Feb 042018
 


John William Waterhouse Hylas and the Nymphs 1896

 

A Tale Of Two Americas (Axios)
Today’s Market Is Biding Its Time Until It Becomes Normal Again (Bonner)
The Market System Is Tight In All Directions (Fas.)
Bond Market’s Debt-Ceiling Alarm Bell Is Ringing Loud and Clear (BBG)
Yellen: “I Don’t Want To Label What We’re Seeing As A Bubble” (ZH)
The Fed’s Dilemma Isn’t Going Away Under Powell (Shilling)
Theresa May Says Brexit Transition Deal Will Be Agreed In Seven Weeks (R.)
Tory Former Attorney General Says “Time is Now” To Reverse Brexit (Ind.)
Anger Over Glut Of ‘Posh Ghost Towers’ Planned For London (G.)
‘We Made The Finest Steel In The World – Now We Make Lattes’ (G.)
Illicit Foreign Casino Cash Often Goes Straight Into Vancouver Housing (VSun)
Greece On Edge For ‘Macedonia’ Protest In Athens (K.)

 

 

As I said yesterday: the divisions it causes are much bigger than the memo itself. It’s what happens in echo chambers.

A Tale Of Two Americas (Axios)

On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow was literally laughing. Over on Fox News, Sean Hannity put up his dukes. At 9 last night, Axios points out that you could just flip between the two and see an encapsulation of our two Americas – total dismissal of the memo’s import, versus the assertion that it’s “only about 15 percent of what’s coming.”

So, Rachel, how was your day? “This thing?! This was two weeks of: This memo is going to end everything. This memo, have you heard about the memo? Hashtag: Release the memo! This memo will make Donald Trump innocent. This memo will put Robert Mueller in jail. It will abolish the FBI. The Justice Department will have to rename itself the Donald J. Trump & Family Private Security Task Force.” “I mean, I can’t believe this is it.” “I don’t really believe in the whole Cable News Wars idea. I know people who work across the street at the Fox News Channel. I’ve got friends that work there. I think we’re all doing our own thing in our own way best we can.”

“But, oh my God, right? … [T]his … hyping and huffing and puffing and working their audience up into a frenzy for two solid weeks.” “And apparently, despite all of that, … they either didn’t know or they didn’t notice that this thing they have been clamoring for and hyping for two solid weeks, … it actually disproves their whole point.” “They release this memo to prove that the dossier started everything. The memo says the dossier didn’t actually start anything.”

What’s up, Sean? “[W]hen you put all this information together, here’s what it all means. The FBI misled and purposely deceived a federal court while using an unverified, completely phony opposition research bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton.” “We have never, ever in history seen anything like this, and it was spearheaded not by rank-and-file members of the FBI intelligence community and Department of Justice. No. High-ranking officials: James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, likely Loretta Lynch.”

“But here’s the bottom line: Crimes have been committed. There is no way that they did not know that the FBI was lying to a FISA court in order to spy on an opposition campaign during an election year. They have aided and abetted what is a massive constitutional violation.” “Comey, McCabe, Rosenstein and others all need to be investigated and, in many cases, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” “Now, of course, Comey is running scared. He’s out of his mind right now, now that he is exposed with this memo.” “[T]he special counsel must be disbanded immediately.” “And, by the way — nobody else will say this — all charges against Paul Manafort and General Michael Flynn need to be dropped. It’s that simple.” “This scandal is only in Phase 1. … Stay tuned! Tick tock! “

Read more …

“..when something is not normal… it is just biding its time until it becomes normal again.”

Today’s Market Is Biding Its Time Until It Becomes Normal Again (Bonner)

On Planet Earth, we can find our direction by reference to the Magnetic North. For investing, we use the most reliable force in finance – the relentless return to “normal” – to get our bearings. And searching for normal, we may have stumbled upon what could be the Trade of the Century. More on that later… As economists describe it, reversion to the mean is merely a recognition of the tendency for things to stay in a range that we recognize as “normal.” Trees do not grow 1,000 feet high. People don’t run 100 mph. You don’t get something for nothing. Normal exists because things tend to follow certain familiar patterns, shapes, and routines. When people go out in the morning, they know, generally, whether to wear a winter coat or a pair of shorts.

The temperature is not 100 degrees one day and zero the next. Occasionally, of course, odd things happen. And sometimes, things change in a fundamental way. But usually, when people say “this time is different”… it’s time to bet on normal. This phenomenon – reversion to the mean – has been thoroughly tested and studied in the investment world. It seems to apply to just about everything – stocks, bonds, strategies, markets, sectors… you name it. But let’s push on. What is unusual in the chart below? What is so abnormal that the mean is likely to revert against it? You will note that global debt was only $30 trillion in 1994. Now it is $230 trillion. That $200 trillion in extra credit is probably the whirlwind that sent equities spinning up to the top right.

Those gusts blew stock and other asset prices up to heights never seen before. The Dow reached over 26,000. Houses went on the market for more than $100 million. Gold rose above $1,900. But while stocks and bonds may have the wind at their backs, it seems to blow in the economy’s face… making forward progress almost impossible. The real economy – as depicted by GDP at the bottom of the chart – has grown in a rather normal way, but at a slower and slower rate. Its steady, plodding increase gives no hint of the chaos going on above it. The real economy and the financial world are as different as the eye of a hurricane and the swirling clouds and storms around it. Another thing you notice is that until the mid-’90s… and again between 2008 and 2012… the average investor got essentially no benefit in exchange for the added risk of putting his money into equities (the chart above includes dividends). He might just as well have left his money in U.S. Treasury bonds.

