Meet The Press

Why There Is So Much Pro-War Reporting

Cheney Caught In Another Major Lie

When the Republican party agreed last week to a push back on the debt ceiling discussion by three months to May 19, virtually without a fight in a move that may presage what is set to become a quarterly can kicking exercise on the US credit card max, some were curious what the quo to this particular quid may be. Earlier today on Meet the press Paul Ryan explained: the pound of spending flesh demanded by the GOP in exchange for caving on yet another key GOP hurdle is, as our readers have known for over two weeks, the Sequester, which is set to hit on March 1 and possibly the stop-gap government funding on March 27, after which various government agencies will start shutting down. Both programs are set to kick in automatically as incremental spending cuts, chopping away even more basis points from the 2013 US GDP, unless the GOP votes affirmatively to extend them in what would then be seen as a move that destroys any last trace of leverage and credibility that GOP may have had.

If earlier media speculation that the cliff debate was seeing some progress would have sent stocks higher (assuming it was not a Sunday), the speaker's just released response to Obama's Meet The Press appearance would have deflated all hope of any progress. Remember: all is fair in political circus and Beltway theater.

More GOP-bashing, more scapegoating, more "we need to raise taxes to cover a few days of spending" (and pray America's rich have never heard of Belgium), more hope and optimism, in other words more of the same, yet nothing on the last minute executive order hiking Federal spending, nothing on the myth of what really constitutes the spending "cuts", or why it is all really all about preserving the lie of a fair and efficient market: as if more than 10% of the US population actually cares where the DJIA closed on Friday. The full Obama Meet the Press interview below.

• U.S. Family of Mao’s General Assimilates, Votes for Obama (Bloomberg)
• Iron ore prices hit eight-month high (FT)... four months after plunging and crushing iron ore miners
• Obama seeks 60 Senate votes for cliff deal (MarketWatch)
• Need. Moar. InfinitQEeee: Japan PM adviser urges unlimited BOJ easing, higher price goal (Reuters)
• Yen Touches 16-Month Low Versus Euro Before Japan CPI (BBG)
• China consumers driving economic rebound (Reuters) - ot just year end window dressing to accompany the new Politburo
• Rajaratnam agrees to pay $1.5 million disgorgement in SEC case (Reuters)
• France should review 2013 deficit target with EU partners (Reuters)
• Monti-led poll alliance takes shape (FT)
• Bersani wants growth-oriented Europe (FT)

As the Fiscal Cliff discussions get progressively more acrimonious, more people are being reminded that the new and improved $16.4 trillion debt ceiling, which the US will breach in a few days, is just as important, and just as much at an impasse. Which is why the Treasury just opined on the issue, by openly supporting the "McConnell Provision" and in doing so may have made any future Cliff/Ceiling discussions more difficult as the US has effectively invoked the nuclear option, aka a Presidential Veto to effectively elimiante the debt ceiling, something which will antagonize the GOP to such an extent any potential Fiscal Cliff deal may become unfeasible. The market is hardly happy that the already record polarity in Congress is about to get even worse as a result of this hardline stance, and just took another big leg lower.

Here is a summary of where the world stands:

• Unable to reach a compromise over the weekend, South Africa is now in an all out labor strike, with the police again firing rubber bullets at miners with lethal escalation guaranteed
• Back from vacation, the once again penniless citizens of Spain, Greece, and Portugal have resumed protesting austerity
• US embassies attacked, in many cases with numerous casualties, in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan, Lebanon, India, Balgadesh, Indonesia, and others.
• Japan "appropriating" China-contested islands provoking a firestorm of retaliation including demands for "war with Japan"
• The Japanese ambassador to China dying mysteriously
• Netanyahu telling Meet the Press Iran will have a nuke in six-seven months and must be stopped beforehand
• Warships from more than 25 countries, including the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, launching a military exercise in the Straits of Hormuz
• A third US aircraft - the CVN-74 Stennis - carrier is en route to Iran with an ETA of about 10 days
• And finally, a potential catalyst to light this whole mess on fire, Iran's Revolutionary Guard announcing that its troops are now on the ground in Syria.

"Yellow journalism" – which seems almost the only kind we have these days dominates our newsflow, but the truth is out there. As with everything else though, it's subject to Pareto's Law. So, 80% of what's out there is crap, and 80% of what's left is merely okay. But that remaining 4% of quality, uncensored, free information flow is extremely valuable. The terminal corruption of the major news corporations and the lack of interest in seeking the truth among the general population augurs very poorly for the prospects of the US and the current world order. This creates speculative opportunities, but prospects for mainstream investments are not good. Western civilization is truly in decline and far down the slippery slope.

