Unemployment

Facing a new “deadline” to submit a viable proposal to EU creditors and keep Greece in the eurozone, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras faced friends and enemies at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday, where there was no shortage of fireworks from both sides of the Grexit debate. 

Greece formally requested a three-year bailout from the eurozone’s rescue fund Wednesday and pledged to start implementing some of the overhauls demanded by creditors by early next week. Crucially for Greece’s creditors, the letter says the government would start implementing some measures, including on taxation and pensions, by the beginning of next week, though it doesn’t go into details. The letter is a first step toward fulfilling a demand by international creditors, who have given Athens until Sunday to come up with tougher measures they would impose in return for desperately needed financing that could keep the country from bankruptcy and even worse economic turmoil. 

"We Greeks have voted 'No' to slavery -- but 'Yes' to our chains... What's simply whack-o is that, while voting "No" to austerity, many Greeks wish to remain shackled to the euro, the very cause of our miseries."

The Fed understands that economic cycles do not last forever, and we are closer to the next recession than not. While raising rates would likely accelerate a potential recession and a significant market correction, from the Fed's perspective it might be the 'lesser of two evils. Being caught at the "zero bound" at the onset of a recession leaves few options for the Federal Reserve to stabilize an economic decline. The problem is that they may have missed their window to get there.

"After the Greeks voted against accepting the latest demands from its creditors, Merkel is facing her worst nightmare: a possible Greek exit from the euro, a possible exit from the EU completely and loss of confidence in the currency itself.  Half of her was Merkel — the pragmatic economist, the other was Merkel — the great European. She has now discovered, in her vacillation, she has not shown the leadership expected of the most powerful woman in the European Union."

Once the reality of debt write-offs and who lent how much and what that means at home, the real fireworks could start. Can Italy, Spain or Austria afford to write-off 1/3 or 1/2 or more of what they lent to Greece? How about the EFSF or ECB? How will depositors feel if they get a quick 30% off the top? That is the biggest issue. The math as they say. And it is what we should be watching for.

"This 'No' from the Greek people must pave the way for a healthy new approach," said Marine Le Pen.  "European countries should take advantage of this event to gather around the negotiating table, take stock of the failure of the euro and austerity, and organize the dissolution of the single currency system, which is needed to get back to real growth, employment and debt reduction."

What investors will focus on in the week ahead

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras allows the Greek people to decide their own fate via a democratic referendum. That’s enough to send the troika – the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission (EC), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - into a paroxysm of rage. Here, in a nutshell, is everything one needs to know about the EU “dream”.

America is better off when President Obama is out on the stump bloviating and boasting rather than in Washington actively doing harm. But the whoppers he just told the students at the University of Wisconsin are beyond the pale. Said our spinmeister-in-chief: "And the unemployment rate is now down to 5.3 percent. (Applause.) Keep in mind, when I came into office it was hovering around 10 percent. All told, we’ve now seen 64 straight months of private sector job growth, which is a new record — (applause) — new record — 12.8 million new jobs all told." That’s a pack of context-free factoids.

...while the media gets overly excited about monthly job growth, the reality is that job growth has been little more than just a function of overall population growth. This isn't something the fosters long-term economic expansions that generate higher levels of prosperity... and if you think low interest rates necessitate high stock prices, that wasn't the case in the 1940s when interest rates were low and stock prices were below their long-term average relative to past earnings.

Earlier this week the embattled Greeks delivered still more body blows to the rotten regime of Keynesian central banking and the crony capitalist bailout state to which it is conjoined. By defaulting on its IMF loan, walking away from the troika bailout program and taking control of its insolvent domestic banking system, Alexis Tsipras and his band of political outlaws have shattered a giant illusion.

The Greece impasse set to culminate on Sunday continues to have a massive impact on at least one stock market, unfortunately it is the wrong one, located on a continent which is mostly irrelevant to the future of the Greek people (unless that whole AIIB bailout does take place of course). We are, of course, talking about China which as noted earlier, started off horribly, plunging over 7% with over 1000 stocks hitting 10% limit down, then in the afternoon session mysteriously recovering all losses and even trading slightly higher on the day, before the late selling returned once more, and the Shanghai Composite plunged to close down 5.8%: an unimaginable 20% total roundtrip move!