Archive - Nov 8, 2013 - Story

America has become a gigantic gulag over the past few decades and most of its citizens don’t know, or just don’t care. One of the primary causes of the over incarceration in the U.S. is the absurd, tragic failure that is the “war on drugs”, and indeed nearly half of the folks in prison are there for drug related offenses. Making matters worse is a rapidly growing private prison system, which adds a profit motive to the equation. Recently, we wrote an extensive rant against the private prison system and provided details on how it works in:  A Deep Look into the Shady World of the Private Prison Industry. Now here are some of the sad facts...

We previously highlighted Didier Sornette's excellent work trying to identify pre-crash conditions in financial markets and John Hussman's chart below suggests we are indeed heading that way. His warning, however, "Don't rely on further blow-off - but don't be shocked - risk dominates... Hold Tight."

Most market watchers expect that Janet Yellen will grapple with two major tasks once she takes the helm at the Federal Reserve in 2014: deciding on the appropriate timing and intensity of the Fed's quantitative easing taper strategy, and unwinding the Fed's enormous $4 trillion balance sheet (without creating huge losses in the value of its portfolio). In reality both assignments are far more difficult than just about anyone understands or admits.

Speaking, ironically, at the Economic Club of Detroit in 1988, Ron Paul warns oh-so-prophetically of a coming economic crisis and the profound implications of the government's fiscal and monetary program largesse.

The death of the dollar is coming, and it will probably be China that pulls the trigger.  What you are about to read is understood by only a very small fraction of all Americans.  Right now, the U.S. dollar is the de facto reserve currency of the planet.  Most global trade is conducted in U.S. dollars, and almost all oil is sold for U.S. dollars.  More than 60 percent of all global foreign exchange reserves are held in U.S. dollars, and far more U.S. dollars are actually used outside of the United States than inside of it.  As will be described below, this has given the United States some tremendous economic advantages, and most Americans have no idea how much their current standard of living depends on the dollar remaining the reserve currency of the world.  Unfortunately, thanks to reckless money printing by the Federal Reserve and the reckless accumulation of debt by the federal government, the status of the dollar as the reserve currency of the world is now in great jeopardy.

When one steps back from all the frustration, all the confusion,  all the failures both in the rollout and the mass behavioral experimentation, and the fact that the math just doesn't work, the primary stated purpose behind Obamacare was simple: to provide uniform, affordable (the A in ACA) healthcare for all Americans. But especially to those who are currently uninsured. At least such was the utopian, egalitarian vision behind its conception. Which is also why, stripping away the political posturing, the html coding errors, the funding issues, the biggest failing of Obamacare would be if it opened, and none of America's uninsured came. Sadly, this last nail in Obamacare's coffin, has just been confirmed with a just released Gallup poll which found that a tiny 18% of uninsured Americans - the primary target population for the exchanges - have so far attempted to even visit an exchange website.

"People are, once again, being fooled," fears Bill Fleckenstein in this brief CNBC clip, warning that investors buying into the stock market at all-time highs here are making a grave error. Investors are ignoring fundamentals at their peril, "in the stock mania in 1999, people were bullish because stocks were going up. In 2007, people were bullish because stocks and real estate were going up. They didn't look ask - Why are they going up? Is this sustainable? Is this healthy? - and in both cases, it was not." In the current environment, the bubble Fleckenstein points to is powered not by tech stocks or real estate, but by the Fed's quantitative easing program. But, he warns, the Fed is losing control of one key market...

European monetary policy/monetary conditions are too tight and, Citi's FX Technical group explains, the EURO is too strong thereby exacerbating the effects of the internal devaluation in Europe (as we noted here). Looser monetary policy and a weaker currency are becoming increasingly necessary conditions for the Eurozone to recover/survive. The present period in the Eurozone, Citi adds, where the financial architecture is coming apart at the seams is not remotely unprecedented and in fact offers a very compelling historical perspective for significant devaluation of the EUR in the years ahead.

One of the most trumpeted stories justifying the US economic "recovery" is the resurgence in car sales, which have now returned to an annual sales clip almost on par with that from before the great depression. What is conveniently left out of all such stories is what is the funding for these purchases (funnelling through to the top and bottom line of such administration darling companies as GM) comes from. The answer: the same NINJA loans, with non-existent zero credit rating requirements that allowed anything with a pulse to buy a McMansion during the peak day of the last credit bubble.  Bloomberg reports on an issue we have been reporting for over a year, namely the 'stringent' credit-check requirements for new car purchasers by recounting the story of Alan Helfman, a car dealer in Houston, who served a woman in his showroom last month with a credit score lower than 500 and a desire for a new Dodge Dart for her daily commute. She drove away with a new car.

This past week saw the initial public offering of the single most anticipated IPO of 2013 - Twitter. If you tweeted about it then you are not alone as the news dominated the media headlines and the market. With Twitter already sporting a 11x price-to-sales ratio, and no earnings, what could possibly go wrong? However, it is that growing complacency among investors that should be the most concerning as the general sentiment has become that nothing can stop the markets as long as the Fed is in the game. This week's issue of things to ponder over the weekend provides some thoughts in this regard...

The "commodity king" author of the "world renowned" Gartman momentum chasing and perpetual contrarian fade newsletter, if not so much of an ETF under the same name anymore, does it again. From this morning.

Now with the S&P forging a massive reversal to the downside, we not only must abandon being bullish we must become bearish... and very so.... Our bearish friends, having been wrong for so long, are now right; it is time to be bearish of stocks, while the time for having been bullish is now past... We trust we are clear. The game’s changed and when the game changes, we change.... We had heretofore consistently erred bullishly of simple things… of coal; of steel; of railroads; of ships and shipping… but we are not now.

And... wrong again. Or said otherwise, short of subscribers in breaking even terms.

It seems like the last 2 days have been a massive NASDAQ-TWTR pairs trade... Today saw broad stock indices best day in a month despite the early "good news is bad news" sell-off as newly minted TWTR heads towards its first bear market threshold off the highs. The Dow managed to get back to a record high close by the end of the day. Treasury prices were clubbed like a baby seal with yields jumping their most in over 4 months. Shorts were grossly squeezed today ("most shorted +2.9% vs Russell +1.1%). Gold was down 1.4% on the day (oil and copper flat) and 2% on the week. VIX was banged back under 13% and the JPY weakness sparked by the taper-on-driven USD strength kept carry traders alive. All in all - only equity markets reacted "positively" to the good news with a panic-buying-frenzy in the last 30 minutes as rates, FX, and precious metals all shifted in a "taper-on" trend...

At the heart of the matter, money is after all a claim on real-world resources, goods and services. Printing or borrowing money into existence does not create more resources, goods or services to exchange for the money. In this sense, all financial schemes for retirement are misdirections of the real challenge, which is creating enough real-world surplus to support 75 million retirees (not to mention the other 75 million people drawing government benefits). Printing or borrowing money are both attempts to get a free lunch; alas, there is no free lunch. We can only spend what we extract or generate in surplus, i.e. what's left after subtracting the costs of production, labor and capital.

Ben Bernanke is participating in an IMF panel with Larry Summers, Ken Rogoff, and fromer Bank of Israel chief Stan Fischer... Full speech below...

It's quite simple.