Oct 212016
 
 October 21, 2016  Posted by at 9:43 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Lewis Wickes Hine Game of craps. Cincinnati, Ohio 1908

 

 

NICOLE FOSS is the keynote speaker tonight, October 21, at the

Community Solutions Conference
McGregor Hall, Antioch College
Yellow Springs, Ohio
7.30 pm

 

 

Dollar Near 7-Month High As Euro Slides, Asia Slips (R.)
Another Thing Trump, Hillary Get Wrong In This Election: The National Debt (F.)
Trump’s Candidacy – the Good and the Bad of It (Stockman)
China Property Prices Rise At Fastest Pace On Record In September (CNBC)
Yuan Hits Record Low Against Dollar in Offshore Trading (WSJ)
China’s Property Frenzy Spurs Risky Business (WSJ)
China’s Local Governments Are Getting Into The Venture Capital Business (BBG)
The Sharing Economy is Creating a Dickensian World (Das)
‘Lions Hunting Zebras’: Ex-Wells Fargo Bankers Describe Abuses (NYT)
Washington Foreign Policy Elites Not Sorry To See Obama Go (WaPo)
Hacking Democracy (ZH)
Italy Shields Russia From EU Sanctions Threat (EUO)
Draghi Says Athens Should Focus On Reforms, And The Eurozone On Debt (Kath.)
126,956 Greeks Work In Private Sector For €100 Per Month (KTG)

 

 

“The European Central Bank removed a source of immediate risk for traders by revealing that it did not discuss tapering its QE program at this month’s meeting..”

Dollar Near 7-Month High As Euro Slides, Asia Slips (R.)

Asian stocks were mostly lower on Friday as the dollar climbed to seven-month highs against a basket of currencies and dragged down crude oil prices, cooling investor risk appetite. The greenback was boosted by a fall in the euro after the ECB shot down talk it was contemplating tapering its monetary easing – sending the common currency to its lowest since March. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 0.3%. South Korea’s Kospi lost 0.4% and Australian stocks shed 0.1%, weighed down by a retreat in energy shares. Singapore fell 0.4% while Shanghai added 0.3%. Japan’s Nikkei rose 0.3% , brushing a six-month high, as the yen weakened against the dollar.

U.S. stocks ended a choppy session on Thursday slightly lower as investors digested the latest round of earnings, with a sharp drop in telecoms offset by gains in healthcare. The ECB left its ultra-loose monetary policy unchanged on Thursday but kept the door open to more stimulus in December, with ECB President Mario Draghi dousing recent market speculation that the central bank may begin tapering its €1.7 trillion asset-buying program. “The European Central Bank removed a source of immediate risk for traders by revealing that it did not discuss tapering its QE program at this month’s meeting,” wrote Ric Spooner, chief market analyst at CMC Markets. “Decisions are being deferred until December pending the outcome of research – meaning that meeting will be a key focus for markets.”

Read more …

Debt explained in the vein of Steve Keen.

Another Thing Trump, Hillary Get Wrong In This Election: The National Debt (F.)

As if there aren’t enough things to be upset about as it is, here’s another: neither candidate’s position on the debt and the deficit makes economic sense (something they each reinforced in last night’s Las Vegas debate). If they act on their campaign promises, we will most certainly be facing an economic downturn, if not an outright disaster. 1. Public sector deficits must, by definition, be private sector surpluses. If one entity spends more than it earns (the public sector) then another must earn more than it spends (you and me). This is an inescapable accounting identity. 2. Public sector debt must, by definition, be a private sector asset. If one entity adds liabilities, another adds assets–another inescapable law of accounting. 3. It is impossible for a nation to be forced to default in debt denominated in its own currency. Not unlikely, not improbable, but impossible. This is not my opinion, it’s a fact, albeit a poorly known one.

4. U.S. public debt to foreign countries like China has nothing to do with the budget deficit. It’s a result of the trade deficit. The federal government’s budget could have been in surplus for the past 100 years, but whenever we buy more from China than we sell to them, they have leftover cash which they use to buy our financial assets. These may include but are not limited to Treasury Bills. No amount of budget balancing will affect debt to China. 5. The private sector cannot consistently generate sufficient demand to create jobs for everyone who wants one. As technology and productivity have increased, so it has become more difficult. Entrepreneurs cannot be blamed for adding self-checkout lanes, they have families and stockholders. But it means the store can sell the same volume of output with fewer employees–unemployment therefore rises.

