Archive - Sep 5, 2014

Decision making it has a lot of implications for your success as an investor, as a business person, and even in your personal relationships. It is a skill which needs to be constantly developed, honed and refined.

When Lee Goldsmith drives by one of the many fake cellphone towers being discovered throughout the U.S., his $3,500 CryptoPhone 500 will immediately display the warning message in the thumbnail image to the left. When you drive by the same fake towers, known as “interceptors,” your run of the mill iPhone or Samsung Galaxy won’t alert you to any potential security breach. And that’s exactly how those people who installed these interceptors, whoever they are, like it. What Lee Goldsmith and other users of the CryptoPhone 500 have discovered while driving across part of America will shock and disturb you.

Remember, it's for Main Street...

Judging by these photos taken moments ago above the Islamic State (i.e. ISIS) capital of Raqqa, a triggerhappy remote-control operator in Whiteman Air Force Base is about to get jiggy with some jihadists located nearly 7000 miles away.

The Bank Of Japan (BOJ) says it is looking for consumer spending to stay on a recovery path, focusing on the relatively small increase in nominal wages rather than the steep slide in real wages. Goldman believes the BOJ’s view is founded on money illusion; and crucially, expect the positive effects to be clearly outweighed by the negative impact of lower real wages, and on a net basis see consumption falling. Simply put, once people wake up to the illusion of money, its impact will also fade.

This is so completely ridiculous. But it really crystalizes what’s wrong with the entire financial system.

We’re told to keep our money in banks... that banks are safe. But the objective data tells a completely different story.

Today's jobs data was almost 5 standard deviations below Wall Street's best-and-brightest's estimate and has already been dismissed by many as an 'anomaly' or 'unbelievable'. Despite the fact that the National Retail Foundation noted over 17,000 layoffs in August "calling into question how much momentum the economy really has," one member of the public was able to #NailTheNumber on CNBC's great payroll-guessing game. Ronnie Squires explains to a silenced CNBC anchor the real state of America...

Ebola continues to spread an an exponential rate. According to the World Health Organization, 40 percent of all Ebola cases have happened in just the last three weeks. At this point, the official numbers tell us that approximately 3,967 people have gotten the virus in Africa and more than 2,105 people have died. That is quite alarming, but the real problem will arise if this disease continues to spread at an exponential pace. We have never seen anything like this in any of our lifetimes, and the scary part is that this might only be just the beginning, as the following 16 quotes from health officials suggests...

Nothing lasts forever (except central bank dovishness) in the real world. Here is an interpretation of when the world will run out of each metal or energy source...

At the end of the day, everything the Fed has done has been focused on propping up a broken system. Eventually the Fed’s efforts will fail at which point so will the Fed (just as the last two Central Banks in the US failed). 

Things are getting a bit hotter for the Federal Reserve regarding the tradeoff between growth and inflation, according to JPMorgan CIO Michael Cembalest. For the last few years, he notes, a zero rate policy was put on autopilot given excess labor and industrial capacity. Both are shrinking now, and when looking at a broad range of variables, some are clearly mid-cycle. If so, in a few months Fed governors will have to jump out of the 0% interest rate pot and remove some of the liquidity that it has infused into the US economy; and, Cembalest warns, despite today's jobs print, they may have to do so at a quicker pace than what markets are pricing in.

Volatility is the academic's choice for defining and measuring risk; but Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks warns Bloomberg TV's Stephanie Ruhle that "while volatility is quantifiable and machinable... it falls far short as 'the' definition of investment risk." In fact, he berates, "I don't think most investors fear volatility. In fact, I've never heard anyone say, 'The prospective return isn't high enough to warrant bearing all that volatility.' What they fear is the possibility of permanent loss." With $91 billion under management, perhaps it's worth listening to (and reading) his perspective: "In brief, if riskier investments could be counted on to produce higher returns, they wouldn’t be riskier. Misplaced reliance on the benefits of risk bearing has led investors to some very unpleasant surprises."

Central bank stimulus is not leading to virtuous circles but to vicious ones. How can we get out? – Only by changing our attitudes to monetary interventions fundamentally. Only if we accept that interest rates are market prices, not policy levers. Only if we accept that the growth we generate through cheap credit and interest-rate suppression is always fleeting, and always comes at the price of new capital misallocations. The prospect for such a change looks dim at present. The near-term outlook is for more heavy-handed interventions everywhere, and the endgame is probably inflation. This will end badly.

The chart below shows the civilian employment to population ratio: a convenient indicator of the real state of the US labor market which does away with the labor force entirely, and the associated rhetoric of why it may or may not be plunging, and merely focuses on two simple things: total population and the total civilian population of the US. One thing is clear: the ratio crashed when the depression started and has flatlined since. Which, incidentally, may be all you, and the Fed, needs to know about the recovery.

This past week has seen the market repeatedly attempt new "all-time" highs only to be found wanting. There has been plenty of headline data for the "bulls" to feast on from the ECB announcing a program to buy bonds, surging ISM data and improvement in productivity. However, the underlying data has kept the "bears" in the game with new orders and employment showing weakness, unit labor costs shrinking and the realization that the ECB's plans are likely be ineffectual.