Archive - Nov 2014

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.

Though, if history is anything to go by, it offers a potential for outsized returns

The referendum for the Swiss Gold Initiative is scheduled for November 30th and the propaganda war - between the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and the Swiss Parliament on one side and the Swiss People's Party (SVP) on the other - has begun and we expect it to escalate as the day draws ever nearer. Having already questioned the 'location, location, location' of Switzerland's current gold stash, and examined the initiative in great depth here, JPMorgan notes that not only might the forthcoming Swiss gold referendum stabilize gold prices at a time when Gold ETF demand continues to decline, but warns, it also appears that markets under-appreciate this event.

“A Luxembourg structure is a way of stripping income from whatever country it comes from,’’ said Stephen E. Shay, a professor of international taxation at Harvard Law School and a former tax official in the U.S. Treasury Department. The Grand Duchy, he said, “combines enormous flexibility to set up tax reduction schemes, along with binding tax rulings that are unique. It’s like a magical fairyland.”

Send The Voters Packing!!!!...