Fail

And so it will continue; as society evolves and progresses, the free market — so long as there is a free market — will naturally reallocate resources and labour based on society’s preferences. Without a free market — and since 2008 when the banks were bailed out and markets became junkiefied intervention-loving zombies, it is highly dubious that there is such a thing as a free market in the West — planners will just end up guessing at how to allocate resources, labour and capital, and producing monstrous misallocations of capital. The political nature of such reallocation is irrelevant; whether the centralists call themselves communists or socialists or environmentalists, their modus operandi is always the same: ignore society’s true economic preferences, and reallocate resources based on their own ideological imperatives (often for their own enrichment). The command economies of the 20th Century — particularly Maoist China and Soviet Russia — produced much greater pollution than the free markets. Under a free market, polluters who damage citizens or their property can be held to account in the market place, and through the court system.There is no such mechanism through the kind of command of economy that the centralists seem to wish to implement.

The answer is not central planning and government control. The answer is the free market.

The solution to centralized power can be summarized as the three Ds: diffusion, decentralization, and devolution of power to local communities.  The concentration of power into the hands of a few bureaucrats in Europe has failed, just as concentrating monetary power into the (privately owned) hands of Federal Reserve bureaucrats has failed. Enabled by a captured Central State, financial power has become concentrated in five banks, media control has been concentrated into six corporations, and so on, ad nauseum. Concentrating centralized political power inevitably spawns State/private-capital cartels that stripmine taxpayer/citizens. This cannot be avoided or staved off with 1,000-page legislative bills and 30,000 pages of regulations, all of which serve to consolidate the power of centralized government and private capital.

Here we come:

• MOODY'S CUTS 4 FIRMS BY 1 NOTCH
• MOODY'S CUTS 10 FIRMS' RATINGS BY 2 NOTCHES
• MOODY'S CUTS 1 FIRM BY 3 NOTCHES
• MORGAN STANLEY L-T SR DEBT CUT TO Baa1 FROM A2 BY MOODY'S
• MOODY'S CUTS MORGAN STANLEY 2 LEVELS, HAD SEEN UP TO 3
• MORGAN STANLEY OUTLOOK NEGATIVE BY MOODY'S
• MORGAN STANLEY S-T RATING CUT TO P-2 FROM P-1 BY MOODY'S
• BANK OF AMERICA L-T SR DEBT CUT TO Baa2 BY MOODY'S;OUTLOOK NEG

So the reason for the delay were last minute negotiations, most certainly involving extensive monetary explanations, by Morgan Stanley's Gorman (potentially with Moody's investor Warren Buffett on the call) to get only a two notch downgrade. And Wall Street wins again.

The primary "news" narrative may be the failure of the euro, but the master narrative is much, much bigger: centralization has failed. The failure of Europe's "ultimate centralization project" is but a symptom of a global failure of centralization. Though many look at China's command-economy as proof that the model of Elite-controlled centralization is a roaring success, let's check in on China's stability and distribution of prosperity in 2021 before declaring centralization an enduring success. The pressure cooker is already hissing and the flame is being turned up every day. What's the key driver of this master narrative? Technology, specifically, the Internet. Gatekeepers and centralized authority are no match for decentralized knowledge and decision-making. Once a people don't need to rely on a centralized authority to tell them what to do, the centralized authority becomes a costly impediment, a tax on the entire society and economy. In a cost-benefit analysis, centralization once paid significant dividends. Now it is a drag that only inhibits growth and progress. The Eurozone is the ultimate attempt to impose an intrinsically inefficient and unproductive centralized authority on disparate economies, and we are witnessing its spectacular implosion. Centralization acts as a positive feedback, i.e. a self-reinforcing loop that leads to a runaway death spiral.

Why hasn't anyone realized that JPM actually had negative revenue growth despite muppet maven analyst proclamations of the contrary?

The middle class has a gut feeling they are being screwed by somebody, they just can’t figure out who to blame. The ultra-wealthy elite keep up an endless cacophony of propaganda and misinformation designed to confuse an increasingly uneducated and willfully ignorant public while blurring the facts for those educated few capable of understanding the truth. They have been able to keep the masses dumbed down through government run education; distracted by sports, reality TV, Facebook, internet porn, and igadgets; lured by mass media messages of materialism; and shackled with the chains of debt used to acquire the goods sold by mega-corporations. We’ve become a society oppressed by a small faction of ultra-wealthy masters served by millions of impoverished, uneducated, sedated slaves. But the slaves are getting restless and angry. The illegally generated wealth disparity chasm is growing so large that even the ideologue talking head representatives of the elite are having difficulty spinning it. Even uneducated rubes understand when they are getting pissed on.

