance- regardless now you learned an obscure candlestick setup roflmao watch and learn – its a two and half crow – algo dealt PRECISE window day dressing – comparison close – “spacey algo driven superposition” – my original material there Nonetheless knaive keep telling yourself about my sucks to be you week – meanwhile that PRECISE price action forecast sure SCREAMS volumes in my accounts. 🙂
              Best of luck in your “big picture total economic end” next year rants. Research the word PIKER then look in the mirror. Rotflmao

            • Ping from Spatial Memory:

              Unauthorized access, unauthorized delete data, unauthorized damages, not limited to- commenced full legal redress. Govern yourself accordingly. 🙂

            • Ping from steven Fortin:

              Mabee banging his head will get rid of some of the other personalities

            • Ping from Knave_Dave:

              Yikes. We’ll have twenty of them running around like knocking baby spiders out of the nest.

            • Ping from steven Fortin:

              Ha! What’s that in the acronym 10-year-olds use? Oh yeah ROFLMAO!!

  2. Ping from Auldenemy:

    I see the pathetic nobody, Spastic Memory, is once again in full troll mode on here. He attempted to trash comments I had left on SilverSeek, even calling me a, ‘Liar’. It would appear that on that site he is a numismatic expert (though is unable to give a single example of a low mintage coin type that is cheaper now than it was a few years ago). He very evidently knows nothing about numismatic coins and how their value is assessed on their yearly mintage numbers and of course their grade. On your site he poses endlessly as being some kind of expert trader mixed with financial economist. No doubt if he popped up on a motorbike site he would be trashing anyone who believed ‘X’ bike model was not as well built as ‘Y’, again despite having little to no understanding of the topic being discussed. In other words he is a deeply inadequate little character who plods from site to site, not with the intention of learning, discussing and on occasion politely disagreeing, but with the sole motive to shower writers and commentators with insults while at the same time attempting to pose and preen with his own, utterly contradictory verbal diarrhoea.

    It is your site David and I know you are a man who believes passionately in free speech. I do too and applaud you for it. That said, if he continues to troll here to the extent he is I hope you might at least consider blocking him (for no other reason than his motive here is so obviously malicious and thus impedes proper debate between you and sane commentators to your articles).

    Multum In Parvo

    • Ping from Spatial Memory:

      −
      Avatar
      vox kadavergehorsamkeit Auldenemy
      17 hours ago
      Mr. Auldenemy, Mr. Spatial Memory did not accuse you of reposing in a horizontal position as you thrice claimed in your multiple posts today. He stated that a portion of your post bordered on being a deliberate falsehood.

      By the way, congratulations on finally getting off the dole. And on your coin collection. i remember when you were so desperately poor that you could only heat one room at a time, turned the water heater on only once a day, fretted about having to buy a new pot and had but 3 coins in your collection. But now you are a real man, supporting yourself and you have a coin collection. If true (and i rather doubt it) wow! How times have changed for you.

      The material aspects of your life aside, you are still a tiresome, small minded and exceedingly ignorant feminine hygiene product.

      • Ping from Auldenemy:

        LOL….I don’t believe it! Another well known and LOATHED troll on Silver/Goldseek. Vox who is also SantiniBrothers and Spastic Memory too. Go and do the only thing you have ever been capable of troll, and FK yourself.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      ” I know you are a man who believes passionately in free speech. ”

      I do. That’s why I thought, “Out him, and see if he’s smart enough to be embarrassed by how far he misses his predictions.” I generally expect someone who whose predictions are self-assessed as “spot on” not to be 50-100% off or to have some things go the opposite way; but I don’t usually get to see them brag about how spot on they were on a day of such embarrassment. That was actually amusing and and interesting observation (for me, not others) as to how far denial goes.

      I will from this point forward just delete comments that are off topic … like the one below. That’s not censorship. The comments don’t exist for someone to just rant about whatever he wants.

  3. Ping from Auldenemy:

    Incredible isn’t it just how many false political narratives are created by our dear friends in the Deep State of the West. I don’t believe for one minute that USA agencies have picked up on an imminent chemical attack by the Assad regime. Even if I am wrong, what exactly will air strikes by the USA achieve when Assad has full Russia backing? Well, the answer ultimately is war with Russia, something which the Deep State appears to have had its heart set on for quite a while now. They have done nothing but try to bait Putin, not only in Syria but of course covert USA interventions in Ukraine and Crimea. Then there is the ever growing build up in European countries that border Russia of NATO troops and missile systems capable of carrying nuclear war heads. Looks to me like the lunatics running the asylum have little to no qualms about a war between the West and Russia, despite the very obvious risks of what it could turn into. Perhaps it isn’t going to be just the economic Armageddon you have long predicted David. Perhaps the lunatics at the helm think a nuclear war is a better idea than facing what lies ahead in terms of financially nuked economies.

    John McCain appears to be a senile version of Dr Strangelove and very obviously is wetting himself for there to be war with Russia, (going out of his way to encourage conflict with that nation). Is it because at his age there isn’t much to lose if billions end up fried and poisoned to death in a nuclear holocaust? Does he think that as he will have access to a nuclear shelter, he will have a wonderful, below ground existence post a nuclear war? I sometimes wonder what exactly our Western leaders do think when they beat on the age old war drum. I mean do they think anything at all? Are they only capable of thinking in the here and now and not the consequences of the decisions they make in the here and now? The same goes for their Deep State operators in the intelligence agencies and Military Industrial Complex. Do none of them have the capacity to understand that baiting a nation with a vast nuclear arsenal won’t result in more wasted trillions drained from the already bankrupt USA economy and into their pockets, but in fact will end their beloved Military Industrial Complex altogether if it and Russia start firing nuclear missiles at one another (after Europe has been nuked to radioactive charcoal).

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      I distrusted Nato’s actions from the time George Bush torpedoed Russian relations by insisting upon a Nato build-up all along Russia’s borders. I really couldn’t see and still don’t that Russia was much of a threat to those nations anymore, and it seemed like Bush was tossing away a prime opportunity to build better relations with Russia.

      Now, neocons are using the “Russian hacking” story as an excuse to tear into Russia and appearing to use regime-change in Syria as a proxy war against Russia. Obviously we haven’t learned that nearly all of our regime-change/nation-building efforts are disasters and bring about more evil than good. Once again, we are supporting some of the worst people on earth, ISIS, in order to see them attack the Assad regime, instead of just obliterating ISIS. We strategically keep them alive in certain areas where they are fighting Assad, thus limiting the success of our operations against them.

      Frankly, I felt like Russia did us a favor, if it did hack into Hillary’s and the DNC’s emails by exposing how awful the DNC is — how it was deliberately creating violence at Trump’s events by its own admission in its own emails. However let us know that Hillary’s emails were hacked did us a favor by letting us know how vulnerable we were thanks to her personal server setup. But, so far, I have not hear any evidence that convinces me it was the Russians. We all know that good hackers try to mirror off other sites and devices and try to create breadcrumbs that point to someone else. I’d have to think true Russian government agents were not that sloppy. It looks a bit like planted government evidence.

      Even if the hacking was done by Russians, I wouldn’t go to war over it; I’d just hack them back and embarrass them and seize the opportunity to spend some serious money tightening up our own computer security. I’m disappointed that Trump talked so much about improving relations with Russia but has now completely bought into the Russian hacking theory. Even if he has info we don’t that is clear proof, I am disappointed that he is thumbing his nose at them the way he is.

      It’s sad for me to look at Ukraine and say Putin is right. We clearly supported a coup against a democratically elected government there just because we didn’t like the government. It’s sad to look at Syria and say Putin is right. We clearly are ineffectual against ISIS because we are letting them develop strength in areas where they are strategically effective against the Assad regime. Whenever the US has developed one evil entity to fight another enemy, as Reagan did in developing the Taliban’s power in Afghanistan during the Afghan war with Russia, we create an enemy worse than the regime we hope to overthrow. The Taliban has proven way worse to us than Russia ever thought of being. ISIS is more dangerous to us by far than Bashar Assad. By taking out Saddam Hussein, we created a nation so riddled with turmoil that ISIS and al Qaeda now have a lot of influence and control where Saddam once allowed them almost zero room to move.

      It’s not just stupid. I think it’s evil. We propped up the Shaw of Iran over oil. Look what that led to — a massive uprising and a new regime that has been our arch enemy ever since because we WERE “The Great Satan” in that we propped up a rather evil ruler. It disgusts me that our people continue to let our leaders foist these evil follies on the world. And, so often, you come back to oil.

      • Ping from Bill In Montgomey:

        Trump correctly (imo) states that the “Russian meddling” story is a “hoax.” Much of the U.S. population seems to agree with this. My question: If this is the case, why then did the U.S. Senate just vote 97-2 (!) to impose harsh sanctions on the government of Russia (in large part because of the allegation of “Russian meddling.”)? If it was indeed a hoax, you don’t punish the nation that didn’t do what it is accused of doing. Or apparently you do. Many of us know that Assad certainly didn’t “gas his own people.” This doesn’t stop us from bombing him as punishment .
        The stories we act on are increasingly bogus (“fake news”). Those stories that might keep us from acting (for example, the absence of solid evidence that Assad ordered a Sarin bomb to be dropped on one of his own cities, or that some Russians hacked the DNC computers) are concealed.
        What should be a “search for the truth” by the press corps has become an effort to keep the truth from the public.
        Anyway, It’s not only the stories that get reported that create fake news, it’s the stories that should get investigated and reported … but don’t. ‘Such is the power of the “gate keepers” of the news. This site – your work – is trying to circumvent this gate keeper.

