Archive - Jul 2015

More and more insiders are warning of a potential systemic event.

Is bad news, bad news again?

"Well, I think it will be jarring when we see an interest rate hike. People will get out the smelling salts."

"No question that low interest rates have exacerbated the wealth gap between the poor and the rich because the rich have assets."

The worst "economic expansion" in history was even worse than previously expected.

Initial jobless claims rose 12k last week to 267k but remains zero-interest-rate-dismissingly close to 42 year lows...

Yesterday it was US and Italian energy giants Chevron and Saipem which announced a total of over 10,000 new job cuts in the aftermath of oil sliding back under $50 and resuming its downward trend. Today, we got more confirmation of this when Royal Dutch Shell, still basking in the glow of its proposed $70 billion mega-acquisition of BG Group, announced it would axe 6,500 jobs this year and step up spending cuts, responding to an extended period of lower oil prices which contributed to a 37 percent drop in the oil and gas group's second-quarter profits.

Speaking to a gathering of some 200 Syriza lawmakers on Wednesday, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras drew a line in the sand, insisting that the divisions within the party cannot persist. In a dramatic move, Tsipras called for a party referendum on Sunday to decide once and for all whether Syriza lawmakers will support the bailout or push for its cancellation.

• Second-quarter GDP seen rebounding on consumer spending, housing (Reuters)
• China Stocks Fall as Traders Puzzle Over Sudden Late-Day Swings (BBG)
• European 'alliance of national liberation fronts' emerges to avenge Greek defeat (Telegraph)
• Thomas Cook warns on earnings over Greece (MW)
• Largest Greek toy seller Jumbo warns of hit from capital controls (Kathimerini)
• Chevron and Exxon Get the Plaudits, but Some Smaller Drillers Faring Well (WSJ)
• Schäuble outlines plan to limit European Commission powers (FT)
• UBS Deal Shows Clinton’s Complicated Ties (WSJ)

Elio Motors announced earlier this week that it has received “non-binding indications of interest” valued over $25MM through its initial crowdfunding campaign on StartEngine. To date, the company has received $25,436,650 from 6,773 people, averaging $3,755 per person, and will continue to take additional expressions of interest while working with the SEC on next steps. It will eventually proceed with filing an offering statement and will begin to make a formal stock offer to interested investors after approval. 

"We turned openly, but moderately, bearish of shares late last week and for a day or two we appeared to have been wise in our decision. Clearly that wisdom has waned rather materially in the course of the last two trading sessions and following the Fed’s non-decision yesterday we found ourselves covering in the calls we had written against our “tanker” shares as well as covering in some of the derivatives we had had in place, thus taking our net position in our retirement funds from one that was modestly net bearish to one that is nearly net market neutral."

We start off the overnight wrap up with the usual place, China, where in a mirror image of Wednesday's action, stocks once again started off uneventful, then gradually rose in the afternoon session and meandered near unchanged territory until the last half hour, when out of the blue they tumbled to close near the day's low, some 2.2% below yesterday's closing level.  What caused it?  One possible catalyst came from Reuters which reported that that Chinese banks were investigating their exposure to the stock market via wealth management products and loans backed by stock as collateral. 

Few of us understand patient gradualism. We live and have our being within a few years and mostly in an unconscious automated state of mind. But people in power are long-term planners. They absolutely understand human nature and how to channel it to the evolution and refinement of the authoritarian state. The goal is perfect docility and perfect harmony with authoritarianism (economic, social and spiritual). Until the people accept collectivism under some pretext, they are not docile and completely subdued. Once they do, rebellion and confrontation are impossible. This is the ultimate goal of the globalists, and the American system is nearing this state.

In a rather stunning note, CyberBerkut, a Ukrainian group of hackers, claims to have hacked John McCain’s laptop while he was in the Ukraine, and as Techworm reports, what they have released from his June visit appears to be a fully staged production of an ISIS execution video...

Following last night's afternoon session melt-up at the hands of a $100bn injection into China's sovereign rescue fund, Chinese stocks opened higher but faded fast, with no follow-through from yesterday's farce. With Warren Buffett's favorite indicator flashing red for China (and US) stocks, and so many rural Chinese citizens "just hoping to get out at breakeven," any assistance in levitating the nation's stocks are simply being sold into as margined traders unwind their positions. One such leveraged 'citizen' is none other than State-Owned-Enterprise GM Yang Shengjun, whose firm was ironically among the most vocal in blaming the crash on "malicious foreign sellers trying tio start an economic war" and is now under investigation for dumping his own shares... do as I say Chinese people, not as I do.

16 Months after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared off the coast of Malaysia, The Telegraph reports that fragments of a wing washed up in the French island of Reunion (near Madagascar) could be wreckage from the missing plane, according to an aviation expert.