Fail

What makes for a good investment is price. Price is everything. You need to receive value in excess of the price paid. An investment’s value is the amount of real cash its underlying assets can reasonably be expected to deliver to its shareholders in the future, discounted for its risk – period. The investment’s price will either be higher than its value (an uncompensated risk), the same as (neutral) or lower than its value (a compensated risk). But since value is an imprecise measurement, the best one can do is to build in a margin of safety by buying investments that are at deep discounts to a reasonable estimated value. Too many investors let an investment’s short-term price movements, or perceptions of short-term price movements drive their decisions. But since short-term price moves are unknowable, irrelevant and independent of investment merits, this is not worthy of any time spent analyzing. If short-term price moves were knowable, then a cadre of top-performing chartists and market technicians would have far greater net worths than Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and the Saudi Royal Family. They would need only apply leverage to their process and repeat it a few times in order to accrue hundreds of billions of dollars. Question: How many market technicians occupy the Forbes 400? Answer: Zero. Why? Because successfully guessing future price moves based on charts, MACD indicators or tea leaves is not a repeatable process. Investors who do this generally have poor outcomes because they are pursuing answers to the wrong question.

The right question is: where is the value?

Did a BIS gold trader just spill coffee on his keyboard not once but twice, or did we just have another ye olde algo trick of stopping the hunts (get it?) out of all marginal players? We will never know. What we will know is that paper prices of physical objects are becoming increasingly more meaningless.

As Predicted Last Year, The French and the Greeks Are In A Race For The Biggest Bank Run! Each stock showcased has led the drop as well...

While some have discussed the game-theoretic dilemma that Germany faces relative to the 'rest' of Europe, David Santschi of TrimTabs (Biderman's balder buddy) digs into the details of a potential solution (hard as it may be) as Europe's fatal flaw (the currency unionization - but not fiscal or banking union -  of a group of nations with strong sovereign identities) becomes all too real. The imbalances are so great right now that the only solution David sees is to breakup the Euro-zone, and simply put the best way to achieve a break up would be for Germany to leave voluntarily - establishing a strong currency and in turn saving itself financially. While not minimizing this as a 'good' or 'easy' solution - many people would lose their livelihoods and many would lose a lot of money - it is the only practical solution that he sees (as Eurobonds, banking unions, and fiscal unions are simply impractical in terms of both effect and timeliness). Quoting W.C.Fields with regard the European press' and politicians' efforts towards investors: "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit!", they correctly explain that Europe is a solvency problem and not a currency problem. In one of the sanest (and least hyperbolic) discussions of the reality in Europe, Bidermantschi note that it appears investors have finally wised up to the fact that "bailout loans are nothing but a shell game replacing old debt with new debt" and the heretical proposition that central banks perhaps cannot solve all the world's problems.

If we understand the difference between parasitic wealth and real value/wealth creation, we can properly align the tax structure to reality: the tax on authentic wealth creation should be low, to encourage wealth creation and the employment (broad-based wealth creation) generated by legitimate value creation. We must also understand that the Central State now protects and enables parasitic skimming as the primary function of the nation's financial system. Thus the entire financial system is parasitic on the wealth of the nation. Financial parasitic incomes should be taxed at 99%. If Mitt Romney reshuffles assets created by others and skims $100 million, 99% of that parasitic wealth should be returned to the nation via taxes. The parasite still gets to keep $1 million, more than enough to live well but not enough to buy the presidency, the Congress and the regulatory machinery of the Central State.

The crony capitalist show must go on: those bribed by Jamie Dimon are about to ask question of the same person. That this theatrical hearing will be a farce is by now well known by absolutely everyone, as confirmed by the rumor that late last night someone ordered 22 copies of "Credit Default Swaps for Bought and Paid For Senatorial Muppet Idiots" from Amazon.com. In the off chance Dimon slips and does say something of significance, here is your chance to follow the next 2 hours live. Everyone else will be.

Testimony of Jamie Dimon: "Listen up you morons..."

News & headlines from the day

Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, thinks Europe needs a unified banking system.

