Archive - Aug 2015 - Story

August 2 is the day when Russia celebrates its Airborne Forces, only this year something went very wrong, and it was all caught on tape.

Overnight something unexpected happened: Sheng Songcheng, the director of the statistics division of the People's Bank of China (PBOC), was quoted by the National Business Daily on Saturday whereby he essentially admitted China had been lying about not only its local debt exposure but the level of NPLs across the economy.  The punchline: Sheng warned about the risks of local government debt, saying that 2 trillion yuan in bond swaps may not be able to fully cover maturing debt, according to the report. What he really said, as paraphrased by Bloomberg, is that "local govt's tended to not report all their debts when audited in June 2013, thus the 2 trillion yuan debt swap plan arranged this year may not cover all debts due, Sheng cited as saying."

Oops.

Lately, a varied chorus of powerful union bosses, politicians and candidates, an asset management company executive, and a few ivory tower types have asserted that activism is short term in nature, engaged in by “hit and run”  investors who care only about making a quick buck while leaving a company and its employees in ruins. It might surprise people to hear that we agree completely that the sort of activism they describe is abominable.  Luckily, it does not really exist, and certainly not at Third Point.  Activists today are very different from corporate raiders of the ‘80’s (about whom these criticisms might have been leveled fairly).

Bubbles collapse, period; and government interventions don't stop them. Furthermore, we are beginning to see a crack widen in the foundations of China's capital markets that could end up undermining the whole economy. If Plan A fails, it is time for Plan B...

A report from the U.S. Army War College discusses the use of American troops to quell civil unrest brought about by a worsening economic crisis. The report from the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute warns that the U.S. military must prepare for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” that could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” [The report also warns of a possible “rapid dissolution of public order in all or significant parts of the US.”]

"This was nothing but a coup. In 1967 there were the tanks and in 2015 there were the banks. But the result is the same in the sense of having overthrown the Government or having forced it to overthrow itself."

Be prepared for the now imminent equity valuation reset.  It is true the Fed now has the ability to manipulate the market well beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.  However, it is also still true that when the bursting bubble achieves full momentum the Fed will be helpless to stop it.   While the Fed feels increasingly omnipotent they will once again learn, that while natural laws can be bent, they cannot be broken.

While mocking socialist paradises everywhere is a recurring theme especially once they have completely run out of other people's money to burn through, what always follows next is far less amusing - complete social collapse, with riots, civil war and deaths not far behind. That is precisely what the video shown below has captured. In the clip, a demonstration against Venezuela's poor transportation services quickly turned violent. End result: one person dead from a gunshot wound, more than 80 arrested and four shops looted on the Manuel Piar Avenue in San Felix.

Now, more than ever, with Greece and Ukraine front and center, understanding how corporations take control of countries, and how capitalism drives the expansion of the Military Industrial Complex is crucial: "we have created a mutant form of predatory capitalism which has created an extremely unstable, unsustainable, unjust and very very dangerous world."

"The robots have produced almost three times as many pieces as were produced before. According to the People's Daily, production per person has increased from 8,000 pieces to 21,000 pieces. That's a 162.5% increase."

We have argued that it is a perilous myth that central bankers these days control a general price level. They instead incentivize massive financial flows into securities markets and fashionable sectors. Over time, ramifications and consequences reach the profound. For one, excess liquidity promotes over/mal-investment. It’s only the scope and nature that remain in question. If major Bubble flows inundate new technology investment, the resulting surge in the supply of high-margin products engenders disinflationary pressures elsewhere. Policy responses to perceived heightened “deflation” risks then only work to exacerbate Bubbles, mounting imbalances and structural fragilities. This was a critical facet of “Roaring Twenties” analysis that was lost in time.

"Opposite"-land...

To get a sense of the complete devastation in the world of commodities, consider the curious case of Australia's Isaac Plans coking coal mine, which was valued at $630 million in 2011. It sold on Thursday for $1.  it gets worse: based on data from Citi Research, 90% of all M&A that miners did since 2007 has been written off. The commodity bubble has officially burst - feel free to thank China.

Back in the 1960s, Alan Greenspan wrote a well-known essay that to this day is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand the present-day monetary and economic system (which is a kind of “fascism lite” type of statism, masquerading as capitalism) and especially the almost visceral hate etatistes harbor toward gold. Greenspan’s essay is entitled “Gold and Economic Freedom”, and as the title already suggests, the two are intimately connected.

The US has determined that the Chinese cyber attack on the databases of the Office of Personnel Management "was so vast in scope and ambition that the usual practices for dealing with traditional espionage cases [does] not apply," The New York Times reports. In short: "this agression will not stand, man."