Archive - Aug 4, 2012

Welcome to the beautiful and surreal reality of life under American corporatism, under a Congress that churns out thousands  and thousands of pages of (often contradictory) legislation a year. If providing material assistance to al-Qaeda is illegal under the National Defence Authorization Act (2012), and Obama and Congress are sending $25 million of aid to al-Qaeda-affiliated Syrian opposition, aren’t Congress and President Obama violating their own law? Should Obama (or at least the Justice Department) not be using “all necessary and appropriate force” including “the power to indefinitely detain” to prevent Obama and Congress from assisting al-Qaeda? Did anyone in Congress or the Obama administration even bother to read the law that they were signing? Do Federal laws no longer apply to lawmakers?

The 2012 Olympics was shaping up as Ryan Lochte's breakout year, and in many respects it was. But more than anything, the London Olympics turned out to be the swan song of Michael Phelps, who hours ago completed his final Olympic event and retired from the sport of swimming where is now inducted in perpetuity into the swimming hall of fame with not only a record 18 Olympic gold medals, twice as many more as any other Olympian, in a career that stretches from Athens through Beijing and concludes with London, but a record 22 medals of all colors. What was Phelps final tally in the 2012 Olympics, how does that compare to Lochte's total, and how did the London Olympic swim times compare to Bejing? The infographic below will answer all questions.

While Mario Draghi has done wonders to expose his total and utter lack of credibility - no matter how much spin is pushed at us - it seems that equity analysts still (somewhat remarkably) move markets and remain credible in the eyes of what we assume is an entirely cognitively dissonant self-perpetuating market-structure in need of 'excuses'. To wit, the following chart, from Strategas, which illustrates perfectly the herd-like upward-biased and constant shift in year after year of S&P 500 earnings expectations that quickly and inexorably smashes lower in the face of the reality of a crushed credit cycle and 'whocouldanode' recessions/stagnations. It seems we (as investors) and they (as shills analysts) will never learn - or maybe we all will this time (as it's never different!).

Will the Peasants Go Medieval?

There has been much confusion over last week's remarks by Mario Draghi, with the prevailing narrative being that the market first got what Draghi meant wrong (when it plunged), then right (when it soared). The confusion is further granulated by attempts to explain what was merely a desperate attempt at delaying a decision for action, which was inevitable considering the now open opposition by Buba's Weidmann, into a formal and planned plotline: "Inverse Twist" or other such technical jargon is what we have seen floating around. The reality is that, just like all other central bankers, Draghi did what he does best: use big words and threats of action in hope it will buy him a few extra days of time. The reality is also that, just like when the LTRO was announced, the market did get it right initially, when peripheral bonds plunged, and got it wrong over the subsequent 3 months when bond prices rose, only to collapse to new lows (and in the case of Spain - record high yields as of two weeks ago). Back then, the ECB merely bought a few months time with its transitory intervention. This time it has at best bought a few days with the lack of any actual action. And yet, Draghi did leave a way out, for at least another brief respite (where unless Europe expands the available bailout machinery yet again, the respite will have an even briefer half life than that from the LTROs). The way out is simple, and in order to avoid any confusion, we will use an allegory from the movie Batman: Spain and Italy can be saved. But first they must be destroyed.

Kirk Sorensen, NASA-trained engineer, is a man on a mission to open minds to the tremendous promise that thorium, a near-valueless element in today's marketplace, may offer in meeting future world energy demand. Compared to Uranium-238-based nuclear reactors currently in use today, a liquid flouride thorium reactor (LTFR) would be:

• Much safer - no risk of environmental radiation contamination or plant explosion (e.g. Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three-Mile Island)
• Much more efficient at producing energy - over 90% of the input fuel would be tapped for energy; vs <1% in today's reactors
• Less waste-generating - most of the radioactive by-products would take days/weeks to degrade to safe levels, vs centuries
• Much cheaper - reactor footprints and infrastructure would be much smaller, and could be constructed in modular fashion
• More plentiful - LFTR reactors do not need to be located next to large water supplies, as current plants do
• Less controversial - the byproducts of the thorium reaction are pretty useless for weaponization
• Longer-lived - thorium is much more plentiful than uranium and treated as valueless today. There is virtually no danger of running out of it given LFTR plant efficiency 

Most of the know-how and technology to build and maintain LFTR reactors exists today. If made a priority, the US could have its first fully-operational LFTR plant running at commercial scale in under a decade.

Some odds and ends, plus a very scary report on China

A few days ago we wrote that "Greece Runs Out Of Money. Again" because it did. The country, which is permanently locked out of the bond markets, would be down to a negative cash balance as soon as its August bond payment to the ECB was made. The reason is that the Troika continues to delay its decision. whether or not to hand over Greece its next monthly allowance. So with the country threatening to once again be on the front page as math rears its ugly head, the ECB has decided to take the bold step and admit that in lieu of even remotely credible collateral pledged and repledged in the ponzi repo system, the ECB has no choice but to expand the universe of eligible "collateral" against which it will provide cash. From Reuters: "The ECB's Governing Council agreed at its meeting on Thursday to increase the upper limit for the amount of Greek short-term loans the Bank of Greece can accept in exchange for emergency loans, the newspaper said in an advance copy of the article due to appear in its Saturday edition."

Here in Britain, we hear the word competition a lot. Since Margaret Thatcher, there has been a general trend — in the name of competition — toward the selling-off of utilities such as water, railway, electricity and telecoms providers. More recently, there has been a trend toward government services being provided by private companies, such as the bungled Olympic security arrangements contracted out to multinational security giant G4S, as well as work capability assessments contracted out to French IT consultancy ATOS, and the contracting-out of some medical services. The way this works is that the government provides the funding for services, which private sector companies then bid to undertake. This is also the way in which defence contractors have historically competed for defence contracts, a sector which is renowned worldwide for its profligacy, waste and inefficiency. This is a bizarre arrangement. Competing for government contracts is nothing like the free market. In a true market environment businesses compete for the custom of individuals based on their ability to provide the best products and services.

If the political tsunami underway in Maine is any indicator, the November 2012 election will be fascinating and unpredictable