Archive - May 8, 2014

As of 2012, the most recent year for which data are available, there were about 49 million Americans who, sadly, describe themselves as "food insecure," meaning they have limited access to sufficient amounts of food, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Interviews with several food banks around the country suggest things haven't really improved since then. A new report from the hunger relief charity 'Feeding America' throws the nation’s struggle with hunger into an even starker light. The report, titled "Map the Meal Gap 2014," breaks the USDA’s data down county by county, giving a more nuanced picture of food insecurity. As the Interactive report below reveals, HuffPo notes that there are 16 counties in the U.S. with more than 100,000 "food insecure" children -- a number you might expect to see in a developing country rather than the world’s wealthiest nation.

Some people are either born or nurtured into a time warp and never seem to escape. That’s Janet Yellen’s apparent problem with the “bathtub economics” of the 1960s neo-Keynesians. As has now been apparent for decades, the Great Inflation of the 1970s was a live fire drill that proved Keynesian activism doesn’t work. That particular historic trauma showed that “full employment” and “potential GDP” were imaginary figments from scribblers in Ivy League economics departments—not something that is targetable by the fiscal and monetary authorities or even measureable in a free market economy. Even more crucially, the double digit inflation, faltering growth and repetitive boom and bust macro-cycles of the 1970s and early 1980s proved in spades that interventionist manipulations designed to achieve so-called “full-employment” actually did the opposite—that is, they only amplified economic instability and underperformance as the decade wore on.

In our busy days, it is all too easy to fall into the trap of hearing (and believing) the latest headline and its associated spin. For some reason, three minute videos can quickly and easily remove these 'spins' without the need for a PhD. And so we decided to dust off today's 3:06 un-spin clip, addressing the broken-window-fallacy  as the seen versus unseen impact of the idiocy of a broken-window's (or war, or destroying homes, or...) positive impact on an economy is explained in cartoon style. The sad fact is that this fallacy remains at the core of mainstream policy-making and as the video notes, the government's 'creation' of jobs via public works programs (or any number of stimulus-driven enterprises) it does so at the expense of the tax-payer via higher taxes or inflation and that 'spending' which would have otherwise gone to new fridges or iPads is removed and this does nothing to significantly improve aggregate demand (should there be such an amorphous thing) and in fact (as we recently noted here and here) leaves us more and more dependent on the state for corporate profit margins leaving any organic growth a dim and distant memory.

The US approach to the Russia/Ukraine situation reflects a serious misunderstanding of the situation. Russia has little choice but to try to raise the price of products it is selling, any way it can. It needs to cut out those who cannot afford its products, including the Ukraine. If Europe increasingly cannot afford its products, Russia needs to find customers who can afford them. There is little chance that the United States is going to be able to help Europe with its natural gas needs in any reasonable timeframe. Our best chance at keeping the global economy “working” for a little longer is to try to keep globalization working as best we can. This will likely require “making nice” to countries we are unhappy with, and putting up with what looks like aggression. Policymakers like to think that the US has more power than it really does, and like to encourage stories suggesting great power in the press. Unfortunately, these stories are not true; we need policymakers who understand our real situation

With the Biotech bubble busted and social media stocks slaughtered, it seems disappointment is spreading for the world's wealthy living off the fat of the Fed. As NY Times reports, on Wednesday, many in the art world converged upon Sotheby’s for the sales of Impressionist and modern art... but nearly a third of the art went unsold. The mediocre results followed an unexciting night at Christie’s on Tuesday and suggest that yet another central-bank-fueled excess-money-has-to-spill-out-of-our-silk-lined-pockets-somewhere trickle-down bubble is bursting. With Chinese property prices tumbling and PBOC cracking down on Macau money-laundering, it is perhaps no surprise that what demand Sotheby's saw was Asia buyers.

The marriage rate in the United States has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded. So why is this happening? Well, the truth is that there are a lot of reasons why so many young people are choosing not to get married today. One big reason is money. Young adults in the U.S. are really struggling to find good jobs, and many are hesitant to take a big step like marriage without achieving a certain level of financial security first. And as you will see below, many young adults (especially women) do not even want to date someone that is not employed. In this harsh economic environment, money makes a big difference in the world of romance.

