Archive - Nov 2010

The Government today agreed to request financial support from the European Union and the Euro Area Members States. The IMF will also be requested to assist in the provision of support. The Government welcomes the agreement reached at the Eurogroup meeting today that providing assistance to Ireland is warranted to safeguard financial stability in the EU and in the Euro Area...

A few days back we asked whether if as part of the now certain Irish austerity package, the imminent rise in the corprate tax rate for offshore companies based in Ireland would result in a crunch in the bottom line for US corporations such as Google. Now that a hike from the prevailing 12.5% rate is inevitable, US companies have launched an offensive to make it clear that only Irish citizens will be subject to the critical austerity measures. The Telegraph reports that "the Irish government has been given a stark warning from some of the biggest American companies in Ireland on the risk of a mass exodus if the country's low corporation tax rate is raised." If companies, which are purely circumventing much higher US corporate tax rates, also have to share the burden, they will simply depart from the already insolvent country, leaving it with even less tax revenues, thus accelerating the toxic loop of greater insolvency coupled with even less revenue. And since the IMF is backed primarily by the US, which is end-domicile to the bulk of the corporations in question, it is obvious that corporations have all the leverage and will most certainly get their wishes, further widening the chasm between the "corporation" and the simple Guiness-drinking, potato chewing peasant. In the brave new world, the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness appliues only financiers and corporations. Everyone else has been relegated to footnote status.

With Ireland now a lost cause, the next country which will see its bond yields surge to new records is Portugal. And just so vigilantes don't miss the hint, the Portuguese opposition party has stated that the country's budget deficit and public debt are "higher than those reported by the government." The claim is that Portuguese debt is about 30% higher than claimed by official statistics: instead of 82% of GDP, it is actually 112%. With bankrupt Greece having lied about virtually every aspect of its comatose economy, it is not as easy to dismiss the announcement as merely political bickering, and is sure to leads to at least a modest double digit basis point jump in Portuguese spreads. And once Portugal is rescued, just after New Year's, then it will be time for those last two countries of the peripheral block: Italy and Spain. And after them, it's the core's turn.

Goldman's Jan Hatzius, who after flipping his view on the economy in early August, and taking all of the street with him, has recently flopped back to a semi-optimistic outlook. What is amusing is that despite his suddenly far more bullish outlook, he, as well as the entire Goldman team, continue to call for $2 trillion in total QE2. Of course the two are completely at odds with each other, but hey - if it means 2011 will be another record bonus year, why leave something as irrelevant as logic stand in the way of that 3rd French Polynesian island. On the other hand, Hatzius is certainly not stupid, so in continuing with his rhetorical device of an hypothetical interrogation, today Hatzius releases his latest Q&A, this time focusing on the future of Quantitative Easing. What is most notable, is that as of today, the Dutch strategist sees the possibility for less QE2 post June, contrary to his recent missives which expected QE2 to continue until the full $2 trillion of expected monetary base "printing" was fulfilled. Then again, as Ireland has so aptly demonstrated today, at this point it is no longer a question of whether any economic policy is viable in the long-run. All that matters is for putting enough lipstick on the bankrupt global pig for another few months at a time, so that yet another sovereign constituency can foot the bills in what has become a rolling global bailout of country after country.

It's been exactly one year since I wrote about an exciting but controversial treatment for Multiple Sclerosis (MS), called the Liberation treatment. A lot has happened in a year, and I think it's important to share some of my thoughts with you. Please feel free to relay the information back to anyone you know who has MS.

The CBO is against extending the Bush tax cuts. So why are we doing it?

And so the can has been kicked down the road one more time as Ireland's Brian Lenihan has just sold out his country to the IMF, the ECB and the Fed for a few extra years of puppet control. RTE reports that EU Finance Ministers are due to hold a conference call later this evening during which Ireland is expected to make a formal request for a financial rescue package. What is not discussed is how the Irish people, now likely furious at being manipulated over a lost cause will express their anger over being the latest sheep used to bail out Europe's ever more insolvent banking system. They can at least sleep soundly, that they won't be the last. After today's rescue of Ireland, the vigilantes will focus their undivided attention on Portugal and Spain - perhaps these two countries will be a little less timid when it comes to rescuing Germany's banking oligarchy.

Just another P-H-D clown called Turkey in the Fed...

Say what you will about Alan Greenspan, he was never a whiner. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for present Fed chairman Ben Bernanke.

Forget what the Fed is saying ... what is it actually doing?

But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything. --Alan Watts

One of the more persuasive analyses on the fate of the EMU that we have read recently, comes, oddly enough, from JP Morgan, although not from the firm "proper" but from its somewhat more iconoclastic Private Bank division (which manages portfolios for the ultrawealthy). At the core of the argument, which is far more subtle and nuanced than any report by Ambrose-Evans Pritchard, yet which reaches the same conclusion on the viability of the Eurozone, is the now accepted schism between the core and the periphery, in virtually every aspect of their economies: "how can the European Central Bank simultaneously maintain the “right” monetary policy for inflation-phobic Germany and the weak periphery at the same time?" What many don't know, however, is that this very dichotomy was the reason for the collapse of the first attempt at a monetary union in Europe, the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which ended with a loud thug back in 1992, "when the UK needed a much weaker monetary policy than Germany, which was overheating in the wake of Unification stimulus." Of course, instead of taking no for an answer, Europe merely upped the ante and layered monetary unification on top of an artificial political and customs union. The current state of affairs is all Europe has to show for it. So what happens next? Just as Dylan Grice suggested on Friday that China may have realized that its inflationary endgame has now entered its "out of control" phase, so too perhaps Europe, now accepts the realization that the same unsuccessful outcome as 1992 is inevitable and the premise of a European Union can finally be shelved. Yet in a world in which, as JPM claims, the need for an artificial European union to preserve the peace ended in 1954, and the far more critical peace-perpetuation mechanism - global corporatocracy - is far more important, perhaps Europe should instead focus on doing all it can to promote the interests of various multinational corporations, whose viability may be far more important to Europe's continued non-wartime status. Or perhaps that is the idea all along - with corporate viability more reliant on a healthy banking sector than anything else, are Europe's taxpayers now expected to pay for the 50+ years of peace and social welfare they have received by rescuing the various banks whose bad investments would not sustain one day without an explicit and implicit sovereign backstop. Is Europe essentially saying that should Europe's banks be impaired, that war will certainly follow? Or if the message is not too clear yet, perhaps it will be made soon enough...

With everyone chanting the praises of the "better than abysmal" economy, we decided to post a time lapse video (since cartoons are all that stand an even remote chance of attracting some attention)prepared by John Lohman, of just how the New Normal has been progressing, both since the starts of the great depression in December 2007, and more importantly, since the beginning of the "end" of the recession. The result may surprise you. As John points out: food stamps - the only thing keeping 43 million Americans from going postal." Hopefully the end of extended unemployment benefits coming December 1 won't be that first one additional straw on the camel's back that leads to a full blown fracture.

The only time that Treasuries actually RALLIED (lowering long-term interest rates) was from April-August 2010: the ONLY time that the Fed hasn’t maintained a public QE program in the last 18 months.

I wrote this opinion piece on Sarah Palin and her populist appeal. I got mostly jeers. Mainly being accused of elitism. Tough being libertarian.