Archive - Dec 10, 2014 - Story

The Department of Treasury is spending $200,000 on survival kits for all of its employees who oversee the federal banking system, according to a new solicitation. As FreeBeacon reports, survival kits will be delivered to every major bank in the United States and includes a solar blanket, food bar, water-purification tablets, and dust mask (among other things). The question, obviously, is just what do they know that the rest of us don't?

A week ago we wrote how Pennsylvania is financing various state infrastructure projects by selling residency to Chinese "investors" for $500K each. As it turns out, the practice of pimping passports for Chinese capex is hardly new or just isolated to Pennsylvania and is, in fact, massively widespread throughout America's insolvent states whose tax collections are far below budget and which are in desperate need of fresh funds to embezzle invest in random boondoggles. Case in point, New York, where the Biggest real-estate project in a generation, the Hudson Yards, is now officially financed by 1200 Chinese families in search of visas allowing them to live (and park their stolen cash) in the US. In all, 10,928 foreign investors applied to invest through the program in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, up from 6,346 a year earlier and 486 in 2006, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the program’s administrator. Most projects have been real-estate developments.

For the first time in almost 3 years, the 'market' is fighting the PBOC in the FX markets. The last month has seen USDCNY rise almost 9 handles to as high as 6.21 (the weakest CNY in 5 months). At the same time, the PBOC's official 'fix' of CNY has been strengthened to below 6.12 (the strongest CNY in 9-months) diverging by the most in six months from the market. "The market is staying cautious and even bearish on the China macro outlook," notes Morgan Stanley, but as HSBC explains, "China doesn't want to join the currency wars [and wants to stall any speculation on trend] and that explains the fix movement." Simply put, markets doubt the PBOC and believe it will eventually be dragged into the currency war or just fundamentally deteriorate enough to warrant capital flight.

While on the one hand, Iceland's decision to inch towards lifting its capital controls is a positive step, it appears what they give with one hand they are taking with another. Just as we predicted three years ago, the muddle-through has failed and there are only hard choices left and sure enough BCG's envisioned 'wealth tax' appears to be rearing its ugly head once more. As Morgunbladid reports, Iceland plans to impose an exit tax as part of removing capital controls, anticipating all bank assets will be subject to the levy, regardless of whether assets are held in local (ISK) or foreign exchange.

The game is rigged, and “we the people” keep getting dealt the same losing hand. Even so, we stay in the game, against all odds, trusting that our luck will change. The problem, of course, is that luck will not save us. The people dealing the cards—the politicians, the corporations, the judges, the prosecutors, the police, the bureaucrats, the military, the media, etc.—have only one prevailing concern, and that is to maintain their power and control over the country and us. It’s time to change the rules of the game. For that matter, it’s time to change the game.

Because you can always bet on the "stupidity of the American voter" and win.

In July 2008, crude oil prices peaked and began to fall quickly. After 2 months they had dropped 30%, but being the smartest extrapolators in the room, producers piled on the rig count driving it higher and higher until around 5 months after oil prices peaked... the rig count completely collapsed. Today, it has now been almost 6 months since oil peaked and began its accelerating free-fall and rig counts have just started to drop (still 2% above the June peak oil levels)... of course, it's different this time... it's way worse! All these rigs are backed by massive debt loads at drastically lower costs of funding than is possible now... but we should ignore that, right?

The U.S. government justifies all of its militaristic and other interventions overseas using this false narrative that it holds some sort of moral high ground. It should now be abundantly clear to everyone that this invented ethical position is a total fabrication.   I can summarize my thoughts on this entire matter with the following: "If you're part of status quo, you can get away with anything. Murder, torture, theft of trillions. Until top guys are jailed it won't stop."

Are much lower oil prices good news for the U.S. economy?  Only if you like collapsing capital expenditures, rising unemployment and a potential financial implosion on Wall Street.

Just a week after raising capital implying a $40 billion-plus valuation, Uber is coming under significant pressure as their operations are banned in various nations, death threats in others, and some of its drivers were accused of committing crimes against customers and the public. As the following map shows, there is room for growth but increasingly Uber's disruption is being disrupted...

The simple message: Quantitative Easing has failed to generate inflation. Stated alternatively: QE has not been able to overcome still extant deflationary pressures. Global central banker actions in printing over $13 trillion of new money over the last 6 years have been insufficient to surmount still existing deflationary forces.  It tells us the probability of further global deflationary impulses are very real.  This has direct implications for any sector of the economy or financial markets whose fundamentals are negatively leveraged to deflationary pressures (think banks, real estate, etc.)  Be assured the central bankers are more than fully aware of this.

When the EBay spinoff press release hit, some were wondering just what do the following buzzwords mean: Maximizes strategic focus and flexibility for eBay and PayPal to capitalize on respective growth opportunities in highly competitive, rapidly changing global commerce and payments markets; Preserves eBay and PayPal relationships through arm’s length operating agreements; Provides shareholders with more targeted investment opportunities; best path to sustainable shareholder value. Now, thanks to the WSJ, all confusion can be swept away, because as with every other case of corporate jargon, "synergies" and "shareholder value" simply meant one thing: thousands of pink slips.

In Top-Gun-esque imagery, NATO has released video of a Dutch Air-Force F-16 fighter engaging with numerous Russian planes (more than 30!) including fighter and transport aircraft, over the Baltic Sea. This was filmed this last weekend as activity, according to NATO, continues to increase.

While the question of supply vs demand in global oil markets is merely different sides of the same coin, we hope the following "name that chart" image provides some clarifying perspective on what is really dragging oil prices lower...

In reality, bureaucrats and politicians who produce nothing of value parasitically choke off the productive class through onerous taxation and regulation. This cannot last forever, because at some point they will have no hosts left to feed off of. Ukraine is the perfect example of this right now. In a leaked version of a new budget proposal (in Ukrainian), we are seeing the drastic extent to which bankrupt governments feed on their hosts.