Gross Domestic Product

After the banks, after the city of Detroit it will be the USA that will be going bankrupt and filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. If only that were possible! But unfortunately it won’t be.

The flood myth is common in many cultures and civilizations around the world, in the belief that some greater deity will destroy the Earth for the wrong-doing that has been done and a new order will be created.

A new study carried out by the economists at the World Bank has examined the risks that coastal cities around the world face due to global warming’s effect on extreme weather events, and rising sea levels. The study determined the cost of flooding in 136 of the world’s largest coastal cities by matching average annual losses against the city’s gross domestic product (GDP), and predicted that by 2050 the cost could reach $1 trillion a year, if governments don’t start to take the “prophecies of doom” more seriously and prepare strategies to minimise the effects of severe weather and build flood defences. Over 40% of those costs will likely occur in just four global cities; New Orleans, Miami, and New York in the US, and then Guangzhou in China.

Albert Einstein, a man who knew a thing or two about celestial mechanics, supposedly once called compound interest "the most powerful force in the universe." While the remark was likely meant to be funny (astrophysicists can be hilarious), it sheds light on the often overlooked fact that small changes, over time, can yield enormous results. The same phenomenon may be at work in our economy. A minor, but persistent under-bias in the inflation gauge used in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) may have created a wildly distorted picture of our economic health. So the next time you see a GDP report remind yourself that the "deflator" should really be called the "distractor." It's there to distract you from the truth.

Yesterday I thought that Barack Obama was probably the worst President in the entire history of the USA given his record on unemployment and Gross Domestic Product since he has been in office. But, then again, on second thoughts...

South Africa supplies almost 60% of the world's platinum (including secondary supply) and 30% of the world's palladium (including secondary supply).

According to Johnson Matthey, platinum production fell almost 16% in 2012 while palladium production declined 10% last year alone.

With prices well below their recent highs, looming production cuts will leave markets tight supporting prices and likely leading to higher prices.

A record deficit in platinum supplies is set to push prices higher and demand is boosted by the new exchange traded fund (ETF).

A recent survey of asset managers globally, managing USD 27.4 trillion between them, found that 78% of defined-benefit plans would need annual returns of at least 5% per year to meet their commitments, while 19% required more than 8%, "a target of 5% per year can be reached but only by using leverage, shorting, and derivavtives." And sure enough, as Deutsche Bank (DB) reports, in short, investors have rarely been more levered than today! According to DB, a MoM change in NYSE margin debt >10% has to be taken as a critical warning signal as there are astonishing similarities in the sequence of events among all crises. As the S&P 500 just hit a new all-time high, investors might want to ask themselves when it is a good time to become more cautious – yesterday, in our view. Simply put, the higher margin debt levels rise, the more fragile the underlying basis on which prices trade; with even a less severe sell-off in equities capable of triggering a collapse.

So is President Obama the worst President in history?

We hear day in and day out that the economy here is going down the tubes, that the banks there are tying up the markets and exploiting them and that China is contracting, that Greece will be the ruin of the already-ruined European Union and the so the list goes on

Back in April 2012, Zero Hedge pointed out something rather disturbing for the European banking sector and defenders of the European monetary myth: the "aggregate shortfall of required stable funding Is €2.78 trillion" which was the number estimated by the BIS' Basel III rules needed to return to some semblance of balance sheet stability in Europe. More importantly, this was a number so big, it was obvious that there was only one way to deal with it: cover it up deeply under the rug and pray it never reemerged. What happened next was inevitable: Basel III's implementation was delayed as there was no way Europe's banks could satisfy their deleveraging requirements, while the actual capital shortfall hole became bigger and bigger. Today, 16 months later, the FT discovers what Zero Hedge readers knew long ago in "Eurozone banks need to shed €3.2tn in assets to meet Basel III." In other words, not only has Europe not fixed anything in the past year, but the liquidity tsunami injected by the central banks merely taped over the epic capital shortfall that just got epic-er, increasing from €2.8 trillion to €3.2 trillion, an increase of half a trillion to over $4 trillion in one short year.

The UK economy is recovery at its best rate since 2010 today with figures that are released by the British government via the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

It is well-known that as part of the S&P500's ascent to new records, investor margin debt has also surged to all time highs, surpassing for the past three months previous records set during both prior, the dot com and the housing, stock market bubbles. And as more attention has shifted to the topic of speculator leverage once more, inquiries into the correlation between bets upon bets and stock performance are popping up once more, in this case in a study by Deutsche Bank titled "Red Flag! - The curious case of NYSE margin debt." Of particular note here is a historical comparison of margin-debt warnings that have recurred throughout history but especially just before major stock bubble crashes, such as in the period 1999/2000, 2007/2008 and of course today, which have time and again been ignored. Here is what was said then, what is being said now, and what is ignored always.

The Russian Bear is stronger and more powerful than it has ever been before.  Sadly, most Americans don't understand this.  They still think of Russia as an "ex-superpower" that was rendered almost irrelevant when the Cold War ended.  And yes, when the Cold War ended Russia was in rough shape. Today, Russia is an economic powerhouse that is blessed with an abundance of natural resources.  Their debt to GDP ratio is extremely small, they actually run a trade surplus every year, and they have the second most powerful military on the entire planet.  Anyone that underestimates Russia at this point is making a huge mistake.  The Russian Bear is back, and today it is a more formidable adversary than it ever was at any point during the Cold War. Just check out the following statistics...

‘The bigger they are, the harder they fall’ has always been true and is seemingly even more so today with regard to the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China)

Evans, who is one of twelve Federal Reserve Presidents, believes that the economic indicators “are actually really better” and this signals a new, more firmer indication from the Fed that tapering is going to happen.