Archive - Oct 18, 2013

That's right, you heard what I said...Anti-Radiation Underwear!

But I never thought it wise to sell it, because for central banks this is a reserve of safety, it’s viewed by the country as such. In the case of non-dollar countries it gives you a value-protection against fluctuations against the dollar, so there are several reasons, risk diversification and so on.

The whole fulcrum of the bloated American state is beyond ready for a radical deconstruction. The same goes for most nation-states in the West. The continual borrowing, serviced indiscreetly by an accommodating central bank, has made an entirety of the populace fat and happy off of debt. This is no realistic method for operating any institution. Something has to give eventually. Any conservative who places high value on civil society over the intrusion of government should balk at the prospect of a higher debt load. It makes certain that the ruling political class will not cease in their effort to infiltrate private life. Unfortunately it appears as if some otherwise sharp minds have fallen prey to the liberal device of alarmism.

We already highlighted the return of gold lease rates to subzero yesterday, during the dramatic spike in gold following Gartman's latest sell recommendation. Now, it is time for the banks to also begin admitting that, as SocGen has just pointed out, the gold "physical squeeze returns."

The corks are popping, new valuation metrics are confirming the buy signals, and everyone's a stock-picking genius... that is the image projected by CNBC USA (and Europe) as the Russell 2000 is now up 30.6% year-to-date. However, we can only imagine the elation, exuberance, and ecstasy that would be seen day in and day out in at CNBC Venezuela as the Caracas Stock Index rises its most in a month to a new all-time record high and is now up 312.5% year-to-date...

People need to be aware that worsening the situation of one class of tax payers is never going to improve the situation of another. The particular wealth tax proposal mentioned by the IMF en passant is odious in the extreme, especially as the wealth to be taxed has already been taxed at what are historically stratospheric rates. It is noteworthy that the alternatives discussed by the IMF for heavily indebted states which are weighed down by the wasteful spending of yesterday appear to have been reduced to 'default' (either outright or via hyperinflation) or 'more confiscation'. How about rigorously cutting spending instead? Lastly, a popular as well as populist target of the self-appointed arbiters of 'fairness' are loopholes, but as we have previously discussed, they are to paraphrase Mises 'what allows capitalism to breathe'. Closing them will in the end only lead to higher costs for consumers, less innovation, lower growth and considerable damage to retirement savings.

Earlier this month, we highlighted the fact that the Carlyle Group was the latest in a series of “smart money” private equity firms to decide it was time to exit the suddenly extremely crowded “buy-to rent” residential real estate trade. Well it appears Carlyle has already started to make its move. In case you can’t figure out what appears to be the key logic behind the shift in focus, try this line on for size:

Because the cost of relocating a home is expensive, residents are less likely to move away. “Our customers have no alternative shot at homeownership, nor do they [normally] even have the credit scores and quality to seek anything better,” Mr. Rolfe said. “They never leave the park they are in, and the revenues are unbelievably stable as a result.”

In neo-feudalistic America, always, always go long serfdom.

While Bloomberg's BusinessWeek division is no stranger to provocative covers (here, here and here), it will be interesting to see what reactions among a growing segment of the US population, those that don't believe that unsustainable, reserve currency-threatening spending like a drunken sailor is the equivalent of "wealth creation", its latest cover (to the following story) will provoke: namely, the "crazy", "deadender" tea party.

Perhaps no (albeit brief) conversation sums up how the debacle of the last couple of weeks started than the following exchange that took place on October 2nd, according to Politico,

Obama: "John, What Happened"

 

Boehner: "I Got Overrun, That's What Happened"

The question, prompted by the shutdown in the face of Boehner's pledge to avoid it, set the scene for what Politico notes was a fiscal drama set on a series of complicated relationships. A look back reveals how Republicans waged a fight on Obamacare that their leaders knew they would probably lose but pushed anyways because many in their ranks truly believed that Democrats, like they’ve done so often before, would fold - especially under the threat of an historic default on U.S. debt.

Five years after the "recovery" began, the Fed continues to monetize more debt as part of QE3 than at any time in history, and certainly more than during QE1, Twist, and QE2, as can be seen on the chart below (remember: all that matters is the flow, as we noted well over a year ago, and as even the Fed has finally realized).Why is this important? Because as even the Treasury has now admitted, the Fed's daily liquidity injections are all that matters. Of note: in the just completed week, the Fed's balance sheet increased by over $50 billion (again, in one week), by $100 billion in the past month, and by just shy of $1 trillion in the past year. Incidentally, this is "money" that continues to not make its way into the economy, and every single "reserve" dollar created by the Fed in exchange for monetization, is used by banks to ramp asset prices to now daily record levels.

Presented with little comment aside to note that Google (3rd largest market cap in the S&P 500) is now up 13% on the day... (at $1007.40)

The Dow has been the laggard in all the recent exuberance and opened down this morning once again (as IBM slips a little lower). It seems the 15,380 ("Summers is Out") level is key resistance for now...

The rate of false positives limits the effectiveness of any predictive system. The process of attempting to eliminate false positives is inherently one of diminishing return: even with no expense spared, the effort to eliminate false positives runs into boundaries of signal noise and generation of false positives. To the degree that financial markets are ultimately predictive systems, this suggests a systemic cause of "unexpected" market crashes: signal noise and the intrinsic generation of false positives lead to a false sense of confidence in the system's stability and its ability to predict continued stability.

In what is a staggering example of not only state meddling in the affairs of the "free press", but worse, sheer state idiocy, yesterday the WSJ posted an article on its website revealing that as many as 24 co-conspirators would be exposed shortly in the ongoing Libor manipulation scandal and divulging the names of various individuals on this list. What promptly followed was truly bizarre. As the WSJ reports shortly after posting the article, "a British judge ordered the Journal and David Enrich, the newspaper's European banking editor, to comply with a request by the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office prohibiting the newspaper from publishing names of individuals not yet made public in the government's ongoing investigation into alleged manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor." This happened at 7:18 pm London time, after the original WSJ article had already hit the Internet.  What's worse: the names had already been made public, and through this statist intervention, it only assured that everyone would now read just who was on the list.