rapier
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I’ve seen 4 to 1 on net energy return for tight oil.
I reject the generational change as a force to drive stocks lower. The amounts that will be liquidated by retirees is not that big a part of the whole anymore as the super rich own ever more of all stocks.
The great thing about central bank money printing adherents is that they always say it hasn’t succeeded because it isn’t enough. Kuroda just boosted the monthly amount from the $70 billions $100bn and it barely was noticed. The efficacy is not in doubt anywhere in the mainstream. One thing about Japan is the thing about all developed countries now. It isn’t about their people its about their corporations. Almost literally all the people of Japan not working directly for multi national corporations could disappear tomorrow and it would not matter to the ‘markets’ at all. Well it would be good for the Yen I suppose.
Supply and demand started the ball rolling down in oil but now it has taken on a life of its own, supported by Saudi rhetoric and others too. That’s how markets work even our corrupted ones.
My new take is the Saudis don’t like anyone especially Iran and Russia and talking down oil is the best way to hurt them. They have their issues with the West too so shaking them up a bit is fine. It is also all simply a way to exercise power. No matter the outcomes the feeling of power is always seductive. With the king all but dead it is hard to say where the decision making lies there. I don’t think anyone knows what machinations are going on at the top of the family which is the state. Let’s not forget the House of Saud is hugely motivated by its particular sect of Islamic fundamentalism where there is a longing to return to the 11th century. I suppose they know our feckless leaders would never consider the most obvious thing that real empire builders would. Simply taking over the oil fields. Of course I now remember that there are dark rumors that the infrastructure has some self destruct systems in place. It is now totally forgotten that Nixon at least entertained the thought.
And again, the Fed cannot raise longer term Treasury rates. Most other rates can rise and many are right now but unless Uncle Sam either goes on another borrowing binge or starts talking about default or the Fed itself starts selling paper there is no short term way to raise Treasury rates in a world filled with trillions of dollars looking for a safe home. Which rates are rising is a crucial distinction.
The safe haven status of the US Treasury and equity markets and the dollar speaks not to decline but to a new period of ascendancy, relative anyway. In certain ways including the embrace of The Empire of Chaos all over the globe can be seen and certainly is by the power elites here as the empire gaining strength.
$50bn? Well if they can build empty mega cities why not. Well either we are right or we are wrong. Either debt means something and must be paid back or it doesn’t. If the latter than XX thousands of years of human existence dominated by want and need were simply a mistake. The mistake of not having enough money. Don’t ask how money based upon debt which isn’t paid back makes any sense. It makes my brain hurt.
One possible irony is that if this project is successful long term, because industrial civilization has march on, then most of the canal won’t be needed in 150 years. The sea level will be up 50 feet.
Doug Noland asks who are the counter parties to all those hedges and ‘three ways’
https://www.prudentbear.com/2014/12/bo-bo.html#moreThat’s a very good question. Like the October plunge and last weeks the rocket blasts off the bottom seem to suggest the panic or near panic was fake. Maybe not. I suppose fat finger buy orders from those with unlimited funds can always save the day. We will see. I tend to think such could go on for years but won’t count on it.
As things stand today 250 S&P points to the upside by spring are not out of the question. Melt ups or melt downs seem to be the only paths.
The overriding fact is that the economic world is filled beyond overflowing with bank deposits, ie. money, by several orders of magnitude over any previous historic amounts.
A huge portion of that money is held by a tiny few who seek to buy something with it to either, A: want to make it grow, or B: want to preserve it’s ‘value’. Not to buy stuff to live or live well mind you, but just to preserve it or make it grow. For the most part that being by holding the equity or debt of large corporations and US Treasury paper. The perhaps temporary decline in the price of a few hundred billion of those assets, oil related, is not actually a big deal. Not when dozens of trillions are held by those tiny few. The tiny few be they Americans, Russians, Brazilians, Chinese,or whoever who are now being invited to put this ‘money’ into US approved assets. The result has to be the inflation of those assets, especially equity ones, ie. stocks.
Thus a virtuous circle has been created. The ‘money’ flees other places so inflating the approved assets which reinforces the flows into those assets, and on and on again. As Lee Adler calls it, the US the last Ponzi standing.
The thing is this could go on for years. Days perhaps but years too.
