Archive - 2014 - Story

While Japanese imports are surging on the back of an ever-depreciating currency and ever-appreciating cost of energy, it would appear the enterprising Easterners have come up with a solution to two problems - exports and radiation. As RT reports, more than 130 "contaminated" used cars from Japan were denied access to Russia last year. The consumer watchdog agency Rospotrebnadzor is also closely monitoring deliveries of fish. It seems the world is also losing interest in one of Japan's other major exports - Blue-Fin Tuna (as prices have dropped 95% from last year!)

Since quantitative easing (QE) became the policy of the world's major central banks, capital is being herded into fewer and fewer asset classes. With such huge volumes of money at play, very crowded trades in assets like stocks and housing have resulted - bringing us back to familiar bubble territory in record time. The key for the individual, as Pretti emphasizes in this excellent interview, is risk management. The safety many investors believe they are buying in today's markets is not real... "this comes down to individual families making an assessment of how much risk they can afford to take. Below that line, they do not allow it to happen. It may sound trite but: You have every day of your life to get back into the market, but sometimes you do not have a second chance to get out."

"Hope" And "Change" And This Time It's Different...again...

As we enter 2014 mainstream economists relying on inaccurate statistics, many of which are not even relevant to a true understanding of our economic condition, seem convinced that the crises of recent years are now laid to rest. If we objectively assess the state of the labour markets in most welfare-driven economies the truth conforms to a continuing slump; and if we take a realistic view of price increases, including capital assets, price inflation may even be in double figures. The corruption of price inflation statistics in turn makes a mockery of GDP numbers, which realistically adjusted for price inflation are contracting. This gloomy conclusion should come as no surprise to thoughtful souls in any era. These conditions are the logical outcome of the corruption of currencies and the effect of unsound money... and two conclusions for 2014...

Treasury bears are at risk, is the ominous warning from BofAML's Technical Strategist MacNeil Curry, as bonds are on the verge of turning the near-term, and potentially medium-term, trend from bearish to bullish. USDJPY bulls should also take note as with the 3-month uptrend increasingly showing its age, a reversal in US rates could prove to be the catalyst for a USDJPY reversal lower.

It seems the adoption of major US-based vendors of the digital currency is trumping the Chinese clamp-down on Bitcoin as first Overstock and now Zynga confirm their adoption of the crypto-currency. For the first time since the PBOC issued its statement, Bloomberg reports Zynga is partnering with BitPay to test Bitcoin payments. As ConvergEx's Nick Colas notes, "Bitcoin has been remarkably resilient in the face of all the bad news out of China. The strength shows a continued interest, which is a very positive sign."

The efforts underway by the Service Employees International Union, and its political and media allies, to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 per hour would, if successful, cause major unemployment among low-skilled workers, who are the supposed beneficiaries of those efforts. No one can question the desirability of being able to earn $15 an hour rather than $7.25 an hour. Still more desirable would be the ability to earn $50 an hour instead of $15 an hour. However, it is necessary to know considerably more than this about economics before attempting to enact sweeping changes in economic policy...

Contrary to ongoing attempts by the administration to refocus the public's attention on such focal points as guns, an imminent external cybersecurity threat (until it was revealed that the biggest cyber terrorist is the NSA itself), and climate change, the three still remain, pardon the pan, at the cold end of the spectrum when it comes to what issues most concern the US public. On the other end, for one decade and counting, the "top priority" for the US public was and continues to be "the economy", stupid.

“In the past few years, we seem to have embarked on a new paradigm in which our control engineer central bankers have decided that the value of assets must no longer be driven by a price that would be reached today, but instead by whatever best price a given asset may have reached in the past. This is a revolutionary change... In all likelihood, this manipulation will fail as every attempt at price manipulation since Diocletian’s Edict on Maximum Prices in the 3rd century. The only outstanding question is one of timing". - Louis-Vincent Gave.

It's cold out there. Cold enough that JFK's runways are so frozen, airplanes literally are skidding off runways, which is what happened seconds ago to a Delta airplane landing at JFK.The result: JFK is now closed until further notice.  But that's just New York: elsewhere America is gripped in a cold spell which may beat all records, as 140 million Americans are expected to see subzero temperatures in the coming days, including the deep south. As CNN reports, "The deep freeze gripping much of the country is about to send temperatures plummeting to unbelievable lows. Parts of the Midwest and Great Plains will plunge as low as 30 degrees below zero on Sunday. That's where the Green Bay Packers will host the San Francisco 49ers in what could be the coldest football game in NFL history. By Wednesday, nearly half the nation -- 140 million people -- will shudder in temperatures of zero or lower, forecasters said. Even the Deep South will endure single-digit or sub-zero temperatures."

The resilience that has long been one of America's remarkable traits was on display in 2013. Not only did businesses create 2 million jobs, but the struggling economy actually grew and profits and stock prices soared to near-record levels. Still, five years into the Obama presidency, the economy is grossly underperforming. Contrary to the dominant media narrative, it's not bad luck or the financial crisis to blame, but bad policies — from the $860 billion "stimulus" that didn't stimulate to the Dodd-Frank financial reform that killed lending. Last year was a challenging one for entrepreneurs and other productive Americans. No fewer than 13 new taxes were put into place. Big government now consumes one of every four dollars of our GDP and is getting bigger. Entering 2014, we face problems, including taxes and spending, that neither the White House nor Congress is addressing. In the following charts, we look at a few of the more alarming and intractable ones.

With Bernanke's term due to expire in January, Jim Rogers warns Mineweb that the Fed-head will be remembered as "the guy who set the stage for the demise of the Central Bank in America. We've had three central banks in America. The first two disappeared. This one's going to disappear too in the next decade." With precious metals, bonds, and stock markets obsessing over Fed actions, Rogers says, in the next 10 years or so, "People will realise that these guys have led us down a terrible path," and collapse is "not a possibility," he adds, "it's a probability."

For a man who spent his entire career, over half a century, generating ~2% inflation leading to the great middle-class wealth transfer known as the "great moderation", and of course the great financial crisis, personally experiencing 40% deflation in under three months must be the supremest of ironies. Oh wait, 40% two weeks ago. Make that 50% deflation as of today... or as the Princeton economics department would say, an annualized deflation rate of #Ref!

While the last two days of relative excitement in the precious metals are noteworthy in their bucking-the-trend of recent months, there is perhaps a much more critical 'trend' that may finally allow the demand for physical gold to peer through the veneer of synthetic paper pricing. As JPMorgan notes, speculative positions (defined CFTC net longs minus shorts) have dropped to record lows in the last few weeks. With ETF gold holdings back below 'Lehman' levels and gold coin sales elevated, perhaps the Indian government's (and most of the Western world's Feds) hope for the death of the precious metals market is greatly exaggerated...

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