Greece

In a word, the official unemployment rate is now in what has been the macroeconomic end zone for the past 45 years. Might this suggest that the emergency is over and done? Self-evidently, the only “incoming” information that can matter between now and next Wednesday is the stock market averages.  If the Fed takes no action in September, it’s hard to imagine any economic or jobs report that wouldn’t support ZIRP or near-ZIRP in the minds of the money printers and the Wall Street gamblers they pleasure.

"We believe a global recession scenario has become the most likely global macroeconomic scenario for the next two years or so. Helicopter money drops would be the best instrument to tackle a downturn in all DMs. We expect to see QE #N, where N could become a large integer, as part of the monetary policy response in the US and the UK, and QEE2 in Japan." 

Not to be outdone by his partner Charlie Munger (who offended many with his comments that "gold is a great thing to sew onto your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939,"), Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett - having already taken on Europe, comparing Greece to a "dog peeing on the carpet" of Europe, suggesting Germany stop "rewarding behavior you want to get rid of" - takes aim at the military. Speaking on Bloomberg TV, the octagenerian oracle of offense just unfriended every American veteran...

A baby boy turned to flotsam. Washed up on the shore, face down in the mud. Warmongers in government and the media are perversely but predictably trying to conscript Aylan’s corpse into their march to escalation. They are contending that Aylan died because the West has not intervened against Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad, and that it must do so now to spare other children the same fate. Um, no, Aylan’s family were Kurdish refugees from Kobani who had to flee that city when it was besieged, not by Assad, but by Assad’s enemy: ISIS.

The refugee crisis in Europe - sparked in large part by Syria’s four-year old, bloody civil war - recently reached a tipping point and the scramble to find a workable solution both in terms of allocating asylum seekers and finding the funds to accommodate them has become the single most pressing challenge facing European policy makers. Amid the chaos, Goldman may have found the silver lining. 

While we wait for Greece to pick a side between the US and Russia by either allowing Moscow to use its airspace on the way to supplying Assad at Latakia or else snubbing the Kremlin and jeopardizing a potentially lucrative gas deal, at least one country has been quick to make a decision.

Today the US made a dramatic diplomatic escalation ahead of what is now assured to be the second major showdown between the US and Russia in Syria, over a Qatari gas pipeline no less, when according to Reuters, it asked Greece to deny Russia the use of its airspace for supply flights to Syria, a Greek official said on Monday, after Washington told Moscow it was deeply concerned by reports of a Russian military build up in Syria.

Five years of austerity, higher taxes, deep cuts in public spending, record suicide rates, and homelessness beyond anyone's worst forecasts... is it any wonder that, as Gallup reports, a majority of adults in the country - 55% - said in a poll that they think converting from the Greek drachma to the euro in 2001 has harmed Greece.

Don’t expect to see any end to desperation and instability in MENA, but do expect new demographic crises out of other regions: Indonesia, Ukraine, Pakistan, West Africa, and Brazil, with its cratering economy. It’s not inconceivable that China might bust apart politically, with centrifugal consequences. The global economy is contracting. We have indeed attained the limits to growth. Cheap oil is bygone and the capital infrastructure we have won’t run on expensive oil — including the oil industry itself. New technology or further central bank legerdemain is not going to fix that. We’re in population overshoot and a scramble is underway to bail on the places that just can’t support the people who live there. National boundaries will be defended. Sentimentalists will have to step aside. History is not a bedtime story about bunnies and kittens.

News That Matters

Banks in the US and Europe are trying to develop a cashless transactions system. The concept is to establish a comprehensive ledger for a business or a person that records everything received and spent, and all of the assets held – mortgages, investment portfolios, debts, contractual financial obligations, and anything else of market value. There would be no need for cash because the ledger would tell you and anyone you were considering a transaction with how much is available and would be transactable at any specific moment. This is not a dreamy idea. Blythe Masters is leading a new business effort to develop a universal cashless system. Not only is she gathering significant investor interest, but the Federal Reserve and various US Government agencies have become keenly interested in the potential usefulness and efficiencies of a universal cashless system

We can look at official statistics to get a sense of inflation, but these numbers are totally meaningless. When I was a kid, my father earned enough money to support his family with a single salary. We had a house, a car, an occasional vacation, and we never missed a meal. All on one income. But those days are long gone. Now it’s almost obligatory to live in a dual-income household just to make ends meet. The official statistics never paint this picture.

With the refugee crisis in Europe reaching epidemic levels and European leaders impotent, it appears an Egyptian Billionaire has a solution. As Al-Arabiya reports, Naguib Sawiris has offered to buy an island off Greece or Italy and develop it to help hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from Syria and other conflicts.

Large pools of gold in indebted nations will be vulnerable. Pool accounts, digital gold bullion vaulting providers and depositories in the UK and the US might have their companies and assets nationalized and have their clients gold and silver bullion confiscated.

Moments ago, US equity futures tumbled to their lowest level in the overnight session, down 22 points or 1.1% to 1924, following both Europe (Eurostoxx 600 -1.8%, giving up more than half of yesterday's gains, led by the banking sector) and Japan (Nikkei -2.2%), and pretty much across the board as DM bonds are bid, EM assets are all weaker, oil and commodities are lower in what is shaping up to be another EM driven "risk off" day. Only this time one can't blame the usual scapegoat China whose market is shut for the long weekend.