Morgan Stanley

"Despite the low level of interest rates, mortgage affordability for first-time buyers remains roughly at the long-term average levels whereas the aggregate home buyer's affordability remains well below the long-term average. As the servicing of student loan debt is part of the Debt-To-Income calculation, the new regulatory (Bernanke-busting) regime compounds the already substantial challenges confronting the first-time home-buyer's access to mortgage credit. We believe the average student debtor is likely unable to secure a typical home mortgage due to their debt-to-income ratio."

• How you know it is all a lie: Pelosi Presses Obama to Talk Up Stronger U.S. Economy (BBG)
• Secret Goldman Sachs Tapes Put Pressure on New York Fed (NYT), Uh, no they don't
• Clashes Break Out at Hong Kong Protest Site (WSJ)
• N.Y. Fed Lawyer Says AIG Got Billions Without Paperwork (BBG)
• Ebola’s Disease Detectives Race to Track Others Exposed (BBG)
• UPS, FedEx Want Retailers to Get Real on Holiday Shipping (WSJ)
• No more mailman at the door under U.S. Postal Service plan (Reuters)

• Citigroup 175K
• HSBC 200K
• Deutsche Bank 200K
• JP Morgan 225K
• Morgan Stanley 230K
• Goldman Sachs 230K
• BofAML 235K
• UBS 250K

Here come the revisionists with new malarkey about the 2008 financial crisis. No less august a forum than the New York Times today carries a front page piece by journeyman financial reporter James Stewart suggesting that Lehman Brothers was solvent; could and should have been bailed out; and that the entire trauma of the financial crisis and Great Recession might have been avoided or substantially mitigated. That is not just meretricious nonsense; its a measure of how thoroughly corrupted public discourse about the fundamental financial and economic realities of the present era has become owing to the cult of central banking. The great error of September 2008 was not in failing to bailout Lehman. It was in providing a $100 billion liquidity hose to Morgan Stanley and an even larger one to Goldman.  They too were insolvent. That was the essence of their business model. Fed policies inherently generate runs, and then it stands ready with limitless free money to rescue the gamblers.  You can call that pragmatism, if you like. But don’t call it capitalism.

• Hong Kong protesters stockpile supplies, fear fresh police advance (Reuters)
• Protesters stay out on Hong Kong streets, defying Beijing (Reuters)
• Traders Turn Up Grilling Sausages at Hong Kong Protests (BBG)
• Ukraine Army Sees Worst Day Since Truce as Battles Flare (BBG)
• Islamic State uses grain to tighten grip in Iraq (Reuters)
• For Putin Ally, U.S. Sanctions Only Add to Anti-Russia Conspiracy Theory (WSJ)
• Coinbase Leads Move to Bring Bitcoin to Masses (BBG) - good luck
• Austria Cracks Down on Spies -- and Jihadis (BBG)
• EU Believes Apple, Fiat Tax Deals Broke Rules (WSJ); Apple’s Irish Tax Deal ‘Engineered’ to Boost Employment, EU Says (BBG)

• This is why the locals are furious at the US: U.S-led raids hit grain silos in Syria, kill workers (Reuters) explaining this
• Billions Fly Out the Door at Pimco: About $10 Billion Is Withdrawn After Departure of Gross (WSJ)
• Pimco’s Ivascyn Takes on Gross With Unconstrained Fund (BBG)
• Revealed - the Troika threats to bankrupt Ireland (The Independent)
• Private Bad Debt Build-Up Casts Shadow on Greek Rebound (BBG)
• Fed Questions Bank Maneuver to Reduce Hedge Funds' Dividend Taxes (WSJ)
• Yuan-Euro Direct Trading Begins Tomorrow as China Promotes Usage (BBG)
• Geneva Report warns record debt and slow growth point to crisis (FT)
• Greenberg Team to Grill Bernanke, Geithner on AIG Bailout (BBG)... sadly only metaphorically

• Mystery Man Who Moves Japanese Markets Made More Than 1 Million Trades  (BBG)
• Draghi’s Trillion-Euro Pump Finds Blockage in Spain: Euro Credit (BBG)
• Apple plays defense on iPhone 6 bending, software concerns (Reuters)
• U.S. to Shield Military From High-Interest Debt (WSJ)
• U.S. Outgunned by Extremists on Social Media Battlefield (BBG)
• Yen Weakens on Pension Fund Reform; Aussie Drops to 7-Month Low (BBG)
• Secretive Russian oil giant has no fear of sanctions (Reuters)
• Ride-Sharing Services Face Legal Threat From San Francisco, Los Angeles (WSJ)
• Putin’s Sell-Treasuries-for-BRICS Bonds Plan Has Limits (BBG)

When is the U.S. banking system going to crash? We can sum it up in three words. Watch the derivatives. It used to be only four, but now there are five "too big to fail" banks in the United States that each have more than 40 trillion dollars in exposure to derivatives.

