CRAP

Ukraine and Thailand are in the midst of chaotic turmoil right now, characterized by riots and violent clashes between protestors and police. It reminds us of the old quote from Louis XVI upon being informed in 1789 that the French people had stormed the Bastille. “Is it a revolt?”, the King asked; “No, sire,” the duke replied, “It is a revolution.” History is packed with examples of how people rise up in the streets whenever economic conditions deteriorate. The French Revolution in 1789 is one famous example where the people finally reached their breaking points after nearly starving to death. In our system we award a tiny elite with the power to kill, steal, wage war, educate our children, and conjure unlimited quantities of paper money out of thin air. This is just plain silly. The real answer is within ourselves.

While the eyes of the world were focused on the now infamous "Credit Equals Gold #1" Chinese wealth management product - it's imminent default and last-minute bailout by 'investors' unknown - the coal industry in China continued to collapse (as we noted here). We noted at the time how bailing out current high-yield product investors would merely amplify the problems down the line and it seems that Chinese authorities have heard that message. As Reuters reports, a high-yield investment product backed by a loan to a debt-ridden coal company failed to repay investors when it matured last Friday, state media reported on Wednesday.

Last year we exposed the reasoning for the extremely predictable cyclicality in US macro-economic surprise data. Each year of the last few, the third quarter has exhibited unusual "strength" surprising 'economists' - thanks to government agencies executing their final budgets to use up all their allotments - only to stabilize in Q4 and the fade rapidly in Q1. 2013 was "different" as we had the government shutdown which threw the seasonal pattern off... but once the agencies were re-opened, the spice did flow and we got what is now clearly not a sustainable 'surprise' in growth but a lagged cyclical bounce. However, the lag introduced by the shutdown is now catching up to us - so it is different this time (2mo. lag) but the same...

While The White House crows of the falling unemployment rate (which everyone now knows is entirely useless as an indicator of anything), the rapid-drop in this indicator is a major headache for the Fed. While forward-guidance is crucial in replacing the "common knowledge" that the Fed remains easier-for-longer as bond-buying is tapered, despite it's dismissal by vice-chair Stan Fischer and BoE's Carney (and even an almost admission of its weakness by Bernanke), Yellen faces a market that is betting massively (actually in record size) that short-term rates will rise and Fed heads like Lacker shift to "more qualitative ways" of maintaining the punchbowl.

Is it any wonder Mario Draghi didn't lift a quantitative-easing finger this week? Despite record unemployment, record (and disastrous youth unemployment), record suicide rates, record non-performing loans, and an inextricably-linked banking system facing $3 trillion in exposure to emerging markets... Spanish bond yields have collapsed to their lowest since 2006 (and Italian close behind). With an entirely broken transmission mechanism of monetary policy, it seems the "market" for European bonds knows no bounds as spreads on the riskiest sovereigns drop to pre-crisis levels and 10Y Spain yields are now lower than 30Y US Treasuries.

I predicted this clearly, with loads of evidence, last spring. I even tipped the SEC/UK authorities. Tthe chickens come home to roost. Let it be known, Wall Street's margin IS my business model!!!

From hashish to drinking cheap whiskey in Chiang Mai clubs, the following clip rounds up the 'best of' Marc Faber over the last few years...

• On the elites - "I am not sure the thinkers are in Davos"
• On the media - "you are an optimist, keep on dreaming... us foreigners just laugh"
• On solutions - "cut government expenditures by 50%; fire half the government... including the President"
• On Americans - "people in the western world have abandoned personal responsibility"
• On government - "who would have faith in the US administration, certainly not someone who thinks"
• On Gold - "not to own gold is to trust central banks, and that you don't want to do in your life"

2013 already saw violent unrest in some of the most stable countries in the world like Singapore and Sweden, all underpinned by absolute disgust for the status quo. Whether today or tomorrow, this year or next, there will be a reckoning. The system is far too broken to repair, it must be reset. It’s simply absurd to look at the situation objectively and presume this status quo can continue indefinitely... that this time is different… that we’re somehow special and immune to universal principles.

How many people in the financial services industry understand how the financial system works?

We've all experienced it, we are dealing with someone who has all sorts of masters degrees, PhD's, and doesn't know the Federal Reserve is a private corporation, and even doesn't know the product their company is selling.

In the spirit of professionalism, we must keep these quotes anonymous, but certainly if you have survived long enough in Finance or read the Financial news regularly, you will not need any references because you've probably heard it before.

Even Before 9/11, NSA Knew In Real-Time Which Countries Both Parties to Phone Calls Were In

There are those who would blame the people who have chosen to live far beyond their means. They have a point. The financialization of America; where Wall Street con artists,shysters and swindlers rake in billions for shuffling paper and making risky casino bets; mega-corporations ship blue collar middle class jobs to Asia in an all out effort to increase quarterly profits; politicians spend future generations into the poor house in order to get re-elected; and the Federal Reserve purposefully creates monetary inflation to prop up the corrupt system; has systematically destroyed the working middle class and created generations of debt slaves. The American people have been foolish, infantile, and easily duped. But it is clear to me who the real culprits in our long downward spiral have been. Lord Acton stated the obvious, many years ago:

 “The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.”

? John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

In the 1st installment of this article – May the Odds Ever Be in Your Favor – The Reaping, we addressed how wealth inequality created by men rigging the system and utilizing media propaganda ultimately leads to rebellion. In Part 2, we will show how hope and defiance can ignite the flame of liberty in the minds of men. Edward Snowden has ignited that flame.  A Lot of Hope is Dangerous... Linear thinking old timers are likely to scoff at the notion that some trilogy of novels for teenagers could capture the mood of the time in a way that explains how the people of this country will respond to the current worsening Crisis. History is cyclical and we’ve returned to a time where leaders will step forward to lead and brave heroes step forward to fight. The future of the country hangs in the balance.

Just as in the 1930s the Fed fueled deflation by not making credit available, today the opposite seems to be the case – low rates are fueling deflation and preventing markets from clearing.

You can’t overstate the baleful effects for Americans of living in the tortured landscapes and townscapes we created for ourselves in the past century. This fiasco of cartoon suburbia, overgrown metroplexes, trashed small cities and abandoned small towns, and the gruesome connective tissue of roadways, commercial smarm, and free parking is the toxic medium of everyday life in this country. Its corrosive omnipresence induces a general failure of conscious awareness that it works implacably at every moment to diminish our lives. It is both the expression of our collapsed values and a self-reinforcing malady collapsing our values further. The worse it gets, the worse we become. The citizens who do recognize their own discomfort in this geography of nowhere generally articulate it as a response to “ugliness.” This is only part of the story. The effects actually run much deeper.

Now I was a kid once too, and I liked toys as much as the next child, but over the years, I have grown increasingly aware of the fact of how short-lived the pleasure of Getting Stuff is. Whether it's a toy as a child or a sports car as an adult, once you've actually got whatever it is that you thought you couldn't live without, well, it just sort of blends into normalcy.