B+

Conjuring images of Jack Nicholson in 'A Few Good Men', Alan Simpson laid out the sad and terrible truth that none of us or our politicians can handle in a very direct and sincere interview with Bloomberg TV's Deirdre Bolton. "Medicare costs stand to squeeze out the rest of domestic government spending," Simpson said, "it is on automatic pilot. It will use up every resource in the government." Simpson also said that the current path of debt, deficit and interest is “totally unsustainable” confirming once again the facade that his 18 years in Washington proved to him that he "never saw any projection of any economist ever come true." From Paul Ryan's plan to the 'simple math' of CBO budget projections, and whether older Americans should be afraid, Simpson pulls no punches as he sums up American society thus: "we don't care about our money, all we want is more money for our money."

What is high-frequency trading? We will never exhaustively address this issue here. We recommend that you do your own research on the subject. There are numerous articles on this topic. High-frequency trading (HFT) consists in using sophisticated technology to trade securities. It is highly quantitative, employing algorithms to analyze incoming market data. HF investment positions are held only very briefly, with HF traders trading in and out of positions intraday tens of thousands of times. The important feature is that at the end of a trading day there is no net investment position. Processing speed and access to the exchanges are critical.

When we wrote Part I of this paper in June 2009, the total U.S. public debt was just north of $10 trillion. Since then, that figure has increased by more than 50% to almost $16 trillion, thanks largely to unprecedented levels of government intervention. Once the exclusive domain of central bankers and policy makers, acronyms such as QE, LTRO, SMP, TWIST, TARP, TALF have found their way into the mainstream. With the aim of providing stimulus to the economy, central planners of all stripes have both increased spending and reduced taxes in most rich countries. But do these fiscal and monetary measures really increase economic activity or do they have other perverse effects?...  The politically favoured option of financial repression and negative real interest rates has important implications. Negative real interest rates are basically a thinly disguised tax on savers and a subsidy to profligate borrowers. By definition, taxes distort incentives and, as discussed earlier, discourage savings.... The current misconception that our economic salvation lies with more stimulus is both treacherous and self-defeating. As long as we continue down this path, the “solution” will continue to be the problem. There is no miracle cure to our current woes and recent proposals by central planners risk worsening the economic outlook for decades to come.

With bank exec heads rolling, investigations hotting up globally, politicians fuming and investors exercising caution in bank shares, the LIBOR scandal is fueling massive speculation about the long-term ramifications for the industry. Indeed, after all that the banking industry has faced in the wake of the bursting of the housing bubble, an anonymously quoted bank CEO in a recent Economist story proclaimed "This is the banking industry’s tobacco moment." While there are more reasons not to draw parallels between the banking industry now and the tobacco industry of the mid-1990’s than there are similarities, we thought it would be interesting to review the impact on Tobacco during its "moment", and beyond.

ECB to EU governments: “Guys, we won’t fly solo…”

Bond Market to ECB “Show me the money!”

Equity market “Someone said Money? Buy!”

• Regulators irate at NY action against Standard Chartered (Reuters)
• Recession Generation Opts To Rent Not Buy Houses To Cars (Bloomberg)
• Egypt launches air strikes on militants in Sinai (Reuters)
• Loan-Shark Lending Surge Feared In Japan (Bloomberg)
• US seeks $3bn for Sudan oil deal (FT)
• Home Prices Climb as Supply Dwindles (WSJ)... not really- just money laundering in the form of ultra luxury home purchases soars
• A lifeline is thrown to the periphery - Smaghi (FT)
• Standard and Who? Greece Credit-Rating Outlook Lowered by S&P as Economy Weakens (Bloomberg)
• BOE Cuts Growth Forecast, Sees Inflation Below Goal in Two Years (Bloomberg)
• S&P Takes CreditWatch Actions On Four Spanish Banks (Reuters)
• Japan Gets Reprieve as Drop in Oil Eases Trade Impact (Bloomberg)

We've Gone Way Too Far ... It's Time to Decentralize

Putting our trust and faith in a few unelected bureaucrats and bankers, who use their obscene wealth to buy off politicians in writing the laws and regulations to favor them has proven to be a death knell for our country. The captured main stream media proclaims these men to be heroes and saviors of the world, when they are truly the villains in this episode. These are the men who unleashed the frenzy of Wall Street greed and pillaging by repealing Glass Steagall, blocking Brooksley Born’s efforts to regulate derivatives, encouraging mortgage fraud, not enforcing existing regulations, and creating speculative bubbles through excessively low interest rates and making it known they would bailout recklessness. They have created an overly complex tangled financial system so they could peddle propaganda to the math challenged American public without fear of being caught in their web of lies. Big government, big banks and big legislation like Dodd/Frank and Obamacare are designed to benefit the few at the expense of the many. The system has been captured by a plutocracy of self-serving men. They don’t care about you or your children. We are only given 80 years, or so, on this earth and our purpose should be to sustain our economic and political system in a balanced way, so our children and their children have a chance at a decent life. Do you trust that is the purpose of those in power today? Should we trust the jackals and grifters who got us into this mess, to get us out?   

