Archive - Mar 30, 2014

With Chinese authorities increasingly looking like they are sticking to their reform promises, fighting moral hazard and allowing defaults to occur (in a completely 'contained' way, of course); the continued crackdown on graft and government corruption has hit a new high (or low). As Reuters reports, Chinese authorities have seized assets worth at least 90 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) from family members and associates of retired domestic security tsar Zhou Yongkang, who is at the center of China's biggest corruption scandal in more than six decades. 71-year-old Zhou has been under house arrest since first being investigated late last year but the size and scale of the corruption is unprecedented including 300 apartments, 60 vehicles, bonds, stocks, and gold - "it's the ugliest in the history of the New China."

Analysis suggests that commentators and policymakers need to better distinguish between the ways in which the US shale gas boom constitutes a ‘revolution’ and the ways in which it does not. The US unconventional energy boom has reversed the decline of domestic production, significantly lowered oil and gas imports, reduced gas costs for consumers, and created a political space for tougher regulations on coal-fired power plants. But it is not a panacea. Even if current estimates of production turn out to be accurate, the benefits to the US economy in the long run are relatively small, and the benefits to manufacturing competitiveness in most sectors are even smaller.

"It's always darkest before the dawn," we are sure will be the next idiotic (and wholly unsupported) bullshit line from various Japanese leaders about yet another round of disastrous Japanese data. Aside from June 2013, this is the biggest monthly drop in Industrial Production since the Tsunami - and biggest miss since Abenomics began. Good news right? More stimulus right? Not with inflation surging thanks to the collapsed currency. But wait, there's more 'great' news, Markit PMI just had its biggest 2-month drop in 20 months and is at its lowest in 6 months. For now, JPY is confused (and so is the Nikkei) but US futures aren't, they are rallying; because, well - why not, the casino is still open for now.

With at least 300,000 German jobs dependent on business relations with Russia, it is hardly surprising that, as Reuters reports, several top German executives have criticized the strategy of the U.S. and Europe in dealing with Russia fearing the consequences for their businesses. On the heels of Siemens CEO's comments (as we noted here) that "you don’t want to sanction anyone you depend on,” a number of other senior German executives have commented that that great change could be achieved if the West cooperated with Russia rather than being confrontational. Deutsche Post's Appel summed it up, "Since we don't have major sources of raw materials in Europe, we will always be dependent on others... and it seems questionable to me whether dependence on the Middle East or Venezuela would be better than that on Russia."

FOOD AND BEVERAGE NOT RECOMMENDED

There are just hours left until the formal March 31 deadline (although at this point so many deadlines have been extended it is not quite clear just which deadline this is) to sign up for Obamacare. Or rather, to put Obamacare in your check out basket with the intention of paying... at some indefinite time in the future. So instead of rehashing and repeating all the things that have already been said countless times about Obamacare, below we show some of the best cartoons laying out the tragicomedy that is Obamacare by Politico's Matt Wuerker.

It is supremely ironic that those who wish to withdraw or minimize their interactions with the Ponzi might actually feed it on the way out. This alone speaks volumes towards how dysfunctional and truly unsustainable it is.

One of the big problems in America today is that a lot of people simply do not seem to care about what they are doing anymore.  The level of sloth, laziness and apathy that we are witnessing in this country is absolutely mind-numbing.  Of course this is not true of everyone.  There are still many Americans that are extremely hard working.  But overall, it really appears that people are not taking as much pride in their work as they once did.  Some of the examples below are quite funny; others are more than just a little bit disturbing.  But they all have a common theme.  Americans from all walks of life are simply giving up.  Whether they are teachers, delivery people or fast food workers, the truth is that there are a whole lot of people out there that seem to have mentally checked out.

Both the entire month of March, and its last full week, particularly for biotech investors and especially hedge funds, is a time that many would rather forget and continue pretending that the saying "as January goes, so goes the year" is no longer applicable. Luckily, for all those bulls who have forgotten that in a normal market there is both return and risk, at least in pre-New Normal times, there may be some good news. As Bank of America's chief technician MacNeil Curry reminds us, April is the least cruel month for stocks, posting the highest monthly average return since 1950, returning just over 2.0%.

No tree grows to the sky. Once extremes are reached, trends reverse, often with symmetry: the decline often matches the ascent. Which leads to an interesting question: have we reached Peak Putin? The capture of a few pawns has cleared the chessboard, but the strategic choices already made have greatly reduced Putin's room to maneuver.

A week after initial votes showed the far-right anti-Euro National Front party gaining ground in French municipal elections, it appears the ongoing disappointment in the ruling Socialists is increasing (amid record joblessness).

• *FAR RIGHT MAKES FURTHER GAINS IN FRENCH MUNI ELECTIONS
• *MOSCOVICI SAYS TODAY'S  ELECTIONS 'UNQUESTIONABLY A DEFEAT'
• *MOSCOVICI SAYS IT'S 'DIFFICULT TO REFORM FRANCE'

These are the first nationwide elections in France since Hollande took office and point to rather concerning lack of support for his party and his policies (and the core of the EU); but a record high 38.5% of votes abstained suggesting major apathy as the country's north-south divide grows.

Last week in the markets was all about what was happening below the calm surface waters, which saw the DJIA post a tiny increase and the S&P dip just a fraction. If one was going off merely by the two main indices, one would certainly have missed the drubbing that tech and specifically biotech stocks suffered. However, nowhere was it worse than in the "hedge fund hotel" basket of names most near and dear to the hearts of hedge funds, and respectively those most hated, one which Goldman defines as the long Very Important Positions <GSTHHVIP> vs. short Very Important Shorts <GSTHVISP>. It was here that P&Ls saw one of the worst weekly losses for hedge fund positions since 2001.

The start of Q2 2014.  US economy to strength.  Japan's to weaken.  Euro-area is barly growing, while the UK continues apace.   

While many have pointed out that the Middle-East/Far-East are drifting to a more "Orwellian" world and the West is a more "Huxleyan" environ, the merger of the two dystopias is seemingly growing each day. As The Guardian previously noted, Huxley's dystopia is a totalitarian society, ruled by a supposedly benevolent dictatorship whose subjects have been programmed to enjoy their subjugation through conditioning and the use of a narcotic drug - the rulers of Brave New World have solved the problem of making people love their servitude. On the Orwellian front, we are doing rather well – as the revelations of Edward Snowden have recently underlined. We have constructed an architecture of state surveillance that would make Orwell gasp. The most striking parallel of course is that both men foresaw the future as totalitarian rather than democratic and free. Both Big Brother’s world and the Brave New World are ruled by authoritarian elites of a basically socialist/communist nature, whose only real purpose is the maintenance of their own power and privileges.

IIn a country which has banned the free flow of information via social networks and other venues in order to preserve the corrupt government, why one would believe any official data is unclear, but for those who are curious, here are the early results from today's municipal elections (where eight people have already died as fights broke out between rival candidates in two villages near the southeastern border with Syria): with 12.4% of ballots counted, the ruling AKP party appears to be a blowout victory, with 48.1% of the vote, while CHP has 24% and MHP is at 13.8%, based on CNNTurk reporting. And, as expected, there are huge discrepancies between the numbers provided by the state run news agencies, and the pro-Gulen, Cihan, news agency.