Archive - May 2014

When Obama repeatedly chanted "costs" should the Kremlin continue to ignore him, it appears he was referring to western corporations, because overnight we got the first batch of companies scapegoating no longer snow in the winter but - what else - the Ukraine. Leading this morning's scapegoat parade is SocGen, which following in Barclays' footsteps reported a 13% tumble in its Q1 profit, plunging to €315 million from €364 million. The reason for this huge hit to profits apparently was a €525 million ($731.26 million) write-down at its Russian bank - the same bank which, as recently as April 11, saw SocGen "increase its stake in Russian subsidiary Rosbank which it said was part of a long-term commitment to Russia. The deal comes as Russia's economy is under pressure partly as a result of sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe to protest against Moscow's annexation of Crimea." So SocGen was dumping money into a Russian subsidiary well after the Ukraine conflict  had begun, knowing quite well it would be "forced" to take a Rosbank charge mere weeks later! Why yes, of course.

• Alibaba files for what may be biggest tech IPO (Reuters)
• Early Tap of 401(k) Replaces Homes as American Piggy Bank (BBG)
• Developers Turn Former Office Buildings Into High-End Apartments (WSJ)
• Thai court orders Yingluck Shinawatra to step down as PM (Guardian)
• German industry orders fell 2.8% in March, the biggest drop in one and a half years (RTE)
• Ukraine Bulls Scatter as Death Toll Mounts (BBG)
• China Property Slump Adds Danger to Local Finances (BBG)
• Stein Says Fed May See Bouts of Volatility as It Approaches Exit (BBG)

Perhaps the most important "news" of the day is that it is non-Tuesday. Yes, there was actual news news, like German factory orders dropping -2.8% on expectations of a 0.3% increase, French industrial production down -0.7% on expectations of a 0.3% increase (both misses driven by a soaring Euro which is now spitting distance away from the 1.40 ECB "redline"), the Nikkei tumbling 2.9% to just above 14000, the Shanghai Composite down 0.9%, SocGen Q1 profit plunging 13% and conveniently blaming it on Russia, speaking of Russia things continue to deteriorate even though Interfax reported that the country has received the first part, some $3.2 billion, of the promised IMF bailout - money which will be used to promptly pay Gazprom... and buy gold, a sudden conflict between China and Vietnam escalating over the placement of an offshore oil rig and so forth, but in the new normal, none of this matters.

"I asked Bernanke questions, And the answers were frightening."--David Einhorn

Are the S&P 500 and VIX right while the Russell and Treasury Rates are Dumb?

"I got to ask [Bernanke] all these questions that had been on my mind for a very long period of time, right? And then on the other side, it was like sort of frightening because the answers weren’t any better than I thought that they might be." - David Einhorn

Over the weekend of May 3 and 4, China sent an oil rig into disputed waters of the South China Sea to begin oil exploration. The rig is near the Paracel Islands, inside the 200-mile exclusive economic zone of Vietnam, which angrily protested the decision. The Vietnamese government insists that the waters, as well as the oil and gas reserves held beneath, belong to Vietnam.

VIETNAM CANNOT ACCEPT AND STRONGLY OPPOSES CHINA RIG PLACEMENT

The question now becomes, after his recent Asia trip, is this another red line being crossed for President Obama?

There are a few crucial tenets that everyone must live by... "never fight a land war in Asia", "don't mess with Texas", and, of course, "eat more bacon." The first two have occasionally been broken (with dire conseuqnce) but now, as the following clip shows, thanks to the soaring inflation in food prices that we have been documenting, the price you are paying for a package of bacon is flat as the size of the package collapses... less is more is never acceptable when it comes to bacon...

Amidst the deepening war of words over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, U.S. President Barack Obama on April 28 added more Russian individuals and companies to a sanctions list that already included influential members of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and Bank Rossiya, which has close ties to the Russian leadership. The new list freezes the assets of Igor Sechin, head of Russia's major oil company, Rosneft, six other individuals and 17 companies. Significantly, the new U.S. list does not include Alexei Miller, CEO of the Russian natural gas state monopoly, Gazprom. Although the European Union has imposed its own tough sanctions on 48 Russian individuals, Gazprom is arguably where daylight exists between the Obama administration and the EU on the issue of penalizing Moscow for its actions in Ukraine. The numbers make it clear why...

Understanding Cuba’s past and present illustrates the consequences of misguided economic policy and how it impacts socially.

Virtually everything that you do is being watched.  Do you drive a car?  Do you watch television?  Do you use a cell phone?  As you do any of those things, information about you is being recorded and tracked.  We live at a time when personal privacy is dying.  And it is not just governments that are doing this.  In fact, sometimes private companies are the biggest offenders.  It turns out that gathering information about all of us is very, very profitable.  And both government entities and private companies are going to continue to push the envelope when it comes to high tech surveillance until people start objecting to what they are trying to do.  If we continue down the path that we are currently on, it is inevitable that we will end up living in an extremely restrictive “Big Brother” police state where basically everything that we do is very closely watched, monitored, tracked and controlled.  And such a day may be much closer than you think.  The following are 10 examples of how “Big Brother” is steadily creeping into our daily lives…

"as a businessman, I’m thrilled... never dreamed we'd [borrow so cheaply] at artificial rates... it's Nirvana... unless you look at the truth of the matter and the impact it has on your customers and your employees... that’s a much darker story... for every businessman in America and any economist that has their heads screwed on right, it’s an ominous situation... But look at it from a consumers’ point of view or a working person’s point of view, who’s paying for all this cheap money? Well, right now, the Fed is. I thought Bernie Madoff went to jail for that."

No more Goldman turdball for you...

When it comes to the San Francisco Fed, it is best known throughout the financial community as the group of crack economists who spend millions of taxpayer funds to investigate such probing, for kindergarteners at least, topics as: is water wet, do trees make a sound when they fall in the forest, is it still worth going to college, and are hedge funds important in a crisis. Little did we know that, at least some of them, are homicidal psychopaths with suicidal tendencies. Because this is precisely what was revealed moments ago when Bloomberg reported that the chief operating officer of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and 26-year San Fran Fed veteran, Richard Hornsby, is facing a felony charge for threatening to kill the agency’s former top official, Ed DeMarco, and then kill himself.

Robot is a Czech word, meaning ‘forced labor’. It’s a bit like slavery, but when it’s a machine nobody gives a damn.