Archive - Jan 2015 - Story

Remember when S&P forgot for a second that it lives in a world of pretend free speech, and where telling the truth would promptly result in a lawsuit by the US government after it downgraded the US from AAA to AA+ in the summer of 2011? A downgrade which as Bloomberg previously reported led to this exchange with then Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: "S&P’s conduct would be looked at very carefully," Geithner told McGraw according to the filing. "Such behavior would not occur, he said, without a response from the government." Well, S&P will never make the same mistake again, because according to Reuters, it will cost it $1.5 billion to settle with the government and put the whole "downgrade" episode in the past.

Extended-term loans are "stupid not just for us, but for the industry," exclaimed Honda's US sales chief John Mendel, adding that competitors are doing "stupid thing" to boost auto sales. With delinquency rates surging, it appears he is right to worry, as Bloomberg reports, more than one in four new-car loans in October and November had terms of 73 to 84 months long (more than double that of the previous 08 peak). Honda has said it will avoid longer-term loans even if competitors do note as one economist ranted, "we've seen this movie before, we know how it ends, and it’s not pretty."

“Quite frankly, a lot of us thought that by buying politicians, rewriting tax laws, and hiding money overseas, we were getting it done,” said Dorrinson, who owns the hedge fund Garrote Capital. “If, at the end of the day, all we control is a measly half of the world’s wealth, clearly we need to do more - much more.”

Exporting crude oil and natural gas from the United States are among the dumbest energy ideas of all time. Exporting gas is dumb. Exporting oil is dumber.

Having saved the world markets from a 10% correction fate worse than death (or recession) in October with 'hints' of reigniting QE4, The Fed's Jim Bullard is back to his jawboning best. Blaming The ECB's looming unconventional policy move for the global bond market rally (as opposed to collapsing growth and disinflation), Bullard proclaims the domestic US economy is doing well with tailwinds from low rates and oil prices (just don't tell the 7,000 Baker Hughes workers this morning) and tells WSJ's Jon Hilsenrath that he wants to “get going” with rate increases warning that the funds rate is 400bps below normal.

Whether you agree or disagree with our points below, or the President's "wealth redistribution agenda" in tonight's SOTU address, is of little matter. With both houses of Congress controlled by conservatives, the likelihood of any of these proposals actually passing into law nears "zero." This will leave the President with his nuclear option of "excutive orders" to move his agenda down the field, but even that is likely to be viciously contested in the months ahead.

After reportedly rejecting Vladimir Putin's peace proposal and continuing heavy shelling in the pro-Russian-held regions of Donetsk, Ukraine's military spokesman Lysenko is reporting the Russian army is directly attacking Ukraine forces in the north conflict zone. The fight over what is now a destroyed Donetsk airport continues with Lysenko claiming to have stalled Russian forces adding that three Russian battallions are approaching the Ukraine border. CNN reports that the Russian Defense Ministry says, "Ukraine's allegations that Russian troops are in Ukraine are complete rubbish."

Even more disturbing than China's growth forecast, is what the IMF sees global growth doing, which nobody will be shocked to learn, has once again been drastically slashed lower. Why is this disturbing? Because as the world is slowly learning, it is all about trade, and central banks can't print trade.

Total Gold ETF physical holdings rose 0.85% on Friday (following Thursday's 0.78% rise) combining for the biggest 2-day rise since Nov 2011 (adding 843,000 ounces of gold in 2 days). Of course these moves came right after the SNB decision ands are the largest since the peg was announced in 2011. GLD - the largest gold ETF - saw holdings surge 1.9% on Friday, the biggest single-day surge in almost 5 years. Of course, once again this shows that only paper gold matters for price determination... physical is irrelevant (until of course, physical is all that matters).

It seems like an eternity ago when Obama delivered the following extensively choreographed "Statement by the President on ISIL", in which he praised US anti-terrorist tactics, giving Yemen and its "partners" as an example of "successful" US foreign intervention.  To wit: "This counterterrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground.  This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years." He may want to scrub that statement because just 4 months after reading that from the Teleprompter, America's "partners on the Yemen front lines" have officially fled quietly into that good night, abandoning the control of the nation to local Shiite militiamen.

Breaking the stranglehold of vested interests is the essential step to rebuilding an economy that isn't totally dependent on manipulated money and statistics.

Having noted that voter angst has been riled, propagandized, and fear-mongered to the point at which the most pressing priority for Congress is to 'fix' terrorism, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that we discover - deep down in the archives - that giving the public someone to 'hate' as opposed to something may have been an entire fiction. As The New York Times exposed in 2007, Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi, the titular head of the Islamic State, according to Brigadier General Kevin Bergner - the chief American military spokesman at the time - never existed (and was actually a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor named Abu Adullah al-Naima). So he was a ghost back then.... is he a ghost again, designed purely to put a face on ISIS and the biggest bogeyman of the current global anti-terrorist mania?

What is it about central bankers who wait to tell the truth only after they have quit their post. First it was the maestro himself, the Fed's Alan Greenspan (most recently in "Greenspan's Stunning Admission: "Gold Is Currency; No Fiat Currency, Including the Dollar, Can Match It"), and now it is the Bank of England's former head, Mervyn King, who yesterday told an audience at the LSE that "more monetary stimulus will not help the world economy return to strong growth." That this is happening just as we learn that in one year the world's 1% will collectively own more wealth than the rest of the world combined, and two days before Goldman's Mario Draghi unleashed up to €1 trillion (if not unlimited) in QE, is hardly as surprise, and will be surely ignored by everyone until the inevitable outcome of another "French revolution" finally arrives.

NAHB Sentiment in January printed 57 (missing expectations of 58) down 1 from last month's upwardly revised 58 print. This headline mediocrity, however, hides a relative plunge in future sales expectations which tumbled to their lowest since June. Only the Midwest region saw improvement with the West region plunging 9 points to 66.