Archive - Nov 21, 2013

It is often said there only two kinds of people in this world: those who know, and those who don’t. We would expand on this and say that there are actually three kinds of people: those who know, those who don’t know, and those who don’t care to know. Members of the last group are the kind of people we would characterize as “sheeple.” Sheeple are members of a culture or society who are not necessarily oblivious to the reality of their surroundings; they may have been exposed to valuable truths on numerous occasions. However, when confronted with facts contrary to their conditioned viewpoint, they become aggressive and antagonistic in their behavior, seeking to dismiss and attack the truth by attacking the messenger and denying reason.  Sheeple exist on both sides of America's false political paradigm, and they exist in all social "classes". We cannot imagine an existence more deserving of pity and remorse than that of the sheeple.

So what does the data show when there are an extreme low number of Investor Intelligence bears?

With less than 6 weeks left to the end of the year, the S&P 500 has reached its "richest" nominal price relative to the average Wall Street strategist's forecast. The last time the 'market' over-reached like this was in mid-May, right before the exuberance of a non-taper-believing investor-class was popped (oh so briefly).

The best silver lining Goldman Sachs found when faced with the total and utter collapse in their global leading indicator swirlogram was - (probably) stabilizing. The only improving factor across all their global economic components was the US initial jobless claims (and that has been a farce wrapped in a debacle for 2 months of 'glitches'). Having led global industrial production for a few months, it seems the indicator is crashing back to reality as the summer's hopefulness is exsanguinated from hard and soft data around the world.

Peter Schiff is sympathetic "with what [bitcoin] is trying to achieve," but as he explains in this brief clip he believes, "they are using the wrong vehicle." After rising from less than $20 to more than $600 in one year, many investors are wondering if bitcoin might be worth the risk, Schiff adds, nothing that early adopters pitch bitcoin as "gold 2.0" – a digital currency that cannot be manipulated like fiat money. Bitcoins are even "mined," similar to physical gold and silver (and are scarce and divisble); but as Schiff explains, bitcoins still fail as a substitute for gold and strongly urges investors to avoid this risky new currency. Bitcoin could very well have already hit its top, but Peter is confident gold is still well below its future record highs.

In every country we can think of, the sovereignty and wealth of the Nation, which was once the embodiment of the power and will of the people,  is being butchered and sold to the highest bidder. Everywhere, the Nation and the people within it, are under attack. Not from without by terrorists but from within. Because in every country the people who run the State have largely decided they no longer wish to serve the people but prefer instead to serve the interests of a Global Over-Class. Of course we are not encouraged to see this clearly or if we do, certainly not to speak of it to others. And many of those we might try to talk to, do not want to hear.

With the duration of the current bull market now the 4th longest in history, we thought it worth noting just how unusual this business cycle has been. As the following chart shows, the current 'expansion' has lasted longer than 80% of all the 33 previous NBER expansionary periods. Of course, given projections from Wall Street to the Fed, there will never be another recession (by decree) ever again...

"All fixed"

Outspoken MEP Daniel Hannan summed up the day's political machinations rather aptly

Did I hear that properly? Obama doesn't like how the US Constitution works, because it's getting in his way?

— Daniel Hannan (@DanHannanMEP) November 21, 2013

A new opportunity to play "What's wrong with this picture" arose recently, with Larry Summers’ recent speech at the IMF and Paul Krugman’s follow-up blog. The two economists’ messages are slightly different, but combining them into one fictional character we shall call SK, their comments can be summed up "...essentially, we need to manufacture bubbles to achieve full employment equilibrium." With this new line of reasoning, SK have completely outdone themselves, but not in a good way. Think Jamie Dimon’s infamous “that’s why I’m richer than you” quip. Or, Bill Dudley’s memorable “but the price of iPads is falling” excuse for increases in basic living costs. Dimon and Dudley managed to encapsulate in single sentences much of what’s wrong with their institutions. Yet, they showed baffling ignorance of faults that are clear to the rest of us.

Perhaps this should have been a "Humor" post but in possibly the most ironic news story of the day, New York-based SEC employee Steven Gilchrist was charged with three counts of making false statements regarding the nature of his personal financial holdings. As WSJ reports, the 48-year-old compliance examiner at the agency, allegedly certified that his stock holdings were in compliance with the agency's ethics rules, when in reality he had held shares of six companies that agency staffers are barred from holding. The SEC is "very disappointed that an employee allegedly made false statements to conceal prohibited holdings after being told by our ethics office to divest." Gilchrist, unlike Cohen, faces a maximum 15 year sentence!

When Barack Obama, floundering in the endless humiliation from the disastrous rollout of Obamacare, gave the country's insurance  companies the "put option" to reject the one-year "cancellation" extension fix stemming from the whole "if you like your plan, you can keep it, period" fiasco, he committed a cardinal sin - he lost control of the situation, because from that point onward the decision was no longer in his court. Furthermore, due to the syndicate nature of insurance companies and state insurance commissioners implementing Obamacare, suddenly the decision was subject to game theoretical facets including cooperation and defection, or rather just defection since at this point the biggest spoils would go to whoever had the initial leverage or rather, defiance of the president. Sure enough, California just flopped on Obama's most recent flip when the state, moments ago, rejected Obama's proposed fix to allow legacy plans to survive for one additional year. Welcome to socialist central planning 101 - where everything that can go wrong, sooner or later does.

France’s General de Gaulle once said that the only thing that would unite Europe would be China. At the time he was probably visionary in the knowledge that the Europeans would never unite.

David Einhorn begins his discussion on the market warning that "certain aspects of the market are very much in bubble,"  with investors "dismissing valuation metrics." "The market is confused," between useful products and real profit streams, he suggests for a number of headline-grabbing higly speculative names. More broadly, Einhorn believes real damage has been done by Fed policy, and is "not convinced if or when they will ever taper." Crucially, he adds, we may see another rollover/recession and "the Fed will pour more fuel on the fire." The cognitive bias he exposes is that most people believe the Fed policy is supporting the economy (in some way), whereas (as we noted here) there are real costs and as Einhorn notes "Fed policy is a headwind to the economy," as he quantifies the hundreds of billions in lost interest income relative to wealth gains. Owning gold makes sense, he adds, "in case they lose control."

We wish we could say we didn't warn Boeing's machinists about the key trend taking place in the US economy under the Obama "recovery" but unfortunately we did. Three years ago, to be specific, when we wrote: "Charting America's Transformation To A Part-Time Worker Society" and followed it up with "A "Quality Assessment" Of US Jobs Reveals The Ugliest Picture Yet" in which we explained that while the propaganda machine was fixated on numeric, quantitative, job additions every month, what has subversively going on, was the constant deterioration in the quality of jobs - and specifically the declining wages - available to those Americans who had not rotated outside of the labor force permanently (currently at a record 91.5 million). We say "alas" because it once again took several years before our cautions to be felt by the broader population, in this case the Boeing machinist union struggling to extract a wage increase from its employer: Boeing, whose stock keeps hitting new record highs with every passing day.