goldman sachs

This next week is not so much about Greece the butterfly, but it is about keeping the butterfly from becoming a hindrance to the math working globally. And the Greek government knows this. They are negotiating on the basis that a bad Greek deal from Europe’s point of view is better than a default. Angela Merkel wanted a concluded Greek deal before markets open on Monday. Now she has a mess.

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday (June 25) in favor of the Obama Administration's current implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), denying claims from challengers that health insurance subsidies were improperly paid for enrollees in states that did not operate their own health insurance exchanges. Goldman explains what it means... (spoiler alert: more healthcare consumption - which translated means higher healthcare costs).

Nope - no bubble here at all...

Ron Paul, former congressman for Texas, laid plain the absurdity of central policy towards the markets in a recent interview with Amanda Diaz on CNBC. He believes a day of reckoning is in the cards because the central banks “can’t print money forever.”

With a DoJ probe having predictably gone nowhere, a group of pensioners and retirement funds are suing Wall Street and Markit for colluding to monopolize the CDS market. Amusingly, Citadel has been subpoenaed to discuss how it was shut out of creating a CDS trading platform by the "oligopolistic" activities of TBTF banks, even as the firm looks set to dominate the market for IR swaps.

"We've won a few months' respite but the problem will come back," France's Marine Le Pen said of Greece... "Today we're talking about Grexit, tomorrow it will be Brexit, and the day after tomorrow it will be Frexit." We shouldn’t need Le Pen to voice the obvious. But that no other ‘leader’, save for Nigel Farage, puts it into these crystal clear terms, does tell us a lot about all other European leaders. And unfortunately that includes Alexis Tsipras. Though we hold out some hope for him yet. Here’s hoping he will not sign that deal, whichever it may be in the end, and thereby set in motion the disintegration of the unholy Union.

The problem for investors is that inorganic measures to boost profitability, like cost-cutting, wage suppression, layoffs, and stock buybacks, are finite in nature. Eventually, these options are exhausted. There are only so many employees that can be terminated, wages can only be suppressed for so long, and there is a finite number of shares that can ultimately be repurchased from shareholders. The question that investors need to be asking is what happens when companies inevitabilty reach "the end of road." Importantly, with the Fed determined to begin hiking interest rates, despite weak economic data, the end may be nearer than most are currently expecting.

Prepare to laugh. A lot.

It would appear, whether by plan or unintended consequence, Obama's dream of a single-payer socialized healthcare is getting closer by the day, and as WSJ reports, drastically increasing the risk that ObamaCare is creating oligopolies, with the predictable results of higher costs, lower quality and less innovation. The five largest commercial health insurers in the U.S. have contracted merger fever, and if the logic of ObamaCare prevails, this exercise will conclude with all five fusing into one monster conglomerate.

A fund manager for one of the largest mutual fund and investment groups in the world, Fidelity, has warned investors and savers to have an allocation to “physical cash,” “including  precious metals” to protect against "systemic risk".

Unnamed "officials" have proclaimed a new set of Greek proposals received by Brussels tonight as "a good base," according to AFP, and thusly the Euro is very modestly bid. However, both Socgen (without a 3rd bailout of €60-80 billion over the next 3 years, Greek uncertainty remains high and leaves Grexit risk merely semi-stable) and Goldman (a deal will come only after the introduction of capital controls, a technical default on the IMF and issuance of IOUs/and a further build-up of arreas... and the damage resulting from a breaking of the integrity of the Euro would not be fixed by monetary policy alone) leave us wondering just who is buying Euros and US stocks and selling Swiss Francs as D(efault) Day looms and the 'C' word (contagion) spreads.

• Greek PM optimistic on debt deal as banks bleed (Reuters)
• Greek central bank chief says banking system stable (Kathimerini)
• ECB Said to Confer on Emergency Greek Aid Amid Cash Flight (BBG)
• More tax "avoidance": Citigroup to shift European retail banking HQ to Dublin (Reuters)
• Florist's tip led police to Charleston shooting suspect (USAToday)
• Asian shares edge higher on Fed caution, China sell-off intensifies (Reuters)
• Toyota in damage control mode after American exec arrested (Reuters)
• Venezuela Oil Loans Go Awry for China (WSJ)

We want to highlight today's absolute failure at investigative reporting, and the worst example of journalistic capture by the Federal Reserve that we have ever seen because at stake is the criminality, competence and corruption of that most important of organizations in modern society, the US Federal Reserve.

All those saying the Fed will never be able to raise rate are looking particularly smug this morning, because if the market needed a green light that despite all the constant posturing, pomp and rhetoric, the US economy is simply (never) ready for a rate hike, it got it late last night when Goldman is pushing back its forecast for the first Fed rate hike from  September to December 2015 saying that "in large part this reflects the fact that seven FOMC participants are now projecting zero or one rate hike this year, a group that we believe includes Fed Chair Janet Yellen. We had viewed a clear signal for a September hike at the June meeting as close to a necessary condition for the FOMC to actually hike in September, but the committee did not lay that groundwork today."

They call it "voting," and we're told it's our civic duty. But it's just an illusion. Just like in Caesar’s time, the election will go to the people who spend the most money. But we're not talking about the candidates. They're just puppets. Entertainers. We're talking about the people who bankroll them.