Archive - Apr 2015 - Story

Instead of merely plugging the hole left from declining liabilities (deposits), what the ECB's ELA funding appears to also be doing is compensating for a rapid write down in bank assets (loans) as well, in the form of charged off Non-Performing Loans. According to Reuters, one of the leading Greek financial institutions, Piraeus Bank will write off credit cards and retail loans up to 20,000 euros ($21,484) for Greeks who qualify for help under a law the leftist government passed to provide relief to poverty-stricken borrowers, it said on Thursday.

"...choosing to raise your children to be independent thinkers who don’t automatically want to control others by force, can sometimes lead to tension with family and friends, especially older ones. I find most of them to be just innocent victims who happily reside within the matrix, merely repeating thoughts they were subliminally conditioned to believe."

"Companies that obsessively buy back their shares could be making a big mistake," Moody's head of head of leveraged finance tells CNBC, echoing what we have said on too many occasions to count. With IG supply at all-time highs and with companies pouring the money into share repurchases instead of investing in future productivity and growth, we say yet again that the theatre of financial engineering will continue only until it can no longer continue.

No matter what other problems may or may not be linked to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the disposal of wastewater from oil and gas drilling almost certainly is primarily responsible for the recent spate of earthquakes in Oklahoma, normally a seismologically quiet state. That’s the conclusion of a report issued April 21 by the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS). What’s important about Andrews’ and Holland’s conclusion is that they represent the state of Oklahoma, where energy is an important industry, providing about one-quarter of the state’s jobs.

“It’s absolutely possible we’ll see some draconian measures from the regulators,” a UBS strategist tells Bloomberg, referring to steps Beijing may have to take to curb China's equity mania. Meanwhile, in a new note, the bank says that "the challenge with almost all retail-driven liquidity rallies (like this one) is that they generally don't abide by the more fundamental rules we follow." It's all liquidity and "animal spirits" in China folks — look out below.

At HSBC — whose Swiss arm is the international gold standard for money laundering — Mexican drug cartels and terrorists were once welcomed, but porn site operators will apparently have to take their business elsewhere.  

When we deny reality and engage in irrational wishful thinking, we are engaging in something called 'hopium': "The irrational belief that, despite all evidence to the contrary, things will turn out for the best." Right now that propaganda matrix is assuring the American people that everything is going to be just fine. Well, they better be right.  Because if not, they are going to have millions of people extremely angry with them when things really start falling to pieces.

Entrepreneurs around the world are "drowning in this nothingness reality," and Saxobank CIO Steen Jakobsen sees a crisis correction as the only outcome of a zero environment in his opinion. "We have zero growth, zero inflation and zero hope," he explains based on his recent global travels meeting business leaders and key investors whose shared negative outlook was striking. The following brief clip concludes ominously, with Jakobsen noting that he "believes a Fed hike will act as a margin call on the global economy."

The CME contacted Sarao about his trades after concluding he appeared to be significantly swaying opening prices.  Sarao explained some of his conduct to the CME in a March 2010 e-mail as “just showing a friend of mine what occurs on the bid side of the market almost 24 hours a day, by the high-frequency geeks.” And the reason why nobody touched Sarao until just days before the 5 years statute of limitations following the Flash Crash had run out, is the following: "He then questioned whether CME’s actions regarding his activity meant “the mass manipulation of high frequency nerds is going to end."

The answer was no.

The next time some financial pundit tells you to buy stocks, show them this chart. It’s an incredibly interesting take on not only how expensive stocks are right now, but also how the monetary system has left the average guy behind.

It appears as though Hillary Clinton may be witnessing her “Geithner moment,” because as Reuters reports, several Clinton family charities will now refile a half decade worth of returns after failing to report “tens of millions” in contributions from foreign governments.

... or the similarities...

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again: In a situation with the police, it's not immediately about who is right or wrong, it's about staying alive,” a former Alabama state trooper says, in an open letter to African Americans across the country.