Archive - Nov 17, 2015

I had never heard the term "safe space" until just a few days ago, but it's a zone in which free speech is completely forbidden, for fear of hurting the feelings of some special snowflake.

Anonymous Is Doing More to Unplug ISIS Than All the Western Intelligence Agencies

The Baltic Dry Index staged a recovery mid-year, hopefully rising amid promises of stability in China and an 'escape' velocity USA. All that centrally-planned hope and hype faith has been eviscerated on the altar of economic reality. With no ability to directly manipulate the Baltic Dry Index to 'pretend' everything is awesome, it remains among the best 'real' indicators of the state of the global economy... and it's in the toilet...

After seven straight weeks of significant inventory builds, API reported a modest 482k draw. That was all the algos needed and WTI immediately ramped back above $41.00. However, what they likely missed was the 2nd weekly (huge) build in Cushing (1.5mm barrels) as we warned earlier on land storage starting to really fill...

"There is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror. If there were a group of radical Christians pledging to murder anyone who had a different religious view than they, we would have a different national security situation."

Hannover chief of police: "There was a device intended to be detonated inside the stadium... You don't know what a perpetrator is possibly planning. Don't stay in groups. Find safety."

Reports that German police have discovered a truck bomb disguised as an ambulance near football stadium in Hannover.

"The Chinese government has the right and the ability to recover the islands and reefs illegally occupied by neighboring countries"...

Interest rates across the developed markets have been kept at emergency levels (and all time historical lows) for seven years. Do we think that allowing banks to access essentially free money is more or less likely to give rise to the sort of malinvestments that caused the financial crisis in the first place? If you believe that the answer is ‘less likely’, there is a job at your local central bank with your name on it.

"We are sellers of risk SPX 2050-2100, DXY>100. Terror/geopolitics can keep ZIRP for longer, but bullish FMS indicates big EPS needed for sustained new risk highs."
- BOfA

Economists have been consistently over-estimating the strength of the economy this year. The magnitude of their misses is not particularly worrisome but volatility measures and the recent record number of consecutive negative readings are suggesting that economists’ models are losing their grasp on the state of the economy.

For the second straight day, France hit ISIS "targets" in Raqqa while domestic security personnel conducted more than 120 fresh raids across the country in a frantic effort to head off further attacks. Meanwhile, President Hollande is making a bid to change the constitution in what some are billing as a French "Patriot Act." 

Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually. By 2014, that number had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year. Now, according to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses. This means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals.