Dec 202016
 
 December 20, 2016  Posted by at 9:57 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  11 Responses »


Dorothea Lange Homeless mother and child walking from Phoenix to Imperial County CA 1939

China Talks the Talk on Property Curbs, but Can it Walk the Walk? (BBG)
China May Be Losing Cat-and-Mouse Game With ‘Hong Kong Insurance’ Buyers (BBG)
New Italy PM Asks Parliament To Approve Borrowing €20 Billion For Banks (BBC)
After Aleppo: We Need A New Syria Policy (Ron Paul)
We’re About To Sign A Deal With Canada That’s Just As Bad As TTIP (Ind.)
Britain’s Shame: The People Who Are Homeless, Even Though They’re In Work (G.)
Nine In 10 Jobless Greeks Receive No Unemployment Benefit (Kath.)
Moody’s Voices Concern At ‘Material Delay’ In Greece Debt Relief Talks (G.)
Greek Hospitals Deepen Trauma For Refugee Women Giving Birth (Gill)
Thousands Of US Locales Have Lead Poisoning Worse Than Flint (R.)
Coal Continues Its March Towards Asia (IEA)
Air Pollution In Northern Chinese City Surpasses WHO Guideline By 100 Times (R.)
Japan Pulls Plug On Troubled Fast Breeder Reactor (AFP)
This Is The Polar Bear Capital Of The World, But The Snow Has Gone (G.)

 

 

Now that Trump is sealed in to become America’s 45th president in a month’s time, comparisons to Hitler and nazism seem to become the flavor of the day. Sad. Almost as sad as the multiple deadly attacks that have taken place over the last 24 hours. But there is enough to read about that everywhere. I’ll focus on things that may seem less important.

 

“They absolutely cannot have any significant drop in prices without risking real social instability.”

China Talks the Talk on Property Curbs, but Can it Walk the Walk? (BBG)

China is talking the talk about reining in the speculation that fueled spiraling property prices. The test will be whether it can walk the walk should growth start to falter. [..] With the leadership wed to Xi’s goal of annual growth averaging 6.5 percent through 2020, the challenge will be to achieve that amid another slowdown in the crucial property engine. “Policy makers are trying now to contain the property market by talking,” Zhu said. “That unfortunately is too late and does little to dispel the speculative sentiment and expectation that’s built up over the past one-and-half decades. The situation has already gone beyond a soft landing.” China’s highly leveraged developers are feeling the heat. Regulators in October choked off a key source of funding with the Shanghai Stock Exchange raising the threshold for property firms to sell bonds on their platform.

Medicine being administered to the bond market is also raising risks of dangerous side-effects as policy makers try to discourage risky investments made on borrowed money. Authorities have increased short-term money-market rates and tightened rules on using debt as collateral to buy even more securities. That’s sparked a jump in borrowing costs, prompted firms to cancel bond offerings and fueled speculation defaults will spread next year amid a near-record 4.5 trillion yuan of maturities. Christopher Balding, an associate professor at Peking University in Shenzhen, cites the risk of increased credit growth for mortgages and real estate. Longer-term household loans increased by 569.2 billion yuan last month, accounting for more than two thirds of total new yuan loans. That was just shy of the 571.3 billion yuan record in September. The growth pace is likely to moderate, though “that isn’t saying a lot,” Balding said. “They absolutely cannot have any significant drop in prices without risking real social instability.”

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“They’ve also swiped their credit or debit cards again and again – in one case, as many as 800 times – so that each transaction remained below the limit.”

China May Be Losing Cat-and-Mouse Game With ‘Hong Kong Insurance’ Buyers (BBG)

It’s a game of cat-and-mouse that has gone on for most of this year, with Beijing showing no signs of winning yet. Each time China tightens up on money flowing out of the country for purchases of Hong Kong insurance, new routes seem to emerge. In the latest clampdown, which started on Saturday, MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc. added restrictions on purchasing all but the cheapest insurance policies using credit cards issued in China, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Chinese have been spending billions of Hong Kong dollars on insurance products that are linked to investments, as a way of channeling money out of China. Chinese residents will “actively seek ways to get around the curbs no matter what,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Steven Lam.

