Archive - Feb 2011

Nearly three-quarters of UK defined benefit pension schemes aim to de-risk their funds, according to a survey of 200 schemes, carried out by Aon Hewitt.

As you know by now, the endless money printing by our inept and foolish "leaders" is causing prices to rise in all things dollar-denominated. Economics 101 teaches us that more dollars chasing a static supply of goods leads to an increase in price. Eventually, these rising input costs are passed along to the consumer in the form of cost-push inflation. This insidious monster is the most painful of economic afflictions as rising costs are not met with commensurate rises in wages. The pain to the consumer is great and often brings about social unrest and upheaval. We will surely discuss this phenomenon in greater detail in the days ahead. For now, I wanted to give you charts on some items that we don't normally follow here, just so you can grasp the dimension and scale of that which lies ahead.

This Court does not accept the argument that because MERS may be involved with 50% of all residential mortgages in the country, that is reason enough for this Court to turn a blind eye to the fact that this process does not comply with the law.

Analyzing last week's CFTC Commitment of Trader data continues to confirm our assumption that ever more speculators are honing in on rice as the fulcrum commodity. Jumping to a fresh year high of 6,652, non-commercial net spec contracts are the highest they have been since December 2009, when they hit 6,773, and approaching the record from early 2008. Yet while the price of rough rice in late 2009 was comparable to recent price levels in the $16 region, the peak from early 2008 was 50% higher, approaching $25. Therefore it is safe to assume that should speculative interest continue surging at the current rate, and if it were to approach the spec exposure of ~8,000 last seen in early 2008, then the price of rice has a long way to go...

Zero Hedge enjoys entertaining contrarian views, even to our own. The most notable recent one comes from Peak Theories which speculates that based on technical patterns, food prices are bound to fall. The one exception is rice, as we have speculated is long overdue for a major surge in price. Furthermore, as we will shortly show, speculative traders seem to agree with CFTC data indicating that net non-commercial specs continue to surge. As for dropping commodities, the ball we believe is in Bernanke's court - as last week's ICE margin hike in cotton demonstrated, exchanges' actions are now backfiring, and the only immediate price catalyst is broad market liquidity. Thus the question is whether Bernanke believes the Russell 2000 is at a high enough level that allows for a food price correction yet...

This just might be our anthem folks...

All those who were hoping that Egypt would open its stock market today, as had been indicated previously by the Egyptian Central Bank, will be disappointed. Not only will the CASE not open today, but it will remain shut on Monday and Tuesday as well. The reason: the Thermidor reaction at local banks is starting. Per Reuters: "Egypt's central bank declared Monday a bank holiday after a series of worker protests and strikes on Sunday at state-owned banks." Oddly enough, in the power vacuum immediately following a revolution, when the country has just transferred power to a supposedly beneficial, but not really, military regime, Egypt's number one priority is not to keep the general casino open. What a disgrace. More from Reuters: "Banks were also due to be closed on Tuesday, which is an official holiday marking the Prophet Mohamed's birthday. "Employees are demanding higher salaries," Deputy Central Bank Governor Hisham Ramez said by telephone, adding that strikes were mainly at state and not private banks." But do not despair, according to the perfectly efficient ($25MM AUM) EGPT ETF, the Egypt stock market is currently 15% undervalued. All that is needed to make sure that someone can pocket a guaranteed 14.6% arbitrage is for the Egyptian financial industry to have enough people left employed to open the stock market.

Now that the FCIC has declassified all of its interviews with the people responsible, or profiting, for the housing crisis (among which are those of John Paulson, Hank Paulson, Lloyd Blankfein, Dick Fuld, Jonathan Egol (the man who helped Fab Tourre construct Abacus), Alan Greenspan and of course Agent Orange himself - Angelo Mozilo), there is one interview strangely withheld. That of the man largely at the heart of everything - Ben Bernanke. From Bloomberg: "The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, created by Congress to investigate and report on the causes of the market meltdown late last decade, won’t publicly release its full 2009 interview with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, a commission spokesman said. The interview is quoted in the congressionally authorized
panel’s final report, which cites the November 17, 2009,
“closed-door” session in 11 footnotes. The Fed chief discussed
a range of topics including the central bank’s failures and why
the government rescued Bear Stearns Cos. and let Lehman Brothers
Holdings Inc. go bankrupt, the FCIC report shows." And yet, it appears to contain information so sensitive it would once again rain fire and brimstone on everyone, and like an audio medusa, lead to widespread petrifying contagion everywhere it was heard. Once again we discover that the Fed has learned nothing from the Pittman episode, nor from the Paul campaign to bring some transparency to its actions. We do learn, however, that the Fed continues to believe it is above the people, and that the information it is privy to will never be voluntarily released to those whom it supposedly serves courtesy its three mandates, all of which have the words "Russell" and "36,000" in them.

Sure, there is pure imperial motivation ... but there is also a faulty economic model.

Wake up, liberals.

Wake up, conservatives.

Hear the whispers of the Founding Fathers ... and of Gandhi, and King, and the Egyptian people.

"By attempting to gratify their desires we have in the results of our legislation arrayed section against section, interest against interest, and man against man, in a fearful commotion which threatens to shake the foundations of our Union." -- Andrew Jackson, Veto Message to Congress regarding the Second Bank of the United States, 1832

Yet another to be filed under revolving Squids...

It's only a start ... but the Egyptians have done orders of magnitude more in a couple weeks than the U.S. military has been able to do in 9 years.

An important advance indicator of leading conservative frontrunners for the presidency was won by Criminal Reserve archnemesis Ron Paul. The Washington Times reports: "Texas Rep. Ron Paul  has won the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) 2012 presidential preference straw poll of 3,742 activists, the chairman of the huge annual gathering of conservative activists announced on Saturday. The Republican lawmaker, long a favorite of the party’s libertarian wing, took 30 percent of the votes cast, followed by Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 23 percent. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has said he will not be a candidate in 2012, and New Mexico former Gov. Gary Johnson tied for third, with 6 percent of the vote. Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich followed with 5 percent. Tied at 4 percent were Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Trailing them was former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who garnered just 3 percent of the vote." Now since the mere prospect of "President Paul" sends shivers of mortal terror down the spine of every self-respecting member of the criminal Wall Street syndicate, does this mean that in order to guarantee 4 more years of Teleprompting, JPM and GS will send the Russell to 36,000,000, the unemployment rate to -15%, and the labor participation rate to -100%, just to make sure that the peasantry is content enough and chooses 4 more years of unmitigated dollar debasement and what is rapidly becoming a weekly iPad cadence? With the popularity of American Idol plunging to record lows, the mission to brainwash America for 4 more years may be just that more difficult. Add 15% inflation and the vassals may actually stirs for once.

Recently, some have started to ask a very pertinent question when it comes to the global Current Account: with every developed and developing country supposedly seeing a surge in exports, just who is it that is doing all the importing? Sean Corrigan from Diapason takes this question, and flips it on its head, as regards the printing of money and the "trade balance" of inflation: if every central bank continues to excuse itself from taking responsibility from what is now a global money printing pandemic, claiming it is merely importing inflation... then who is doing all the inflation exporting? Read on for some brilliant observations...