Archive - May 2015 - Story

There's trouble brewing in The South China Sea, where Beijing has been using "scores of dredgers" to turn reefs into islands in the Spratly archipelago. Reports that Washington is looking into options for countering China's island-building project, have set up a contentious scenario that culminated in Beijing advising the US to "refrain from provocative action" in the area. Now, China is telling US surveillance planes to "Go now!"

"Europe faces the risk of a second revolt by Left-wing forces in the South after Portugal’s Socialist Party vowed to defy austerity demands from the country’s creditors and block any further sackings of public officials", The Telegraph reports. In sum, the reason why concessions (any concessions) to the Greeks are a non-starter in Athens' negotiations with creditors is that the IMF, the European Commission, and most especially Germany, want to send a clear message to any other 'leftist radicals' who may be thinking about using the "one move and the idea of EMU indissolubility gets it" routine as a way to negotiate for breathing room on austerity pledges, will get exactly nowhere and will have a very unpleasant time on the way.

“You can’t stop an idea whose time has come.”

According to The China People's Daily, Indonesia has just sank a large Chinese vessel and 40 other foreign ships caught fishing in The South China Sea. AP confirms that Indonesian authorities blew up and sank the 41 vessels... which seems like something that might just lead to some serious escalation if true...

JPMorgan expects U.K. won’t delay the promised in out referendum on EU membership until 2017 but will put the issue to vote in late 2016 instead. Given the ruling Conservatives have only a small majority, any legislation could fail if euro skeptics within the party vote against it, suggesting the party leadership will want to get the issue resolved sooner rather than later. The prospect of a vote could weigh on the economy, again arguing for an earlier vote, so here are the pros and cons of Brexit simplified...

Distract, deny, democracy...

We do not have to choose between liberty and security. We can have both, and we can provide it for ourselves as our own protectors. Sheepdogs be damned. Each citizen is his first and best line of defense. Only when the American people take on the philosophy of self-defense rather than government reliance will we be free of fear from terrorism and free of fear from tyrannical government. This is the answer to the propaganda of militarization. ISIS does not matter. It is what we ultimately do about ISIS or similar threats that matters, and martial law is not the answer.

Chinese Manufacturing PMI missed expectations, printing a contractrionary 49.1 (against 49.3 expectatons) for the 3rd month in a row. While this was a small pick up from last month's 48.9 print, it hardly signals 'success' for the various easing efforts unleashed upon an all-knowing investing public. After yesterday's weakness in Chinese stocks, one would think a disappointing PMI was just the ticket to send investors wild with buying in anticipation of more easing, but now, Chinese stocks have erased early modest gains and are fading back...

The problems we’re grappling with have been building for more than 40 years. They’re not going to go away overnight, and they certainly will not be resolved by a report that instructs the police to simply adopt different tactics to accomplish the same results - i.e., maintain the government’s power, control and wealth at all costs. This is the sad reality of life in the American police state.

Now here's a story about something that will never happen in the United States.

In exactly a month, Ukraine will owe Russia a $75 million debt coupon payment. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told reporters in Moscow today that "if they miss the payment, we will use our right to go to court." Then it got serious, as Vladimir Putin instructed Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to assume control of Ukraine's repayment of its $3-billion debt in Eurobonds that Russia bought in 2013, slamming Ukraine's bill allowing them to impose a moratorium on foreign debt repayments as a de facto announcement of default. As one market participant warned, "I would wait until after June 20 to go forward with" any moratorium, as "if Russia takes Ukraine to court, that might be an incentive for other creditors to go down the same route."

The uncertainty surrounding the inevitability, if not the exact timing, of multiple and possibly overlapping volatility drivers is itself a source of volatility. For the average person, these signs can be scary. Taking steps to avoid the circus as much as possible, such as extracting money from the markets, securing personal assets, and waiting out the swings, can be a source of emotional comfort and future financial stability.

Despite Bernanke's previous protestations that "gold is not money... it is tradition," in an effort to mobilise 20,000 tonnes of unproductive gold owned by Indian households into cash, Reuters reports that - after unveiling the gold monetisation scheme on Feb 28th, India's FinMin Arun Jaitley released bank guidelines overnight on interest rates, reserve and liquidity ratios. The scheme "allows gold to become a dynamic, fungible asset in the hands of gold savers," offering incentives (interest payable in gold) to convince households, who sometimes have little faith in financial institutions, to break the tradition and hand over gold passed down the generations.

Since 1979, hourly pay for the vast majority of American workers has not only lagged behind growth at the very top of the distribution and thus behind average wage growth, but has also diverged from economy-wide productivity, as shown in Figure M. This divergence is at the root of numerous American economic challenges

The consequences of economic stagnation are not limited to finance: stagnation is causing a social depression.