Archive - Mar 2015 - Story

As Goldman notes, the driver behind the recent modest rise in real weekly earnings: lowflation - is the wrong recipe for wage growth...

The credit-based dollar brought about a new economy. It changed the way people thought and the way their government operated. Now, deep pools of money determine which candidates are presented to voters. And there is a new branch of government: the “Deep State.” It is not mentioned in the Constitution. And it operates above and beyond the visible process of democratic government.

Despite what may look to be "cheap" valuations, JPM calls the EM contrarian approach “tactically challenging” thanks to leverage, a difficult environment for economic growth and Janet Yellen. "Each of these is a problem, in our view. In combination, they could be a serious problem," the bank notes.

If you ever doubted that bad news is good news... have faith!

"We made an error in our original estimate of the GDP tracking implications of the February PCE report. We have now reduced our Q1 GDP tracking estimate to +0.8%. We regret the mistake."

In all the annals of investing, few seemingly innocuous phrases incorporate as much by way of grave implication as those four words, “a shift to banknotes”. 2008 was bad. With central bank policy now at the outer reaches of the possible and even of the theoretical, the outlook is certainly uncertain. Not wishing to participate in the terminal stages of a momentum-driven bubble is not bearish so much as simply sane.

Because nothing screams un-broken and un-rigged market like a completely unjustified $1+ spike in the world's most important commodity as it nears the NYMEX close, just because at the very same instant every algo decided to frontrun every other algo. 

Nestling idyllically between France and Spain in the foothills of the Pyrenees, Andorra - which has enjoyed the benefits of European borders without the restrictions of EU membership - has seen its risk "increase beyond our expectations," according to S&P. As a reminder, when Cyprus was "templated" and depositors awoke with a 47% haircut, its total financial assets to GDP was around 8x, Andorra is now at a stunning 17x. As The Telegrpah explains, in the last three weeks, the state has been gripped by a banking crisis that threatens to take it to the brink; and Andorra, which is not a member of the eurozone but uses the single currency on an informal basis, would have no way of bailing them out (with no central bank or lender of last resort). In short, the country faces a catastrophe if its banks fall apart.

“Everybody knows that the Americans are dropping supplies to Daesh,” said Brig. Gen. Abed al-Maliki, a senior Iraqi army commander based in the city of Samarra, about 80 miles north of Baghdad, using another term for the Islamic State. “It’s just a show,” he said, sitting in the city’s army command headquarters. “If the Americans want to finish something, they will finish it. If they wanted to liberate Iraq, they could.”

Presented with no comment...

"Will The Fed Allow Irrational Exuberance, Season 2?"

We have no clue, nor do we want to know, what is going on in the following picture of Lynn Tilton.

People in the United States feel under threat, both from beyond our borders and within them and as Reuters reports, when asked about both U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, it was a pretty darn close call. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds a third of Republicans believe President Barack Obama poses an imminent threat to the United States, outranking concerns about Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Meanwhile, the world is certainly worried about America with about one quarter (of respondents from 65 countries) naming the United States as the greatest threat to world peace.