Mainland purchases of Hong Kong insurance may rise to fresh records after reaching a high of HK$18.9 billion ($2.4 billion) in the third quarter, he said. Tenacious mainland buyers have bypassed restrictions by channeling money through online payment services or by using Hong Kong money changers, who allow money to be received in Hong Kong based on domestic transfers to accounts within China. They’ve also swiped their credit or debit cards again and again – in one case, as many as 800 times – so that each transaction remained below the limit. The latest Visa and MasterCard rules restrict multiple swiping. Weakness in the yuan is encouraging Chinese residents to put their money into products denominated in either Hong Kong or U.S. dollars. That’s adding to the headaches for Chinese officials concerned that capital flight could further contribute to yuan depreciation. Outflows are estimated to have totaled more than $1.5 trillion since the beginning of 2015.

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One would almost hope the new technocrats fail miserably.

New Italy PM Asks Parliament To Approve Borrowing €20 Billion For Banks (BBC)

The Italian government will seek parliamentary approval to borrow up to €20bn to support its fragile banking sector and potentially rescue Monte dei Paschi di Siena. The country’s third-largest bank needs to raise €5bn in fresh capital by the end of the month. If Monte dei Paschi cannot arrange a private sector bailout, a state rescue may come as early as this week. It is saddled with bad loans and is deemed to be the weakest major EU bank. Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, whose government has only been in office for a week, is under pressure because private investors would suffer any losses under EU bailout rules.

He described the move as a “precautionary measure”, adding: “We believe it is our duty to take this measure to protect savings. I hope all the political movements in parliament share this responsibility.” However, Italy’s economy minister, Pier Carlo Padoan, stressed the funds would be used to ensure adequate liquidity in the banking system and support other struggling banks. Officials have also said they were examining a scheme to compensate retail investors for any losses incurred. Mr Gentiloni’s predecessor, Matteo Renzi, resigned after losing a referendum on constitutional reform and was regularly accused of being too close to the banks.

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“We are a country sitting on $20 trillion in debt, living far beyond our means. Power can oftentimes be an illusion, and in any case it doesn’t last forever.”

After Aleppo: We Need A New Syria Policy (Ron Paul)

Over the past week, eastern Aleppo was completely brought back under control of the Syrian government. The population began to return to its homes, many of which were abandoned when al-Qaeda-linked rebels took over in 2012. As far as I know, the western mainstream media did not have a single reporter on the ground in Aleppo, but relied on “activists” to inform us that the Syrian army was massacring the civilian population. It hardly makes sense for an army to fight and defeat armed rebels just so it can go in and murder unarmed civilians, but then again not much mainstream reporting on the tragedy in Syria has made sense. I spoke to one western journalist last week who actually did report from Aleppo and she painted a very different picture of what was going on there.

She conducted video interviews with dozens of local residents and they told of being held hostage and starved by the “rebels,” many of whom were using US-supplied weapons supposed to go to “moderates.” We cannot be sure what exactly is happening in Aleppo, but we do know a few things about what happened in Syria over the past five years. This was no popular uprising to overthrow a dictator and bring in democracy. From the moment President Obama declared “Assad must go” and approved sending in weapons, it was obvious this was a foreign-sponsored regime change operation that used foreign fighters against Syrian government forces. If the Syrian people really opposed Assad, there is no way he could have survived five years of attack from foreigners and his own people.

Recently we heard that the CIA and Hillary Clinton believe that the Russians are behind leaked Democratic National Committee documents, and that the leaks were meant to influence the US presidential election in Donald Trump’s favor. These are the same people who for the past five years have been behind the violent overthrow of the Syrian government, which has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands. Isn’t supporting violent overthrow to influence who runs a country even worse than leaking documents? Is it OK when we do it? Why? Because we are the most powerful country? We are a country sitting on $20 trillion in debt, living far beyond our means. Power can oftentimes be an illusion, and in any case it doesn’t last forever. We can be sure that the example we set while we are the most powerful country will be followed by those who may one day take our place. The hypocrisy of our political leaders who say one thing and do another does not go unnoticed.

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Still not over. TISA is another one that keeps lurking.

We’re About To Sign A Deal With Canada That’s Just As Bad As TTIP (Ind.)

