Brazil

The “tipping point” occurs at about the time when the local stock market returns fall below the currency depreciation.

A regular feature back in 2010 when we had our first taste of global currency warfare as Brazil's finance minister accurately summarized when he said "a currency war has broken out" (and yes: currency war existed then, and especially in the 1930s which led to the Great Depression, long before the recent eponymous book came out desperate to take credit for this simplistic concept) were the global FX heatmaps which showed how any given currency is doing on any given day. Since currency warfare is now back and more violent than at any time in the past 80 years, it only makes sense to bring back a long-time reader favorite: the currency warfare heatmaps which show who, on any given day, is winning and losing, the global race to debase and in the process beggar all globalized and SWIFT-interlinked neighbors. But don't forget: in a relativistic fiat world, nobody can actually win the global race to debase. Well, not nobody: gold (and other precious metals) can, assuming it is not confiscated as it was the last time the US ended the global currency war with a 50%+ devaluation of the USD relative to gold... and promptly confiscated all gold.

It's going to be a week of being bombarded with data and earnings from all angles. This week will see the first reading of US Q4 GDP as well as the first FOMC statement, Payrolls and ISM print of the year. In Europe we will get a handful of confidence indicators in the earlier part of the week but the main highlight will be the Spanish and Italian manufacturing PMIs on Friday.  The coming week could see further sizeable moves in FX, mainly because investors – and policymakers – have become a lot more focused on currency markets. Finally, a few potentially interesting policy speeches are scheduled in the upcoming week. In Japan, Prime Minister Abe will likely talk in parliament about his economic policy, which could contain more comments on the BoJ and the Yen. In Germany, Buba President Weidmann will talk at the car manufacturers association and the recent sharp move in EUR/JPY may well be a subject given the competition between German and Japanese brands. Interestingly, Mr. Weidmann already mentioned the BoJ in a recent speech about global pressures on central bank independence.

As with every piece of potentially bad news in the here and now, the IMF provides some bone for bulls to gnaw on by offering hope that 2014 will be considerably better. What at first glance is a broad-based slashing of global growth outlooks for 2013 ends up being yet another hockey-stick expectation dangled out in front of the world's investors. With Europe now downgraded to a recession in 2013 (GDP -0.2%), we should not fear though as Olivier Blanchard adds that "If crisis risks do not materialize and financial conditions continue to improve, global growth could be stronger than projected," and sure enough 2014 is expected to herald a new era of growthiness (GDP +1.0%) for the troubled region. He does offer one note of reality that is critical - "Financial market optimism should not lead to policy complacency" - alas we fear that time has long gone. World Trade Volume expectations have been ratcheted lower with Brazil and Newly Industrialized Asia seeing the biggest downgrades to growth.

Well, my fellow Slope-a-Dopes, your selfless Idiotic Savant servant, whom is securely chained to his desk, has spent a significant part of the long weekend, perusing nearly every finance blog on the world wide web for you.  Therefore, I can reliably report to the SOH, that the overwhelming consensus out there in the financial blogosphere, which has now reached a nearly universal feverish pitch, is boldly & proudly heralding that a most encouraging new economic dawn is finally upon us.  It seems, a pristine permanent plateau of prosperity has been patently perfected.

Today, Jeff Currie, Goldman Sachs chief commodity strategist said he wouldn’t be surprised if we woke up in summer with $150 oil. Well, I would, and here is why.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the usual cadre of politicians, pundits and commentators are hitting the airwaves and condemning believers of the “guns don’t kill” rationale. This exercise in demonization is being followed with pleas to strip Americans of their guns and place a ban on vaguely-defined “assault” weapons. What’s been lacking in the flurry of proposals that inevitably followed a catastrophe like Sandy Hook has been a deeper look at the kind of environment impressionable minds are coming of age in. Far too often, politically-minded observers fall back on reactionary emotion for the solution to problems without actually engaging in critical thinking as to the root of what they are trying to solve. What must be considered is why some individuals are so drawn to violence, what effect has the increased prescription rate of antidepressants had, and why casualties in war have become so dehumanized. There is an uncomfortable but common denominator in all these factors. I would hope anti-gun zealots notice it before they ramp up their War on Firearms.