Only when the approved debt assets begin to fall in price will anything be changed. Such change cannot I believe be caused by democratic process. It will probably be caused by, in a broad sense, anarchy.
On the plus side it’s hard to imagine any nation who would have been better given the financial and military power that the US was after WWII . Now however things have taken a more ugly turn. As far as American citizens they are as enamored with empire as any citizenry would be. Especially since American exceptionalism is a quasi official religious belief and this summary does not give the very particular form of Christian God ordained/God approved American destiny its full due.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalismThe freedom which really counts in America is the freedom wealth can buy.
The underclass was baked into America at its founding as you can’t get more under than chattel slave. Race is still class and that’s as it should be in the view of a huge majority of white Americans. There is hardly room here but it can be said that slavery was a necessary requirement for Americas freedom. One can start here on that. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations-an-intellectual-autopsy/371125/
In the above post the chart was of the Conference Board’s concon survey, in October. All the excitement now is about the University of Michigan/Reuters survey for November.
I looked up the Conference Board’s November report and dang if it did not fall from 94.1 to 88.7.
https://www.conference-board.org/data/consumerconfidence.cfmFor the most part the concon number reflects the stock market. People have been well trained to equate the stock market with the economy. 07 and 08 was an anomaly when stocks were strong and concon sank.
This is a month old but still applies.
Concon has been in a downtrend for 14 yearsTo be perfectly fair we are now just above the down sloping trend line connecting the highs. I’m not sure that the concon numbers actually contain any information however. It’s just a sort of derivative of feelings. Feelings and expectations do not move the economy, money does.
I had thought that the oil market could be managed somewhat via the paper market, ie. derivatives, as gold and stocks are to a large extent. Not saying it won’t be at some point but it seems the paper market is being left behind as a price setting mechanism with all the discounts now being offered. The Saudis and Iran and probably others are said to be offering oil at a 4 handle.
While to you and me a managed market isn’t a market at all for those with power any other kind of market portends death of their power. Why and how the Saudis went down this path may become one of the major stories of the period.
Admittedly it is very easy to get caught up in immediate short term things believing the portend huge trend changes when in fact looking back they are just squiggles. The overarching fact is that there are trillions of dollars, in bank deposit form anyway, that can put a bid under any asset, anyplace, anytime and many more trillions could be created by central banks.
Cairo Illinois looks about the same today and stands as a particular story of collapse on a small local scale in America. I drove through there only 2 months ago. Taking a detour to see what I knew was a sad thing. Collapse is the rule in much of rural America. In the Midwest and plains I am familiar with the only towns doing OK are ones that have some attachment, usually manufacturing, with major corporations. As I say Cairo was a particular story while in agricultural areas the cause was the relentless growth of the size of farming operations and population stagnation and then loss. Many towns simply no longer needed. Just places to put Walmart’s which wiped out the struggling local businesses.
https://www.legendsofamerica.com/il-cairo.html
As to the Fed raising rates, Lee Adler maintains they can’t until they shrink their balance sheet but it seems all the relevant articles are behind the pay wall. The Fed has no magic wand to raise rates. Not Treasury rates anyway. Junk is another matter.
My bizarro theory is that the trend and the goal is for the debt of giant global corporations to eventually carry lower rates than sovereign debt. Perhaps you can imagine what this would mean, or maybe not.
Economics itself is an ideology. Before there was Economics, capital E, a stand alone social science there was a more wide ranging study of what was called the political economy which by its very name embraced the idea that economic outcomes were heavily determined by politics and government. Pre big E economics the only pure market based study of economics was relegated to agricultural economics the study of which entailed supply, demand, credit and importantly the earth itself and the vagaries of weather and soil.
The first job of capital E economics was to absolutely reject, by ignoring, the above fact that government is a primary determinate of economic outcomes, winners and losers. The second job was to reject, by ignoring, that natural resources, the earth itself, made any contribution to economic outcomes. For capital E economics there were only two major forces that determined economic outcomes, those being capital and labor. Thus the profound alteration of the entire biosphere is to this day not considered a cost at all. Nor by extension is growth itself in question. Any questioning of the purpose of growth cannot possibly be considered by big E economics since nothing outside economics is deemed worthy of question which comes back to economics being an ideology. We live in the age of economics. Big E’s victory is total so then too is its destruction. Nothing humans can do is perfectible for all can and will be corrupted and so it is with economics.