CETA is an EU-Canada trade deal just like the controversial EU-US deal TTIP. It was secretly negotiated over five years, locks in the privatisation of public services and will permit corporations across the North America to sue European governments in a private justice system. Brexit may not happen for at least two years, but CETA will be voted on in February – if it passes, it will immediately apply to the UK. Inequality is grist to the mill for far-right populists, yet the European Commission and members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are failing to learn the lessons of Brexit and the rise of Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. Instead, it’s big business as usual, and continued support for policies that generate inequality and, in turn, fuel the xenophobic right.

This week there has been a clear demarcation of the crucial choice faced by the EU and UK, which may help determine the future rise of the far right in Europe – and, set against it, the decline of out-of-touch, centre-left parties. On Friday, the International Labour Organisation reported that the top 10% of highest paid workers in Europe together earn almost as much as the bottom 50%. Last week, the European Parliament’s Employment and Social Affairs Committee found that the EU-Canada trade deal CETA will only make this situation worse, “widening the income gap between unskilled and skilled workers thus increasing inequalities and social tensions.” The cross-party committee points to CETA triggering potential job losses of more than 200,000 across the EU.

It goes on to point out what campaigners across Europe have long been saying about accords like CETA, TTIP, and the Donald Trump-opposed TPP: “There is a clear disparity between the levels of protection envisaged for investors and for labour interests and rights.” These investors are not the small businesses that CETA and TTIP’s supporters repeatedly cite. As the report makes clear, CETA has no chapter with specific measures to help small business. The clear disparity between workers and investor interests is perhaps best captured in one key element found across all these deals: the widely opposed “corporate court” private justice system that grants big business the power to sue states for policies that affect their profits. Put more simply, it’s a taxpayer-funded risk insurance scheme for corporations that would swing into play were a government to decide to ban nuclear power, oppose fracking or re-nationalise public services like the railways.

Despite voting to leave the EU, CETA can still affect the UK: the deal could be passed within the next two months, with large swathes of it immediately put in place. After that happens, those already struggling in the UK’s brittle Brexit economy will feel the squeeze of yet more anti-worker policy-making. Yet despite the clear dangers posed by CETA, Liam “Take Back Control” Fox has already signed the UK up to the deal, willfully bypassing UK parliamentary scrutiny along the way.

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“.. over 170,000 Londoners are homeless..”

Britain’s Shame: The People Who Are Homeless, Even Though They’re In Work (G.)


Illustration: Eva Bee

The former Tory minister George Young described the homeless as “what you step over when you come out of the opera”. No, Sir George: today’s homeless deliver your takeaways and pull pints at the local. Then they kip on park benches. Martin, who works for Islington council taking disabled children to school, told me how he’d spent a month sleeping either in Hampstead Heath or by the canal near London Zoo. “I was exhausted all the time,” he said. Some mornings, he’d knock for the children still clutching the bag that held all his belongings. This month, the charity Shelter calculated that over 170,000 Londoners are homeless. Its researchers pieced together the data for how many were both in a job and in temporary accommodation: it amounts to nearly half (47%) of all homeless households in the capital.

Figures like these, and shelters like Scott’s, neatly puncture many of the official boasts about work in post-crash Britain. The ministerial bragging about record employment? That economic miracle would include a third of the people dossing down at Scott’s place. The smugness with which David Cameron talked about the high-tech sharing economy? The Uber driver in that bunk over there might put him right on a few things. All the blether about how strong unions will destroy the economy? The casualised workforce in these improvised dormitories make a good argument for labour protection. Most of all, it proves that two of the hardiest orthodoxies in British politics are now a lie. First, the notion that work pays.

That is why Norman Tebbit told men to get on their bikes, why Gordon Brown fiddled about with tax credits, why George Osborne could get away with attacking “skivers”. But minimum wages, zero-hours contracts and a couple of shifts through a temping agency don’t pay. They certainly don’t pay enough to get you decent accommodation in one of the most expensive housing markets on the planet. When that belief dies, so too must its corollary: that the homeless are always unemployed. “Why are beggars despised? For they are despised universally,” asked George Orwell in Down and Out in Paris and London. “It is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living.” None of the people I met were begging, but each lived within the shadow of the idea that by being homeless, they had become despicable.

