Jun 232016
 
 June 23, 2016  Posted by at 8:48 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,


Harris&Ewing Horse and Motor Oil, Washington, DC 1918

World’s Central Bankers Will Be Holed Up In Basel For Brexit Fallout (BBG)
Who Is The “European Movement”? (Werner)
Vancouver Proposes Tax on Empty Homes If Province Fails to Act (BBG)
IMF Warns The US Over High Poverty (BBC)
China’s Xi Lauds New Silk Road (R.)
Tesla: Incessant Cash Burn, Looming Competition No Trillion-Dollar Formula (WSJ)
Tesla Bid For Solarcity ‘Shameful’: Jim Chanos (BBC)
ECB Restores Bond Waiver, Lets Greek Banks Tap Cheap Credit (AP)
European Commission To Freeze Payments To Greece (NE)
Erdogan Says Referendum Might Be Held On Turkey’s Negotiations With EU (TM)
EU Approves Common Border Agency (WSJ)

Won’t be sleeping peacefully.

World’s Central Bankers Will Be Holed Up In Basel For Brexit Fallout (BBG)

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda will be in Switzerland as the results are announced of the U.K.’s June 23 vote on whether to remain in the European Union. Kuroda will be traveling from June 23 to June 28 to attend meetings of the Bank for International Settlements, where other central bankers also will gather, the BOJ said Wednesday. Given the travel time between Europe and Japan, Kuroda would be unable to chair an emergency meeting if the central bank decides to hold one Friday Tokyo time in the event the U.K. votes to leave the EU. “This raises the likelihood of the BOJ not taking drastic measures right after the results come out,” said Daiju Aoki, an economist at UBS in Tokyo.

“Kuroda probably sees the benefit of being with other central bankers where they could talk about coordinated action.” In a press conference June 16, Kuroda declined to comment about whether he’d convene an emergency meeting after the Brexit vote and said the central bank was in touch with counterparts including the Bank of England amid Brexit concerns he said had had an impact in the bond market. The BOJ can hold an emergency meeting without the governor, according to the bank’s rules. In May 2010, then-Deputy Governor Hirohide Yamaguchi led an emergency gathering in the absence of Governor Masaaki Shirakawa, who was traveling in Europe.

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A comprehensive overview of things EU for those who can still stomach more.

Who Is The “European Movement”? (Werner)

Prime Minister David Cameron, together with the heads of the IMF, the OECD and various EU agencies have given dire warnings that economic growth will drop, the fiscal position will deteriorate, the currency will weaken and UK exports will decline precipitously. George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer has threatened to cut pensions if pensioners dare to vote for exit. But what are the facts? I have been trained in international and monetary economics at the London School of Economics and have a doctorate from the University of Oxford in economics. I have studied such issues for several decades. I have also recently tested, using advanced quantitative techniques, the question of the size of impact on GDP from entry to or exit from the EU or the eurozone.

The conclusion is that this makes no difference to economic growth, and everyone who claims the opposite is not guided by the facts. The reason is that economic growth and national income are almost entirely determined by a factor that is decided at home, namely the amount of bank credit created for productive purposes. This has sadly been very small in the UK in recent decades, thus much greater economic growth is possible as soon as steps are taken to boost bank credit for productive purposes – irrespective of whether the UK stays in the EU or not (although Brexit will make it much easier to take such policy steps).

We should also remember that a much smaller economy like Norway – thought more dependent on international trade – fared extremely well after its people rejected EU membership in a referendum in 1995 (which happened against the dire warnings and threats from its cross-party elites, most of its media and the united chorus of the heads of international organisations). Besides, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China never needed EU membership to move from developing economy status to top industrialised nations within about half a century. The argument of dire economic consequences of Brexit is bogus.

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10 years late. We called it Hongcouver by then.

Vancouver Proposes Tax on Empty Homes If Province Fails to Act (BBG)

Vancouver, home of Canada’s priciest housing market, is proposing a tax on empty homes to help address an “unprecedented” low vacancy rate as residents struggle to find affordable housing. Vancouver’s preferred option is to have the provincial government of British Columbia create a new tax for empty or under-occupied residential homes, Mayor Gregor Robertson said in a statement Wednesday. Failing that, the city plans to impose a business tax on empty homes held as investment properties. The city wants a response from the province by Aug. 1.