Unfortunately I can’t find Lee Adler’s most recent article on how fracking has accounted for most all the increase in industrial production post 08 and has been a significant contributor to all sorts of economic stats. Keep in mind that the credit expansion part of the fracking boom has been a positive too. Positive to the extent that credit expansion is an existential systematic necessity. Wall Street pouring credit into oil and gas production was integral to the motive for the whole scheme or one might say the whole reason for it.
Now that the worm has turned bad things for bad economic numbers are good for Fed money printing along with deflation of course. Be ready for the message that the Fed will not be raising rates next year coming soon, as if they could anyway. The Fed actually can’t raise Treasury rates. Junk is another matter. Instead when the jobs and industrial production and other numbers turn bad get ready for QE V.
QE by the Fed, BOJ, even the EU when the war with Putin gives the ECB a free hand to finally go full printing mode,and whatever you call it in China is never going to end. There is no limit to the trillions central banks are going to ‘print’. That’s my take anyway. Expecting some definitive quantum leap down in the economy and markets is probably wrong for some years to come. I could be wrong but I could be right.
Every crisis since the late 80’s has the same result the world over. More power to banks and central banks. Every crisis has the same cause, excess credit creation, by the self same banks and central banks. Xi and Li like all political leaders before them have no choice but to cede more independence and power to banks and central banks.
Once a country has a big enough uber class and middle class the chance of reform much less revolution drops to zero so every time you don’t think it can get more crazy it gets more crazy since there is no brake. Nothing goes on forever but in the meantime there are limitless trillions to be printed to support the banking giants assets. Not coincidentally the banks will provide credit to the governments so they can continue doing the things governments do. I don’t doubt for a moment that governments can continue to function just fine as they are with half of their citizens not participating in the economy at all.
RE am under the impression that the currently operation “fracked” wells are a “use-it-or-lose-it” proposition. That if the wells are not pumped constantly, they lose their production.
That’s kind of the wrong question. Such wells are spent in 3 years in most every case with the 3rd year pretty bad. They go downhill fast. Once the pipe is put down no matter what they will utilize it because of the sunk cost. It’s not about use it or lose it, it’s about start it or not.
As to the question of why the Saudis are set on seeing the price drop maybe some day we will know, and what part the US played but we know now that it’s a profound blunder. It’s stupid which is what is to be expected. It’s twilight of the elites baby. The product of inbred stupidity.
At it’s core the AE message, Nicole’s message, has been that deflation is inevitable. That means growth, the growth Illargi rails against, has to end if for no other reason that the planet won’t support it which is a pretty good reason.
Which presents a dilemma if one has to choose a side. More inflation/growth or deflation/contraction. If there is a middle way, a way out I’d like to hear what it is.
In every possible short term I think it’s fair to say that for most every living human, growth is preferred. It’s water under the bridge now but at any point the last 50 years or whatever period you choose if we had chosen to reject growth for its own sake the way down would have been less steep but we can’t go back now. Then too at every possible point in the past the same formula applied. Growth was better at every moment along the line.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a right or correct price for a fungible centrally traded in auction markets commodity like oil. Such things are always strongly subject to liquidity flows based upon greed and fear compounded by leverage. One can argue the correct price is around the price of production but there is never a single cost of production. A better measure might be the the cost of the last marginal unit but how do you figure that? Gross stats from 3/13 to 3/14 of US gas and oil producers showed a loss of over $100bn and yet you can see now those claiming the cost of production in the Balken play is $65.
It occurs to me, right or wrong, that oil has had several years of speculative long side support, just because. That oil could easily have been in the $70/bbl all along.
Instead of the system, any system monetary or otherwise, being labeled, prim facie, as corrupt or criminal it is better to think in terms of them becoming corrupt.
My Catholic/Christian education is speaking here (in old fashioned pre modern Christianist terms) in declaring that man is imperfect, cannot create a perfect system and will eventually corrupt any system. Any of a myriad of systems would serve the majority well if were not corrupted. The fractional reserve fiat money system worked pretty well post Great Depression, for Americans in America anyway, until pick your date. 1973, or 80 or 87, the latter placing Greenspan as the important actor.
To repeat. There is no possible perfect system and every system will end up being corrupted because of human nature.
