Archive - Jul 10, 2015 - Story

Yes, it’s still entirely possible that Tsipras submitted this last set of proposals knowing full well they won’t be accepted. But he’s already gone way too far in his concessions. This is an exercise in futility. It’s time to acknowledge this is a road to nowhere.

"The explosion in margin financing behind the recent astonishing run-up in Chinese A shares is a new twist on China credit concerns, a long-standing grey swan for Chinese and global growth. As of the beginning of June, the balance of margin financing outstanding was RMB2.2tn, an estimated 12% of the free float market cap of marginable stocks and 3.5% of GDP—easily the highest in the history of global equity markets."

Since 1982, the entire market has been nothing but one massive slow-motion leveraged buyout. This places the SEC right up there with the Federal Reserve in market manipulation credentials.

Despite the exuberance in US and European equity markets, it appears Bitcoin is sending a different (avoid the looming capital controls) message... Does someone know something?

"Trust me..."

The Chinese economy is in an obvious deepening swoon and the median company on the Shanghai exchange had a PE ratio of 60X before the recent break. But no matter. Not only does everything financial race the skyscrapers to the sky in the land of red capitalism, but valuation upside is apparently whatever the comrades in Beijing want it to be. Says Goldman’s chief stock tout for China,“It’s not in a bubble yet.”. Why? Because “China’s government has a lot of tools to support the market.”

If The Fed's dream of wealth creation by equity-levitated mandate is to be fulfilled then it is simply inevitable that QE Moar is on its way...

It's true that “the authorities” want the price of financial assets (stocks, bonds) to go up, and the price of hard assets (commodities) to go down… which is exactly what has happened. So do governments and central banks ever lose? In the old days, they lost all the time. In one extreme example, an individual hedge fund took out the entire Bank of England. But central banks are currently on a massive winning streak. So to answer the question, “Will we ever have a crisis,” you need to answer the question, “Will we ever be allowed to have one?”

"There is an estimated need of about 10 to 14 billion euros in new capital. Given the magnitude of the shock we have been through, regulators will take stock of the situation and the impact on non-performing loans."

For the 2nd week in a row - after declines every week this year - the US oil rig count increased (up 5 to 645). The total rig count rose 1 to 863 (for the 3rd week in a row). The initial reaction was a smal snap below $52.50 but WTI is stabilizing now...

"It will be appropriate at some point this year...to raise the Fed funds rate and normalize monetary policy," Yellen recently explained but given recent comments from Fed heads and the FOMC Minutes, it appears the real meme is "everything is awesome, we promise and as long as it stays that way we will hike rates just a little bit, stand back and watch the implosion, then stand ready to step back in to save the world... oh, and if Greece, China, US Shale, or LatAm blow up contagiously, we won't normalize policy ever again." Yellen speaks on the US economic outlook at The City Club of Cleveland.

Facing pressure from all sides, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras sells out voters and looks to push concessions through parliament ahead of Sunday deadline.