[..] there is a time to be in stocks… and a time to be out of them. Without knowing the future, you can still know when something is not normal. And when something is not normal… it is just biding its time until it becomes normal again.

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Who or what can restore flexibility when everything’s maxed out to the point of bursting?

The Market System Is Tight In All Directions (Fas.)

The Four Pillars Holding Markets Up Are Strained, All At The Same Time. Viewed as a combination of intertwined components, each component is showing growing signs of pressure and seem to be running out of road for further advancing. The synchronicity of them, more than any single component taken independently, is what should draw attention, as it compounds systemic risk. Here are the four components, characterizing the basin of chaotic attraction for markets nowadays:

What happens when the system is tight in its key possible directions of expansion? That it expands no more. Stochastically, on one of the components a tipping point is reached, which jumpstarts the autolytic effect, spreading back through the vectors of the complex system, and snapping the unstable equilibrium into an alternative stable state. That is our thesis. In [a] recent interview, we discuss the impending tipping points for markets due to a synchronicity of excess valuations, excess indebtedness, excessively low cash balances and a drawback in excessive public flows. Let’s give a cursory look across the four components. Again, the list is by no means exhaustive, but rather a work-in-progress (seemingly endless) collecting of data points, following on to our previous work of ‘a long list of anomalies’

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In a country so divided it doesn’t take much to let things get out of hand.

Bond Market’s Debt-Ceiling Alarm Bell Is Ringing Loud and Clear (BBG)

In the $2 trillion Treasury-bill market, where the U.S. government turns for short-term funding, investors are showing they’re plenty nervous about the approaching deadline to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. With Treasury expected to exhaust its borrowing authority as early as the first half of March, a four-week bill sale on Tuesday will serve as the latest gauge of investor anxiety. There’s growing concern that the impasse over the debt limit will become entangled with efforts to keep the government open. Current federal funding expires Feb. 8, and the Republican-led Congress has been working on a stopgap measure to extend that into late March.

Treasury has deployed extraordinary measures to stay under the debt cap since it was reinstated in early December, but investors are wary. The new securities mature March 8, around when the Congressional Budget Office expects Treasury to run out of room. Traders are asking for higher yields to own previously issued bills maturing March 8. What’s more, an auction last week of bills due March 1 drew the weakest demand since May. “People are kind of getting skeptical of March 8 bills,” said Joseph Abate at Barclays Capital in New York. “You might argue that the March 1 bill isn’t necessarily vulnerable to payment delay because the Treasury probably has sufficient resources to meet outflows and thus might be able to last until” March 5.

Treasury has placed the drop-dead date around the end of February. But investors are leaning toward the projection from the nonpartisan CBO, which said last week that the U.S. may run the risk of default without a debt-ceiling increase in the first half of March. After the Jan. 30 auction of bills maturing March 1, the rate on those securities was higher than debt due a week later. Since then, the rate on debt expiring March 8 has climbed to 1.40%, exceeding that on bills due a week later.

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In a country where 70% of people live paycheck to paycheck, the best the central bank president can muster is “they should diversify their investments..” And people are praising her for doing such a good job.

Yellen: “I Don’t Want To Label What We’re Seeing As A Bubble” (ZH)

While her term ended – for all practical purposes – with the conclusion of this week’s January FOMC meeting, former Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s last official day at the helm of the world’s most important central bank was marked by an explosion of volatility in the Dow, with the blue chips recording their worst single-day selloff since the collapse of Lehman brothers. And even though it’s tempting to suspect Friday’s selloff might foreshadow what’s to come during the Powell era, Yellen admitted during an interview with PBS Newshour that she was disappointed to not be reappointed for a second term by President Trump – and that, if she had her druthers, she would’ve opted to stay. “I would have liked to serve an additional term and I did make that clear, so I will say I was disappointed not to be reappointed,” Yellen said Friday. “I think things are looking very strong.”

Despite the volatility of the past week and the first nascent signs of wage growth in years – which should worry a central bank whose primary responsibility is to put a floor under plunging markets – Yellen says she expects interest rate hikes to proceed as planned. “The Federal Reserve has been on a path of gradual rate increases and if conditions continue as they have been, that process is likely to continue,” she said. “And as it happens we would expect long rates to move up.” Unlike fellow former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan – who this week declared that both stocks and bond valuations are in bubble territory – Yellen was careful not to use such strident language. “I don’t want to label what we’re seeing as a bubble.”

“But I would say that asset valuations are generally elevated…for the stock market, the ratio of price to earnings…is near the high end of its historical range. If we look at for example commercial real estate and other assets, we’re seeing high valuations.” But should Americans be worried about the markets? “They should be careful and I would say diversified in their investments. What we look at is the likely resilience of the economy and the financial system… In that regard, we have a banking system that is much stronger and better capitalized and better able to withstand a shock than prior to the financial crisis.” Stlll, Yellen is refusing to rule out another selloff. “Asset valuations could change I’m not predicting that that would happen and I wouldn’t rule that out,” she said.

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Powelll will be cleaning up Bernanke and Yellen’s shit.