The drop this month “doesn’t change our view that the trend in consumer confidence is moving upwards,” said David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Funds in New York. “
I wonder if this guy can read a chart? This is the damnedest uptrend I’ve ever seen. This is a secular downtrend that is 14 years old.
https://wallstreetexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Untitled43.png
Via Lee Adler
Again, the view that the trend is up cannot be disparaged enough. It’s one thing to “believe” something is in an uptrend but when it’s a number with a history there is no possible excuse for ignoring simple facts or for reporters to just jot down such nonsense and not challenge it. I use the term “reporters” loosely. Well everyone has to make a living and being able to voice such whoppers with a straight face shows how one can make the real dollars.
Apropos of nothing, despite being what I thought was exceedingly reasonable in my downplaying of the Ebola outbreak I still feel like I was played. One has to keep reminding yourself to pay no attention at all to the things everyone is paying attention to.
A few hundred million sent to buy Brent or WTI futures can stabilize the oil price, over and over again. Any exchange traded commodity can easily be goosed against shorts.
Once one dispenses with the idea of real markets then pretty much anything is possible in things that are priced at futures exchanges. Ultimately many things are not priced there but the prices of real things being bought and sold by real people and real companies is slow motion. Slow motion is the opposite of crash or panic.
If they want oil to stop falling and stabilize, or rise, it will. The “they” being those who want higher stock prices,low interest rates, low gold and silver price, etc. I don’t particularly buy that ‘they’, the Fed in one case, are in the stock futures at all times or even ever, directly. It’s more a matter of consensus and will.
So oil at $30? Only if ‘they’ lose control. With $XX trillion at the ready it doesn’t seem likely.
Federal withholding taxes were up in October 6.7% year over year, so about half that in inflation adjusted terms. SS and Medicare withholdings for the month were up 4.2% YOY. This is growth as the definition of growth is applied in the mainstream. It might not be enough and let’s face it, growth will not save us, but there it is. There is growth at the moment. Sustainable is another matter. How? Mainly by ‘stimulus’.
How, why, for how long or the very nature of said growth are not the first issue issue at hand here. Those are the back story. I mean no ill will but Illargi should be more circumspect in declaring there is no growth in the US.
I use this web site often, Bloomberg stock futures, to see what the market is doing.
”
https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/stocks/futures/There is a little box to the right explaining the market moves. They don’t say the market moves “because” like the lamest the mainstream but instead use “as”. It has been striking how most of blurbs and stories do not pertain to the economy at all. It’s all “as Dragi” or “as the PBC or “as the Fed”.
https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/stocks/futures/This is actually a positive development in the sense that stocks have always simply been a barometer of financial market liquidity and central banks ultimately are the source or cause of the liquidity trends. The thing is however that this fact has always been hidden behind stories like ‘the market rose because earning’, etc. etc. It has been the project of everyone to maintain the stock market was a mirror of the economy. That is no longer the case. No longer is the pretense worth advertising, which is the bad part too. How long can the system hold when one of its most important myths is abandoned? As in we don’t care about you losers, just print and we win.
Hendry’s knowing skepticism and cynicism is all well and good for him but he’s a winner working for the winners. What about the losers with no job at all or the slightly better losers with a job that doesn’t pay the bills. They are not going to be skeptical they are going to become ever more cynical. More and more people are onto the game. Central banks ‘stimulate’, stocks rise. The winners are as happy as could be, poor children be damned.
Simple question. How is the Fed going to raise interest rates? They set the Fed Funds rate, the overnight interbank rate, and that’s it. Unless they start to shrink their balance sheet,that is sell their notes and bonds which they won’t do then all they have left is words.
The world financial system is flooded with money that is now dying to get into US assets. It’s the last Ponzi standing after all.
Everybody says they are going to raise rates, even them, but nobody says how. They seem to think there is a magic wand in the Eccles building.
I have a very strong belief that there is never going to be any real push back against the powers that be, that comes from a ballot box. Sadly. I would be happy to be proven wrong.
Thanks for the great little insight that the Ukraine situation can be understood in part as a way to boost loyalty to the EU because of the Russian ‘threat’. With the drumbeat about the threat of Putin it’s far easier to sweep the economic, political and sovereignty issues aside.
