Archive - Jan 2015

Foreign policy actions have consequences. The aggressive foreign policies of the United States and its allies in the Middle East have radicalized thousands and have made us less safe. Blowback is real whether some want to recognize it or not. There are no guarantees of security, but only a policy of non-intervention can reduce the risk of another attack.

Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Al Naimi has asked why he should be responsible for cutting output while U.A.E. Energy Minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei said non-OPEC producers should reduce "irresponsible" production. How can that be? How can American production be 'irresponsible' in the land of the free (money). Well, as the following chart from Bloomberg shows, perhaps OPEC members have a point...

The major unintended consequence of government and central bank intervention since Volcker's stand against inflation has been to generate its nemesis; deflation. With interest rates near zero in the major economies, there is nowhere for rates intervention to go to provide a stimulus. Strangely the answer must be higher interest rates. We will then see some "creative destruction" which is what the financial system needs to reset and start a proper economic cycle, but with the investment banks, who stand to lose the most, controlling the strings (just how do you think the US Budget bill got changed to allow banks’ derivative positions to be included in subsidiaries covered by FDIC insurance? ie the taxpayer covers their losses) we need stronger hands at the tiller than a coalition of "politicians" or a lame duck president. We need somebody with balls... any volunteers?

On the cover: the Prophet Mohammed holding the now iconic "I Am Charlie" sign, with "All is forgiven" written in the background.

"I'm not sure how long this rally will last," warns one Chinese securities analyst, but adds, Chinese investors "tend to ignore important fundamentals" anyway. When even mainstream media is reporting on the epic farce that is the explosion of retail interest in Chinese stocks (and the concomittant surge in stock prices), perhaps it is time for the 'greater fool' to pull back a little. Perhaps the 'exuberance' is best summed up by the following from a security guard for Beijing's subway system, "low-priced stocks are less risky - big drops won’t result in huge losses for me - I don’t know much about investing, but the stocks my friends recommended have been soaring." Trade accordingly...

That the global Status Quo is terrified of deflation is the background of every policy decision and official PR sound-bite. The reason behind this unremitting terror: deflation is the Achilles Heel of the global Status Quo. Rather than being the Monster Under the Bed in central bank nightmares, deflation is the natural result of a competitive economy experiencing productivity gains.

Everyone has heard of "inflation" and "deflation" and, when things go really bad and another recession is just around the corner coupled with soaring prices and plunging wages like in Japan for example, "stagflation." But have you heard about its optimistic, happy-go-lucky cousin?

Meet Joyflation!

We are observing the emergence of a new phase in The Golden Age of the Central Banker – the cult phase – to use the sociological lingo. Joseph Heller’s brilliant book provides the starting point, not only by calling attention to the prevalence and power of Catch-22’s in the investment world today, but also in the creation of a self-regulated, faith-based system of social behavior. A Catch-22 world is not a happy world, but it is a very stable world, at least on its own terms. Change is very unlikely to come from within, and internal market risk indicators are all quite benign. But external market risk indicators are all screaming red, as the global environment has rarely been this worrisome for political shocks, trade/forex shocks, and supply shocks with the scope and power to challenge the Central Banking gods.

Local NBC, FOX, and CBS stations are confirming earlier reports of smoke (so far of an unknown origin) which filled L'Enfant Plaza Metro Station in Washington D.C. this afternoon. Early reports suggested minimal injuries but NBC Washington now confirms one woman died and 84 have been hospitalized. The cause of the smoke remains under investigation - firefighters are on the scene but did not immediately find a fire.

Too soon?

"We have to rethink our world just about from scratch. Or else. We’ve lived chasing the recovery carrot for years now, but the economy won’t recover; it can’t. There hasn’t been any real growth since at least the 1980s, the only thing there’s been is increasing debt levels that we mistook for growth." We need to do a lot more thinking, and take a far more critical look at ourselves, than we do at present. We’re not even playing it safe, we’re only playing it easy. And that’s just not enough.

Germany could end up in a position where it would be constitutionally bound to leave the euro area, warns the IFO economic institute's Hans-Werner Sinn, which would force "somebody to give in and that would be the ECB." Sinn blasts the looming decision of ECB QE as an excuse to help weaker nations, exclaiming, as Bloomberg reports, "the risk of deflation is just a pretext for quantitative easing, for hammering out a bailout program for southern Europe."

Throughout history, there have been cases where this willingness to live together vanished because a big part of the population expresses a desire to live under different rules. What happened last week in Paris begs the question whether Western Europe faces this problem; i.e., does France and its neighbors have a part of their population that rejects the rules on which the nation is based, and wishes to build a nation under a different set of rules?

It appears Lazard's investment banker Antonio Weiss' "help" in tax inversions was just too 'unpatriotic' to scare President Obama off at the last minute.

• *ANTONIO WEISS SAID TO WITHDRAW NAME AS TREASURY NOMINEE
• *WEISS SOUGHT TO AVOID LENGTHY CONFIRMATION PROCESS (how thoughtful?)

The White House exclaimed "opposition to Weiss was unjustfied," so perhaps it was his $203 million in assets just would not have played well with Obama's new vision for the future. However, he has managed to get a position as "counselor" - which does not require Senate approval.

It is at least well-understood that there are seasons in history, but they seem to have a mysterious, implacable dynamism that mere humans can only hope to ride like great waves, hoping to not get crushed. In the background of the present disturbances are not only the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, but the imminent collapse of the machinery that boosted up the greater Islamic economy of our time: the oil engine. These are the stresses that are boiling over into the West these days. The long war underway is a race to the bottom where the human project has to re-set the terms of a life above savagery.