The Fed’s Dilemma Isn’t Going Away Under Powell (Shilling)

[..] the Fed is confronted with a serious dilemma: Inflation and wage increases continue to undershoot its expectations at the same time the central bank confronts forces pressuring it toward credit tightening. The new chairman, Jerome Powell, who isn’t a trained economist, may change the central bank’s tone, but his soon-to-be predecessor Janet Yellen and the other academic economists who have dominated monetary policy, believe fervently in the theoretical Phillips Curve. It posits that a declining unemployment rate should spur inflation, despite evidence to the contrary. Rather than increase as the unemployment rate declined since the recession, the rate of inflation has largely stayed the same.

Nevertheless, the Fed wants to tighten credit slowly due to chronic low inflation and memories of the May 2013 “taper tantrum,” when a mere mention by then-Chairman Ben Bernanke of reducing the Fed’s rate of asset purchases sent financial markets into tailspins as interest rates leaped. Another reason for the Fed to tighten is to keep commercial banks from lending out the more than $2 trillion in excess reserves the Fed has given them through quantitative easing. These are simply an asset of the banks and a liability on the Fed balance sheet with little financial or economic consequences. But as economic growth picks up as a result of the tax cuts followed by likely massive fiscal stimulus, creditworthy borrowers will want to borrow, banks will be happy to lend, and these excess reserves could turn into tons of money that would threaten major inflation.

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Fat chance.

Theresa May Says Brexit Transition Deal Will Be Agreed In Seven Weeks (R.)

British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Friday that a Brexit transition period will be agreed with the European Union in seven weeks as she tries to ease concerns that a deal may take longer to reach. The EU has offered Britain a status quo transition until the end of 2020 after Brexit. Both sides are aiming to reach a transition agreement by the end of March that will form part of the final withdrawal treaty to be agreed later this year. But there is disagreement inside May’s Conservative Party over some details such as the status of EU citizens during the transition and the scope of European Court of Justice jurisdiction. Many businesses and banks are concerned a battle over the terms of a transition could delay or even sink an agreement just months before Britain exits the EU on March 29, 2019.

“In seven weeks time, we will have an agreement with the European Union, that is the timetable they have said on an implementation period,” May told the BBC in an interview in China. “What the British people voted for is for us to take back control of our money, our borders and our laws and that’s exactly what we are going to do,” May said of Brexit. The EU and Britain hope to hammer out a deal on Britain’s exit and the outline of a trade package by October 2018. But some EU officials have begun to voice concern that a plan to have the leaders endorse negotiating guidelines for a new phase of talks to begin in April on a future trade agreement may be in danger of slipping if May does not spell out what Britain’s demands are for that trade pact.

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Britain is as divided as the US is.

Tory Former Attorney General Says “Time is Now” To Reverse Brexit (Ind.)

Dominic Grieve has warned the public it is running out of time to change its mind on Brexit, saying the next few months are “decision time”.The former Attorney General told The Independent it would soon be too late to reverse the decision to leave the EU, and urged people to make their minds up in the next six months.“The six months we have between now and the autumn are so important,” he said. “It is going to be decision time. And decision time in the sense of what happens in the next six months being a final decision.“If people do want to change their mind, and they could if they wanted to, the time is now. It cannot be after 29 March 2019, and frankly it cannot be after the end of the autumn of this year.”

While he did not endorse calls for a second EU referendum, Mr Grieve said it was important to give people the chance to change their minds on Brexit. “I’m not calling for a second referendum,” he said. “But we should not exclude the possibility that people’s opinion may change. And to start from an opinion on an issue that was expressed 18 months ago, where people are bound to have had their opinion influenced since, we must be very careful to listen about what it is they want.”He continued: “It the most extraordinary conundrum. We have an instruction from the electorate, by a small but significant majority, to do something that many of us [in Parliament] think is going to be very hard to achieve without serious damage to the wellbeing of every citizen in this country. It is an ethical conundrum and it is a practical conundrum.”

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And here is why the country is so divided.

Anger Over Glut Of ‘Posh Ghost Towers’ Planned For London (G.)

London councils have granted property developers planning permission to build more than 26,000 luxury flats priced at more than £1m each, despite fears that there are already too many half-empty “posh ghost towers” in the capital. Builders are currently constructing towers containing 7,749 homes priced between £1m and £10m, and have planning rights to build another 18,712 high-end apartments and townhouses, the Observer can reveal. Politicians and housing campaigners said the figures show councils are prioritising the needs of the super-rich over those of hardworking young Londoners. The boom in developments of luxury flats, which often include private cinemas, gyms, swimming pools and concierge facilities, comes as the capital faces a growing crisis in the availability of affordable housing, with nurses, police officers and other essential workers struggling to get on to the housing ladder.

Research shows that a fifth of aspiring first-time buyers have moved in with their parents to save money, and a quarter of them will need to stay there for at least five years to amass enough for a deposit. The proportion of English first-time buyers who rely on help from families and friends for their deposit has increased from 22% in 1996 to 29% in 2016, according to the government’s English Housing Survey. Anne Baxendale of Shelter said: “The UK is in the grip of a housing crisis and nowhere is this more apparent than in the capital – and these luxury developments are certainly not the types of homes most Londoners need. The government must close loopholes which make it easy for developers to build high-priced homes that are way out of reach of ordinary families, rather than the affordable ones most people actually need and can afford.”

David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham, said the figures “reveal a travesty being played against the working class and young Londoners”. “The public keep being told we are building more affordable housing, and people can see cranes up all over London,” he said. “But this shows that councils are prioritising the fancies of overseas millionaires and billionaires before the needs of hardworking young Londoners.” Just 6,423 affordable homes were built in London during the 2016-2017 financial year (the latest figures available), a 5% decline on the previous year and a big drop from the 19,622 built in 2014-15.