• German court may delay ESM bailout fund ratification (Reuters)
• New dangers lurk for rudderless Spain (Reuters)
• SEC Said to Depose SAC’s Cohen in Insider-Trading Probe (Bloomberg)
• With Europe broke, Asia is Wall Street's new dumb money: Riskier Bets Pitched To Asia's Rising Rich (WSJ)
• Spain expected to request bank aid after debt test (Reuters)
• Lawmakers Push for Overhaul of IPO Process (WSJ)
• Israel: "all options" open after Iran talks fail (Reuters)
• Canadian housing boom to grind to a halt (Financial Post)
• Italians Dodge Property Tax in Test for Monti’s Austerity (Bloomberg)
• ORCL earnings must have been good: Oracle CEO Ellison to Buy Most of Hawaiian Island Lanai (Bloomberg)

Capitalists have been gripped by 'systemic fear' making them worry not about the day-to-day movements of growth, employment, and profit, but about 'losing their grip'. An interesting recent article by the Real-World Economics Review on the Asymptotes of Power focuses on the fact that the capitalists are forced to realize that their system may not be eternal, and that it may not survive in its current form. The authors fear that, peering into the future, the '1%' realize that in order to maintain (or further increase) their distributional power (their net profit share of national income - which hovers at record highs) they will have to unleash even greater doses of social 'violence' on the lower classes. The high level of force already being applied makes them increasingly fearful of the backlash they are about to receive (think Europe to a lesser extent) and nowhere is this relationship between the wealthy capitalists and social upheaval more evident than in the incredible correlation between the Top 10% share of wealth and the percent of the labor force in prison. In order to have reached the peak level of power it currently enjoys, the ruling class has had to inflict growing threats, sabotage and pain on the underlying population. Although there are no hard and fast rules here, it is doubtful that this massive punishment can be increased much further without highly destabilizing consequences. This crisis is rooted in our past sins and we are unlikely to escape the punishment we justly deserve.

The always pragmatic Art Cashin summarizes today's 12:30pm FOMC announcement. In summary: "look for the Fed to dangle a big carrot - some semi-specific course of action that would be put in place if the labor markets continue to worsen. Net/net, he needs to keep the door wide open and maybe outline certain milestone “triggers” that will allow the Fed to act later in an election year without being accused of being overtly political." Said otherwise, the happy ending will likely be deferred one more time. The market may not be very happy.

XAU/USD Currency Chart – (Bloomberg)

Gold dipped today despite Wall Street hopes that the US Fed will embark on more QE. As we have said for some time QE3, or a new term for electronic and paper money creation, is a certainty and this will lead to inflation hedging and safe haven demand for gold. 

As expected, absolutely nothing new was disclosed in today's latest Jamie Dimon dog and pony show. To summarize what we did learn:

• "JPM is not too big to fail, but it is not at risk of failing unless the earth is hit by the moon"
• "We make CDS for the benefit of veterans, retirees, orphans and widows"
• "We only bought Bear's assets in a firesale while the Fed backstopped its liabilities, because the US government made us"
• "VaR can be made to show anything. We have a closet full of models"
• "Gambling is not investing"

Finally, Jamie Dimon once again refused to disclose the to-date losses on the CIO trade, but promises the firm will be profitable. Which only leaves one question open: how much "profit" from "reserve release" and "DVA", aka blowing out in JPM CDS, will the firm need to take to mask the CIO losses?

One European think tank which has been spot on in its skepticism over the past two years, is OpenEurope. Below they share their views on the next steps for Greece.

The most ironic moment in the Greek denouement will come when fractional reserve lending collapses onto itself:

"Stavropoulos and her friends have a new strategy to deal with their daily expenses. "We charge everything to our credit cards," she says. If the Greek banks fail, they won't be able to collect the outstanding debts, she argues. "If they want to mess me around, I will do the same to them."

In other words, Greece is now America, where the vast majority of people also live on credit alone, and have taken up the following motto when dealing with banks: "you pretend to be solvent, we pretend to have money." At the end of the day, it is all just one big global monetary circle jerk, only this time in reverse, as the snake of fractional reserve banking has finally started to eat its own tail. With people spending money they don't have, and in debt to their eyeballs to a banking system that itself is just as insolvent, is there any wonder that nobody really panics any more over daily threats the grand reset is finally coming?

All you need to know about today's prime time event.

Indeed, one has to wonder… just how does a €100 billion bailout solve Spain’s banking woes when its Prime Minister was suggesting the real damage is more to the tune of €500 billion in a text message to his Finance Minister??? Indeed, if Rajoy’s text is even remotely truthful, then we can assume that Spain’s real capitalization needs are multiples of the €100 billion bailout… something that the EU media is picking up on already. As one example, JP Morgan believes that when all is said and done Spanish banks could be looking at €350 BILLION in capital needs.