Archive - Feb 2015 - Story

If it’s not one geopolitical concern these days it’s invariably another. The number of world conflicts to total world events is at its highest level in seven years and the number of protests to total world events has spiked of late after falling precipitously since the good old days of the Arab Spring and 7% periphery 10-year yields.

With the weight of Tom Brokaw on his shoulders (and neck), NBC's Brian Williams has written a note to NBC Staff...

This won't end well...

Hope has changed...

“We like the money,” said Raymond Baker, the president of Global Financial Integrity, a Washington nonprofit that tracks the illicit flow of money. “It’s that simple. We like the money that comes into our accounts, and we are not nearly as judgmental about it as we should be”... Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on his weekly radio program in 2013, shortly before leaving office: “If we could get every billionaire around the world to move here, it would be a godsend.”

The phony 5.7% domestic unemployment rate reported yesterday has nothing to do with full employment. The relevant number in the report is that there are still 101 million working age Americans who do not have jobs, and only 45 million of them are on OASI retirement benefits. And that says nothing about the tens of millions of job holders who are employed far less than a full 40 hour work week. In short, there is a surfeit of available labor at home and abroad, meaning 3-4% wage gains are not coming down the pike any time soon or ever. So if that’s what the Fed is waiting for - then the so-called “lift-off” may not be coming even this year. And in any event, the trivial 25 bps increases in the funds rate that may eventually come have nothing to do with interest rate “normalization” or the return of honest price discovery in the casino. And that suits the needs of the Wall Street gamblers just fine.

Just as the existing 'truce' in Ukraine has been made a total farce as 1000s of military and civilians have been killed, so any 'hope' that this weekend's "peace efforts" will result in anything but more talk is rapidly diminishing... Germany's Merkel exclaimed honestly that it's "uncertain whether this will be successful," seemingly resigned to the fact as she added, "but it's at least worth making an attempt." French President Hollande admitted that Ukraine's eastern regions likely need "strong autonomy." Ukraine's Poroshenko blustered that he "trusts" Merkel, that the economy is collapsing (more money please), that the country does not need peacekeepers and a lack of arms is fueling conflict (so send us weapons) while pushing for a Russian withdrawal and quick cease-fire.  Finally Vladimir Putin blasted that Russia is unwilling to tolerate a post-Cold War global system dominated by one absolute leader, to which US VP Joe Biden remarked simply "get out of Ukraine." But apart from that, talks are going great...

The current controversy enveloping the news anchor for NBC Brian Williams is both growing in furor as well as out right shock. As many of you have probably heard he has come under direct fire that is quite real as opposed to the fictional accounts he’s been extolling about a helicopter incident he had in Iraq a few years ago. The main stream media (especially that of television) is currently in the death throes of any semblance of credibility, let alone believability. As more and more incidents resembling the likes of these continue, the quicker as well as scope of their ratings failures will persist. For this is no longer a symptom – it’s now a full-blown metastasized cancer plaguing the main stream media as a whole.

Amid all the bluster, propaganda, and pressure from 'Europe-ex-Greece' towards Greece, we thought the words of Luis de Guindos (of course before he became the status-quo-fulfilling Finance Minister of Spain) were particularly enlightening given Greece's 'demands' and Europe's rebuttal...

Greece’s problem can only be truly solved if large scale debt restructuring is accepted and executed. But that would initiate a chain of events that would bring down the bloated zombie that is Wall Street. And it just so happens that this zombie rules the planet. We are all addicted to the zombie. It allows us to fool ourselves into thinking we are doing well – well, sort of -, but the longer term implications of that behavior will be devastating. We’re all going to be Greece, that’s inevitable. It’s not some maybe thing. The only thing that keeps us from realizing that is that the big media outlets have become part of the same industry that Wall Street, and the governments it controls, have full control over. And that in turn says something about the importance of what Yanis Varoufakis and Syriza are trying to accomplish. They’re taking the battle to the finance empire. And it should not be a lonely fight. Because if the international Wall Street banks succeed in Greece, some theater eerily uncomfortably near you will be next. That is cast in stone.

Even as the whispers that the imposition of capital controls by Greece, which is now running out of both time, negotiating leverage and tax money is just a matter of time, get louder with every passing day if not acknowledged by Greek officials yet, it was none other than one of the supposedly most "rock-solid" central banks in the world that fired a shot across the bow of global financial stability when it hinted that not Greece but another country may be the first to engage in capital controls. The country: Switzerland.

Update: And now this: "Moody's places Greece's Caa1 government bond rating on review for downgrade"

Europe has an unpleasant habit of dropping tape bombs at the most inopportune of times, like at 3pm or later a Friday. And while on Wednesday it was the ECB yanking repoable Greek collateral for local banks, today it was first S&P, which downgraded Greece 5 months after upgrading it, and moments ago it was none other than the Cyprus bail-in man himself, the Eurogroup's Dijsselbloem  who just have Greece a 10 day ultimatum to fall into place or risk a terminal bank run and capital controls (both hinted at earlier by the post-DOJ settlement political "rating agency')

• GREECE MUST APPLY FOR BAILOUT EXTENSION ON FEB 16 AT THE LATEST TO KEEP EURO ZONE FINANCIAL BACKING -EUROGROUP CHAIRMAN DIJSSELBLOEM

This means that Greece now has 10 days, or until the Monday after next to decide whether it will stay in the Eurozone or Grexit.

What neither the Saudis, nor the US shale companies, and certainly not their investors, who lately seem to get their investment advice from the Cartoon Network, know is even if every last US shale company is Friendo'ed, there is an even more insidious group of drillers and oil extractors waiting behind them, backed by an even greater monetary bubble and an even more clueless group of sources of cash, just waiting to step in and become the next marginal oil producer.

China.

At the end of the day, the issue here is one of freedom, and freedom is the freedom to choose – even if we make a bad choice. The argument that I must vaccinate my children for the good of the community is not only scientifically questionable, it is an unethical precept. It is the argument all dictators and totalitarians have used. “Comrade, you must work tirelessly for the good of the collective. You must give up your money and property for the good of the collective, and now … you must allow us to inject your children with what we deem is good for the collective.” If American’s don’t stand up against this, then we are lost. Because we have lost ownership of ourselves. Our bodies are no longer solely ours – we and our children are able to be commandeered for the “greater good.”

"A clueless political personnel, in denial of the systemic nature of the crisis, is pursuing policies akin to carpet-bombing the economy of proud European nations in order to save them."