Archive - Mar 11, 2013

If you recall, Winston Smith’s job in George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 was to go into historical records and literally change history.  He would alter photographs and text in the archives so that history would always portray “The Party” in a positive light and as omniscient.  Well folks, this behavior has arrived in America and we better nip it in the bud fast before one of these drones is flying right over our heads. "As scrutiny and debate over the use of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) by the American military increased last month, the Air Force reversed a policy of sharing the number of airstrikes launched from RPAs in Afghanistan and quietly scrubbed those statistics from previous releases kept on their website. On Sunday, U.S. Central Command said in a statement that the decision was made to remove the statistics because the data disproportionately places emphasis on the airstrikes. The majority of the RPA missions are for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, with a small percent involving airstrikes."

U.S. equity markets rallied once again after opening weaker Monday repeating previous performances. There wasn’t much news domestically. The Fed continued modest POMO actions which will grow in scope throughout the week. Stocks were quiet most of the day but got a lift on rumors that Apple (AAPL) will declare a dividend of some kind. If they do this, then the SEC should be monitoring who and what groups were front-running this piece of news.

The topic of Illinois' various insolvent pension systems is not news to regular Zero Hedge readers. One needs but to recall our articles from mid/late 2010: "61% Underfunded Illinois Teachers Pension Fund Goes For Broke, Becomes Next AIG-In-Waiting By Selling Billions In CDS", "Illinois' Pension Fund Death Spiral Revisited: "10 Years Of Money Left" or "Illinois Teachers' Retirement System Enters The Death Spiral: AIG Wannabe's Go-For-Broke Strategy Fails As Pension Fund Begins Liquidations" in which we clearly explained how the state's teachers pension fund was systematically doing everything in its power to mask its massive underfunding, and the fact that it was rapidly running out of money. The retiremnet fund, in turn, took things very personally, prompting Dave Urbanek, Public Information Officer at the Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois (TRS), to write an impassioned response to Zero Hedge denying all allegations. Today, over two years after the above news, the SEC finally concluded their analysis of one part of the massively underfunded Illinois Pension system and found the Illinois failed to inform investors about the impact of problems with its pension funding schedule as the state offered and sold more than $2.2 billion worth of municipal bonds from 2005 to early 2009. The SEC also said Illinois failed to disclose that it had underfunded the state's pension obligations, increasing the risk to its overall financial condition.

Because having legal authority to buy corporate bonds, ETFs and REITs, in addition to everything else the Fed now buys, is apparently not enough to crush, mangle and suicide its currency, the BOJ is now considering adding yet another "asset" to its cocktail of eligible securities for purchase: those which Buffett once declared weapons of mass financial destruction - derivatives.

Record Dow Jones, record US debt ($16,701,846,937,879.74), and now, once more, record number of Americans on foodstamps. According to the USDA, an all time high of 47,791,966 Americans closed 2012 in possession of the highly desired Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card, managed by who else but JPMorgan. And with a civilian non-institutional population of 244.4 million in December, this means that a record 19.56% of eligible Americans are on Foodstamps.

a/k/a Muammar Bloomberg...

Presenting the VIX. Or rather, highlighting the grotesque and blatant last second "banging the close" of the VIX. Thank you Simon Potter and your protege, Kevin Henry, for providing countless hours of sideline entertainment, and lamentation for what was once a stock market.

When we summarized the overnight session just before 7 am, we titled it appropriately enough, "No Melt Up (Yet) In Boring Overnight Trading." Little did we know, actually scratch that - we knew full well that moments later the ramp would make its now daily reappearance. Because if it weren't for the 7th straight day of no volume, no news levitation, someone, somewhere may have gotten the impression that the market is desperately manipulated and artificial, and that if it weren't for a constant ramp higher, confidence in authoritarian "markets" may disappear, and the retail investor may pull even more than was pulled last week, following a brief inflow in the market in early 2013.

We believe @nychealthy has the legal authority and responsibility to tackle causes of the obesity epidemic, which kills 5,000 NYers a year.

— NYC Mayor's Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) March 11, 2013

Worse Than Ever?

Just hitting the tape ahead of tomorrow's scheduled hit of Bloomberg's ban on "large sugary drinks":

Judge invalidates New York City's ban on large sugary drinks; ban had been scheduled to take effect tomorrow.
Judge says sugar drink limit "illegal"
Judge finds ban to be arbitrary and capricious.

Has the time come to ban independently thinking judicial authorities who don't agree with multi-term Spanish-speaking authoritarians?

Oil? Financials? Aerospace? When someone asks who the biggest sources of lobby dollars for DC's politicians-for-purchase are, these are the three usual suspects that come to mind. Some may, therefore, be surprised to learn according to the database kept by OpenSecrets between Pharmaceutical and health product industry, hospital and nursing homes, health professionals and health services, HMOs, or more broadly Pharma/Healthcare/HMO, the total lobby dollars spent between 1998 and 2012 was a staggering $5.3 billion, or nearly three times greater than the second most generous industry: insurance, and well above Oil and Gas at $1.4 billion, and Securities and Investment at $1.0 billion. Is it becoming clearer why the US government has few qualms about unsustainable taxpayer funded healthcare spending, especially when there are so many current benefits accruing to the politicians who see so many billions in benefits from passing lobby-friendly laws now (by which we mean generous taxpayer funding, the bulk of which benefits the healthcare industry's bottom line)? As for the costs: who cares - just dump them on future generations. It's not like anyone expects the $16.7 trillion in US debt to be ever repaid.

Hello-ello-ello...

In just a week's time, the political elite in the Land of the Free gave us bills which:

1. ensure the government cannot assassinate its own citizens with drones
2. impose price controls with insurance premiums
3. award the government with more power to initiate biosurveillance operations
4. create a quota system in the labor market

It really makes me wonder... how much more will it take for people to notice how rapidly they're losing freedom, or how destructive the political leadership is?

“‘Devaluing a currency,’ one senior Federal Reserve official once told me, ‘is like peeing in bed. It feels good at first, but pretty soon it becomes a real mess.’”

—Francesco Guerrera, The Wall Street Journal, 4 Feb 2013.