Archive - Jul 10, 2014

A money-laundering butterfly flaps its wings in China... and the US housing market crashes?

Cynicism is popular. Cynicism is popular these days. It's what passes off as wisdom. But cynics didn't put a man on the moon. Cynics never won a war. Cynics didn't cure a disease, or start a business, or feed a young mind. Cynicism didn't bring about the right for women to vote, or the right for African Americans to be full citizens. Cynicism is a choice. Hope is a better choice.

And so, as President, I'm going to keep a promise that I made when I first ran: Every day, I will keep asking the same question, and that is, how can I help you? And I'll keep treating your cares and your concerns as my own. And I will keep fighting to restore the American Dream for everybody who's willing to work for it. And I am going to need you to be right there with me. (Applause.) Do not get cynical. Hope is the better choice.

The recent IRS scandal is sure to go down as one of the most ridiculous of scandals in U.S. history. As Andrea Combs scoffs (rightly), the more that is uncovered, the more unbelievable the story becomes. So, in the interests of "fairness" - a topic this administration holds at its core - we present the new tax return, with addenda...

Manhattan has been transformed into nothing more than an oligarch playground, or as some call it, “Disneyland for Wall Street.” We have discussed at length the head-shakingly insane money-laundering inflows that are 'stashed' into NYC real estate but, as the following reports, one of the most shocking and disturbing revelations from that article was the fact that: "The Census Bureau estimates that 30 percent of all apartments in the quadrant from 49th to 70th Streets between Fifth and Park are vacant at least ten months a year." Forget China, ghost residences come to the US. Welcome to Planet Oligarchy, where empty skyscrapers loom over the hordes of freedom-hating, destitute slaves.

Day in, day out, China 'bulls' (which implies 'everything' bulls as China is the ultimate fall-back save of growth in the world) will use the government-provided PMIs (at 2014 highs) as an indication that everything is tip-top and all those concerns about China's shadow-banking system, CCFD unwinds, guarantor bankruptcies, money-market rate surges on liquidity demand, and tumbling house prices are storms in a teacup to be ignored. Well in the interests of 'beating' a dead horse (and remembering just how bad soft-survey-based PMI data is at predicting future growth), we show below 11 examples that suggest China is anything but healthy.

As the world awaits the last day of the week and hopefully some clarity on the fate (or even state) of Portugal's Banco Espirito Santo ("BES"), which ultimately is controlled by the nebulous and unpublished accounts of the topmost HoldCo, Espirito Santo International, which in turn is merely a family investment vehicle of the Espirito Santo family as we showed this morning, moments ago BES issued two press releases whose purposes was to provide an updated org chart of the troubled financial entity, and more importantly, to boast that as of today, the deepest of value investors, Seth Klarman's Baupost was a 2.27% investor in the company.

On the heels of Wal-Mart explaining that America is anything but recovering, we thought a look at the state of the union's wealth would be useful. To wit, the following map of household incomes shows where the "haves" and the "have-nots" reside...

Despite being responsible for some deaths and numerous injuries already, the downgrade from SuperTyphoon to Tropical Storm means the mainstream media has lost interest in the impact of Neoguri on Japan. TEPCO hasn't! As NHK World reports, the operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is bracing for damage; pumping out water accumulated in barriers surrounding storage tanks for radioactive water to prevent it from overflowing the barriers. The building of "The Ice Wall" has been delayed as just like last Summer, when heavy rains overflowed protective barriers, spilling radioactive cooling water. Neoguri is expected to hit Fukushima Friday early morning.

Eventually every bubble comes to an abrupt end

Confirming every Wall Street stereotype that "ethics are all well and good, but money is more important," the ex-Goldman Sachs banker who wrote a book on whether the bank always put "profits above principles" has started a firm charging extremely high rates of interest (above 100% in some cases) for struggling small businesses... oh the irony.

just to make sure that the abysmal Q1 GDP which has now spilled over into Q2 and will likely see the US economy growing in the mid-2% range, has a sufficiently broad "excuse" in the third quarter of the year, here comes - in the middle of July - the polar vortex 2.0.  As WaPo reports, "However you choose to refer to the looming weather pattern, unseasonably chilly air is headed for parts of the northern and northeastern U.S at the height of summer early next week."

Is there any doubt that we are living in a bubble economy? At this moment in the United States we are simultaneously experiencing a stock market bubble, a government debt bubble, a corporate bond bubble, a bubble in San Francisco real estate, a farmland bubble, a derivatives bubble and a student loan debt bubble. And of course similar things could be said about most of the rest of the planet as well. And when these current financial bubbles in America burst, the pain is going to be absolutely enormous.

With Russia and China having briefly taken over the hub of global executive suicides, the sad trend has returned back to America. In what appears to the 15th financial services executive suicide this year, yet another JPMorgan Director took his own life. As IBTimes reports, Jefferson Township (New Jersey) police report that the Global Network Operations Center Executive Director, "Julian Knott, age 45, shot his wife Alita Knott, age 47, multiple times and then took his own life with the same weapon." They are survived by 3 teenage children... 

you sure about that?

Maybe its time for a new version of the old regime at the Fed. That is, for the Eccles Building to eschew interest rate-pegging and ZIRP entirely, and thereby allow financial markets to once again engage in honest price discovery and two-way trading; and to allow the natural business cycle to meander along its own capitalist path as determined not by the 12 members of the monetary politburo, but the 317 million consumers, producers, investors, entrepreneurs and even speculators who comprise the real main street economy.