Archive - Oct 11, 2015 - Story

According to the WSJ, the Pentagon is offering "condolence payments" to the civilians injured and the families of those killed by a U.S. airstrike that destroyed a hospital near Kunduz, Afghanistan. Because, the thinking probably goes, human lives are like any other commodity and can be measured in reserve notes. However, what is more disturbing is that since the US prints the world's reserve currency, should Obama proceed to exterminate countless other "collaterally damaged" civilians, all that the US will need to do is print a few more million to wash its - and that of the "free and democratic world" - conscience, and all shall be well in all future cases.

The sprawling Trans-Pacific Partnership deal would affect a variety of issues, including tariffs, labor rights, and international investment. But the deal's most controversial provisions are the ones limiting competition in the pharmaceutical industry. According to Doctors Without Borders, "The TPP will still go down in history as the worst trade agreement for access to medicines in developing countries."

With the benefit of hindsight, the two-day devaluation of the yuan in mid-August might have been a masterstroke of strategy. China executed a financial move that appeared to undermine its own position but instead created trouble for the US; how much is still to be played out. So was the devaluation a well-executed move against the dollar, or are the Chinese authorities as clueless as any other government?

The Fed needs to extricate itself from manipulating the financial markets. It needs to end backstopping market liquidity. It must never again print Trillions of new “money” out of thin air. Because so long as the marketplace perceives that the markets are "too big to fail", there will be speculative excess, major securities markets mispricings and Bubble fragilities. No one – average investor or sophisticated financial operator – has a clue as to the degree Fed policies have distorted asset prices.

"...declining velocity of money requires an ever rising level of monetary stimulus, which further depresses velocity of money, and requiring even further QEs. Also as countries compete in a diminishing pool by discounting currencies, global demand compresses, as current account surpluses in these countries rise not because of exports growing faster than imports but because imports decline faster than exports. This implies less demand for the global economy."

"Europe has seen nothing like this for 70 years – the visible expression of a world where order is collapsing. The millions of refugees fleeing from ceaseless Middle Eastern war and barbarism are voting with their feet, despairing of their futures. The catalyst for their despair – the shredding of state structures and grip of Islamic fundamentalism on young Muslim minds – shows no sign of disappearing. Yet there is a parallel collapse in the economic order that is less conspicuous: the hundreds of billions of dollars fleeing emerging economies, from Brazil to China, don’t come with images of women and children on capsizing boats."