“Vancouver housing is first and foremost for homes, not a commodity to make money with,” Robertson said. “We need a tax on empty homes to encourage the best use of all our housing, and help boost our rental supply at a time when there’s almost no vacancy.” Prices in Vancouver are the highest in Canada, topping C$1.5 million ($1.2 million) for a detached home in May, a 37% rise over the prior year, according to that city’s real estate board. At 0.6%, the current vacancy rate means there are only 330 purpose-built rental apartments available at a given time, Robertson said. That’s in a municipal region of about 2.5 million people.

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Lagarde’s just a lot of emptiness.

IMF Warns The US Over High Poverty (BBC)

The US has been warned about its high poverty rate in the International Monetary Fund’s annual assessment of the economy. The fund said about one in seven people were living in poverty and that it needed to be tackled urgently. It recommended raising the minimum wage and offering paid maternity leave to women to encourage them to work. The report also cut the country’s growth forecast for 2016 to 2.2% from a previous prediction of 2.4%. Slower global growth and weaker consumer spending were blamed. US economic growth slowed to an annual pace of 0.5% during the first three months of the year, down sharply from 1.4% in the last three months of 2015.

But the stronger labour market meant that overall “the US economy is in good shape”, said the IMF’s managing director Christine Lagarde. May’s unemployment figures showed the rate at an eight-year low of 4.7%. However Ms Lagarde warned that “not only does poverty create significant social strains, it also eats into labour force participation, and undermines the ability to invest in education and improve health outcomes”. “Our assessment is that, if left unchecked, these four forces – participation, productivity, polarisation and poverty – will corrode the underpinnings of growth and hold back gains in US living standards,” she added.

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All the things monopoly money can buy.

China’s Xi Lauds New Silk Road (R.)

Chinese companies invested nearly $15 billion in countries participating in Beijing’s new Silk Road initiative last year, up one-fifth from 2014, President Xi Jinping said in Uzbekistan, lauding a scheme that is one of his key foreign policy. Under the program, announced by Xi in 2013, and also known as the “One Belt, One Road” program, China aims to invest in infrastructure projects including railways and power grids in central, west and southern Asia, as well as Africa and Europe. China has dedicated $40 billion to a Silk Road Fund and the idea was the driving force behind the establishment of the $50 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

In comments carried by state media late on Wednesday, Xi said China’s trade with countries participating in the new Silk Road exceeded $1 trillion in 2015, accounting for a quarter of its total foreign trade. “The Belt and Road Initiative’s primary planning and deployment has been completed and is now stepping onto the stage of taking root and intensive cultivation for sustained development,” Xi told the Uzbek parliament. Regions like the Balkans and Central Asia are key to the project, the government has said. Xi’s trip to Uzbekistan followed trips to Serbia and Poland. The initiative envisages the revival of the ancient Silk Road routes from China to Europe to open new trade markets for its firms as the domestic market slows.

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Musk has easy access to the green bubble.

Tesla: Incessant Cash Burn, Looming Competition No Trillion-Dollar Formula (WSJ)

Visions of a future dominated by electric cars have long powered Tesla Motors’ stock price. Sooner or later, the reality of corporate finance is likely to intervene. Tesla’s offer to acquire solar-energy company SolarCity brings this issue to the forefront. Though details on the financial benefits of the proposed tie-up are scant, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was his usual bold self on a conference call with analysts on Wednesday. He said the proposed deal could help Tesla become the world’s first company with a trillion-dollar market capitalization. That would require a more than 30-fold increase from today’s value. Yet that boast may not be the most jarring one Mr. Musk has offered of late.

Powered by the new Model 3 mass-market sedan, Tesla aims to deliver 500,000 vehicles in 2018, Mr. Musk said last month. That target is two years ahead of the previous goal. Tesla forecasts 80,000 to 90,000 deliveries this year. In a world of slow growth and cautious corporate management teams, bold ambition is a central part of Tesla’s appeal to investors. But reaching for the stars has proven expensive. Tesla’s core business has burned more than $3 billion in cash over the past six quarters. Capital needs are expected to further intensify over the coming years. No surprise there; automobile manufacturing is a low-return, capital-intensive business.

