Archive - Dec 2, 2014 - Story

With Black Friday sales plunging and Cyber Monday growth slowing, it appears the chicken of stagnant wages and debt-saturation are coming home to roost for a massacred middle-class America. However, as WSJ reports "we are buying less stuff," because the basic costs of necessities such as healthcare, food eaten at home, rent, education, and cellphones have surged. Overall spending for the group rose by about 2.3% over the six-year period from 2007, even as inflation totaled about 12%.

On October 22, 1981, the government of the United States of America accumulated an astounding $1 TRILLION in debt. At that point, it had taken the country 74,984 days (more than 205 years) to accumulate its first trillion in debt. It would take less than five years to accumulate its second trillion. And as the US government just hit $18 trillion in debt on Friday afternoon, it has taken a measly 403 days to accumulate its most recent trillion. There’s so much misinformation and propaganda about this; let’s examine some of the biggest lies out there about the US debt...

Did you know that there exists a federal Immigrant Investor Program that grants “EB-5? immigration visas to foreigners who provide at least $500,000 to U.S. projects that create 10 or more American jobs? Apparently the good folks at the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission are well aware of it, and are using it to raise $200 million. Here’s what we’d like to know. Who are these investors and who vets them? It is a known fact that corrupt Chinese officials and businessmen are scrambling to get themselves and their money out of their homeland as the government cracks down on corruption. How many of them are going to use this program to get into the U.S., and what will be the long-term impact to our society?

What we experience today is completely contrary to the German (maybe not the U.S.) understanding of the role of the Central Bank. The ECB has now assumed a role not only to protect the value of our common currency against inflation but also to take action as if it is responsible to create economic growth and full employment with instruments like money printing, zero interest rates and unlimited investments in bonds which the free market is rejecting... Is it really worth it to increase the already heavy burden of public debt, which our children must service someday, by accepting even more debt in a vain effort to increase public demand? Let’s instead be happy with zero GDP growth, zero inflation and zero growth of public debt! That could be a more rational solution.

Only the 1% can afford to go to a basketball game...

As reported two weeks ago, following to a stunning announcement by the head of Ukraine's central bank, Valeriya Gontareva, we learned that (virtually) all of Ukraine's gold was gone, or - in the parlance of Jon Corzine - had "vaporized." And as we also predicted two weeks ago, it was only a matter of time before Ukraine's people - the vast majority of whom are innocent pawns in a vast game of realpolitik between the west and east - finally got angry and demanded some answers. That time came earlier today when as Interfax.ua reported "a Kyiv-based court has instructed Kyiv prosecutors to bring an action against National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Governor Valeriya Gontareva on charges of abuse of power or misuse of office to obtain illegal profit, the Vesti newspaper reported on Tuesday."

With African Americans. However, even they are unhappy with Obama's Ferguson performance.

Not a quarter passes without a bank announcing, as part of its earning statement, that - it just so happens - it has incurred a few hundreds million (or billion) in legal fees, expenses and charges for breaking the law and manipulating this market or that (recall that for banks "Crime Is Now An Ordinary Course Of Business"), but it's ok, because it is a one-time, non-recurring thing, so please exclude it from the EPS calculation.... Until the next quarter when everything repeats once more. But the repetition of "one-time" events is not the only constant: the other one, of course, is that nobody ever goes to jail. The latter is also the reason why, as the WSJ reports, British regulators are "getting exasperated with banks failing to clean up their act after repeated wrongdoings." No, really: the UK's equivalent to the SEC truly can't understand how banks refuse to stop breaking the law when the have a paid for by others - and quite literal - get out of jail card.

Outspoken realist billionaire Sam Zell tells Fox's Maria Bartiromo, "the US economy is bifurcated," noting that "the very top has done very well as The Fed's QE 'saved the system'," but, he adds, the 90% that did not benefit from that "have seen wages go down and the recent election showed a lot of discomfort and a lack of trust." A hopeful money-honey asks whether the president will work with the Republicans to improve this situation, Zell lashes back, "isn't the question whether the president wants to work with anybody to create anything?"

Mission Accomplished Abenomics? The Nikkei 225 just hit fresh 7 year highs at around 17,900 (the highest since July 2007) managing to soar 24% off the mid-October 'Bullard lows' and once again trading above the Dow. Great news for all the bulled up US investors we see day after day on financial TV... wrong! In US Dollars, US investors remain down 4% year-to-date (and have yet to have a positive close in 2014). But hey on the bright side, your Japanese brethren are loving the nominal surge in their 'wealth' as their currency collapses to 119.4 this evening.

Any economic sage should conclude that the cure for high taxation is, well, low taxation. Remember our job is not to maximize government revenues in the short run, but to improve living standards in the long run. France would do well to repudiate its native son Piketty, and move to align its policies with the Scotsman Adam Smith, who a long time ago advocated low-broad taxation and light-handed regulation of capital and labour markets.

If you notice that display racks this holiday season are nicely scented, it’s not just shops are tidier at year’s end. Scents like citrus and floral can make you linger and stay alert in the shop to buy more. The use of scent is just one of four sensory marketing tricks being used on us by shops eager for more sales. Collated in the new infographic below you can find a number of scientific studies that indicate what we see, hear or touch affect our buying decisions. Do you know why Apple Store leaves its notebook display half-open, or why you suddenly crave for a tropical vacation while inside Bloomingdale’s?

With an 83% probability of default within 5 years, Venezuela is in trouble... imminent trouble with a 24% chance of default within a year (more than 10 times the probability of a Russian default)

The selling is because the dominant Common Knowledge regarding energy sector stocks is that they move up and down with the price of oil. Common Knowledge is not what everyone knows; that’s the consensus. Common Knowledge is what everyone knows that everyone knows, and it’s the driving force behind the Game of Sentiment. Everyone knows that everyone knows energy stocks are tied to oil prices, we just took another sharp leg down in oil prices, and so energy stocks must be sold. The fact that energy stocks are down “proves” the relationship (a wonderful example of Soros’s concept of reflexivity), which adds to the selling. The reality (not that it matters) is that energy stocks are barely correlated with the price of oil, and their correlation with each other is barely driven by oil prices. What’s really driving this across-the-board decline is the fact that “long energy” has become a very crowded trade.

"It's a funny thing... but if you start taxing countries for doing the right thing, in order to pay countries who are doing the wrong thing, you're going to end up fewer of the former and more of the latter." Europe's perverse incentives to 'not' succeed exposed in just 70 seconds...