Archive - Jul 1, 2013 - Story

"Throughout all of history, there has never been a single instance where a fiat currency did not end in hyperinflation and complete collapse. There is not one example of a successful fiat currency. Because the simple thing is that if you give a printing press, in simplified terms, to a politician, a king, an emperor, a president, a prime minister, you name it, they will overuse it every single time. That is just human nature. And that is what happens..."

From massive NSA spying, to IRS targeting of the administration's political opponents, to collection and sharing of our health care information as part of Obamacare, it seems every day we learn of another assault on our privacy. Sadly, this week the Senate took another significant, if little-noticed, step toward creating an authoritarian surveillance state. Buried in the immigration bill is a national identification system called mandatory E-Verify.

That a BitCoin-based ETF is a horrible idea for those who believe in what BitCoin stands for, i.e., a status-quo regime-remote monetary process which is naturally also independent of existing capital markets, is quite clear. Yet a BitCoin-based ETF prospectus, namely the Winklevoss BitCoin Trust, with a proposed offering of 1 million shares at a price of $20 each, is precisely what the Winklevi filed today with the SEC. We can only assume this idiotic idea is proposed simply to entice the habitual gambling momentum-chasers, who seek a conventional method of pursuing the momentous volatility that only Bitcoin can offer now that regular BitCoin exchanges are being shut down by the US and other governments, as absolutely nobody else would be interested. That, or just another expression of the identical twins' megalomania who enjoy nothing more than seeing their name in lights or in the title of a security. Because once one reads the risk factors, among which we find the following, we doubt even said habitual gamblers will be interested: "It may be illegal now, or in the future, to acquire, own, hold, sell or use Bitcoins in one or more countries, and ownership of, holding or trading in Shares may also be considered illegal and subject to sanction." Well, you have been warned.

Are these the only truly free countries left in the world - those that are not joined at the hip with the United States and ready and willing to do Obama's bidding at the drop of a hat? The NSA's most infamous whistleblower certainly thinks so.

Buenos Aires is the headquarters for the central planning bad idea bus. Argentina’s President, Cristina Fernandez, continues to tighten her stranglehold over the nation’s economy and society. Cristina rules by decree here; there is very little legislative power. She may as well start wearing a crown. Being here in this laboratory of central planning makes a few things abundantly clear and both the United States and pan-European governments are varying degrees of this model, with only a flimsy layer of international credibility separating them from the regime of Cristina. So Argentina is really a perfect case study in things to come.

Three years ago we discussed the details of Didier Sornette's approach to identifying bubble-like characteristics of price evolutions. In this brief TED talk, the bubble-whisperer combines behavioral finance with risk management with his super-exponential model view of the world that "we have been operating under a few detrimental illusions that have landed us in our current economic state." He warns that there are many early warning signs of what he calls 'Dragon Kings' - in direct contrast with 'black swans,' are at the core characterized by a slow maturation of instability, which move toward a bubble, until the bubble reaches a climax and bursts.

One of these is an overloaded top-heavy vessel afloat on an ocean of liquidity and the other is a container ship.

According to most commentators, although not an easy task, experienced and wise policy makers should be able to navigate the US economy away from various bad side effects that come in response to a tighter Fed stance. We suggest that whenever the Fed raises the pace of monetary pumping in order to “revive” the economy it in fact creates a supportive platform for various non-productive bubble activities that divert real wealth from wealth generators. Whenever the US central bank curbs the monetary pumping this weakens the diversion of real wealth and undermines the existence of bubble activities - it generates an economic bust. We suggest that there is no way that the Fed can tighten its stance without setting in motion an economic bust. This would defy the law of cause and effect.

North American crude oil has been in the news on several fronts this week, including some rapid price moves and an unexpected intervention by President Obama. Despite the publication of a new report projecting a much more rapid rate of tight oil supply growth than is generally expected and the entire Buffet-Railroad-Traffic-Pipeline meme relying on increasingly exponential dreams of the Bakken et al. saving us from our excess-energy-consuming selves, Barclays questions just how realistic these forecasts are, noting "it is perhaps wise to exercise a degree of caution over longer-term shale oil forecasts... partly because of the steepness of decline rates for shale oil wells, a lot of the very big productivity gains have already been made, and finally, skepticism around some of the more ambitious projections of US shale output due to the existence of numerous logistical barriers."

If the economy is improving, then why aren't things getting better for most average Americans?  They tell us that the unemployment rate is going down, but the percentage of Americans that are actually working is exactly the same it was three years ago.  They tell us that American families are in better financial shape now, but real disposable income is falling rapidly.  They tell us that inflation is low, but every time we go shopping at the grocery store the prices just seem to keep going up.  They tell us that the economic crisis is over, and yet poverty and government dependence continue to explode to unprecedented heights.  There seems to be a disconnect between what the government and the media are telling us and what is actually true. The following are 36 hard questions about the U.S. economy that everyone should be asking...

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.

If there is one chart that shows just how addicted the market has become to the Fed's soothing monthly bond bid come hell or high water, it is the following. It shows that on a rolling 6 month average, the Fed is now responsible for monetizing a record 70% of all net supply issued measured in 10 year equivalents. This represents a reliance on the market that is greater than ever before in history.  It is somehow in this environment - when the Fed is monetizing more duration than ever on a relative basis - that the Fed believes it can wean the market off its support: a market that has never been more reliant on the Fed than it is now. And, hence, the Fed's Catch 22 - damned if you taper, damned if you don't.

With the Abenomics honeymoon over, and the market starts to turn against your extreme policies, you have to bring out the big guns. Girl bands, Teenagers in short skirts, Sumo champions, and now social media is the platform of choice for Shinzo Abe's latest propaganda-fest on how he is saving the world one printed Yen at a time. Unfortunately for him, of the 8,627 people that viewed his note on LinkedIn, a mere 66 gave it a thumbs up (how many ministers are there in his party?) and only 107 'liked' it on Facebook. It seems he is 'lucky' that there is no Dislike button...

"The biggest problem currently is that there is virtually no expectation, or analysis that incorporates the impact, of an average economic recession ever occurring again."

The New York Times had the definitive take on the vicious sell off in gold. The analysis provides a good representation of the current conventional wisdom. The only twist here is that the article from which this summary is derived appeared in the August 29, 1976 edition of The New York Times. At that time gold was preparing to embark on an historic rally that would push it up more than 700% a little over three years later. Is it possible that the history is about to repeat itself?