Archive - Mar 2014

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.

American exceptionalism is a common theme in any policy debate surrounding the United States. We have to protect American manufacturing, protectionists ignorant of economics argue, because America is exceptional. We have to pass expansive welfare programs to care for the poor, because America is exceptional. Most recently, we have to intervene in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, because America is exceptional. Why the imputed exceptionalism requires one country to police the world and meddle in matters that do not concern them remains unexplained.

Widening income disparity has been a feature of many advanced and developing economies for the past few years and has myriad investment implications. As we noted yesterday, the USA is at levels of income disparity not seen since the roaring 20s (and by some counts worse) but how does that stack up to the rest of the world? Fed fans will be proud to say that once again USA in Number 1... in global income inequality.

"The war mongers will continue to use propaganda and misinformation to convince you we are in danger if the war budget is cut by 2%. The truth is that we need to cut the military by 50%, stop trying to operate a world empire, and withdrawal our troops from Germany, Japan, and the dozens of other countries around the globe. We need to stop handing billions of dollars we don’t have to Israel, Egypt and dozens of other countries so they can buy arms from our arms dealers. We are the cause of all the war and violence in this world. The job of our military is to protect our borders, not to police the world. Hubris, arrogance, and overreach, financed by central bank created debt, is how empires die."

The vast majority of humans appear to be oblivious to this abuse and passively accept what is being done to them. Why is that? In one word - conditioning.

Over the past month, there has been a lot of "Hilsenrathing", or the biased media urgently "explaining" to the Western world, just what Russia's actions mean both tactically in response to Ukraine developments, and strategically as part of Putin's global perspective. So instead of relying on the broken media narrative which serves merely to perpetuate US corporate interests and rally the public behind this or that company's geopolitical interests, here, straight from the horse's mouth, in this case Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, how Russia sees itself in a world in which it is allegedly "isolated", and "threatening Ukraine" with further invasion but more importantly, how the Russians view the rapidly changing global balance of power, in which post-USSR Russia has emerged from the backwood of slighted nations and stormed to the stage of nations who dare defy the former global hegemon, the US.

It just hasn't been JPMorgan's year. Or several years for that matter. The bank which has been on a steady downward slope when it comes to paying billions in quarterly "non-recurring, one-time" legal settlements and charges, and for which engaging in criminal behavior which is neither admitted nor denied, yet which has cost JPM nearly $30 billion in the past several years, has just had its latest "wristslapping" incident, one which involves none other than the recently departed CEO of JPM Asia, Fang Fang, whose office was raided on March 26 by Hong Kong's anti-corruption agency amid a U.S. investigation into the bank’s hiring practices as reported by Bloomberg.

For when you absolutely need to nail it...

Diplomatic relations can be roughly categorized into realism (utilitarianism) and idealism (led by ideology and philosophy). Although realism has been dominant in modern times, idealism has seemingly been everywhere and nowhere - U.S. is a realist with ideals, while China is a realistic idealist. The “realism” of each country is more or less the same, but the ideals are not. The U.S. adores liberty and democracy while China worships the idea of a socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics. It’s because of such compromises and concessions by the U.S. and China that “new type great power relations” becomes possible. Russia, however, is a realist through and through. Of course, you can’t blame Russia for this…

With gold's last few days of weakness being extrapolated to the end of the precious metal once again, we thought a look back at 220 years of military spending, economic growth, presidents, and inflation may be a useful comparison to the 'real' price of gold...

"The idea that stimulation, even if only in form but not reality, can be withdrawn without draconian economic results is simply false. Chair Yellen is truly dedicated to full employment and is going to go into shock over the next few short months at the divergence between her economic modeling, the behavioral economic projections and the degree of economic contraction in the US." The US (and world) economy are not growing. Ben Bernanke and his counterparts in other countries pumped like mad to hide the dysfunction. Flooding with liquidity did nothing to heal the distortions and made them worse.

On Thursday, according to the Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 10,000 Russian troops began a drill simulating the massive use of nuclear missiles. Shortly before reassuming the Russian presidency for a third term, Putin reaffirmed the importance he placed on Russia’s nuclear forces in a number of articles and speeches. Thus, this week’s massive offensive nuclear drill is in line with the goals that Russia and Putin have been articulating for well over a decade. Still, the timing of the drill is likely to cause great concern in Western capitals, particularly in Washington.

Contrary to most consensus views (including Citi's FX technical group) EURUSD has failed to move lower in 2014. Why?