Reality

What are the drivers of the recent heat-up in M&A activity in the past few weeks? A healthy prospect of the Global Economy? Cash burning holes in CEOs’ pockets? Valuation for the acquisition targets is compelling?

Diana Olick, by far the best reporter at CNBC, and not merely an anchored regurgitator of propaganda bullet points, let one slip today, by posting an article on CNBC titled: "Home Price Double Dip Begins" (and we have a screenshot in case CNBC realizes the grave error it has made and retracts it). While nothing new to Zero Hedge readers, where we have been making the case that the economy has nothing to double dip to, considering it has been in one depression for 33 months now, it may catch the broader public by surprise. Ms. Olick's arguments: "given the combination of the expiration of the
home buyer tax credit and the increasing number of loans moving to final
foreclosure, we knew that home prices overall would take a hit, but it
would take a while. Well we're here." And there you have it - there is little that can and should be added when dealing with the simple truth. Of course, for CNBC to regain its floundering Nielsen ratings it would take all the daily staff to follow in Ms. Olick's example and report what is actually happening to the country, instead of what Joe LaVorgna believes should be happening, based on the goalseeked output his "economic" model is spewing forth. Alas, it is now far too late for the cable station to regain much needed credibility, especially when anchors tell guests who dare to question the propaganda assumptions that they disagree with they are not welcome.

Central banks (and specifically their credibility) just can't get any love these days. Why should they: the Swiss National Bank spent a boatload, blew up its balance sheet, pissed off trade unions, and achieved nothing at all. And if Japan itself is any indication, the BOJ spent $300 billion a few years ago, and the JPY still hit all time highs yesterday. So unless someone believes that the BOJ can afford to spend about double that number to actually achieve results (and they can't) every uptick in the JPY should be shorted (and that ignores that stench that Schumer is about to raise any minute calling for a boycott of every Prius and Sony TV in the US for ever and ever as long as the BOJ continues to manipulate). Even Goldman's Thomas Stolper, who tends to be somewhat more polite than Zero Hedge, has come out with a 6 month target in the USDJPY below 79 due to the "impact of US QE, persistent trade surpluses and the attraction of testing the authorities’ resolve to intervene again." We would certainly agree on this one.

I think the action is heating up.

In the emails that our readers at Casey Research send our way, questions and concerns about the possibility of gold confiscation rank high. My somewhat standard response is that, yes, it’s possible, but that we should see straws in the wind well before it happened… allowing us to take measures to protect ourselves. While I don’t want to make too big a deal about it, there have been clear signs of late that the U.S. government is taking an unhealthy interest in your gold. My recent article “I Smell a VAT” touched on one such straw. The relevant point being that, thanks to a regulation slipped into the healthcare legislation, coin dealers – and all businesses, for that matter – will have to begin reporting any purchases of $600 or more from anyone, including clients selling back their gold. While I think the overriding intent is to pave the road for the implementation of a value-added tax (VAT), there’s no question that the legislation simultaneously paints a target on the back of the free trade of precious metals.

It’s all over but the crying. Online betting site Intrade is giving the Republicans a 70.9% change of taking the house in November, and 47.5% odds that they grab 50 seats or more. Harry Reid’s job is safe, and Carly Fiorina can forget it in California. Get used to Obama. He’s in for two terms. Until November 2, it is the only game in town.

At times like this, I find the opening lines to Rudyard Kipling’s “If” inspirational and soothing. That and a tall glass of Dalwhinnie, 15 years old, on ice. - David Rosenberg

It is no secret that both the household debt/income ratio, as well as the debt service ratio (interest expense as a % of disposable income) continue to be near all time high levels, albeit slightly lower than recent all time records. In fact, the debt service ratio has declined more in real terms than in nominal terms, making the argument that the consumer deleveraging process might not be as dramatic as some expect. Yet it is precisely when looking at the real, and not nominal, value of a projected debt service burden, that explains why consumers will continue to be faced with a crippling debt regime, why deleveraging will continue, and why the economy will be far weaker than the Fed expects for years to come. Goldman's Jan Hatzius, who continues to be more bearish on the future prospects for the economy than ever before, explains.

A free market and laws against criminal fraud are both necessary. Indeed, they are interrelated and mutually self-reinforcing.

