Post Office

This will make every American feel much better about handing over that check today... as Simon Black notes today "I believe we have an obligation to starve the beast..."

Next week is all about the Fed, and the positioning or should I say De-Positioning will be taking place right up until the last minute of this all-important Fed Meeting.

In order to preserve the western narrative that the violent Ukraine coup was not one staged, massive, and very deadly false flag event, protest organisers have always denied any involvement. Which is why stories such as the one we wrote in March, which revealed that "Behind The Kiev Snipers It Was Somebody From The New Coalition" - A Stunning New Leak Released" got precisely zero traction in the western press. But now, for the first time, one man has spoken up and told the BBC a different story. 

• Alexis Tsipras: the Syriza leader about to take charge in Greece (Guardian)
• Tsipras to form anti-bailout Greek government after big victory (Reuters)
• Tsipras Forges Anti-Austerity Coalition in EU Challenge (BBG)
• East Coast braces, flights canceled as 'historic' blizzard bears down (Reuters)
• Rebels press Ukraine offensive, Obama promises steps against Russian-backed 'aggression (Reuters)
• Syriza Victory Brings Hope for Immigrants of EU Access (BBG)
• For Saudis, Falling Demand for Oil Is the Biggest Concern (BBG)
• Oil prices fall on market relief over Saudi policy (Reuters)

Just a flashing headline for now from Bloomberg citing AFP:

HOSTAGES TAKEN IN POST OFFICE IN PARIS SUBURB, POLICE SAY: AFP

Three people have been taken hostage by an unknown gunman at a post office in Colombes, a northwest suburb of Paris, French media reported. The gunman is armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, French RTL radio reports. He is holding from two to five people hostage, Le Figaro reports, citing police sources.

Every year, David Collum writes a detailed "Year in Review" synopsis full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. This year's is no exception. "I have not seen a year in which so many risks - some truly existential - piled up so quickly. Each risk has its own, often unknown, probability of morphing into a destructive force. It feels like we’re in the final throes of a geopolitical Game of Tetris as financial and political authorities race to place the pieces correctly. But the acceleration is palpable. The proximate trigger for pain and ultimately a collapse can be small, as anyone who’s ever stepped barefoot on a Lego knows..."

"My name is Jasmine and I support President Obama's move to give affordable auto insurance for everyone."

We fear many Americans who don't travel internationally might have become somewhat immune to the intrusive, arbitrary nature of today's American government and its institutions. It is still possible to achieve the American Dream of a simple life with opportunity for wealth creation, fun, freedom and good times without an overly intrusive, threatening government ... just not in the United States.

Ayn Rand or US Congress? Directive 10-289: "All business establishments of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth remain in operation, and the owners of such establishments shall not quit nor leave, nor close, sell or transfer their business..." H.R. 5445: "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no mail processing facility operating as of September 1, 2014, may be closed or consolidated prior to December 31, 2015."

The boom is unsustainable. Investment and consumption are higher than they would have been in the absence of monetary intervention. As asset bubbles inflate, yields increase, but so do inflation expectations. To dampen inflation expectations, the Fed withdraws stimulus. As soon as asset prices start to fall, yields on heavily leveraged assets are negative. As asset prices decline, increasingly more investors are underwater. Loan defaults rise as mortgage payments adjust up with rising interest rates. When asset bubbles pop, the boom becomes the bust.

As each of the following seven towns from history around the world boomed on the back of resource-hungry bubbles, no one could have foreseen (or even believed) that it would ever end... but as the following dismal images show - end it did. Is this the future for North Dakota or Texas? or Silicon Valley? (of course not stupid... it's different this time).

First it was Italy which, as we reported last week, had decided to "boost" its GDP by adding the estimated impact of cocaine and hookers. And now, riding on the coattails of this economics gimmick designed solely to make the economy appear more solvent, it is Britain's turn, whose Office for National Statistics will also add add up the "contribution" made by prostitutes and drug dealers. According to the Guardian "for the first time official statisticians are measuring the value to the UK economy of sex work and drug dealing – and they have discovered these unsavoury hidden-economy trades make roughly the same contribution as farming – and only slightly less than book and newspaper publishers added together."

So instead of one wholly integrated federal health care system, we have something like 30 disparate systems, all of them expensive, and none of them perfect. Indeed, "not perfect" is an absurd understatement, roughly equal to Oprah being "not petite." Allow me to offer my own personal example.

The mainstream recovery narrative has an astounding “recency bias”. According to all the CNBC talking heads, the 192,000 NFP jobs gain reported on Friday constituted another “strong” report card. Well, let’s see. Approximately 75 months ago (December 2007) at the cyclical peak before the so-called Great Recession, the BLS reported 138.4 million NFP jobs. When the hosanna chorus broke into song last Friday, the reported figure was 137.9 million NFP jobs. By the lights of old-fashioned subtraction, therefore, we are still 500k jobs short—notwithstanding $3.5 trillion of money printing in the interim. The truth is, all the ballyhooed “new jobs” celebrated on bubblevision month-after-month have actually been “born again” jobs. That is, jobs which were created during the Fed’s 2002-2007 bubble inflation; lost in the aftermath of the September 2008 meltdown; and then “recovered” during the renewed bubble inflation now underway.

Once we get rid of these obsolete middleman parasites - Wall Street, the banking sector and the Federal Reserve - we have a delightful question to answer: what else can we do with the $1.25 trillion we'll save every year by eliminating these obsolete financial middleman parasites? A lot.