The SolarCity transaction could further pressure Tesla’s financial profile. Mr. Musk said Wednesday that Tesla would be willing to provide a bridge loan to SolarCity before the deal closes if needed, although he thought such a scenario to be unlikely. Still, even the possibility of such a loan should raise eyebrows. Mr. Musk said he expects SolarCity to be cash-flow positive within three to six months. That could be the case in a given quarter, but analysts at Barclays forecast 2016 free cash flow at negative-$1.8 billion. As for Tesla, Barclays expects the auto maker to burn $2.1 billion without much improvement over the coming two years. The combined company could burn as much as $3.4 billion in 2018, before factoring in the financial impact of the merger.

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Always funny how close shameful and shameless are in the English language.

Tesla Bid For Solarcity ‘Shameful’: Jim Chanos (BBC)

Tesla’s bid to buy struggling solar energy firm SolarCity has been called “shameful” by financier Jim Chanos. Mr Chanos, who is betting against the shares of both firms, described the bid as a “shameful example of corporate governance at its worst”. Tesla made a $2.8bn (1.9bn) offer for SolarCity on Tuesday. Tesla’s chief executive Elon Musk said the deal, which will be paid for in Telsa shares, was a “no brainer”. The two firms have close ties. Mr Musk owns 22% of SolarCity and sits on the company’s board. SolarCity’s chief executive Lyndon Rive and Mr Musk are cousins. “As a combined automotive and power storage and power generation company, the potential is there for Tesla to be a trillion-dollar market cap company,” Mr Musk said.

Mr Chanos has taken short positions in both Tesla and SolarCity. When investors take short positions they borrow shares of a company, sell those shares and try to buy them back at a lower price. Mr Chanos said SolarCity was “headed toward financial distress,” and neither company could handle the burden of a tie-up. “[SolarCity] is burning hundreds of millions in cash every quarter, a burden that now Tesla shareholders will have to bear, at a total cost of over $8bn,” he said.

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Why now?

ECB Restores Bond Waiver, Lets Greek Banks Tap Cheap Credit (AP)

The ECB has restored a key waiver that will let Greek banks tap emergency central bank credit, one step toward putting the country’s financial institutions back on their feet. The decision announced Wednesday permits Greek government bonds to be used by banks as collateral to get cheap money from the ECB — even though those bonds are rated too low under the usual rules. Greek banks were shattered by the country’s financial and debt crisis which has led to three bailouts since 2010. They have been relying on more expensive financing from the Greek national central bank to do business. The ECB restored the waiver after the Greek government got a €7.5 billion installment on its latest bailout, ensuring the government can pay its bills for now.

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Still a very corrupt country. And not given the time to do something about it; ‘reform’ has eaten that away.

European Commission To Freeze Payments To Greece (NE)

The European Commission will stop all payments of the European Regional Development Fund/Cohesion fund to Greece for the 2014-2020 programmes. This is confirmed by an internal letter obtained by New Europe signed by Walter Deffaa, Director-General for Regional Development. The reason for the Commission’s pause is an investigation of the Greek competition authority, which concerns possible manipulation of tendering procedures for major infrastructure projects. While the letter was circulated internally on June 17, it is expected that the decision will not be announced until after the European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, has concluded his trip to the Greek capital, but possibly before the competition authority will examine the case on July 21.

The European Commission did not immediately respond to New Europe on whether the President had discussed the issue with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, or as to the amount of money that would be affected by this decision. According to the letter, the Greek authorities working on the case have “already identified companies participating in the cartel as all major constructions companies and large foreign companies present in Greece.” The cartel was allegedly active for over 27 years from 1989, to this year, in the domain of road construction, railroads, metro, and concession projects. The Director-General confirms that some of these projects “will certainly have been co-financed by EU funds”.

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We’ll file this under entertainment…

Erdogan Says Referendum Might Be Held On Turkey’s Negotiations With EU (TM)

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Turkey might hold a referendum on whether to end or continue negotiations with European Union (EU). Erdogan commented on Turkey’s EU accession negotiations during a graduation ceremony of Fatih Sultan Mehmet Foundation University on Wednesday. “Just like United Kingdom, we could also ask our people whether to continue or end negotiations with EU”, Erdogan said.

