Archive - Nov 2015

Our booming green-industrial complex built up by administrations of both parties in the US is effectively using the United Nations, its thirty two “sister” institutions — such as the World Bank, UNESCO, and numerous “tribunals” — and hundreds of training and research centers. This huge international bureaucratic buildup is already employing over a million “international civil servants” to administer what our socialist visionaries hope will become the world government of the future.

It is now open season on "climate change deniers" everywhere.

“Bank of Ireland understands these changes may be a new way of banking for some of our customers, and the branch teams will be available to help and guide them through this change."

Shunned... In this 'free-stuff-army' world full of expectations of moar for less (or nothing), it should come as no surprise that the ultimate buy-one-get-a-unicorn-free clothes retailer - Men's Warehouse - just unleashed a 30% off sale on its stock. Due to a self-described "decline in traffic" as the firm transitioned away from the Buy-One-Get-Three-Free campaign, comparable store sales are expected to collapse 20-25%. This has smashed the stocks to its lowest since August 2012...

They called it the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). But it’s one of the most poorly named pieces of legislation in US history. They might as well have called it the “Bank Sell-Your-Customers-Out Act”, because that’s ultimately what it amounts to. The BSA is a cornerstone regulation that requires banks in the Land of the Free to be unpaid spies of the government. Now they’re expanding further into “rewards-based crowdfunding platforms”, sites like Kickstarter which help entrepreneurs find money to start a business.

In the next phase of the Obama administration's other war on drugs, The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued a letter to the CEOs of four large drug providers (AbbVie, Gilead, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck), warning that "manufacturers have a role to play in ensuring access and affordability to these medications," asking for "value-based purchasing arrangements." While there is no "or else" in the letter, the focus on 'significance to many', 'costs', and 'accessible' suggest an overhang of government intervention as new specialty drugs account for nearly a third of overall costs, but represent less than 1% of prescriptions.

China can’t allow its industrial economy to sink without a fight. It will have to devalue the renminbi to try to get more market share for its exports. It still has 80% of its workers earning less than $10 a day. A lower renminbi will reduce real wages further and make China’s exports cheaper than ever. And then, what about the rest of the world? As the renminbi goes down, the dollar, yen, and euro will have to go up. Commodities – priced in dollars – will stay down. U.S. corporate profits will fall. The stock market “tape” will go down. Consumer prices, too, will remain low... or go negative. Deflation. Deflation. Deflation.

"Summarizing technical flows from option hedges, volatility targeting, CTA and Risk Parity funds, we believe that these strategies largely re-levered to pre August crash levels. This was a significant driver of the S&P 500 performance in October and hence poses some downside risk.... The risk of this increasingly one dimensional positioning across CTAs, Macro and some of Equity Long-Short managers is that these trends don’t materialize and trades become too crowded. The result could be a sharp reversion as positions are exited."

With the S&P 500 just over 1% from its all-time record-high, it is perhaps shocking that only just over 50% of the index members are trading above their 200-day moving average. Worse still,  the divergence between index price performance and underlying component performance has never been greater as The Fed's last money-printing effort drove a wedge between the have-nots and the have-yachts...

"The Trans-Pacific Partnership means that America will write the rules for 21st century trade," according to President Obama, but as Reuters reports, U.S. unions, lawmakers and interest groups questioned the long-awaited text of a landmark U.S.-backed Pacific trade deal on Thursday. "It's worse than we thought,” Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, told members and U.S. labor representatives said the agreement contained weak, poorly worded or unenforceable provisions, concluding "we do not believe those improvements are significant or meaningful for workers." It appears, that ObamaTrade may be a boon for factory and export economies like Malaysia and Vietnam, but - as expected - will achieve little for the average joe in America.

"He had become increasingly concerned with gas matters"...

You know it's bad when...