Archive - Jun 3, 2015

Buildings make a statement about their owners. FIFA-Hauptquartier seems to be saying: our owners have a boatload of cash... and in a world where heavily-manipulated stock markets are constantly achieving all-time highs, the message from the 'market' is just as full of it as Blatter.

There is no nuance to what I'm going to say: interest rates are pushing higher, and this is going to be a millstone around the neck of the world economy.

"During the roughly two years of Arab Spring protests that confronted authoritarian governments with popular uprisings, Clinton’s State Department approved $66 million worth of so-called Category 14 exports -- defined as "toxicological agents, including chemical agents, biological agents and associated equipment" -- to nine Middle Eastern governments that either donated to the Clinton Foundation or whose affiliated groups paid Bill Clinton speaking fees," IBTimes reports.

With bond yields spiking and the dollar dumping, one might think precious metals would be bid... but that anti-status quo reality will not do and so, gold and silver (and crude oil) are tumbling faster than Sepp Blatter's reputation...

In the last 24 months, Canada, Cyprus, New Zealand, the US, the UK, and now Germany have all implemented legislation that would allow them to first FREEZE and then SEIZE bank assets during the next crisis.

Hint...

Dear Janet, you find yourself in a terrible conundrum.  You understand as well as anyone that managing the trickle-less down recovery and the resulting tenacious dislocation between the market and the economy is becoming unmanageably expensive; about $13T to date.  And while the hint of a rate hike over the past year has sent the dollar up some +15%, some suggesting a sign of strength for the American economy, it really is not helping the situation now is it??

There's Always Been Some Corruption in the U.S. ... But Never Like THIS

Wendy's just took buyback mania to the next level when, earlier today, it announced it would buyback $1.4 billion of its shares, which amounts to just under 50% of its entire float!

A new research paper from none other than the IMF has a unique observation for heavily-indebted countries: "It is better to live with the debt than to pay it down." 

U.S. healthcare is unsustainable. That it will break in the next decade is predictable. We are collectively wandering the beach, picking up seashells, while a mighty tsunami wave is approaching that will wash everyone on the beach away. We can either deal with the lifestyle and cultural causes of our mounting ill health or be swept away when the system crashes.

Following last night's inventory build report from API, expectations adjusted to a 818k build for the DOE data this morning. However, for the 5th week in a row, DOE reported a draw (this time of 1.95 million barrels).  WTI Crude had rallied into the data but was still in the red from yesterday's close and spiked on the inventory news. However, once the machines had a chance to see that production rose once again - to a new cycle record - prices began to slide....

Two years ago, bank analyst Mike Mayo asked JPM chief Jamie Dimon a simple question: why should affluent customers not pick UBS over JPM due to a mismatch in capital ratios, to which Dimon's response was even simpler: "that's why I'm richer than you." To which we then added: "No logic, no rationale: all about the bottom line, which to Jamie at least is all that matters. The bottom line was indeed all, because as Bloomberg calculated overnight, over the past several years, Jamie Dimon quietly became not just "richer than you", but "much" richer: his net worth is now well over $1 billion!

But the post-weather bounce? Markit's Services PMI in May missed expectations and dropped for the 2nd month in a row to its lowest since January. This notched the Composite PMI also down to its lowest since Jan, leaving Markit warning "the US economy has lost some momentum after an initial bounce-back from weather-related weakness at the start of the year." Worst still, ISM Services thenprinted a notably disappointing 55.7 (against 57.0 expectations) - its weakest since April 2014. The breakdown shows weakness across the board with prices rising. Finally, we note that an incredible 75 of 79 'qualified' economists had an ISM Services estimate that was too high... extrapolated hope springs eternal until it is smashed on the shores of reality.

It appears Draghi's comments are not what the market wanted to hear.Bunds have crashed over 30bps in the last 2 days... the biggest 2-day spike since Oct 1998...