Archive - Feb 2015

Because admitting that the Venezuelan utopia is failing due to the policies of Hugo Chavez' "socialist revolution" would leave the thread by which Venezuelan socialism hangs ready to snap, President Maduro has shifted the blame for hyperinflating-price-based staples shortages and food lines from a cut in oil revenues to the dastardly capitalists. As The BBC reports, Maduro ordered the arrest of executives of one of the country’s largest pharmacy chains for allegedly creating shortages of everything from diapers to heart medicine. A triumphant information minister proclaimed, "we came, we normalized sales, we summoned the owners, we arrested them and they're prisoners for having provoked the people with economic war."

For the past couple of years, the economic optimists have been telling us that the economy has been getting better. Well, if the economy really has been getting better, why does the homeownership rate keep going down? If the economy really was healthy, more people would be getting good jobs and thus would be able to buy homes. But instead, the homeownership rate has continued to plummet throughout the entire “Obama recovery”.

Because nothing says "we really do fear social unrest... and please stick with the new king" like Saudi Arabia spewing a massive $29.3 billion spending program that include lavish payments of two months bonus salary to all Saudi state employees and a series of subsidies. As al-Arabiya reports, King Salman bin Abdulaziz has issued a number of decrees because - as he wrote on Twitter (which you may remember is considered "the source of all evil" by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia) "Dear Citizens, you deserve more," adding "do not forget to include me in your prayers."

In 1923 Hitler said, “Believe me, our misery will increase. The scoundrel will get by. But the decent, solid businessman who doesn’t speculate will be utterly crushed; first the little fellow on the bottom, but in the end the big fellow on top too. But the scoundrel and the swindler will remain, top and bottom. The reason: because the state itself has become the biggest swindler and crook. A robbers’ state!” Hitler wasn’t talking about hard money, he was talking about excessive money printing by a robber state. Krugman himself echoes these words, "It’s basically about revenue: when governments can’t either raise taxes or borrow to pay for their spending, they sometimes turn to the printing press." Out of control government that can’t borrow or tax enough to pay its bills? Zimbabwe, Iran, Venezuela... what country is next?

Everything that is broken with the US judicial system, explained with the help of two judges... and why nothing in this broken, corrupt system can ever be fixed until the grand reset finally sweeps every last remnant of the existing farce.

There is intense debate going on in the worlds of economics, politics, and finance as to whether we will, in 2015, experience the mother of all stock market crashes or whether, instead, we will float along ever higher on the happy cloud that has been making at least some people rich over the last few years (or whether, for a third possibility, we will just muddle along somewhere in the middle). Beyond the diatribes from the punditocracy, there is a mood – maybe it is idiosyncratic – but there’s the feeling that something dramatic is about to happen. I mean, a snowstorm hits and the local supermarket runs out of bread?! Are we all rehearsing for something here?

Despite Greek Government Bonds bouncing modestly higher (and marginal improvement in Greek stocks) today, the epicenter of the Greek crisis - their banking system - appears to continue crashing. As the ECB's decision to accept junk Greek collateral (as it does now) for ELA funding or not - a purely political decision - looms, the message from the Greek bank bond market is "nein nein nein." As Professor Karl Whelan exclaims, don’t believe for a minute that this is a technocratic thing to do with "the ECB having to follow its rules." And it has almost nothing to do with Greek government bonds being junk-rated. All of the issues come down to discretionary decisions by the ECB and there is plenty of wiggle room for them to allow Greek banks to continue receiving various sources of funding next month in the absence of an EU-IMF program agreement.

ZIRP in essence is deflationary in nature, it becomes a self-fulfilling, reinforcing slippery slope of “Monetary Extremism” and should be rejected at all costs!

In January, gold surged 8 per cent in dollar terms, 11 per cent in pound terms and a very large 16 per cent in euro terms. January’s 8.4% gain for gold in dollar terms was the best month in terms of price gains in three years.

Two enterprising teenagers in NJ were going around their neighborhood advertising their snow-shoveling service right before the big storm hit. But in the New America where security trumps all else, a local resident called the police to report about the teens' "suspicious activity," who actually came out to investigate since, apparently running a snow-shoveling business is something that only criminal terrorists would do. Even when the police saw that it was just two harmless kids trying to earn some money, they forced them to stop (because in the Land of the Free, it seems you need a permit in order to offer to shovel snow for people). Just think about the lesson that’s being reinforced here: if you get off your ass, go out there, and try to take charge of your financial future, you’ll end up with nothing but a bunch of headaches, accusations, and unpleasant encounters with the government.

If you are an investor, your big concern should not be about stocks… but what happens when the bond bubble goes bust.

The Super-bowl halftime show the best concise index of how psychotic American culture is becoming from year to year, and the 2015 version signaled a complete break from reality, a nightmare of twerking robots in a hall of mirrors, as if America had utterly surrendered its tattered soul to some rogue motherboard pulsing deep within Dr. Evil’s subterranean palace of sin. Hence it is the perfect analog for understanding otherwise incomprehensible happenings such as the USA’s role in fomenting further chaos and mayhem in Ukraine.

The fundamental problem with real estate is cost.  The average household, whether renters or homeowners, is allocating too much of its income to housing.  As a result, public policies are likely to continue in the direction of more subsidies, such the Federal Reserve’s manipulation of long term rates, and more regulations, such as eviction and foreclosure prevention, and rent controls.  Real estate, could become a lot less “real” in the foreseeable future. As the market has witnessed since 2007, the Government could dictate the conditions of real estate ownership, even when it was not the lender.  Today, it is in full control. 

As the new Greek government begins 'reforming' the previous administration's austerity reforms and travels the length and breadth of Europe pitching its "we don't want more loans, we want debt reduction" ultimatum, Greek judges back at home have had their own moment of clarity in the new normal. The Greek Court of Auditors ruled on Monday that a decision by the previous government to cut the pensions of judges retroactively from August 2012 was unconstitutional and in violation of the European Convention of Human Rights... Well played judges.