Archive - Jul 9, 2015

Presented with nothing but an open-mouthed 'no comment'...

Seven years of bailing out the big banks that control the Federal Reserve and US Treasury at the expense of the US economy has threatened the US dollar to the extent that the dollar must be protected at all cost, including US regulatory tolerance of illegal activity to suppress gold and silver prices.

For those curious what it looks like when a centrally-planned market devolves into complete chaotic hell despite the relentless intervention of the local authorities and central planners, look no further than the chart below...

Have you noticed that events have begun to accelerate?

*CHINA'S SHANGHAI COMPOSITE INDEX FALLS 0.6% TO 3,687.36 AT OPEN

Amid the highest level Typhoon warnings, China's stock market continues to storm as only 49% of Chinese stocks are halted (down from 54%) as local analysts fear yesterday's bounce (just like last week's) was nothing but a dead cat bounce: "bounces like today prolong the timeframe to get that final bottom in place." For the 14th day in a row margin balances declined with the pace accelerating (down 10.9% yesterday alone) for a total over 36% decline so far. Seemingly on pain of death, someone is selling Chinese stocks as CSI-300 futures opened a mere 0.2% higher then sold off - no follow through for now. Goldman warned to expect another 30% decline margin balance and concludes, China "hasn't yet fully purged."

There is nothing incrementally new or different to what we revealed earlier in the leaked Greek proposal (i.e., no actionable pension cuts, no debt "reprofiling") and as Bloomberg makes it all too clear in flashing red headlines:

GREEK GOVT PROPOSAL SIMILAR TO EU COMMISSION'S JUNE 26 PROPOSAL

... or the one which 61% of the Greek people said no to.

With just six days to go until the government begins Jade Helm 15, expect the rumor mill to come alive because as The Washington Post reports, the media will not be given access to the drills. 

"Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake replaced the city's police commissioner on Wednesday, saying the city needed to be more focused on suppressing a spike in violence in the months since the death of a man in police custody."

The time of deflationary confiscation is coming closer for the remaining Greek bank depositors. Those who kept their cash in safe deposit boxes at banks are out of luck too: the government has decreed they may not take it out. This is something one needs to keep in mind – if one wants to keep cash outside the banking system, one cannot leave it in a bank safe deposit box either. The government will confiscate it when push comes to shove and the banks need to be rescued.

Buying stocks "is buying the Chinese Dream," proclaimed a top brokerage after officials 'promised' a centrally-planned bull market for the on-the-verge-of-social-unrest-after-real-estate-collapse population... but instead they have lured them into a bear trap. Even The Economist sees the irony... as yet another centrally-planned market economy scars a generation of investors...

This all seems like good investment strategy: Convince everyone that "free trade" is good, take their jobs, make them desperate enough to become heroin addicts, and then take the last bit of their money by profiting from their drug-related healthcare expenses. For some reason, the average person always seems to come out on the wrong side of quantitative easing.

If earnings are the mother's milk of stock bull markets, then the endless supply of talking heads bloviating on the next leg of the stock market rally being driven by a post Q1 renaissance in earnings growth (ever ready to pull out their hockey-stick forecasts) may want to look away from the following chart...

The tense division in Europe's union are becoming increasingly evident. Between Greece's "no" vote, yesterday's EU Parliament outbursts, and today's German parliament commentary it is clear that, as Bloomberg reports, the centerpiece of Merkel’s cure for Europe - fiscal retrenchment - has catalyzed her in the eyes of many as despite her calm but firm entreaties, an economic bully. “The lesson of this crisis is more Europe, not less Europe,” Angela Merkel said in 2012 as the integrity of the region’s monetary union was threatened by financial instability, but many, like Greece, have come to understand "more Europe" means something different: "more Germany."

While yesterday's suspension of trading on the New York Stock Exchange drew attention to the plunge in equity prices, the reality is that stocks have been in a correction since the all-time highs posted back in May. Of course, until yesterday's headlines, you may not have realized that the correction was in process as it has been "as slow as a turtle running in peanut butter."