Hence, we need the public sector to spend in deficit so that a.) the private sector can net save and b.) jobs are created to supplement those generated by the market system. And it creates neither a default risk nor inflation–unless we are already at full-employment, which means we don’t need to be spending that much in the first place! It is noteworthy that when, in the midst of the Great Depression, the government decided to try to reduce the deficit, unemployment jumped from 14% (after having fallen from nearly 25%) to 19%. Once WWII hit, however, any worries about government spending went right out the window and unemployment plummeted to 1.9%. There’s no reason we can’t be there right now. Only bad policy can stand in our way.

Read more …

Dave’s new book, Trumped, is out. “God help America if she becomes president.

Trump’s Candidacy – the Good and the Bad of It (Stockman)

America is heading for a devastating financial collapse and prolonged recession that will make the last go-round look tame by comparison. The entire recovery is one giant Potemkin village of phony economics and egregious financial asset inflation. It isn’t even a mixed or debatable story. Beneath the “all is awesome” propaganda of the establishment institutions is a broken system hurtling toward ruin. For example, during the month of July 2016, when the Democrats were convening in Philadelphia to confirm a third Obama term and toast 25-years of Bubble Finance, exactly 98 million Americans in the prime working ages of 25 to 54 years had jobs, including part-time gigs and self-employment. That compares to 98.1 million during July 2000. That’s right. After 16 years of the current regime we have 5 million more prime working age Americans and not a single one of them with a job.

At the same time, the number of persons in households receiving means-tested benefits has risen from 50 million to 110 million. Even as the economic wagon has faltered and become loaded with dependents, however, the financial system has grown by leaps and bounds. For example, during those same 16 years public and private debt outstanding in America has risen from $28 trillion to $64 trillion. The value of publicly traded equity has increased from $25 trillion to $45 trillion. And the net worth of the Forbes 400 has nearly doubled from $1.2 trillion to $2.4 trillion. In a word, the U.S. economy is a ticking time bomb. Main Street economics and Wall Street finance have become radically and dangerously disconnected owing to the reckless falsification of financial markets by the Fed and Washington’s addiction to endless deficits and crony capitalist bailouts and boodle.

There is not a remote chance that this toxic brew can be sustained much longer. Under those circumstances the very last thing America will need in 2017–18 when it hits the fan is a lifetime political careerist and clueless acolyte of the state who knows all the right words and harbors all the wrong ideas. Indeed, during the coming crisis America will need a brash disrupter of the status quo, not a diehard defender. Yet when the Dow index drops by 7,000 points and unemployment erupts back toward double digits, Hillary Clinton’s only impulse will be to double down. That is, to fire-up the printing presses at the Fed from red hot to white heat, plunge the nation’s fiscal equation back into multi-trillion deficits and crank-out Washington’s free stuff like never before.

A combination of a Clinton White House and the devastating day of reckoning just ahead would result in Big Government on steroids. It would also tilt the Imperial City toward war in order to distract the nation’s disgruntled voters in their tens of millions. Indeed, her prospective war cabinet — including Victoria Nuland and Michéle Flournoy — is comprised of the actual architects of Washington’s unprovoked NATO siege on Russia’s own doorsteps. God help America if she becomes president.

Read more …

And Beijing keeps pretending they want to cool it down.

China Property Prices Rise At Fastest Pace On Record In September (CNBC)

China property prices rose at the fastest pace on record in September, fueling fears of a market bubble in the world’s second-largest economy. Property prices climbed 11.2% on-year in September in 70 major cities while prices were up 2.1% from August, according to Reuters calculations using data from the National Bureau of Statistics. In August, prices rose 9.2% from a year ago. Home prices in the second-tier city of Hefei recorded the largest on-year gain at 46.8%, compared with on-year gains of 40.3% in August. Top August performer Xiamen posted an on-year rise of 46.5% against an increase of 43.8% in August. Prices in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing rose 34.1%, 32.7% and 27.8% on an annual basis respectively, according to Reuters.

Underpinning the strong growth was simply “debt” said independent analyst, Fraser Howie, who is also co-author of “Red Capitalism” and “Privatizing China.” “A decade ago you could make a case for strong property in China (with) genuine demand and relatively low leverage in the sector. This is certainly not the case now. You are seeing a lot of leverage in the property sector, both retail and commercial,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box”. The quick gains in property prices in China came after the Chinese government introduced measures aimed at boosting home sales earlier this year to reduce large inventories in an effort to limit an economic slowdown. Recent fears of overheating, however, prompted local governments in China to announce a flurry of property market cooling measures in recent weeks. Any impact from those measures was not reflected in the latest data.

