Archive - Nov 2015 - Story

FAA SAYS FLIGHTS BARRED FROM LANDING AT SAN DIEGO ON SHOOTER:AP

Ripped from the scenes of the latest Bond movie, former Walmart CEO Bill Simon, piloting a small plane over Fayetteville, was forced to pop the aircraft's emergency parachute, to slow its landing, as a severe loss of oil pressure sent the plane plunging. No one was severely injured, but as the following clip shows, while things could have been a lot worse, the parachute-slowed plane still took a beating upon 'landing'.

With helicopters hovering overhead, and surrounded by an army of security forces,  this is how America transports its nuclear weapons. However, as this onlooker captures, amid police harrassment for filming, it appears one of the military trucks was just a little too close and rear-ends a truck carrying a nuclear missile.

"Equities are in denial. Stock buybacks at all time highs and discounting future earnings at zero rates is an odd long- term strategy at this point. If the Fed gets what it seems to want in December, markets will look back on this and wonder what they were thinking."

There's a long way to go for the Saudis and the UAE to get back into the black and indeed, even Qatar is now set to post red ink...

The production structure has long since adapted to ZIRP and “short-term gambling, punting on momentum-driven moves, on levered buybacks” are further lifting the opportunity costs of abandoning it. In order to try to rescue its credibility, the Fed may decide to try some timid, quarter-point increases. But what will they do if markets really crash?

It is not just shorts buying and insiders selling. One other, quite persistent force has reemerged and contrary to the speculation that corporations are currently in an stock repurchase blackout period, the reality is anything but.

"As more information has come to light, we have become concerned that the plane may well have been brought down by an explosive device."

When Saudi Arabia moved to Plaxico themselves last November by killing the petrodollar in an effort to bankrupt the US shale space and tighten the screws on Moscow, Riyadh set in motion a series of events that culminted in a 20% fiscal deficit and, most recently, an S&P downgrade. Now, the kingdom is not only running out of money, but water and food as well.

The Illinois cop, whose death sparked a massive manhunt in September, fatally shot himself in a "carefully staged suicide" after committing "extensive criminal acts," police said Wednesday according to NBC News. Initially hailed as a hero after his death, Fox Lake, Illinois, police Lt. Joe Gliniewicz is now likely to be remembered by another label: a betrayer. As the local police commander told CNN, the officer placed his equipment at the scene in an "attempt to mislead first responders and investigators to believe this was a homicide," and far from being a hero, Gliniewicz "committed the ultimate betrayal" with his actions over the past several years which included stealing and laundering money from a program that mentored young people.

Following today's mauiling of the short end, few were expecting a strong 2 Year auction. They did not get it. As widely expected, the yield of 0.824% jumped from 0.699% a month ago to a level seen in April of 2010. The good news: it wasn't as bad as it could have been: the When Issued was trading at 0.825% at 1pm. The Bid to Cover was ugly too, because at 3.013 this was the lowest implied demand for 2Y paper since May of 2010.

"Absent the central banks, we would be in the later stages of a credit cycle," warns Principal Global Investors's David Blake as 2015 has now seen the most corporate debt downgrades since 2009 and the upgrade-downgrade ratio crashes to financial crisis lows. A lot of people are recognising we are closer to the end of the credit cycle than the beginning, and while stocks have bounced back dramatically as Dana Lyons' details, junk bonds have not; a combination normally associated with more extensive bear markets and recessions. As BofAML analysts warned "the slow moving train wreck seems to be accelerating."

Welcome to the most bifurcated US jobs market ever... According to ISM, employment is best since 2005 for the Services 'economy' and the worst since 2009 for the Manufacturing 'economy'. The last two times the labor market was so divergent... did not end well.