Archive - Feb 2015 - Story

The last time US weather was this bad, annualized US GDP crashed from 2.3% to -2.9%.

Following the reported withdrawal of what Greece deemed as an acceptable draft document to move forward - replaced by an "absurd, unacceptable" draft by EU President Dijsselbloem - it appears the Germans are none too happy. A senior lawmaker from Angela Merkel's Christian Union bloc has demanded that following this 'rejection' of the Eurogroup's plan, all payments to Greece should be immediately stopped. The rift is clearly deepening on both sides...

We've heard the Eurogroup's side, now it is Greece's turn... Greek FinMin Varoufakis says Eurogroup talks were "collegial" but

*VAROUFAKIS: GREECE SEEKING 'SUSTAINABLE LONG-TERM CONTRACT', WANTS MORE THAN COSMETIC CHANGES TO RESCUE; ILLOGICAL TO ASK GREECE TO COMPLETE PLAN IT REJECTS, GREECE SHOULDN'T BE TREATED AS DEBT COLONY

And warns "ultimatums" never worked well in the Eurozone. Greece is "ready and willing to do whatever it takes," and "expects Eurogroup to drop its ultimatum."

In 1988, America was the best place to be born in the world. Based on The Economist Intelligence Unit's quality-of-life index - which links the results of subjective life-satisfaction surveys (how happy people say they are) to objective determinants of the quality of life across countries - USA was #1. Fast forward 25 years or so... and The United States now ranks 16th, just above South Korea and just below Taiwan and Belgium.

As anti-austerity protests continue to build in numbers across Europe (and not just in Spain where Podemos now holds a commanding poll lead over the status quo) KeepTalkingGreece reports that Greek parliamentary spokesman for Syriza, Nikos Filis notes "The wave of protests indicates a new beginning... And it scares the dominant forces in Europe. Because Syriza virus can spread and in their communities." And we suspect that is indeed the Eurogroup's greatest fear...

While so much has been made of the considerable decline in US rig counts as the driver behind the recent price bounce in oil, Goldman Sachs' Damien Courvalin pours cold water all over that narrative as he explains that the rig count decline is still not sufficient, in our view, to achieve the slowdown in US production growth required to balance the oil market. Worse yet, he concludes, with the producer hedging that has occurred over the past weeks and the recent wave of equity issuance, the risk that the US production slowdown will be delayed is high, meaning oil prices will need to remain lower in the coming quarters in order for the announced capex guidance and rig reduction to materialize into sufficiently lower production growth.

US equity market Sharpe- and Sortino-ratios shows results that are nothing short of staggering. What they really say = Plenty of Gain with Very Little Pain... and it really is unsustainable if only because it has become much too easy to generate positive returns with very little effort, pain or savvy. To be sure these distorting effects may be entirely assigned to The Fed... They’ve literally trounced and expectorated on the concept of "moral hazard" and, it seems, purposely reconfigured and redefined its meaning into: "We have no economic morals... the spoils go to the ignorant only... The Fed's true heroes."

The following chart courtesy of Citigroup, demonstrating the liquidity cliff, i.e., the impact of a liquidity bubble on price and risk, is so mindbogglingly simple, it is no wonder that virtually nobody gets it.

All the gimmicks lenders press on borrowers to maintain the artifice that the loan is being serviced are financial frauds. They are simply new frauds piled on the initial fraud of issuing a visibly imprudent loan. The borrower was not creditworthy and the lender should never have offered him loans of that magnitude and at that low interest rate. The losses belong to the lenders, period.

You know things are bad in the ship-building business when... amid considerably larger than expected losses, China's COSCO announced that it has dis-assembled 8 vessels in January alone (including 3 bulk carriers) and will be decommissioning and disposing of them as it awaits a "more conducive" environment. It appears that is not coming anytime soon, as The Baltic Dry Index just hit 522 - a new all-time low (down a stunning 53 of the last 55 days).

Contrary to popular opinion, it is not “demand” from the world’s population which creates the mind destroying drug trade. Rather, it is the world financial oligarchy, looking for massive profits and the destruction of the minds of the population it is determined to dominate, which organized the drug trade. The case of HSBC underscores that point. Serving as the central bank of this global apparatus, is HSBC.

With "common ground" appearing to be a long lost hope, Eurogroup members have been arriving in Brussels for the latest installment of the EU-Greece showdown. Notably, ECB President Mario Draghi is in attendance this time. With Germany staunchly anti-change and France appearing to soften their stance a little, the cracks are beginning to show as EU leaders - as they arrived - were anything but optimistic of a solution being reached anytime soon.

Moments ago, Interfax made it a trifecta when it reported that:

RUSSIA PUTS AIRBORNE TROOPS ON ALERT IN VOLGOGRAD REGION: IFX
ASSAULT LANDING UNIT OF AIRBORNE TROOPS ALERTED IN VOLGOGRAD REGION

As a reminder, Volgograd is about 150 miles east of Ukraine.