Despite the property cooling measures, Howie said the broad theme of how the Chinese government was responding to the situation was recurrent. “For five to six years or so, you have on-again-off-again cooling measures in the property market, trying to make property more affordable and it’s still nowhere near affordable,” he added. The Chinese government, he said, “has no clear plan”. “It’s just a bubble, they try to pull it back; they rein it in a bit, they let it go again when it impacts the real economy.”

Read more …

It’s gettiing time for the IMF to comment on this.

Yuan Hits Record Low Against Dollar in Offshore Trading (WSJ)

The yuan hit a record low against the U.S. dollar in offshore trading Friday after strong earnings on Wall Street and weakness in the euro boosted the strength of the greenback. The dollar reached a high of 6.75651 against the Chinese currency, which trades freely around the clock in offshore markets such as Hong Kong, its biggest trading center. It was last trading up 0.2% at 6.7582. The yuan has been traded outside China since 2010. Hong Kong’s markets are closed today as a typhoon lashes the city, with the yuan breaching its previous record around 7.41 a.m. local time, typically a time when market liquidity is thin. The People’s Bank of China later set its daily reference rate for the yuan traded in mainland China at 6.7558 against the U.S. dollar.

Onshore, the yuan is allowed to trade 2% either side of this level. The currency last traded at 6.7519 against the greenback, while its offshore counterpart weakened further after the fixing. “Overnight we saw a broadly stronger U.S. dollar,” says Qi Gao, Asia foreign exchange strategist at Scotiabank. He anticipates further strength in the greenback in the weeks running up to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s December meeting, at which the central bank may deliver its first rate increase in a year.

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“This is actually what we’re told by banks’ client managers to do to meet [regulatory] requirements.”

China’s Property Frenzy Spurs Risky Business (WSJ)

Xiong Meifang was about $30,000 short two months ago for a 30% down payment on an $895,000 apartment in the southern part of Beijing. To make up the difference, the 31-year-old graphic designer took out a line of credit from a national bank. She said the bank told her she could use the loan however she wanted. China bans borrowing for down payments. A surge in such financing offered by nonbank lenders earlier this year led to a regulatory clampdown. But as banks increasingly turn to mortgage lending, there are new signs of risky practices. In some instances, banks offer credit lines to borrowers buying apartments with few questions asked. In others, banks work with independent loan brokers or property agents to funnel money into down-payment financing.

Data released Tuesday showed medium- and long-term household loans, almost all of which are mortgages, made up 60% of all new loans created in the third quarter, up from 47% in the second quarter and 23% in the first. Easy credit has fanned a property-buying craze in many Chinese cities this year, helping shore up an otherwise weak economy. Government data on Wednesday showed GDP expanded by 6.7% from a year earlier in the third quarter, matching expectations, largely on the strength of the hot property market and loose monetary policies. In the past two weeks, two dozen cities have asked banks to tighten home-lending standards. Financial regulators are seeking to rein in the relatively new practice of banks working with brokers and others, such as developers, to help home buyers come up with down payments.

[..] On paper, the purpose of the loan can’t be for the home purchase itself. But the company could help arrange a contract with, say, a decorator, to show a bank that the loan would be for home decoration, the representative said, adding that ultimately the bank can’t check how the money is used. [The broker] charges a 3% flat fee on the amount of any loans it helps arrange. “It’s all legal, of course,” said the representative. “This is actually what we’re told by banks’ client managers to do to meet [regulatory] requirements.”

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While they have huge debts with the shadow banks. What could go worng?

China’s Local Governments Are Getting Into The Venture Capital Business (BBG)

China’s next billion-dollar startup could have backing from an investor with more money than Warren Buffett and a knack for promoting spicy duck-neck delicacies. The Hubei provincial government is armed with 547 billion yuan ($81 billion) earmarked for investments that can diversify a job base dependent on steel, mining and cars. And the bureaucrats in the heartland region along the Yangtze River are letting professionals do the work – allocating the money to investment houses Sequoia Capital, TCL Capital and CBC Capital. Local governments across China are getting into the venture-capital business, deploying a combined 3 trillion yuan as the Communist Party resolves to modernize the economy and reduce debt-fueled spending on infrastructure. The money is meant to spur development of biotechnology, internet and high-end manufacturing companies that can replace the stumbling heavy industries sapping economic growth.