        All of us should also allow for the possibility that the “gate keepers” of the news are also corrupt. This in itself is one hell of a story and one that (for the most part) isn’t being pursued or told.

        • Ping from Knave_Dave:

          Than answer to your conundrum would be that, of the parties you specifically mention, Trump is apparently the only one who believes (along with just two senators) that the Russian election tampering is a hoax. The senate, 97-2 either 1) believes the Russian meddling is real, so sanctioned them; 2) or will use any excuse to create sanctions against Russia, wether it believes the excuse or not.

          I say, “Let them eat yellowcake.”

  4. Ping from Spatial Memory:

    Spatial Memory Spatial Memory
    7 hours ago
    Spatial Memory 9 days ago
    SPX vulnerable to 2435.8 eight confluences, 2398.4 ten confluences
    QQQ to 139.63, 12 confluences
    Still all about Russell rebalancing then window dressing.
    July- August bears get some fun then back to biz with SPX rebalance in September. Watch and learn.

    Spatial Memory 6 days ago
    Futures sinking after giving back 30%+ of yesterdays intraday gains on closing basis – price weighted DJIA best tell. QQQ – NASDAQ minus financials heavy tape – violation of 139.46 – (16 ta confluences) sure seems significant IMHO. Maybe VIX and UVXY scream today through the close – as hidden divergence becomes classic divergence. Looking like qtrly and prolly cyclical highs are behind. Jmho

  5. Ping from Spatial Memory:

    … As for the NASDAQ, that exchange doesn’t provide volume data…

    How can anyone belief such foolishness?
    R O F L M A O

  6. Ping from steven Fortin:

    I’ve been reading your blog for a couple of years now as well as others. I’ve enjoyed your respectful way you’ve dealt with the issues you discuss. I don’t agree with everything but that is what a blog is all about- your opinion. I like to keep up with the economy and what it is doing. I have learned from reading you. Anyone who can’t see that the world is in a world of hurt has got to be blind or stupid. I am now however starting to wonder who’s blog this is. Is Special Mammory taking it over? I enjoy back and forth discussions but this I ridiculous. Why are you allowing this?

    • Ping from Spatial Memory:

      If you’ve been reading his INACCURACIES for years then you can CLEARLY see he’s PROVING himself a LIAR and desperately attempting to mischaracterize my spot on forecasts – posted here many times leading to today’s price action. Spot on hit the cover off the ball today while he scores another goose egg – watching for “next year – total financial end” rotflmao

      • Ping from steven Fortin:

        Your a funny person. Rotflmao? Who puts that after every sentence? Are you 10?

        • Ping from Spatial Memory:

          Rotflmao and puts you got it. After day like today with QQQ puts IWM puts and UVXY calls I sure am ROTFLMAO

          Juxtaposed to watching wrong way kaive try and spin the day is the best capital markets related comedy available anywhere – seems near PRICELESS on day like today – jmho

        • Ping from Auldenemy:

          He is mentally ill. He loves using the word, ‘Liar’ (he accused me of being one on another site recently). You cannot call someone a liar without providing factual evidence that they are lying. Only children aged 10 and under behave like that and often as a double bluff, as in they are lying and so desperately try to accuse their victim of being the liar! He is like the fat, dumb, bully kid at the back of the class who is sneaky as hell and always making trouble. He pinches the girl next to him, she tells the teacher and the class bully protests wildly; shouting and screaming, “She’s lying Miss. I never touched her. She always tells LIES!” That is what we have in Spastic Memory: he ticks every single box of the inadequate, imature, tiny minded, conceited, cowardly, spiteful bully. The over use of, ‘ROFLMAO’ and other juvenile expressions means there is no point in responding to him at all. He wants that and I refuse to give him that. I made it very clear to him on SilverSeek (where he attempted to trash my integrity and my 40 years of numismatics study by claiming I am a, ‘Liar’), that I know what he is and I will neither read or respond to any further garbage he sicks up. It is your right to respond to him or not, but personally I don’t think he deserves your intelligence and time wasted on him. He is repeating his little performance over on SilverSeek and no doubt other financial/economic/trader sites. He is probably unemployed, bored and living at home dependant on his mother still. She probably works her fingers to the bone all day while her beloved Spastic Memory brat lives on his computer, obsessed with his, ‘Play At Being A Trader’ ap. and his second hobby being a troll on sites like this. To use one of his own, over used expressions, ‘ROFLMAO’.

          • Ping from Spatial Memory:

            I have never called you a liar – until now that you’re here lying. Many of the regular readers of that site did however call you a liar – which you were unable to spell correctly when arguing with them. Obviously they were familiar with your antics and sure knew details regarding your series of lies on that forum – remarkable that you’ve found your way to this site as well. That hayseed Cooper nailed this site for what it is. ROFL

          • Ping from Knave_Dave:

            And now others know what response I was aiming for:

            “I will neither read or respond to any further garbage he sicks up.”

            Sometimes, you don’t have to ban the bully. He bans himself as soon as he has to prove how tough he is intellectually and loses by his own standards.

          • Ping from Knave_Dave:

            This is why I decided to let him reveal his superior skills today and judge him by his own standard.I saw that he constantly bullies people here and that he constantly bullied everyone he wrote to on the Economic Collapse Blog when I went back to see what accurate predictions he ever made. While there, I found that his own predictions were faulty when intelligible and otherwise not even understandable (like today’s bunch of baloney).

            So, I felt he deserves to get as good as he gives. Call the tiny bully out on his baloney. I knew he couldn’t live up to his claims if he wasn’t going back and cherry-picking from the past but had to actually do something forward looking. He survived 38 minutes before he started looking pretty bad. The amazing part was that he cannot even see how far off he was. He thought he did great!

      • Ping from Auldenemy:

        He is mentally ill. He loves using the word, ‘Liar’ (he accused me of being one on another site recently). You cannot call someone a liar without providing factual evidence that they are lying. Only children aged 10 and under behave like that and often as a double bluff, as in they are lying and so desperately try to accuse their victim of being the liar! He is like the fat, dumb, bully kid at the back of the class who is sneaky as hell and always making trouble. He pinches the girl next to him, she tells the teacher and the class bully protests wildly; shouting and screaming, “She’s lying Miss. I never touched her. She always tells LIES!” That is what we have in Spastic Memory: he ticks every single box of the inadequate, imature, tiny minded, conceited, cowardly, spiteful bully. The over use of, ‘ROFLMAO’ and other juvenile expressions means there is no point in responding to him at all. He wants that and I refuse to give him that. I made it very clear to him on SilverSeek (where he attempted to trash my integrity and my 40 years of numismatic study by claiming I am a, ‘Liar’), that I know what he is and I will neither read or respond to any further garbage he sicks up. It is your right to respond to him or not, but personally I don’t think he deserves your intelligence and time wasted on him. He is repeating his little performance over on SilverSeek and no doubt other financial/economic/trader sites

    • Ping from Auldenemy:

      I agree with you completely Steve. Spastic Memory is very evidently a troll. He does exactly the same on the Gold/SilverSeek sites. Of course we all have the right to disagree but Spastic M. is only out to trash anything and everything just about anyone else has to say. I too feel this site is now being ruined by SM using it as a vehicle to vent his malicious character, also as a way to pose and boast. He is obviously a deeply inadequate fake and I have asked David Haggith to consider blocking him as I feel it is now blatantly obvious SM only comes on here to trash every article and to attempt to ruin discourse between the author and sane readers like yourself whose comments are articulate and genuine. I know David is a democratic in the true sense (I don’t mean Hillary Clinton style!). So maybe he should put it to the vote and ask us to vote on whether Spastic Memory gets to stay on here, ruining our discussions and baiting not only David but the rest of us (thus wasting our time). I know which way I would vote!

      • Ping from steven Fortin:

        What I find really funny is: who has time to comment hour after hour on someone else’s blog? If this narcissist enjoys hearing himself so much why doesn’t he start his own blog? Maybe he has and no one listened.

      • Ping from Knave_Dave:

        I know I’ll tone it down on my side because he’s clearly shown his own predictions amount to nothing, so he really has nothing to offer but vapid criticism of everyone but himself. From this point forward, his comments will have to be on topic and intelligible. If he’s just spewing, he’s wasting everyone’s time, and clearly others feel the same way. I don’t want the comments to become a mere waste of time with boasting and counter boasting, etc.

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      Fair enough criticism, Steven. i was thinking the same thing myself today. I decided to go after him today because I saw he was attacking everyone here and had attacked everyone at his last blog; so I wanted to give him a day to hang himself with his own inaccurate predictions because if he’s going to beat up on everyone else, he’s going to be held to a high standard himself, which he wasn’t able to pass.

