Archive - Jan 17, 2015

Despite various media reports over the past 24 hours about risk-sharing and sovereign security exclusion (i.e., that of Greek Treasurys), as well as speculation that despite it being priced in more than 100%, the ECB may yet again delay the actual announcement especially with what watershed Greek elections following just days after the ECB announcement, the question remains just what format will European QE take. Here, courtesy of Credit Suisse - a bank which was pounded in the past 2 days following the record surge in the CHF - is a preview of the 4 most likely ECB scenarios, as well as a glimpse at what may be the worst possible outcome for Europe: QE itself!

Over the past few days there has been renewed, large-scale fighting over the airport in Donetsk. Now, after months of almost non-stop shelling there is almost nothing left of what was a previously a new, modern facility. As Conflict-News reports, this video shot by a Ukrainian activity group using a multicopter drone gives the viewer a birds-eye view of the ruins of what was once Donetsk International Airport.

The utter lunacy of the ECB is reaching its inevitable end because lunacy itself cannot create economic, or even financial, normalcy. The Keynesian heart of all of this is that they fully believe redistribution can make for potent economic tonic, but redistribution is at its root a very negative factor.

Late on Friday afternoon, desparate to relive his mid-October 'world-saving' heroics, The Fed's Jim Bullard unleashed some more Fedspeak aimed at the promise of moar money to save the world (i.e. stocks) if things don't work out. But it is his concluding comment that sparked the most 'keyboard-smashing-angst' for those not buying the spoon-fed omnipotence of the central planners. Bullard stated unequivocally that "the lesson of QE is that it works fairly well." While we are not exactly sure what his definition of 'works' is, as the chart below and Richard Koo's QE-dream-crushing commentary shows, by reflating assets by their hand, the central planners are putting the cart before the horse... and Japan is a perfect example of the vicious economic spiral that leads to...

Government data reports are so funny. The blaring headlines today tells us that prices dropped in December. We are all saving billions from the drop in oil and gas. Hallelujah!!! The corporate MSM never digs into the numbers to get the real truth. These reports and their distribution to the sheep are designed to keep you sedated and calm. Facts are not necessary. How this data pertains to your everyday life is not important to the .1% who control the flow of information. Your government keepers will continue to drown you in propaganda and misinformation. But the average person should know they are being lied to. They see how much money they have left over at the end of every month. If any.

Simple cogent analysis of the price action in the capital markets.  Take it or leave it.  

Just to make things interesting, overnight Russia told a beleaguered Greece, and specifically its hurting farmers, that it "may lift its ban on food imports from Greece in the event it quits the European Union" according to Russian Minister of Agriculture Nikolai Fyodorov who spoke in Berlin on Friday. “If Greece has to leave the European Union, we will build our own relations with it, the food ban will not be applicable to it,” Fyodorov said as reported by Tass. In other words, Russia has casually thrown out feelers to Greece (and any other peripheral European country) and given it the option of joining the greater Russian sphere of influence (because the USSR 2.0 and satellites is still not trademarked), should it decide that 5 years after the first Greek "bailout" things for the country caught in an endless depression are as good as they will get with a bunch of Goldman bankers in charge.