Australia

The demise of the dollar has been greatly exaggerated.  Here is how I see the near-term outlook. 

Deflation is a bitch. The only way the rich can keep getting richer is if the rest of us keep getting poorer. Economic growth is a thing of the past. Deleveraging has started for real. Huge amounts of zombified ‘money’ are disappearing as we speak. That leaves the world with a lot less wealth. And still the rich seek to get richer, and they are in charge. The math is simple... but there is a point when the can gets so big and heavy, no-one can kick it down any road anymore.

Here comes today's main event, the July non-farm payrolls - once again the "most important ever" as the number will cement whether the Fed hikes this year or punts once again to the next year, and which consensus expects to print +225K although the whisper range is very wide: based on this week's ADP report, NFP may easily slide under 200K, while if using the non-mfg PMI as an indicator, a 300K+ print is in the cards. At the end of the day, it will be all in the hands of the BLS' Arima X 12 seasonal adjusters, and whatever goalseeked print the labor department has been strongly urged is the right one.

It has been more of the same in the latest quiet overnight session where many await tomorrow's NFP data for much needed guidance, and where Chinese markets opened weaker, rose during the day, then went through a mini rollercoaster, then sold off in the afternoon.  The Shanghai Composite and HS China Enterprises indices finished down .9% and .3%, respectively. Trading volume continued to be very subdued, running at half the thirty day average as some 20 million "investors" have pulled out of the market to be replaced with HFTs such as Virtu.  But while stock action has been muted, the story of the night so far is oil and the energy complex broke out of a tight overnight range early in the European session to continue yesterday's downward trend, seeing WTI Sep'15 futures fall below the USD 45.00 handle after yesterday's DoE crude oil inventories saw US crude output rise by 0.552%. As of this moment oil was trading at $44.72, just pennies above the low print of 2015.

Boeing, whose Chairman Jim McNerney says the demise of the Export Import bank amounts to "craziness", lost a contract worth several hundred million dollars last month, after the buyer backed out citing credit concers related to the expiration of the Depression-era institution's charter. Now, Boeing and GE alike are threatening to move American jobs overseas if Congress fails to renew the authorization for what some commentators call "a vast, well-funded network of consultants, lobbyists and big-government interest groups."  

After a lukewarm start by the Chinese "market", which had dropped for the past 6 out of 7 days despite ever escalating measures by Beijing to manipulate stocks higher, finally the Shanghai Composite reacted favorably to Chinese micromanagement of stock prices and closed 3.7% higher as Chinese regulators stepped up their latest measures by adjusting rules on short-selling in order to reduce trading frequency and price volatility, resulting in several large brokerages suspending short sell operations. At this pace only buy orders will soon be legal which just may send the farce of what was once a "market" limit up.

We have lived through a credit hyper-expansion for the record books, with an unprecedented generation of excess claims to underlying real wealth. In doing so we have created the largest financial departure from reality in human history. Bubbles are not new – humanity has experienced them periodically going all the way back to antiquity – but the novel aspect of this one, apart from its scale, is its occurrence at a point when we have reached or are reaching so many limits on a global scale. The retrenchment we are about to experience as this bubble bursts is also set to be unprecedented, given that the scale of a bust is predictably proportionate to the scale of the excesses during the boom that precedes it. Deflation and depression are mutually reinforcing, meaning the downward spiral will continue for many years. China is the biggest domino about to fall, and from a great height as well, threatening to flatten everything in its path on the way down. This is the beginning of a New World Disorder…

The quest for perfection is man’s unattainable goal. Man can never be perfect if we are to believe the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Man is man’s wolf and all of that.

Amid the collapse in coal prices, not helped by the 'China situation' and President Obama's nudge, WSJ reports that the ailing US coal just got another black eye as Alpha Natural Resources is expected to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection early Monday to cut its more than $3 billion debt load. After four straight annual losses, Alpha - one of America's largest coal producers - has secured $692mm in DIP financing as it prepares its restructuring plan expected to sell some of the best mines and shutter others. It appears the Arch Coal's CEO's ominous words last week were prophetic - “Coal markets are as difficult as I’ve seen them during my 30 years in the industry."

• Deadline Draws Near for Puerto Rico (WSJ)
• U.S. to defend Syrian rebels with airpower, including from Assad (Reuters)
• Alpha Natural Resources to Seek Chapter 11 (WSJ)
• Iran’s Rouhani Says Nuclear Deal ‘More Than What Was Imagined’ (BBG)
• Cables Show Hillary Clinton's State Department Deeply Involved in Trans-Pacific Partnership (IBTimes)
• Win or Lose, U.S. Stocks Get Biggest Earnings Bang Since ’12 (BBG)
• Weaker China factories argue for more policy support as stocks swoon (Reuters)

A non-bombastic analysis of the events and data in the week ahead, with insulting anyone or resorting to conspiracy theories.

To get a sense of the complete devastation in the world of commodities, consider the curious case of Australia's Isaac Plans coking coal mine, which was valued at $630 million in 2011. It sold on Thursday for $1.  it gets worse: based on data from Citi Research, 90% of all M&A that miners did since 2007 has been written off. The commodity bubble has officially burst - feel free to thank China.

16 Months after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared off the coast of Malaysia, The Telegraph reports that fragments of a wing washed up in the French island of Reunion (near Madagascar) could be wreckage from the missing plane, according to an aviation expert.

On a day when market participants will care about only one thing - how hawkish (or dovish) the FOMC sounds at 2:00 pm (no Yellen press conference today) - Chinese stocks provided the usual dramatic sideshow and traded unchanged or modestly negative for most of the day despite the latest $100 billion injection, the close of trading on Wednesday was a mirror image of what happened in the last hour on Monday, as various Chinese "plunge-protection" mechanism went into a furious buying frenzy and government-backed funds rushed to buy anything that trades in the last 60 minutes of trading in what may be the most glaring example of banging the close yet.

"I have lost everything. I don't know what to do... I trusted the government too much... I won't touch stocks again, I have ruined everyone in my family." "I will sell all my shares tomorrow if there is a chance." ... "I am pretty sure that if the government does not come to rescue us, the situation will get much worse," ...  "I managed to sell them all at a loss today, and so I lost 320,000 yuan in two days. I don't have confidence on the market any more. I don't want to get into the market again."