Transparency

There is no such thing as objective science when a researcher receives tens of thousands of dollars from the GM producers themselves, then goes on to promote their financiers’ products. Corporate collusion between government bureaucracies and educational institutions has become a serious issue in the U.S. that has corrupted objectivity in nearly every sector of American life.

The Telegraph’s John Ficenec has written an excellent piece warning of a possible market crash in the coming weeks. He identifies eight key “signs things could get a whole lot worse.”  

Though transparency was a cause he championed when campaigning for the presidency, President Obama has largely avoided making certain defense costs known to the public. However, when it comes to military appropriations for government spy agencies, we know from Freedom of Information Act requests that the so-called “black budget” is an increasingly massive expenditure subsidized by American taxpayers.

"...Given that “transparency” has such positive connotations, it is hard to imagine a reversal of these measures. But the public interest would not be served if the internal deliberations of the US Federal Reserve or the Supreme Court were put on CSPAN, as some have demanded."

Google is adopting this structure in order to make clearer the difference between its main business and longer-term endeavors, as Page and Brin take on more strategic roles, while leaving operational management to trusted deputies.

The supposedly independent, apolitical Federal Reserve - facing serious pressures from Republicans over leaks and transparency - may have just accidentally admitted it will not be raising rates any time soon (if ever):

• *LOCKHART: ECONOMIC OUTLOOK TO INFLUENCE HOW U.S. VOTES IN 2016

One can only wonder how this will factor into The Fed's "make it up as we go along" strategy as credibility dwindles but survival trumps any populist backlash.

When China's tinderbox economy implodes, who will be left to bid up the world's surplus commodities and real estate?

After 30 years of torrid expansion, perhaps the single most consequential factor in China’s economy is how much of it is a “black box”: a system with visible inputs and outputs whose internal workings are opaque. China’s recorded history stretches back thousands of years, but in terms of applicable financial and economic parallels to the current economy, there is no precedent. China’s leadership is truly in uncharted waters. This in itself heightens the risk of miscalculation and basing policies on faulty premises.

Paul Volcker's "policy and demeanor were very solid," explains Donald Trump in a brief Bloomberg TV interview, pointing out that the inflation-taming former Fed head is a role model for the type of central banker he would pick. While admitting he "has always done well in a low rate environment," Trumps slammed the current Fed's ZIRP for "creating a bubble.. and the bubble could explode." Trump had  - as usual - plenty to say on topics from Ex-Im Bank (against it as not "free enterprise"), to campaign financing (favoring full transparency of money in politics) careful to brag - jabbing at The Kochs - that "I don't need anybody else's money."

If Edward Snowden's patriotic exposure of all things 'super secret surveillance state' in America were not enough, Newsweek reports that, as 10s of millions of hungry PC users download the free upgrade, Windows 10 is watching - and logging and sharing - everything users do... and we mean everything.

Lately, a varied chorus of powerful union bosses, politicians and candidates, an asset management company executive, and a few ivory tower types have asserted that activism is short term in nature, engaged in by “hit and run”  investors who care only about making a quick buck while leaving a company and its employees in ruins. It might surprise people to hear that we agree completely that the sort of activism they describe is abominable.  Luckily, it does not really exist, and certainly not at Third Point.  Activists today are very different from corporate raiders of the ‘80’s (about whom these criticisms might have been leveled fairly).

Earlier today, the SNB which is perhaps the most transparent hedge fund of all central banks and actually lays out its financial statements in a respectable manner every quarter, released its results for the second quarter (and first half) of 2015. The result: another absolutely epic loss, amounting to €50.1 billion ($51.8 billion) of which €47.2 billion on currency positions - a whopping 7% of Swiss GDP - meaning that in Q2 the SNB lost another €20 billion. This happened despite the SNB having invested 17%, or $94 billion, in foreign - mostly US -stocks.

Lerner then asks whether OCS is automatically archived. When informed it was not, Lerner responded “Perfect.”

“To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality”  ?  Ayn Rand