New Normal

Thirteen cars came off the tracks around 1 a.m. Saturday -- 9 of which were carrying liquefied petroleum gas and four that were carrying crude oil. The derailment prompted local officials to declare a state of emergency and the evacuation of the nearly hamlet of Gainford about 80km west of Edmonton. As AP reports, an eyewitness noted "the fireball was so big, it shot across both lanes of the Yellowhead (Highway)... there's fire on both sides." According to the latest reports, the train cars remain ablaze as the liquified hydrocarbons continue to leak. Parkland County police chief added "how it exploded and why is yet to be determined," but while only 2 injuries (CN employees) and no deaths have been reported, he noted "it's still a risky situation so we need to contain as much as possible and keep people far away." This explosion comes just 3 months after the disaster that too 47 lives in Lac-Megantic and once again raises questions over the safety of dramatically increased rail traffic from/to the Bakken.

As RealtyTrac observes in its latest flipping report, while home-flipping among high-end homes, or those reserved exclusively for the New Normal aristocracy which buys and sells with reckless abandon almost exclusively on an all cash basis, is up 34% over the prior year with flipping on houses priced between $2 and $5 million was up a ridiculous 350%, overall flipping activity is finally starting to subside and in the third quarter was down by a third from Q3 and over 10% down from the the prior year. Not surprisingly, the bulk of the ultra-luxury flips were limited to New York and the four core California bubble markets. "More than three-fourths of all high-end flips were in five markets: the New York metro area and four coastal California markets — Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose and San Diego.  Flips on homes priced between $1 million and $2 million increased 42 percent year over year, while flips on homes priced between $2 million and $5 million increased 350 percent year over year."

It is oddly appropriate for the BS New Normal, in which as the DOL showed earlier virtually every data point is made up, that moments after the Bloomberg Consumer Confidence Index showed a plunge in consumer expectations to the lowest leve in two years, that the October Philly Fed would come out with a six-month general activity outlook indicator of 60.8 (up from 58.2) and the second highest ever in the history of the series! One really can't make up the farce that biased, propaganda data "reporting" has become.

Just out from Fed "hawk" Dick Fisher:

• FISHER: FISCAL SHENANIGANS HAVE `SWAMPED' QE TAPER PROSPECTS
• FISHER: HARD TO NOW ARGUE TO CHANGE COURSE OF MONETARY POLICY
• FISHER HAS FAVORED TAPERING FED MONTHLY BOND PURCHASES
• U.S. FED'S FISHER REPEATS BEST TO 'STAY THE COURSE' ON BOND BUYING AT OCTOBER FOMC MEETING

And therein lies the most circular argument of the New Normal.

While the specter of the debt ceiling debate continues to haunt the halls of Washington D.C. it is the state of retail sales that investors should be potentially focusing on.  While the latest retail sales figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis are unavailable due to the government shutdown; we can look at other data sources to derive the trend and direction of consumer spending as we head into the beginning of the biggest shopping periods of the year - Halloween, Thanks Giving (Black Friday) and Christmas. The recent downturns in consumer confidence and spending are likely being exacerbated by the controversy in Washington; but it is clear that the consumer was already feeling the pressure of the surge in interest rates, higher energy and food costs and stagnant wages.  As we have warned in the past - these divergences do not last forever and tend to end very badly.

For the 3rd time in 3 days, Silver (and gold) have been slammed lower in an almost instantaneous hammer blow, only to be lifted shortly thereafter to fill the apparent foreced sale void. Prices of precious metals have become increasingly volatile intraday in the last week or so as the debt ceiling debacle plays out but this mornings dump-and-pump seemed to sum up the new normal perfectly. Once again, it would seem, the Chinese will be sending thank you letters to the Fed and their henchmen... (as Goldman suggests there will be no Taper until March)

In the past five years it has become apparent that America can survive a near-fatal financial system collapse, an economy teetering on the edge and kept ticking only thanks to the Fed's now perpetual QE, a collapsing standard of living for everyone but the wealthiest 0.1%, declining wages, zero interest rates, surging food, energy, rent, tuition and welfare costs, and pretty much everything else, as long as the welfare state keeps humming along. Any be welfare state we mostly mean providing the daily bread to the nearly 50 million Americans living in poverty and surviving only thanks to the only thing to have exploded to epic record highs under Obama (in addition to the Fed's balance sheet of course): foodstamp usage. However, the true stability of the US may be tested very soon following reports that due to a "possible computer glitch" the Electronic Benefits Transfer System, aka EBT, ala Foodstamps, is offline. Cue mass panic among the best-weaponized population in the world. Naturally, this latest fiasco involving a country that has grown accustomed to sucking on the government's teat was immediately blamed on a "glitch" - just like everything else that is slowly but surely breaking in the New Normal.

This objective report concisely summarizes important macro events over the past week. It is not geared to push an agenda. Impartiality is necessary to avoid costly psychological traps, which all investors are prone to, such as confirmation, conservatism, and endowment biases.

The euro system has many peculiarities as we have shown extensively on our blog. To a large extent the system can be analyzed as a “tragedy of the commons” problem. As is well known in economics, when a shared resource can be exploited in full by individuals with no exclusive property right, the resource will be overexploited.

The euro is a shared resource. Every national central bank can exploit it to the fullest while the cost will be shared by every member state.

The incentive in such a system is obviously rigged to its disfavor and it will eventually break down.

The chart below lay outs the amount of Bill, Note and Bond maturities between October 18 and November 15: it totals a whopping $441 billion... And according to our and the BPC's preliminary calculations, just focusing on simply paying down this debt in the all too likely case that the rollover machinery grinds to a halt, means that the Treasury would be about $180 billion short of paying down just the amounts due in the table above!

There used to be a time when US manufacturing set the pace for the entire world, and was the leading indicator for growth in developed and emerging economies around the globe. Unfortunately, in the days of the New Normal, this indicator has lost its potency, and has been replaced by the only variable that currently matters: which central bank is injecting the most credit money into a fungible, globalized marketplace (where for some reason analysts continue to confuse the economy with the centrally-planned market). Still, what the US does has reverberations around the world. Which is why the following chart showing MarkIt manufacturing index (PMI) data for the world's countries may be troubling. Despite hitting a global two year high of 51.8 in September, the key US subcomponent has been on a downward slope since the start of 2013.

David Stockman, author of The Great Deformation, summarizes the last quarter century thus: What has been growing is the wealth of the rich, the remit of the state, the girth of Wall Street, the debt burden of the people, the prosperity of the beltway and the sway of the three great branches of government - that is, the warfare state, the welfare state and the central bank...

What is flailing is the vast expanse of the Main Street economy where the great majority have experienced stagnant living standards, rising job insecurity, failure to accumulate material savings, rapidly approach old age and the certainty of a Hobbesian future where, inexorably, taxes will rise and social benefits will be cut...

He calls this condition "Sundown in America".

Faith, hope, and central bank charity... that's all there is left in the new normal.

The New Normal: a world in which the best performing "asset" in the month of September was the stock market of bankrupt Greece, while silver, that historic store of value, was on the other end, performing the worst.

Not a segment goes by on today's business media when we have not heard that "Bill Miller says AAPL is a no brainer." Of course, it is no surprise that markets have no memories but to heed the vehement advice of an almost self-proclaimed dip-buyer who told the New York Times that "not understanding the systemic nature" of the market "was his biggest mistake," in the new normal of too-bigger-to-fail banks and ever-longer collateral chains seems risible. As to his confidence, we remind those who care, that on Dec 3rd 2008, Miller said the "bottom has been made" in U.S. equities. Trade accordingly...