      • Ping from steven Fortin:

        You see that is what I meant by your respectful way of dealing with issues. You acknowledged my thoughts and then explain why you did or said what you did. That boob “special mammory” is just insulting. It raises hair on the back of my neck to see the way he talks to people. There are a lot of sites that carry-on that type of communication and that’s fine for them but it’s not for me. I’ve especially been drawn to your insightful way of looking at where the economy actually is compared to the MSM. I’m not as interested in your predictions being 100% as your why’s and how’s. What I have always enjoyed is your way of seeing the obvious. I do not comment very often on blogs, but I really enjoy your economics writings and would find it a shame to have it turned into this type of nonsense. Like I mentioned, I have been reading your blog for a couple years now so this is probably an overdue thank you.

        • Ping from Knave_Dave:

          “That boob “special mammory” is just insulting. It raises hair on the back of my neck to see the way he talks to people.”

          Me, too, and I was seeing it in his comments to EVERYONE here. That’s really the only reason i went after him today. I saw so much evidence of his bullying everywhere that he haunts that I just wanted to let him have it really good by giving him a prime opportunity to show everyone how short he comes up if he really has to prove himself. Sometimes I just want to take a bully and knock him on the head, using his own fists to do it. He jumped right in and cooperated.

          Thanks for your gracious comments, Steve. From this point on, since Spatial has shown himself to be a petty bully everywhere, anything he says that is off topic or is nothing but bullying will be deleted. He’s welcome to say what he wants about me from this point forward (but no longer off topic), and others can be the judge of his accusations there.

          He’s a classic troll that can shape up or waste his time posting and simply getting deleted, as he appears to have nothing better to do. If he consumes too much of my time reading his stuff only to delete it because it was barely on topic (just enough as an excuse for posting) or is just baiting someone to get in a fight, then I’ll have to ban him to keep from wasting my time.

          I’ll let others decide to themselves today if his predictions today were a joke, but to me he outed himself completely by boasting about wide misses as if he’d knocked it out of the park. Maybe so, if he’s playing in the kiddie park. People who make as much money as he likes to pretend he does, don’t waste their time bashing everyone everywhere or constantly flaunting jargon. Whenever I see that much jargon with such disconnected thinking, I know we have a very small person in a large suit of armor.

  7. Ping from Spatial Memory:

    ROTFLMAO

    the markets decided to do what others are more accurately calling a “Dow plunge” and a “tech selloff.” That sounds a lot more like the continuing breakup of the Trump Rally, as I predicted and right on schedule at the start of summer, as does the Nasdaq’s breaking below its 50-day average, which you know many chart-lovers like yourself take to be a bad omen regarding the market’s direction (though I don’t put a lot of faith in that yardstick myself).

    R
    O
    F
    L
    M
    A
    O

    DJIA down 0.78%
    SP500 down 0.89%
    NASDAQ down 1.44%
    QQQ down 1.74%

    Keep PROVING how much you do NOT know about REAL WORLD DATA. ROFL

    Rotflmao

  8. Ping from Spatial Memory:

    Or as market watch wrote = roflmaooooo

    Not only dont you have an original thought that makes sense – you’ve also PROVEN yourself inept at comprehension and regurgitating of other spin doctors and carnival barkers.

    What a joke you’ve PROVEN yourself beyond any doubt whatsoever ROFL

  9. Ping from Spatial Memory:

    Spatial Memory Spatial Memory
    11 hours ago
    Todays price action seems all about the Russell 2000, (IWM (and TNA 3x etf)) transforming from capitalization weighted to float weighted worked well for sp500 and NASDAQ now last and certainly not least Russells. Maybe squeeze shorts through end of quarter – maybe tomorrow afternoon low volume can make fresh highs on Russell 2000 – think 142.90+ – if “bulls” “manage” then with fresh July inflows can squeeze “top down portfolios” / “managers” through July 7 options expiry cycle (NASDAQ and QQQ- already heavy tape -barometers- maybe volume reversal test – try retrace 85% of yesterday gain on 85% of yesterday volume- counter trend squeeze of top down already). Lots of financial engineering – “management” – few more fits and starts then – without exogenous event, all things equal, etc. then expect 3%-6%…..maybe 10%+. 🙂

    Treasury bonds bull traps snapping shut – gonna have to lean into equity markets to force traditional “flight to quality” reflex. TMV BTFD. Jmho

    Same old recycled comment around recycled high probability occurrences 🙂

    EditReply
    S P O T O N
    R O F L M A O

  10. Ping from Spatial Memory:

    Spatial Memory 14 days ago
    Bearish doji star on DJIA downside to 20996- at least 12 confluences t/a methods. SPX eight t/a confluences at 2394.7, six confluences 2364.3, QQQ bearish engulfed, no significant t/a confluences, violation 132.56 significant. Jmho
    Looking like Kabuki dance and bulge bracket secret handshake right on scheduled with calendar of events. Russell rebalance-
    June 16 & 23 – updated US index add & delete lists posted to the FTSE Russell website after 6:00 PM US eastern time.
    June 23 – reconstitution is final after equity markets close
    June 26 – equity markets open with newly reconstituted Russell US Indexes
    Whodathunkedit
    One more sharp relief rally short squeeze into window-dressing and funds reporting – some fresh July inflows then test gravity. (Andrews Pitchfork(s) gonna bust the Ichimoku Cloud(s)- chairwoman told me.) Pattern recognition savants may recall similar differential equation event after fresh June inflows. NASDAQ unable to sustain three day displacement at those levels sure was – is significant. If reengineered – now float weighted Russell indicies can’t “cure through ‘relative valuations’ then heavy tape be like honey for bears. Old wall St Winnie the Pooh adage – hubts for honey can get little sticky. Think it through – you and Pooh. Anyway heavy tape through q3 and SPX rebalance charade. IWM:SLY rusell2000:sp600.
    Jmho cause I never provide legal, tax, economic or any advice, service, product whatsoever. 🙂

    SPOT ON ROFLMAOOOOO 🙂

  11. Ping from Spatial Memory:

    Tell us about the free market economy that you remember again roflmaooooo

  12. Ping from Spatial Memory:

    If ANOTHER four (4%) percent pullback in NASDAQ occurred and a knaive doesn’t see nor write about it AGAIN – did it occur- did scalpers and sharpshooters knock the cover off the ball? ROFLMAO

    Yet you miraculously see next year’s events – and imagined “bait” – “total financial end” etc. roflmaooooo – which nobody else not even central bankers can fathom the extent of knaive knowledge- meanwhile real world ZERO clue whatsoever of present levels nor how indicies and benchmarks got here. Too funny for words!!!

    Thanks again for the great laughs !!!!

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      OOOPS! Indeed, whodathunkedit? As your wrote below when you predicted today would be just a 85% “retracement” of yesterday’s gains. You missed by a landslide. How about the market “plunged” by 200% of yesterday’s gains, and the Nasdaq even closed below its 50-day moving average. Oh, and the weak volume was actually a little higher than its average for the year.

      Oh well. It seems your great predictive abilities, Cognac the Maleficent, as you’ve laid them out below, only work until about 38 minutes out when the market was looking good for your lame predictions. That’s when you started to brag about how right on you were, and I let you drone on. Ah well, spoke too soon, you did. Now you look ridiculous.

      Unfortunately, after you started your typical vain boasting (vain as in empty of boast-worthy content), the markets decided to do what others are more accurately calling a “Dow plunge” and a “tech selloff.” That sounds a lot more like the continuing breakup of the Trump Rally, as I predicted and right on schedule at the start of summer, as does the Nasdaq’s breaking below its 50-day average, which you know many chart-lovers like yourself take to be a bad omen regarding the market’s direction (though I don’t put a lot of faith in that yardstick myself).

      As MarketWatch wrote in summary of the day today,

      “Those are sizable swings, and much of those moves occurred over the course of 48 hours, highlighting the potential for markets to abruptly experience a so-called “taper tantrum “on the threat of two legs of economic and market stimulus being suddenly removed or delayed.”

      So, they’re calling this a “taper tantrum” or, at least, evidence of one, and that is especially the nomination of major central-bank curtailments that I have said will be bringing down the stock market in the months ahead, along with other economic declines that will impact stocks, STARTING at the beginning of summer (i.e., about NOW).

      Or, as MarketWatch wrote,

      ““As I believe the main factor in driving market multiples to historically high levels was QE, ZIRP and NIRP, then yes, the reversal will have major implications for markets and volatility.”

      Indeed. Today demonstrated that the stock market is looking increasingly crash-prone at the top.

      Oh, they also blamed today’s action on the continual appearance that Trump’s tax-cutting and stimulus plans are going nowhere, as I said would prove to be the case over the course of the year and as I said would eventually be a major factor in cutting back down the Trump Rally, which was irrationally based on such dim hopes.

      While I have yet to be proven right on a market crash, you were just very clearly proven seriously short of the mark at one of your peak bragging moments when you were trying so hard to prove you actually can predict something. And, so, you try to gloss over that with the garbage above my not seeing it coming. But, I’m the one who said he cannot predict the next day because I do everything based on longer-term trends and am not trying to predict daily moves. YOU are the one who boasted many times that he can predict the next day, and you just missed a really big day. It was a traceable loss, I’m sure for those who had the right short positions.

      Well, at least, we now know your accuracy range is limited to about 38 minutes. You missed today’s shot by so far you weren’t even on the target. In fact, we could not even find your arrows anywhere in the hay behind the target. Since you claim that short-term predictions are much easier than longterm ones, and since you missed such major action as it was playing out, we are certainly not going to trust you on the longer-term stuff.

