Archive - Feb 28, 2014 - Story

Let’s move on to the third piece of the puzzle. The routine exploitation of the weakness and most gullible members of society, teenage girls. The crazy thing here is not that some random selection of underage girls are being led to click on ads that direct them to adult video cam sites and dangerous dietary supplements, but that they represent the primary demographic clicking on these ads. This story from the Wall Street Journal is sure to make your blood boil no matter who you are, but particularly if you are a parent with young children.

Readers will recall that back in October, when the only way for Bitcoin seemed up, none other than the head of sophisticated hedge fund/private equity megafund Fortress Group, Michael Novograts, recommended buying Bitcoin:  "I have a nice little Bitcoin position,” Novogratz said. "Enough that I’m smiling that it doubled... Put a little money in Bitcoin...Come back in a few years and it’s going to be worth a lot." Or, you can come back in a few months and now that the momentum euphoria is over and done with, watch it be worth far less.

The future of oil exploration lies in new technology--from massive data-processing supercomputers to 4D seismic to early-phase airborne spy technology that can pinpoint prospective reservoirs. Oil and gas is getting bigger, deeper, faster and more efficient, with new technology chipping away at “peak oil” concerns.  Hydraulic fracturing has caught mainstream attention, other high-tech developments in exploration and discovery have kept this ball rolling. Oil majors are second only to the US Defense Department in terms of the use of supercomputing systems, which find sweet spots for drilling based on analog geology. These supercomputing systems analyze vast amounts of seismic imaging data collected by geologists using sound waves.

Everyone is curious who those unmarked men in unforms that have been seen in youtube clips from the Crimea are. Courtesy of Russian blogger Lev Shlosberg who writes for the newspaper Pskovskaya Guberniya, we now have an answer: according to him they are the officers of the 76th Chernihov (Pskov) Storm Troops Division and have slowly dispersed across key choke points in Ukraine.

Well that was quick:

• OBAMA SAYS ‘DEEPLY CONCERNED’ BY RUSSIAN MILITARY MOVEMENTS
• OBAMA SAYS "THERE WILL BE COSTS" FOR MILITARY INTERVENTION IN UKRAINE
• OBAMA SAYS "UKRAINE PEOPLE DESERVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO DETERMINE THEIR OWN FUTURE"
• OBAMA SAYS HE COMMENDS RESTRAINT OF UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT
• OBAMA SAYS BIDEN HAS SPOKEN WITH PRIME MINISTER OF UKRAINE
• OBAMA SAYS U.S. SUPPORTS UKRANIAN SOVERIGNTY

And... that's it: no statement on what if anything the US will do if Russia keeps its presence there and continues piling troops and equipment.

With the Ukraine now openly appealing to the world to halt what in its own words is a Russian invasion, it only made sense that after the bigger than expected downward revision to Q4 GDP, and the miss in Pending Home Sales, that the S&P would close at a new all time high

"If I ask you what’s the risk in investing, you would answer the risk of losing money. But there actually are two risks in investing: One is to lose money and the other is to miss opportunity. You can eliminate either one, but you can’t eliminate both at the same time. So the question is how you’re going to position yourself versus these two risks: straight down the middle, more aggressive or more defensive. I think of it like a comedy movie where a guy is considering some activity. On his right shoulder is sitting an angel in a white robe. He says: «No, don’t do it! It’s not prudent, it’s not a good idea, it’s not proper and you’ll get in trouble». On the other shoulder is the devil in a red robe with his pitchfork. He whispers: «Do it, you’ll get rich». In the end, the devil usually wins. Caution, maturity and doing the right thing are old-fashioned ideas. And when they do battle against the desire to get rich, other than in panic times the desire to get rich usually wins. That’s why bubbles are created and frauds like Bernie Madoff get money." - Howard Marks

But... hadn't this brilliant, vacuum-tube controlled market priced in every possible Ukraine contingency? Or maybe the GDP miss wasn't bad enough?

Here we go:

2,000 RUSSIAN SOLDIERS LAND IN CRIMEA IN ARMED INVASION, KIEV OFFICIAL SAYS -- AFP
UKRAINE ACTING PRESIDENT TURCHYNOV STARTS BRIEFING
UKRAINE LEADER SAYS RUSSIA STARTS AGGRESSION AGAINST COUNTRY
UKRAINE SAYS RUSSIA INVADED UKRAINE UNDER GUISE OF EXERCISE

At the same time, Ukraine Pravda is reporting that Russian military planes are now landing in the Crimea

While it is unclear why it happened, in the most recent week of Fed data, February 19, Primary Dealer holdings of Coupon securities tumbled by $21 billion, to just $2.3 billion. As the chart below show this is curious because the last time PD holdings of coupon securities was this low was in September of 2011, suggesting that in the middle of the month dealers were dumping coupon paper aggressively even though this did not impact the prevailing price of the various maturity buckets, considering the bond complex continues to grind higher in 2014 despite panicked warnings by the punditry that all Treasury holdings must be sold.

With the UN Security council set to meet in a closed-door session at 3 pm and discuss the ongoing crisis in the Ukraine, here are all the latest news out of the Crimean, where so far things have been tense if without violence.

Why is the periphery crumbling? It's simple: the conditions that enabled rising national surpluses and the distribution of spoils is breaking down for three reasons:

1. Energy is no longer cheap (compared to past prices)
2. The low-hanging fruit of higher productivity has all been plucked
3. The free-money flood of cheap, limitless credit is drying up

As regimes find surplus and credit are both contracting, their ability to placate every key group with spoils is also declining, and the conflicts between them can no longer be patched over with bribery or brutality. Instability starts on the periphery and moves into the core.

Yesterday we reported that as part of the Ukrainian central bank's plan to bailout the nation's largely insolvent private banks, it would provide any needed funding but only "if they will remain under open control of the National Bank of Ukraine." And since the new CB head Stepan Kubiv's allegiance to Europe were already well-known, this was merely a quick and efficient way of providing Europe with all the banking details including asset holdings of the local population. Today, the annexation of the country's banking system by a "benevolent" Europe is complete. Itar-Tass reports that Ukraine's national bank has imposed temporary limits to withdraw money from foreign currency deposits to sums equivalent to no more than 15,000 hryvnias (about $1,500) a day, National Bank Chief Stepan Kubiv told a press conference. Or, as the citizens of Cyprus call it - capital controls.

While the FT promptly retracted an article on precisely the topic of gold manipulation from earlier this week (recorded for posterity here), Bloomberg appears to not have had the same "editorial" concerns and pressures, and today released an article once again slamming the final conspiracy theory that while every other asset class is manipulated, gold is in a pristine class of its own, untouched by close-banging, price fixing traders or central bankers, and reports that "the London gold fix, the benchmark used by miners, jewelers and central banks to value the metal, may have been manipulated for a decade by the banks setting it, researchers say." And the punchline: "Large price moves during the afternoon call were also overwhelmingly in the same direction: down. On days when the authors identified large price moves during the fix, they were downwards at least two-thirds of the time in six different years between 2004 and 2013. In 2010, large moves during the fix were negative 92 percent of the time, the authors found."

First it was frat bros, then it was sluts, then it was Richard Simmons. Now, that the doge meme has arrived, Obamacare marketing desperation has just sunk to unfathomable lows.