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Britain is bad, Greece is worse. “350,000 families without a single employed person..”

Nine In 10 Jobless Greeks Receive No Unemployment Benefit (Kath.)

Nine in 10 jobless Greeks do not receive unemployment benefits, according to a study by the country’s statistical authority (ELSTAT) and the Labor Institute of the General Confederation of Greek Labor (INE/GSEE). The same study found that nearly 74 percent of the unemployed population have been without work for more than 12 months. Meanwhile, there are 350,000 families without a single employed person, while about 300,000 high-skilled workers have left the country in the past six years in search of better prospects, the study showed.

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Why is the entire Eurogroup of finance ministers silent on the feact that Dijsselbloem makes decisions behind their backs?

Moody’s Voices Concern At ‘Material Delay’ In Greece Debt Relief Talks (G.)

Fears that Greece’s seven-year debt crisis is about to enter a troubling new phase have been voiced by one of the world’s leading rating agencies. Moody’s said it was worried by the decision by the European authorities to suspend a debt-relief deal for Greece after the government in Athens gave a Christmas bonus to pensioners, promised free school meals for the poorest children and cancelled a VAT increase. The rating agency said any “material delay” in concluding talks between Greece and its European creditors would make it harder for the troubled country to meet next year’s onerous financial commitments and would increase the risks of bondholders not being paid. After months of negotiations, Europe agreed to limited debt relief to Greece earlier this month by giving Athens longer to pay and reducing the interest rate payable on its loans.

But within days the decision was put on hold by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) – the Luxembourg-based body that provides help to countries and banks facing financial difficulties – after Alexis Tsipras’s coalition government decided to provide help to pensioners, schoolchildren and VAT payers on the Greek islands. The plans involved spending amounting to €617m – less than 0.5% of Greece’s GDP – but were made without consultation with the country’s creditors. Hardliners in Brussels and in Berlin were outraged by Tsipras’s decision, seen as evidence of backsliding on a commitment made in August 2015 to keep to a tough programme of economic reforms in return for an €86bn bailout. Tsipras says that Greece has overachieved on the budget targets set by Europe and that the money will be going to those hardest hit by austerity. Greece has seen its economy shrink by 30% since its financial crisis began in 2009.

[..] “.. a material delay in the negotiations would raise the credit risk to bondholders. Greece has large upcoming maturities in July 2017, with €2.3bn owed to private-sector bondholders and €3.9bn to the ECB. Greece will be highly challenged to meet these redemptions without completion of the programme’s second review and without the disbursement of €6.1bn of ESM funding by the summer.”

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Troubling, but do be careful about where to lay the blame.

Greek Hospitals Deepen Trauma For Refugee Women Giving Birth (Gill)

Dr Konstantinos Spiriounis, an obstetrician-gynecologist, is a member of the department of municipal clinics and public health in Athens and until June this year worked at one of the city’s main public maternity hospitals, Elena. He says that the country’s economic problems have led to a recruitment crisis, putting hospitals under pressure, but that doctors do their best in difficult circumstances. “There are no new hires happening in the hospitals, so us doctors in Greece in public hospitals have learnt to do the work of two or three people. “Many times the doctors and nurses stay on when their shift ends because there isn’t anyone else to do it. You are always concerned in that you will make a mistake or miss something important, because you are so exhausted. Sometimes we find we’re out of things like gauze or medical tape, and we go buy it ourselves from the pharmacy.”

He says that all women are offered the same service, the best the doctors can provide. “We offer the same to everyone, whether you are Greek or a foreigner. For us, the cry of a baby and the joy of the mother is the same no matter where they are from.” But human rights lawyer Electra Leda Koutra, who worked on the research into birth experiences of refugee mothers, says vulnerable refugees need specific support. “A Greek woman will go home after birth. A refugee woman will be thrown back in a refugee camp or out on the streets [to] incredibly harsh, dangerous, unsanitary conditions.

