Archive - May 2015 - Story

It appears The US Ministry of Truth has been hard at work this week...

A quick look at the list below reveals why economists are praying, for consumers' sake, that oil and gas prices stay low and remain "unambiguously good" for all those who rushed to buy gas guzzling trucks and SUVs. Because if the plunge in oil and gas prices failed to spur a spending spree in the US in the first quarter, then a surge right back to historic price levels will hardly do miracles for American discretionary income once it again costs ~$100 to fill up one's gas tank.

We heard from several central banks in the last few days, and what they had to say was just one more reminder that we are in a Hill Street Blues financial world. So, hey, let’s be careful out there - and then some!

Peering into the froth of a cappuccino, we noticed various sized bubbles. There is a fine line between froth and bubbles. As we continued our gaze, both eventually disappeared. Stirring made the frothy bubbles disappear more quickly. Markets are beginning to stir (more later). Unsustainable states ultimately end.

Facing a pensioner rebellion and a looming payment due to the IMF, Greece’s back is now truly against the wall. As Handelsblatt reports, even if a deal were reached with creditors this weekend, it may now be logistically impossible for Greece to make a €780 million payment scheduled for May 12. Oh well, there's always war reparations...

For those who require still more proof that the rally in US equities has become inextricably linked with corporations leveraging their balance sheets to repurchase their own shares, JP Morgan is out with an in-depth look at buyback trends which strongly suggests that buyback activity is in fact responsible for driving US stocks to record highs.

The final Q1 GDP revision was just released and we saw that GDP has again missed expectations by such a large margin that 2015 is another write off for a 3% growth year.  Almost comically we heard the same excuses we got last year.  “Weather was wintery and next year is going to be the turnaround year”.  So in order to explain to these supposed economic and market ‘experts’ who seem wholly incapable of understanding economic and market forces with any sense of accuracy, let’s run through a few fundamentals.

With London, Paris, and Basel’s compliance, Nazi Germany had just looted 23.1 metric tons of gold without a shot being fired.

It appears the situation in Baltimore just got a lot more serious as MD State Attorney Marilyn Mosby states that charges have been filed against 6 Baltimore PD police officers, arrest warrants have been issued for the charged cops, and that Gray's death was a homicide.

Racism, it seems, is not only alive and well, but worse than it has ever been. Or is it? Could it be that most Americans, regardless of the color of their skin, are perfectly fine having people of other races as their friends, neighbors and colleagues, and that certain people in positions of power are using their influence to manipulate the masses?

Have you noticed that we are starting to be bombarded with images of troops in the streets?  Have you noticed that the term “martial law” is coming up a lot in movies, news broadcasts and even in television commercials?  In recent years, it seems like the solution to almost every major crisis involves bringing in troops.  In fact, it has already gotten to the point where when something really bad happens a lot of Americans immediately cry out for troops to be brought in.  And we are seeing the same patterns over and over again.

On April 28, Zero Hedge presented what was unmistakable evidence of manipulation by spoofing in the gold market in "Dear CFTC: Here Is Today's Illegal "Spoofing" In Gold Futures." Two days later, the CME said it bas suspended two traders for placing precisely the trade we profiled previously intending to manipulate the gold market. Dear CME - you are welcome. Now if only you pursued all those other documented instances of S&P futures manipulation with the same speed and resolve...

The goal of equality of opportunity is both absurd and vicious. Achieving it would require that children all be raised in the same environment and have the same genetic inheritance. In contrast, what we should actually strive for is the freedom of opportunity. Freedom of opportunity means the ability to exploit the opportunities afforded by reality, without being stopped by the initiation of physical force, in particular the initiation of physical force by the government or that takes place with the sanction of the government.

Despite claiming that its “people’s Uber” service in China, involving private drivers, is simply a type of car-pooling service; the bubblicious company continues to burn its series ZZ financings on legal briefs around the world. That appears to be a total waste when it comes to China as IBTimes reports, police, transport and commercial officials in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou have raided the local offices of online car service company Uber, amid continuing tension in China over the legality of ride-booking apps using private vehicles, which officials say have disrupted the country’s heavily regulated taxi market.