Recession

"Then tell me, future boy, who's President of Brazil in 2016? Then who's vice president?"

• Global Stock Markets Edge Higher Though Global Growth Concerns Weigh (WSJ)
• Nikkei up 1.9% because Japan export growth slows sharply, raising fears of recession (Reuters)
• Saudis Risk Draining Financial Assets in 5 Years, IMF Says (BBG)
• Syria's Assad flies to Moscow to thank Russia's Putin for air strikes (Reuters)
• US Prosecutor Preet Bharara Probing Daily Fantasy-Sports Business (WSJ)
• Syrian army denies Russian ground forces fighting in Syria (Reuters)

Rising rents have been cited as a reason millennials aren’t moving out of their parents’ basements. But higher rents could force some boomers to move in with their children... it is shaping up to be a crisis for some boomers for the following reasons...

Current oil prices are simply not low enough to stop over-production. Unless external investment capital is curtailed and producers learn to live within cash flow, a production surplus and low oil prices will persist for years.

"Even though I had expected Q4 to contain lots of two-way volatility my expectation was generally for another risk-off quarter, and I felt that my S&P stop loss (weekly close above 2020 on the cash index) would afford me a prudent degree of cushion and comfort to absorb this expected two-way volatility. I did not expect such a strong risk-on move in response to such bad data!"

Having missed for the last 2 months, Housing Starts bounced 6.5% in September back to cycle highs (which previously occurred right before the last recession). The South and West regions both saw housing completions drop notably (as The Midwest soared as housing starts slid in that region). However, the more forward-looking Building Permits remains well off the June pre-reg change spike highs. Despite soaring homebuilder sentiment, permits plunged to 1.103mm SAAR - the lowest in 7 months - thanks to a collapse in multi-family permits to the lowest since 2014.

Last week, beleaguered Illinois Comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger admitted that, thanks to the bitter budget battle going on in Springfield, the state would miss a $560 million pension payment in November. Now, in a move that shouldn't exactly surprise anyone, Fitch has cut the state's GO rating citing the budget impasse. The move affects some $27 billion in debt.

The Fed has worked overtime since the 2008 crisis to produce a stability, a sense of normalcy in the economy and markets. It is a stable equilibrium now but almost any minor shock could change that dynamic for the worse and quickly. Widening credit spreads, Treasuries and gold outperforming stocks indicate that some parts of the market are already preparing for the storm. Stocks are about the only asset yet to batten down the hatches. If this is the calm before the storm, stock investors are about to get swept overboard.

"Yellen is doing this with the blessing of the President because he doesn’t want to have a recession - or worse- in his administration. I’m a developer, I’m not complaining from my own standpoint, I’m just saying that at some point, you have to raise interest rates, you pay nothing. They are trying to put the recession - and it could be a beauty - into the next administration."

Capitalism isn’t – wasn’t – the problem. The culprit instead was unsound finance and deeply flawed monetary management. In short, Capitalism cannot function effectively within a backdrop of unfettered cheap finance. Things appear miraculous during the boom, and then the bust discombobulates. Contemporary central bank rate administration essentially abandoned the self-adjusting and regulating market system for determining the price of finance – so fundamental to Capitalism.

Q: Why do you still expect the FOMC to hike rates in December?

A: Because the FOMC leadership has said that a rate hike by the end of the year is likely if the economy and markets evolve broadly as expected. Our near-term forecast is similar to theirs, so our baseline is also that they hike.

Moments ago, Europe's largest bank by assets and by gross notional derivatives, announced a raft of high-level management changes as part of an anticipated and sweeping restructuring of key divisions and senior-level committees. As WSJ reports, Colin Fan, the investment-banking co-head responsible for securities trading, will resign effective Monday. But the most profound change is that Deutsche Bank will split its investment bank into two pieces: one, focused on mergers and other deals, corporate finance and transaction banking services such as cash management, and the other on trading and global markets.

Thousands of austerity measures, dramatic cuts in incomes, incredible hikes in taxes. Five and a half years in deep recession. Three bailout agreements. And where do Greeks stand now? On top of the Eurozone when it comes to poverty. More than one out of three Greeks, that is “36% of the Greek population is at risk of poverty and social exclusion,” the EUROSTAT found out - the highest rate within the Euro Zone.

"Since Washington doesn't understand what went wrong in 2007 and 2008, so the Fed, the White House and Congress are recreating the very same conditions for another financial bubble. If it pops, we could replay the same devastating effects as occurred during the first bubble in 1999 and 2000.”