      Thanks for today’s demonstration of your skill level. It was comical, and I’m enjoying the amusement of it immensely. Seems that when we put you on a test for anything forward leaning (instead of reaching back and cherry-picking from your past), you don’t do too well.

      Let this comment stand for all your other dopey comments made earlier today as you laid out your predictions and boasted of their accuracy as they played out, only to find thing went much worse than you predicted.

      • Ping from Spatial Memory:

        Another of your weak attempts at constructive deception after a 100% spot on forecast reiterated and running commentary as the price action CONFIRMED such. You can try and take one sentence at a time out of context however days ago on this blog I posted a two to three sigma move in QQQ was possible before expiry. You will NEVER see that type of accuracy again nor will you EVER be able to accomplish anything near. Glad we both got to laugh to the banks together today. Roflmaooooo

        You’ve PROVEN beyond any doubt you have zero clue how markets and economies function- you’re pretty CLUELESS raving lunatic with nothing but paraphrased NONSENSICAL MISCONCEPTIONS from other spin doctors and carnival barkers. You’re as weak as they get. Give up after today’s performance – forecasting capital markets and economic data certainly is NOT your forte – you can not even accurately predict the past. Roflmaooooo.

        You’re seriously as weak as they get at the charade you pretend. Thanks again for the laughs. Good luck on your big picture GUESSWORK so you know whether to trade out of your primary residence before “total financial end”. R O T F L M A O O O !!!

        • Ping from Knave_Dave:

          Given that nothing you said earlier today remotely matched the fairly extreme action that happened, the egg on your face smells funny. Better luck nextime getting beyond the 38-minute mark.

          • Ping from Spatial Memory:

            roflmaooooooo
            Keep telling yourself that.
            Markets have CLEARLY PROVEN you a fool – now a liar as well beyond doubt
            Too funny for words

      • Ping from Auldenemy:

        I was expecting to see discussions of your latest article on here. I am now horrified to see that one Troll (Spastic Memory) is the main commentator (with you wasting your time and intelligence by answering him every time, knowing full well he won’t ever acknowledge anything you say). Vox on Gold/Silver Seek is a well known troll who for years has trashed everyone while boasting and preening. Everyone got sick of him and sighed with relief when he slunk off a few years ago. Sadly he didn’t stay away for long, reappearing under a new user name, ‘SantiniBrothers’. The idiot was too stupid not to realise that I would quickly recognise his pretentious and bloated writing style, along with his endless boasting. When I warned other commentators that SantiniBrothers was in fact Vox we rid ourselves of him by ignoring him completely. So he stopped his SantiniBrothers user name and reverted back to Vox. It occurred to me recently that SpacialMemory is perhaps also Vox/SantiniBrothers and Lo and behold look what the cat just dragged in (check out who has turned up on your site to defend SpacialMemory, basically, SpacialMemory under a different user name!). If that doesn’t prove to you that this character is not only a troll but a lunatic then nothing will. Imagine leaving a comment, someone criticises it and you come back on with a different user name, to support yourself! Not only is that nuts, but it is pathetic and proof that this guy writes endless craXp cos he has no supporters of his garbage (so invents ones!).

        Don’t you yet get it David, you are dealing with a deeply mentally ill parasite that feeds off you communicating with it!

        By allowing this fake and completely malicious character to carry on infesting your site with his insults and garbage you are inadvertently encouraging a deeply destructive force to use your site simply to indulge in its narcissism and spite. Look how another commentator, (Steven) can’t believe you allow this. I am afraid I am starting to think the same David. Sane disagreement is all part of debate, insane trashing of everyone and everything on your site is not. You wrote an article about the very dangerous situation in Syria. Instead of having discussion about that there are endless comments mainly between you and a lunatic as to who was right about some drop or rise in this or that index on a particular day. I am asking you to stand back, imagine you are an ordinary person like me who comes on here and see the comments section reduced to a boxing ring between you and a complete cretin. You are demeaning yourself by allowing this Spastic Lunatic/Vox/SantiniBrothers troll to do this. I urge you to end this by blocking him, then maybe we can get back to discussing the topic of your latest articles, which is surely what the comments section should be about?

        I hope you don’t take offence. No one has greater respect for your intelligence, wit and superb writing skills. It is for that very reason that I am now becoming annoyed that you are allowing a completely malicious troll – one I have explained is well known on Gold/Silver Seek – to wreck the comments section of this site. I know if you block him he will try and come back under yet another user name but I assure you I will spot him instantly (just as I spotted him under a different user name on Gold/SilverSeek).

        Multum In Parvo

        • Ping from Knave_Dave:

          No, I get it, and I got it from the beginning. I just wanted to give him a chance to show his stuff, make him prove himself. Gave him a little rope, and he hung himself even while congratulating himself for the hanging. Problem with banning them is they do just come back in another form. So, I thought it might be better giving him the chance to prove how incapable he is of predicting anything today. he took the bait and failed miserably. Not to worry. Rather than banning him. From now on, he stays right on topic, or his comments get deleted, and if he’s just being a bully, they’ll be deleted, too.

  13. Ping from Chris P:

    We can see by the comments why conservative media gets torn from the outside. The liberal media will not tolerate anyone who goes against their ideology and will cast any aside that does not agree with them. When we look at conservative media we let outside ideas and thoughts come int with nothing but lies and hatred to destroy the one thing we are trying to find and that is some truth. Keep up the good work Dave.

    • Ping from Auldenemy:

      Spastic Memory is a complete Troll Chris. What he does here is exactly what he does on SilverSeek. He is some deeply inadequate creature with a desperate desire for attention. No sane person could boast and preen as he continually does. He is pathetic. So you are right not to engage with him, it is about as pointless as trying to converse with a block of wood.

  14. Ping from Spatial Memory:

    Credit markets convulsing, equity markets struggle on precipice moments ahead of second quarter fund reporting – window dressing and subsequent unwinding meanwhile rubes are distracted and suggested they focus on sabre rattling look for “false flags” thousands of miles away. Too funny for words!

    Often times I would enjoy the comedy of such LUDICROUS constructive deception but after watching the author INACCURATELY warn of CRASHES, Collapses and Catastrophes literally throughout a 15,000 point DJIA advance and now ridiculously hedges with maybe next year as a two to three sigma event seems imminent is pitiful. Jmho

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      “after watching the INACCURATE RANT of CRASHES, Collapses and Catastrophes …. literally throughout a 15,000 point DJIA advance”

      Now you are outright lying. You haven’t watched me anywhere near that long: a) You couldn’t stand to sit quiet through even a 1,000 point advance, and I didn’t hear from you until very recently; b) I waited out thousands of those points, saying the market would continue to rise and even for the most part discontinued writing here for almost two years, telling my readers that nothing much would change for that long (so I wasn’t even writing here myself during thousands of those points; therefore you could not have been hearing from me “throughout” that point rise); c) the only rise since the time when I said the bull market would end has been the Trump Rally; and the market did nothing but churn sideways for two years between when I said the bull would break and the Trump Rally. So, you cannot even lay out the past accurately, much less predict anything right about the future.

      Now, as you talk about “credit markets convulsing” and “equity markets struggling on a precipice” you sound exactly like me so are moving strongly in my direction, which only days ago you denied would happen completely due to the genius of the central bankers.

      Let me refresh your obviously VERY spatial memory (as in riddled with enormous gaps and imaginary happenings) as to your position only a couple of weeks back:

      “Hi knave. I’m not trying to be trolling nor irritating, but the fact is the frb has brilliantly navigated the US economy from a classic free market – demand economy to a controlled demand economy post 2001 to a command economy post 2008 while brilliantly retrofitting and reengineering the vestiges of legacy indexes and benchmarks”

      “data points and continuous price action confirmations along all asset classes and relevant data points for such a protracted time frame”

      A time frame that turned out to have ended just as I said because the market has gone nowhere since then, closing yesterday at almost the same point it was at four months ago when I said the Trump Rally was over.

      “Solution: CONTINUOUSLY double down on foolish predictions based on HOMESPUN hokum and guesswork regardless of CONTINUOUS economic and market data and price action confirmations for such a protracted time frame?”

      See above.

      “Traditional reflex reaction to market uncertainty and weaknesses is a move further in the risk curve – often known as flight to quality and would most likely be a positive response”

      Well, that positive response hasn’t turned very positive so far, as that was two weeks ago, during which time the DJIA trickled up barely higher than what it subsequently trickled right back down while the Nasdaq rose only to trip over a little bluff and land on its butt.

      Of course two weeks ago you were almost in agreement with me:

      “Everyone vanished and that idiot at economic collapse bans anyone that isn’t a sub idiot leaving only socialbeachclown and some hayseeds- and unlike that aforementioned- this ain’t no chithole old knaves trying to help and not foisting ludicrous notions of supernatural phenomena coming to end all markets, economies, civilizations, etc. because of planned parenthood or some other absurd shemata and voodoo or idiotic esoteric hokum of the day to sell canned foods or doomsday books for rubes.

      Anyway- great to see you too coop. :)”

      “good luck knave. I think you’re on to something with your timing”

      At that point your forecast for the near-term future was:

      “As for current technicals, Fridays closing prices able to retrace higher and regain back 30%+ of the intraday losses by the close was a short term positive. Today’s price action likely provides a proverbial “retest” and IMHO likely holds. The calendar of (market) events through June 30 likey provide some short term “support”- especially significant is this years Russell indicies rebalance…. That transformation has certainly added to the positive price action over recent years … and then end of second quarter reports for mutual funds prints based on June 30 closing prices likely adds some strength – traditionally know as window dressing.”

