As reported via Bloomberg:

Euro-area finance ministers agreed to an unprecedented tax on Cypriot bank deposits as officials unveiled a 10 billion-euro ($13 billion) rescue plan for the country, the fifth since Europe’s debt crisis broke out in 2009.

Cyprus will impose a levy of 6.75 percent on deposits of less than 100,000 euros — the ceiling for European Union account insurance — and 9.9 percent above that.”

I just read about Jeffries economist Jim Zervos’ note to clients on BI, in which he admonishes the “Austrian economist types” and “perma-bears” for being so gloomy, for likening this current bull market to a “sugar high”. Because in his opinion, the policy handlers (like Bernanke and the central banks) have all of this under control and it’s full steam ahead.…

Intrade, the Irish based  online trading exchange website has ceased trading with immediate effect. Visitors to Intrade.com are greeted with the following:…

Being a contrarian is never glamorous. Even the word itself seems to be ostracized by the various word processor dictionaries as I’m often used to seeing it underlined with red dots signifying a spelling error when I type it online.

Wikipedia defines a contrarian as “a person who takes up a position opposed to that of the majority, regardless of how unpopular it may be.”…

A couple days ago, while Business Insider’s Joe Weisenthal was gleefully hyperventilating about gold’s “death cross” (recall the “Joe Weisenthal can’t fail contrarian gold indicator here“), somebody undauntedly stepped up within the last 3 minutes of the trading session and made a 5.3 million dollar bet on out-of the money calls on the big three gold miners:…