recovery

Earlier today GE announced plans to cut 6,500 jobs in Europe over the next two years, including 765 in France, a spokesman for the company in France said on Wednesday. The spokesman added that GE was sticking to its pledge to create 1,000 net jobs in France in the next three years as part of its recent acquisition of Alstom's energy business. So definitely firing 6,500, but tentatively promising to add 1,000.

As the towering forces that are prevailing against failing global economic architecture and the pit of debt beneath that structure, as laid out below, it is clear that the 'Epocalypse' - encompassing the roots "economic, epoch, collapse" and "apocalypse" - is here, and it is everywhere. The Great Collapse has already begun. What follows are the megatrends that will increasingly gang up in the first part of 2016 to stomp the deeply flawed global economy down into its own hole of debt.

Tank cars, once feverishly ordered during the US shale boom, are sitting on sidings. Lessors are obtaining car rents 20-30 per cent below early 2015 — “if you’re lucky enough to keep your car in service”, said James Husband of RailSolutions, a consultancy.

"Overall, the county economies recovered on all four indicators by 2015 still represent only 7 percent of all county economies. In contrast, almost 16 percent of county economies had not recovered on any indicator by 2015."

This is the title of its latest piece looking at retail spending paterns based on its credit and debit card data: "Confusingly cautious consumer." Here is why BofA so confused by the cautious consumers.

"Given that no fundamental relationship is currently driving the oil market towards any equilibrium, prices are being moved almost entirely by financial flows caused by fluctuations in other asset prices, including the USD and equity markets,” Horsnell said. "We think prices could fall as low as $10/bbl before most of the money managers in the market conceded that matters had gone too far."

On Tuesday we get the latest tragedy out of Turkey as at least 10 are dead in a suicide attack on Istanbul. The explosion rocked Sultanahmet Square outside the city’s Blue Mosque injuring 15 in addition to those killed.

Welcome to the recovery: a record number of Americans who are retired, or are collecting Social Security, worked part-time last month.

... if analysts, like those at Autonomous are to be believed, China’s banks could require up to $7.7tn of new capital and funding over the next three years. State bailouts could send the government debt to GDP ratio spiralling from 22 per cent to 122 per cent. That kind of shock would be a challenge for any country, even one of China’s vast might.

While the President will do his best to put a positive spin on the current economic environment, and the success of his policies, when he gives his “State of the Union” address, it would be worth remembering whom he is actually addressing. It is also worth considering that much of this is likely the reason that Donald Trump is surging in Conservative polling. As with all things – it is the lens from which you view the world that defines what you see. For Wall Street, things could not be better. For Main Street, most everything could be better. The President has a lot of “convincing” to do if he expects to change voter’s attitudes between now and the 2016 Presidential election.

Jim Cramer is so imbricated within the strictures of CNBC, so enamored of his guests, so genuflective and collegial that he has no critical distance to see the flaws of the very system of which he is a part. People like Cramer who are so invested (literally and figuratively) in the current financial system are loathe to realize that it is farcical, that it is built on toothpicks, that the corporate and government numbers are cooked, that the ‘recovery’ is a joke, that the ‘markets’ are rigged by central banks, that wrongdoing is epidemic, that there are no longer any rational connections between prices and fundamentals, that we have passed beyond reality into fantasyland. Cramer is the embodiment of a society awash in information but starved in meaning.

"Commerce between Europe and North America has literally come to a halt. For the first time in known history, not one cargo ship is in-transit in the North Atlantic between Europe and North America. All of them (hundreds) are either anchored offshore or in-port. NOTHING is moving. This has never happened before. It is a horrific economic sign; proof that commerce is literally stopped."

Maybe because not enough people caught the dire warning the first time, moments ago Bloomberg reported that Han Jun, the deputy director of China’s office of the central leading group for financial and economic afairs, spoke at an event at the Chinese consulate in New York and practically reiterated the anonymous source's warning practically verbatim. To wit: "There won’t be a strong economic stimulus and people shouldn’t expect a V-shape recovery; instead long period of L-shape growth path is likely" said Han, who participated in the drafting of China’s latest five year plan.

The following three charts make last week’s market turmoil easier to understand. Falling trade means lower corporate profits, which, if history is still a valid guide, means less valuable equities. So it could be that the markets are simply figuring this out and revaluing assets accordingly.

In principle, the BRRD, or “bail-in directive” as it is also known, is quite a good idea. The fact that lending money to fractionally reserved banks or even merely depositing it with them, involves risks needed to be firmly reestablished. One simply cannot expect that banks and their creditors will be bailed out by taxpayers at every opportunity. Besides, the admission that there are risks in banking that have hitherto been glossed over or have even been lied about was long overdue. However, Europe’s governments are now likely to find out that the current monetary system with its fractionally reserved banks is actually incompatible with this admission, so to speak.