"fragile" comes to mind... but the excuse factory will be working overtime this year: Q1 was cold weather; Q2 will be Ukraine; and Q3 will be El Nino...

"Stocks in the advanced economies are basically fully priced," Faber pronounces, and adds that, given their low yields, government bonds are also expensive. The true contrarian play is the "most under-appreciated asset - cash." Even though investors won't earn any money and will actually lose money in the long-term because of Federal Reserve-induced dollar depreciation, Faber suggests that "for the next six months, maybe cash is the most attractive," because the US economy is not recovering at all the way stocks are priced and what is more worrisome is the potential for a sudden eruption of inflation. As we have noted numerous times, Faber blasts that despite the prices of everything going up, government statistics "are distorted by the ministry of truth" in order to enable more money printing by the central banks. Crucially, while we may not be seeing wage inflation in the US, that excess liquidity is squirting up everywhere around the world's assets (and wages in China and India for instance), and the 2008 financial crisis could be just a precursor to a more severe economic fallout on the horizon.

When the IRS was targeting conservative groups seeking tax exempt status for special scrutiny, they demanded the list of donors supporting those groups in 17 cases. Despite assurances from the agency that the lists had been destroyed, a search requested by Congress revealed that at least 3 lists had survived.

And of the donors on those lists, fully 10% of the individuals had been audited (the rate of audits for ordinary Americans is about 1%)

Now, the House Ways and Means Oversight Committee is demanding that the Government Accountability Office investigate the IRS to see why so many Tea Party donors were audited.

Presented with no comment...

...What’s left for the Empire of Chaos is to pray for chaos to keep spreading across Ukraine, thus sapping Moscow’s energy. And all this because the Washington establishment is absolutely terrified of an emerging power in Eurasia. Not one, but two – Russia and China. Worse: strategically aligned. Worse still: bent on integrating Asia and Europe. So feel free to picture a bunch of Washington angry old men hissing like juvenile delinquents: “I don’t like you. I don’t want to talk to you. I want you to die.”

In recent weeks the concept of capital has been thoroughly, and incorrectly, deconstructed by Marxists and Keynesians alike now that, suddenly, the world caught up with what we said would be the crux issue back in 2011: record wealth inequality (who could have possibly foreseen it following $10 trillion in central bank balance sheet expansion in the last decade), and finding "fair" ways of confiscating the wealth of the rich to - at least on paper - help the poor even if in reality all it would do is simply lead to more government theft, embezzling, corruption, and capital misallocation. It is now time to get an Austrian perspective and courtesy of unrepentant "Austrian" Sean Corrigan we just got one.

...and the 'strategists' think these 2 lines will inevitably converge back into a Nirvanic status quo of leveraged Utopians as if nothing ever happened...

US equity markets were off to the races when stocks opened and Yellen began to speak but the late-day ugliness was written on the wall by a total lack of support from either volume or any other risk-market. The S&P ramped up to last Friday's spike highs, Zero Hedge reminded traders that Biotech P/Es were double what they expected, and the 30Y auction tailed ugly was enough - with a dearth of news (aside from downplayed escalations in Ukraine) stocks dumped and played catch down with JPY (weakness) and Bond (strength). EUR weakness (from Draghi Jawboning) provided the impetus for USD strength but leaves the USD unch on the week. Considerable divergence in bonds today (30Y +3bps, 5Y -3bps) means the curve is steepening modestly. VIX was running stocks today and we slammed back under 13 briefly and closer higher on the day. Ugly day for high beta stocks with the Russell near 6mo lows (and the Dow is back in the red for 2014)

Two days ago, we told you about how the US appears to be destroying its banking system with the FATCA deadline - it’s as if they’re deliberately trying to weaken one of the few things that still gives the US a shred of power in the world anymore. Fast forward to today and the next shoe appears to have dropped... The FT reported yesterday that JP Morgan has started freezing accounts, declining credit card charges, and terminating customer relationships with foreign diplomats and politicians. All of this is under pressure from the US government to scrutinize banking relationships with "politically exposed persons", or PEPs. Apparently once you’re a PEP, you’re always a PEP. So banks are simply shutting these relationships down.