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Plus, of course, Britain suffers from what brought Trump to power. Where globalization goes to die.

‘We Made The Finest Steel In The World – Now We Make Lattes’ (G.)

Wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Fighting for the community” underneath an image of Redcar’s mothballed steelworks, Frankie Wales is preparing to take a training session at the town’s boxing club. Young men are sparring in the rings; others are hitting punchbags. “Nothing gets you fit like boxing,” says one, exhausted from the ring. Wales, who set up the club 20 years ago and funds it on a shoestring with various small grants, is proud to be doing his bit for Redcar’s young people. He is a livewire in a community struggling to get off the floor after a series of near knockout blows. The local steelworks ceased production in 2015 with the loss of 3,000 jobs. Someone, he insists, has to help them. “It is incredibly sad,” he says. “Not long ago they would go and work in the steelworks after school.

Men round here made the finest steel in the world. Now they are making lattes and sandwiches on zero-hours contracts. We have lots of entrepreneurial kids, but the only entrepreneurial activity going on around here is selling fags and drugs.” Few young people care what those who are supposed to run their country – politicians and civic and business leaders – say any more because they feel so let down. “We have lost the steel industry, lost the local shipbuilding, lost the coal. What’s the point? There is nothing left,” says Wales. “We just have to make the best of what we have got and get on with it ourselves.” Like many communities in England’s north-east, the people of this North Yorkshire town, which bears the scars of industrial decline, and has a youth unemployment rate more than double the national average, made their unhappiness known in June 2016.

They fought back. In Redcar, there was a hefty 66% vote for Brexit, similar to that in areas further north up the coast, from Teesside to Tyneside. “We have to get our country back to where it needs to be,” says Geoff Holding, a caretaker at a government office in the town who voted Leave and whose brother lost his job at the steelworks. He wants an end to cheap imports of foreign goods, like the Chinese steel that did for the local plant. There is a still a thriving chemicals sector in Redcar, but not enough manufacturing. “We need to bring things back in-house, get industry back on its own feet, make things ourselves.”

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“Staggering volumes of dirty cash, including hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of $20-dollar bills stuffed in hockey bags..”

Illicit Foreign Casino Cash Often Goes Straight Into Vancouver Housing (VSun)

It’s almost hard to believe the dismaying stories that Postmedia investigative reporter Sam Cooper has been producing about the laundering of hundreds of millions of dollars of East Asian cash through Metro Vancouver casinos and the funnelling of much of it into the city’s pricey real estate. Yet Cooper continues to clearly map out, using impeccable high-level sources, the trans-national connections between Chinese drug traffickers, B.C. casinos and the city’s housing market. He has been so effective that NDP Attorney General David Eby ended years of B.C. Liberal inaction on casino fraud to launch an investigation by money-laundering specialist Peter German. Global intelligence agents have come to call the Asian-Pacific network of corruption, drugs, tax avoidance and real estate that Cooper is exposing “The Vancouver Model.”

Metro’s casinos have become infamous for the way B.C.’s former Liberal government allowed them to be exploited to help make possibly billions of dollars in “dirty” money appear “clean” – particularly by injecting it into residential housing and condo development. Cooper says his sources “took a lot of risks” to unveil how high-stakes Chinese gamblers, called “whales,” have been funnelling illicit cash into gambling chips, especially at Richmond’s River Rock Casino. Using freedom-of-information law, Cooper obtained reports in which an official with the B.C. Lottery Commission noted that 97 of its 100 top rollers were East Asian. Cooper also dug up reports suggesting one out of four of China’s major 100 alleged financial fugitives were living in Canada, with many of them believed to be in B.C.

One Metro Vancouver gambler was accused Lai Changxing, alleged mastermind of a billion-dollar drug-smuggling operation in China, who owned property in Richmond. An audit of 800 “VIP” gamblers at River Rock Casino found their most common profession was “real estate.” Almost half their $53 million worth of transactions in one year were flagged as “suspicious.” The second and third most common professions among the biggest gamblers were “business owner” and “construction.” Many high-stakes gamblers at River Rock also declared themselves as “housewife” or “student” – with one youth forking over $819,000 in cash to buy casino chips. Investigators believe housewives and offspring are often used as fake “nominees” to hide the true source of wealth in money-laundering and real-estate schemes. Staggering volumes of dirty cash, including hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of $20-dollar bills stuffed in hockey bags, have been flowing through Metro casinos and then been shifted into real-estate.

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A major and undoubtedly heated protest today. Topic: A former Yugoslav province wants to call itself Macedonia. But there already is a Greek province called macedonia. So Greece has refused to accept that name for a foreign country, and has for years halted access for that country to international organizations. The legacy of Alexander the Great plays a big role too. There are negotiations ongoing, but 70% of Greeks want no referral to Macedonia in the country’s eventual name. So no New Macedonia etc. Just call it the Republic of Skopje.

Greece On Edge For ‘Macedonia’ Protest In Athens (K.)

With United Nations-mediated negotiations aimed at resolving a dispute between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) over the latter’s name at a sensitive juncture, the government is bracing for Sunday’s Athens rally protesting the use of the term “Macedonia” in a solution amid signs that the turnout will be significant. Around 1,500 buses have been chartered to bring demonstrators from the provinces to the capital where the rally is to begin at Syntagma Square at 2 p.m. Most conservative New Democracy MPs are expected to attend. ND leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the party respects both those who do choose to attend and those who do not.