“Our focus is more on the sector than the return,” said Wang Hanbing, who oversees $6 billion as chairman of the Yangtze River Industry Fund, one of several using Hubei government money. “We encourage people to bring real jobs back to Hubei.” China is grappling with a profusion of economic difficulties such as declining exports, surging home prices and skyrocketing corporate debt. The State Council signaled last month it had a bigger appetite for venture capital, urging local administrations to play a leading role and promising to level the playing field for foreign VC funds. Policy makers want to curb the proliferation of borrowing by regional authorities to pay for infrastructure projects that prop up growth. Local government financing vehicles borrow on behalf of governments, which often are barred from doing so. Through September, the debt issued by more than 1,600 such vehicles soared 47% from a year ago to 1.5 trillion yuan.

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The same effect as globalization: bring down wages..

The Sharing Economy is Creating a Dickensian World (Das)

Cheerleaders frame the sharing economy in lofty utopian terms: The sharing economy isn’t business but a social movement, transforming relationships between people in a new form of internet intimacy and humanitarianism. Exchanges are economic. Buyers are primarily concerned about access to services at low costs rather than social objectives. Providers are motivated by money, using their assets and labor to get by in an unforgiving and poor economic environment.

The major financial backers of the sharing economy aren’t philanthropists. They are Wall Street and Silicon Valley’s 1%, related venture-capital firms and a few institutional investors, such as sovereign-wealth funds. The amount of capital provided is substantial. Given the normal five-to-seven-year cycle for such investments, the pressure to deliver results will increase, bringing it into conflict with the social or altruistic objectives espoused. Ultimately, the sharing economy will influence how traditional businesses operate. Traditional automobile makers could offer a car-sharing service, such as BMW’s Drive Now. Users can access a car as needed, paying only for usage. These types of changes may decrease rather than increase revenue as it substitutes hiring arrangements for outright purchases.

But perhaps the real issue is that the sharing economy reverses progress in labor markets. Whatever the gains from increased efficiency, it recreates a Dickensian world for a part of the population. Formal employment protects labor from exploitation and deprivation to varying degrees. The sharing economy transfers the risk of economic uncertainty from the employer to the employee with potentially tragic consequences. Most important, the underlying economic premise is false. Consumption constitutes 60%-70% of activity in advanced economies. In 1914, Henry Ford doubled his workers’ pay from $2.34 to $5 a day, recognizing that paying people more would enable them to afford the cars they were producing. Reduction of income levels and employment security ultimately reduces consumption and economic activity, impoverishing most within societies.

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They should take the lot of them, everyone involved, and ban them from ever working in banking or finance again.

‘Lions Hunting Zebras’: Ex-Wells Fargo Bankers Describe Abuses (NYT)

Mexican immigrants who speak little English. Older adults with memory problems. College students opening their first bank accounts. Small-business owners with several lines of credit. These were some of the customers whom bankers at Wells Fargo, trying to meet steep sales goals and avoid being fired, targeted for unauthorized or unnecessary accounts, according to legal filings and statements from former bank employees. “The analogy I use was that it was like lions hunting zebras,” said Kevin Pham, a former Wells Fargo employee in San Jose, Calif., who saw it happening at the branch where he worked. “They would look for the weakest, the ones that would put up the least resistance.”

Wells Fargo would like to close the chapter on the sham account scandal, saying it has changed its policies, replaced its chief executive and refunded $2.6 million to customers. But lawmakers and regulators say they will not let it go that quickly, and emerging evidence that some victims were among the bank’s most vulnerable customers has given them fresh ammunition. This week, three members of the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco, Wells Fargo’s hometown, introduced a resolution calling on the city to cut all financial ties with the bank. They cited both the recent scandal and past cases — particularly the $175 million that Wells Fargo paid in 2012 to settle accusations that its mortgage brokers had discriminated against black and Hispanic borrowers.

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You may not like Trump, but do you like war any better?

Washington Foreign Policy Elites Not Sorry To See Obama Go (WaPo)

There is one corner of Washington where Donald Trump’s scorched-earth presidential campaign is treated as a mere distraction and where bipartisanship reigns. In the rarefied world of the Washington foreign policy establishment, President Obama’s departure from the White House – and the possible return of a more conventional and hawkish Hillary Clinton — is being met with quiet relief. The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American foreign policy, via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House. It is not unusual for Washington’s establishment to launch major studies in the final months of an administration to correct the perceived mistakes of a president or influence his successor.

