Archive - Mar 26, 2015

If yesterday's 5 Year auction was ugly across the board, today's 7 Year was even uglier.

Further proof that the disparity between America's bosses and the country's non-supervisory workforce is widening at an alarming rate...

"Revelations about the NSA’s programs reveal the extraordinary extent to which the program has invaded Americans’ privacy. I reject the notion that we must sacrifice liberty for security — we can live in a secure nation which also upholds a strong commitment to civil liberties. This legislation ends the NSA’s dragnet surveillance practices, while putting provisions in place to protect the privacy of American citizens through real and lasting change." – Rep. Mark Pocan on the Surveillance State Repeal Act

All of these are signs of a top forming.

With Washington throwing its full faith and credit behind a new Ukrainian bond issue, it appears it’s time for Moscow to play spoiler to current debt restructuring talks between Kiev and its creditors. Russia holds some $3 billion of Ukraine's debt and doesn't think it should have to incur losses as part of any deal because Vladimir Putin is no average joe private creditor.

In one of the most chilling segments of this morning's press conference describing what was found on the cockpit voice recorder, screams were heard from passengers and crew as the realisation of what was about to happen struck them all. Prosecutor Brice Robin's findings state that when the German Captain left the cockpit - following what appeared to be - the 28-year-old German co-pilot (who was alive to the end) refused to re-open the door and began an "intentional", "controlled", and "steady" descent as he "seems to have sought to destroy the plane." Nothing indicates that this was a terrorist incident.

How can it be? Services PMI was at 6-month highs. The Kansas City Fed Index tumbled to -4 in March (against expectations of +1) and was last below this level in Feb 2013. KC Fed has now missed for 6 of the last 8 months and the report is a disaster across the board. New orders plunged to -20 (2nd lowest print since Lehman), order backlogs imploded, average workweek collapsed to -17 (lowest since Lehman), and future capex expectations fell to a five-year low. As one respondent noted, "we do not see the economy as being as strong as a portrayed in the national media reports."

The political pressure on Germany is rising in Europe. The country faces a choice: Continue business as usual or change the strategy? Only the latter option may give it real influence on shaping the future course of economic and political affairs in Europe. Playing defense is the comfortable choice, but it may be the wrong strategy. What needs to be done? Below is a proposal for saving the Eurozone in a way that would safeguard Germany’s interests, too

Doing what it does best, a month after the fact and long after the black swans have left the stable so to say, Mario Draghi's ECB has finally asked Eurozone banks "to detail their exposure to Austria and provisions they plan to make after the country halted debt repayments by a "bad bank" winding down defunct lender Hypo Alpe Adria," financial sources told Reuters.

Paging Jim Bullard...

Oil prices bounced back on March 24 on a sliding U.S. Dollar, and then again overnight on Middle East turmoil, but the pain may not be over yet.

Who could have seen that coming? Markit reports that US Services PMI surged to 58.6 in March (considerably better than the 57.0 exp) and the highest in 6 months. Despite the total collapse in US Macro data, the survey says... everything is awesome.

With Trannies now down almost 6% year-to-date, the S&P just fell back below the red-line for 2015, joining The Dow. Small Caps and Nasdaq remain up 2% for now. Bonds, gold, and silver are back in the green for 2015.

To Yemen Obama has flown...

Having now discovered more of the disturbing facts about the last 30 minutes of the Germanwings flight, the Lufthansa CEO holds a press conference...