“We respect all choices,” he said. Former conservative premier Antonis Samaras endorsed the demo, saying Sunday will be “a great day for the country.” The main speaker will be veteran Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis, who is to address the crowd in person rather than sending a video message as originally planned. Speeches will also be delivered by three clerics representing the Church of Greece, which has backed the rally following initial reservations by Archbishop Ieronymos. The Greek Police plans to erect barriers to keep demonstrators at Syntagma apart from anarchists who are to stage their own counter-rally, starting at noon outside Athens University.

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Aug 042016
 
 August 4, 2016  Posted by at 8:04 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  Comments Off on Debt Rattle August 4 2016


G.G. Bain New York, suffragettes on way to Boston 1913

Is Deutsche as Dangerous to Financial Stability as Citigroup in 2008? (M2)
Pound Volatility Gauge Climbs as Traders Brace for BOE Rate Cut (BBG)
Britain Faces A Nasty Shock When The Global Energy Cycle Turns (AEP)
Cash Handouts Are Best Way To Boost Growth, Say Economists (G.)
Shock At The ATM: 1000s Of Supplementary Greek Pensions Cut By 21%-46% (KTG)
EU Trade Policy ‘Close To Death’ If Canada Deal Fails (Politico)
Reality of BC’s Foreign Buyers Tax Begins To Bite, Deals Collapsing (FP)
Morgan Stanley Discloses $3.21 Billion Italian Swaps Claim (BBG)
Tesla Loses $293 Million as Deliveries Fall Short, Expenses Rise (WSJ)
We’re Not Out of the Woods Yet (STA)
Justice Department Officials Objected to US Cash Payment to Iran (WSJ)
Julian Assange: The Untold Story Of An Epic Struggle For Justice (Pilger)
Court Throws Out Terrorism Conviction In Canada, Cites Police Entrapment (I’Cept)
Italy Adopts ‘Beautiful’ New Law To Slash Food Waste (BBC)

 

 

Martens and Martens. “..a year ago, Deutsche Bank’s stock closed at $34.88. Its share price at the open this morning was $12.56, a loss of 64% in one year’s time. But from June 1 of 2007, Deutsche Bank has lost a whopping 90% of its share value, right on par with Citigroup.”

Is Deutsche as Dangerous to Financial Stability as Citigroup in 2008? (M2)

Deutsche Bank is starting to resemble the financial basket case that Citigroup became in 2008, leading to Citigroup’s partial ownership by the U.S. government for a time and the bank requiring the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. financial history. Citigroup’s teetering condition and its interconnectedness to other mega banks played a critical role in the Wall Street crash and collapse of the U.S. economy. That Deutsche Bank (which is highly interconnected to other major Wall Street banks and locked and loaded with tens of trillions of dollars in derivatives) is now showing the same kind of stresses as Citigroup back in 2008, raises the obvious question about just how effectively the Obama administration has reined in systemic financial risk after six years of reassurances that Dodd-Frank financial reform was getting the job done.

On this date a year ago, Deutsche Bank’s stock closed at $34.88. Its share price at the open this morning on the New York Stock Exchange was $12.56, a loss of 64% in one year’s time. But from June 1 of 2007, prior to the onset of the financial crisis, Deutsche Bank has lost a whopping 90% of its share value, right on par with Citigroup. As of this morning’s open, Deutsche Bank has a measly $17.32 billion in equity capital versus a portfolio of derivatives amounting to just shy of $50 trillion notional (face amount) as of December 31, 2015.


Systemic Risk Among Deutsche Bank and Global Systemically Important Banks (Source: IMF: “The blue, purple and green nodes denote European, US and Asian banks, respectively. The thickness of the arrows capture total linkages (both inward and outward), and the arrow captures the direction of net spillover. The size of the nodes reflects asset size.”)

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Carney’s expected to announce desperate measures today.

Pound Volatility Gauge Climbs as Traders Brace for BOE Rate Cut (BBG)

A measure of overnight potential price swings for the pound against the dollar approached the highest closing level since Britain voted to leave the European Union in June as traders braced for the Bank of England’s policy decision Thursday, which most economists forecast will bring the first interest-rate cut in seven years. Sterling fell versus all but one of its 16 major peers as swaps pricing showed a 100% chance of a rate cut. While all except two of 52 analysts in a Bloomberg survey forecast a reduction, there are a suite of other measures, including an expansion of its bond-purchase program, which the BOE may adopt to tackle a Brexit-induced fallout which are more difficult to predict.

Some economists said they would not rule out the possibility that the BOE will keep its powder dry at this meeting, as it did in July, while awaiting a clearer economic picture. “There is quite a lot of speculation regarding what the BOE might do today, so the short-term volatility is to be expected,” said Mark Dowding, a London-based partner and money manager at BlueBay Asset Management. “We doubt the BOE would be opposed to the idea of the pound falling further as it would support the growth outlook, which is deteriorating markedly. We see the pound falling to $1.20 or lower by the end of the year.”

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Yes, Britain’s in for a bind. But energy is not Ambrose’s strong suit.

