Corruption

Greece's bailout program is not working. After receiving hundreds of billions of Euros in new loans to stave off a sovereign default, Greeks are on the verge of electing a new government that may throw Eurozone politics into turmoil. How things will play out in Greece and abroad is anybody’s guess. But it is important to consider the factors which have contributed to the current state of affairs.

• Obama Targets Income Gap in Address That Shapes 2016 Election (BBG)
• Republicans Reject Obama’s Main Economic Proposals (WSJ)
• Senate’s Shelby Says White House Bank Tax Is Dead on Arrival (BBG)
• Is Dollar Next? Investors Reassess After Swiss Shock: Currencies (BBG)
• Bank of Japan Cuts Price Forecast, Maintains Record Stimulus (BBG)
• Pound Weakens After BOE Policy Makers Drop Call to Raise Rates (BBG)
• Putin not flinching on Ukraine despite economic crisis (Reuters)
• Indonesia will not make public full preliminary AirAsia crash report (Reuters)
• Party Hasn't Stopped for Russians at Davos Even With Ukraine Sanctions (BBG)

Big Corporations Are Only Part of the Problem …

People have been asking me why we spend so much time in New Zealand, so here you go...

When news broke of the death, by gunshot wound to the head, of Alberto Nisman - the prosecutor who was due within hours to deliver testimony implicating the Argentine President in covering up the investigation into a bombing in 1994 - it seemed oddly quick for police to rule it suicide within hours (especially after his earlier concerns that "I could end up dead because of this.") Today's news from The Buenos Aires Herald that the "unexpected result" of forensic analysis of Nisman’s body confirmed that there were no traces of gunpowder on his hands suggests (despite experts still proclaiming it does not rule out suicide) has prompted many questions over just how he died. Even the US has offered help... and protests are growing larger.

Success, we’re constantly told, breeds success. And success breeds stability. The way to avoid failure is to copy successful people and strategies. The way to continue succeeding is to do more of what has been successful. This line of thinking is so intuitively compelling that we wonder what other basis for success can there be other than 'success'? As counter-intuitive as it may sound, success rather reliably leads to failure and destabilization. Instead, it’s the close study of failure and the role of luck that leads to success. In the macro-economic arena, we think it highly likely that the monetary and fiscal policies of the past six years that are conventionally viewed as successful will lead to spectacular political and financial failures in 2015 and 2016. How can success breed failure? It turns out there are a number of dynamics at work.

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has held a meeting with founder of the Open Society Foundations, international philanthropist George Soros. President Poroshenko has expressed gratitude to George Soros for his support of Ukraine, particularly for urging the international society to increase the level of support to Ukraine...

When an accounting 'fudge' accounts for $300 billion of a nation's Balance of Payments, you might suspect something is amiss. And sure enough, as Goldman notes, the growing 'error and emission' items in China’s balance of payments may reflect a pickup in hidden cash transfers as China's anti-corruption probes encouraged  the corrupt oligarchs to get their money out of dodge. As Goldman warns, "such outflows may be harder to contain with regulations, a continuation of their recent acceleration could start posing tangible financial stability concerns."

In the first half of this piece, readers were subjected to an exposition on the status quo. We revisited the preposterous paradigm of “too big to fail”, where a Crime Syndicate of private sector mega-banks pronounced themselves so “systemically important” that (supposedly) we could not live without them.

If Americans were honest with themselves they would acknowledge that the Republic is no more. We now live in a police state. If we do not recognize and resist this development, freedom and prosperity for all Americans will continue to deteriorate. All liberties in America today are under siege. Reality is now setting in for America and for that matter for most of the world. We should not be discouraged. Enlightenment is not nearly as difficult to achieve as it was before the breakthrough with Internet communications occurred. I smell progress.

The last session in China on Friday provided an epic roller-coaster as exuberant retail BTFD'ers met their match with fading inflation and surging default risk concerns. The Monday session has opened to more of the same - with the Shanghai Composite opening down another 1.3% and erasing all the year's gains. As Shanghaio Daily reports, the Chinese property developer Kaisa Group Holdings (that we have discussed in detail here and who's next here) failed to repay a US$26 million bond coupon, making it the first Chinese property firm to default on dollar bonds.

It will be even more disruptive if some among them decide that the only reason for the failure of their collective delusion of grandeur is that they have not been deluded enough and that even more wild-eyed palliatives are therefore needed. Disruption on such a scale is not what the budding entrepreneur wants to contend with as he contemplates whether to risk both his capital and his reputation in launching or expanding a business, in ordering new equipment, or hiring new staff and so fostering a meaningful recovery. Disruption on such a scale is not something we should wish to inflict upon a system we have been both unable and unwilling to fully repair. Either way – damned if they do, damned if they don’t – disruption seems to be what we will get in the months ahead.

Currently there are a number of weak spots in the global financial edifice, in addition to the perennial problem children Argentina and Venezuela... The happy bubble in risk assets could presumably be derailed a bit if any of the possible worst case scenarios were to become manifest.

"Socialists/Communists try desperately to paint capitalism as the benefit of the greedy rich. People see the bankers as manipulating government but this is not inherent in capitalism, that is the corruption that infects all republics. A republic always devolves into an oligarchy, which is not freedom and is not capitalism."