Archive - Jul 17, 2015 - Story

If you were a shareholder of a Greek bank, you wouldn’t lose sleep over your relationship with your regulator. In that context, the statement of the 12 July Euro Summit may have come as a shock—particularly the bit about the new program for Greece having to include "the establishment of a buffer of EUR 10 to 25bn for the banking sector in order to address potential bank recapitalisation needs and resolution costs." You could be forgiven for thinking—where did that come from?

With yesterday's appearance what seems like the first Iran oil tanker to set sail post-nuke-deal, Haaretz reports that Iran has been hiding millions of barrels of oil it never reported to the United States or in the world oil market, according to a company that has developed sophisticated maritime tracking technology. With the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves, Iran denies it’s storing oil at sea, despite reports that surfaced in The New York Times as early as 2012; but Ami Daniel, Windward founder and cochairman, shows "the Iranians are taking huge, 280-meter-long ships and filling them with oil, to sit at sea and wait. Because the sanctions allow for production of only three million barrels a day, they began storing the remainder... oil tankers have been sitting in the Gulf for anywhere between three and six months, just waiting for orders."

Searching for a refuge in today's uncertain markets? BlackRock has a solution...

The trick is to borrow as much as you can and leverage it to the hilt, and buy, buy, buy.

"Working out the statistics for the Chinese economy is immensely challenging and it is hard to be absolutely accurate. No wonder the West has questions about the methodology. But different methods will not affect the authority of the NBS figures.... Despite the lowest GDP growth rate, the Chinese economy is not in its hardest times because the slowdown has greatly declined and the public has adapted to the current growth and even a lower rate. As faking a 7 percent figure takes more risk than releasing a lower but real one, China has no motives to forge the data... It is hence groundless to suspect the NBS faked its statistics."

"Free" markets for all, but the real joke is that this comes from the Beijing Review

Total US Rig Count dropped 6 this week to 857 - the lows of the cycle - after 3 weeks of very modest rises. Oil rig count also declined, after 2 weeks of increases, by 7 to 638. The initial move in prices was higher (as for now we are in topsy-turvy land for crude) but that is starting to fade.

Remember when Greece was fixed... when The ECB extended its ELA to Greek banks and bridge loans were provided to repay The ECB? As we noted previously, it seems Greek banks are a sell at any price and today's continued crash in National Bank of Greece ADRs ahead of 'supposedly' a Greek bank re-opening on Monday, suggest "mark it zero" is coming soon to some knife-catchers' portfolios.

While the Ukraine civil war, which just last summer was the biggest market-moving event and media discussion topic, has faded into the collective subconsciousness, for residents on both sides of the proxy conflict it continues to be an all too real and tragic event, and none more so perhaps than for Anatoliy Lyubimov, a resident of central Ukraine's Kozyatinskiy district, who recently received a draft notice mobilizing him to join the Ukraine army in its ongoing war with the Donetsk separatists. The reason: Anatoliy is disabled and has no arms.

Update: it appears that far from accidental, there may be an arson element behind these events. According to Greek ERT1 TV, "66 wildefires broke out simultanously", which is highly improbable without human intervention, begging the question: is someone employing "scorched earth" tactics with Germany's latest vassal state?

Greece is burning, literally, as Athens residents fled their homes on Friday amid wildfires fanned by strong winds and high temperatures burned through woodland around the Greek capital, sending clouds of smoke billowing over the city. Greek PM Tsipras urged calm as more than 80 firefighters with 18 fire engines and three aircraft battled the flames... brings a whole new meaning to the term 'firesale'...

The preposterous Gong Show in Brussels over the weekend was the financial “Ben Tre” moment for the Euro and ECB. That is, it was the moment when the Germans - imitating the American military on that ghastly morning in February 1968 - set fire to the Eurozone in order to save it. In short, Greece will become an outright debtors’ colony and its government will function as page-boy legislators for the Troika occupiers. Needless to say, political and social upheaval will erupt when the full extent of the Tsipras surrender becomes evident, and the resulting political contagion will spread throughout the length and breadth of Europe as Greece implodes. In due course, the euro will collapse and the baleful Keynesian money printers’ regime in Frankfurt will be repudiated and dismantled. But not before European democracy has a brush with death, and European prosperity is extinguished for a generation.

An "esoteric point" about China's GDP data has suddenly become a very big deal as the world looks to China for economic leadership amid a global deflationary supply glut, lackluster demand, and depressed trade.

It’s not even “Too Big to Jail” any longer. It’s now, “Too Big to Lose Profits.” After all #banklivesmatter