“Turkey is not after visa-free travel or the shipping back [to Turkish territory of migrants who arrive in Greece]. However, you are after Turkey right now. You are thinking about what would happen if Turkey was to open the gates and let the refugees pass. You are losing your temper because Erdoan throws off your mask and reveals your true, ugly face. That’s why you are thinking of ways to get rid of Erdogan. Europe, you do not want us only because the majority of our people are Muslims”, Erdogan added.

Erdogan’s remarks came after European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that the only person standing in the way of Turkey’s visa-free travel to EU was Erdogan. “If Turks cannot travel to EU without a visa right now, that is because they have not fulfilled the necessary criteria. If Erdogan breaks the deal, he has to explain his people why they can’t travel to EU [without a visa]”, Juncker said.

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Foreign armed ‘soldiers’ operating in another country’s sovereign territory. Is that what people want?

EU Approves Common Border Agency (WSJ)

The European Union on Wednesday agreed on setting up a common external border agency and coast guard to be deployed in countries struggling with a massive influx of migrants. The plan was originally put forward in December and has been pushed by Germany and France in response to the migration crisis that saw over one million asylum seekers arrive via Greece last year, and the threat from Islamic State terrorists mingling with the stream of refugees. Sovereignty concerns raised by some EU governments have been addressed in a compromise whereby a majority of governments would have to approve any deployment of EU border guards, including the country where the external border is deemed too porous and an intervention needed.

If an EU country which belongs to the Schengen border-free area refuses to accept such a deployment, and its failure to protect the common border is considered to endanger the border-free area, other countries can erect borders to isolate themselves from it. The U.K. and Ireland won’t be part of the new agency, as they are not part of the Schengen area. The compromise deal, approved Wednesday by the bloc’s 28 ambassadors, still requires the formal adoption by EU governments and the European Parliament, but EU officials say this is a formality that will likely happen in the coming weeks. The European Border and Coast Guard will build on an existing EU agency—Frontex—which is based in Warsaw and currently only has limited powers when it comes to patrolling land and sea borders—a national prerogative.

The new agency will also comprise a network of national authorities responsible for border management and will have a reserve pool of 1,500 border guards to be deployed in emergency cases within a week. But setting up the pool of 1,500 will take time and resources, as EU countries aren’t equally motivated to see this project come to life, EU officials say. In previous years, EU countries were slow in dispatching border guards to Greece and Italy, whose governments requested EU assistance for search and rescue missions at sea or for patrolling the land border between Greece and Turkey. This is partly because some EU countries need the guards back home and also because polyglot border guards are rare.

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Home Forums Debt Rattle June 23 2016

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  • #28897

    Harris&Ewing Horse and Motor Oil, Washington, DC 1918 • World’s Central Bankers Will Be Holed Up In Basel For Brexit Fallout (BBG) • Who Is The “Europ
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle June 23 2016]

    #28903
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    >>Won’t be sleeping peacefully.<<
    Still pretending the psycho/sociopaths hired by the Debt-Money Monopolists have an active conscience? That’s projecting onto others what isn’t there. They ENJOY forking you and other ordinary people over.
    It’s a sport – and it pays well for those that ENJOY it.
    Oh, that’s right, we are still playing pretend that the Debt-Money Monopolists and their “never to be touched” fraudulent debt-based monetary system doesn’t actually exist and isn’t the precise root cause of all the effects outlined in article after article in the TAE.

    #28907
    Nassim
    Participant

    Great news. We are defintely having some (French) champage to celebrate in a couple of hours (evening our time).

    It looks like the British are not so easy to brainwash with the media. The spend for the REMAIN campaign must have been 10+ times that of the LEAVE campaign.

    #28912
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    I posted this at MoA (a cautionary warning):
    I wouldn’t be getting too exuberant here; 48% – 51.7%. A country truly divided with barely a majority win.
    I hope they (Brits) leave; at least 3 maybe 4 other EU states are talking about leaving; so, it’s begun, but, some very slimy characters with lots to lose are going to do everything they can to change the outcome.
    If, in the end, they fail to stop the exit, “we” win. We being the working stiffs, the ones usually cheated and robbed by the neo-liberal scum.

    #28923
    Dr. Diablo
    Participant

    Now, to steal the pensions and blame it on the Brexit! To the Batcave!

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