Archive - Dec 2014 - Story

Despite the near-record scream higher in Chinese stocks over the last few months, under the surface China is rattled and nowhere is that more evident than in the collapse of its commodity-backed ponzi-financing deals. Since we first uncovered the fraud at the port of Qingdao, another has appeared that is just as fraud-ridden - Penglai; and Citi and Mercuria Energy are arguing over who pays. According to Mercuria's lawyer Graham Dunning, Citi was "in a state of panic," when they uncovered the fraud. As Bloomberg reports, Dunning exclaimed "it appears that substantial quantities may be missing from the warehouses or may be the subject of multiple pledges," and the bank says it is owed at least $270 million. Other 'banks' have been less forthcoming about their potential losses, but the government probe has so far uncovered almost $10 billion in fraudulent trade, including irregularities at Qingdao, according to the country’s currency regulator.

The investment game is becoming more suspect and dangerous as asset price levels continue to ignore economic weakness and the lack of necessary political reform.  Instead, many investors (not just in the EU) have become conditioned like B.F. Skinner rats to bid up financial risk assets whenever a central banker makes a promise about accommodation or further stimulus; this even occurs when data disappoints, because investors expect ‘the promise’ to soon follow. Fear of missing the upside and underperforming peers and benchmarks is what makes this reflexivity work.  This is actually a sad state of affairs and an ever-more dangerous and epic game of chicken.  This conditional response pattern is unsustainable.  Indebtedness and market speculation continue to soar.  In the end, printing is a not a solution, but a source of long-term harm to markets and national economies.

Not "off the lows"...

Who says the US president is unwilling to suffer great discomfort and intolerable pain in the pursuit of his noble, "leader of the free world" duties? Not flashing red headlines informing us about the constant state of the president's frail laryngeal area, that's for sure. From Bloomberg:

• PRESIDENT OBAMA SEEKING TREATMENT FOR SORE THROAT, DOCTOR SAYS

And while the social media has been lit ablaze with alternative "theories" that may have caused Obama's throat discomfort, please join us as we observe a minute of silence in awe of America's suffering president.

There are a hundred flashing red warning signs coming to us from the environment, the Earth, and all of its supporting ecosystems. Either we get off the 'growth at any cost' express train or we risk wrecking important, valuable, essential and beautiful species, ecosystems and support systems that we rely upon for our health, our wealth, and our happiness. Like the economy, ecosystems are complex systems. That means that they owe their complexity and order to energy flows and, most importantly, they are inherently unpredictable. How they will respond to the change by a thousand rapid insults is unknown and literally unknowable.

It was just one short month ago when, on the back of the soaring dollar (which has since soared even more), as well as "diminished global GDP growth and lower crude prices", Goldman's David Kostin cut his EPS for 2015 and 2016 from $125 and $132 to $122 and $131. Then, it was just two short weeks ago, the same David Kostin said "we expect the P/E will contract and the index will slip during the second-half of 2015 as the Fed takes its first step in the long-awaited tightening cycle. Our S&P 500 year-end 2015 target of 2100 implies a modest 5-10% P/E multiple compression to 16.0x our top-down 2016 EPS estimate or 14.6x bottom-up consensus earnings estimates." And then, with the S&P now about 20 points away from Goldman's 2015 year end target (and just 120 points from the government-backed hedge fund's 2016 year end target!), the very same David Kostin admits that he was only kidding and that the S&P may in fact rise to a whopping 2300 in the coming year...

Astonishingly, Newton’s Third Law seems to be either forgotten or dismissed altogether, and this is a shame because the world’s financial pendulum is in the process of reaching that ever so brief pause, after which it then begins to swing in the other direction. To many thoughtful investors, it has become crystal clear that the world is indeed on the cusp of a dramatic change in direction. There will be extreme cases of financial, social, political and economic losses. But there will also be extreme cases of financial gains – the secret is understanding how and where global capital will flow.

You thought gold was "only" for wealth preservation? You ain't seen nothing yet.

Another day, another record for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Main Street’s favorite measure of Wall Street stock performance. How did we get here?  The answer sits in a comfortable blend of good returns from a range of industry sectors.  Seven of the Dow 30 names have added over 100 points to the total 1,303 point gain for the Average this year: Visa (251 points), UnitedHealth (185), Nike (136), 3M (129), Disney (116), Johnson & Johnson (111) and Home Depot (106).  By contrast, there is just one 100 point loser: IBM (negative 137 points). The collapse in energy stocks hasn’t hurt the Dow very much – just 113 points year to date related to declines in ExxonMobil and Chevron.  And to satisfy the most common “What if” scenarios we hear: adding Apple on its split day this June would have added an estimated 166 points, and Facebook’s whole-year 2014 performance would have pushed the Average higher by 162 points.  

It seems rather appropriate that just seven days after the US government hit a whopping $18 trillion in debt, mainstream financial media has picked up the IMF’s recent World Economic Outlook report, which puts the US economy as #2 in the world. China obviously has its own substantial problems, but over the last several decades one thing is for certain - China (and Asia in general) is a place where production and savings are valued. The universal law of wealth is to produce more than you consume. The West has completely broken that.

Overnight, two hostages including an American photojournalist, 33-year-old Luke Sommers, who was held for more than a year by al Qaeda's Yemen branch, as well as a South African teacher, Pierre Korkie, were killed in a botched rescue attempt by US special operations forces. This was the second rescue attempt in as many weeks. According to the WSJ, Luke Somers, 33 years old, was killed by militants, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Saturday. Several members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, were also killed in the raid.

Yesterday the US House passed what I consider to be one of the worst pieces of legislation ever. H. Res. 758 was billed as a resolution “strongly condemning the actions of the Russian Federation, under President Vladimir Putin, which has carried out a policy of aggression against neighboring countries aimed at political and economic domination.” In fact, the bill was 16 pages of war propaganda that should have made even neocons blush, if they were capable of such a thing.

The best option, the only option when faced with a conundrum like Ferguson, is for residents to kick government out of the picture completely. Whatever problems might be encountered during such a transition would be a happy trade over the constant crisis wrought by political “mismanagement” or manipulation. In the end, corrupt government will never go away unless we stop handing our responsibilities over to them — and this includes security. We must stop trying to change the system by following the rules that perpetually benefit the system. If we are ever going to get rid of elitist control, we have to step outside the false paradigm and play our own game by our own rules.

In a healthy, moral and civilized society defined by the rule of law, police can play an important role. They should be people who come from the communities they promise to “protect and serve.” They should view themselves as a part of these communities, not as something separate and distinct. Police should see their jobs as having a great degree of risk, and must be willing to accept that risk. This means not pretending to be a solider at war, not choosing the most violent solution to every problem, and not viewing the citizenry as milk cows ready and willing to be drained of their assets via civil forfeiture.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the state of the police in America in 2014, and it’s quickly becoming obvious to everyone.

Do you ever feel like you are living in a “Bizarro World”?