Archive - Dec 2015

A closer look at Star Wars economics highlights that any hope for Galactic harmony does not come from the return of the Jedi, but from embracing capitalism. After all, a true market economy would make the construction of a Death Star nearly impossible in the first place.

At 1815ET, after trading in a very narrow $1 range for hours, Bitcoin suddenly exploded $17 higher on very heavy volume. Normally this wouldn't warrant an explicit mention, but this time... something odd happened in Chinese currency markets...

"For years since 9/11, U.S. and Western officials have mostly looked the other way at all this ideological support for extremism: Saudi oil was just too important to the global economy, even though many of these Saudi petro-dollars were underwriting repression at home and the growth of Salafist fundamentalism abroad."

From "Thundering Herd" to thundering-mad. Having recently laid off 100s of staff and cut compensation plans, AdvisorHub reports that Mother Merrill may be canceling Christmas for its roughly 14,500 brokers - "we’re hearing that in many regions the Bank of America-owned brokerage firm has sent out word that there will be no Merrill-financed holiday parties this year." Such Grinch-like moves have little precedent, and brokers in some areas have retaliated.

In a recent survey not a single major central bank could provide an example of an accurate “a priori” recession forecast. The silence from the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, BOE, BOJ and the Bank of Canada is deafening.

BANZAI7 STATIST BULL WARNING

"The Trump campaign, for some time now, has had a 'dustbin of history'-like quality to it, from the vacuous sloganeering, to the outright lies; even the fake hair," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, adding the pertinent question is whether Republicans are "going to be dragged into the dustbin of history" with the Trump campaign.

Send a Million Troops From All Over the World Pouring Into Raqqa

Oil tanker rates soared to the highest in seven years amid an acceleration in the number of bookings and signs that the ships are being delayed when unloading due to a lack of space in on-land storage tanks. This means that day rates for 2 million-barrel carrying ships sailing to Japan from Saudi Arabia, the industry’s benchmark route, surged to $111,359, the highest since July 2008,

According to one US soldier who fought in Mosul from 2005 to 2006, all of the "loose talk" about retaking the city from ISIS is wishful thinking. "Look at the stories from Fallujah — a city that is 20 percent the size of Mosul," he cautions adding that even if the city could be captured and sealed off from ISIS supply lines, troops would need to "settle in for a siege and a ten-year war of attrition." 

We want to take a minute to explain why the collapse in US ISM Manufacturing is important, because as with any negative economic news released, it has been roundly dismissed by the optimistic Wall Street group.

Everything is not awesome. We have three small words for all those MLP-holders: "Paid to wait."

One can choose to ignore all these charts. However, many of them suggest eery similarity to 2007/2008 in structure. And if this structure plays out the so called "Santa" rally may not be all that it's cracked up to be. The cumulative message of all these charts: Things are far from well.