Archive - Oct 12, 2014 - Story

The Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper claims the U.S. is trying to foment a “color revolution” in Hong Kong. Although China has strongly implied that foreigners were secretly controlling the Hong Kong protests in recent weeks, the commentary was the first time it so explicitly accused the U.S. of being behind the movement.

Sunni and Shia Muslims have lived peacefully together for centuries. In many countries it has become common for members of the two sects to intermarry and pray at the same mosques. They share faith in the Quran and the Prophet Mohammed's sayings and perform similar prayers, although they differ in rituals and interpretation of Islamic law. But... An ancient religious divide is helping fuel a resurgence of conflicts in the Middle East and Muslim countries.  Islam's schism, simmering for fourteen centuries, doesn't explain all the political, economic, and geostrategic factors involved in these conflicts, but it has become one prism by which to understand the underlying tensions.

Glenn Greenwald was one of the first reporters to see — and write about — the Edward Snowden files, with their revelations about the United States' extensive surveillance of private citizens. In this searing talk, Greenwald makes the case for why you need to care about privacy, even if you’re “not doing anything you need to hide."

This is the final blow for those who still couldn't comprehend, after all evidence presented, the amount of Chinese non-government gold demand in 2013. At the LBMA forum in Singapore, one of the keynote speakers was chairman of the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) Xu Luode. In his speech he made a few very candid statements about Chinese consumer gold demand, that according to Xu reached 2,000 tonnes in 2013.

UPDATE: That didn't last long... NKY back under 15k as JPY collapses

Heavy volume selling in Nikkei futures at the open sent the index down over 200 points and broke the oh-so-crucial 15,000 line. It appears - just as in August that 15,000 is the BoJ's line in the sand as a miracle buyer turned up and lifted the index all the way back to 15,000 (whiule JPY remained lower and US futures saw no bounce). Of course, for those who prefer to ignore the fact that the BoJ is almost the biggest holder of Japanese stocks in the world and bought more stock ETFs than ever before in August, this is a clear signal of BTFD'ers back to save the world. For the rest of the sane rational fact-checking market participants, that 'know' the BoJ's trigger to buy is a weak morning session, we wonder how much of this futures ramp is front-running... that will fade as JPY is not supportive at all.

Whether it is the lack of any favorable news out of China (in fact, quite the contrary), which the BTFDers on Friday were praying for, or the worsening of the global Ebola pandemic with not only a second confirmed case hitting Texas but panicky reports of Ebola infections from Boston all the way to Los Angeles, or simply the lack of any words of encouragement from the Fed, the Friday rout has continued into the early Sunday night trading, and as of moments ago, the December E-mini future dropped to 1880.5 taking out the August lows, and sliding to levels last seen in May.

A week ago we noted how critical the seige in Kobani was (and why it suggested President Obama's strategy was a fiasco given a lack of commitment from supposed allies such as Turkey). 7 days later.. and America's plans to fight Islamic State are in ruins as the militant group's fighters come close to capturing Kobani and have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Iraqi army west of Baghdad. While John Kerry has today stated, "Kobani does not define strategy against Islamic State," the 'loss' is symbolic as The Independent's Patrick Cockburn notes, in both Syria and Iraq, ISIS is expanding its control rather than contracting.

The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa (which now accounts for 4,000 deaths worldwide) began in Guinea in December 2013. From there, it quickly spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Cases also appeared in Senegal and Nigeria, and a separate outbreak appeared in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Today, Liberia lies is at the center of the epidemic . As President Barack Obama sends American military personnel to West Africa to help combat the epidemic, VICE News traveled to the Liberian capital of Monrovia to spend time with those on the front lines of the outbreak... the scenes are disturbing.

We first exposed the "secret" US-Saudi deal in September which led to the inevitable bombing of Syria. We then progressed to explain the quid pro quo of the deal in lower oil prices (benefiting US consumers into an election and crushing Russian revenues). In today's Wall Street Journal we get the final piece of the puzzle as it is clear that what Saudi Arabia loses in 'price' it will make up in 'volume' as The Kingdon is taking the unusual step of asking buyers to commit to maximum shipments if they want to get its crude. Simply put, "they are threatening [European] buyers" to discontinue sales if they don't agree with the full fixed deliveries. The 'oil weapon' grows stronger...

"Present conditions create an urgency to examine all risk exposures. Once overvalued, overbought, overbullish extremes are joined by deterioration in market internals and trend-uniformity, one finds a narrow set comprising less than 5% of history that contains little but abrupt air-pockets, free-falls, and crashes."

As President Obama's attention has now drifted from the 'humanitarian' mission in Iraq (which initially saw major initial inflows of Jihadists from around the world) to his real goal, we thought the following, somewhat disturbing, map of foreign fighter inflows to Syria would serve to provide context for just what local 'moderate' terrorists will be fighting (for the US) against. Welcome to The New Normal Crusades...

Late into Friday's major market selloff, a completely unfounded rumor emerged out of nowhere, seeking to rekindle the BTFD spirits, that with central bank intervention from both the BOJ and ECB already priced in, and with the Fed still in taper mode (if not for much longer should the S&P dump accelerate), that the last central-planner wildcard, China, would join the fray and a major monetary gusher would come out of Beijing over the weekend to halt the slide. Alas, we have bad news for said BTFDers: just hours before futures are set to open on Sunday afternoon, the chief economist at China’s central bank said Saturday that he doesn’t see any reason for large-scale fiscal or monetary stimulus “in the foreseeable future” despite slowing growth in the world’s second-largest economy and disagreements about the depth and timing of economic overhauls.... Part of China’s “new normal,” he said, is that “big stimulus” won’t be called for every time growth decelerates. “And secondly, the new norm will involve a lot of rebalancing in terms of changing the economic structure.”

It appears the weakness in US equity markets (the last of the hot money flow darlings to be hit) is now rippling back down the bubble-complex of world equity markets. Dubai, infamous for its huge surge in the last 2 years and 36x over-subscribed IPO of a company with no actual operations - which marked the top before a 30% collapse - was open for business today and crashed 6.5%. This the Dubai Financial Markets General Index biggest daily drop in 14 months... the ripple effect is beginning.