But how can financing be a solution for a Zone with a fatal fundamental flaw? Banking cannot save the euro-Zone. This proposal is only the distraction du jour.

Europe continues be unable and unwilling to look at the core problem in the Zone which has morphed into huge competitiveness differences that are creating havoc.

The easiest fix for this is a break up. For the Zone to survive this will require a lot of cooperation and frankly it does not seem close to doing it.

Giddens ought to approach the bankruptcy judge and suggest that they both apply to Judge Rakoff for the appointment of a receiver in the MF Global bankruptcy. 

As Many Have Predicted for Years

Last Saturday, it is being reported that U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary John Bryson was involved in two auto accidents that may have been related to a seizure he suffered during the incidents.  According to CNN, Bryson is currently under investigation for a felony hit and run.  It is unclear at this point if his health played a part in either accident.  Police currently don’t believe drugs or alcohol were involved.  Whatever the case, Bryson’s insider status will likely help him escape any significant legal trouble that could arise from the episode.  That’s just how plutocracies roll. Perhaps now is a good time to analyze the oxymoronic reasoning behind a government bureaucrat in charge of regulating commerce. Those who had their vehicle plowed into by his Lexus are not the only ones who have suffered at the hands of Secretary Bryson.  It is the businesses and innovations that will never see the light of day due to the endless amounts of regulatory red tape which permeate from Washington into the economy like a deadly plague.

While the short-term benefits can be weighed against any long-term solution a number of ways, Nigel Farage provides not just the most colorful summation of situation but also the most succinct when he refers to the 'madness' of 'intervention to keep the Euro alive' as "reinforcement of failure". The better, and braver, in his opinion, thing to do, is to recognize that those Mediterranean countries should never have joined the Euro in the first place. As we have stated again and again, by kicking-the-can once again to prop up the euro-zone with bailout-after-bailout, all we are doing is prolonging the misery. The discussion on Sky News digs into the collateral-damage 'strawman' - which will happen anyway - and then 'Red' Ken Livingstone (an infamously socialist-leaning British politician who advocated for Britain's joining the Euro when it was formed) now somewhat notably agrees with Nigel that we are "locking Europe into a decade of permanent economic malaise" adding that once the smaller countries were added to the core, "it was doomed to fail". The two 'odd fellows' continue on to discuss the analogy of the USA to a United States of Europe noting that it took a civil war and a century before a common monetary and fiscal policy was accepted, adding simply that Europe's "nations will not give up their sovereignty".

"The global banking system is functionally insolvent and will fail without exogenous policy action" is how QBAMCO's Paul Brodsky begins his latest treatise noting that asset monetization (and in, particular, gold monetization) would solve many more problems than it would create. The negatives would merely recognize the balance sheet damage already done and beginning to be manifest (first, in the private sector and now, increasingly in the public sector). The global economy is threatened because, in real terms, it continues to misallocate capital and rolling unfunded debts and debating in the political sphere over the merits and risks of unfunded growth or policy-administered national austerity programs is a futile endeavor. The math suggests strongly neither can work. Brodsky is convinced policy-administered asset monetization would stop the global financial system from seizing, restore sorely needed economic balance, and reset commercial incentives so that real growth can once again gain traction.

• Obama Seeking Ally on Europe Finds Merkel a Tough Sell (Bloomberg) - but he has an election to win
• China rate cut sparks fears of grim May data (Reuters)
• China faces stimulus dilemma  (FT)
• Papademos warns of Grexit vortex (FT)
• China’s Shipyards Fail to Win Orders as Greek Owners Shun Loans (Bloomberg)
• Rajoy Holds Bank Talks With EU Leaders as Fitch Downgrades Spain (Bloomberg)
• Capital Rule Is One Size Fits All (WSJ)... now the modest question of where to get the $3.9 trillion in capital
• Merkel Pokes at Cameron With Backing for Two-Speed Europe (Bloomberg)
• City safeguards set Britain at odds with EU (FT)
• Bernanke says Fed to act if Europe crisis deepens (Reuters)