Britain Faces A Nasty Shock When The Global Energy Cycle Turns (AEP)

Britain’s energy industry is dying. While the US is striving for self-sufficiency in fuel and power as a primary goal of strategic security in a dangerous world, this country has acted with strange insouciance. We have let matters drift for so long that half of our nuclear reactors will be phased out over the next nine years with nothing ready to replace them. North Sea oil and gas is a spent reserve. Britain’s dependency on imported fuels and electricity has jumped from 17pc to 46pc since 2000. Energy is becoming a corrosive element in Britain’s current account deficit, now 6.9pc of GDP, and the scale of vulnerability has been masked by the slump in world energy prices. When the global fossil cycle turns – inevitable, given the $400 investment freeze in oil and gas projects over the last two years – Britain will face a national energy ‘margin call’.

The confluence of Brexit, a new government, and the review of the Hinkley Point nuclear plant have suddenly thrown open the debate on how the UK should power its economy. It is a dangerous moment, but also giddily fluid. As a summer exercise, I will float a few thoughts on how to seize this chance, open to suggestions from Telegraph readers for better ideas. My heterodox mix will satisfy nobody: it includes fracking a l’outrance, micro-nuclear and molten-salt reactors, more off-shore wind, a Norwegian-style push for electric vehicles by 2030, and a grand plan for carbon capture and storage to take advantage of Britain’s unique competitive advantage in this field and revitalize Northern industries.

There is no shortage of funds. Britain can borrow at 1.47pc for half a century, and it should do so without compunction as an investment stimulus to carry the country through the post-Brexit storm. Oil and gas fracking does not require public money anyway. Britain’s shale industry is already poised to drill, so that is where I will begin today.

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Including Steve Keen, David Graeber.

Cash Handouts Are Best Way To Boost Growth, Say Economists (G.)

Direct cash handouts to households would be a better way of boosting Britain’s flagging economy than the interest-rate cuts expected from the Bank of England on Thursday, according to a group of progressive economists. In a letter to the chancellor, 35 economists have urged Philip Hammond to ditch the approach that has been followed by the government since the recession of 2008-09 and give the Bank the right to try more radical options. The letter, to be printed in Thursday’s Guardian, suggests that the Bank should be allowed to create money to fund key infrastructure projects. Alternatively, the group says the Bank could pay for tax cuts or direct payments to households.

The letter states: “A fiscal stimulus financed by central bank money creation could be used to fund essential investment in infrastructure projects – boosting the incomes of businesses and households, and increasing the public sector’s productive assets in the process. Alternatively, the money could be used to fund either a tax cut or direct cash transfers to households, resulting in an immediate increase of household disposable incomes.” Threadneedle Street would need approval from the Treasury to adopt what the US economist Milton Friedman once described as “helicopter drops” of money on to the economy as a means of removing the threat of deflation. The nine members of the Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC) will announce at midday how they plan to respond to the economic shock caused by the decision to leave the EU in the 23 June referendum.

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The rape of Greece continues.

Shock At The ATM: 1000s Of Supplementary Greek Pensions Cut By 21%-46% (KTG)

It was certainly a shock for thousands of Greek pensioners: beginning of August they saw their supplementary pensions to have undergone cuts from 21% up to 46%. Affected are 311,680 pensioners receiving pensions from 11 pension funds. The 3. bailout and the Pensions Reforms provided that if the sum of main and supplementary pension exceeds €1,300 gross, the supplementary pension has to be cut. The second wave of cuts to be implemented as of September will affect another 924,345 pensioners belonging to other pension funds.

The Pension Reforms ended up in throwing all pensioners in one bag and have them ‘share’ the available pension funds, although this is –first of all- “unfair” for the pensioners of the private sector. They have been loyally paying their social security contributions all through their work life, while the pensioners of the public sector have been paying much less and thus receiving disproportionately much more. Public servants who massively left service with early retirement of 25 years in 2010, they ended up receiving a pension amount equal to their salary – although it should have been much lower. Yes, it is unfair. And this is what I hear from more and more people form the private sector.

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100,000 TTiP protesters in Germany yesterday?!

EU Trade Policy ‘Close To Death’ If Canada Deal Fails (Politico)

One of the EU’s most senior officials has warned that the bloc’s trade policy will be “close to death” if it cannot ratify a landmark agreement with Canada. The alarm sounded by Jean-Luc Demarty, director-general for trade, is a sign of growing concern in Brussels that the European Commission is losing control over one of its core competencies in the face of surging public opposition to free trade. In a frustrating blow to the Commission, the member countries last month wrested the approval process for the trade deal with Canada away from Brussels. The accord will now require approval in Europe’s 38 national and regional parliaments, raising the specter of delays and even vetoes in assemblies ranging from Wallonia to Romania.

Demarty delivered his stark warning at the EU’s trade policy committee ahead of the summer break, according to people present at the confidential meeting. Most diplomats expect the Canadian deal to win the qualified majority required for provisional application at the Council. Notes from the July 15 meeting, seen by POLITICO on Monday, showed that Demarty warned that EU trade policy would have a “big credibility problem” if it could not ratify the deal. He then added that it would be “close to death.” Two other diplomats confirmed the remarks and added that this was now typical of Demarty’s tone on the subject. One observed that Demarty seemed “helpless.”

Traditionally, trade has been the blue-riband portfolio in Brussels, with national governments surrendering all of their powers to negotiate trade deals and impose tariffs to the Commission. But Brussels suffered a significant setback on July 5 when France and Germany unexpectedly insisted that a trade deal with Canada would have to be ratified by the EU’s 38 national and regional assemblies. That has left the Commission scrambling to rescue the deal and preserve its status as the biggest force in global trade.

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It’s healthy when bubbles burst. But painful too for some.

