Archive - Dec 1, 2014

"Many reasonable analysts understand that there is a widening gap between the global ambitions of the US Administration and the country’s real potential. The world is changing and, as has always happened in history, at some point somebody’s influence and power reach their peak and then somebody begins to develop still faster and more effectively. One should study history and proceed from realities. The seven developing economies headed by BRICS already have a bigger GDP than the Western G7. One should proceed from the facts of life, and not from a misconceived sense of one’s own grandeur."

Yep that should do it...

"This is a golden time window to acquire more strategic oil at lower costs," notes one Hong-Kong based analyst, as Bloomberg confirms what we have noted here and here, that China is emerging as the winner from OPEC’s battle with rival oil producers as the world’s biggest energy consumer stockpiles crude.

Once again the cyclical patterns in US macro data are re-emerging as extrapolated hopes fade into mean-reverting credit-impulse-hangover-driven realities. Despite all the hopes and dreams of escape velocity, cleanest-dirty-shirt-wearing economic enthusiasts, year-to-date performance of Citi's US Macro Surprise index is at its lowest level since 2008. Whether this is absolute weakness or relative weakness (versus yet more over-enthusiastic expectations) is unclear though, the Midterm election results and NFR Black Friday spending data may be a hint.

Over four centuries ago, the Dutch East India Company made history as the world’s first IPO. Known as VOC in the Netherlands, the company was one of the most successful ventures in the last several hundred years. When adjusted for inflation, its highest market capitalization would be worth over $7 TRILLION today (i.e. ten times the size of Apple).

You will note something quite interesting: up until October 2011, commodities and equities had an awfully strong positive correlation.

Earlier today, in a stunning announcement, Putin revealed that the South Stream project is now finished. As the WSJ reports, "Putin said Moscow will stop pursuing Gazprom’s South Stream pipeline project that would supply natural gas to Europe with an underwater link to Bulgaria, blaming the European Union for scuttling the project." Putin is right: Europe - Austria excluded - had seen rising resistance to the South Stream in recent months. The EU is concerned that the project would cement Russia’s position as Europe’s dominant supplier of natural gas. Russia already meets around 30% of Europe’s annual needs. So what does Putin do? He signs a strategic alliance with NATO member Turkey, the only country in Europe that is anything but European and which lately has been increasingly anti-Western, to build a new mega-pipeline to Turkey instead. And the exclamation point:

TURKEY, RUSSIA AGREE TO USE LOCAL CURRENCIES IN TRADE: TRT

Or, as Obama would put it, Russia just got even more "isolated."

With a market capitalization of around $16 trillion, the NYSE Composite Index is a massively broad equity indicator less affected by the day to day gyrations of AAPL, TSLA, BABA, or NFLX. As NewEdge's Brad Wishak remarks, the world's largest market cap equity index is painting a very different picture than that of the Dow or S&P 500...

Goldman Sachs' 2015 global equity views and themes note is out and its title "The Long Grind Higher Continues" says it all... it's muppet slaughtering time...

As noted previously, total US debt is now over $18 trillion. Here is where it gets even more surreal: debt held by the public on January 20, 2009, Obama's inauguration day, was $6.3 trillion. It is now $12.9 trillion, a 105% increase. And here, for your viewing pleasure, is Senator Barack Obama saying on July 3, 2008, that the $4 trillion in debt added by Bush was "irresponsible and unpatriotic"...

“... I am a hard working taxpayer who is getting pretty fed up with having my savings earning no interest and possibly being devalued (see Japan) and of not being able to find any sensible place to invest my hard earned due to central bank policies making it impossible to make any return anywhere without taking crazy risks.”

"When a social construct (gold as money) survives for 6,000 years I would expect curious people to inquire as to whether it is tied to some immutable underlying law... [instead], our court economists prefer to write this off as a 6,000 year old delusion. That says a lot about the sorry state of the economics discipline today.”