Meltdown

"...the 'Ice Age' of low rates and low growth for a long time – as predicted by many analysts and economists – won’t happen. Instead, a crisis will cause a crash on Wall Street. The banks will go broke. The credit system will seize up. People will line up at ATMs to get cash and the cash will quickly run out. This will provoke the authorities to go full central bank retard. They will flood the system with “money” of all sorts. The ice will melt into a tidal wave of hyperinflation."

It is hard to believe that in these allegedly enlightened times this question even needs to be asked. Are there really educated adults who believe that by dropping helicopter money conjured from thin air, the central bank can actually make society wealthier? Well, yes there are. They spread this lunacy from the most respectable MSM platforms.

On a year-over-year basis, average spending in May of 2015 was $7 less than 2014, and nearly identical to  2013, when the US unemployment rate was nearly 3% higher, and the economy was supposedly sputtering badly enough for the Fed to launch QE3. Finally, as the chart below shows, this was the biggest month of May consumer spending drop in nominal dollar terms since the 2008 financial crisis.

We have long argued that the most likely endgame for Greece is that PM Tsipras caves to the troika, compromises on the government’s ‘red lines’ and risks a government reshuffle on the way to a third program, thus averting a euro exit and keeping Greece from descending into a drachma death spiral, even as the “solution” effectively strips the Greek people of their right to choose how they want to be governed — a tragically absurd outcome in what is the birthplace of democracy. It now appears that scenario is set to unfold.

Promptly upon release of today’s GDP update, Steve Liesman and his Wall Street economist pals spent 10 minutes bloviating about why the negative print should be completely ignored. The MSM cheerleaders like Liesman and his pals cannot see the handwriting on the wall because central bank bubble finance has essentially abolished the old rules of macro-economics. Someone should tell them that an economic deja vu is about to happen... all over again!

Perhaps the most concerning is the fact that should a “systemically important” financial entity go bust, any deposits above $250,000 located therein could be converted to equity… at which point if the company’s shares, your wealth evaporates.

Successive rounds of government bond monetization have worked to destroy the Treasury, JGB, and EU core markets while the post-crisis regulatory regime has seen dealers back away from providing liquity in the secondary market for corporate credit just as the very same monetary policy that broke government bond markets has led to an explosion of new issuance from corporate borrowers, creating the potential for a self-feeding catastrophe in the event of selloff in corporate bonds.

On Tuesday, Deutsche Bank agreed to a $55 million SEC settlement tied to allegations it hid billions in losses by mismarking its crisis-era derivatives book. The bank has always contended its valuation methodologies were sound. Here is the real story...

We all know the difference between reality and wishful thinking. Many of us know just how quickly the jaws of reality can crush the life out of unicorn and fairytale stories when fiction is used to cover the facts. Where the businesses and happy customers that are supposedly represented on an income statement turn out to be little more than the Non-GAAP application of a fairy’s wand and pixie dust. However, this doesn’t stop people from buying in (literally) to the illusion. And what has far more onerous consequences is when the story tellers themselves begin to believe their own works of fiction.

A lot of people have got very excited as the price of WTI has bounced back from the lows reached a few months ago. If oil fails to break and hold above $62 this time around, however, their enthusiasm could well be misplaced, as the fundamental factors that caused the price decline in the first instance are still in place.

Janet Yellen at the Federal Reserve believes that the partying on Wall Street and in the financial institutions may “lead to trouble”.

The ECB warns Athens that Greece is rapidly approaching the "end game", as Tsipras sticks to 'red line' rhetoric. Meanwhile, FinMin Varoufakis claims the country will pay wages and pensions this month, but a leaked IMF memo indicates Greece will default on June 5 if it does not strike a deal with creditors by the end of the month.

"Young people are not going to be talking about cutting back," exclaims billionaire hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller, ominously concluding "there will be nothing to cut back." The reason he is so doom-full about the future - an aging population will present a "massive, massive problem" for the U.S. in 15 years - as Bloomberg reports, because of demographics, "we're just using more and more of society’s resources to fend for the old people," warning that Obama's plans to tax the rich to pay for more social services for the poor would be futile.

Looking for signs that the country's largest asset management firms believe a market meltdown may be on the horizon? Look no further than Vanguard and several other large ETF providers who have set up billions in credit lines with banks to guard against the possibility that a wave of redemptions could wreak havoc on illiquid credit markets.