Lehman

The evidence is mounting...

UK debt has continued to rise throughout the recovery and has soared to an eye-watering £1.48 trillion. In recent days, a slew of foreign exchange analysts have warned that the pound is vulnerable to falling in value. The incumbent government have not reined in public and trade deficits and have been accused of juicing the property market and the economy to postpone a crisis until after the election. 

Nothing exposes the fallacies of the Fed’s policies  like its horror at the prospect of raising rates even a little bit. Rates have been effectively zero for five years. 

Europe is going to begin both capital and border controls.

With escorts forced to travel and with spending on alcohol and gambling on the decline, there's still one area of the vice economy which offers a compelling investment opportunity and thanks to Bloomberg, we now know which 55 stocks to focus on in order to capitalize off of the rise of legalized marijuana. 

If you’re inclined to agree with the notion that trends in cash-based businesses are a good leading indicator when it comes to assessing where consumer spending (and thus the US economy) is headed going forward, you should expect the string of retail sales misses to continue because as Andrew Zatlin notes, spending on hookers, booze, and gambling is now sliding, forcing some escorts to take their show on the road.

If one compares the history of the Chinese and US housing bubbles, one observes that it was when US housing had dropped by about 6% following their all time highs in November 2005, that the US entered a recession. This is precisely where China is now: a 6.1% drop following the all time high peak in January of 2014. If the last US recession is any indication, the Chinese economy is now contracting! So much for hopes of 7% GDP growth this year.

This may take you the entire weekend to digest, but if you are an unsecured creditor/lender (have a checking, savings or demand deposit account) to a euro zone bank, I would consider it your fiduciary responsibility to yourself to sit down and parse this piece with care and aplomb!

"The last time China suffered such pace of capital outflows was during 2012 when $165bn of capital left during the last three quarters of that year. And before then it was during the Lehman crisis," JPM notes, in yet another sign that Beijing is stuck between a rock and a hard place as it battles to maintain the dollar peg in the face of slumping economic growth.

The economic data has continued to disappoint on virtually all fronts, earnings are weak and markets are grossly extended. Yet, investors are more bullish than ever...

Let’s talk about idiots. Somewhere out there, some absurdly well-paid banker just placed his investors’ capital in yet another financial instrument which is guaranteed to lose money: Australian government debt. For the first time in Australia, every single one of the 47 bidders offered a price so high that it implies a negative interest rate. Sadly, there are plenty of similarities between today’s negative interest rates and the early 2000s housing bubble. Only a fool believes that this time is different.

In 2010, contrary to nearly every pundit, analyst and economist popularly published, I proclaimed ZIRP would starve the banks. Fast forward 5 years and banks are looking famished and things are getting worse 'casue more bailouts are coming before we finish ending the last bailout program (ZIRP) - The Federal Reserve has decided to let U.S. banks make limited use of municipal bonds to meet liquidity requirements

Late last year, Grexit "expert" Willem Buiter decided that he was a greater expert on the topic of monetary metals than on geopolitics by stating that "Gold Is A 6,000 Year Old Bubble." Now, he has decided that after gold, it is best to just do away with any physical currency altogether and the time to ban cash has arrived.

• Euro zone bond yields sink to historic lows (Reuters)
• Clinton Foundation to Keep Foreign Donors (WSJ)
• Russia says U.S. forced it to act on Ukraine (Reuters)
• Bankers to China's Rescue (BBG)
• Saudi Arabia Adds Half a Bakken to Global Oil Market in a Month (BBG)
• Valuations of Hong Kong's stock market operator go interstellar (Reuters)
• Switzerland Attracts Fewer Firms as Politics Hurt Business Image (BBG)