Treasury Department

As The Fed tapers and shifts its decision-making process away from rules-based, model-backed strategies in favor of "we'll know when to tighten when we see it" qualitative hand-waving, it seems the need to maintain teams of PhDs - to mutually masturbate over the historical back-fitted effectiveness of their models - is lacking. As The Boston Globe reports, The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston will cut nearly 15% of its workforce - around 160 jobs - in the largest layoff in over a decade... “It’s obviously a tough decision for us and the folks who are here,” Lavelle said. “It’s really about cost and efficiency.” Austerity strikes... (as it turns out the job cuts are due to losing a key customer - The US Treasury!)

A division of the U.S. military known as the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO), which studies threats to national security (i.e., the status quo’s grip on power) has listed Bitcoin amongst a number of potential terrorist threats. Of course, as we and many others have noted repeatedly, anything which threatens the prevailing criminal status quo will be merely labeled a “terrorist threat” in order to neutralize it. Just in case you aren’t yet convinced of how insane the folks at CTTSO are, “also on the CTTSO’s list of terrorism research topics were Android, Motorola, social media and virtual reality.” What has happened to this country...

20 years in prison... That’s the penalty you could face for traveling to a country the President has labelled to be “of concern”. Sending any form of monetary assistance to people in the country merits further steep penalties.  While something as innocuous as travelling abroad is enough to get the average American 20 years in prison, the government is using your tax dollars to aid terrorism directly… and using YouTube as their auditor. Sounds about right for a terrorist organization whose leader has a Nobel Peace Prize.

For years, the suspicion that Mr. Putin has a secret fortune has intrigued scholars, industry analysts, opposition figures, journalists and intelligence agencies but defied their efforts to uncover it. Numbers are thrown around suggesting that Putin may control $40 billion or even $70 billion, in theory making him not only the richest head of state in world history but possibly the richest man alive in the world today, period. Now, the quest to track down, and isolate, Putin's billions launches in earnest.

Military Keynesians Are Full of Sh ... (Cough) ... Shallow Myths

Over the past week the Obama administration leaked material information, in effect allowing and encouraging frontrunning of public data, when it told "asset managers last week that it was planning additional sanctions against Russia over the conflict in Ukraine."Bloomberg reports that the meeting, convened a week before talks with Russia in Geneva that ended yesterday, left managers grappling with the question of whether the government intended to follow through, or was trying to trigger asset sales through the threat of sanctions, said the person. Former administration officials have said forcing Russia out of global financial markets is the strongest tool President Barack Obama has at his disposal in trying to defuse the ongoing crisis between Russia and Ukraine.

Yes, this is not meant to be ironic.  

With Ukraine no longer paying for Russian gaz, and with Gazprom making it clear Kiev has to a) first pay the overdue $2+ billion in invoice and then b) prepay some $5 billion in gas until the end of the year of Europe gets it, it was only a matter of time before the US Treasury stepped in and paid off part or all of Gazprom's demands. That time is now, when moments ago Jack Lew announced a $1 billion loan guarantee for Ukraine - very much the same way that the US provided billions in loan guarnatees for the now long overthrown Mursi regime in Egypt. And in other news, many more "costly" and "damaging" US sanctions are surely headed Russia's way any second now.

• Sensitive Market Data Leaked After Government Phone Call (WSJ)
• This is a actual Bloomberg headline: China Fake Data to Skew More Export Numbers (BBG)
• This is another actual BBG headline: U.S. as Global Growth Engine Putt-Putts Instead of Purring (BBG)
• Ukraine wants to buy European gas to boost energy security (Reuters)
• JPMorgan Profit Falls 19% on Trading, Mortgage Declines (BBG)
• Record Europe Dividends Keep $2.8 Trillion From Factories (BBG)
• Why is Goldman shutting down Sigma X: SEC eyes test that may lead to shift away from 'dark pools' (Reuters)
• Ebola Outbreak Empties Hotels as West Africa Borders Closed (BBG)
• Australian PM says searchers confident of position of MH370's black boxes (Reuters)
• Gross Says El-Erian Should Explain Reason for Exit (BBG)

