Archive - Feb 2015

It would appear that monetizing more than 100% of your debt and constant daily reassurances that everything is awesome are not enough to create real world economic growth. Japanese manufacturing PMI slipped to 51.5 in February (missing expectations of 52.2), its lowest since July 2014 as New Orders & Employment slowed. Perhaps most worrying for the deflation-death match Abe is wagering, Output prices tumbled. Japanese stocks don't care of course, having entirely decoupled from JPY when The BoJ scared the FX carry markets with its 'hawkish' bias and 5-4 vote.

Three months ahead of schedule, Russia announces the launch of its own 'SWIFT'-alternative, linking 91 credit institutions initially, suggests de-dollarization is considerably further along than many expected (especially as Russia dumps US Treasuries at a record pace).

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No Longer Focused On Deposits Or Loans?!

The global financial system desperately needs a big, bloody sovereign default - a profoundly disruptive financial event capable of shattering the current rotten regime of bank bailouts and central bank financial repression. Needless to say, Greece is just the ticket: A default on its crushing debt and exit from the Euro would stick a fork in it like no other. But don’t count on the Greeks.

Three hours ago, when the NY Fed trading desk was patting itself on the back for another day without hitches or major glitches in the "market" (except for that HFT-snafu in the USDCAD of course), one person was live-tweeting his arrest.  The person is Antonio Ledezma, who is not only the mayor of Caracas but the leader of Venezuela's, and around 5:20 pm local time, he was taken to the intelligence service’s headquarters in Caracas after the local police broke into his office and arrested him. The moment of the arrest was captured on video.

Everything has to come to an end, sometime...

Meet Guan Tao. He oversees the foreign exchange of China’s $4 trillion stockpile of reserves (so he has an incredibly unique view of capital flows and currency movements in and out of the country), and he just admitted that capital flight from China is accelerating suggesting that outflows could be considerably higher than official channels show.

Fed's Yellen (12/17): "The decline we've seen in oil prices is likely to be, on net, a positive."

Fed's Yellen (02/18): "Persistently low oil prices could dampen the overall expansion of economic activity."

And this is the woman we trust to run the world?

Very few, it seems...

While the ECB is responsible for determining the euro-zone's supply of bank notes, it doesn't actually print them; instead it outsources the work to central banks of a few euro-zone countries (one of which is Greece). As WSJ reports, the Greek central bank's bank-note printing facility is called IETA. Built in 1941, the Attica plant today is outfitted with "state-of-the-art machinery," and has been responsible for printing batches of €10 notes, according to the ECB. One wonders how tempted the Greeks will be to take matters into their own ink-stained hands, should the ECB/Germany/Eurogroup pull the plug without acquiescing to their non-ultimatum "take it or leave it" offer...

First, the US openly allows potential Jihadist elements (don't worry, the answered "moderate" on the questionnaire) to call in B-1B strikes, and now in all its Sun Tzu-esque brilliance, the Pentagon is handing out not only issuing press releases on its military invasion calendar, but its troops deployment numbers as well. According to Reuters, the United States sees an Iraqi military offensive involving 20,000-25,000 troops to retake Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in April-May, a U.N. military official said on Thursday.

In its role as global hall monitor, Washington appears to have jabbed its nose into the Greece-EU talks:

*LEW SPOKE WITH SAPIN, DIJSSELBLOEM, VAROUFAKIS TODAY: OFFICIAL
*U.S. URGES SIDES IN GREEK TALKS TO TONE DOWN RHETORIC: OFFICIAL

Treasury Secretary Lew "urges compromise" and explains he is in touch with Eurogroup, IMF, and Greece putting the onus back on Varoufakis' shoulders by urging them to reach a deal of face additional hardhsip.

In typical European fashion, today's Greek negotiations have ended in a Schrodingerian fashion: on one hands reports are now trickling in that the Greek Eurogroup working group has concluded their meeting after 7 hours without a result while on the other, Market News is reporting that Eurozone deputies have "drafted a statement that could well serve as a basis for a compromise between Greece and the Eurozone, to be examined by finance ministers Friday."

When you owe someone $340, it is YOUR problem.
When you owe someone $340 BILLION, it is THEIR problem.