Real estate

“Fed Chair Janet Yellen will be forced to either acknowledge labor market tightening as reason to continue with the four-hike schedule for 2016 or risk her credibility, belittle job market stability and sound a warning about the risks of lower oil prices and cheap gasoline (sacrilege to regular Americans) by slowing the hiking pace after a single 0.25 percent increase last month. If she gets it wrong, things could get ugly fast."

"Japan’s deflation didn’t begin until the mid-1990s, a half-decade after the collapse of Japanese real estate and equity prices. Furthermore, during the early years of deflation, Japanese long-run inflation expectations remained well anchored, averaging about 1½ percent as measured by consensus forecasts. So, unfortunately, a Japan-style deflation remains a relevant worst-case scenario for us going forward."

"Your fund made 5.6% net last month, to finish the year up 20.45% net. Gains came from the short book.... Your fund remains long bonds, short equities."

Following a comprehensive review of China's housing market, we now realize it's much worse than the consensus understands.

“We are seeking to understand the risk that corrupt foreign officials, or transnational criminals, may be using premium U.S. real estate to secretly invest millions in dirty money,” said FinCEN Director Jennifer Shasky Calvery. “Cash purchases present a more complex gap that we seek to address. These GTOs will produce valuable data that will assist law enforcement and inform our broader efforts to combat money laundering in the real estate sector.”

When we first wrote on the subject, there was considerable criticism as to the possibility that such a program would ever be attempted, let alone succeed. And, granted, it was so Orwellian that it was understandably seen as a crackpot idea. But since that time, the program has been developing extremely rapidly. In the last six months alone, it has become so visible that it has even garnered a name - "the War on Cash." Once complete, state wealth control will exist.

The Fed is, indeed, a political, oligarchic force, and a key part of what looks and functions like a banking cartel. During the 2007-08 financial crisis, the Fed’s true nature was clear to anyone paying attention. We can’t really know what we don’t know until we look. We owe it to the “swindled futurity” of the next generation to take a long, hard look through a full and independent audit of the Fed.

This decline is inevitable in fast-expanding economies that play fast and loose with credit/debt and leverage. All the phantom wealth piled up in China's boost phase is now melting down, and the China Syndrome will trigger a meltdown in global phantom assets.

"The challenge to Hillary, if Trump is the nominee and pivots to the center in the general election as a problem-solving, independent-minded, successful 'get it done' businessman is that Democrats will no longer be able to count on his personality and outrageous sound bites to disqualify him in the voters' minds."

"It’s no secret that Alberta’s economy is closely linked to the peaks and craters of oil prices—nominal GDP (not adjusted for inflation) swings in tandem with crude prices. It’s why Fort McMurray is like a wounded beast these days. MacKay’s neighbour got laid off this fall. “I watched the bank come and take his truck,” he recalls—it was that or not feed the kids."

In March 2014 Wall Street’s ex-items S&P 500 earnings forecast for 2015 was about $133 per share; it ended up 20% lower at $106. Yet here they go again - the consensus for 2016 started out at $137 per share last spring, and is just now beginning to make its way back toward the high $120s. It is a barometer of the abject complacency and intellectual sloth that has descended on the casino owing to two decades of Fed coddling and seven year of free money for the carry trades. In the case of Chipotle, it was always just a burrito. In the case of the US and world economy and financial markets, it’s not even that.

Bubbles don’t correct - they burst! Sure, U.S. stocks might have climbed out of the August correction. But too many small- and mid-cap stocks are in the red to say "the coast is clear." And these growing divergences in the market are showing that we are very, very close to bursting.

Two months after the first "Macy's Massacre", the massacre is back with a vengeance, and moments ago the iconic retailer not only reported yet another cut in its guidance, but also announced it would be laying off another boatload of retailers, demonstrating just how strong the "service" economy truly is.

As goes US manufacturing, so goes US services. In a narrative-crushing print, US Services PMI dropped to 54.3 - the lowest since January 2015. Output and New business growth slumped to 11-month lows, optimism dropped, and input cost inflation continued to moderate as "suggests the pace of hiring has slowed since earlier in the year as businesses have become more cautious." Then, confirming  this plunge, ISM Services printed 55.3 - its lowest since March 2014 as unadjusted new orders collapsed to their lowest since February 2014.

Fed policymakers seem to be of the view that the almost zero federal funds rate and their massive monetary pumping has cured the economy, which now seems to be approaching a path of stable economic growth and price stability, so it is held. Yet, manipulations by the Fed could not bring the economy onto a path of stability and prosperity but, on the contrary, set in motion the menace of the boom-bust cycle. This raises the likelihood that the elimination of bubbles as a result of a tighter stance while good in the long-term for wealth generators is likely to trigger a severe economic slump in the near to medium term.