Archive - 2015

With the launch of "The Big Short" movie (assuredly infuriating many Americans with its "dangerous for the establishment" expose of the greed, stupidity, hubris, and arrogance of Wall Street bankers gone wild), Dr. Michael Burry's infamous UCLA commencement speech has much to offer... "In this age of infinite distraction... when the entitled elect themselves, the party accelerates, and the brutal hangover is inevitable." 15 minutes well spent with a self-described 'chicken-little' who was "just trying to figure it all out."

Recently, former CIA deputy director Michael Morell told Charlie Rose on PBS that the reason the US had never actually gone after the lifeblood of the ISIS regime, its oil supply chain, infrastructure and products, was because "we didn’t want to do environmental damage, and we didn’t want to destroy that infrastructure." Luckily as the clip below shows, the Russian military has no such qualms.

It’s all here: unilateral Exceptionalistan in action against anyone who dares to defy imperial diktats. From Ukraine to Syria, and all across MENA (Middle East and North Africa), the proxy war between Washington and Moscow, with higher and higher stakes, won’t abate. Imperial despair over the irreversible Chinese ascent also won’t abate. As the New Great Game picks up speed, and Russia supplies Eurasian powers Iran, China and India with missile defense systems beyond anything the West has, get used to the new normal; Cold War 2.0 between Washington and Beijing-Moscow.

With 29% of young Americans having lost faith in 'The American Dream' (for good reason as we detailed here), it is hardly surprising that a new poll by The Associated Press finds that just 10% of people believe 2015 was a better year for the world than 2014. That is half the number from 2013 and appears to confirm what we already tongue-in-cheek noted  - that 2015 was perhaps the worst year ever.

With the topic of global (im)migration getting increasingly more prominence as we get ever closer to the presidential elections, not to mention Europe's ongoing plight with the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, here is a handful of factual, and bias-free, charts summarizing the key aspects of global human mobility.

In the case of the car business, longer loans have been the key to maintaining the facade of this Potemkin village on wheels. But this dodge only works when the cost of the loan – interest – is low. And with cars – unlike houses – there is a built-in limit to how far out the loan can be stretched as way to tamp down the month-to-month costs down. Eight or nine years is probably the absolute maximum, because cars – unlike houses – always decrease in value over time and because unlike houses, cars are fundamentally throw-aways.

"In the media they wrote that we were training in an FSA military camp, but in fact, all 60 of us were members of Daesh. We were Syrian nationals, many of whom in the beginning moved to Turkey to earn some money, and then joined Daesh."

Amid ISIS' spread, with NATO troops pulling out, and local law enforcement agencies ill-equipped and underfunded, Afghanistan has once again become the frontline in the so-called "War On Drugs." As Al-Jazeera reports, Afghanistan's poppy fields, which feed the habits of drug addicts worldwide, are thriving, with cultivation of the crop hitting record highs last year. The number of Afghan addicts is soaring, and with the Taliban funded by the drug trade, security fears are paramount; but Afghan authorities are struggling to control the resurgence in poppy farming.

According to a recent contrarian call by  Prerequisite Capital Management, the "US Treasury Bond Market is potentially set up for a substantial move higher over the next year or two." Here are the reasons why.

“For sure it will cause a big delay and it may kill the whole process. Whoever committed this crime is pushing for a military solution, not a political process solution.”

Our quarterly survey of “Off the Grid” economic indicators finds that the U.S. economy is still growing, but the pace seems to be slowing from Q3 2015.

"If, as seems possible, the ECB will increase, in H1 2016, the scale of its monthly asset purchases from €60bn to, say, €75bn, and if these additional purchases are concentrated on public debt, the euro area will benefit from a ‘backdoor’ helicopter money drop –something long overdue."

We apologize, but 2015 had so many negatives that we’re having trouble seeing the positives. It’s like we’re on the Titanic, and it’s tilting at an 85-degree angle with its propellers way up in the air, and we’re dangling over the cold Atlantic trying to tell ourselves: “At least there’s no waiting for the shuffleboard courts!” Are we saying that 2015 was the worst year ever? Are we saying it was worse than, for example, 1347, the year when the Bubonic Plague killed a large part of humanity? Yes, we are saying that.

In 2013, Maduro’s first year in office, the government released a Christmas carol praising the Socialist utopia's dictator. Last year, Maduro debuted a “socialist Barbie” that almost bankrupted stores forced to sell it after the government forced the price down to a tenth of its value. And this year, as AFP reports, "Christmas is dead, there is not enough money," according to one resident, noting there is no Christmas decor anywhere and people do not have enough money to buy presents. Some cannot even afford the basic goods needed to put together a traditional feast of roast pork and assorted sides.