“Treating refugee women ‘the same as Greeks’ means speaking to them in Greek, giving them no option but male obstetricians, not translating for their medical instructions upon exit from hospital, and not taking into account the conditions they will face right afterwards. All this so-called equal treatment constitutes blatant gender-based violence and discrimination.” The difficulties faced by the women in pregnancy and birth are part of a wider challenge for all refugee families in Greece, that of surviving day to day with no idea of what the future will bring. Since borders closed further west within Europe earlier in 2016, tens of thousands of refugees have been stuck in overstretched Greece and Italy. The EU has promised to disperse 160,000 to other EU countries, only 8,162 people have been found a new home, figures from the European commission show.

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Count me not surprised.

Thousands Of US Locales Have Lead Poisoning Worse Than Flint (R.)

On a sunny November afternoon in this historic city, birthplace of the Pony Express and death spot of Jesse James, Lauranda Mignery watched her son Kadin, 2, dig in their front yard. As he played, she scolded him for putting his fingers in his mouth. In explanation, she pointed to the peeling paint on her old house. Kadin, she said, has been diagnosed with lead poisoning. He has lots of company: Within 15 blocks of his house, at least 120 small children have been poisoned since 2010, making the neighborhood among the most toxic in Missouri, Reuters found as part of an analysis of childhood lead testing results across the country. In St. Joseph, even a local pediatrician’s children were poisoned.

Last year, the city of Flint, Michigan, burst into the world spotlight after its children were exposed to lead in drinking water and some were poisoned. In the year after Flint switched to corrosive river water that leached lead from old pipes, 5 percent of the children screened there had high blood lead levels. Flint is no aberration. In fact, it doesn’t even rank among the most dangerous lead hotspots in America. In all, Reuters found nearly 3,000 areas with recently recorded lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint during the peak of that city’s contamination crisis. And more than 1,100 of these communities had a rate of elevated blood tests at least four times higher.

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Growth at all costs.

Coal Continues Its March Towards Asia (IEA)

Growth in global coal demand will stall over the next five years as the appetite for the fuel wanes and other energy sources gain ground, according to the latest coal forecast from the International Energy Agency. The share of coal in the power generation mix will drop to 36% by 2021, down from 41% in 2014, the IEA said in the latest Medium-Term Coal Market Report, driven by lower demand from China and the United States, along with fast growth of renewables and strong focus on energy efficiency. But in a sign of coal’s paradoxical position, the world is still highly dependent on coal. While coal demand dropped in 2015 for the first time this century, the IEA forecasts that demand will not reach 2014 levels again until 2021.

However such a path would depend greatly on the trajectory of China’s demand, which accounts for 50% of global coal demand – and almost half of coal production – and more than any other country influences global coal prices. The new report highlights the continuation of a major geographic shift in the global coal market towards Asia. In 2000, about half of coal demand was in Europe and North America, while Asia accounted for less than half. By 2015, Asia accounted for almost three-quarters of coal demand, while coal consumption in Europe and North America had declined sharply below one quarter. This shift will accelerate in the next years, according to the IEA.

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All costs, including that of human lives.

Air Pollution In Northern Chinese City Surpasses WHO Guideline By 100 Times (R.)

Concentrations of airborne pollutants in a major northern Chinese city exceeded a World Health Organisation (WHO) guideline by 100 times on Monday as north China battled with poor air quality for the third straight day. In Shijiazhuang, capital of northern Hebei province, levels of PM 2.5, fine particulate matter, soared to 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter, state-run Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday. That compares with a WHO guideline of an annual average of no more than 10 micrograms. In nearby Tianjin city, authorities grounded dozens of flights for the second day and closed all highways after severe smog blanketed the port city, one of more than 40 in China’s northeast to issue pollution warnings.

PM 2.5 levels hit 334 micrograms per cubic meter in Tianjin as of 4 p.m. local time, according to local environmental protection authorities. In Beijing, PM 2.5 levels were at 212 micrograms per cubic meter. On Saturday, 22 cities issued red alerts, including top steelmaking city Tangshan city in Hebei and Jinan in coal-rich Shandong province. A red alert is the highest possible air pollution warning. Red alerts are issued when the Air Quality Index (AQI) is forecast to exceed 200 for more than four days in succession, 300 for more than two days or 500 for at least 24 hours. The AQI is a different measure from the PM 2.5 gauge.

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After all the fast breeder hype this is what you end up with. But I’m sure there’ll be lots more talk. Coal it is then.

