Archive - Nov 2015 - Story

The EU expects 3 million refugees in 2016. This year, there will be ‘only’ 1 million. Of which resettlement deals have been made for 160,000, and at last count 116 have actually been resettled. The 1 million refugees in 2015 have already strained resources, international relationships and indeed entire governments to such an extent, wars could start just because of that. Add another 3 million, and the chances of a peaceful 2016 in Europe grow terribly slim.. The fact is that Europe risks being strained to the point of military conflict.

It has not been a good year for former Bear trader "right person at the right time" with his subprime short, John Paulson who after getting slammed on Valeant, if not quite as badly as Ackman, moments ago saw a quarter of his investment in Mallinckrodt - where he is a top3 holder - wiped out, when Citron tweeted that "MNK has significantly more downside than Valeant" and is a far worse offender of the reimbursement system.

Having dramatically converged to the tumbling price of WTI Crude, Trannies are jumping dramatically after Bloomberg runs the following flashing-red headline: *CANADIAN PACIFIC SAID TO EXPLORE TAKEOVER OF NORFOLK SOUTHERN. Amid crashing railcar loadings (down over 23% YoY - worst since the financial crisis), this 'syngery' may make some sense but will likely only mean moar layoffs as "two wrongs do not make a right."

"Historically, the statistical or mathematical properties of the financial markets have shifted as the economic recovery nears full employment (i.e., at about the 5% unemployment rate the contemporary recovery has reached). Traditionally, at this point in the recovery, the stock market suffers more frequent declines, bond yields rise more often, average annualized returns from both asset classes are lower, diversification benefits tend to diminish, and recession risk is enhanced."

Moments ago in what we initially thought was a joke, abc9 reported that close to two dozen train cars derailed after a crash Monday morning. Lt. Brett Grimshaw of the Des Moines County Sheriff’s Office said the crash happened a little after 8 a.m. when a coal train hit a road grader that had been backed up onto the tracks. And before you ask, yes, this train, too, belongs to BNSF, which in turn belongs to Warren Buffett,

Having noted the plunge in consumer spending expectations to record lows last month, The Fed faces an even bigger problem this month. Despite the apparent wage growth in Friday's magical BLS data, The New York Fed admits "public expectations of future income took a big hit," as the index suffered its biggest one-month decline on record. But the news gets even worse, as 3-year-ahead inflation expectations plunged to record lows (confirming the record low inflation expectations from UMich's) and entirely discounting Stan Fischer's inflation excuses last week. Fianlly, as stocks have stagnated this year as wealth creator for The Fed, consumer expectations of housing price gains have tumbled to series lows. It appears a desperate-to-hike-rates fed is cornered by, as UMIch previously noted, "a disinflationary mindset is taking hold."

In short: end demand far weaker, saved by Primary Dealers, as suddenly foreign central banks are far less interested in US paper just at a time when yields are rising and purchases of said paper that much more attractive.

Repeated dosages of quantitative easing to kick-start economic recovery have proved totally ineffective everywhere. Yet central bankers are talking about doing it again – in larger amounts. The obsession with spending rather than saving has led governments everywhere to suppress interest rates to near zero. Under this destructive economic model governments are the worst offenders. In their craze to spend cheap money they allocate resources blindly into projects of dubious viability, for which there was no public demand in the first place. Result: huge taxpayer-borne losses.

An "independent" commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency has found that Russia engaged in state-sponsored doping and more importantly, recommended that Russia’s track and field athletes be suspended from Olympic competition in 2016.  The "Independent" commission was led by  Canadian Dick Pound. Joining him on the commission was Richard McLaren, another Canadian lawyer and a long-standing member of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, as well as Günter Younger, head of department of cybercrime with Bavarian Landeskriminalamt. So two Canadians and a German made up an "independent" commission that now wants to bar Russia from the marquee event of the upcoming olympics.

It appears that hawkishness and rate-hikes are once again not-so-bullish for stocks... either that or the algos read the details of the jobs report and realized just how ugly it all is under the surface...

Automation is upending the global order by eliminating human labor on an unprecedented scale - and the status quo has no reality-based solution to this wholesale loss of jobs. The idea that taxing the owners of robots and software will fund guaranteed incomes for all is not anchored in reality.

Rajoy's warning: “Catalonia isn’t separating from anywhere."

If the US economy were actually in economic recovery, would half of the 25-year-old population be living with parents? The real job situation is so poor that young people are unable to form households.