fixed

Other asset-classes are screaming that deflationary headwinds are very much still in play...

The lasting legacy of the First World War has been the rationales and implementations of paternalist Big Government in the Western world, with its diminished recognition and respect for individual liberty, free association, freedom of competitive trade and exchange, reduced civil liberties and weakened impartial rule of law. From this has followed the regulating and redistributing State, which includes political control and manipulation of the monetary and banking systems to serve those in governmental power and others who feed at the trough of governmental largess. It is a legacy that will likely take another century to completely overcome and reverse, if we are able to devise a strategy for restoring the idea and ideal of a society of liberty.

Unnamed Lebanese sources claim US spec ops are now operating near Latakia, and while we must consider the source, that would mean direct combat between American troops and Iranian ground forces is virtually a foregone conclusion and would also help to explain why the Pentagon has reportedly sent in the dogfighters to patrol the skies. 

The most entertaining overnight story has to do with the latest farcical development in the Chinese "market" when just after open, it was reported that PBOC Governor Zhou said a trading link with Shenzhen will start this year which promptly sent all Chinese brokerages soaring, and the Shanghai Composite jumped over 3%. And then, out of the blue, the PBOC said the undated comments were actually as of May. As Bloomberg put it, "China’s central bank unintentionally sparked a surge in the nation’s stock market by publishing five-month-old comments from governor Zhou Xiaochuan that said a link between exchanges in Shenzhen and Hong Kong would start in 2015."

Following Caixin China Manufacturing's 'surprise' jump higher (in the face of the official PMI flat), Caixin Services PMI just beat expectations and bounced considerably to a 'healthy expanding' 52.0 (despite official Services PMI plunge), bringing the Composite PMI to 49.9 - thus proving that billions of dollars of liquidity injections, market interventions, debt transfers to SOEs, arrests, shootings, and general thuggery has fixed China. For now stocks are rallying on this news but offshore Yuan is continuing to leak back to Friday's lows. The biggest gainers are the Chinese brokerages and exchanges (HKEx is up 8%) after PBOC Governor Zhou said a trading link with Shenzhen will start this year.

The stock market has been soaring, but all of the hard economic numbers are telling us that a major global recession is here.  This is so reminiscent of what happened back in 2008.  Back then, all of the fundamentals were screaming “recession” by the middle of that year, but the equity markets didn’t respond until later.  It appears that a similar pattern is playing out right now. Just like in 2008, the irrational optimists are going to keep chanting their happy mantras for as long as they possibly can.

At the height of the financial crisis, the unprecedented decline in swap rates below Treasury yields was seen as an anomaly. The phenomenon is now widespread, as Bloomberg notes, what Fabozzi's bible of swap-pricing calls a "perversion" is now the rule all the way from 30Y to 2Y maturities. As one analyst notes, historical interpretations of this have been destroyed and if the flip to negative spreads persists, it would signal that its roots are in a combination of regulators’ efforts to head off another financial crisis, massive corporate issuance (which we are seeing), China selling pressure (and its impact on repo markets) and "broken" wholesale money-markets.

The growth of poverty in the United States is wildly out of control.  It turns out that there is a tremendous amount of suffering in “the wealthiest nation on the planet”, and it is getting worse with each passing year.  During this election season, politicians of all stripes are running around telling all of us how great we are, but is that really true?

While understandably all eyes have been fixed on every monthly capital outflow update from China (even the ones that the Politburo is clearly massaging), few have noticed that one of the biggest total outflows currently in the global developed economy is taking place right in America's own back yard.

Our ancestors were wiser and far more educated than modern Americans about the dangers posed by a centralized, monopolistic system charged with the creation and distribution of money, and our society and economy have paid a very heavy price for its ignorance. Indeed, some of today’s Fed critics aren’t even aware that the U.S. Central Bank originally had far less power than it does today. As concerned as they were, its early critics could never have imagined how perverted its mandate would become in the subsequent 100 years. A mandate that has now made it the single most powerful and destructive force on planet earth.

Update: CME DIRECT ISSUES NOW RESOLVED, EXCHANGE SAYS

CME Group's online trading platform CME Direct will be unavailable until further notice due to a technical issue, the exchange said in a member notice this morning sent at 0857ET. While volumes look largely unaffected, Reuters reports that the outage came on the first day that CME migrated many users of its EOS Trader platform over to CME Direct, and also coincided with an upgrade to CME Direct's technology, sources familiar with the matter said.

The Fed's confidence trick this week was, once again, the Keyser Soze gambit (via Beaudelaire)-  "convincing the world of Yellen's hawkishness, when no such character trait exists." However, unlike the movies, stocks and FX markets have already seen through the con, leaving Fed Funds futures alone to believe the hype. As we noted previously, "The Fed Can't Raise Rates, But Must Pretend It Will," repeating its pre-meeting hawkishness to dovishness swing time and again in a "Groundhog Day" meets "Waiting For Godot"-like manner. Time is running out Janet, tick tock...

“It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.”

To believe this isn’t a bubble is to believe that all of the hot momo money from insti’s, high/biotech, flipper, flappers, fraudsters, and foreigners buying houses is fundamental and here to stay, which is exactly what everybody thought in 2006. Or, to believe that interest rates will keep falling 1% per year going forward, which would lend an element of support to prices.

Investors are aware that the market is manipulated... and it doesn’t seem to worry them. They don’t fight the Fed; they sit down at the table with it. They play the game. And so far, they have done well. But now... She will signal that, soon, the central bank will begin the long return to “normalcy.” Don’t believe it. The entire system depends on abnormality.