Archive - Jul 9, 2015

When the going gets tough, the taxed get going and that is what Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz thinks should happen. In a Time op-ed, Stiglitz warns (likely correctly) that if Greece continues with austerity, it would be depression without end; and so his solution is simple... "The U.S. was generous with Germany as we defeated it. Now, it is time for the U.S. to be generous with our friends in Greece in their time of need, as they have been crushed for the second time in a century by Germany, this time with the support of the troika." Strawman much?

"China is not doing anything that the US has not already tried," exclaims Rick Santelli as he derides the 'entitlement' society that has reached the investor class. Whether it's US, Japan, Europe, or China, "the idea of trying to prop up returns in the equity market - admitted or not - is going on," Santelli notes, asking - after forcing every mom and pop out of savings and into investment, "if it doesn't turn out well... do they have a moral obligation to help out?" Simply put, he rages - drawing the chart of the year - "the central planners are in control... and I don't suspect they will give up the reins any time soon."

Enemies of the People...

This time it is different, but not in the way that the cheerleaders intended.

When you shred democracy and the central tenants of a legal system in order to benefit the very few, it’s only a matter of time before the whole system collapses.

Moments ago MarketNews reported that during today's "marathon governmental meeting" in which Greek PM Alexis Tsipras sat down with his party to hammer out and complete the "compromise" Greek proposal to be sent to the Troika before midnight, the prime minister told his ministers that he was "ready for compromises," suggesting he was willing to clash with the ultra-left part his party, Syriza. So far so good, and perhaps indeed suggestive of a big step down. The problem emerges upon a closer read of the proposal, which is clearly not nearly "capitulatory" enough.

Who could have seen that coming? A US equity rally on the basis of an entirely manipulated Chinese stock market rally overnight and hope for a last minute Greek deal (dashed by calls for a massive EUR80billion bailout which zee Germans will never give in to). The Dow just experienced a 500-point-pump-and-dump as this morning's exuberant TV anchors are suddenly silenced by the reality that China and Greece matter after all...

We previously questioned whether western sanctions imposed on Russia were being regularly breached by E.U. and Asian companies, noting that sanctions only work if all countries unite behind them. Now, only one year after being imposed, the sanctions are eroding as it seems that government and business policies are pulling in opposite directions. A U.S. State Dept. representative may have let the truth slip out recently when he noted, "if you tell us you’re going [to break a sanction], we’ll probably order you not to, but if you go and don’t tell us, we’ll probably do nothing."

After dozens of separate interventions, manipulations, and central-planning machinations over the past three weeks, China resorted to threats overnight when it called for the arrest of "hostile short sellers." The reason they went full Orwell, this is the great loss of 'wealth' in China's history... losing equivalent to 15 Greeces in just 17 days.

The Dow is now down 170 points from its intraday highs and the S&P 500 is at the cash session lows, breaking back below the 200-day moving-average. It appears we have some "malicious short sellers" in the US equity market that need to be reprimanded...

Between June 28 and July 4 at a Hilton hotel in Athens, transactions on a Bloomberg reporter's Visa credit card issued by Citigroup Inc. were posted as being carried out in "Drachma EQ."

If yesterday's 10 Year auction priced stronger than expected during yesterday's NYSE-trading vacuum, today's 30 Year was the mirror image, with the Treasury selling $13 billion in 30 Year paper far weaker than the When Issued market had expected, resulting in a 3.084% high yield, a tail of 1.6 bps to the When Issued.

The Austrian School of economics has a concept called a “crack-up boom” in which a critical mass of people conclude that their government is actively trying to devalue its currency. Consumers respond by front-running the government, spending their paychecks immediately in order to convert their soon-to-be-less-valuable money into real things. Merchants, not happy about the sudden influx of suspect currency (and sensing the panic of their customers) hold out for ever-higher prices, causing inflation to spike. But it’s a special kind of inflation, driven not by a sudden increase in the money supply but by collapsing confidence among holders of the currency. In a very short time, so goes the theory, the supply of stuff available for purchase dries up, prices hyperinflate, and the economy collapses. Welcome, in other words, to Greece...