Frequent readers know that Citi's Matt King is our favorite analyst from the bailed out firm. Which is why we read his latest just released piece with great interest. And unfortunately for our European readers, if King is right, things in Europe are going to get far worse, before they get better, if at all. Because while one may speculate about political jawboning, the intricacies of summit backstabbing, and other generic nonsense, the one most important topic as discussed lately, is that terminal event that any financial system suffers just before it implodes or is bailed out: full scale bank runs. It is here where King's observations, himself a member of a TBTF bank which would likely be dragged down in any cash outflow avalanche, are most disturbing: "In Greece, Ireland, and Portugal, foreign deposits have fallen by an average of 52%, and foreign government bond holdings by an average of 33%, from their peaks. The same move in Spain and Italy, taking into account the fall that has taken place already, would imply a further €215bn and €214bn in capital flight respectively, skewed towards deposits in the case of Spain and towards government bonds in the case of Italy....Economic deterioration, ratings downgrades and especially a Greek exit would almost certainly significantly accelerate the timescale and increase the amounts of these outflows." That's right: according to Citi there is a distinct likelihood that, all else equal, the domestic bank sector in Spain will see another €215 billion in deposit outflows.

But Bill Black Demolishes Dimon's Fake PR Campaign

Today's Meet The Press PR damage control campaign orchestrated on behalf of Jamie Dimon by the fawning press was just another attempt at redirection, in which a faux contrite Jamie Dimon promises that as a result of being '100% wrong' about his prior "Tempest in a Teapot" description of the Bruno Iksil debacle, he has learned his lesson, and in tried and true American fashion deserves a second chance. The rest was filler. What was not said is that the entire business model of the modern US banking edifice, where due to the Net Interest Margin limitations imposed by ZIRP, is one of prop trading as being a glorified hedge fund is the only way the banks can generate a rate of return above their cost of capital. What was also not said was the glaring lies by Blythe Masters from a month ago who swore up and down to CNBC that JPM does not engage in prop trading. What was also not said is that contrary to "conventional wisdom" where a few prop traders have been sacked (most likely due to not taking enough risk) prop trading is alive and well across Wall Street, even if it has been largely rebranded as 'flow trading' - just as the high freaks are scrambling to come up with a new name for HFT because that will make all the difference. What was also not said, nor discussed, is why anyone would trust or invest in these money center banks when their balance sheets are so opaque, even their CEOs flip flop within a month of what is really happening, with accounting standards so poor, that nobody can figure out what they are investing in, and why Mark-to-Market is still halted (Aren't banks finally quote unquote healthy?). Finally, the most important thing not said, was Glass-Steagall, the one law whose overturning allowed the commingling of deposits and hedge fund activity courtesy of Gramm-Leach-Bliley, hilarious called the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999. If America is to have even a remote hope of returning to normalcy, Glass-Steagall has to be reinstated. Which is why nobody brought it up on MTP: neither the anchor who is accountable to an organization which needs the status quo for advertising revenues, nor the hungry for TV exposure senator, nor the DCF-expert access journalist. Nobody.

The Congressional Budget Office has just released three very telling infographics which, unintentionally, spell out a pretty dreary picture of US government finances. At the very bottom corner is a most disingenuous statement that says ”Net Interest not included.”  In other words, they didn’t bother to include the $454,393,280,417.03 (nearly half a trillion dollars) that the US government spent on interest last year. To put this number in perspective, the US paid more in interest last year than the entire GDP of Saudi Arabia, or the combined GDPs of the smallest 82 economies in the world. Not exactly a trivial number… unless you’re Tim Geithner. A few days ago, Geithner quipped on NBC’s Meet the Press that there is ”no risk” of the US turning into Greece over the next few years due to such extraordinary fiscal imbalances. This is the same guy who said there was no risk of the US losing its AAA credit rating, and that inflation on a global level is “not high on the list of concerns…” Whether it’s lies, ignorance, or arrogance is irrelevant at this point. The situation is what it is. It’s not going to go away just because the political leadership denies it. Each one of us has a choice. We can either bury our heads in the sand, just like they’re doing… or embrace reality and take control of our own financial futures.

While the chief baddy on SOPA – Lamar Smith – is a Republican, it is really the Democrats who are the ones still trying to censor the web

The political press has been abuzz with over the much anticipated signing of the NDAA by Barack Obama on Saturday: this move was not surprising because Obama had already made it clear he would go ahead and enact the law, even though he added some 'stern' language that is supposed to legitimize what some say is a precursor to the establishment of martial law in the US. To wit: "The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it. In particular, I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists." And yet he signed it (full text of Obama's statement on the NDAA, sent while on vacation in Hawaii, can be found here). Perhaps the reason for that unpopular move were some of the more nuanced contents of the Bill, among which is the decision to fully boycott not only Iran, but any bank, including central bank, and other financial institution found to deal with Iran. Which incidentally means most of Russia and China, and probably half of Europe, as all petrodollars generated by the country's petroleum export industry first have to make their way via the international financial community back into the country. The history buffs out there will realize that this form of couched antagonism is nothing short of the US approach to Japan during World War II, which was essentially provoked into attacking Pearl Harbor - read the details of the October 7, 1940 McCollum Memo here, and especially bullet point 10. And unfortunately, it appears that within 24 hours or so, Iran may have already taken the bait. As Reuters and BBC report, Iran has both test-fired a medium-range SAM during the ongoing wargames exercise previously discussed here, as well as made a formal announcement it has made and tested domestically made nuclear fuel rods: precisely the event that the Israel or US-borne Stuxnet was designed to prevent. So as the tennis match of escalation keeps on growing the ball is now once again in the US' court.