Archive - Jan 16, 2016

Americans are fat. They are so fat very few would even bother to click on a hyperlink in this article explaining how fat they are, so instead we will present 7 charts showing how the situation got so dire.

How do you view your country relative to others? Chances are if it’s based on most world maps, your view is distorted.

The true Benghazi scandal indicts not just Hillary, but the entire Western power elite, whose wars have, as Gaddafi warned, flooded the world with a Jihadi Deluge and installed a postdiluvian Reign of Terror over us all.

As a potential worst case scenario, we use the simple sum of probabilities from 2001- 2002 and the current debt stock as an example of what could happen during a protracted downturn. If this comes to fruition, we estimate fallen angel volumes over 2 years could spike to $413bn, with $117bn of 10+ fallen angel paper (again crashing into a 10+ HY market that is only $48bn in size). This is an ugly spectre that the high-grade markets would need to face in future years.

It would be hard for a year to start any worse than 2016 has... "Prices are oversold and sentiment hasn’t been this despondent in a long time (even Aug/Sept wasn’t this palpably negative) but any bounce will not be particularly impressive and in a lot of ways that is the main problem as the upside just isn’t compelling enough to make a major stand...as Western central banks attempted to mollify sentiment with dovish rhetoric but to no avail."

The economy was supposed to fire on all cylinders in 2015. Sufficient time had passed for the often-mentioned lags in monetary and fiscal policy to finally work their way through the system according to many pundits inside and outside the Fed. Surely the economy would be kick-started by: three rounds of QE and forward guidance; a record Fed balance sheet; and an unprecedented increase in federal debt to $18.63 trillion in 2015, a jump of 86%. Further, stock prices had gained sufficiently over the past several years, thus the so-called wealth effect would boost consumer spending. But the economic facts of 2015 displayed no impact from these massive government experiments.

U.S. + EU will begin lifting nuclear-related sanctions, expanding the horizon of opportunity for the Iranian people.

— John Kerry (@JohnKerry) January 16, 2016

"Hands Up... Don't Nuke"?

Over the last 5 years the various Fed QE (quantitative easing) interventions into the capital markets has facilitated dumb luck trading into “genius” status, and no clue analysis into “spot on brilliant” prognostications. The real issue at hand is many believed their own press, and the current state of egg on their face would make many a Denny's blush. As bad as that sounds – it gets worse.

It’s nearly that time again. On the heels of December’s “big disappointment” wherein Mario Draghi cut the depo rate by a “measly” 10 bps and extended PSPP by an underwhelming six months, the ECB meets again next week, and this time around, expectations are low. But even if Draghi doesn't budge in January, most expect more easing is one the way. The only question is this: how will the Frankfurt cabal cope with the shrinking pool of purchase eligible assets?

Decades of accumulated market distortions appear to be on the brink of a great unwind, most of which can be blamed on expansionary monetary policies. If so, the banking crisis of 2008 was a prelude, rather than the crisis itself. The Keynesians will blame the Fed for a complete policy failure. The reality is, that by implementing conventional policies on the recommendation of group-thinking macroeconomists, the central banks have dug a hole too deep to escape. Recognition of the merits of Austrian sound money theory will simply expose this reality sooner than later.

Is it different this time?

Several more slips like this one and the President’s strongest, most durable economy in the world could backslide into recession. On top of that, ‘the big one’ could rupture at any moment.

"Why has public opinion changed so much? How did our party misread public opinion? We failed. The Nationalist Party lost the elections. We didn't work hard enough."