But the bipartisan nature of the recent recommendations, coming at a time when the country has never been more polarized, reflects a remarkable consensus among the foreign policy elite. This consensus is driven by a broad-based backlash against a president who has repeatedly stressed the dangers of overreach and the need for restraint, especially in the Middle East. “There’s a widespread perception that not being active enough or recognizing the limits of American power has costs,” said Philip Gordon, a senior foreign policy adviser to Obama until 2015. “So the normal swing is to be more interventionist.” In other instances, the activity reflects alarm over Trump’s calls for the United States to pull back from its traditional role as a global guarantor of security.

“The American-led international order that has been prevalent since World War II is now under threat,” said Martin Indyk, who oversees a team of top former officials from the administrations of Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton assembled by the Brookings Institution. “The question is how to restore and renovate it.”

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Very clear video. But then, it was of course always a stupid thing to claim that US elections cannot be rigged.

Hacking Democracy (ZH)

“Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” – Joe Stalin.

With the mainstream media lambasting Trump for daring to suggest the election process is rigged – despite hard evidence – this is the hack that proved America’s elections can be stolen using a few lines of computer code. The ‘Hursti Hack’ in this video is an excerpt from the feature length Emmy nominated documentary ‘Hacking Democracy’. The hack of the Diebold voting system in Leon County, Florida, is real. It was verified by computer scientists at UC Berkeley.

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Brussels is as crazy as the US Democrats.

Italy Shields Russia From EU Sanctions Threat (EUO)

Italy has shielded Russia and Syria from a threat of new sanctions, amid warnings by some leaders that Russia was trying to “weaken” the EU. EU leaders said in a joint statement in Brussels on Thursday (20 October) that: “The EU is considering all available options, should the current atrocities [in Syria] continue.” They also urged “the Syrian regime and its allies, notably Russia” to “bring the atrocities to an end”, referring to Russian and Syrian airstrikes on the city of Aleppo in Syria that have caused severe civilian casualties. Germany, France, and the UK had wanted to threaten sanctions more explicitly.

“The EU is considering all options, including further restrictive measures targeting individuals and entities supporting the regime, should the current atrocities continue”, they had suggested saying. Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi led opposition, also shared by some other states, to the threat, diplomats said. He said while leaving the summit that “if we want to speak with Russia then we have to leave the door open”. He also said he did not think “that the difficult situation in Syria could be solved by additional sanctions on Russia”.

Read more …

Europe has but one purpose: to humiliate Greece. Britain better watch out.

Draghi Says Athens Should Focus On Reforms, And The Eurozone On Debt (Kath.)

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi on Thursday called on the Greek government to focus its efforts on implementing reforms agreed with the country’s creditors, noting that the ECB will examine the issues of Greece’s debt sustainability and its possible involvement in the Central Bank’s quantitative easing program when the time is right. “Discussions on the sustainability of the Greek debt continued” at an ECB meeting earlier in the day, he said. “We expressed concern, and steps should be taken.” Draghi said the ECB will conduct its own independent assessment of Greece’s debt.

“When the time comes we will examine independently the issue of the debt sustainability,” Draghi said, adding that “until then it is premature to speculate and weave scenarios,” an apparent reference to Greek calls for inclusion in the ECB’s QE program. Draghi appeared to indicate that the ECB would proceed with its assessment of Greece’s debt once there has been action from both sides: work from Athens in implementing reforms and action from Greece’s eurozone partners in lightening its debt burden. The timing of Draghi’s comments was significant. They came a day before Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the sidelines of an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels for talks that are expected to touch on Greece’s debt problem and the progress of reforms.

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As supermarket prices are as high as in the rest of Europe.

126,956 Greek Workers Earn €100 Per Month, 343,760 Between €100 and €400 (KTG)

When it comes to escape the nightmare of unemployment, one may grab all possible and impossible opportunities and even accept jobs with wages that let you come home with a loaf of bread, two tomatoes and a tiny piece of cheese. The data released by the Labor Ministry are shocking: 126,956 employees in the private sector are paid a gross monthly salary of €100. 343,760 employees are paid monthly salaries between €100 and €400 gross. This category of workers have part-time or rotating work contracts. Working time: 2-3 days per week or even a few hours a week. €100 per month gross could be €55-60(?) net – enough to cover transport cost and make a living at €1 per day. PS a friend recently got a job for €300 gross – net should be around €250-230. Working hours are 4 hours per day, four days per week. She has been jobless for 4 years.

Read more …

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    Lewis Wickes Hine Game of craps. Cincinnati, Ohio 1908 • Dollar Near 7-Month High As Euro Slides, Asia Slips (R.) • Another Thing Trump, Hillary Get W
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle October 21 2016]

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