      While you seemed generally in agreement, there was apparently not much strength added as the Dow rose minimally only to fall back off and end about 300 point higher while the Nasdaq didn’t end any higher at all — but merely banged its head on a temporary uplift and knocked itself out.

      Prior to that, also agreement:

      “Looking like you’re on to something there Dr. Nave. The current cack handed actions whether emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave or Shanghai Cooperation Organization are sure to test policymakers both fiscal and monetary coordination, orientation and current avant garde financial engineering abilities to … navigate past what certainly may well be central banks greatest fear- the Great Liquidity Trap.”

      Of course, most of the time you are completely incoherent, making no sense to anyone at all while pretending you know something, such as:

      “Maybe gradually if necessary, try and recall “the great recession” theme? Seems extreme CB financial engineering Great Precession applied to market cycles (intermediate term 6-18 mo., range bound, spinny top doji) about to collide and assimilate ‘recently’ resurrected nostalgic legacy notions of a fiscal policy and delusions of demand economy dynamics eclipsing current carry trade conditions and related GDP potential output, output gaps and interest rate gap dynamics- Great Precession continuation or great nutation through capital markets and macroeconomic great recession effects??”

      Two months ago, you wrote:

      “Obviously you’re far from the sharpest knave in any drawer and even an average eggplant has far more economic and business acumen as PROVEN by your misconceptions and CONFIRMED by markets price action. :)”

      Well, price action has gone NOWHERE since. It dropped 500 points, rose 1,000 and then dropped 300 since for a current net gain of 200 points that is rapidly fading to zero with the Nasdaq having fallen off a little cliff (hundred-point plummet). That drop was due to the president’s Obamacare Revisited Act failing again, something I have predicted would be typical of the entire year during which is stimulus plans would continue to disappoint and go nowhere, letting the air out of the Trump Rally.

      Then there was this precious comment:

      “How many CONSECUTIVE YEARS or constructive economic data CONFIRMING the absolute greatest economic EXPANSION CONFIRMED by greatest constructive aggregate gains PRICE ACTION in multiple GLOBAL CAPITAL MARKETS and ASSET APPRECIATION before the ludicrous ” great” recession GUESSWORK “gets out of the proverbial rain (of losses) and back to homeschool…”

      Really? “CONSECUTIVE YEARS” of “constructive economic data.” You consider years of GDP growth well under 3%, often hovering around 2% “constructive?” Consecutive years? How about two consecutive years during which the market went absolutely NOWHERE (because the bull was broken as I predicted it would be right before it actually broke off) until the Trump Rally finally gave it a euphoric boost that ended when I said it did; as in it has gone virtually nowhere in the four months since.

      You were asked to show your track record for predicting the last few years, and you came up with nothing but baloney that you could if you had time. You seem to have plenty of time to pick away at things here. So, go back and show us your stellar prediction of how the past three years would go.

      And that, as near as I can tell is when you joined (this year). So spare me the crap about sitting through 15,000 points of my failing. You’ve barely been here at all and have in all of that time predicting absolutely nothing correctly yourself — didn’t even predict that the Trump Rally was over when you were sitting right on top of its close. You got banned at the Economic Collapse Blog so you came here to prattle away with your nonsense and to criticize wherever you could. You have no idea what I’ve written over the years of writing this blog, yet claim that you’ve sat through it all — an outright lie.

      Let’s look at what you said when the Trump Rally ended. To do that, I have to go back to your comments on the Economic Collapse Blog (prior to your time here):

      Four months ago, you wrote, “Looking like sharp pullback 6% range to correction 10% off may be near.”

      Oops. It didn’t pull back at all. No correction. It simply ended. (Technically, it actually continued slightly upward, but is essentially almost flat.) Whereas, as I said, final rallies of “irrational exuberance” usually do not end by falling off a cliff. They flatten out, round down, and eventually fall off a cliff a few months later. So much for your predictive ability, and your predictions change from week to week anyway, going wherever the winds blow at that particular time.

      “Between the negative divergence in the term structure of implied volatility, uncertainty in credit markets and pending monetary policy changes and thirdly and most importantly: the return of JazzZ, I now expect a sharp pullback – possibly 6%+ or even a correction (10% decline) in key equity indicies before end of March – ”

      Oops. Didn’t even REMOTELY happen. What an idiot. Your memory is quite spatial when it comes to remembering your own large mistakes.

      Of course, a month before that, when the Trump Rally was still climbing, you wrote, “Combined with simple Dow theory and the calendar of events, even you may see that a pullback (defined as 3-6% decline) seems improbable”

      At that point the pullback was possible but “improbable.” It only became “expected” when the rally ended, but didn’t happen even then. In other words, you adjust your predictions as real events play out and show what is actually happening. When the market is soaring, a correction is “improbable;” when it stops soaring, a correction is “expected.”

      You go wherever the wind blows at the time, and so your own predictions blow. While you criticize others who have a verifiable track record of getting it right ( http://thegreatrecession.info/blog/track-record-stock-market-macro-economic-predictions-different-now/ ), you have predicted nothing right that I can find in your comments going back half a year to where they begun at the Economic Collapse Blog. In fact, your limited predictions proved to be entirely wrong. You’ve made a fool of yourself whenever you’ve tried to actually make a significant prediction. You’re a pretentious waste of time.

      • Ping from Spatial Memory:

        Knave – another of your long winded series of constructive deception grounded in homespun misconceptions and compound lies. Your honespun corkscrewing of economic cycles and data with capital markets machinations and cycles- never mind election cycling events and MOST SIGNIFICANT complete 100% obliviousness to capital markets calendar of events, broker dealer net cap requirements and how capital is “created” the obliviousness is near endless – combined with the delusions that markets are “wrong” central banks emergency meetings staved off your delusions of “total financial end” all great comedy. Meanwhile my comments are open and when not taken out of context and compared with price action have been near precise and without doubt profitable- while enjoying the comedy of your whipsawing GUESSWORK. 🙂

        • Ping from Knave_Dave:

          So far, all of your predictions have happened after the fact and have still turned out wrong. (An astounding accomplishment to be sure.)

          When the day comes that you ever predict anything accurately and with clarity of thought and in intelligible language, I’ll listen. As it stands, you’ve not been able to prove you have ever predicting anything correctly, though challenged to do so. You’ve even missed the most obvious points like the way the Trump Rally would end when you were standing right on top of it.

          • Ping from Spatial Memory:

            Keep telling yourself that all those spot on accurate forecasts were made after the occurrences- I will continue hitting the register with what appears to you as recycling patterns and occurrences and recognition of high probability set ups. Keep telling yourself the facts and principles contained in my comments are recycled cut and pastes as well- real world you’ll never gain that knowledge nor abilities to apply it so guesswork of “total financial end”- (sometime this year or next – roflmao) whatever the heck that even means seems brilliant. Trump baiting ISIS, Trump Rally, ROFLMAOOOOO
            No doubt media spin doctors have you spun like a rube recycling and regurgitating foolishness. Real world POTUS effects FISCAL policy fiscal multiplier – not to mention has years policy lag – of which ZERO policy action. Price action remains MONETARY policy- Trump Rally = roflmaooooo. Media has you spun and markets decimated your misconstrued regurgitations. Nonetheless thanks for the laughs knaive.

            • Ping from Knave_Dave:

              The only thing that spins my head is trying to read your disconnected prose. It’s like trying to read in a washing machine.

              Didn’t see a single accurate forecast going all the way back through your comments, just extremely inaccurate ones like multiple forecasts of a 6-10% correction that never came, though you kept saying it was very near … months ago. Apparently not so near. When the market does start to fall, you’ll say, “See, there was that correction I was talking about.” Sorry too many months past. Otherwise, all I could find were comments about what happened that day. Main thing is you missed the big ones entirely.

              Why don’t you lay on us the big moves that will happen this summer, and we can see if you are “spot on,” as you claim. Don’t be shy. Lay it out there. How much will the market go up or down by. What will happen in the fall? Since we cannot find evidence that you can forecast anything right by looking to the past (and you certainly haven’t provided a shred), let’s see how well you can do going forward for next week, next month, and the month after. Maybe the start of fall. Let’s see if you are “spot on.”

