The 'Next Big Thing' Might Be Getting in Your Way

Scientists at PepsiCo (PEP) have spent 70 years and billions of dollars chasing the right combination of lemon and lime.

And they still haven't figured it out.

We can go back nearly 100 years to understand Pepsi's struggles...

In 1929, one company out of St. Louis first created the soft drink 7UP. At the time, and throughout the next two decades, this soda was laced with lithium as a calming agent.

As you can imagine, folks were hooked. 7UP stormed the beverage market and was a dominant soda for decades.

Then, in the 1970s, Sprite began to steal 7UP's market share. Its brand benefited from generous marketing spending and associations with hip-hop stars and other edgy artists. In 1986, rapper Kurtis Blow recorded an ad touting Sprite's taste... "Great lymon taste, it's tough," Blow rapped. "Without lymon, it's not happening. So sorry, 7UP."

Here Come the HELOCs: Mortgage Balances, Delinquencies, and Foreclosures

When will it get messy for our Drunken Sailors? Not now.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Mortgage balances outstanding ticked up by 0.9% in Q4 from Q3, to a record of $12.3 trillion. Year-over-year, the increase was only 2.8%, according to data from the New York Fed’s Household Debt and Credit Report.

This small increase in mortgage balances is the result of a strange mix: Purchases of existing homes have plunged by one-third, and mortgage origination volume has collapsed, with existing home prices still sky high; but new house sales have held up, as prices have dropped 17%. And homeowners with these infamous 3% mortgages are not selling, and they’re not buying, and so they’re not paying off their 3% mortgages, and they’re not getting bigger new mortgages.

Washington Is About to Send the Nuclear Energy Revival Into Overdrive

By Nomi Prins

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, it was a blow to Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower’s ego.

President Eisenhower couldn’t just stand by as the Soviets beat America into the new frontier of outer space.

So, he asked Congress to create a civilian space agency in the U.S. And he got his wish in 1958 when Congress voted to establish NASA.

The Space Race was on.

Next came Project Mercury, which sent America’s first astronaut into space in 1961 – and returned him safely home. And in 1969, Apollo 11 landed humans on the Moon for the first time.

Since then, the U.S. Space program has grown into a pillar of U.S. defense and scientific prowess. Today, the worldwide space industry is worth over $420 billion.

I’m telling you this because we stand at a similar inflection point today.

SEC delays decision on Grayscale, BlackRock spot Ethereum ETFs: Law Decoded

By David Attlee

On Jan. 24, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) pushed back its decision on BlackRock’s proposed spot Ethereum exchange-traded fund application (ETF) a day before the deadline, citing the need for more time to review the proposed rule change. While the SEC must make a final decision on BlackRock’s spot Ether ETF decision by Aug. 7, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas has predicted a final decision will be made on all pending spot Ether ETFs in May — similar to the way the SEC decided on 10 pending spot Bitcoin

The next day, the SEC also delayed its decision on whether to approve a spot Ether ETF from Grayscale Investments, opening the application to public comments. The SEC said it would institute proceedings to determine whether to approve or disapprove a proposed rule change allowing NYSE Arca to list and trade Grayscale Ethereum Trust shares. Opening the proposed investment vehicle to public comment will push the deadline for a decision by an additional 35 days upon publication in the Federal Register.

Landslide Trump Victory in 2024 – Martin Armstrong

By Greg Hunter

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong has correctly predicted every presidential race since the 1980’s with his “Socrates” data mining program. The 2024 race, featuring Donald J. Trump, is shaping up to be the most lopsided race for the White House in history. Armstrong explains, “Trump should win. This data has even shocked me, and it’s been right on every election and even Brexit. It’s basically showing, out of 6 models, it is showing four basically all for Trump, but two of them are showing absolute unbelievable landslides. It’s showing 61% for Trump. . . . The computer has never come up before with this complete gap . . . . In 2016, it showed Trump would win, but not overwhelming, but this one is absolutely stunning.”

Many say that they can stop Trump by cheating more than in 2020. Armstrong is seeing that the margins are so big they cannot cheat enough to fill the gap. Armstrong contends, “That’s the way it is shaping up. If you look at the polls on confidence in government, even Europe is down to only 30% of the people trust government anymore. We are looking at a serious collapse in the confidence of government on every level you want to look at. Our computer also shows that this election is not going to be accepted by the other side. . . . Honestly, I have never seen our computer project such a landslide. . . . The Biden Administration, in all honesty, is a complete disaster.”

Everything that’s Dangerous about U.S. Banks Today in One Highly Readable Book

By Pam Martens

Anat Admati, Professor of Finance and Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and German economist Martin Hellwig, have performed a public service to all Americans with their newly released, updated and expanded book The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It. It puts the interlocking web of corruption that is mistakenly referred to as the U.S. banking system into a pristinely documented and highly readable book.

Let us first explain those men without pants on the book jacket. That provocative graphic comes from the storyline in the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Tailors offer to make the emperor magical clothes that will be visible only to smart people and invisible to the stupid and unfit.