Insurance Companies

• Cyprus Salvaged After EU Deal Shuts Bank to Get $13B (BBG)
• Last-minute Cyprus deal to close bank, force losses (Reuters)
• Anxious, angry Cypriots face uncertain future (Reuters)
• Spain Brings the Pain to Bank Investors (WSJ)
• First Switzerland now... U.S. Seeks Answers in Liechtenstein on Tax Cheats (BBG)
• Rebel Free Syrian Army founder loses leg in Syria blast (Reuters)
• European Stocks Rise on Cyprus Deal as Italian Bonds, Crude Gain (BBG)
• Michael Dell Likely to Sweeten Buyout Bid to Save Legacy (BBG)
• Bankers’ pay premium is narrowing (FT)
• Surgery Restoring Penis After Prostate Cancer Increasing (BBG)
• Silent or supportive, conservatives give gay marriage momentum (Reuters)

Even your data and conversations on its encrypted services that you thought were secure aren’t; at least not from 46 governments around the world.

Today, lots of people woke up in shock and horror to what happened in Cyprus: a forced capital reallocation mandated by political elites under the guise of an "equity investment" in insolvent banks, which is really code for a "coercive, mandatory wealth tax." If less concerned about political correctness, one could say that what just happened was daylight robbery from savers to banks and the status quo. These same people may be even more shocked to learn that today's Cypriot "resolution" is merely the first of many such coercive interventions into personal wealth, first in Europe, and then everywhere else. For the benefit of those people, we wish to point them to our article from September 2011, "The "Muddle Through" Has Failed: BCG Says "There May Be Only Painful Ways Out Of The Crisis", which predicted and explained all of this and much more. What else did the September BCG study conclude? Simply that such mandatory, coercive wealth tax is merely the beginning for a world in which there was some $21 trillion in excess debt as of 2009, a number which has since balooned to over $30 trillion. And with inflation woefully late in appearing and "inflating away" said debt overhang, Europe first is finally moving to Plan B, and is using Cyrprus as its Guniea Pig. For those who missed it the first time, here it is again

A dispassionate discussion of developments in Cyprus and a few broader implications.

The dark ages were an awful time. Considering the brightest days delivered constant warfare, the burning of books, and the fear of barbarians, no one ever looked forward to the darkest days. Fast forward 1,600 years, and the darkest days of the European debt crisis are finally over - not because the bad debt has been written off or due to the consolidation of all debt, but simply because everyone has said so. Exactly who is telling lies and who is telling the truth will only be determined in due course. Without a doubt, global economic growth remains stagnate, yet stock markets are booming. Our message on financial markets remains very consistent – do not confuse strong financial markets with a strong underlying economy. While this may sound like hogwash to many investors and investment professionals, it is the extreme, unorthodox, and never-before-tried policies by the World’s central banks that is the reason for the march higher for stocks. Regardless, for those who honestly believe in the recovery, ask yourself the following questions...

The U.S. health care system is a giant money making scam that is designed to drain as much money as possible out of all of us before we die.  In the United States today, the health care industry is completely dominated by government bureaucrats, health insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations. At this point, our health care system is a complete and total disaster.  Health care costs continue to go up rapidly, the level of care that we are receiving continues to go down, and every move that our politicians make just seems to make all of our health care problems even worse. At the same time, hospital administrators, pharmaceutical corporations and health insurance company executives are absolutely swimming in huge mountains of cash.  Unfortunately, this gigantic money making scam has become so large that it threatens to collapse both the U.S. health care system and the entire U.S. economy.

The underlying question in Bill Gross' latest monthly letter, built around Jeremy Stein's (in)famous speech earlier this month, is the following: "How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?" He then proceeds to provide a very politically correct answer, which is to be expected for the manager of the world's largest bond fund. Our answer is simpler: We know there is an irrational exuberance asset bubble, because the Fed is still in existence. Far simpler.

We addressed the systemic ills of U.S. healthcare, a.k.a. sickcare most recently here. Nobody likes any of the practical solutions because everyone wants unlimited care and unlimited choice. Expectations in a system where the government can just borrow another $1+ trillion to pay the bills are high, and the feedback from reality, i.e. price, has been eliminated in the cartel/fiefdom system that is sickcare. Everyone talks about "reform," but real reform is impossible in a bought-and-paid-for "democracy" like ours. There is no one solution to something as complex and costly as healthcare; the solution is to let 100 solutions blossom and compete openly for citizens' money and trust.