            • Ping from Spatial Memory:

              Knaive obviously you’re not even familiar with the basic industry standard vernacular. Three to six percent declines are known a “pull-back” (or “profit taking”), 10%+ decline = correction and 30%+ = crash. Although many key indicies has been able to generate shallow ~3% pull backs, it has been an extraordinarily protracted time frame since a sharper 6% pull back or 10% correction- traditionally ~ 15 month intervals. Not to make excuses because markets and price action are ALWAYS correct – Price action never lies. Seems a plethora of leveraged etfs and various derivatives have ” helped collar” prices. Nonetheless I expect volatility to increase and six to 10% decline between July 1 and before sp500 rebalance at end of September and q3 window dressing end of September. Although forecasting major moves 2-3 sigma or more are difficult- as all the Kings horses and all the Kings men are defending the other side of that trade- that type of price action is constructive and necessary for markets – either way point is knowing the calendar of events and technical analysis methods certainly are needed in the current Ichimoku Cloud and sharpshooters can catch – like in baseball can catch singles or doubles etc near daily and five singles is as good or better that one homerun and much more easily accomplished. Good luck predicting the “total financial end” while I continue with nimble scalps in the current muted markets and diminished expectations backdrop. Hey knave – you seem like a pretty good guy – and you sure have a lot of patience – and you sure can write well. I try and reply many times on the fly and lot going on in the three ring circus here but I will try and do some hard analysis after Fridays closing prices and Predictions (predictions written in stone, forecasts are subject to changes). Anyway I’ll get some hard numbers for here through end of September then we can laugh to the banks together – or you can mock and laugh at me when I miss – doubtful. Anyway good luck. Cya l8r. Feeding time at the zoo here

            • Ping from Spatial Memory:

              Todays price action seems all about the Russell 2000, (IWM (and TNA 3x etf)) transforming from capitalization weighted to float weighted worked well for sp500 and NASDAQ now last and certainly not least Russells. Maybe squeeze shorts through end of quarter – maybe tomorrow afternoon low volume can make fresh highs on Russell 2000 – think 141.90+ – if “bulls” “manage” then with fresh July inflows can squeeze “top down portfolios” / “managers” through July 7 options expiry cycle. Without exogenous event, all things equal, etc. then expect 3%-6%…..maybe 10%+. 🙂

              Treasury bonds bull traps snapping shut – gonna have to lean into equity markets to force traditional “flight to quality” reflex. TMV BTFD. Jmho

            • Ping from Spatial Memory:

              NASDAQ and QQQ- already heavy tape -barometers- maybe volume reversal test – try retrace 85% of yesterday gain on 85% of yesterday volume- counter trend squeeze of top down already).

              Whodathunkedit:)

            • Ping from Knave_Dave:

              I know I wouldn’t have thunked it. Glad I didn’t.

            • Ping from Spatial Memory:

              Keep telling yourself that. They need a video feed for this parody. You one step from growing your own food or relying on road kill as markets PROVE you FOOLISH at the high inflection point that you predicted HUNDREDS of times earlier at much lower levels and other with decades experience in and around the industry after day like today knocking positions out the park. Thanks for the LAUGHS – wannabe pikers always crack me up. And even they have lot more game than you.

              Anyone takes you serious deserves pity. Your repertoire is 100% CLUELESS JOKE. Thanks again for the laughs.roflmaooooo

            • Ping from Knave_Dave:

              You can always cherry pick one statistic that didn’t do as badly as most others did, but your earlier comments were not about QQQ. They were about the overall market; and, sorry, but you missed your call by a long shot. The egg must be getting in your eyes since you cannot even see how far off you were AFTER THE FACT. Wow! That’s bad. Most people can, at least, appreciate the size of their miss after the fact.

              Then there are your lies. I predicted HUNDREDS of times earlier that the market would turn downward. I’ve predicted all year it would probably not turn downward until early summer. Here we are — the one inflection point this year. Last year’s inflection point was December 15, 2015, just before the start of the year. I said the Fed would definitely make its first rate increase, and market would capitulate by immediately rising euphorically … for a couple of days. It would do that because the irruption idiots would look around the second the long-feared moment came and see that the sky didn’t fall, and they’d all pop open the champagne and celebrate with stock purchases. I said the market would, then settle out and start to fall for a short time as the idiots came off the champagne and their heads started to clear. And I predicted it would then in a very short time fall off a cliff, which it did two weeks after the initial rise. It would do that because, once the idiots started to see straight and saw the market was starting to drop, they’d panic, which they did. That was my last inflection point for the market. That one and the present one. That’s HUNDREDS of times? As for this year, I said the Trump Rally would end first and that there would likely be a few months where the market traded sideways and then started to go down based on past patterns. And that APPEARS to be where we are now.

            • Ping from Spatial Memory:

              Quit Lying roflmaooooo

              At this point you seem pathological with your lies. Jmho

              Spatial Memory Spatial Memory
              11 hours ago
              Todays price action seems all about the Russell 2000, (IWM (and TNA 3x etf)) transforming from capitalization weighted to float weighted worked well for sp500 and NASDAQ now last and certainly not least Russells. Maybe squeeze shorts through end of quarter – maybe tomorrow afternoon low volume can make fresh highs on Russell 2000 – think 142.90+ – if “bulls” “manage” then with fresh July inflows can squeeze “top down portfolios” / “managers” through July 7 options expiry cycle (NASDAQ and QQQ- already heavy tape -barometers- maybe volume reversal test – try retrace 85% of yesterday gain on 85% of yesterday volume- counter trend squeeze of top down already). Lots of financial engineering – “management” – few more fits and starts then – without exogenous event, all things equal, etc. then expect 3%-6%…..maybe 10%+. 🙂

              Treasury bonds bull traps snapping shut – gonna have to lean into equity markets to force traditional “flight to quality” reflex. TMV BTFD. Jmho

              Same old recycled comment around recycled high probability occurrences 🙂

              EditReply

            • Ping from Knave_Dave:

              I guess I have to parse your own writing for you to understand how dim it was:

              “Todays price action seems all about the Russell 2000,”

              Umm, gee, not really. The Russell 2000 was one index of the market that moved the least. Down only 9 points from yesterday’s close. Kind of not “all about” the Russell 2000. Russell 2000 kind of insignificant today.

              “worked well for sp500 and NASDAQ now last and certainly not least Russells.”

              Maybe in your jargon, dropping nine points is “working well” for the Russells. Or maybe it’s just that your writing is so obtuse it is nearly impossible to tell what you DO mean. Doesn’t seem like a day that worked well for the Russells or well for your prediction that today would be all about the Russell 2000. Sorry. Today, the Russell 2000 was boring, down 0.6%.

              Continuing to try to parse my way through your verbiage:

              “Maybe squeeze shorts through end of quarter”

              Don’t know where you are going with that, but shorts certainly didn’t get squeezed today. Today was a day I’d far rather be short the market than long. End of the quarter is only another day away, so not seeing a short squeeze developing today.

              “maybe tomorrow afternoon low volume can make fresh highs on Russell 2000 – think 142.90+ -”

              Don’t even know what you’re talking about on that. The Russell 2000 started at an open of 1420.48. So, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe you meat it would reach a new high of 1429.0. Well, it was actually down almost that much today, not up. Since you posted that twelve hours ago (at the time I’m writing this), I’d have to think tomorrow is still to come and not today’s close. Thank goodness, you have a chance for the Russell 2000 to go back up and even hit that 1429 benchmark if that’s what you were referring to. If you were referring to today’s action, it clearly went the wrong way for you. We’ll see if tomorrow bails you out. As for “tomorrow’s” volume, today’s volume was pretty good (above the year’s average).

              “July inflows can squeeze “top down portfolios” / “managers” through July 7 ”

              Obviously too early to call. We’ll see if the Russel 2000 wakes up and becomes the important price action tomorrow and gets up to that 1429 point that you miswrote. That will be a 18-point rise from where it sank to today in rather uninteresting price action and slightly disappointing price action.

              “maybe volume reversal test – try retrace 85% of yesterday gain on 85% of yesterday ”

              Now we seem to have gone back to yesterday and are predicting what would happen today. This is where you clearly missed by a long shot. Try 200% … unless you were talking solely about the Russel 2000 but that’s hard to tell, given how you jump around between today, end of the quarter, month of July, back to yesterday. I’m trying to throw you a bone here because Russel 2000 is no longer what you were talking about at this point. You had in the this same sentence just turned your attention back to the the NASDAQ:

              “(NASDAQ and QQQ- already heavy tape -barometers- maybe volume reversal test – try retrace 85% of yesterday gain on 85% of yesterday volume- ”

              But that is where you were off. The NASDAQ lost well over a 100% of yesterday’s gains. You cannot call that a “retracement.” It was more of plunge, given that it also broke below its 50-day average. The QQQ, which you tout as successful prediction for you, did even worse!. It went way below its open, didn’t just retrace 85% of yesterday’s gain. it lost 150% of what it gained yesterday. Maybe you call that “spot on” accuracy, but I call it a miss as wide as the target itself. You’re off by almost double! Yikes, if this is your example of “spot on” performance.

              As for 85% of yesterday’s volume, we had 85% MORE volume in the QQQ than yesterday. My gosh! It went the opposite way from your prediction! As for the NASDAQ, that exchange doesn’t provide volume data.

              Good thing you didn’t mention the DOW. It did even worse. It doubled its volume and dropped by 200% of the yesterday’s gain.

              When a guy considers a knock on the head like this BRAGGING RIGHTS, I know he’s got space between his memories. Yikes! Lots of space.

              So, why should we even bear in our own memories, your final prediction in that contorted piece of prose:

              “Lots of financial engineering – “management” – few more fits and starts then – without exogenous event, all things equal, etc. then expect 3%-6%…..maybe 10%+. :)”

              With “lots of financial engineering,” you sound like me; but with the 3-10% gain, you sure don’t. (A plus sign usually indicates a gain in case you didn’t know.) Problem is, you might want to put a clear timeframe on that. Are you still talking end of the quarter, month of July? Or did you suddenly leap to the end of summer or end of the year? No one knows but you because that is how you always right – half thoughts connected together in the most disjoined ways. You’re like moth bouncing off a lightbulb.

