Archive - Oct 2015

The United States provided approximately $35 billion in economic aid to over 140 countries in fiscal year 2014. The question is: Who received the largest slice of the pie from the U.S.?

As all eyes, ears, and noses anxiously await the scantest of dovishness from Kuroda and The BoJ tonight (despite numerous hints that they will not unleash moar for now), the data that was just delivered may have helped the bad-news-is-good-news case. Most notably Japanese household spending dropped 0.4% YoY (with tax hike issues out of the way) missing expectations by a mile as the 'deflationary' mindset remains mired in Japanese heads. AsiaPac stocks are hovering at the week's lows unable to mount any bid as China fixed the Yuan notably stronger and instigated a new central pricing plan for pork prices (which suggests concerns about inflation domestically). Once again Chinese margin debt reaches a new 8-week high as 'stability' has prompted releveraging among the farmers and grandmas.

Fuku-Youku-Nuku

Welcome to the oligarch recovery. An economic rebound so robust that an ever increasing number of Americans are being forced to borrow money at usurious rates just to pay the bills. Today, we want to introduce you to the latest scheme to profit from poverty: Pension Advance Companies.

The 100 largest CEO retirement funds are worth a combined $4.9 billion. That’s equal to the entire retirement account savings of 41 percent of American families - more than 50 million families and more than 116 million people.

Passports are nothing more than a form of control - a way to obtain oodles of personal information and to restrict one of the most basic freedoms of humanity - the freedom to move. So you can imagine how excited we were when we read about Australia’s government announcing a program to eliminate passports. Great news, right? Well, no...

With winter rapidly approaching, Europe has yet to develop a viable plan to provide shelter for the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the war-torn Mid-East. If the bloc doesn't act soon, tens of thousands of families could end up freezing to death on the way to Germany. 

Bernie Sanders supporters seem to be everywhere. 49% of Democrats now have a favorable view towards socialism. This is scary. And sad. No matter how it is wrapped, socialism is still the belief that we can raise people out of poverty by taking money out of the hands of those who have learned how to produce. And it has never worked. Socialism always fails because at some point people realize they don’t have to work as hard to get the same amount of stuff. It takes all the incentive away to really succeed.

The bottom line: the gross profit from a "flip" in any of these 20 markets will result in an average profit of just over 102% in as little under 7 months. Good luck.

"House prices have decoupled most from local incomes in Hong Kong, London, Paris, Singapore, New York and Tokyo. Buying a 60-square-meter apartment exceeds the budget of most people who work even in the highly-skilled service sector. Loose monetary policy has prevented a normalization of housing markets and encouraged local bubble risks to grow"

On Wednesday morning a new national poll revealed that 54% of Americans rate the economy as 'poor', but instead of focusing oin that, Becky Quick quizzed Marco Rubio about his 'lack of bookkeeping skills,' Carl Quintanilla posed questions about homosexuality and fantasy football, and the astonishingly incompetent John Harwood expressed doubt about Donald Trump's 'moral authority.' The interaction between the candidates and the CNBC moderators revealed the yawning gap between the bubble world at the intersection of Washington and Wall Street and the hard scrabble reality of economic stagnation and political alienation on main street America.

Just when you (and Bill Ackman) thought the worst was over,  an avalanche of insurers and pharmacies are dumping Valeant's Philidor and raising more questions about its activities. VRX is now down 16% on the day, back below the key $100 level (after touching $127 intraday).

According to the Guardian, the US trade representative, Michael Froman, in the first public comments from a senior US official on the matter, said that "the United States is not keen on pursuing a separate free trade deal with Britain if it leaves the European Union."

Contrary to the popular view, a fall in the growth momentum of prices is always good news for the wealth generating process and hence for the economy.