Reality of BC’s Foreign Buyers Tax Begins To Bite, Deals Collapsing (FP)

Realtors and lawyers desperate to get in under the deadline filed a record-setting 15,000 property transfer applications on Thursday and Friday, the last business days before B.C.’s punishing new 15-per-cent tax on foreign property buyers went into effect. More than 9,200 transactions were filed on Friday, breaking the 2007-2008 record of more than 8,400 in a single day, according to the B.C. Land Title and Survey Authority. It also reported over 5,800 transactions on Thursday, representing nearly as many deals registered at month’s end in April. The demand was so heavy that it crashed the land titles office’s electronic filing service on both days, the authority said.

Now, as a new dawn breaks in Metro Vancouver’s real estate market, realty companies and real estate boards are reporting the first anecdotes of deals falling through as foreign buyers forfeited deposits on binding deals rather than pay the new tax. And they report evidence of local buyers withdrawing offers in expectation that the market will soften. Elton Ash, executive vice-president of Re/Max Western Region, said it is too early to accurately quantify how many deals fell apart, but he’s heard from realtors in some of the company’s 30 Metro Vancouver offices of cases where foreign buyers who couldn’t rearrange previously negotiated closing dates have already walked away.

[..] Jonathan Cooper, vice-president of operations at MacDonald Realty, expects many cases to go to court because deposits are held in trust by realtors and usually can’t be released without a court order. “I think the next chapters in this story are going to be written by lawyers,” Cooper said. “There are going to be cases for sellers trying to get the deposit out of trust and maybe suing the buyer for specific performance trying to get them to complete, and/or for damages if they are not able to find a buyer at a similar price point.”

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“Across Italy, cities faced with shrinking income and rising expenses bought swaps from U.S. firms to cut short-term interest costs..”

Morgan Stanley Discloses $3.21 Billion Italian Swaps Claim (BBG)

Morgan Stanley said an Italian prosecutor may seek as much as €2.88 billion ($3.21 billion) over allegations that derivatives the investment bank sold more than a decade ago were improper and unfairly unwound. Italy’s Court of Accounts, the country’s state auditor, sent Morgan Stanley the proposed claim over derivatives created from 1999 through 2005 and terminated by 2012, the New York-based bank said Wednesday in a quarterly regulatory filing. Italy had paid Morgan Stanley $3.4 billion to unwind interest-rate swaps and options that had backfired, as it was cheaper than renewing the contracts, Bloomberg reported in 2012.

Mark Lake, a Morgan Stanley spokesman, said the proposed claim is groundless and that the bank will defend itself vigorously. Wall Street has been accused of duping municipalities with sophisticated and complex instruments. Some banks pitched the derivatives transactions as a way to save on borrowing expenses, but many ended up being costly for their government customers. Across Italy, cities faced with shrinking income and rising expenses bought swaps from U.S. firms to cut short-term interest costs, putting them at risk of paying more in the long run.

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Wonder when this bubble will burst. Tesla rides ‘green waves’ in more than one way.

Tesla Loses $293 Million as Deliveries Fall Short, Expenses Rise (WSJ)

Tesla Motors’s loss widened in the second quarter amid higher costs, but the company stuck to an ambitious plan that calls for building nearly 80,000 cars in 2016 and pulling forward a cheaper sedan aimed at the mass market. The Silicon Valley electric car maker’s report follows a tumultuous period capped by a traffic fatality related to the company’s semiautonomous Autopilot system. Regulators also dinged the company’s practice of having certain buyers sign nondisclosure agreements and the company faced continued questions about the quality of its Model X sport-utility vehicle.

Tesla, long known as a company that moves faster than traditional auto makers, plowed forward during the quarter. It announced its intention to combine with SolarCity Corp., which shares with Tesla Elon Musk as chairman. On Monday, the Tesla announced a firm deal with SolarCity valued at $2.6 billion.

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“..the next leg down in oil prices could be far more disruptive than most investors expect and it may not take much to trigger a major financial event.”

We’re Not Out of the Woods Yet (STA)

The risk of a global shock appears to be rising once again as (1) oil prices fall back into the $30s and (2) modestly improving US economic growth strengthens the case for a rising dollar. In addition to a likely revival in US rate hike expectations, growing foreign demand for US cash flows, or the prospect for more central bank easing abroad (both of which could drive the dollar higher), the world economy may already be nearing another breaking point as foreign central bank assets held at the Federal Reserve continue to fall on a year-over-year basis. Every time this measure has fallen below zero in the last fifty years, it has coincided with a major global event.

My suspicion is that oil producing countries (who officially flipped from current account surplus into current account deficit in 2015) are liquidating their US dollar assets to manage government budget shortfalls. With that in mind, the next leg down in oil prices could be far more disruptive than most investors expect and it may not take much to trigger a major financial event. We’re not aggressively betting on a crisis, but my colleagues and I on the STA Investment Committee continue to run conservative portfolios with an underweight to equities, and a focus on yield-oriented assets (like corporate bonds and preferred stocks) and defensive assets (like cash, gold, managed futures, and long-dated US Treasuries) while we wait for quality assets to go on sale.

If you’ve been paying attention to global markets this year, you are probably still scratching your head as to what fundamentally changed in early February. What pulled us back from the edge of a global crisis and set the stage for one of the most powerful reflations (ex earnings) in recent memory? What caused corporate credit spreads to collapse, crude oil to bottom, and the S&P 500 to scream higher? And, most importantly, is this a sustainable new trend? Or an epic bear trap? As regular FWIW readers may remember, I offered a hypothesis in mid-March – arguing that major central banks had begun to quietly intervene in foreign exchange markets – and I laid out a vision for 2016 as long as policy elites were able to keep the trade-weighted US dollar in a “goldilocks” trading range.

