Archive - Feb 13, 2013 - Blog entry

Bottom line? $100 an hour is the minimum wage for a person with a family in NY. The Prez is offering $9.

How do you hedge when shots are pips? The next world war will be computerized. The global economy is on the brink and battle lines are forming with one objective, restoring economic balance. Properly engineered devaluation measures would accomplish precisely that. This is a new age of currency wars. In the past countries would directly manipulate the value of their currency with trade wars and the like. But today’s currency war is a result of unconventional monetary policy by central banks, which indirectly impacts the value of a countries currency.

The vise is tightening.

Europe’s banks are totally insolvent and have not been fixed. No EU leader is going to tell you this because their jobs depend on convincing people that everything is fine. Bankia was supposedly “fine” right up until the truth came out. Just like the Wall Street banks were “fine” going into 2008.

Oh, this 35% Apple correction, drop in margins, increase in competition and decrease in competitiveness of products is a temporary thing. Seriously!!! That Reggie guy shouldn't even be allowed on TV. Really!!!

Reports indicating that Americans have invested more in equity funds here in 2013 than they did all last year have given rise to talk of the "Great Rotation". The idea is that Americans are selling fixed income investments bought during the financial crisis and now buying shares. We are less sanguine. There is a third asset class that needs to be integrated into the analysis: cash. After surveying the data and various reports, it looks to us that the flows into equities is not coming out of fixed income but rather money market funds and deposits.

The price action in the foreign exchange market is choppy as short-term participants seem nervous after being whipsawed yesterday. Sterling fell nearly a cent to new multi-month lows following the BOE's inflation report that confirmed official expectations that price pressures will remain above target and King welcomed the recent depreciation of the point. Also of note the Australian dollar, which staged a sharp recovery off the year's lows yesterday and has seen follow through buying today, helped perhaps by gains in a consumer confidence measure.

The was nothing in the rogue G7 sourced comment yesterday that that Japanese Finance Minister Aso did not say prior to the G7 statement and before the weekend. The pace of the yen's depreciation was too fast. The market reacted to it at the time.

We have gone from a supply and demand market to a funds flow market and this really sucks for consumers. 

Michael Woolfolk took the anti-gold position and Komal Sri-Kumar defended a gold standard on Bloomberg TV.  Is it true that we don't have enough gold for a gold standard?  Is it true that a gold standard is established by government fixing the price of gold?