Archive - Nov 9, 2014

As reported previously, and as had been suspected for years, the gold manipulation cartel is slowly breaking apart, and courtesy of the FT, we now know at least one individual directly implicated in Swiss gold-rigging: the former head of UBS's gold desk in Zurich, André Flotron. So as part of our diligence, because apparently no other media will touch the topic of gold rigging until and unless it is shoved in their face on a, ahem, silver platter, because after all the subject matter is just too "conspiratorial", we decided to ask Mr. Flotron some on the record questions, and sent him an email. This is the response we got...

A normalization effort is going to then basically expose that the stock market is roughly overvalued by 100%? "100%, yes. I actually think the case is a little bit harsher than that; in fact, quite a bit harsher than that."

By continuously intervening in all of the markets, the Fed has destroyed the information transmission system that is built into freely trading markets. Time is starting to run out for ability of the U.S. to keep kicking the can of collapse down the road. We’ve come full circle, only with China in the Midas throne this time around.  Eventually the world is going to revert back to a gold-backed currency system.  When this happens, the U.S. will be required to demonstrate that it possesses the amount of gold that it reports to own. The only caveat here is that we believe that the U.S. will start WW3 before it’s forced to reveal the truth about its empty gold vault. That’s how broken our system really is…

Despite testifying that she wasn’t informed of the deadly ignition-switch problem until late December 2013, The Wall Street Journal reports that, according to emails it has obtained, GM ordered a half-million replacement ignition switches almost two months before it alerted federal safety regulators to any problems. Who was in charge of GM purchasing at this time? Mary Barra. As WSJ concludes, the switch order, nearly two months before GM told NHTSA of the need for recall in early February, suggests the company took initial concrete action to address the defect, but outside of scrutiny by regulators and vehicle owners.

Following Friday's notable weakness in USDCNY (the biggest drop in the market rate since March and an abrupt change of recent trend), and trade data this weekend, the PBOC appears to have decided to try and put a stop to any weakness and smashed the USDCNY Fix lower by 0.37% - its biggest 'stronger CNY' adjustment since 2010 - when the Fed initially ended QE1 (and 2nd biggest shift since Lehman). Of course, we are sure it is nothing but a storm in a teacup that the largest economy in the world just re-valued its currrency fix by the most in 4 years... just days after the end of QE3 and the BoJ's insanity... but as we warned previously, "we think that for China in particular this latest BoJ action is perceived as an aggressive provocation that must be responded to forcefully." We note also that Japan's Abe and China's Xi are due to meet on Wednesday and perhaps this is a tactical move in that chess game.

"China should accumulate 8,500 tonnes in official gold reserves - more than the US... Gold is money par excellence in all circumstances and will help support the renminbi to become an international currency as gold forms the very material basis for modern fiat currencies"

The following two charts cut right through the headline propaganda and show all there is to know about the state of the global economy. The first is a chart of Global Cyclicals stocks (Goldman ticker GSSBGCYC). The second shows Global Defensives (Goldman ticker GSSBGDEF). The resulting picture is worth 1000 Op-Eds welcoming you to yet another "global recovery."

Friday gave us a rare glimpse inside one of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Jobs Centers (courtesy of CNBC)... Perhaps, as the following screengrab indicates, this is why the American unemployed's "re-training" is not preparing them for life in the new economy?

"So there is a failure of politics there that we've got to improve on."

"This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard." - Who Said It?

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has a problem. Despite his best legal and propoganda defenses (and harsh weather conditions) today's symbolioc vote for Catalonia independence proceeded... and the initial results (with 88% of the vote counted) are in:

*TURNOUT IN CATALAN BALLOT WAS ABT 2.25 MLN, GOVT SAYS; 81% BACK INDEPENDENCE

The Spanish government is saying the "data is not valid" and is investigating the illegal ballot calling it a "useless sham." Catalan President Mas says pro-independence parties will meet this week to put pressure on Madrid.

Get to work!

Spoiler alert: it's not the Fed, even though the portfolio rebalancing channel courtesy of a $4.5 trillion Fed balance sheet certainly assured that the artificially inflated bubble in stocks, as a result of the Fed's own purchases of bonds, is unlike anything seen before (and to all those debating whether the bubble is in bonds or stocks, here is the answer: it is in both). The answer, according to Goldman's David Kostin is the following: "From a strategic perspective, buybacks have been the largest source of overall US equity demand in recent years."

We often hear that if there is not enough oil at a given price, the situation will lead to substitution or to demand destruction. Because of the networked nature of the economy, this demand destruction comes about in a different way than most economists expect–it comes from fewer people having jobs with good wages. With lower wages, it also comes from less debt being available. We end up with a disparity between what consumers can afford to pay for oil, and the amount that it costs to extract the oil. This is the problem we are facing today, and it is a very difficult issue.

Our technological culture seems to place us firmly in conflict with time itself. The rush to cram as much as possible into as small a slice of time as we can seems to be the holy grail these days, and the pace is accelerating exponentially.