Archive - Sep 2, 2013

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As More Fukushima Leaks Are "Discovered", Japan Vows "Quick Action"





First it was "contained." Then we found out there was a "small leak." Then, after numerous media reports confirmed it, Japan admitted there was "a big leak," which only became bigger with time. Then the severity level of Fukushima was raised from level 1 to level 3, the highest since the March 2011 disaster. And now it is many leaks. According to AP, "Japan's top nuclear regulator raised safety concerns Monday about hastily built storage tanks and their foundations at the damaged Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant after signs of new leaks of radioactive water. The latest leak was found over the weekend in a connecting pipe. The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said it suspects there may also have been leaks from three storage tanks because elevated radioactivity was detected near them. The levels were not considered deadly." Oh so it was not the 1.8 sieverts/hour reported over the weekend? Maybe in the case the honorable Prime Minister can take a big swig from the supposedly undeadly water.

 

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AsiaPac Stocks Test 3-Month Highs As China Services PMI Droops To 11-Month Low





China's Manufacturing PMI printed in line with its Flash estimate last night and the Services PMI just printed at a disappointing 11-month low as the 2 segments of the economy diverge by their most on record. The 'good' news that Obama backed away from the big red button for 5 minutes (and improving European PMIs) is spurring some more catch up in Asia tonight and while critical nations like India (whose PMI was dismal) and Indonesia are still languishing, the bounce back in the last few days has pushed MSCI's AsiaPac (ex-Japan) index up to 3-month highs... Well, it's a hot-money current-account-deficit vicious cycle dip to be bought, of course. Treasuries re-opened in line with futures expectations (around 5bps higher in yield) and S&P futures are leaking very gently off this morning's exuberant heights (but remain up over 1% from Friday's close). WTI is hovering around $107 (down from Friday) but Brent is at $114.50 (slightly higher than Friday's close). Silver is holding its strong gains and gold is flat.

 

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Fiction, Fact... Or Scandal?





* * * We make no claims that any of the presented is in any way accurate or representative of the truth. It is sourced from a "hack" by €Wagn3r of what the hacker purports to be numerous emails of one Colonel Anthony James MacDonald, his wife, and various other "Pentagon officers." However, if accurate, the exposed data sheds some critical, if circumstantial, light on the events that transpired in the days ahead of the Wednesday, August 22 "nerve gas" chemical attack alleged to have been executed by Syria's president al-Assad, and presented "beyond a doubt" as such, and as the basis for full-scale military operations and "surgical strikes" targeting Syrian assets, which in the coming days will involve a Congressional vote to determine the fate of the Syrian government and ostensibly of ten of thousands of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. While we doubt the Pentagon, the US Military, or any person in the administration will officially address these "hacked" emails, the world has a right to be aware of the existence of this information, and to come their own conclusions about the veracity of the official "case" for Syrian involvement * * *

 

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Ron Paul Asks "Will Congress Endorse Obama's War Plans? And, Does It Matter?"





President Obama announced this weekend that he has decided to use military force against Syria and would seek authorization from Congress when it returned from its August break. Every Member ought to vote against this reckless and immoral use of the US military. But even if every single Member and Senator votes for another war, it will not make this terrible idea any better because some sort of nod is given to the Constitution along the way.  Besides, the president made it clear that Congressional authorization is superfluous, asserting falsely that he has the authority to act on his own with or without Congress. That Congress allows itself to be treated as window dressing by the imperial president is just astonishing... We are rapidly headed for the same collapse as the Roman Empire if we continue down the president's war path.

 

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Unrealized "Gains" On Commercial Bank "Available-For-Sale" Securities Plunge To 2009 Levels





The last time we looked at the impact of the ongoing rates blow out on banks' "available for securities" books, we found the biggest monthly drop in unrealized gains, which dropped by $24 billion in the one month in which interest rates surged by 100 bps. Nonetheless, the cumulative net unrealized number was still positive at $6 billion (down from over $43 billion). A cursory look at the most recent H8 statement shows that as a result of the recent secondary blow out in rates which threatened to take the 10 Year to 3%, the damage has continued, and as of August 21 the formerly net profit has turned into a net loss of ($16) billion. The is the most negative the AFS number for the commercial banks operating in the US, has been since late 2009. 

