Archive - Aug 5, 2015 - Story

Moments ago a far less liberal outlet than either the WaPo or the NYT, came out with its own interpretation of the ongoing FBI escalation involving Hillary, and according to the NY Post, "the FBI investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s unsecured e-mail account is not just a fact-finding venture — it’s a criminal probe, sources told The Post on Wednesday."

"What can we do?"

Reuters has taken an in depth look at Illinois' sprawling bureaucracy and discovered that the state "is home to nearly 8,500 local government units" which helps to explain why "the average homeowner pays taxes to six layers of government, and in Wauconda and many other places a lot more." The story also sheds quite a bit of light on why the state's fiscal crisis may ultimately prove to be intractable. 

I sure am glad there's no inflation, because these "stable prices" the Federal Reserve keeps jaw-jacking about are putting us in a world of hurt.

The seriousness is underscored by the declarations of the president of Turkey regarding a Kurdish state. In contrast, the Islamic State has no such aims on Turkey and does not have the wherewithal to undertake such an enterprise—even if it wanted to. Turks have a long history of secularism and are not receptive to the strict Islamism of ISIS. For the time being, therefore, the Turkish state will pretend to be fighting ISIS while directing its violence towards the PKK and the YPG.

Surprise! In what must be the most predictable geopolitical event in recent days, WSJ reports that Iran has refused to let United Nations inspectors interview key scientists and military officers to investigate allegations Tehran maintained a covert nuclear-weapons program.

No lesser liquidity-providing high-frequency-trading never-a-losing-trade shop than Virtu financial has been 'allowed' to trade Chinese capital markets. Coming just days after Citadel's ban, one can only assume that Chinese regulators made a deal with the devil CEO Doug Cifu to levitate markets at any and every cost in order to pick up pennies in front of de-leveraging, over-margined army of farmers and grandmas now seeking exits. Sure enough for the second day in a row margin debt is on the rise again. The retail-dominated Chinese stock market will be ripe picking for the HFTs, as long as not to many are allowed and a tail-chasing flash-crash ensues... but for now its appears yesterday afternoon's selling pressure continues with CSI-300 down almost 2% at the open.

There are so many parallels between the current period since 2007 in the U.S. (The Great Recession), the period since 1990 in Japan (Japan’s 2+ lost decades), and the period after 1929 in the US (The Great Depression) because they are all periods of a ‘balance-sheet recession’ (or similarly, ‘secular stagnation'; that it is next to impossible to dismiss the comparison. Using this, there is an important lesson for the Fed to consider now in weighing whether to raise rates.

In an irony of ironies, Saudi Arabia is set to take advantage of the very same forgiving capital markets that have served to keep its US competition in business as persistently low oil prices and two armed conflicts look set to strain the Kingdom's finances.

Earlier this week we reported a stunning statistic: in July, the US police had killed 118 people mostly through gunfire, the highest number of police "induced" fatalities in 2015, and on pace for a record 1150 deaths for all of 2015. To be sure, most of these deaths took place in the "ordinary course" of police business, primarily in self-defense. However, in many instances, the killings took place in "less than ordinary course", usually involving the police officer making a rash judgment that cost the victim their life, and in many cases shooting without a clear cause. But the worst example of what is increasingly, and broadly, referred to as "police brutality", are cases such as that of Alexander City officer Troy Middlebrooks, was, as NBC reports, was "caught on a secret recording discussing ways to kill a black man and cover it up."

"The United States is on the brink of making another grave mistake under the name of protecting cyber security... If it stubbornly implements retaliatory measures against China in cyber space, it will be known for being a cyber bully and will have to shoulder responsibility for escalating confrontation and disrupting the peaceful order in the cyber space."

Debt is a fickle witch. When left to its own devices, which it has been for nearly seven years with interest rates at the zero bound, it tends to get into trouble. Unchecked credit initially seeps, and eventually finds itself fracked, into the dark, dank nooks and crannies of the fixed income markets whose infrastructures and borrowers are ill-suited to handle the capacity. Consider the two flashiest badges of wealth in America - cars and homes...

The best time to prepare for trouble... is before trouble arrives.

18 of the 22 components in the Bloomberg Commodity Index have dropped at least 20% from recent closing highs, meeting the common definition of a bear market. As Bloomberg details, that’s the same number as at the end of October 2008, when deepening financial turmoil sent global markets into a swoon.