Archive - Feb 7, 2015

The phony 5.7% domestic unemployment rate reported yesterday has nothing to do with full employment. The relevant number in the report is that there are still 101 million working age Americans who do not have jobs, and only 45 million of them are on OASI retirement benefits. And that says nothing about the tens of millions of job holders who are employed far less than a full 40 hour work week. In short, there is a surfeit of available labor at home and abroad, meaning 3-4% wage gains are not coming down the pike any time soon or ever. So if that’s what the Fed is waiting for - then the so-called “lift-off” may not be coming even this year. And in any event, the trivial 25 bps increases in the funds rate that may eventually come have nothing to do with interest rate “normalization” or the return of honest price discovery in the casino. And that suits the needs of the Wall Street gamblers just fine.

Just as the existing 'truce' in Ukraine has been made a total farce as 1000s of military and civilians have been killed, so any 'hope' that this weekend's "peace efforts" will result in anything but more talk is rapidly diminishing... Germany's Merkel exclaimed honestly that it's "uncertain whether this will be successful," seemingly resigned to the fact as she added, "but it's at least worth making an attempt." French President Hollande admitted that Ukraine's eastern regions likely need "strong autonomy." Ukraine's Poroshenko blustered that he "trusts" Merkel, that the economy is collapsing (more money please), that the country does not need peacekeepers and a lack of arms is fueling conflict (so send us weapons) while pushing for a Russian withdrawal and quick cease-fire.  Finally Vladimir Putin blasted that Russia is unwilling to tolerate a post-Cold War global system dominated by one absolute leader, to which US VP Joe Biden remarked simply "get out of Ukraine." But apart from that, talks are going great...

The current controversy enveloping the news anchor for NBC Brian Williams is both growing in furor as well as out right shock. As many of you have probably heard he has come under direct fire that is quite real as opposed to the fictional accounts he’s been extolling about a helicopter incident he had in Iraq a few years ago. The main stream media (especially that of television) is currently in the death throes of any semblance of credibility, let alone believability. As more and more incidents resembling the likes of these continue, the quicker as well as scope of their ratings failures will persist. For this is no longer a symptom – it’s now a full-blown metastasized cancer plaguing the main stream media as a whole.

Amid all the bluster, propaganda, and pressure from 'Europe-ex-Greece' towards Greece, we thought the words of Luis de Guindos (of course before he became the status-quo-fulfilling Finance Minister of Spain) were particularly enlightening given Greece's 'demands' and Europe's rebuttal...

Greece’s problem can only be truly solved if large scale debt restructuring is accepted and executed. But that would initiate a chain of events that would bring down the bloated zombie that is Wall Street. And it just so happens that this zombie rules the planet. We are all addicted to the zombie. It allows us to fool ourselves into thinking we are doing well – well, sort of -, but the longer term implications of that behavior will be devastating. We’re all going to be Greece, that’s inevitable. It’s not some maybe thing. The only thing that keeps us from realizing that is that the big media outlets have become part of the same industry that Wall Street, and the governments it controls, have full control over. And that in turn says something about the importance of what Yanis Varoufakis and Syriza are trying to accomplish. They’re taking the battle to the finance empire. And it should not be a lonely fight. Because if the international Wall Street banks succeed in Greece, some theater eerily uncomfortably near you will be next. That is cast in stone.

Put on the a tin foil hat if you must, but US dollar's rally is resuming after short consolidation phase.  I think the rally is only about 1/3 of where it is eventually going.  

Even as the whispers that the imposition of capital controls by Greece, which is now running out of both time, negotiating leverage and tax money is just a matter of time, get louder with every passing day if not acknowledged by Greek officials yet, it was none other than one of the supposedly most "rock-solid" central banks in the world that fired a shot across the bow of global financial stability when it hinted that not Greece but another country may be the first to engage in capital controls. The country: Switzerland.

Many previous commentaries have detailed the mounting crises faced by the One Bank in its own paper-bullion markets. Invariably, these “crises” are 100% self-created. This is easily illustrated by reviewing a few of its current (increasingly serious) problems.

1) No one has seen the 10,000+ tons of gold which the U.S. government claims to have been storing (on behalf of itself, and other nations) for roughly 60 years.

2) The reason why no one has seen this gold is that most of it does not exist, and of the small fraction that remains, any audit would reveal that every bar had been pledged to numerous (dozens of?) owners.