 

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Monday Humor: How Glenn Greenwald Killed The Internet





You know the Internet is in trouble when people start taking plane flights to deliver messages.  After Glenn Greenwald's partner was detained for nine hours and stripped of all his computer gear, it's clearly time to look at new ways of communicating...

 

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"Sentimentals" Versus Fundamentals





We would be the first to espouse the view that, in speculative markets, the 'sentimentals' can long trump the fundamentals, but there is a counterpoint to such a projection, not that many wish to countenance it. The dispiriting truth is that some of the steam has already gone out of the US and were this to continue to be the case, given that esteemed institution’s pathological aversion to short-term difficulty, the Fed's "taper" might yet prove an all too short-lived gesture in the direction of a belated restoration of monetary sanity. As the following 3 charts suggest, equity 'sentimental' valuations are at extremes and fundamentals are deteriorating rapidly, making for an uncomfortable rock- and hard-place-straddle for a Fed that faces 4 reasons it has to Taper (sentiment, deficits, technicals, and international resentment).

 

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Commander-In-Chief Caption Contest(s)





It's a holiday, so today we have two for the price of one... well zero.

 

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Guest Post: Labor Day 2013 - How To Get And Keep A Job In A Fast-Changing Economy





In the 21st century economy, if you want to stay employed, seek out a field that is ascending rather than declining. Most people understand that technology is fundamentally changing the nature of work and employment. These changes are also having a profound effect on the state of the US economy...

 

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The Hemisphere Project (f/k/a Hudson Hawk): The Latest Spy Scandal Involving 4 Billion Recorded Phone Calls Per Day





It is convenient that in a recent post covering the latest historic Verizon M&A deal we showed a spaghetti chart, created by the WSJ, of the US telecom space because it lays roughly how many current subscribers that other US telecom giant, AT&T, has.  The reason for this is that according to the latest revelations from the NYT, which following recent work-sharing with the Guardian is now another official distributor of the Edward Snowden leaks (who in a brilliant move has decided to spread out his disclosures week after week, many times allowing such staggered disclosures to catch the administration - which has no idea what is coming next - in flagrant lies), the chart above shows that 140 million landline and wireless paying AT&T customers is the minimum number of affected Americans whose every call is recorded, however not directly or indirectly by the government, but rather by a private corporation working in collaboration with the US government.

The name of the collaboration: the Hemisphere Project, fomerly Hudson Hawk.

 

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Harvard Research Shows 'Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People'





In an inconvenient truth moment for the anti-gun lobby, Harvard's Don Kates and Gary Mauser expose the facts behind gun control and violent crime. While not the first time we have discussed this awkward reality, the depth of the academics' datasets and the findings are unquestionable that there is in fact a "negative correlation" between violence and gun ownership. As they state, "where firearms are most dense violent crime rates are lowest, and where guns are least dense violent crime rates are highest," concluding that "The burden of proof rests on the proponents of the more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death mantra, especially since they argue public policy ought to be based on that mantra... But those correlations are not observed when a large number of nations are compared across the world."

 

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Syrian S-300 Surface-To-Air Missile Propaganda Video





Because nothing says "bring it on" like CGI-aircraft explosions and a dozen dancing Syrian soldiers...

 

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Verizon Seals Second Largest M&A Deal In History





Vodafone is to sell its 45% stake in Verizon Wireless to Verizon for $130bn in cash and stock, subject to regulatory approvals, comprising $61.4bn in cash and assumption of net liabilities, $60.2bn in stock (within a $47-51 per share collar), $5bn in a VZ loan note and $3.5bn ascribed to VZ’s 23.1% stake in Vodafone Italy. As the WSJ reports, this is the second-largest ever behind another Vodafone deal - the $172 billion acquisition of Mannesmann AG in 1999 (which is somewhat ironic in its largesse and timing). The cash component - nearly twice the state budget of Verizon Wireless's New Jersey home - is by far the largest amount of cash ever deployed in an acquisition and will be financed by 4 $15 billion 'bridge loans', "until more permanent financing can be found over the next 12 to 18 months." Of course, we assume investors will be over-subscribing to the higher-leveraged firm's bonds (just like they did with AAPL but 4 times bigger!)

 

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Chart Of The Day: Happy Unlabor Day





What's Labor Day to the 130 million not working?

 
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