Archive - May 9, 2015

Te most shocking development took place yesterday when the US State Department, via spokesman Jeff Rathke, told reporters that while it "regrets" that it did not get to review the new foreign government funding, it does not plan to look into the matter further, spokesman Jeff Rathke said on Thursday. "The State Department has not and does not intend to initiate a formal review or to make a retroactive judgment about items that were not submitted during Secretary Clinton's tenure," Rathke told reporters. And while the "unbiased" media kept its mouth shut, on person who did speak up was AP's Matt Lee who asked why the State Department wouldn't investigate further to determine if the tens of millions of dollars in donations had influenced her decisions while she was SecState.

Having faced up to the dreadful reality of a dust-bowl-esque California, and following Governor Jerry Brown's mandatory water restrictions, The LA Times reports a growing list of 'plans' to solve the state's water shortage is growing. From innovations to insanity - from iceberg-towing to biodegradable towels and from 'water pipelines' to bumper stickers - officials have cataloged more than 170 messages containing suggestions and received untold more in emails, phone calls and public meetings.

Fed-created bubbles are inevitably going to implode, because they have no relation to economic reality whatsoever.  And when they implode, millions of Americans are going to be financially wiped out. Just like David and Jackie Siegel, “America’s time-share king”, America just keeps on making the same mistakes over and over again - we simply can’t help ourselves. And in the end, we will all pay a great, great price for our utter foolishness.

The following map from Goldman compares the entire market cap of various European companies to assorted standalone US corporations. The result is just a touch eerie.

Why "industry standard," together with "standard procedure" are probably two of the most overused phrases in business

A straightforward analysis of the near-term outlook for the dollar, oil, 10-year US and German yields and the S&P 500.  

The US is applying political pressure to Greece in an effort to dissuade Athens from participating in Russia's Turkish Stream Pipeline project which has been implicitly used, at various times, as a negotiating tactic in discussions with EU creditors. As the Times suggests, this is further evidence that Washington is becoming increasingly concerned that the world is rapidly shifting away from the US-dominated, unipolar model that has existed, in one form or another, since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This consternation is beginning to manifest itself in the revitalization of Cold War politics.