Archive - Oct 2014 - Story

When Mario Draghi set off on his latest quest to slay Europe's deflation monster, after an endless array of failed alphabet soup programs to inject money into stock markets mysteriously failed to fix Europe's insolvent economy riddled by record unemployment and trillions in non-performing loans, he clearly was guided by this latest Eurobarometer survey of Public Opinion in the European Union, in which virtually everyone across the board admitted that the most important issue facing the common folk in Europe is plunging prices and crushing deflation.

Oh wait... it says rising prices/inflation. Well, that's embarrassing.

As the daily propaganda machine prompts the majority of today's American youth to go to college "to further their earning potential," despite the actuality that working alongside a non-high-school-graduate flipping burgers is just as likely an outcome, we thought it only fair to discuss the tradeoff between doing something we love and something that pays the bills. As The Washington Post reports, careers in healthcare and engineering ranked high in both meaningfulness and average pay. At the other end of the spectrum, people who had majored in art and design or humanities fields reported low pay, little sense of purpose, and they were relatively unlikely to say that they'd recommend their major to others.

Not only are the Post 9/11 entanglements the longest of any war the US has been involved in, they are also the most expensive – even more than World War II, when the US was fighting on two major fronts against heavily industrialized powers. Rather than achieving victory quickly as advocated by Sun Tzu, the US has been involved in very costly wars for well over a decade now.  Sun Tzu had something to say about this: “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” Seen in this light, has the Post 9/11 military strategy made the US a victorious warrior? While all of this is taking place, the US’ ideological foes can afford the luxury of sitting back and employing a more measured approach: “To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.” Indeed, nothing breaks morale more than the prospect of never ending foreign wars.

Earlier this week, a bunch of guys from DJIGlobal had a brilliant idea: let's take the infamous "camera on a stick" from Go Pro(laroid), stick it on a drone, and dump the whole thing above the magma caldera of Iceland's most recent active volcanic eruption at Bardarbunga, while filming every step of the way. The resulting video is stunning, even if the camera melted in the process.

This week saw the first confirmed case of Ebola virus within the United States, the latest development in an outbreak that has already claimed over 3,000 lives. Here are some recommendations from The Onion on how you can protect yourself against this deadly disease:

What is really embodied in today’s report is more evidence that America’s dependency ratio is still rising and that the already crushing burden of the welfare state will weigh ever more heavily on an economy that is visibly failing as measured by any of the fundamental trends of performance. Indeed, it is well to recall that even today—after what the clueless occupant of the White House claims as 10 million new jobs when 90% of that number, in fact, represents “born again” jobs relative to the 2007 peak—-there are 110 million Americans living in households receiving means-tested benefits and 158 million in households that receive transfer payments of all types. Yet as the burden of taxation and public debt resulting from these trends weigh ever more heavily, it leaves the mad money printers resident in the Eccles Building stranded in an impossible corner.

While one can't help but snicker when the administration of a Nobel Peace Prize winner has launched at least 7 offensive wars, mostly against Muslim countries with virtually none obtaining prior approval from Congress, until now Obama at least showed the sense to realize that maintaining proper "made for propaganda media" optics matters, even if his underlying actions were the very definition of hypocrisy. And then something snapped. As reported by Yahoo News, the White House has acknowledged for the first time that strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes will not apply to U.S. military operations in Syria and Iraq. A White House statement confirmed the looser policy came in response to questions about reports that as many as a dozen civilians, including women and young children, were killed when a Tomahawk missile struck the village of Kafr Daryan in Syria's Idlib province on the morning of Sept. 23.

Despite constant cries of "isolation" from The West, China's popular support for Russia has risen since Moscow's confrontation with the West over Ukraine - rising to 66% in July from 47% a year earlier. That is borne out dramatically, as WSJ reports, books on Mr. Putin have been flying off shelves across China since the crisis in Ukraine began, far outselling those on other world leaders; leaving book-shop staff members with no doubt which foreign leader customers are most interested in: President Vladimir Putin, or "Putin the Great" as some Chinese call him.

"...the road to poverty is paved with small inflations."

If there is a major Ebola pandemic in America, all of the liberties and the freedoms that you currently enjoy would be gone. If government officials believe that you have the virus, federal law allows them to round you up and detain you "for such time and in such manner as may be reasonably necessary."

Every quarter we take a break from all the standard economic indicators to look at a range of alternative data.  The purpose here is to pose the question: “Does the consensus view of the U.S. economy square with what real people do in their day to day lives?” Overall, the news from “Off the Grid” challenges the notion that the U.S. economy is on solid ground and accelerating.  Inching forward, yes... But not much more.

The 100-day moving average of the advance/decline ratio for the MSCI World Index has collapsed to its lowest level since November 2008.

Market weakness, as BofAML reports, has taken a toll on mutual fund and ETF flows, with stocks (-$9.56bn), HY bonds (-$1.56bn) and levered loans (-$1.17bn) all reporting significant outflows last week (ending on October 1st). There is a clear "up in quality" and "up in capital structure" rotation among investors as investment grade bonds saw huge inflows. Notably, most PIMCO funds, including the Total Return Funds, do not report flows weekly, and hence the bulk of this outflow was not reflected in the last week’s data. In a statement PIMCO said that outflows from the Total Return Fund totaled $23.5bn in September, so we will have to see just where that outflow hit.

Due to the trend of renting as opposed to buying by average citizens, there has been an enormous construction boom of apartment complexes across the U.S. However, as Bloomberg reports, the U.S. apartment-vacancy rate rose for the first time in almost five years. Rents are still rising, but for how long? Unless incomes rise substantially, it will be difficult to continue this trend, which is why so many of the financial players have already started bailing on the “buy-to-rent” strategy. And today's zero wage gains does not help support the positivity.

Despite ongoing outflows, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed earlier statements by the Central Bank ruling out any measures to stop the flow of money from his nation (following rumors that they were weighing capital controls sent the Ruble to fresh record lows against the USD). The central bank continues to make "small interventions" but the Ruble has pushed to new record lows this morning nevertheless, as Bloomberg reports, restating "the first principle is the lack of limits on capital movements." In order to "curb risks" from ongoing outflows, Putin said on Thursday that Russia wants to shift to national currencies in trade deals with China and other countries, implying a shift away from the U.S. dollar. That appears to be strengthened further this morning as Putin signs law ratifying a Eurasian economic union.