Archive - Mar 4, 2015

"There is no evidence upon which prosecutors can rely to disprove Wilson’s stated subjective belief that he feared for his safety," states a report from The Justice Department, clearing Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson of civil rights violations in the shooting of Michael Brown last year. Although this was somewhat expected, as we noted previously, the DoJ's report points specifically to "some prosecution witness accounts cannot be relied on because their accounts cannot be reconciled with the DNA bloodstain evidence and other credible witness accounts."

Is Janet Yellen "patient" or not? And is "patient" a nudge-nudge, wink-wink code for a period stretching beyond the next few FOMC meetings or is it just a tacit admission that the Fed will start checking its parachute harness only after the plane’s engines have at last caught fire?  The last time they did this - with the benefit of hindsight - the supposed golden era was the one in which were actively sowing the seeds of our own ruin, it might give pause for thought about quite how much harm our masters' stubbornly accommodative stance is causing us again today.

The BLS put out their monthly CPI lie last week. They issued the proclamation that inflation is dead. Did you know your costs are 0.1% lower than they were one year ago. They then used these deflation numbers to proclaim your real wages soared last month. It’s all good. The American consumer is so flush with cash, they decided to spend less money for the second month in a row. The Wall Street shysters are so happy with declining consumer spending, declining corporate profits, and a global recession, they pushed the NASDAQ up to 5,000 for the first time in 15 years.

"Three big private equity firms — the Blackstone Group, Colony Capital and Cerberus Capital Management — are betting that so-called landlord loans to small and midsize investors will become the next big opportunity to profit from the rebound in the United States housing market. The private equity firms are providing financing indirectly to hundreds of real estate funds buying single-family homes, something that until recently was not widely available."

"Presidents should get the power to declare economic emergencies along the lines to declare war... [and] take extraordinary actions and not put that all on the Fed." - Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke

For those of us who remain horrified and disgusted by the 2008-09 Federal Reserve and U.S. government bailout of the kleptocratic oligarchs who created the crisis, the above comments by the mastermind of this historic theft should be extremely concerning.

A guffaw a day keeps the Bilderboogress away...

So much for last night's lower than expected API build, DOE data shows a massive build compared to the 3.95 mm barrels expected:

*CRUDE OIL INVENTORIES ROSE 10.30 MLN BARRELS, EIA SAYS

This is the 8th build in a row (adding the most inventory in history) and biggest weekly inventory rise in 14 years.

Just what are the Swiss up to...

*SWISS FINANCE MINISTER WANTS NEW MINIMUM EXCHANGE RATE: HZ

A confidential paper signed by Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, discussed in government last week, said that new minimum exchange rate should be "considered," Handelszeitung reports in a prerelease of an article to be published Thursday.

US Services PMI rose and beat very modestly from 57.0 to 57.1 in February (this is a flash print). This is the highest Services PMI print since October but Markit warns not to get excited, data "is up only slightly compared to the fourth quarter of last year, meaning growth this year is running at a rate similar to the 2.2% annualised pace seen late last year." ISM Services (survey) confirmed this modest improvement in February (despite all the hard data collapsing) boucing very modestly from 56.7 to 56.9 in Feb despite a drop in BusinessActivity and New Orders.

Just 2 days ago everything was awesome (according to stocks). Nasdaq hit 5000 proving it's different this time, despite the total collapse in macro and earnings data. So perhaps - just perhaps - as buybacks slow, US equity markets are exposed to reality underneath them. VIX has snapped back above 15, its highest in 10 days, and the S&P is back at 2-week lows... retracing all the "Greek Deal" gains.

UPDATE: And now *YEMEN GUNMEN BLOW UP OIL PIPELINE IN SHABWA: ARABIYA

As oil prices started to slide this morning, following their pop on lower-than-expected API inventory build data, headlines crossed:

*ISLAMISTS ATTACK IRAQ OIL PIPELINES EAST OF TIKRIT: IRAQIYA

As we detailed yesterday, Tikrit is key, and this (unconfirmed for now) headline sent WTI and Brent up 40c per barrel (for now). With ISIS suffering from lower cashflows (thanks to lower oil prices), we suspect their efforts to raise oil prices (by any means possible) will continue.

It is becoming clear that a pretty wide divide seems to appear between what many people think the Syriza government in Athens should do, and what they actually can do at this point in time. It should be useful to clarify what this divide consists of, and how it can be breached, if that is at all possible.

Yeah but apart from that, US-China relations are excellent. Following President Obama's barbed comments aimed at China's new counter-terrorism laws (and their implications for US tech companies - as NSA spying 'facts' reduce China's appetite for American-made IT products), Beijing has blasted back. In one of the least holds-barred undiploatic statements in recent times, China (speaking through its official mouthpiece Xinhua), calls Obama's criticism "utterly groundless and another piece of evidence of arrogance and hypocrisy of the U.S. foreign policy." And with that they are just getting started...