Japan Pulls Plug On Troubled Fast Breeder Reactor (AFP)

Japan has scrapped plans to generate electricity at a multi-billion dollar experimental nuclear reactor, the government said Monday, giving up on the decades-old project due to spiralling costs. Once touted as a “dream reactor,” the Monju facility was designed to generate more fuel than it consumes via nuclear chain reaction, an attractive alternative in a country with few natural resources. But its complex fast breeder reactor technology has been plagued with problems that have left it idle for more than a decade. It has also been a financial black hole since construction began in 1986, given its initial 1 trillion yen ($8.5 billion) construction cost and daily operating costs of 50 million yen, even while shut down. The government “will not restart (Monju) as a nuclear reactor and will take steps to decommission it,” science minister Hirokazu Matsuno told the governor of western Japan’s Fukui prefecture where it is located.

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Wave bye bye.

This Is The Polar Bear Capital Of The World, But The Snow Has Gone (G.)

Churchill, on the banks of the Hudson Bay in Canada, is known as the polar bear capital of the world. Hundreds of bears gather there each year before the sea freezes over in October and November so they can hunt seals again from the ice for the first time since the summer. I first went there 12 years ago at this time of year. The place was white, the temperature was -20C, and the bears were out feeding. This year I came back to make a film for Danish TV and set up live feeds of the bears. It was so different. In mid-November there was no snow or sea ice or ice; the land was green or brown and the temperature was 2C. The bears were walking around on the land waiting for the ice to form. It was like summer.

October had seen unprecedented temperatures all around the Arctic leading to a record-breaking slowdown of sea ice formation. Local people told me they had never seen it like this before. With Geoff York, director of conservation at Polar Bears International, we pored over satellite maps every day. It was shocking. The whole 470,000 sq mile bay was completely ice-free. This is the southernmost colony of polar bears in the world and in the past about 1,000 bears would be there. But studies have shown that in the last 20 years the surface temperature of Hudson Bay has warmed by about 3C. This has had a massive effect on the bear. The western Hudson Bay population has declined by more than 20% in 30 years. It’s the same elsewhere. New analysis of data from the southern Beaufort Sea in north-west Canada and Alaska suggest even greater population declines there.

We saw about 20 bears around Churchill in the 10 days I was there. That’s actually a few more than I saw last time, when I was there 12 years ago, but that was because most of the bears were out on the ice then. The ones we did see this year appeared thin, restless and hungry, and were starting to be more aggressive. There was a mum and a cub and it was very emotional because it looked pretty certain that the cub would not survive much longer. The days of bears in this region having triplets seem to be over. The declining sea ice has decreased hunting opportunities, so the bears are smaller and fewer cubs are being born in this area.

Read more …

Oct 312016
 
 October 31, 2016  Posted by at 9:36 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  Comments Off on Debt Rattle October 31 2016


Harris&Ewing State, War & Navy Building, Washington DC 1917

Economic Stress As World Runs Out Of Dollars (AEP)
China as Factory to World Mulls the Unthinkable: Price Hikes (BBG)
European Banks Stuck With $1.3 Trillion of Bad Loans, KPMG Says (BBG)
FBI Obtains Warrant; Agents Waited Weeks To Tell Comey About Emails (WaPo) (WaPo)
Why Comey Jumped At The Chance To Reopen Hillary Investigation (DM)
FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe (WSJ)
Hillary’s Emails Matter: A Retired CIA Officer Explains Why (Hill)
Ex-FBI Official: ‘Intensive Investigation’ Ongoing Into Clinton Foundation (DC)
Clinton Supporter Doug Schoen Reconsiders, Cites Constitutional Crisis (RCP)
James Comey – As Seen Through The Persuasion Filter (Adams)
Theresa May Lied And Lied Again To Become PM (G.)
The Dirty Secret Beneath Hong Kong’s Wealth: Slavery (SCMP)
EU And Canada Sign CETA Free Trade Deal (G.)
Turkey Detains Editor Of Opposition Newspaper Cumhuriyet (AFP)
Erdogan Says Greek Islands ‘Used To Be Ours’ (Kath.)

 

 

“Our allocation model is now 100pc in cash. This is a warning signal for the market and it happens extremely rarely..”

