Apple

"...we are failing to deliver on our obligations as Americans, that is undeniable.  We are allowing the political class to plunder our wealth, negate our freedoms and desecrate our Constitution.  Sadly we have become the immoral populace our founding fathers warned all future generations not to become... The duty and obligation is ours and so too then are the failures and successes of our society. We are 15 years in to what is absolute denial regarding the competence of our nation’s policymakers. Yet here we sit, silent and indifferent to our own demise; so completely antithetical to the character of a true American."

If not the economy or fundamentals, and if not the Fed, which as we know is still on sabbatical after its massive QE1-2-Twist-3 $3 trillion liquidity injection, just what has pushed stocks up to jawdropping all time highs? Here, courtesy of Deutsche Bank, is the answer...

Forget what you think you know about credit and debit cards, PayPal, bitcoin, Apple Pay and any other modern conveniences meant to displace physical currency. The truth is that transactional currency ($1 through $20 bills) in circulation per capita today in America is essentially where it was, inflation adjusted, in 1994: $661 then and $649 today. Simply put, despite the mainstream media buzz, the “Cashless economy” is myth.

Euro-denominated emerging market sovereign issuance will soar to its highest levels in 10 years on the back of the European Central Bank's quantitative easing programme, as issuers outside the eurozone seek to take advantage of falling euro yields, according to bank analysts.

• Central Banks With Negative Rates Spur Question of How Low to Go (BBG)
• DHS to keep running: Congress edges toward domestic security funding patch (Reuters)
• Setbacks for Tsipras Stir Discord in Greek Ruling Party (BBG)
• Greece’s Challenge: Appeasing Its Creditors and Its Population (WSJ)
• Buffett, a cheerleader for America, takes his checkbook abroad (Reuters)
• Oil’s Big Swings Are the New Normal: Market has rarely been more volatile (WSJ)
• Ukraine Left Behind as Russian Stock Gains Are Unmatched (BBG)
• Brent rises to $61, set for first monthly gain since July (Reuters)

One bank which dared to go dramatically against the grain is Germany's Berenberg Bank, which earlier today forecast that AAPL's price will crash to $60, a plunge of more than 50%, due to two things: the law of large numbers, and over-reliance on one single product as the iPhone accounts for 85% of AAPL's operating profit. Putting this in perspective, the vast majority of sellside analysts have a price target well over $100, even the bears. .

• Goldman Employees Reaped $2 Billion From 2008 Options Last Year (BBG)
• On Bush turf, Obama blames immigration woes on Republicans (Reuters)
• Tougher Internet rules to hit cable, telecoms companies (Reuters)
• Russia's Gazprom says can exempt rebel-held areas from Ukraine gas contract (Reuters)
• Allianz Says Pimco Seeing ‘Substantially’ Lower Outflows (BBG)
• Merkel Faces Stepped-Up Dissent on Greek Bailout in Party (BBG)
• SEC Probes Companies’ Treatment of Whistleblowers (WSJ)
• 2-Year Trek From Turf to Table Delays Cheaper U.S. Beef (BBG)
• Turkish jets violate Greek air space (Kathimerini)

Stock market investors live by the Apple and die by the Apple... and with Apple's 2.5% drop today, broad stock market indices have cratered in the last few minutes retracing the gains accrued since Yellen started speaking yesterday...

At the end of September 2011, just days before his passing, the company that Steve Jobs founded had a $25 billion cash hoard. Nearly half of this was stashed overseas. His personal share of the untaxed offshore booty was obviously substantial. Did this make him ‘unpatriotic’?

Was the guy who revolutionized five industries and touched the lives of billions of people some nefarious traitor because he held so much money offshore? Of course not.

Another quarter of leaks of ubiquitous US espionage in every corner of the world, and sure enough we get another quarter of China just saying no to spending any more money on companies which are, as far as Beijing is concerned, a natural extension of the NSA. According to Reuters, China has just dropped some of America's leading technology brands from its approved state purchase lists, chief among them Cisco (which already was hammered a year ago due to the Snowden revelations), and everyone's favorite $1 trillion market cap or bust cell phone maker, Apple. At the same time China shifted production focus away from foreign production approved thousands more locally made products. The reason according to Reuters, and pretty much anyone else: a response to revelations of widespread Western cybersurveillance.

• Yellen faces Senate grilling on Fed rate policy, transparency (Reuters)
• Big Banks Face Scrutiny Over Pricing of Metals (WSJ)
• Greece makes more concessions to euro zone, Germany sets vote (Reuters)
• Time for another executive order: Longer Lives Hit Companies With Pension Plans Hard (WSJ)
• The Syria invasion "false flag" approaches: Islamic State in Syria abducts at least 90 from Christian villages (Reuters)
• Why Lenders Love the $2.5 Million Home Loan (BBG)
• Reuters journalist Maria Golovnina dies in Pakistan aged 34 (Reuters)
• Qatar’s Ties to Militants Strain Alliance (WSJ)

• Tsipras Tamed as Economists Declare Greece Loses Austerity Fight (BBG)
• Greece readies reform plans to first sign of leftist unrest (Reuters)
• Yellen Faces Congress Amid Direst Threat to Fed Since Dodd-Frank (BBG)
• The war must go on: Kiev says cannot withdraw heavy weapons as attacks persist (Reuters)
• Ukraine fears spread of war after blast in eastern city (Reuters)
• Denmark Dismisses Report It Could Consider Capital Controls (BBG)
• Deadline Nears on Homeland Security Funding Impasse (WSJ)
• Gross Fund Hurt by Oil’s Plunge Amid Bets on Energy Bonds (BBG)

Maybe one day investors, or at least the 1%-ers, will finally grasp that in a centrally-planned world in which the central banks themselves assure that there is "no risk", there is also no point in paying billionaire hedge fund managers 2 and 20 to "hedge" away risk, since there simply is none left.  However, since most people are too lazy to do any work (this includes hedge funds themselves), and would rather piggy back on other people's work (such as the rating agencies back in 2005-2007) that day is still far away. So for the time being, to satisfy everyone's natural curiosity why hedge funds continue to suck so bad, here are their biggest long, and far more importantly short, positions.

Government mandated fiat currency simply does not work in the long run. We have empirical evidence galore – every fiat currency system in history has failed, except the current one, which has not failed yet. The modern fiat money system is more ingeniously designed than its historical predecessors and has a far greater amount of accumulated real wealth to draw sustenance from, so it seems likely that it will be relatively long-lived as far as fiat money systems go. In a truly free market, fiat money would never come into existence though. Greenspan was wrong – government bureaucrats cannot create something “as good as gold” by decree.

The trouble with the money printing madness in the Eccles Building is that it generates huge deformations, misallocations and speculative excesses in the financial markets. Eventually these bubbles splatter, as they have twice this century.  The resulting carnage, needless to say, is not small. Combined financial and real estate asset markdowns totaled about $7 trillion after the dotcom bust and $15 trillion during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. The Wall Street casino is now festooned with giant deadweight losses waiting to happen. But perhaps none is more egregious than Tesla - a crony capitalist con job that has long been insolvent, and has survived only by dint of prodigious taxpayer subsidies and billions of free money from the Fed’s Wall Street casino.