Archive - Jun 8, 2013

A harbinger of things to come in other markets

Demand for Warren Buffett, the investor, peaked in 2012 when an anonymous donor bid $3,456,789 for the annual Glide Foundation's eBay lunch with the Octogenarian of Omaha. Demand for Warren Buffett, 82, the Obama tax and fairness advisor, however, is a mere fraction as the stunned Glide Foundation found out last night when the final bid for the "Power Lunch for 8 with Warren Buffett to Benefit GLIDE Foundation" auction closed at the lowest possible 6 digit increment, or an embarrassing $1,000,100. This was the lowest demand to have lunch with Buffett since 2007. This is a stunning result considering that with every passing year, for obvious reasons, the likelihood of many more such "power lunches" drops exponentially. We hope Buffett-demand is not a proxy leading indicator for the stock market or else a 71% plunge is coming.

China continues to be stuck between an external hot money flows rock and a contracting economy and unstable banking sector hard place... Thanks to the G-0 central planners, the PBOC's hands are now tied: if it injects more hot money or lowers the interest rate the inflation on the margins, which it has so far been able to mask will spill over into the streets in a repeat of 2011, and force an even more epic scramble for inflation protection than the one seen two years ago, and which led to gold rising to just shy of $2000. Naturally, at a time when the central planners have gone all in on precipitating the Great Rotation out of bonds and into stocks at all costs, a re-exodus into gold might just end the Keynesian experiment. So the China central bank has that to contend with as well.Which means one thing: in reality Chinese credit and liquidity is in far worse shape than reported. And sure enough, over the past 24 hours we got news courtesy of Bloomberg that the "China Liquidity Squeeze Risks Companies’ Debt Rollover" leading to what may be the first harbinger of a Chinese bank failure which may subsequently lead to a whole lot of dominoes falling.

Here is my weekly outlook for the major foreign currencies.  Yes they are not backed by silver or gold, it is still the largest of the major captial markets at an estimated turn-over of some $4 trillion a day.  Yes, officials may try to guide the market directly and indirectly, but success is often elusive.   

They are playing a game...

Top NSA Official: Government Tapping CONTENT, Not Just Metadata … Using Bogus “Secret Interpretation” of Patriot Act