              Anyway, good luck with the 3-10% market gain by whenever. Judging from your performance on everything else today, it’s not looking good for you.

              Bad day for you! Craziest part is that you think it was a score! I hope I don’t ever get to the point of thinking a miss that wide was proof of my accuracy; but I’m glad to let it stand as your proof of yours now that you doubled down on it after the fact!

              It’s like watching a guy bang his brain on the wall.

            • Ping from Spatial Memory:

              As I’ve stated many times. Great comedy watching your weak attempts at constructive deception as you (unintentionally many times) attempt to misconstrue facts to fit your delusions. GREATEST example of the day is your complete ignorance regarding a volume reversal test and what it serves. The selling pressure certainly did ACCELERATE as the. Volume Reversal test failed to hold. QQQ CERTAINLY did lead down as I stated and Russell 2000 recent rebalance and subsequent machinations was all bulls had as fuel to squeeze shorts. You can parse EVERY COMMENT and spin them as you need to that spot on analysis and today’s gains are something you will NEVER accomplish. Seriously you’re too delusional and demented to even recognize the best spot on analysis right in your face. Roflmao

              MARKETS have made a fool of you BEYOND BELIEF and now you try and lie you way around it. GREATEST Capital Markets related comedy available

              Thanks again for the laughs piker wannabes crack me and seriously nearly 35 YEARS in this game and no bs you’re one of the most CLUELESS and DELUSIONAL LIARS that I’ve seen. Why bother writing such ABSURD NONSENSICAL MISCONCEPTIONS about markets, Central Banks, even the POTUS – get professional help – after your manic REJECTION of the reality of today’s price action dovetail with my forecasts- it’s obvious you need it – desperately- jmho

            • Ping from Knave_Dave:

              You look so funny with that arrow you shot through your head today. No wonder we couldn’t find it in the bales of hay behind the target. I thought it was just one of those joke hats; but somehow you actually managed to shoot yourself in the head with a bow and arrow, and I don’t know how ANYONE manages that. it can’t be easy given how awkward it is to point an arrow at your head and pull the string. Good job!

            • Ping from Spatial Memory:

              That manic NONSENSICAL episode is a fresh low even given the parameters of your delusions roflmaooooo

            • Ping from Knave_Dave:

              Jmho, but that egg on your face looks really drippy and is kind of smelly. Probably because it was the same old recycled egg. I’m sure you will be tempted to delete or edit your comments above, and the one below because they look really funny right now, given the market’s plunge and its jolt below its 50-day moving average. Retrace 85% of yesterday’s gain. That’s like predicting someone is going to stub their toe; and, instead, they lose their leg.

            • Ping from Spatial Memory:

              Keep telling yourself that. Your ‘constructive deception repertoire is wayyyyyy too weak. BTW QQQ on closing basis did not lose 85%+ of yesterday gain – making your weak attempts at reductio ad absurdum even more pathetic.
              You must be in pain after markets PROVE you such a fool daily roflmaooooo

            • Ping from Knave_Dave:

              Yes, Your Lameness, I’m aware of the industry vernacular, and I saw that you wrote both in your various posts that repeatedly claimed a 6-10% drop was imminent. I simply used short-hand when I said a 6-10% correction. If you were not so deeply and intently quarrelsome and negative almost all of the time, you would have recognized that I simply used the term that covered the larger drop. Meanwhile, you use this lame diversion to gloss over the fact that multiple times you predicted a correction or near correction that didn’t happen. You ARE making excuses. Your were simply COMPLETELY WRONG. There was nothing that even amounted to a “pullback.” So, you were way off.

              (And when you are working with fundamentals, as I am, the big stuff is easier to see than the small stuff — the little scalps along the way. Everything I say is about macro economics — where the overall economy is going, not about day trading. I’m not a stock trader, except in the most basic retirement fund sort of way. I’ve always been clear that what I am talking about is what is going to happen in the overall economy, which affects everyone, and that stocks are only one part of that.)

              You were, in fact, farther off than I was this year by a long shot because I said things would START to break apart in the early summer — that major cracks in the economy would start to appear and that the stock market would crash, but I also said the crash will take MONTHS to play out, probably until the end of the year or early next year before it has gone down enough to be called a “crash.”

              The economy is now showing some major cracks — major problems in the auto market that will last for, at least, the next two years; massive retail decline that will be chronic for the next several years and that will have huge knock-on effects; and the beginning signs that the housing market may be turning down (though I’ve noted it is too early to claim that victory (in terms of predictions) yet. Not only are these things now real facts on the ground, but they are all things I said would likely be part of the massive economic breakup I’ve forecasted. So, it is not just that the general direction is now taking shape, but the details are right. (Keep in mind that I only said it would BEGIN in early summer, not that it would be done by then, so don’t judge me by some standard that I never set.) Your sole clear prediction, on the other hand, was a total miss; yet you are the one who is constantly critical of me, as if you have a leg to stand on.

              Apparently “price action” is always correct, except when YOU put it to use. Then there are excuses as to why it didn’t work that time, such as “ETFs collaring prices.” So, now you have rescheduled your 6-10% decline that you formerly said you thought would happen “by the end of March” to happening between July 1 and the end of September. Let’s see if you can even get your revised guess correct. I am completely unimpressed with anything you had to say in the last six months, having taken the time to review it. You failed to predict the height of the Trump Rally. You failed to predict when it would end or how it would end. When you did predict a pullback or correction by the end of March (not the end of the rally), it never came close to happening.

              As for my part, I suspect your 6-10% decline this time will be accurate; BUT, to be clear, I am not predicting such a thing in that tight of a window. I suspect, however, that is what my “early summer” breakup will shape up as — about that much of a drop, though I think a big plunge in August and/or October are likely. So, I don’t think you will be wrong. What I AM predicting is that, the market will decline (with some ups along the way but a general downward trajectory), starting in the “early Summer” but becoming a clear disaster by the end of the year or start of next year. (That is what I have said for this year from the start of the year.)

              I saw no evidence of your “nimble scalps” in your past six months. We have only your clearly unreliable word to say they happened. For all we know, you’re still that sloppy, fat guy sitting in his broken swivel desk chair in his bedroom swilling vodka all day. You have presented zero track record, though repeatedly asked to do so. Mine is recorded here for everyone to see and evaluate themselves.

              I made a big mistake last year in predicting a stock market crash, though I did offer the caveat early on that in an election year all bets could be off because the Fed would do everything to prevent a stock market crash and to keep Trump out of office as Candidate Trump clearly did not fit their globalist agenda and clearly would not reinstall Janet Yellen at the end of her term (something that, yes, the Fed does care about because Janet Yellen cares about it). PRESIDENT Trump, on the other hand, is a very different man, but they would have been wanting CANDIDATE Trump out of the picture and globalist Hillary in.

              The stock crash started on the exact DAY I said it would and in the exact MANNER, and it reached full “correction” level on some indices within a month. I would not allow myself to claim I was right that the Fed intervened in EXTRAORDINARY ways to circumvent that crash (even though the Fed is not supposed to be rigging the stock market at all) as a way of covering my missed prediction IF it were not for the fact that there is extremely clear evidence they DID — from their multiple and instantaneous emergency closed-door meetingS to the now clear and obvious intrusion on a large scale by their colleagues at other central banks.

              In explaining away their closed-door emergency meetings, they claimed were just “comparing notes” with the president. Right off, you KNOW they are lying. It is absurd to think that the CEO of the Fed and the President and the Vice President INSTANTLY schedule a meeting right after two emergency back-to-back, closed-door meetings of the full Fed Board, which were held right after their regularly scheduled meeting … all to “compare notes.” Please. How stupid. Emergency note comparisons. It’s absurd.

              Then, just recently, we have learned Bank of America that central-bank intrusion into the US stock market reached a zenith in in US stocks last year and is on track to go even higher this year. The only time in history where our own central bank bought stocks was in taking control and ownership (receivership, if you prefer) of major US companies that it wanted to rescue or part out. So, this was an historically extraordinary change.

              Last year was historic for the huge increase of central-bank purchases of our nation’s most HEALTHY stocks, and those purchases FULLY account for why the FAANG stocks performed as they did. (Fully in the sense that so much central-bank intrusion is easily going to push the stocks in the right direction, from which the rest of the market will jump in and accelerate the ride to the top — like injecting starter fluid into the engine. (You only have to get some momentum going and intrude once in awhile to give the momentum a few pushes along the way in order to get all the speculators on board in following the big money.)

              So, I don’t think I’m just making excuses in claiming my one caveat about central bank intrusion last year (and this) was right on. In fact, I think it is completely fair to claim that it is the exception that proves the rule. (In other words, proves my prediction was spot on because the ONLY thing preventing it was the ONE thing that I claimed very likely might.) It’s now clear that central bank intrusion in the US stock market was HISTORIC in the levels it reached, and that is only the part we know about. There could have been other central banks doing even more that will never report their purchases to ANYONE because central banks routinely operate in secrecy even toward their own supposed (in our case congressional) overseers. They rarely give more than big answers and never show more than broad categories on their balance sheets.

