Archive - Apr 2012

April 29th

Tyler Durden's picture

iTax Avoidance - Why In America There Is No Representation Without "Double Irish With A Dutch Sandwich" Taxation





Back in October 2010 we presented an analysis by Bloomberg which showed not only that courtesy of not paying taxes at its statutory rate of 35% Google was adding about $100/share to its then stock price of $607/share, but just how this was executed. Now, it is the turn of Apple, with its $110 billion in cash, to fall under the spotlight, with an extended expose in the NYT titled "How Apple Sidesteps Billions in Taxes" in which we learn that, shockingly, if you are at a table with only corporations sitting to your left and right, then you are the only person in the room paying taxes. Why - because global corporate tax "avoidance" schemes are not only perfectly legal, but they are actively encouraged, and in some cases form the backbone of a sovereign's (ahem Ireland) economic and even domestic policy, which just happens to be front and center in virtually every global corporate org chart permitting virtually the entire elimination of cash taxation at the corporate level.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Second Baby Squid Rumored To Be In The Running For Bank Of England Head





Two weeks ago we reported the somewhat surprising news that according to the FT, current Bank of Canada head, and former co-head of sovereign risk at Goldman Sachs had been "informally" approached by the Bank of England to be Mervyn King's replacement when the latter's contract runs out in June 2013. Once the news broke, the tenuous arrangement to have a former-Goldmanite at virtually every single developed world central bank seemed to have hit a snag as both the Bank of Canada and Carney himself were forced to deny that any interest by the BOE had been expressed. Of course, what was missing from the public discourse is that this was likely one of those "reverse inquiry" type of career moves, whereby the candidate himself, or rather the employing firm - in this case Goldman Sachs, makes the decision whether or not the candidate would be suitable to head the Goldman subsidiary known as the Bank of England. Which is why it is with even less surprise that we now learn that it is none other than the firm's most permabullish strategist Jim O'Neill, who after coining the globalist wet-dream term "BRIC" was sent in exile to chair the firm's worst performing division, GS Asset Management, that is rumored to be the latest replacement for Mervyn King.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

"We Are Number One!", Or Why At Least Broke Greece Is Not America





A rather curious phenomenon that has been observed in the popular press lately is that on those rare occasions when total global public debt is demonstrated correctly on a country by country basis, i.e., including contingent liabilities, as well as various trans-national, public-sector backed guarantees (such as EFSF backstops), and most importantly the Net Present Value of pensions and healthcare, or the cost of the welfare state expressed in current dollars, there is one country that is  systematically excluded. That would be the United States. Today we set the record straight by adding the US to the list where it rightfully belongs, and also answer the rhetorical question of why the US just so happens to be consistently omitted from such column-chart based, hair-raising classifications. Simply said, it is quite clear why the now defaulted Hellenic Republic could and should be forgiven in saying that “at least Greece is not America…”

 

April 28th

EconMatters's picture

Myth Buster: TARP Bailout May Realize A Positive Return for Taxpayers?





Sadly, it looks like the 99% will likely have more than just one lost decade in the course of bailing out the 1%.

 

Phoenix Capital Research's picture

The Truth About the Spanish Banking System That 99% of Analysts Fail to Grasp





 

To give you an idea of how bad things are with the cajas, consider that in February 2011 the Spanish Government implemented legislation demanding all Spanish banks have equity equal to 8% of their “risk-weighted assets.” Those banks that failed to meet this requirement had to either merge with larger banks or face partial nationalization. The deadline for meeting this capital request was September 2011. Between February 2011 and September 2011, the number of cajas has in Spain has dropped from 45 to 17.

 
 

Tyler Durden's picture

Guest Post: Gold's Value Today





Way back in 2009, we remember fielding all manner of questions from people wanting to invest in gold, having seen it spike from its turn-of-the-millennium slump, and worried about the state of the wider financial economy. A whole swathe of those were from people wanting to invest in exchange traded funds (ETFs). John Aziz always and without exception slammed the notion of a gold ETF as being outstandingly awful, and solely for investors who didn’t really understand the modern case for gold — those who believed that gold was a 'commodity' with the potential to 'do well' in the coming years. People who wanted to push dollars in, and get more dollars out some years later. 2009 was the year when gold ETFs really broke into the mass consciousness. Yet by 2011 the market had collapsed: people were buying much, much larger quantities of physical bullion and coins, but the popularity of ETFs had greatly slumped. This is even clearer when the ETF market is expressed as a percentage of the physical market. So what does this say about gold now? Especially as Zhang Jianhua of the PBoC noted "No asset is safe now. The only choice to hedge risks is to hold hard currency — gold."

