Archive - Jul 2014

The British government has just invested in water cannons because they are fearing the rising tide of civil unrest as austerity is forcing the reduction of state workers and their pensions. The British unions called for strikes nationwide. Teachers, firemen and civil servants joined the calls and and took the streets demonstrating for higher wages and pensions. Just where is this money supposed to come from they really have no idea. They merely argue to take it from someone else no matter what and give it to them. Simply put, it is the rising cost of government that is out of control and no level of tax increase can reverse this trend.

Amid consternation at the market's low levels of volatility - and concerns voiced regularly by Fed officials of 'complacency' - it appears the FOMC has never been more confident in its omnipotence. As WSJ reports, despite being consistently too optimistic about economic growth and too pessimistic about the falling unemployment rate, Federal reserve policy makers have never been less uncertain about their forecasts... With consensus 2014 GDP expectations collapsing to +1.7% (and the Fed still at 2.1 to 2.3%), it appears the Fed's peak complacency is perfectly anti-correlated to the actual uncertainty about the future.

"To the residents of Beit Lahiya, The IDF intends to attack terrorists and terror infrastructures in the area east of Al-Atatra and Al-Salatin St., and in the area west and north of Ma'bscar Jabalyia. Israel is currently attacking, and will continue to attack, every area from which rockets are being launched at its territory.

The civilians are requested to evacuate their residences immediately and move by 12:00 PM today, south of Jabalyia Al-Badr via Shar'a Al-Faluja.  The IDF's campaign is to be short and temporary. Those who fail to comply with the instructions will endanger their lives and the lives of their families.

Beware."

A first class, all expenses paid weekend trip to Vienna with full diplomatic and press cover, to explain to Germany why every day a new CIA spy is uncovered, and to again reach no resolution on Iran's nuclear program: millions of dollars. Relaxing at the end of a long, hard day for a job well done with a cold central European beer: priceless. Some things money can't buy. For everything else there's TaxpayerCard.

Blythe Masters is perhaps the most maligned human being on earth by silver investors due to suspicions of JP Morgan’s manipulation in the silver market (and rightly so). Well she’s back in the news, but it has nothing to do with silver. Rather, the news relates to the fact that her ex-husband and commodities traders, Daniel Masters, has just launched a Bitcoin hedge fund from the island of Jersey, a British Crown dependency.

1/2 BREAKING: IDF forces raided a site used to fire long-range rockets at Israel. The mission was accomplished

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) July 13, 2014

On the heels of John Kerry's accusation that Russia's behavior does not belong in the 21st century, Germany's Angela Merkel has come out swining against the escalating spying scandal with the US (which saw allegations that the US had recruited two Germans to sell secrets this week). During an interview with ZDF, the German leader blasted “that we have different perceptions on the work of intelligence services," adding that "we don’t live in the Cold War anymore." The White House's response, so far, a shrug of 'business-as-usual' from Josh Earnest; which fits with Merkel's conclusion: "I think it's not that easy to convince the Americans ... to completely change the way their intelligence services work."

With threats and promises over cyber-crimes fleeting back and forth between the US and China, it appears - through the 'back-channel' of the nation's state broadcaster CCTV - China has stepped it up once again. As AFP reports, China has accused US technology giant Apple of threatening national security through its iPhone's ability to track and time-stamp a user's location. While not exactly a 'new feature' of the phones, the timing of China's public lambasting reflects the escalating mutual distrust between the US and China over the extent of cyber-espionage.

Well, if you take the US Supreme Court and representatives of the Federal Reserve System at their own words, the case is pretty clear: the member banks of the Federal Reserve System are private corporations / banks.

This is a big deal. On the heels of our pointing out the surge in Treasury fails (following extensive detailing of the market's massive collateral shortage at the hands of the unmerciful Fed's buying programs), various 'strategists' wrote thinly-veiled attempts to calm market concerns that the repo market (the glue that holds risk assets together) was FUBAR. Even the Fed itself sent missives opining that their cunning Reverse-Repo facility would solve the problems and everyone should go back to the important business of BTFATHing... They are wrong - all of them - as yet again the Fed shows its ignorance of how the world works (just as it did in 2007/8 with the same shadow markets). As JPMorgan warns (not some tin-foil-hat-wearing blogger with an ax to grind) "the Fed’s reverse repo facility does little to alleviate the UST scarcity induced by the Federal Reserves’ QE programs coupled with a declining government deficit." The end result, they note, is "higher susceptibility of the repo market to collateral shortages" and thus dramatically higher financial fragility - the opposite of what the Fed 'hopes' for.

We earlier showed the close-up-and-personal images from the bombing raids between Hamas/ISIS/Al-Qaeda and Israel; but the following clip (which we still have not heard the final conclusion of) shows just how much of a 'surprise' these shellings can be... as a reporter is hit by a shell live on air.

Recall that it was Goldman's David Kostin who in January admitted that "The S&P500 Is Now Overvalued By Almost Any Measure." It was then when the Goldman chief strategist admitted there was only 3% upside to the bank's year end target of 1900.  Well, that hasn't changed. In his latest note Kostin says that "S&P 500 now trades at 16.1x forward 12-month consensus EPS and 16.5x our top-down forecast... the only time S&P 500 traded at a higher multiple than today was during the 1997-2000 Tech bubble when margins were 25% (250 bp) lower than today. S&P 500 also trades at high EV/sales and EV/EBITDA multiples relative to history. The cyclically-adjusted P/E ratio suggests S&P 500 is now 30%-45% overvalued compared with the average since 1928." And this is where Goldman just goes apeshit full retard: "we lift our year-end 2014 S&P 500 price target to 2050 (from 1900) and 12-month target to 2075, reflecting prospective returns of 4% and 6%, respectively."

Wait, what???

Martin Armstrong warns that 50% of the municipal governments in Germany are on the verge of bankruptcy. This is part of the reason they are looking for bail-ins and even Merkel has determined they cannot allow any referendums fearing the people will vote against the EU. The Bremen state government has now imposed a spending freeze today. The reason has been the unexpected expenditure and revenue shortfalls in the total amount of 60 million euros. Politicians cannot see that this system is doomed. They keep looking for everything possible to raise more and more taxes. It is just amazing who disconnected government are from the reality of the economy. Everything is geared to move toward the confiscation of wealth not reforming the system.

Having dictated to the citizenry - "Do not get cynical. Hope is the better choice," this week, we thought the following cartoon was particularly appropriate...

Occam’s razor is a principle that states that among various hypotheses that might be used to explain a set of observations, the hypothesis – consistent with the evidence – that relies on the smallest number of assumptions is generally preferred. Essentially, the razor shaves away what is unnecessary and retains the most compact explanation that is consistent with the data. When we observe the increasingly tortured arguments that “this time is different,” we see investors discarding straightforward explanations that are fully consistent with the evidence and opting instead for the aliens-from-Xenon theory. nothing even in recent market cycles provides any support to the assumption of permanently elevated valuations. The only support for it is the desire of investors to avoid contemplating outcomes the same as the market suffered the last two times around. “This time is different” requires a lot of counterfactual assumptions. Occam’s razor would suggest a nice shave.