Recession

The yawning gap between job cuts (surging most since 2009) and initial jobless claims (hovering near 42 year lows) continues to grow as initial jobless claims collapse 7k this week to 255k - the lowest since 1973. Bear in mind, Goldman's explanation that jobless claims are useless in this part of the business cycle..."this does not signal a booming labor market."

"While it is human nature to think and expect along linear lines, our World just doesn’t work that way. Instead, everything moves in cycles, some short and shallow, while other cycles are long and deep. What we are experiencing today is the likely turning point in a very long cycle of borrowing, borrowing and then borrowing some more."

"First off, the premise of the question, I would argue that anybody selling into the industrial market is not selling into a non-recessionary environment. The industrial environment is in a recession - I don’t care what anybody says, because nobody knows that market better than we do. You know, we touch 250,000 active customers a month.

For over 3 years we have pointed out that the surging youth unemployment was Europe's (if not the world's) scariest chart, because the last thing Europe needs is a discontented, disenfranchised, and devoid of hope youth roving the streets with nothing to do, easily susceptible to extremist and xenophobic tendencies: after all, it must be "someone's" fault that there are no job opportunities for anyone. Well, as Bloomberg reports, The World Bank has an unsettling message for young people around the globe: unless we create 5 million jobs a month, the situation is going to get worse.

In September, the Port of Long Beach handled a near record 197,076 outbound empty boxes. "They accounted for nearly a third of all containers that moved through the port last month. September was the eighth straight month in which empty containers leaving Long Beach outnumbered those loaded with exports."

As Rousseff fights to keep the Presidency, and has the speaker of the House battles to have her impeached, the country's economy continues to crumble. Retail sales came in below expectations for August and as Bloomberg reports, Brazil's top bankers now fear the combination of overindebted households and soaring unemployment could spell doom.

Never in history has the US entered a recession when rates were this low. And it spells serious trouble for the financial system going forward.

Hedge fund manager wonders: what happens to the petrodollar as the "sub-prime of this decade" goes up in flames?

Business Inventories were unchanged in August (less than the expected 0.1% rise) with manufacturers down 0.3% - bad for Q3 GDP but Business Sales tumbled 0.6% MoM (the biggest drop since January), down across the board. So clearly no inventory liquidation has started yet (so the pain is yet to come) and this has driven the inventory-to-sales ratio up to 1.37x - the highest in this cycle. The last 2 times the ratio was at this level, the US was in recession.

A confluence of circumstances have conspired to make asset allocation a somewhat vexing task these days. The so called “tricky trinity” is comprised of the following three factors: decelerating global growth, the absence of a policy put, and risk premia offering but a limited buffer. For HSBC, this means "remaining highly risk averse" going forward.

It is America the Herd that is keeping America the Civilization from feeling and being prosperous and safe. For too long, we have let our rulers ride us roughshod, using us to trample the economy and global tranquility with its economic and military interventions. Make America good again, and the kinds of greatness actually worth having will naturally follow.

One of the primary arguments by the more "bullish" media is that the current setup is much like that of 2011 following the "debt ceiling" debate and global economic slowdown caused by the Tsunami in Japan. While there are certainly some similarities, such as the weakness being spread from China and a market selloff, there are some marked differences.

"Global trade is also declining at an alarming pace. According to the latest data available in June the year on year change is -8.4%. To find periods of equivalent declines we only really find recessionary periods. This is an interesting point. On one metric we are already in a recession."

Global central banks have made a Faustian bargain with our economic soul selling our future for a false stability today. At this stage, absent continuous intervention, a large deflationary crash in the global economy is inevitable. The next Lehman brothers will be a country. The real ‘shadow convexity’ will not come from markets but political unrest or war. Peace is not the absence of conflict. Global Central Banks have set up the greatest long volatility trade in history. Buy the fear and you will be protected from the horror.