Economic Stress As World Runs Out Of Dollars (AEP)

Surging rates on dollar Libor contracts are rapidly tightening conditions across large parts of the global economy, incubating stress in the credit markets and ultimately threatening overvalued bourses. Three-month Libor rates – the benchmark cost of short-term borrowing for the international system – have tripled this year to 0.88pc as inflation worries mount. Fear that the US Federal Reserve may have to raise rates uncomfortably fast is leading to an acute dollar shortage, draining global liquidity. “The Libor rate is one of few instruments left that still moves freely and is priced by market forces. It is effectively telling us that that the Fed is already two hikes behind the curve,” said Steen Jakobsen from Saxo Bank. “This is highly significant and is our number one concern. Our allocation model is now 100pc in cash. This is a warning signal for the market and it happens extremely rarely,” he said.

Goldman Sachs estimates that up to 30pc of all business loans in the US are priced off Libor contracts, as well as 20pc of mortgages and most student loans. It is the anchor for a host of exotic markets, used as a floor for 90pc of the $900bn pool of the leveraged loan market. It underpins the derivatives nexus. The chain reaction from the Libor spike is global. The BIS warns that the rising cost of borrowing in dollar markets is transmitted almost instantly through the global credit system. Changes in the short-term policy rate are promptly reflected in the cost of $5 trillion in US dollar bank loans,” it said. Roughly 60pc of the global economy is linked to the dollar through fixed currency pegs or “dirty floats”, but studies by the BIS suggest that borrowing costs in domestic currencies across Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa, move in sympathy with dollar costs, regardless of whether the exchange rate is fixed. Short-term “Shibor” rates in China have been ratcheting up.

The cost of one-year swaps jumped to 2.71pc last week, and the spread over one-year sovereign debt is back to levels seen during the Shanghai stock market crash last year. This is not a pure import from the US. The Chinese authorities themselves are taking action to rein in a credit bubble. It is happening in parallel with Fed tightening, each reinforcing the other, and that makes it more potent. Three-month interbank rates in Saudi Arabia have soared to 2.4pc. This is the highest since the global financial crisis in early 2009 and implies a credit crunch in the Saudi banking system. The M1 money supply has fallen 9pc over the last year. The Bank of Japan has doubled its window of dollar credit for Japanese banks to head off an incipient dollar squeeze, drawing on the country’s ample foreign reserves.

It may not be so easy for others. Credit analysts are becoming nervous about the spread between Libor and the overnight index swap, the so-called Libor-OIS spread that is used to gauge problems in the plumbing of the credit system. It has widened to 38 basis points, near levels seen in the eurozone debt crisis and past bouts of stress. The message from the ‘TED spread’ is similar, if less severe. This measures the spread between eurodollar rates in London and three-month futures contracts for US treasuries. The picture is complex. These signals have been distorted by new rules for US prime money market funds, which have shrunk by $560bn and led to a contraction of commercial paper. The deadline for this reform has come and gone, yet the spreads have not settled.

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Only thing left to do now is find buyers.

China as Factory to World Mulls the Unthinkable: Price Hikes (BBG)

China’s factories may be on the cusp of delivering a new shock to the global economy after years of undercutting rivals with cheaper costs. This time, increases in prices could reverberate around the world. To understand why, consider the dilemma facing Jiangmen Luck Tissue Mfy Ltd., now caught in a squeeze between surging wages and tepid demand. The company has already slashed staff by half, shaved prices and automated production to survive. Now, with margins razor thin, it’s weighing the first price increases since 2010. “There’s just no possibility for me to cut prices any more,” says deputy director Roger Zhao, 52, whose company is based in the city of Jiangmen in southern Guangdong province.

“Because costs are already pretty high and I don’t see any possibility they’ll go down, I’m seeking opportunities to raise prices a little bit.” That push to recover lost margins – even as demand remains muted – was shared by exporters of everything from clocks to jacuzzis interviewed in Guangzhou last week at the Canton Fair, a biannual gathering where 25,000 exhibitors and 180,000 mostly foreign buyers ink export deals in booths spanning exhibition space equivalent to about 3,400 tennis courts. For the world economy, decisions from companies like Jiangmen Tissue to stop cutting prices – and even raise them where demand allows – removes a source of disinflationary pressure.

