Archive - 11769 - Story

Iran is about to get a lot richer and according to President Rouhani, "everybody is happy except the Zionists, the warmongers who are fuelling sectarian war among the Islamic nation, and the hardliners in the U.S. congress."

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is absolutely imploding right now. When people get desperate, they do desperate things, and the latest move by the Clinton campaign reeks of putrid, panicked desperation. Of course, it makes perfect sense that Hillary Clinton, JP Morgan and Bank of America would share the same strategist. After all, they are the exact same brand.

Broad middle-east and african stock markets crashed over 5%, erasing any gains back to November 2008 as the carnage from last week continues. From Kuwait (-4.3%) to Qatar (-8%) it was a bloodbath as Saudi Arabia Tadawul Index plunged 5.4% - the most since Black Monday (now down over 50% from their 2014 highs). These losses are far in excess of US 'catch-up' moves and suggest a dark cloud over Asia this evening.

It must be China. Or the weather, which is usually either too cold or to warm – somehow the weather is just never right for economic growth. Surely it cannot be another Fed policy-induced boom that is on the verge of going bust? Sorry, we completely forgot – the Fed is never at fault when the economy suffers a boom-bust cycle. "[An] oversold market can easily become more oversold when it keeps being inundated with evidence that economic conditions are not what they were thought to be."

The Dallas Fed met with the banks a week ago and effectively suspended mark-to-market on energy debts and as a result no impairments are being written down. Furthermore, as we reported earlier this week when first nothing the rumor, the Fed indicated "under the table" that banks were to work with the energy companies on delivering without a markdown on worry that a backstop, or bail-in, was needed after reviewing loan losses would exceed the current tier 1 capital tranches.

Yesterday was "Implementation Day" for the Iran nuclear accord and no one is happier about it than President Obama who is set to explain to America why rapprochement with Tehran is in everyone's best interests.

“Tsai should keep in mind that if she revisits Chen’s dangerous path to cross the red line of cross-Straits relations, she will meet a dead end. If the DPP abandons the progress made by its predecessor in the past eight years, it will jeopardize its future as a ruling party. The lesson of Chen Shui-bian should be a long-lasting lesson."

The world’s grand experiment with debt has come to an end. And it’s now unraveling.

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."