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Ronald Reagan Returns.

Justice Department Officials Objected to US Cash Payment to Iran (WSJ)

Senior Justice Department officials objected to sending a plane loaded with cash to Tehran at the same time that Iran released four imprisoned Americans, but their objections were overruled by the State Department, according to people familiar with the discussions. After announcing the release of the Americans in January, President Barack Obama also said the U.S. would pay $1.7 billion to Iran to settle a failed arms deal dating back to 1979. What wasn’t disclosed then was that the first payment would be $400 million in cash, flown in at the same time, as The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The timing and manner of the payment raised alarms at the Justice Department, according to those familiar with the discussions. “People knew what it was going to look like, and there was concern the Iranians probably did consider it a ransom payment,’’ said one of the people. The disclosures reignited a political furor over the Iran deal in Washington that could complicate White House efforts to fortify it before Mr. Obama’s term ends. Three top Republicans who have been feuding in recent weeks—presidential candidate Donald Trump, Sen. John McCain and House Speaker Paul Ryan—were united Wednesday in blasting the Obama administration.

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Excellent expose by John Pilger.

Julian Assange: The Untold Story Of An Epic Struggle For Justice (Pilger)

The siege of Knightsbridge is both an emblem of gross injustice and a gruelling farce. For three years, a police cordon around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. It has cost £12 million. The quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His “crime” is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war. The persecution of Julian Assange is about to flare again as it enters a dangerous stage. From August 20, three quarters of the Swedish prosecutor’s case against Assange regarding sexual misconduct in 2010 will disappear as the statute of limitations expires.

At the same time Washington’s obsession with Assange and WikiLeaks has intensified. Indeed, it is vindictive American power that offers the greatest threat – as Chelsea Manning and those still held in Guantanamo can attest. The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they covered up, and their contempt for sovereignty and international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks continues to expose criminal activity by the US, having just published top secret US intercepts – US spies’ reports detailing private phone calls of the presidents of France and Germany, and other senior officials, relating to internal European political and economic affairs.

None of this is illegal under the US Constitution. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama, a professor of constitutional law, lauded whistleblowers as “part of a healthy democracy [and they]must be protected from reprisal”. In 2012, the campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama boasted on its website that he had prosecuted more whistleblowers in his first term than all other US presidents combined.

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The details are stunning, but at the same time familiar.

Court Throws Out Terrorism Conviction In Canada, Cites Police Entrapment (I’Cept)

Sting operations — in which an undercover agent or informant provides the means and opportunity to lure otherwise incapable people into committing a crime — have represented the default tactic for counterterrorism prosecutions since the 9/11 attacks. Critics believe these stings amount to entrapment. Human Rights Watch, for instance, argues that law enforcement authorities in the U.S. have overstepped their role by “effectively participating in developing terrorism plots.” Nonetheless, U.S. courts have rejected entrapment defenses, no matter how hapless the defendants. In Canada, however, the legal standing of counterterrorism stings has suddenly shifted.

Last week, a high-ranking judge in British Columbia stayed the convictions of two alleged terrorists, ruling that they had been “skillfully manipulated” and entrapped by an elaborate sting operation organized by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “The specter of the defendants serving a life sentence for a crime that the police manufactured by exploiting their vulnerabilities, by instilling fear that they would be killed if they backed out, and by quashing all doubts they had in the religious justifications for the crime, is offensive to our concept of fundamental justice,” the judge wrote. “Simply put, the world has enough terrorists. We do not need the police to create more out of marginalized people who have neither the capacity nor sufficient motivation to do it themselves.”

This is the first time that a counterterrorism sting — whose tactics were developed by the FBI through modifying those of undercover drug stings — has been thrown out of court whole cloth in Canada or the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Catherine J. Bruce was ruling in the case of John Nuttall and his common-law wife, Amanda Korody, two drug addicts who lived on the streets in British Columbia. As part of sting operation in which the RCMP paid at least 200 officers a total of more than $900,000 Canadian in overtime, law-enforcement agents encouraged the couple to place pressure-cooker bombs at the British Columbia parliament building on Canada Day 2013. As in FBI counterterrorism stings, RCMP provided Nuttall and Korody with everything they needed to become terrorists.

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Can we adopt this throughout the world please?

Italy Adopts ‘Beautiful’ New Law To Slash Food Waste (BBC)

Italy has passed into law a raft of new measures to try to reduce the mountain of food wasted in the country each year. The bill – backed by 181 Senators, with two against and 16 abstaining – aims to cut waste one million tonnes from the estimated five million it wastes each year. It has been heralded as “one of the most beautiful and practical legacies” of the Expo Milano 2015 international exhibition – which focused on tackling hunger and food waste worldwide – by Agriculture Minister Maurizio Martina. According to ministers, food waste costs Italy’s business and households more than €12bn per year. Studies suggest it could amount to more than 1% of GDP.

The problem is by no means confined to Italy. The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimates that some one third of food may be wasted worldwide – a figure which rises to some 40% in Europe. “The food currently wasted in Europe could feed 200 million people,” the FAO says. It’s not the first time Italy has acted decisively over issues of hunger and food. Three months ago, its highest court ruled that stealing small amounts of food to stave off hunger was not a crime.

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