Archive - Oct 2015

"I said it would make it very difficult for us to be able to provide the kind of support you need if the Russians were here conducting operations as well. We can't conduct operations if the Russians were operating in Iraq right now."

Eurostan...

Given what the Japanese have been subjected to in the past two and a half years of QQE, it is nearly criminal to suggest they need only more of it. None of it has worked as promised and stated, so what might have changed? Absolutely nothing except the arrangement of qualifiers and excuses that litter the same shared central bank speech delivered over and over of late. Kuroda says “robust”, Yellen proclaims “strong”, and both only confirm they live not of this world’s economy.

"Puerto Rico is not Greece"... but it increasingly looks like it will be in a few weeks, thanks to US taxpayers who are about to foot the bill for yet another creditor bailout.

The only certain outcome from the melodramatic debt ceiling fight over the next several days, is the following: the US is about to have a brand spanking new debt ceiling, one that should last it until March of 2017: $19,600,000,000,000.

One week ago he said he has no interest in the Speaker position, but so much can change in one week. Moments ago Paul Ryan sent out a letter to the GOP announcing he would run for speaker of the house. And since he had previously said said he would only enter the speaker’s race if he could lock up support from three wings of the fractious party, in the space of just 3 days this week, he appears to have done just that.

"We know now just how wrong everybody was....and to the rest of the world: we are done with you. Yes we wronged you but we were driven by vain men who harmed us as well as you. Even the interventions across the globe were nothing more than a way to loot the treasury. In the guise of democracy and freedom we brought war and death. We are sorry. I am sorry."

T-12 days till US default...

From the bowels of Australia’s iron ore mines to the top of Dubai’s pointless 100 story office towers, the entire warp and woof of the global economy has been distorted and bloated by the central bank money printing spree of the last two decades, led by the red credit machines of Beijing. Everywhere economies have succumbed to over-building, over-consumption, over-financialization and endless dangerous, unstable speculation. Stated differently, China’s red capitalism is the new black swan. There is nothing rational, stable or sustainable about it.

The ‘money’ in your account doesn’t even really exist. There’s just enough of a thin layer of confidence in the system (at the moment) that this is a widely accepted practice. It seems rather strange when you think about it. Though for thousands of years, early civilizations had some pretty wild ideas about money. There are examples from history of our ancestors using everything from animals skins, to salt, to giant stones, as their form of ‘money’. Though we suppose these weren’t any more ridiculous than our version of money - pieces of paper that don’t even really exist, controlled by unelected central bankers.

In what amounts to a slap in the face for a coalition of Leftist lawmakers who are opposed to the austerity programs that some believe are responsible for painful economic adjustments, Portugal has reappointed PM Pedro Passos Coelho. This sets the country up for an intractable political stalemate and will serve to embed an enormous amount of uncertainty in markets going forward.

"The basic assertion is the following: the U.S. economy is not showing signs of entering into recession, thus stocks are not at risk of falling into a sustained bear market. Unfortunately, this conclusion is not necessarily true. For history has shown on numerous occasions that you do not need to have an economic recession looming on the horizon to see U.S. stocks fall into a bear market."

Curious how Jim Cramer's stock picks perform? One person decided to test them out in an audited environment. Here are the results...