Archive - Nov 2014 - Story

Just one chart...

Because the masses in a democratic polity are deeply imbued with the ideology of egalitarianism and the myth of majority rule, the ruling elites who control and benefit from the state recognize the utmost importance of concealing its oligarchic and exploitative nature from the masses. Continual war making against foreign enemies is a perfect way to disguise the naked clash of interests between the taxpaying and tax-consuming classes.

For 14 years, as Japan's economic demise grew more and more evident, its currency devalued relative to gold (the only non-fiat numeraire). When Abenomics began, the trend began to stabilize... but for the last year or so - as The Fed tapered - JPY and Gold have practically flatlined around 132,000 JPY per ounce. This 'odd' stability stands in strangely stark contrast to the volatility and trends in the USD, JPY, and Gold over this period. Even amid the collapse in JPY in recent weeks, it has remained firmly inside a 3% envelope of the 'peg'.

Do you want to know why Millennials seem so angry?  We promised them that if they worked hard, stayed out of trouble and got good grades that they would be able to achieve the "American Dream".  We told them not to worry about accumulating very high levels of student loan debt because there would be good jobs waiting for them at the end of the rainbow once they graduated.  Well, it turns out that we lied to them.

With the yen reaching seven-year lows, Japanese officials are being pressed by exchange-rate questions from reporters and lawmakers. As policy-makers weigh the costs of the weaker currency along with its benefits, here is a guide to gradations of concern at exchange-rate movements based on remarks in the past.

Hopefully, these charts will give you some food for thought. With everybody so bullish, what could possibly go wrong?

"We could have started later, but then we wouldn’t be sure to get first in line," says Vickey Torres, camped outside the Beaumont Best Buy 22 days before Black Friday. "Some people say we’re crazy."

Is this what they mean when they say 'net neutrality'? From Brazil’s rejection of American IT products - estimated that American firms will lose out on over $35 billion in revenue over the next two years - to this week's announcement that it will be building a 3,500-mile fiber-optic cable to Portugal in order to avoid the grip of the NSA, it appears the Red, White, and Blue Scare has now replaced the Red Scare of the Cold War era.

This Austrian School interpretation of events fits the facts rather better than the monetarist account.  The lesson for policymakers today is uncomfortable.  For, on this view, if there is a parallel with the 1930s, the damage has already been done.  It was done when the Fed allowed funds available for investment in capital markets to balloon, not this time through unsterilized gold inflows but through its QE experiment. 

While it is unclear if moments ago the Mississippian Lime Play under south Kansas was the first major shale quake to hit Kansas, or this was simply the first yet to be named shale company going Chapter 11, but moments ago the USGS reported that a 4.8 quake located 30 miles SSW of Wichita as well as a various other smaller quakes in north Oklahoma,shook the two states.

The U.S. and many other economies left the gold standard more than 40 years ago, yet advocates periodically call for its return, saying that it would curtail or prevent inflation. In these brief clips from the St. Louis Fed video series, David Andolfatto, a vice president and economist explains the gold standard noting "most economists believe a return to the gold standard would not be a wise policy," and "under the gold standard, banking panics are more likely to occur," and then pointing out somewhat stunningly that "however, the fiat system employed by the Federal Reserve has been largely successful in maintaining low inflation and price stability." Enjoy...

As today's latest example of pervasive, apparently endless criminality at the world's largest banks, where once again the shocked public is exposed to a culture of sociopathic, unchecked greed and perpetual raping of clients, showed, one is either part of the all too literal "cartel", or one loses money. However, for those who are unfamiliar with the nuances of FX trading, one doesn't even have to be on the other side of the world's most criminal, above the law, cartel of bankers to have no P and only L: the fundamental premise of currency trading, whereby one can and will be stopped out thanks to leverage as high as 50x - by others but mostly by one's own brokers as we learned today courtesy of JPM, Citi, RBS, HSBC and UBS - is the very same reason why as retail FX trader Dan Gratton, a 71-year-old retiree who lives on Social Security in Kingman, Arizona has found out: "Probably the most consistent thing is losing."

As US QE has come to an end, depriving the world of US$1 trillion printed dollars a year, SocGen's Andrew Lapthorne warns, there are still plenty of things for investors to be concerned about. Indeed with asset prices where they are, investment returns look paltry from here on, as not only is there a long list of macroeconomic issues to worry about, but bottom-up firm level indicators are also flashing red. Valuations, as measured by median price to cash flow ratios, are near historical highs, and the spread of company valuations within the market is near historical lows. The implication is that downside risks are mispriced.