The stock market is the mirror through which most everyone sees the economy. Although virtually nobody consciously understands rising share prices as inflation, it’s always increased ‘value’ and on some subconscious level rising share prices equate with those cousins of inflation growth and confidence. Bernanke made no secret he intended rising stock prices and the reason he wanted that, to boost confidence. It’s all one big mixed up mash up of illusions.
It’s a shame in a way the Great Depression was foretold by the stock market crash. For that lead people to think falling stocks caused the deflation, ie. the Great Depression, Bernanke included to some extent and so he built his career on the idea. The stock market crash was coincident with the great deflation not the cause of it. However belief is a very strong thing so nobody in American will believe in real serious long term deflation until stocks deflate. Which is why I perhaps wrongly think QE infinity is just around the corner.
Fed head Dudley I think it was called the October stock market bottom to the second with his suggestion that QE should perhaps not end that month. The most effective use of Fed words that I can recall in recent times. The October swoon had no underlying justification on a liquidity basis so the snap back has been historic. Along with help from Uncle Abe’s boys at the BOJ. A hint the size of a 500 pound weight dropping on the Yellen’s Fed’s head. How can they not take the hint? In the mash up of illusions the first and last one is if stocks don’t fall deflation won’t ensue and the system will live another day. How can they resist.
The generation came of age during the post WWII expansion of what can be called an empire. An empire based upon military, monetary, financial, technical and organizational power. No generation or generations in history have thought to suppress a rising empire. Who doesn’t want to win?
As for most destructive; I’ll grant it may be true on an environmental basis but not on intent by a long shot.
Bloodlands
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/worst-madness/I gather the drones are typical consumer ones which weigh around one pound. Such are incapable of doing any damage to much of anything especially an industrial plant like a power plant.
The flights are symbolic and one can assume that is what they are intended to be. Either by opponents of such things or maybe their owners, the French government in this case for reasons only they can know but we could assume are not good.
RE thepack
This site is not a financial one. Treasury Direct is the only way to actually own a Tbill, or note or bond for that matter. The word direct means direct. Any other possible way, as far as I know, of holding Treasury paper is indirect. Safety can have many levels and timelines. On the scale of short term Tbills, most a couple of months or less, I don’t think safety is really a question. Then too even the ‘direct’ part is direct to and from a bank account. Think about it.
Is Putin a fan of Automatic Earth or other alt sites or hold views about how untenable modern centralized, energy intensive, debt dependent society is? I think not. He’s a rather straight forward sort of politician seeking power, and wealth, for himself, his core allies, and then his nation. If in some alt universe where the world economic system operated under King Ruble and Russia’s military was supreme and operated from hundreds of bases around the globe do you suppose some benign humanistic world of peace and sustainable development would ensue?
The point is the best one can hope for in politics is selecting the lesser of evils. I question whether Russia under Putin is any less evil than what we’ve got. His main attraction for us being Russia’s age old desire to be somewhat separated and independent of the West. Now manifesting itself in opposition to the American dominated
finance/monetary/corporate, trade and military global system. The old enemy of my enemy is my friend syndrome. Among the oldest of political games.If Putin is best for Russia or not I can’t guess. I simply know a unipolar world is impossible. An impossible dream that had been the dream of Americas elites for over 100 years which is spawning everything we decry and many unaware citizens of all camps hate about our world too but are too unaware of its root causes to ascertain. Meaning they think endless growth is possible. To the extent Russia throws a monkey wrench into the juggernaut of ‘globalization’ is the extent to which I think Russia under Putin should be respected. Not liked, but respected.
That inflation has become a holy grail is bizarre,no matter what wacky definition is used.That Kuroda thinks the falling price of imported oil is something to be fought or offset is insane. Oh wait. No, those are perfectly reasonable ideas and it is we who are insane or just as well be because our ideas are not even given mention much less consideration.
It may seem off topic but all through the 90’s Greenspan would go before congress a couple of times year, Americas elected officials,and announce that if wages rose he would slam on the monetary brakes. The peoples representatives smiled and all but kissed his ring. There is no possible theory of democracy which can explain that. Explain how politicians were happy that their constituents could look forward to falling in real terms wages and that people voted for them. Albeit there were no candidates available to battle against falling wages.
With that bridge crossed I long ago gave up on anything worth talking about vis a vis the economy would be talked about much less even mentioned. Americas experience is a good proxy for what goes on in Japan and the EU as well. Up is down and crazy is normal.