With sequesters and loopholes the only two words that seem to matter in Washington (the latter more than the former as far as action), we suspect the popularity of the so-called 'Bermuda Triangle' tax dodge may raise more than a few eyebrows. Put simply, hedge fund managers create a Bermuda-based re-insurance entity, their clients (high-net-worth individuals) funnel their hard-earned gains through this offshore entity and back to the US hedge funds - dramatically reducing their personal income taxes. The re-insurers do a minimum of business to create the appearance of legitimacy but are enabling hedge fund investors to avoid paying high-rate income tax on any gains from the funds and growing tax-free while in the fund. Of course this is defended as "good tax management." Funds such as Paulson's, Third Point, Greenlight, and SAC all use this vehicle according to Bloomberg as a handy way to funnel a US hedge fund investment through a tax haven. It truly is good to be king...

Latest from my friend David Kotok.  I think both he and Meredith Whitney are too bullish on the banks

Both the recent increase in interest rates and renewed questions about the duration of QE3, sparked by the release of the December FOMC minutes, have raised concerns about a 'Great Rotation' out of credit and into stocks. Barclays notes that the story goes something like this: negative total returns in fixed income and increasing equity prices will drive investors to sell the fixed income assets they have accumulated over the past several years and buy stocks. This “Great Rotation” will force investment grade corporate spreads wider. However, in nearly 100 years of data, Barclays finds no evidence of a period when rates rose, spreads widened, and equity returns were positive. Risky assets are generally correlated. The few times that higher rates were accompanied by wider spreads happened in the 1970s and early 1980s, when inflation was accelerating. In each of these periods, equity prices fell sharply. As we have been warning, credit spread deterioration has tended to front-run equity weakness (with some false positives) but never with the divergence remaining consistent as a 'rotation' would suggest.

Our credit-based financial markets and the economy it supports are levered, fragile and increasingly entropic – it is running out of energy and time. When does money run out of time? The countdown begins when investable assets pose too much risk for too little return; when lenders desert credit markets for other alternatives such as cash or real assets.

I am sorry to tell you that whatever door that had been opened is now closed. America has turned the corner from the self-sufficiency of an individual to a new ideology for this country which is that incomes and life-styles should be equalized by taxes in the name of patriotism and for the greater good. The Socialism of much of Europe has arrived at our shores and spread from sea to shining sea and the safety net of decades past for our less fortunate citizens has been raised to a harmonization of social/governmental benefits regardless of hours worked or income earned. Stock markets rise, Treasury yields decrease, other bonds compress because there is no place off-world to invest money and it must be put somewhere. We are living in a fantasy world of the voters’ making and, I predict with some certainty, that we will all suffer the consequences of our decisions. The problem is extremely serious, answers are frustrating and aggravating and great care must now be exercised because this cliff is exceedingly steep.

Everyone's favorite bull made another magnificently arrogant appearance on TV this morning. Following his recent CNBC embarrassment, Bloomberg TV interviewed the outperforming hedge fund manager this morning - during which he explained his 'where else ya gonna go' bullish stocks thesis. From expectations for an "explosion of greatness" in the US to his gratuitous flirtation, he appears to have the inane ability to use many words where few are needed and his bullish thesis has the ring of any and every guest pumper (with nothing new to add): the same supposedly 'low' multiple, central-banks-are-printing, and wide spread between bond and equity yield argument that everyone's mom can explain. From expectations for the 'great rotation' from bonds to stocks and his 50%-upside prediction in Citi, Tepper is "balls to the wall" the best guest ever on any stock-touting network. However, one little thing gets in the way - the last time the Great-and-Powerful Tepper appeared so overtly bullish of stocks (and financials specifically), he also was dumping his holdings into the rally that followed.

We make more than we’ve ever made, we owe more than we’ve ever owed, and we have less than we've had in decades which is distributed to those that did not earn the money. This is a working definition of Trouble. The stock market is at an all-time high while the financial condition of the country has seriously deteriorated. The world is in a gigantic bubble and it is going to get pricked. You cannot keep printing money without consequences and when absolute and intrinsic valuations replace relative valuations then the game is afoot. When the survival of the State puts its people in dire straits then, eventually, the citizens will rebel as the nation has forgotten just who composes its constituents. The people and institutions that have the capital will only go along quietly for so long when nations try to take what they have earned and dispossess it for others. The rich will become poorer and the poor will become poorer and when those with the capital have been deprived of it so that everyone is worse off then the Lords of Chaos will be in control once again.