India

The great problem with corporate capitalism is that publicly owned companies have short time horizons. As a consequence of the short-sightedness of reformers and Congress, the annual salaries of top executives were capped at $1 million. Amounts in excess are not deductible for the company as an expense. The exception is “performance-related” pay, which has no limit. The result is that the major part of executive pay comes in the form of performance bonuses. Performance means a rise in the price of the company’s shares. The gains in executive bonuses and shareholder capital gains were achieved by destroying the economic prospects of millions of Americans and by reducing the growth potential of the US economy. In the long-run this means the demise of the US as a world power...

"Following the RMB devaluation some weeks ago, markets have been erratic, fearful that the initial move was the beginning of a larger devaluation cycle that could disrupt global markets. Given how worried markets have been about China, a better-than-expected reserves number holds the potential for risk assets to rally as devaluation fears abate."

Because we know the mechanics of the currency war and the endless loop of competitive easing can be a bit confusing at times, we present the following simplified, circular flow chart from Morgan Stanley which should serve as a helpful guide to the never ending "beggar thy neighbor" loop.

News That Matters

Over the past several years, the two-day Jackson Hole symposium had garnered a particular prominence among economists and market watchers as this is where various key inflection points by the Fed were hinted, leaked or announced, including QE2, QE3 and the taper. This year, however, the gathering of central bankers in Teton County, will be less exciting due to the absense of the most important central banker in the world: Janet Yellen, which means the highlighter will be Vice-Chairman Stanley Fischer when he speaks tomorrow at 10:25pm  which will be a key event given the recent market turmoil.

"Given the size of foreign holdings of Asian equity and debt, should foreigners reduce their portfolio holdings by 2-3% over the course of a month, it would broadly offset the region’s current account surpluses, leaving their external balances in a shakier position. During the 'taper tantrum' period, foreigners sold markedly more than 3% of their portfolio holdings through June and July 2013, highlighting the risk that portfolio outflows could cause further Asian currency weakness."

Although we've talked plenty about the impact of the yuan deval on Asia-Pac and LatAm, we haven’t yet mentioned India where yesterday, in the midst of the turmoil, central bank governor Raghuram Rajan sought to calm nervous markets by reassuring the world that India is not, for now anyway, in any danger thanks to ample FX reserves and a low CA.Be that as it may, economic realities are economic realities and a currency war is a currency war, which is why, we suppose, the Indian government’s chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian thinks the country might just have to hit back.

Earlier this month whistleblowing platform, WikiLeaks, announced the launch of a new crowdfunding campaign to gain more information on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The campaign, launched on August 11, is designed to raise funds to offer whistleblowers a reward for any information about the impending trade, which has been negotiated in almost complete secrecy despite its global implications. To date, the campaign has raised $86,693.47 from 2,441 people, 79 percent of the $109,700 goal.

On the heels of China's "failure" to send the PBoC to the rescue with an RRR cut over the weekend, battered EM assets were hit hard again on Monday as stocks, bonds, and currencies all went into panic mode as the global meltdown gathers pace.

We warned on Friday, after last week's China rout, that the market is getting ahead of itself with its expectation of a RRR-cut by China as large as 100 bps. "The risk is that there isn't one." We were spot on, because not only was there no RRR cut, but Chinese stocks plunged, with the composite tumbling as much a 9% at one point, the most since 1996 when it dropped 9.4% in a single session. The session, as profile overnight was brutal, with about 2000 stocks trading by the -10% limit down, and other markets not doing any better: CSI 300 -8.8%, ChiNext -8.1%, Shenzhen Composite -7.7%. This was the biggest Chinese rout since 2007.

The world’s poorest countries are not characterized by naive trust in capitalism, but by utter distrust, which leads to heavy government intervention and regulation of business. Under such conditions, capitalism does not thrive and economies remain poor. Pope Francis is right to focus attention on the plight of the world’s poorest. Their misery, however, is not the consequence of unbridled capitalism, but of a capitalism that has been bridled in just the wrong way.

Coincidence? As China enters the currency wars, crushing carry around the world, it just happens that it also conducted a flight test of its new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) this month (and China’s acquisition of a MIRVed capability is one of the most dangerous nuclear weapons developments that no one is talking about).

"Lower commodity prices and falling farm incomes are continuing to pressure demand for agricultural machinery, with the declines most pronounced in higher-horsepower models. Conditions are more positive in the U.S. livestock sector, supporting some improvement in the sales of smaller sizes of equipment. Based on these factors, industry sales for agricultural equipment in the U.S. and Canada are forecast to be down about 25 percent for 2015."

America’s next president could be eased into office not just by TV ads or speeches, but by Google’s secret decisions, and only a few obscure researchers would know how this was accomplished.

...Perhaps the most effective way to wield political influence in today’s high-tech world is to donate money to a candidate and then to use technology to make sure he or she wins. The technology guarantees the win, and the donation guarantees allegiance, which Google has certainly tapped in recent years with the Obama administration...

In the end, Trump is what America had earned. Trump is what America deserved. Trump was our reckoning. And while his rise to power was born of our failings, it also forced us to find our strength. It’s amazing how adaptable we are as human beings, isn’t it? Trump saved us.