Fail

Chaos reigns, with contradictory headlines pushing and pulling futures in any one direction, only for the next headline to undo the previous one. And only headline scanning frontrunning algos have any chance of trading any of this...

Fukushima will likely go down in history as the biggest cover-up of the 21st Century. Governments and corporations are not leveling with citizens about the risks and dangers; similarly, truth itself, as an ethical standard, is at risk of going to shambles as the glue that holds together the trust and belief in society’s institutions. Ultimately, this is an example of how societies fail.

Some people talk about peak energy (or oil) supply. They expect high prices and more demand than supply. Other people talk about energy demand hitting a peak many years from now, perhaps when most of us have electric cars. Neither of these views is correct. The real situation is that we right now seem to be reaching peak energy demand through low commodity prices.

And it started off all so well: the market, blissfully ignoring what we wrote just yesterday in Why The IMF Will Reject The Latest Greek Proposal In Just Two Numbers, was in full blown levitation mode overnight when it sent Japanese stocks to their highest close since 1996 (pre dot com) and with the Chinese central bank doing its best to keep levitating local stocks away from the abyss, pushing the SHCOMP up another 2.5%. Euro Stoxx 50 went from flat to down 1% and is bouncing. As BBG's Richard Breslow adds, predictably, the market is taking this as a ploy, not an end game. Of course, this is precisely the "Bear Stearns is fine" conventional wisdom that Cramer was spewing days before Bear failed because nobody could fathom how anyone can conceive of a worst case scenario. Only it isn't nobody: we reported before of a Goldman's "Conspiracy Theory" Stunner: A Greek Default Is Precisely What The ECB Wants. 

Watching as bankrupt (Western) governments pay near-zero or even negative rates of interest on their debts, we see a financial fraud and sham of unparalleled dimensions in the history of our nations. However, when these same regimes inflict these fraudulent interest rates on “savers” (i.e. their own populations), while double-digit inflation rages all around us, this is nothing less than a crime against humanity – with even worse crimes still to come.

Of this touted €35 billion in bailout funding which Greece finally admitted it will cross "red lines" to obtain, the country will be lucky to pocket a little over €3 billion. However, considering that is how much the Greek government has already extracted out of various public pensions and municipalities as part of its quasi-capital controls unrolled previously to preserve the illusion of solvency, after the hard fought "deal" finally is inked, the Greek population will be left with... €0.

Many people see national finances as an impenetrable fog of numbers and acronyms, which they feel is best left up to financial specialists to interpret for them. But try to see national finances as a henhouse, yourself as a hen, and financial specialists as foxes. Perhaps you should pay a little bit of attention - perhaps a bit more than one would expect from a chicken?

Rome didn't fall so much as erode away. That's the template for collapse. While collapse may be sudden, the decay that generated the collapse had been rotting away the foundation for years or decades.

Time for the musicians to learn the lessons that the video guys in Hollywood learned from them...

With an agreement in principle on the table, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras now turns his weary eyes towards Syriza party hardliners whose support he will need in order to pass the new deal through parliament. Should the political stalemate prove intractable, Greece may need to call a referendum or snap elections.

Before taking a look at Europe, an update on China. Just a few short hours ago, when looking at the bursting of the Chinese bubble where stocks were down between 3% and 5% across the board in the first post-holiday trading session after the worst week in 7 years, we said that "without assistance (levitation) from the same PBOC that just clamped down on liquidity, the China bubble has burst." And then as if by request, minutes later we got, drumroll, levitation and the stickiest stick-save by the PBOC seen in months, when the Shanghai Composite staged an unprecedented 7% surge from the lows to close 2.2% higher after tumbling as much as 5% earlier in the session. And just like that, faith in the "wealth effect" is preserved.

When systems are broke and broken, collapse is the only way forward.

While we have seen countless such reports in recent weeks and months, and take each and every one with a mine of salt, the reason ES algos just took out overnight highs was due to a BBC interview - which will be broadcast "shortly" - in which BBC economic editor Robert Peston was told by the Greek economic minister George Stathakis that "he believes Greece's new proposals to balance the government's books have broken the deadlock with its creditors." He said he expects eurozone government heads to issue a communique later today that will say there is now a basis for a formal agreement with Athens to complete the current bailout programme and release €7.2bn of vital funds.

The West is impotent to prevent Armageddon. It is up to Russia and China, and as Washington has framed the dilemma, Armageddon can only be prevented by Russia and China accepting vassal status. This is not going to happen. Why would any self-respecting people submit to the corrupt West? The hope is that Washington will cause its European vassals to rebel by pushing them too hard into conflict with Russia. If European politicians were to break from Washington’s hegemony and instead represent European interests, Washington would be deprived of cover for its war crimes. The breakdown of the neoconservative unipower model would then be apparent even to Washington, and the world would become a safer and better place.

The Greek case offers quite a relevant view into the world of 21st century monetary alchemy, because that is what it really amounts to.  What is left, however, is the worst of all cases; no recovery, no lending and now just more financial imbalance piled onto the same negative pressures and imbalances that never really went away. What is amazing is how short the attention of “investors” may be, and how they allow themselves to think monetary complexity passes for proficiency or even expertise despite all and continued observation otherwise.