Archive - Jun 8, 2014 - Story

You’ve got to give young Andrew Demeter a lot of credit. Given the chance to meet a powerful Congresswoman, most people would melt into a sad puddle of unjustified reverence and pathetic groveling. Not this young man. When he was given the opportunity to ask Nancy Pelosi a question, he confronted her on the NSA’s unconstitutional spy practices and why she hasn’t done anything to stop it, considering she claims to be so “liberal.”

On the heels of growing contagion concerns regarding shadow banking collateral and the "rehypothecation evaporation" and this weekend's 'odd' Chinese trade data (big drop in imports, no doubt impacted by dramatic commodity invoicing swings), the PBOC has fixed the Chinese currency 0.36% in the last 2 days... the biggest strengthening in the currency since October 2012. It is unclear for now exactly what is going on but we suspect the panic button outflows as banks pull credit and unwind CCFDs are forcing China's hand to offset CNY selling pressure... and of course China does it in grand style.

First, the world's oligarchs slowly but surely took over London real estate, where as we reported last week, home prices in May soared by the most in 12 years, and now, according to the Telegraph, in order to make London into an even more exclusive enclave where only the uber-wealthy can rub shoulders, assorted luxury buildings are installing metal spikes on the ground outside to fully deter homeless people from sleeping (and hence living) there. In other words, in London homeless people have been relegated to pigeon status, as the same technique has been long used to prevent rats with wings from landing, and defecating, at select locations.

While Japan's Trade balance missed expectations once again (bigger deficit than hoped or expected), the flashing red headlines of the night belong to Japan's 1.6% QoQ GDP print (better than expected)  - the 'best growth' since Q3 2011. The initial reaction was JPY weaker, which meant Nikkei higher (and oddly JGBs rallied too). But... and it's a big but... Japanese consumer spending shot up by 2.2% in Q1 - the biggest on record... matched only by Q1 1997, the quarter before Japan's last tax-hike decision. What happened the quarter after that? Take a look...

Economic science has long shown that labor is not magically exempted from the laws of supply and demand. Therefore, minimum wage laws hurt rather than help workers, especially those with few skills or those just starting out, who are on the lowest rungs of the ladder. If one wants to raise youth unemployment and price unskilled workers out of the market, there is no surer way than introducing a minimum wage – especially one that is far higher than what the market can bear. Seattle is one of the few municipalities in the US boasting of an openly socialist council member, Ksahma Sawant. One of her central demands was the introduction of a $15/hr minimum wage in Seattle. The city council has now bowed to this demand, a decision that is likely to prove extremely destructive, especially to small businesses. Seattle seems eager to become the next Detroit.

E Pluribus, Unum!

The great mystery of the endlessly levitating market continues to confound everyone, even Goldman Sachs. Because while the market soared in May (and has continue to surge in June) contrary to the sell in May mantra, when peeking beneath the market's covers, Goldman has found that most investor groups did just as they are supposed to do for this time of the year: they sold!

While Morgan Stanley's lower-than-consensus economic expectations for the US economy splits the difference between an economy where people remain hesitant to take on risk, essentially extending the post-crisis pall, and one where they embrace risk in the manner of a more typical post-WWII cyclical expansion; their alternative scenarios (at either corner of the goldilocks world) make one wonder just what the catalyst will be to release the kraken of better-than-subpar growth...

Risk is no longer priced into anything. Volatility has gone to sleep. Uniformity of thought has taken over the stock market. Complacency has reached a point where even central banks have begun to worry about it: the idea that markets can only go up – once entrenched, which it is – leads to financial instability because no one is prepared when that theory suddenly snaps. But all this bullishness, this complacency is only skin deep. Beneath the layer of the largest stocks, volatility has taken over ruthlessly, the market is in turmoil, people are dumping stocks wholesale, and dreams and hopes are drowning in red ink.

UPDATE: Las Vegas Review reports 5 dead: 2 cops, 1 civilian, 2 suspects

Multiple shootings and at least one death has been reported after two people (a man and a woman) shot two Law Vegas police officers, stole their gear, and entered a nearby Wal-Mart. As KLAS-TV reports, police say witnesses told them the suspects took the police officers' gear and, as they were walking out of the restaurant after the shooting, they said, "tell the police the revolution has begun." As Las Vegas Review Journal reports, the shooters were still at large as of noon.

With call-signs "Death 11" and "Death 12", we suspect the deployment by the US Air Force of 2 B-2 Stealth Bombers to the UK's RAF base in Fairford is for anything but simple sight-seeing. As The Aviationist notes, B-2s don’t move from Whiteman AFB, in Missouri, too often as they are trained to conduct very long round-trip missions from their homebase; which is why the deployment of two Spirit bombers with the 509th Bomb Wing to the UK is, at least, noteworthy. The question is... what will Putin's retaliatory sabre-rattle be?

Government intervention in the economy manipulates the buying decisions of the population. The resulting malinvestment quickly turns into malinformation and imbalanced marketing messages. Our minds are dominated by the marketing messages of malinvestment which blankets our economy in a dark fog of partial truths. Partial truths masquerade as the whole story, granting subpar products and services unchallenged attention and popularity. Oscar Wilde was right: “Everything popular is wrong.”

Mario Draghi unleashed his ultimate "spend-it-all-now-or-you'll-lose-it" Keynesian demand-pull bazooka this week when he went full negative-rate-tard. While plenty of time has been spent discussing the "low-flation" and the total lack of credit creation (Keynes ultimate kryptonite), we thought the following three charts might bring home just how entirely broken (and dependent) Europe's economy/market has become...

Much has been made about the role that hydraulic fracturing – or fracking -- has played in revolutionizing the energy landscape, unlocking vast new reserves of oil trapped in shale rock. This “tight oil” is pouring into the global pool of oil supplies at a crucial time, preventing oil prices from spiking in an age of high demand and geopolitical turmoil. But the world still relies overwhelmingly on conventional oil production from existing fields, many of which are in decline. The Middle East has dominated the world of oil for half a century and as the list below shows, it remains king. Here are the top five most important oil fields in the world.