HARP, The Home Affordable Refinance Program, is a streamline refinance program developed to help borrowers who have continued to make their mortgage payments, but have be unable to refinance due to a decline in their home value. While it is encouraging that more and more underwater homeowners are gaining the benefits of today’s low interest rates, tremendous profits are being made at their expense. Lack of competition is the primary catalyst, but the underlying economics of the large “too big to fail” banks will do nothing but stoke additional anger in the general public.  Expect this trend to continue until the dynamics of the program is changed once again, possibly in HARP 3.0.  Until then, the cash cow will continue for the TBTF banks.

Many finance-oriented critiques start from the position that our problems largely stem from the financial/political dominance of Elitist cartels and cabals. Clearly, the malinvestment, exploitation, predation and disregard for the law that characterizes the rule of political-financial Elites in both developed and developing nations have wreaked havoc on societies and economies around the globe. Implicit in this critique is a dangerously naive assumption: if all our problems can be traced back to Elitist cabals such as the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, then it follows that the subjugation or eradication of these concentrations of self-serving power would remove the cause of our problems. Alas, that would be a welcome step in the right direction, but that alone would not resolve the structural causes of our devolution. Freeing ourselves of self-serving Elites would certainly create an opening for structural transformation that is currently impossible, but the transformation will require changing much of what the average citizen takes for granted as a "given" or even "right."

James McShirley of Ohio who has documented numerous repetitive market activities which could never occur time and time again in a freely traded market. Just this past week gold completed its 2% up, 1% up, sideways, down hard pattern, which is only one of many trading anomalies James has tracked.

It is late in the afternoon on a Friday, which means one thing: it is time to dump all left over bad news under the rug. Sure enough, here comes S&P. From Bloomberg:

• S&P CUTS RATINGS ON 15 ITALIAN FINL INSTITUTIONS
• S&P TAKES RATING ACTIONS ON 32 ITALIAN FINL INSTITUTIONS
• BANCA MONTE DEI PASCHI DI SIENA SPA CUT TO BBB-/NEGATIVE/A-3
• BANCA POPOLARE DI MILANO SCRL CUT TO BB+/NEGATIVE/B BY S&P
• S&P SAYS ITALY FACES POTENTIAL DEEPER RECESSION THAN IT THOUGHT

While the attached interview between the Casey Report and HFT expert Garrett from CalibratedConfidence will not reveal much unknown new to those who have been following the high frequency trading topic ever since ZH made it a mainstream issue in April of 2009, it will serve as a great foundation for all those new to the topic who are looking for an honest, unbiased introduction to what is otherwise a nebulous and complicated matter. We urge everyone who is even remotely interested in market structure, broken markets and the future of trading to read the observations presented below.

John Tamny of Forbes is one of the more informed contributors in the increasingly dismal state of economic commentating.  Tamny readily admits he is on the libertarian side of things and doesn’t give into the money-making game of carrying the flag for a favored political party under the guise of a neutral observer.  He condemns the whole of the Washington establishment for our current economic woes and realizes that government spending is wasteful in the sense that it is outside the sphere of profit and loss consideration.  In short, Tamny’s column for both Forbes and RealClearMarkets.com are a breath of fresh air in the stale rottenness of mainstream economic analysis. Much to this author’s dismay however, Tamny has written a piece that denies one of the key functions through which central banks facilitate the creation of money.  In doing so, he lets banks off the hook for what really can be classified as counterfeiting.  In a recent Forbes column entitled “Ron Paul, Fractional Reserve Banking, and the Money Multiplier Myth,” Tamny attempts to bust what he calls the myth that fractional reserve banking allows for the creation of money through credit lending.  According to him, it is an extreme exaggeration to say money is created “out of thin air” by fractional reserve banks as Murray Rothbard alleged.  This is a truly outrageous claim that finds itself wrong not just in theory but also in plain evidence.  Not only does fractional reserve banking play a crucial role in inflationary credit expansion, it borders on being outright fraudulent.

We got the pre-spun job quantity data already, where we learned that nearly 3 times the headline print was due to seasonal and B/D adjustments and is thus nothing but noise. Now we get the quality. As can be seen below, courtesy of Table A9 from the Household Survey, in July the number of part-time jobs added was 31K, bringing the total to 27,925, just shy of the all time record of 28,038. Full time jobs? Down 228,000 to 114,345,000 lower than the February full-time jobs print of 114,408,000. Once again, more and more Americans are relinquishing any and all benefits associated with Full Time Jobs benefits, and instead are agreeing on a job. Any job. Even if it means working just 1 hour a week. For the BLS it doesn't matter - 1 hour of work a week still qualifies you as a Part-Time worker.