In our primers, we’ve now covered some of the important concepts that will be referenced frequently on this blog, namely deflation, the housing bubble, and the significance of mass psychology in financial events. This primer will add on to the primer on the Canadian housing bubble and give some insight into what has enabled this bubble to reach such significant proportions.

If you had a previously incurable genetic condition and scientists came up with a treatment for it, you’d jump at the chance to take advantage. That’s a no-brainer. But what if you had the opportunity to invest in a company deeply involved in just such cutting-edge research?

Zero Hedge will be out of pocket for several hours: please use this post as an open thread opportunity to discuss how honest and transparent the government economic data dissemination complex is, how efficient the stock market is, how free of monopoly the Wall Street Fixed Income trading complex is, how altruistic the Federal Reserve is, and everything else that tickles your fancy. In the meantime, here is the latest controversial, and very much must read letter from Mike Krieger: Conscious Capitalism.

Today's announcement by the BLS that it decided to flat out estimate nearly a third of all initial jobless claims (courtesy of several large outliers) due to a "clerical holiday" which resulted in a major beat to estimates, caught many offguard by just how tendentious and manipulative the US Department of Truth can be. This is nothing. To visualize just how ridiculous the perpetual upward bias is at the Labor Bureau, we present a chart demonstrating the weekly jobless claim revisions by the BLS: in a nutshell, 90%+ of the time the bureau has revised prior claims upward, meaning it consistently strives to create an optimistic picture at the moment, only to have it revised it to its true, uglier state a week later when nobody cares. The implication is that fraudulent (and we sure hope this is inadvertent, although a 90% error rate definitely would invite a criminal investigation into just who and how stands to benefit from such an manipulative upward bias) data reporting is responsible for a persistent upward bias in data, and that fundamentals have been disconnected from the "government's reality" for years, confirming that the recent pathological breakdown in the market's relationship with fundamentals is not a new development. For example: today stocks would be flat to down if the BLS were to report the initial claims as they really are. Instead, here we are, almost 1% higher on nothing but soon to be revised lies. In other news, the China-US data distribution Joint Venture/Vassal State development is progressing better than expected.

Having worked for a big box retailer for 14 years, I understand the dynamics of a high growth rollout of stores as a key to increasing market share and profits. Some of the best retail names in the US have practiced the identical strategy of concentrating many stores in each market to drive the small competitors out of business. This strategy worked wonders for Lowes, Wal-Mart, Target and Kohl’s during the early part of this decade. The combination of solid same store sales and opening new stores is a fantastic combination during good times. The results actually make the CEOs of these companies think they are brilliant. Their store expansion models based on rosy assumptions are followed like they can’t go wrong. What these CEOs didn’t realize was that their expansion plans were based on lies and frauds. If they had advisors who could give them a reality check, they could have avoided the massive downsizing that awaits them. Their hubris didn’t leave room for a reality check. The population of the US has grown from 281 million in 2000 to approximately 308 million today. We’ve had a 10% population increase in 10 years. Consumer expenditures have grown from $6.7 trillion in 2000 to $10.3 trillion today. This is a 54% increase over the course of the decade. Amazingly, real average weekly earnings have only gone up by 6% in the last decade.

This is getting really ridiculous. In the week ended September 1, domestic equity mutual funds saw a near record $9.5 billion in outflows: the biggest one week outflow in 2010 since the $13.4 billion redeemed in the Flash Crash week. The trend developing is simple: retail investors withdraw increasingly greater numbers in weeks in which the market is down even a little, and withdraw just a little in weeks in which the low-volume melt up presents them with an opportunity to get out at a better price level. Of course, the common thread is that as we have said for 18 consecutive weeks, retail just wants out. And now that, courtesy of Mary Schapiro, retail has finally put two and two together, and knows that even the regulators are concerned about redemptions, which are perceived by the SEC as being a function of distrust in market structure, we now fully expect more and more redemptions. Year to Date the total pulled out is a whopping $64 billion, incidentally with both inflows and the market having peaked at the same time in April. On thr other hand, if the market were tracking mutual fund redemptions (whose net liquidity is now down to just 3.5% of assets and getting worse by the day), the S&P would be in the 900 range. Once the destructive impact of the Fed's daily meddling in the stock market is eliminated, it will get there. The longer stocks are artificially held up at current artificial levels, the greater the crash when reality and anti-gravity finally meet.