CDS

"It’s not how I want my epitaph to read, but it’s not a shameful thing helping people finance themselves. It’s not a bad thing."

The last time former Goldman employee and then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson bailed out the hedge fund known as Goldman Sachs, and its closest peers (but not its biggest fixed income competitor Lehman Brothers of course), even the traditionally confused American public pushed back on the structure of the bailout which converted the Goldman holding company into an FDIC-insured company, which led many to ask: just where are Goldman's deposits? The answer, of course, was nowhere, so perhaps in anticipation of the logical pushback against its second, upcoming bailout which would see the taxpayer-backed depositor insurance company once again provide trillions in cash to banks as well as the glorified hedge funds such as Goldman, the firm moments ago decided to do something it has never done before: become an actual bank with checking accounts and such.

Despite claiming yesterday's devaluation was a "one-off", The PBOC has devalued the Yuan Fix dramatically for the 2nd day in a row - now 22 handles weaker than Monday's Fix. Offshore Yuan is trading at 4 year lows against the USD. The carnage from this dramatic shift is just beginning as global equity markets (US futures to China cash) are tumbling, US Treasury bond yields are crashing, gold is up, China credit risk is at 2 year highs, and China implied vol has exploded to 4 year highs. Ironically, China's government mouthpeiece Xinhua explains "China is not waging a currency war; merely fixing a discrepancy."

Printing-press money is fertile ground for expanding world crisis. Crisis is excellent cover for national and international chicanery. How can anyone who is paying attention not recognize these tremors for what they are?

With the economy imploding, currency collapsing, and credit risk soaring, it is perhaps no surprise that just under a year since she was re-elected, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff is now Brazil's most unpopular democratically elected president since a military dictatorship ended in 1985, with an approval rating of just 8%. In a recent poll, 71% said they disapprove of the way Rousseff is doing her job... and two-thirds would like to see her impeached.

"There's a saying, 'if there's peace, it will start from Cizre, and if there's war, it will start from here as well.' And we can say we have a civil war in Turkey."

Things are getting downright scary in emerging markets as a "triple unwind" in credit, Chinese leverage, and loose US monetary policy wreaks havoc across the space. Between a prolonged slump in commodity prices and a structural shift towards weaker global trade, the situation could worsen materially going forward.

Aside from the socialist utopias of Greece and Venezuela, who else is on the default chopping block? The CDS heatmap below lays out all the countries which according to the market, are most likely to tell their creditors the money is gone... it's all gone.

Today, following another spike in negative news, it appears that the credit markets have finally woken up, and a quick look at Brazil's CDS shows that following today's spike to 314bps, the country's implied default risk is back to levels last seen in April of 2009! We expect more credit market participants to notice the depressionary developments in brazil, and as the country's CDS continue to blow out, many will start asking themselves: is Brazil the next Argentina?

For the first half an hour after China opened, things looked bleak: after opening down 5%, the Shanghai Composite staged a quick relief rally, then tumbled again. And then, just around 10pm Eastern, we saw a coordinated central bank intervention stepping in to give the flailing PBOC a helping hand, driven by the BOJ but also involving NY Fed members, that sent the USDJPY soaring which in turn dragged ES and most risk assets up with it. And while Shanghai did end up closing down -1.7%, with Shenzhen 2.2% lower at the close, the final outcome was far better than what could have been, with the result being that S&P futures have gone back to doing their thing, and have wiped out all of yesterday's losses in the levitating, zero volume, overnight session which has long become a favorite setting for central banks buying E-Minis.

On the heels of a veritable bloodbath in Chinese equities overnight which saw the SHCOMP slide a harrowing 8.5%, the entire world is now beginning to take a hard look at the notion that dramatic bouts of selling pressure are aggravated and perhaps triggered by an unwind in the multiple backdoor margin lending channels that allowed investors to skirt official restrictions on leverage and helped to drive the market’s world-beating rally. Here is the complete guide to China's CNY4 trillion shadow margin edifice.

As the following chart shows, with $203 billion in investible dry powder which is probably the best way of calling AAPL's cash the Cupertino-based company is more than $30 billion larger than what is generally accepted to be the largest hedge fund in the world, Ray Dalio's Bridgewater, which however "only" managed some $171 billion as of May 2015.

"What Europe Wants" - to use global issues as excuses to extend its power:

• environmental issues: increase control over member countries; advance idea of global governance
• terrorism: use excuse for greater control over police and judicial issues; increase extent of surveillance
• global financial crisis: kill two birds (free market; Anglo-Saxon economies) with one stone (Europe-wide regulator; attempts at global financial governance)
• EMU: create a crisis to force introduction of “European economic government”

Several days ago when we first calculated that the new Greek debt/GDP post bailout #3 will promptly hit 200%, something the IMF agreed with earlier today. But it won't stop here, and as the  following analysis from Michael Lebowitz at 720 Global shows, just based on the country's negative growth rate and positive interest rate, Greek debt/GDP will keep rising indefinitely and will likely hit 336% in about one decade, at which point Greece will, for all intents and purposes, cease to exist.