Archive - Nov 16, 2014 - Story

AMARI: ABENOMICS HASN'T FAILED (so this was the expected outcome?)
SUGA: INVENTORIES, WEATHER, CONSUMER MINDSET CAUSED GDP FALL (nothing to do with record-high misery-index induced by crushing the currency of an energy-import-dependent nation?)

Japanese GDP fell for the 2nd quarter in a row making it official - as we warned a month ago - that Japan has entered a triple-dip recession. Againstr hope-strewn expectations that the rebound from a sales-tax-driven slump would create a magical 2.2% (annualized) expansion, Japanese GDP slumped 1.6% in Q3 - missing by the most since March 2011. So no tax increase... and thus fiscal responsibility goes out the window. Abe dissolves government and bails on another failure? The initial kneejerk reaction sent USDJPY surging back over 117.00 (and NKY followed) but that has quickly reversed and NKY futures are 600 off their highs (and S&P futures are back to last Monday's lows).

The term “anarcho-capitalism” has, we might say, rather an arresting quality. But while the term itself may jolt the newcomer, the ideas it embodies are compelling and attractive: (1) each human being, to use John Locke’s formulation, “has a property in his own person”; (2) there ought to be a single moral code binding all people, whether they are employed by the State or not; and (3) society can run itself without central direction.

According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, nearly a third of all female prisoners worldwide are incarcerated in the United States of America. There are 201,200 women in US prisons, representing 8.8% of the total American prison population. As Forbes' Niall McCarthy reports, China comes a very distant second to the US with 84,600 female prisoners in total or 5.1% of the overall Chinese prison population. Russia is in third position – 59,000 of its prisoners are women and this comes to 7.8% of the total. Either American women are the worst-behaved in the world, or the politically-expedient "prisons-first" culture has gone too far.

"... the gold community paid great attention to the decision of the German Bundesbank to “bring German gold home”. At the beginning of 2013, the Bundesbank announced it would repatriate 300 tonnes of gold stored in the US by 2020. It is well behind schedule, citing logistical difficulties. Yet diplomatic difficulties are more likely to be the chief cause of the delay, especially seeing as the Bundesbank has proven its capacity to organise large-scale gold transports. In the early 2000s, the Bundesbank incrementally repatriated 930 tonnes of German gold held by the Bank of England."

We’ve now created a situation unfortunately in the market where between high frequency trading and algorithms and interference by the planners they can make things happen that looks like everything is OK. And it’s the "OK" part where I think we can really relate to gold not being allowed to go up. Because that's the canary in the coal mine. If gold was above $2,000 we’d all be wondering: What the hell is going on here? And so they haven’t allowed it to happen. However, there is a tremendous imbalance currently seen between global supply and demand for precious metals, and a true price recovery has got to come from the physical market first - or China will continue to buy 60 tons a week until a prodigious upward price correction is forced.

While Americans are preached that "free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity," it appears that not everyone is buying it. Whether it is the failure of prosperity to trickle down (and the inequality that has been created) or just the herd-like need to be told what to do (and never take risks), Pew Research finds a stunning 25% of Americans do not believe people are better off in a free market system - implicitly preferring centrally-planned lives. Ironically, belief in the free market tends to be highest in developing countries while in Japan and Spain, a majority prefer to be managed than free.

Washington’s ability to rig markets has allowed Washington to keep its economic house of cards standing. The extent of financial corruption involving collusion between the mega-banks and the financial authorities is unfathomable. The Western financial system is a house of cards resting on corruption. Can it stand forever or are there so many rotted joints that some simultaneous collection of failures overwhelms the manipulation and brings on a massive crash? Time will tell.

What is the main culprit for the contraction in China's all important credit formation? In two words: shadow banking. As Bank of America summarizes "shadow banking is being tamed" because "the changing structure of TSF suggests that Beijing’s efforts in controlling some types of shadow banking have made some achievements. Two major drivers for the steep decline of TSF from Sept to Oct were the falling of non-discounted bills (down RMB241bn) and falling trust loans (down RMB22bn). By contrast, new corporate bonds were at RMB242bn, a sharp rise from RMB151bn in Sept." In other words, China's shadow banking not only ground to a halt, it actually continued moving in reverse!

While the central banks of the world have yet to directly unleash the helicopter drop of free money to the end-consumer, preferring instead to seek financial asset inflation (and all its unintended consequences), it appears there is another way to get 'free money' direct to the average Joe... "ATM Jackpotting." According to Wired, using a special button sequence and some insider knowledge, it is possible to reconfigure ATMs to believe they are dispensing one dollar bills, instead of the twenties actually loaded into the cash trays. Though industry sources claim this to be rare, they note that "independent operators and financial institutions are very tight lipped about this sort of thing."

"until relatively recently, a profit share of GDP of 6% was perceived to be a cyclical peak; no less than Warren Buffet deemed a higher level to be unsustainable... but the inflection point in profit share is 1987, when Greenspan became Fed chairman. Correlation may not be causation, but the timing is almost exact."

In The West today we see mass delusion everywhere. People seem to believe their governments are almighty beings capable of performing magic - water into wine, debt into wealth. Here are some of the biggest myths we see in the system today...

A rubber band can remain stretched for some time, but it takes some force to keep it stretched. In this case, the force is the daily VIX body-slam and the resulting pop up in equities. This has worked to keep RUT and its cousins aloft for several weeks of going nowhere, but the chart suggests all the kiddies who are supremely confident that Santa will deliver more equity gains might find their complacency is not rewarded.

When a member of the press dared to ask Obama if the head of the "most hypocritical transparent administration ever" "misled Americans" about the taxes and about keeping the plan "in order to get the bill passed" the response was "No, i did not." This was Obama's conclusion after he had just gotten "well-briefed before he came out here." Indeed, nothing escapes the American president who continued: "The fact that some adviser who never worked on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters is no reflection on the actual process that was run." Unfortunately, because Obama apparently wasn't briefed quite as well as he would have hoped, let's just take a look at what Dr. Gruber did do.

As the G-20 meeting comes to a 'successful' end with back-patting congratulations having agreed to create $2 trillion more GDP out of thin air (or maybe hookers and blow), it appears that someone - or more than one - among these nations was less than diplomatic towards every nations' best friend - America. As AP reports, The State Department has taken the unprecedented step of shutting down its entire unclassified email system as technicians repair possible damage from a suspected hacker attack. Earlier attacks have been blamed on Russian or Chinese attackers, although their origin has never been publicly confirmed.