More than half a decade has passed since the recession that triggered the financial panic and the Great Recession, but the condition of the world continues to be summed up by what The Spectator's Michael Lind calls ‘turboparalysis’ - a prolonged condition of furious motion without movement in any particular direction, a situation in which the engine roars and the wheels spin but the vehicle refuses to move. By now one might have expected the emergence of innovative and taboo-breaking schools of thought seeking to account for and respond to the global crisis. But to date there is no insurgent political and intellectual left, nor a new right, for that matter. Why has a global calamity produced so little political change and, at the same time, so little rethinking? Part of the answer, has to do with the collapse of the two-way transmission belt that linked the public to the political elite. But there is a deeper, structural reason for the persistence of turboparalysis. And that has to do with the power and wealth that incumbent elites accumulated during the decades of the global bubble economy. But it is coming...

The main events of this week, monetary policy meetings at the BoE and the ECB on Thursday, are not expected to bring any meaningful changes. In both cases, banks are expected to keep rates on hold and to hold off on further unconventional policy measures. While significant economic slack still exists in the Euro area, and although the inflation picture has remained relatively benign, targeted non-standard policy measures are more likely than an interest rate cut. As financial conditions are already quite easy in the core countries, where the monetary transmission mechanism remains effective, the ECB’s first objective is to reverse the segmentation of the Euro area’s financial markets to ensure the pass-through of lower rates to the countries with the most need for further stimulus.

The Fed's inflationary policies will damage Emerging Markets... not push them higher.

A broken safety net is no safety net at all.  

My thoughts on what is headed our way

The US Fed is playing a very dangerous game by purchasing as many Treasuries as it is. But that game can last much longer than anticipated.

On this lackluster Boxing Day dominated by illiquid moves in every asset class, we thought a few succinct minutes spent comprehending the US and European government policies of social welfare and their outcomes was time well spent. Canadian MP Pierre Poilievre delivers a rather epic speech destroying the myths of US and European 'wealth' noting that "Once the US citizen is in debt, the US government encourages them to stay in debt," noting that "the US government encouraged millions of Americans to spend money they did not have on homes they could not afford using loans they could never repay and then gave them a tax incentive never to repay it." His message, delivered seamlessly, notes the inordinate rise in the cost of all this borrowing, adding that "through debt interest alone, soon the US taxpayer will be funding 100% of the Chinese Military complex." From Dependence to Debt to the Welfare State and back to Dependence, this presentation puts incredible context on the false hope so many believe in the US and Europe. Everyone takes, nobody makes, work doesn't pay, indulgence doesn't cost, money is free, and money is worthless. Must watch.

Leaving the highly sensitive topic of "gun-control" aside for the time being, one can't help but wonder if it isn't time that the US government, seemingly hell-bent on regulating virtually everything in its quest to prove (to itself?) that America's population can no longer be trusted with making any responsible decisions on it own (and in the process becoming even bigger), shouldn't be more focused on "fat-control" instead. Why? Because while guns may or may not kill people, the bottom line is that of the 32K or so death attributed to firearms, roughly 20K, or two thirds were suicides, meaning firearm-based homicides were 11,015 in 2010. Putting this number in perspective, every year some 935,000 Americans suffer a heart attack, and 600,000 people die from some form heart disease: 1 in every 4 deaths. Net result to society: the cost of coronary heart disease borne by everyone is $108.9 billion each year. And of all proximal factors contributing to heart disease, obesity and overweight is the main one. But of course one can't make a media spectacle out of 600,000 hospital wards where people quietly pass away, in many cases due to a lifetime of ill decisions relating primarily to food consumption. In fact, some estimate that obesity now accounts for one fifth of the total US health-care bill (the part of the budget which no amount of tax increase can offset). Which is why if the topic of gun-control has managed to promptly tear the country into two (or three, or more), just wait until fat-control (far more than the recent tepid overtures into this field such as Bloomberg's NYC sugary soda ban) rears its ugly head and sends the already polarized (and weaponized) US society into a state of agitated hyperflux.