Archive - Apr 2015

Financial engineering is one of the worst ills perpetuated by the Fed’s regime of cheap debt and money market subsidies for speculation. And these deformations are turbo-charged by the tax code which creates a powerful bias toward loading capital structures with tax deductible debt, and to delivering returns as lightly taxed capital gains rather than ordinary income. In fact, stock buybacks and LBOs are the bastard offspring of the IRS and Federal Reserve.

While conceding that a Greek exit from the euro would put everyone in “uncharted waters,” the ECB chief says he has the tools to combat contagion and as for shorting the euro, well, perhaps the best way to sum up Draghi’s position is to quote Clint Eastwood: “go ahead, make my day.”  

Nothing is ever permanent with the QE’s because they were doomed from the start. The “dollar” system can never be refined and remade to its prior station because it was irrevocably broken on August 9, 2007. All that QE’s have done is to create reverberation within the downward channel which may, in the end, only exacerbate the degree of imbalance that weighs on the inevitable shift.

We have never, ever, seen a larger Fed-fueled, mal-investment boom in private construction...

On the surface, Canada's 1.2% inflation is negligible, and barely enough to keep up with the pace of overall growth as mandated by a few central bank academics. It is below the surface, however, that one finds the scary truth. Because when stripping away the sliding energy prices (which at the recent pace of short covering among oil speculators are about to surge) some scary numbers emerge, such as a 3.8% monthly jump in food prices, primarily as a result of a whopping 30-40% increase in select meat prices in the last 8 months.  So how do ordinary people survive in an environment of soaring food prices?

While western propaganda would like ISIS to appear to be run by religious fanaticism, it instead, as RT reports, has been functioning more like a secret intelligence service, calculating every operation and drafting plans of a covert Syrian takeover for years. According to detailed organization chart and strategy blueprints seen by Der Spiegel, it has been revealed that the former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein's air defense force (among many ex-Saddam officers who now make up the leadership of ISIS) was secretly pulling the strings at ISIS for years. From recruitment and training to PsyOps tactics and overall strategy, ISIS mastermind Haji Bakr rose to power after he became "bitter and unemployed," when the US suddenly dissolved the Iraqi army after the 2003 invasion.

NeoClown...

Here we are, just barely into our first earnings season without the incessantly added fuel provided by QE and the markets are stumbling. At times on Friday the indexes were hovering near the possibility of posting 2% losses going into the weekend. In today’s media mindset of “everything is awesome.” That’s near – unthinkable. No Fed speaker saved the day; no HFT-induced ramp came to the rescue... Maybe it’s because all ammo (and there has been no silver bullet more powerful of late than a Central Banker press conference) is being reserved for a much larger crisis looming on the horizon (i.e. Greece and all its tenuous implications calling for an “All hands on printing presses deck, battle stations” response).

"The gap would be made up with future tax hikes and/or cuts in spending. Those future taxes would be paid by successful millennials and their descendants, letting unsuccessful millennials off the hook," Bloomberg notes, bemoaning the likely "solution" to America's trillion dollar student debt bubble.

While there are still three months until Operation Jade Helm officially opens, various documented reports of substantial national guard drills and troop exercises are starting to trickle in early. As Paul Joseph Watson notes, the first documented proof of National Guard drills comes from Ontario, California where National Guard troops can be seen patrolling residential streets and practicing traffic control. In the video troops, followed by a humvee, are seen marching close to an elementary school and single family homes.

Hopes ran high among Europe's unelected bureaucratic oligarchy and the Troika of official creditors that the Greek government, after the ECB openly dropped hints of a Greek IOU currency in the immediate future, would finally relent over the weekend and admit that all of its promises to its voters were a lie and that the Tsipras government would finally pick up where the Samaras government left (and was booted) off. There was even a perfect venue: Washington D.C., where Varoufakis and Obama met for the first time just hours before. The hopes were promptly dashed after Greece, once again, said it would not "renege on election pledges to end austerity measures as creditors pressed for a compromise."

Understanding Jackson’s Bank War is critical to our future. He was absolutely correct insofar as following the Jeffersonian view that a National Debt would not be a Blessing as Hamilton proclaimed, but the servitude of the people that would ultimately consume all liberty.

So the fundamental case for a 20-year bull run as BMO is calling for and certainly many other banks seem to be onboard with that is not looking great YTD.  In fact, most perma bulls have shy’d away from even mentioning fundamentals other than to say that generally they aren’t looking great but don’t worry the Fed is still engaged.   And so we feel its a worthwhile exercise to have a look at the technicals.

Trying to make sense of the global capital markets.

As we observed yesterday when we showed that if comparing the collapse in China's housing market with that of the US following their respective peaks then China is already a recession, we added that "as shown in the chart below [China] has recently engaged in several easing steps, with many more to come according to the sell-side consensus." Sure enough, just a few hours later, the PBOC announced its second Reserve Requirement Ratio (RRR) for all banks since February 4, when China had its first industry-wide RRR cut since May 2012. The move will be effective Monday, April 20.