 

Tyler Durden's picture

First Real Greek Bailout: Electricity





While Greece has had its fair-share of EURs funneled to it and through it over the course of the last year or two, it appears they have now created their first 'internal' bailout as things go from bad to worse. As Athens News reports, Greece will provide EUR250mm in emergency funds to its ailing electricity providers to prevent a California-style energy crisis. This liquidity injection to the country's power utlities was yet another unintended consequence of government intervention action. An increasing number of consumers stopped paying their electricity bills following the TROIKA's Greek government's infliction of EUR1.7bn property taxation via the electricity providers. The main power utility PPC had a liquidity hole blown through it as non-payments mounted and while regulators claimed the system needed at least EUR350mm to stay afloat, the government has agreed to allow PPC to hold EUR250mm of the property tax it has collected on behalf of the state until June 30 - by which time, it is hoped the utility will have managed to secure other lending facilities. Quite an incredible move - to force the electricity provider to gather the property taxes - and while this attempt clearly failed we suspect the next move will be food-and-water-rationing without proof of tax payment.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Guest Post: Wealth Inequality – Spitznagel Gets It, Krugman Doesn’t





Krugmann fails to address even a single one of the arguments forwarded by Spitznagel. This is no surprise, as he has often demonstrated he does not even understand the arguments of the Austrians and moreover has frequently shown that his style of debate consists largely of attempts to knock down straw men.  After appraising us of his economic ignorance (see the idea that time preferences can actually 'go negative' implied by his argument on the natural interest rate above), he finally closes a truly Orwellian screed by claiming that everybody who is critical of the Fed and the financial elite is guilty of being 'Orwellian'. As we often say, you really couldn't make this up.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Europe's Other "Union" Is Ending





If the now failed monetary union is the soul that Europe sold to the devil countless of times in the past decade just to plunder from the future as greedily as possible, consequences of unsustainable leverage be damned, the heart of Europe was the visa-free and customs unions that allowed the continent to be as one for the vast majority of people. Yet while the end of the monetary union will not be permitted as long as there are banks which stand to go out of business should that transpire, the end of visa-free travel will hardly impact banks much if at all. Which, unfortunately, explains why while the soul of Europe, already rehypothecated countless times to the lowest bidder, is still out there somewhere, the heart has just begun what may be terminal arrhythmia which has only one sad conclusion.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Presenting The Source Of The "US-Europe Decoupling" Confusion





Over the past several months, starting with the great US stock market surge back in October 2011 which was not paralleled by virtually any other index in the world (and especially not Spain which recently breached its March 2009 low), there has been a great deal of speculation that just because the US stock market was doing "better", that the US economy has by implication "decoupled" from Europe. Well, as yesterday's GDP number showed in Q1 the economy ended up rising at a pace that was quite disappointing, but more importantly, which even Goldman admits is due for a substantial slow down in the coming months. And ironically, in the past 6 months it was not the Fed, but the ECB, that injected over $1.3 trillion in the banking system. One would think that this epic "flow" of liquidity from the central bank would result in a surge in the only metric that matters to 'Austrians', namely the expansion in money (or in this case the widest metric officially tracked on an apples to apples basis - M2). One would be very wrong. Because as the chart below shows, while US M2 has soared from the 2009 troughs, money "movement" in Europe has barely budged at all.

 

williambanzai7's picture

HeiL CISPA!





They don't know how to fix the economy, cut the deficit or eliminate government waste. But there is one they thing they sure as debt ceiling doughnutz know how to do: curtail your Constitutional rights!

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Guest Post: Does Believing In The "Recovery" Make It Real?





Does believing in the "recovery" make it real? The propaganda policies of the Federal Reserve and the Federal government are based on the hope that you'll answer "yes." The entire "recovery" is founded on the idea that if the Fed and Federal agencies can persuade the citizenry that down is up then people will hurry into their friendly "too big to fail" bank and borrow scads of money to bid up housing, buy new vehicles, and generally spend money they don't have in the delusional belief that inflation is low, wages are rising and the economy is growing.... Data is now massaged for political expediency, failure is spun into success, and consequences are shoved remorselessly onto the future generations. The entire policy of the Federal Reserve and the Federal government boils down to pushing propaganda in the hopes we'll all swallow the con and believe that down is now up and our "leadership" is a swell bunch of guys and gals instead of sociopaths who will say anything to evade the consequences of their actions and policy choices.

 

Tyler Durden's picture

Goldman Slashes April NFP To 125,000, Concerned By "FOMC’s Apparent Reluctance To Deliver"





The good days are over, at least according to Goldman's Jan Hatzius. Now that "Cash For Coolers", aka April in February or the record hot winter, has ended, aka pulling summer demand 3-6 months forward, and payback is coming with a bang, starting with what Goldman believes will be a 125,000 NFP print in April, just barely higher than the disastrous March 120,000 NFP print which launched a thousand NEW QE rumors. But before you pray for a truly horrible number which will surely price in the cremation of the USD once CTRL+P types in the launch codes, be careful: from Hatzius - "Despite the weaker numbers, we have on net become more, not less, worried about the risks to our forecast of another round of monetary easing at the June 19-20 FOMC meeting. It is still our forecast, but it depends on our expectation of a meaningful amount of weakness in the economic indicators over the next 6-8 weeks. In other words, our sense of the Fed’s reaction function to economic growth has become more hawkish than it looked after the January 25 FOMC press conference, when Chairman Bernanke saw a “very strong case” for additional accommodation under the FOMC’s forecasts. This shift is a headwind from the perspective of the risk asset markets....So the case for a successor program to Operation Twist still looks solid to us, and the FOMC’s apparent reluctance to deliver it is a concern."

 

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