• J.P. Morgan's Dimon Describes Year of Pain (WSJ)
• SAC Faces a Final Reckoning for 14 Years of Insider Scam (BBG)
• New Standards for $693 Trillion Swaps Market Increase Risk of Blowup (BBG)
• China says no major stimulus planned; March trade weak (Reuters)
• As we said in 2012 would happen: Record Europe Dividends Keep $3 Trillion From Factories (BBG)
• Blame it on the algo: Deutsche Bank Said to Find Improper Communication in FX Case (BBG)
• Coke Sticks to Its Strategy While Soda Sales Slide (WSJ)
• Ukraine’s Rust Belt Faces Ruin as Putin Threatens Imports (BBG)
• RBC Joins Goldman in Suing Clients After Singapore Crash  (BBG)
• U.S. House panel to look at aluminum prices, warehousing (Reuters)
• Brooklyn Apartment Rents Jump to a Record as Leases Surge (BBG)

"The global financial landscape was evolving. Ever since World War II, US bankers hadn’t worried too much about their supremacy being challenged by other international banks, which were still playing catch-up in terms of deposits, loans, and global customers. But by now the international banks had moved beyond postwar reconstructive pain and gained significant ground by trading with Cold War enemies of the United States. They were, in short, cutting into the global market that the US bankers had dominated by extending themselves into areas in which the US bankers were absent for US policy reasons. There was no such thing as “enough” of a market share in this game. As a result, US bankers had to take a longer, harder look at the “shackles” hampering their growth. To remain globally competitive, among other things, bankers sought to shatter post-Depression legislative barriers like Glass-Steagall. They wielded fear coated in shades of nationalism as a weapon: if US bankers became less competitive, then by extension the United States would become less powerful. The competition argument would remain dominant on Wall Street and in Washington for nearly three decades, until the separation of speculative and commercial banking that had been invoked by the Glass-Steagall Act would be no more."

America is being run by an unelected gang of essentially self-perpetuating PhDs. The notion of an economics coup d’ etat is not so far-fetched.  So the last 35 years have brought the greatest exercise in mission creep ever undertaken by an agency of the state. That explains why the monetary politburo persists in its absurd quest to force more debt into an economy which is already saturated with $59 trillion of the same. To pretend, as does Yellen and most of the monetary politburo that they must plow ahead printing money at lunatic rates because Congress so mandated it, is the height of mendacity. The Fed has seized power and is not about to let go - common sense be damned, and the constitution, too.

A dispassionate look at the main considerations for investors in the week ahead.

While every other asset class in the world has now been found to be subject to some form of manipulation (from LIBOR rates to FX fixes and from commodity warehousing to HFT equity front-running), the stakes in a COMEX silver/gold/copper manipulation lawsuit are staggering. Not only is market manipulation the most serious market crime possible, the markets that have been manipulated and the number of those injured are enormous. It is likely not an exaggeration to say that any finding that JPMorgan and the COMEX did manipulate prices as we contend could very well result in the highest damage awards in history. That’s no small thing considering the tens of billions of dollars that JPMorgan has coughed up recently for infractions in just about every line of their business. Our point is that no legal case could be potentially more lucrative or attention getting than this one. It is clear the CFTC will never act and so class-action lawsuits may just be the only way the data is du into deep enough to uncover the truth.

Moments ago the "absorption" of Crimea into the Russian Federation was completed after Putin signed the final previously passed by parliament. And with that, in less than a month, the Crimean "question" has been answered. The only question is whether Putin will stop here or will the ease with which he just expanded the Russian political map leave him hungry for more. In other news, as part of the Western escalations against Russia, Bank of Rossia, the one bank exclusively identified in the sanctions list, announced that Visa and MasterCard have stopped, without notification, providing services for payment transactions for clients. These moves in turn promptly led to Putin announcing that he wants to open an account with the Bank Rossia.