Ilargi, ultimately isn’t it the message of AE that tragedy is going to be the outcome for billions of people? Poverty being perhaps the least of it for many? Against the backdrop of severe economic dislocation increasing poverty is built in, for all ages. The locations and timing of the declines determined by powerful forces, actors, and the forces within different countries and their culture. Greece is obviously a case where history strongly suggests the modern world is going to crush them early in the process, Spain next. Italy? Got me. Each will struggle in their own ways.
I’ll confess, rightly or wrongly, feeling powerless to affect the children of Greece.
I was set to do a post on today’s debt rattle about this. Not child poverty so much but poverty and lives of want overall. My point was this is a desired feature of Anglo American conservatism. The hallmark of all conservatism is the support of aristocracy. A necessary corollary of an aristocracy dominating a nation is that it presupposes a lower class which is subservient to the aristocrats. It is thought that the poor, the less worthy will be subservient, not make waves, know their place in order to keep what little they have. In other words they will act conservatively and this is the proper social order.
Here is a link to a brilliant essay on this
https://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2003/11/dead_right.htmlIn the US the aristocrats have always been the monied and financial elites. The lower classes were non white. Blacks of course but then various immigrant groups. In the US southern Europeans were not considered white until probably after WWII.
My point in the context of what people think of Spanish, Italians or Greek children is that they are less worthy and deserving of their status. The list of undeserving world wide and here in the US is rapidly growing again, overtly. Now Russians are included. I’m not claiming Americans are any worse than any other people in this regard but simply that they are no better even if they lie to themselves and say they are. Usually under some sort of rational based upon freedom. Freedom for Syrians and Ukrainians now, Iraqis not so long ago.
No appeal to thoughts of children in foreign lands will register with the empire. In the defense of the American empire until very recently the amount of absolute desperate poverty world wide had been shrinking. Now, with deflation taking hold old justifications for poverty of the masses are being resurrected.
The Fed ended QE because it has finally become widely known that the only effect of it is to inflate financial asset prices. In the inexact parlance of the chattering classes it caused ‘income inequality’. The idea that it did was the view of a few insane nut jobs 5 years ago. Then it slowly was accepted by all financial insiders and in 2 years everyone will know that it did. Which has made it politically impossible for the Fed to carry on. They do have to maintain some fig leafs worth of cover for themselves politically. Well they don’t really but they think they do.
They can and do whatever they need to do to keep those asset prices high. To wit 3 weeks ago during the little stock market swoon an erstwhile haw Open Market Committee member was gabbing about continuing with QE. So we know they will if the next little swoon is much over a 10% fall in stocks. Which will make the purpose as plain as day and to do so will be a humiliation but they will do it anyway.
That will be the moment I think when a bit of anarchy will begin to take hold in the US.
Interest rates and stock will likely not change much as long as liquidity remains abundant. QE’s end has flattened the rise in liquidity but not reversed it.
Off topic of the day but a good outline of a probable ebola future.
https://www.wired.com/2014/10/ebola-endemic/
I sort of hate to use the term globalization or its derivatives but ebola is probably going to be another kick in its nuts. Endemic not epidemic or pandemic. A constant headwind against trade, travel, order. Note that any flareups in in the West are going to be hugely expensive for governments, or else. In the US a devastating cost for the industry, which is 17% of GDP.
The capital shortfall of EU banks, be it $15bn or even $500bn isn’t really all that much. The Fed, BOJ and ECB can print that up in no time flat. The only problem being, for now, how to get it to the banks that need it. That problem can be solved easily when crisis hits. Just do it, As they say, it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
I have to drag out Karl Rove most every day it seems to explain it all.
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
It’s a shame but Brussels isn’t the Beltway. They so want to be even after Victoria Nuland laid it all out, “fuck the EU” she said. I guess there is no amount of humiliation they won’t take in the name of free markets or whatever you can think of calling what it is America is doing or trying to do or thinks it’s doing.
Whose idea was it to have a sort of legitimate stress test? Heads should roll. 99% of the people in the world don’t know what a bank balance sheet is. Don’t know an bank asset from a liability. Of the 1% who do know 99% don’t care what the numbers are. As long as a bank has liquidity it’s good. Double entry bookkeeping is so 15th century.
