Archive - Nov 6, 2013 - Story

The “authorities” can shut down website after website, but the tide of new technology and the human spirit itself cannot and will not be overcome. This is the hard lesson that statists and collectivists will be learning the hard way in the years to come, as decentralization and freedom stage a gigantic, peaceful revolution. A revolution that is already in full swing and gaining tremendous momentum with each passing day.

It took only a little over a month for Silk Road 2.0 to launch on the “dark web,” and there are already close to 500 illegal drug listings.

Chinese officials are worried. Not about inflation... not about growth... not even about pollution per se... but security. As the South China Morning Post reports, government officials are raising concerns about the function of its vast network of surveillance cameras because of the thick smog blocking visibility for some of them. In a truly central-planned world, there is nothing more dangerous that not being able to keep an eye on the population and officials fear that threat of terrorism could be heightened on smoggy days. Improving air quality in China has been often discussed but a new military team is looking for a solution (as security trumps health it would appear) - harsher punishments on polluters are needed to help improve air quality in China, a senior Chinese official said here on Tuesday.

With the growth of the shadow economy and the surveillance society, it is no surprise that so much is now transacted in the so-called "black-market."

Shouldn't Internet companies actually "make a profit" at some point before being considered worth billions of dollars?  A lot of investors laugh when they look back at the foolishness of the "Dotcom bubble" of the late 1990s, but the tech bubble that is inflating right in front of our eyes today is actually far worse.

Is it possible the war on drugs is to blame for increased potency in marijuana and for how crack ravaged inner cities in the 1980s? Prof. Adam Martin explains how the drug war has altered incentives for both drug buyers and sellers, leading them to favor higher potency drugs. This is what economists call the potency effect. As penalties for purchasing marijuana go up, for example, the cost difference between high- and low-potency marijuana decreases and people may think that if they're risking a fine or jail time anyway they may as well buy the stronger drugs. Similarly, cartels and dealers have shifted their focus to high-value, high-potency drugs like cocaine as a result of the steeper fines and penalties for drug trafficking. The potency effect is just one of many economic forces that make markets so complex. Public policies that alter the incentives people face - as the war on drugs does - can lead to unintended and even dangerous consequences.

How fickle are the wealthy? Six weeks after having never been happier relative to the poor, and mere days after we showed their recent collapse in confidence, it seems the rich are no longer amused by Bernanke's game. As The FT reports, for the second time in a week, an elite art auction has failed for all intent and purpose. One-quarter of the high-profile Impressionist and Modern paintings under the hammer at Christie’s went unsold on Tuesday night, signalling a bleak start for the autumn auction season in New York. The muted results came hot on the heels of disappointing sales on Monday evening for Christie’s, after the collection of the late art dealer Jan Krugier went under the hammer yet failed to dazzle. But how will the wealth effect trickle down?

When the U.S. economy dipped into an inflationary recession in 1969, the Keynesian paradigm could not explain that phenomenon. Given the fact that both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations (not to mention Congress) have followed the Keynesian playbook, the sorry results should be enough to discredit Keynesianism, this time for good. Either a theory explains and predicts phenomena or it does not, and it should be clear that Keynesian theory has failed, but, alas, it seems that the Keynesian paradigm is more influential than ever. Here is a paradigm that claims there cannot be an inflationary recession, yet all of the recessions that have wracked the U.S. economy in recent decades have been inflationary. Alas, the academic “market test” really does not embrace the actual success or failure of a theory.

And they are off as Twitter prices just shy of the whisper $27 upper end of the IPO range, raising $1.82 billion in equity proceeds for the 70 million shares it will sell (before the greenshoe is exercised).

Bitcoin, an online-only currency scarcely four years old, is breaking out to new highs this week and now sports a total value of $2.8 billion.  Just a few months ago, it looked like this economic experiment as the world’s first decentralized technology-based form of money would crash and burn.  Since then, ConvergEx's Nick Colas points out that the U.S. government has shut down a large drug website which accepted bitcoins and promised further scrutiny of its uses; and omputer science experts have warned that bitcoin is neither especially private – one of its notional values – or especially well constructed.  The market doesn't seem to care, with incremental demand from U.S. citizens (through Second Market) and Chinese nationals leading the path higher. Could bitcoin still fail? Sure.  But, as Colas notes, its success to date speaks to how much the world is changing...

For the first time today, in addition to previous anecdotal evidence that the first several days of the Obamacare rollout (with 248 enrollees in the first two days) have been an abysmal failure, and the days since have fared no better, HHS Secretary Sebelius finally admitted to the Senate Finance Committee that over a month after the rollout of healthcare.gov, the enrollment figures have been "very low." Of course, being able to qualify the number didn't mean she could or would actually put it in numeric terms - it would have been simply too humiliating and may have forced her to finally do what so far nobody in the Obama administration has done: take responsibility for one after another failure (after all, for everything else, there's "Mr. Chairwoman getting to work") and resign. One thing, however, is certain, the "very low" number whatever it may be, is orders of magnitude below Obama's mission critical goal of enrolling 494,620 people in October, and another 706,600 for November.

Bob Shiller is one of the winners of this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, which makes him acutely aware of criticism of the prize by those who claim that economics – unlike chemistry, physics, or medicine, for which Nobel Prizes are also awarded – is not a science. One problem with economics is that it is necessarily focused on policy, rather than discovery of fundamentals. Shiller notes that economics is somewhat more vulnerable than the physical sciences to models whose validity will never be clear, because the necessity for approximation is much stronger than in the physical sciences, especially given that the models describe people rather than magnetic resonances or fundamental particles. People can just change their minds and behave completely differently. But all the mathematics in economics is not, as Taleb suggests, charlatanism.

Presented with no comment...

On a below average volume day, there were three intriguing divergences across asset classes today. Thanks to CVX (and a few others including MSFT) the megacaps of the Dow Industrials lurched to new record highs as the Transports dropped their most in a month and the momo names (led by TSLA) took high-beta NDX and RUT down on the day. Another divergence was oil (which surged notably) and copper (which was pummeled) as gold and silver limped higher (on weaker USD ahead of tomorrow's rumored 'no cut' ECB meeting). The last notable divergence was in the Treasury complex where the long-bond continues to push higher in yield while 'forward-guidance' belief is dragging the front-end lower in yield (5s30s now 10bps steeper on the week). The short squeeze of the "most shorted" names into last night's TSLA earninsg appears to have imploded and today saw "most shorted" names dropped the most in a month...

If ever there was a symptom of the instant gratification meme of the new normal (why wait when you can have it all now?), it is 'vice'. That is why Southbay Research's Vice Index (composed of prices paid, volume, and frequency of sales in liquor sales, gambling, and prostitution) is so worrisome, as WSJ reports, "it's signalling that consumer spending growth is about to drop and stay subdued for a few months." Southbay's Zatlin notes that measuring this kind of discretionary spending provides a window into the true state of the economy - which fits with recent macro data on retail sales (and forecasts for the holiday season as hope of the 'second-half' recovery fade quietly into next year.

Venezuelan President Maduro is in the wires confirming that all is well in the nation - nothing to see here...

*BLACK MARKET FX RATE IS HARMING VENEZUELA ECONOMY: MADURO
*VENEZUELA TO START OPERATION AGAINST SPECULATION, MADURO SAYS

Yep, so after a 475% rise in the Caracas Stock Index YTD, he sees 'speculation' and will announce some 'economic fixes'... this should be good...