Archive - Aug 16, 2015

Newly disclosed NSA files expose the spy agency's relationship through the years with American telecoms companies. As NYTimes reports, The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T. The documents, provided by the former agency contractor Edward Snowden, described the NSA-AT&T relationship as "highly collaborative," while another lauded the company’s "extreme willingness to help."

The purpose of austerity is to create insecurity and instill fear in the general population in order to protect the finance and banking sector from popular rage against the crimes the participants of this sector have committed against ordinary people. This rage ought to have given rise a long time ago to legal actions and desperately needed fundamental reforms to take away from bankers the right to create money, a right which they have abused at tremendous cost to ordinary people. Instead of collective reforms, what we are being subjected to is a policy of deliberately spreading insecurity together with the scapegoating of vulnerable people.

Americans, both the destitute and the destitute-in-waiting middle class do need a champion to forever improve their lives, or at least one to light up their torch of hope.  But the senator from Vermont isn’t likely to become that champion, becoming instead the prophet heralding the advent of a savior for America’s democracy, national dignity and pride; in Christian-speak, Bernie is not a Jesus but a John the Baptist.

Just two days ago we warned of the dramatic disconnect between equity insurance and credit insurance markets - at levels last seen before Bear Stearns collapse. As the Yuan devaluation shuddered EURCNH carry traders and battered European assets, US equity markets stumbled onwards and upwards, impregnable in their fortitude with The Fed at their back no matter what. However, US corporate bond markets were a bloodbath...

Today many are talking about the economy, but that’s all they’re doing: talking. Doesn’t matter if its today’s politician, CEO’s from the largest corporations, some national or regional business association figure-head, right down to academia with its self-perpetuating gaggle of Ivory Tower economic aficionados. All they are doing is paying lip-service to the problems. And the reason? They can’t do anything about it because as of today, the U.S. economy is being controlled high-handedly by The Federal Reserve. The U.S. economy has never before been under the command and control of a single entity – until now. Today the Fed. entices nearly all businesses to focus on short-term games of financial engineering rather than on core business principles to grow. This is what a stance at the zero bound gives rise to.

A look at next week's data in the somewhat larger context, and a look at interest rate differentials

The following map lays out the embedded, and regulator blessed, latencies between the three big New Jersey exchange centers: Mahwah (NYSE), Secaucus (BATS), and Carteret (Nasdaq) for everyone but the top tier exchange clients, the HFTs, who are greenlighted to frontrun everyone else, and generate quarter after quarter of perfect trading records.

... and the ECB printing presses!

Open Thread ...

Yuan ting after another...