Archive - Oct 19, 2015

"The only way to get velocity to pick up in a benign way is to write off the debt by a meaningful amount. That would have helped in the 2008 global financial crisis if more losses had been imposed on creditors.  But that obviously did not happen in 2008 as the policymakers demonstrated that they did not believe in capitalism. Otherwise, the only other way velocity picks up is by an unhealthy hyperinflationary surge reflecting a loss of confidence in central banks, an outcome that becomes more plausible the more extreme the resort to quantitative easing."

The entire global financial system is leveraged to the 'Modern Portfolio Theory' concept that stocks and bonds are always anti-correlated. It is impossible to estimate how many trillions of dollars are managed according to the simple 60/40 mantras but let us just assume something north of $1.4 trillion and something south of "more money than God."  However, the truth about the long-term (132-year) historical relationship between stocks and bonds is scary.  The last three decades of extraordinary anti-correlation has been an era of falling rates, globalization, accommodative monetary policy, and very low volatility of CPI. With the global economy now at the zero bound, those days are over.

Submitted for your consideration: 1) "A man from northern Sweden who has praised Adolf Hitler on Facebook and participated in Nazi demonstrations has answered a call from Sweden's Migration Agency for volunteers willing to offer accommodation to refugees," 2) "I said this to Merkel too. No one should expect Turkey to turn into a concentration camp where all the refugees stay in."

The Donald, crushing the hopes of the status quo, has extended his lead among GOP Primary voters with 25% of the support (up from 21% in September). However, the latest WSJ/NBC poll finds Ben Carson coming on strong with 22% support. Aside from Rubio (13%, up from 11%), and Jeb hovering at 8%, this leaves "the rest" of the crowd lagging horribly with Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, and John Kasich looking to go the way of 'the Walker'.

Socialism violates the Ten Commandments which prohibits anyone from coveting what their neighbor has. Well, God must have had a bad day for he does not understand what is fair. If someone is smarter than others are, that is OK and God’s Will, but he should not have more material things. God obviously cannot be all knowing since Marx must be right. God clearly can’t understand what is fair.

Last week, beleaguered Illinois Comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger admitted that, thanks to the bitter budget battle going on in Springfield, the state would miss a $560 million pension payment in November. Now, in a move that shouldn't exactly surprise anyone, Fitch has cut the state's GO rating citing the budget impasse. The move affects some $27 billion in debt.

Moments ago IBM reported what can be defined simply as abysmal results.

We presume the 'threat' of selling hundreds of billions of dollars of US Treasuries has prompted a softening in the "Currency manipulator" rhetoric from The US Treasuy department. Having previously said the Yuan is "significantly undervalued," today's report shifts the comment to stating that the Yuan is "below appropriate medium-term valuation." Of course, The US Treasury would know exactly how all of the world's currencies should trade in this centrally-planned world.

Well we tried 'hope', now let's try 'change'...

Another day, another "crackdown" by the CFTC on an "evil spoofing mastermind."

"I hope Russia, whose friendship and neighborliness we value, will adopt a more careful stance and Turkish-Russian relations will not be negatively affected."

While increasing cries from the West demand an end to all association with Saudi Arabia, the U.K. government described lucrative public contracts with the notorious human rights abuser as a 'priority market'. "It's becoming increasingly clear that ministers are bent on ever-closer ties with the world’s most notorious human rights abusers.”

"Anxiety and distress prevail throughout the land... Indeed, hope seems to have deserted the minds of the people... we are not a match to the crisis before us. These days are like the last days... We need more prayers."

It’s election time in Canada, and as usual ad campaigns on TV, radio, print, and even Facebook are urging “everyone” to vote. But is that such a good thing? If politics is serious business, shouldn’t people have more than causal understanding law, economics, and political science before voting? How are people supposed to judge platforms otherwise–by what “feels right”?