Archive - 2014 - Story

The following clip, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the very real war that is raging between the NYC mayor's office and the city's police department, has to be seen to be believed.

The simmering cold war involving the NYPD and various elements of New York's population just went nuclear when just over an hour ago, reports hit that two NYPD officers were shot in their patrol car, and subsequently died, in what has been dubbed an "execution style" ambush in Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy area. The alleged shooter was chased by police and subsequently died of a self-inflicted gun wound.

“President Obama’s unilateral legislative action violates the separation of powers provided for in the United States Constitution as well as the Take Care Clause, and therefore, is unconstitutional.”

China carried out a long-range missile flight test on Saturday using multiple, independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs, according to U.S. defense officials. As The Washington Free Beacon reports, the test of a new DF-41 missile, China’s longest-range intercontinental ballistic missile, marks the first test of multiple warhead capabilities for China (the DF-41 is capable of carrying up to 10 warheads and has a maximum range of 7,456 miles, allowing it to target the entire continental United States). Rick Fisher, a specialist on the Chinese military with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, warned "the beginning of China’s move toward multiple warhead-armed nuclear missiles is proof that today, arms control is failing to increase the security of Americans."

"Zero..."

George Orwell once said that “during times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act“. That perfectly describes the era that we are currently living in. The truth does not bring fear and despair. Rather, the truth brings hope and it sets people free.

Say what you want about the gold price languishing below $1200 (or not, as the case may be, after this week), and say what you want about the technical picture or the “6,000-year bubble,” as Citi’s Willem Buiter recently termed it; but know this: gold is an insurance policy — not a trading vehicle — and the time to assess gold is when people have a sudden need for insurance. When that day comes - and believe me, it’s coming - the price will be the very last thing that matters. It will be purely and simply a matter of securing possession - bubble or not - and at any price. That price will NOT be $1200. A “run” on the gold “bank”  would undoubtedly lead to one of those Warren Buffett moments when a bunch of people are left standing naked on the shore. It is also a phenomenon which will begin quietly before suddenly exploding into life. If you listen very carefully, you can hear something happening...

For the past 150 years, crude oil prices have varied between around $10 per barrel and around $120 per barrel. For many decades, oil prices were relatively "stable" but a funny thing happened in the early 70s and everything changed - whether coincidental or causative the linkages between the oil crisis and Nixon's Gold-Standard-busting of Bretton Woods are clear in the chart below. Goldman expects continued high oil price volatility with risks skewed to the downside as the market searches for a new equilibrium... and a period of macroeconomic adjustment to structurally lower oil prices. Is oil adjusting to a new 'gold-standard-esque' normal?

The stock market takes off in holiday celebration of the FOMC being even less clear than it really has been in some time; perhaps going all the way back to Alan Greenspan’s intentional mush. Equity “investors” are happy that the Fed may be happy about the economy, even though there is nothing in actual markets (outside of stocks) to suggest that anything the Fed proclaims carries even the slightest validity. The recovery is over because it never was. The Fed is now kamikaze and stuck on this course, having painted itself into a smaller and smaller corner in which to operate. Their only hope is that their confidence turns into your confidence, but credit and funding markets are impenetrable at this moment to such utter nonsense. For many places, it is already “look out below.”

According to Goldman's own calculations, the demand squeeze for the High Quality Collateral that is global "Developed Market" Treasurys is about to go through the roof mostly thanks to central banks which will - even in the Fed's temporary hiatus from the monetization scene - soak up an unprecedented amount of Treasury collateral from both the primary issuance and secondary private market in their scramble to push global equity prices to unseen bubble levels and achieve the kind of Keynes-vindicating, demand-pull inflation that Russia was delighted to enjoy in the past several weeks.
How much?  The answer: a lot, as in a whopping 20% collapse in supply, once the ECB joins the fray!

Having recently given us a two paragraph synopsis of all that is wrong with our financial market faith in fed officialdom, Jim Grant unleashes his critical wit and insight on CNBC to explain the Fed's new remit, as Bill Dudley recently explained, "the administration of American equity prices." The Fed will find it difficult ro raise rates - both technically (for reasons we have explained in detail previously) and "they will find many blocks in the way having to do with financial markets' reaction." Simply put, the Fed wants to raise rates but mostly it wants peace and quiet, which it does not have: "The Fed is America's central bank but it is the steward of the world's currency," and as Grant concludes, "it is raining currencies around the world... and the Fed must be coginizant of that."

Every year, David Collum writes a detailed "Year in Review" synopsis full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. This year's is no exception. "I have not seen a year in which so many risks - some truly existential - piled up so quickly. Each risk has its own, often unknown, probability of morphing into a destructive force. It feels like we’re in the final throes of a geopolitical Game of Tetris as financial and political authorities race to place the pieces correctly. But the acceleration is palpable. The proximate trigger for pain and ultimately a collapse can be small, as anyone who’s ever stepped barefoot on a Lego knows..."

A specter is haunting the world, the specter of two percent inflationism. Whether pronounced by the U.S. Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank, or from the Bank of Japan, many monetary central planners have declared their determination to impose a certain minimum of rising prices on their societies and economies. One of the oldest of economic fallacies continues to dominate and guide the thinking of monetary policy makers: that printing money is the magic elixir for the creating of sustainable prosperity. Once the inflationary monetary expansion ends or is slowed down, it is discovered that the artificially created supply and demand patterns and relative price and wage structure are inconsistent with non-inflationary market conditions. Governments and their monetary central planners, therefore, are the cause and not the solution to the instabilities and hardships of inflations and recessions.