Despite her platitudes to the unemployed (here) and the poor (here), it is clear Janet Yellen's Federal Reserve policies are aimed squarely at only one segment of the US population - the wealthy. The reason is simple... with an economy built on the back of conspicuous consumption, it's only the top quintiles of the population's income earners that spend-spend-spend to keep the dream alive. What's good for the 'wealthy' is good for America, right?

• Apple CEO Cook Goes From Record Sales to IPhone Stumbles (BBG)
• Deal With Saudis Paved Way for Syrian Airstrikes (WSJ)
• Drone delivery: DHL 'parcelcopter' flies to German isle (Reuters)
• Tory Burch Hires Ralph Lauren Veteran as Co-CEO (WSJ)
• Apple releases iOS 8 workaround to fix dropped cell service (Reuters)
• Ukraine Probes Ex-Minister Over $3 Billion Russian Bond (BBG)
• Goldman Sachs-Led Group Near Deal to Buy Messaging Startup Perzo (WSJ)
• U.K. Seeks to Criminalize Manipulation of 7 Benchmarks (BBG)

• A Month of Bombs Dropped in One Night of Strikes on Syria (BBG)
• Air strikes in Syria hit Islamic State-held areas near Turkey (Reuters)
• Pimco ETF Draws Probe by SEC (WSJ)
• Shadowy al Qaeda cell, hit by U.S. in Syria, seen as 'imminent' threat (Reuters)
• Yellen Warns on Market Calm Before ‘Considerable Time’ Up (BBG)
• Dudley Says Fed Needs U.S. Economy to Run ‘A Little Hot' (BBG)
• Websites Are Wary of Facebook Tracking Software (WSJ)
• Just a joke now: Barclays Fined Twice in One Day for Compliance Failures (BBG)
• Fired UPS worker kills two supervisors, self, in Alabama shooting (Reuters)

In an apparent attempt to advise investors on how they can take advantage of America’s transformation into a neo-feudal oligarchy in a 50-page research report, Morgan Stanley has put together some very interesting charts. We will be sharing many of them in the next few days but none is more telling and depressing than the one that shows how the U.S. leads the developed world in the share of low wage jobs...

There is a "hard way" of doing, as in fixing, things and then there is... the European way. Below we show how Italy's debt/GDP for 2013 just was "reduced" by 5% making the country appear far more "sustainable" and attractive to debt investors (the ECB?). As Bloomberg reports, Italy’s 2013 public debt was revised to 127.9% of GDP from a previous estimate of 132.6% of GDP, the country’s statistics agency Istat says in report.

• Quid pro quo Clarice: Iran seeks give and take on Islamic State militants, nuclear program (Reuters)
• Alibaba’s Banks Said to Boost IPO Size to Record $25 Billion (BBG)
• European Stocks Fall Amid China Concern as Tesco Slides (BBG)
• Tesco Suspends Executives, Probes Error That Triggers New Profit Warning (WSJ)
• Kurds say they have halted Islamic State advance on Syrian town (Reuters)
• Because luck and managing money is genetic: Financial Elite's Offspring Start Their Own Hedge Funds (WSJ)
• Islamic State Onslaught Spurs Mass Exodus of Syrian Kurds (BBG)
• Rockefellers, Heirs to an Oil Fortune, Will Divest Charity From Fossil Fuels (NYT)

Yesterday's exuberant equity market reaction has been largely defined by the mainstream media as driven by WSJ Hilsenrath's 'confirmation' that Yellen will keep the uber-dovish phrase "considerable time" in the FOMC statement today. So, we wonder, why did the Fed-whisperer, after markets had closed last night, issue a quasi-retraction of his prediction explaining that instead of some prohetical "I just know" statement, it was a "best guess," as he concluded, "will the Fed take these steps? Only the people in the room know that. The rest of us will see Wednesday afternoon." It appears the sell-side disagrees with him on the language...