Archive - Jun 2015

With levels of investors complacency at extremely high levels, it is a currently "fact" that little can go wrong. There is no recession in sight; the earnings decline was all primarily related to energy companies and most importantly, global Central Banks are continuing to support the financial markets. Of course, maybe it is the last point that should be questioned. If the economy is doing so well, then why are Central Banks still needing to intervene to support the growth? This is equivalent of saying the "the patient is cured, as long as we don't take him off of life support."

Another story from The dark side of Corporate America....

What hath Merkel wrought?

GERMANY'S MERKEL TOLD EU PARTY LEADERS THERE MUST BE DEAL ON GREECE BEFORE MARKETS OPEN ON MONDAY -PARTICIPANTS

The clever people said "Greece didn't matter"...

As we recently noted, Russia and Saudi Arabia appear oddly allied in recent weeks. What happens when two nations, that together account for more than fourth quarter of global oil production, begin collaborating on future energy projects?

But, but, but... dovish-er Fed; good news bad data; Greek Deal; Greece "doesn't matter"...

"CNBC is an electronic shaman for investors... The situation resembles George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the protagonist Winston Smith tuned out the massive telescreen on his apartment wall that issued endless streams of positive news."

It appears it is "Saturday or bust" to avoid Merkel's worst nightmare. Jerome Dijsselbloem just told EU leaders that "insufficent progress" has been made on the Greek deal and has cancelled the EU Leaders' Summit for today and tomorrow:

• *EUROGROUP SATURDAY HAS TO GET THE DEAL DONE, EU OFFICIAL SAYS

Because, as Merkel said, this better be fixed Monday (or else).

Given the self-admitted lack of 'rules' around emergency funding from The ECB, today's (latest) threats to withhold Greek funding "due to politicial events" are perhaps the most ominous non-blackmail warning yet by the entirely independent Mario Draghi and his henchmen...

The treasury auction confusion continues. After yesterday's 5 Year auction priced well weaker than expected, despite a negative repo rate of -0.85% which has actually gotten even more negative this morning dropping to -0.9%, things looked somewhat ominous for today's final for the week issuance of $29 billion in 7 year paper. And yet, moments ago the auction came out far stronger than expected, with the Treasury pricing at 2.153%, a solid 1.2 bps through the 2.165% When Issued, suggesting a far stronger demand into the pricing deadline.

In today's consequence-less world - where only the poor are punished - news that a top official at a controversial U.S. export finance agency deleted text messages sent within days of the 2014 midterm elections after a watchdog group filed an open records request for the messages, will come as no surprise whatsoever. The 'excuse' given by Ex-Im Bank's chief of staff Scott Schloegel  - because as we saw yesterday, there is no accountability - he "deleted, by mistake, the messages on my phone for the period in question." Most transparent administration ever...

Moments ago we learned that none other than that ultimate "arbiter" on all things moral and ethical, Apple itself, entered the fray with a decision to remove all Civil War games from its App Store! According to MacRumors, "Apple has removed seemingly all Civil War games from the App Store for displaying the Confederate Flag in "offensive and mean-spirited ways," our sister website TouchArcade has learned. Apple has sent a removal letter to affected developers to inform them that their app does not comply with Section 19.1 of the App Store Review Guidelines."

The Supreme Court has ruled that people who bought healthcare coverage through federal exchanges as part of Obamacare can keep subsidies that effectively limit the amount low- and middle-income Americans pay for health insurance to 9.5% of their income or less.