            • Ping from Spatial Memory:

              Nothing but NONSENSE there – you may fool the rubes but your classic carnival barking is nothing new. REALITY is in the first 68 minutes of the day markets have again PROVEN my forecast PRECISE- posted here before trading.

              Your LUDICROUS HOMESPUN MISCONCEPTIONS of economic and market anecdotal data are ABSOLUTE ABSURD FICTION and PROVEN by price action daily. Watch and learn.

            • Ping from Knave_Dave:

              We’ll know as the year goes on. As you say, I’m a patient man, and I am not pretending to forecast stock markets on a day-by-day basis. As I stated clearly (whether you like it or not), my focus is entirely macro-economics. My largest investments are in real estate and capital improvements on that real estate. I do not ever attempt to predict the daily gyration of stocks, and I have never claimed I do. So, you are judging me by a false standard that you raise. So, my reality is not the first 68 minutes of the day. That is YOUR standard. My standard is where this YEAR is taking us. So, for my purposes 68 minutes is useless because I do not invest in stocks.

              As a person who has some real-estate investment, I’m interested in where the overall economy is going. Mostly, I a interested in macroeconomics because they impact us all, affecting peoples, jobs, businesses that we might like to frequent, people’s wages, the look of your town (whether it is full of boarded windows or thriving businesses). Only toward that end do I talk about where stocks are going, and I’ve made clear all along, that is a long-term trajectory, not a short one. 68 minutes is not something I EVER LOOK AT. (It’s fine for you; you invest in stocks. I’m not interested and never have been in doing that.)

              So, the only standard you can fairly judge me by (not that I think you have the slightest interest in fairness because you’ve exhibited many times that you do not), is whether I am right that the stock market did not crash last year because of central-bank intrusion and, for this year, whether I am right that it starts going down right about now and continues generally downward through the year to finish the year in clearly bad shape in what will in hindsight eventually be called a “crash.” (I’m not offering any caveats this year, as I did during an election year.)

              It’s a longterm prediction for which 68 minutes is not worth a sneeze, and I’ve made that clear all along the way. Whether or not that is investible information is completely irrelevant to me, as I have never made the claim that it is, and this is clearly not an investment advising website. I a only looking at where the market is headed as the Fed loses control of its game or relinquishes control now that it has Trump to blame.

              I’ve also said that, if the economy is not clearly showing itself to be broken upon the rocks by the beginning of next year (i.e. within the first quarter of next year), I will stop writing this blog. I have put my money where my mouth is (so to speak) offering that guarantee on my words. (Because if I’m wrong at that level, I have nothing useful to say.) So far, things are going EXACTLY as I said they would in both timing and manner; so, I’m not worried about ending the blog.

            • Ping from Spatial Memory:

              Spatial Memory 9 days ago
              SPX vulnerable to 2435.8 eight confluences, 2398.4 ten confluences
              QQQ to 139.63, 12 confluences
              Still all about Russell rebalancing then window dressing.
              July- August bears get some fun then back to biz with SPX rebalance in September. Watch and learn.

              Spatial Memory 6 days ago
              Futures sinking after giving back 30%+ of yesterdays intraday gains on closing basis – price weighted DJIA best tell. QQQ – NASDAQ minus financials heavy tape – violation of 139.46 – (16 ta confluences) sure seems significant IMHO. Maybe VIX and UVXY scream today through the close – as hidden divergence becomes classic divergence. Looking like qtrly and prolly cyclical highs are behind. Jmho

  15. Ping from Spatial Memory:

    …Now that special investigator Robert Mueller is climbing all over Trump and his son-in-law, Eric Kushner — digging into every new hole he can think to explore, given his broad scope for investigation…

    Who the heck is Eric kushner?

  16. Ping from Spatial Memory:

    <<<>>>>

    The 1928 Red Line Agreement
    Introduction

    The 1928 Group Agreement (better known as the “Red Line” Agreement) was a deal struck between several American, British, and French oil companies concerning the oil resources within territories that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire within the Middle East. The origins of the Red Line Agreement can be traced back to the initial formation of the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) in 1912.

    The TPC was formed as a joint venture between Royal Dutch/Shell, the Deutsche Bank, and the Turkish National Bank, in order to promote oil exploration and production within the Ottoman Empire. In March 1914, however, the British Government, which controlled the Turkish National Bank, managed to have its shares within the TPC transferred to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. The following June, the Ottoman Grand Vizier promised an oil concession to the reconstituted TPC to develop oil fields within the Ottoman provinces of Baghdad and Mosul.

    Seven Sisters

    During World War I, the Allies expropriated Deutsche Bank’s share in the TPC and transferred them to the French Government during the San Remo Conference of 1920. At the time, Royal Dutch/Shell hoped that it could purchase the French Government’s shares so as to balance out Anglo-Persian’s 50% stake within the TPC. Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré of France, however, brushed aside any such suggestions, since he was determined to create an independent French oil company that could compete with major British and American oil companies, which became known collectively as the seven sisters. The seven sisters were the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (later Exxon), the Standard Oil Company of New York (Socony, later Mobil, which eventually merged with Exxon), the Standard Oil Company of California (Socal, later renamed Chevron), the Texas Oil Company (later renamed Texaco), Gulf Oil (which later merged with Chevron), Anglo-Persian (later British Petroleum), and Royal Dutch/Shell.

    The San Remo Oil Agreement excluded American oil companies from participation in the TPC. This fact provoked strong protests from both American oil companies, who feared that the Europeans would deny them access to foreign oil sources and dump cheap Middle Eastern oil on the world market, and the U.S. Department of State, which opposed any attempts by foreign governments and businesses to discriminate against American firms in their search for new markets and business opportunities. In order to discourage the Europeans from treating American oil companies unfairly, the U.S. Congress passed the Mineral Leasing Act in February of 1920, which denied drilling rights on publicly-owned land in the United States to any foreign company whose parent government discriminated against American businesses. Neither the British nor the U.S. Government, however, wished to jeopardize relations over the issue. In 1928, the TPC was reorganized to include the Near East Development Corporation, an American oil syndicate that included Jersey Standard, Socony, Gulf Oil, the Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company, and Atlantic Refining (later Arco). Jersey Standard and Socony later assumed total control over the NEDC after they bought out their partners during the 1930s.

    Signing the Red Line Agreement

    On July 31, 1928, following the discovery of an immense oil field in Iraq and TPC negotiating regarding the division of crude oil output between the partners, representatives from the Anglo-Persian, Royal Dutch/Shell, the Compagnie Française des Pétroles (CFP, later Total), and the Near East Development Corporation signed the Red Line Agreement in Ostend, Belgium. Under the terms of the agreement, each of the four parties received a 23.75% share of all the crude oil produced by TPC, which was allowed to operate anywhere in the Middle East between the Suez Canal and Iran, with the exception of Kuwait. The remaining 5% share went to Calouste Gulbenkian, an Armenian businessman who was a partial stakeholder within the TPC. The most important feature of the Red Line Agreement, however, was its ‘self-denying’ clause. It stipulated that the participating companies would agree not to develop oilfields within the territory comprising the TPC unless they secured the support of the other members.

    The deal became known as the Red Line agreement because, supposedly, during the negotiations between TPC members, none of the participants was exactly certain of the pre-war boundaries of the Ottoman Empire. Consequently, during one of the final meetings, Gulbenkian drew the boundaries from memory on a map of the Middle East with a red pencil. In fact, the question had been resolved well before, during negotiations between the British and French foreign ministries. Nevertheless, the name stuck.

    The Red Line Agreement proved to be a difficult arrangement, since it could not keep non-member companies from seeking concessions within the area covered by the TPC (which was renamed the Iraqi Petroleum Company in 1929). In 1928, Socal secured a concession to search for oil in Bahrain and, in 1933, they managed to gain another concession from the Saudi Government that encompassed the province of al-Hasa. In 1936, the Texas Oil Company purchased a 50% share within the California Arabian Standard Oil Company (the Saudi subsidiary of Socal, which was renamed Aramco in 1944) in order to further develop Socal’s concession within Saudi Arabia.

    In 1946, Socal and Texaco invited Jersey Standard and Socony to join them as partners in Aramco, but the latter two were barred from doing so under the terms of the Red Line Agreement unless they invited the other members of the TPC to join them. Consequently, Jersey Standard and Socony joined the U.S. Government in pressuring the other members of the IPC to abrogate the terms of the Red Line Agreement. Although the French Government and Gulbenkian protested, both had withdrawn their objections by November 1948, in exchange for a greater share of the output of the IPC, whose boundaries were now redrawn to exclude Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, and the western-half of Jordan

    https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/red-line

    • Ping from Spatial Memory:

      Red Line Agreement is the name given to an agreement signed by partners in the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) on July 31, 1928. The aim of the agreement was to formalize the corporate structure of TPC and bind all partners to a “self-denial clause” that prohibited any of its shareholders from independently seeking oil interests in the ex-Ottoman territory. It marked the creation of an oil monopoly, or cartel, of immense influence, spanning a vast territory. The cartel preceded easily by three decades the birth of another cartel, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which was formed in 1960

      • Ping from Knave_Dave:

        While I don’t think that Obama, Trump or Russia had the Red Line Agreement in mind when they talked about drawing a red line, it certainly adds some interesting history and dynamic showing how nearly everything in the Middle East ties back to oil and corporate control over politics. Thanks for the addition.

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