Archive - Oct 12, 2015

Perhaps we've been doing it wrong all these years. Capitalism isn't about making money. It's about who can blow through money the fastest. When it comes to increasing shareholder value, there is, quite simply, no better way to do it.

Neurosurgeon-turned-Presidential candidate Ben Carson has been under attack this week by the defenders of the Keynesian faith as he questioned fiat money and flirted with a new gold standard.

With the latest swarm of mass shootings still in the headlines, and of course the ubiquitous call for gun control/prohibition, the Supreme Court's decision this week on whether it will hear a challenge to a suburban Chicago law banning firearms commonly known as assault weapons seems more critical than ever. As NBC News notes, if the court agrees to hear the case, it would cast a shadow over similar bans in seven states; but declining to take it up would boost efforts to impose such bans elsewhere.

As RT and others report, "a major fire broke out in a deposit in the Chinese city of Tianjin. The fire was caused by a leak of alcohol"

We noted previously that last week's face-ripping rally was the biggest short-squeeze sicne 2011, but, as SocGen notes, this "savage reversal" - as the biggest losers rebounded - was the worst price momentum whiplash since 2009. Bear market rallies are typically characterised by sharp reversals and elevated levels of volatility, and as SocGen warns there are several things which point to this being a technical bounce (rather than longer-term supportive value-seeking).

They are spending it on... gas.

Though emerging economies’ debts seem largely moderate by historic standards, it seems likely that they are being underestimated, perhaps by a large margin. If so, the magnitude of the ongoing reversal in capital flows that emerging economies are experiencing may be larger than is generally believed – potentially large enough to trigger a crisis. In this context, keeping track of opaque and evolving financial linkages is more important than ever.

"There were too many wounded, tens of dead, body pieces scattered around, and people screaming. The state wasn’t able to prevent a massacre right in the middle of Ankara. Instead, it enabled it."

Everywhere the U.S. Promotes Regime Change, ISIS Follows

For the first time since October 2010, VIX has fallen for 10 straight days (crashing from over 28 to under 17). The collapse in the 'fear' index has also broken it back below its 200-day moving-average for the first time since breaking above on August 19th.

The US Federal Reserve is obsessed with market reactions to its policies. Because of this, anytime the Fed plans to announce a major change in policy, it preps the markets via numerous leaks and hints… oftentimes for months in advance.

• September 2013: EVANS; NO RATE HIKE UNTIL LATE 2015 (source)
  
• March 2014: EVANS: NO RATE HIKE UNTIL EARLY 2016 (source)
  
• October 2015: EVANS: MID-2016 BEST CHOICE FOR LIFTOFF

The cyclical fallout from the Great Financial Crisis and the secular deflationary “D’s” of excess Debt, tech Disruption, aging Demographics have been the major catalysts for deflation.

It appears Chinese authorities want to be the monopoly manipulator of their stock markets. Just a week after BlackRock suggested (and Hillary spewed) plans for transaction taxes in US markets to effectively kill high-frequency-trading (and all its ills), China's Securities Regulator Commission (CSRC) has proposed limiting the use of automated trading programs in the stock market. Of course, just as we saw last nght in China futures, we assume CSRC only wants to ban "selling" algos and not "spoofers" pushing stocks higher.

Since the economic downturn of 2008, the critics of capitalism have redoubled their efforts to persuade the American people and many others around the world that the system of individual freedom and free enterprise has failed. These critics have insisted that it is unbridled capitalism, set loose on the world, which is the source of all of our personal and society misfortunes. The political and economic crises through which the world suffers is not the crisis or failure of the free market. No, it is the crisis and failure of the interventionist-welfare state, and its anti-free market capitalist ideology.