To be decided is whether China, the factory to the world, swings from becoming a drag on consumer prices to a source of pressure nudging them higher. China’s manufacturing prices rose in September for the first time in almost five years and overall producer prices also clambered out of negative territory. Those likely to feel the biggest lift if Chinese export prices follow through with sustained increases would be the country’s top five markets: the U.S., Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Mexico. “China’s return to positive growth in producer prices marks a very significant turning point in deflationary pressures both in China and globally,” said Shane Oliver at AMP Capital Investors in Sydney. “This is only step one, though. We are still waiting for step two: stronger global demand and trade.”

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Draghi to the rescue. He better be fast.

European Banks Stuck With $1.3 Trillion of Bad Loans, KPMG Says (BBG)

Eight years after Lehman Brothers’ collapse sparked the financial crisis, Europe’s banks still have €1.2 trillion ($1.3 trillion) of non-performing loans and will probably be stuck with them for decades to come, according to KPMG. Anemic economic growth across the region is making it harder for lenders to off-load toxic assets, hurting profitability while banks also come under pressure from tougher capital rules and fines for misconduct, London-based KPMG said in a report published Monday. Firms could take “decades rather than years” to reduce their exposures, hampering profitability. European lenders are battling to cut soured loans as they face evaporating income from lending amid negative interest rates from the ECB.

Net interest margins, the difference between income from lending versus cost of funding, average about 1.2% in the region compared with about 3% in the U.S., according to KPMG. “Reversing the profitability of European banks is not a lost cause but it will certainly be a lot of hard work,” Marcus Evans, a partner at KPMG’s ECB office, said in a statement. “It’s clear that across Europe banks are still grappling with the new world of low, or negative, interest rates and mounting capital and regulatory costs.” The total value of toxic loans in Europe has surged since 2008 from about 1.5% of lending to more than 5% since 2013, according to the report. This has a negative impact on profitability from unpaid interest, raising provisions against impaired assets and realizing losses when disposing bad debts, according to KPMG.

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Lots of Weiner and Comey stuff today. Lots of guessing going on. Accurate picture is slow to seep through.

FBI Obtains Warrant; Agents Waited Weeks To Tell Comey About Emails (WaPo) (WaPo)

FBI agents investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state knew early this month that messages recovered in a separate probe might be germane to their case, but they waited weeks before briefing the FBI director, according to people familiar with the case. Director James B. Comey has written that he was informed of the development Thursday, and he sent a letter to legislators the next day letting them know that he thought the team should take “appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails.” That missive ignited a political firestorm less than two weeks before the election. Almost instantly, Comey came under intense criticism for his timing and for bucking the Justice Department’s guidance not to tell Congress about the development.

And his announcement means that Clinton could have to contend with the news that the FBI has resumed its investigation of her use of a private email server — without any clarity on whether its investigators will find anything significant — up to and beyond Election Day. The FBI has obtained a warrant to search the emails found on a computer used by former congressman Anthony Weiner that may contain evidence relevant to the investigation into Clinton’s private email server, according to law enforcement officials. The warrant was obtained in New York, as FBI agents there have possession of the laptop. [..].. officials familiar with the case said the messages include a significant amount of correspondence associated with Clinton and her top aide Huma Abedin, Weiner’s estranged wife.

People familiar with the case said that agents on the Clinton email team had known about the messages since soon after New York FBI agents seized a computer related to their investigation into Weiner [..] Officials said the agents probing Clinton’s private email server didn’t tell the director immediately because they were trying to better assess what they had. “It’s a step-by-step process,” said one senior law enforcement official. “There are many steps along the way that get you to a place where the director can be appropriately briefed in order to make a decision” about whether to move forward.

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Even his wife was on to him. ‘They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.’

Why Comey Jumped At The Chance To Reopen Hillary Investigation (DM)

James Comey’s decision to revive the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server and her handling of classified material came after he could no longer resist mounting pressure by mutinous agents in the FBI, including some of his top deputies, according to a source close to the embattled FBI director. ‘The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary,’ said the source, a close friend who has known Comey for nearly two decades, shares family outings with him, and accompanies him to Catholic mass every week. ‘Some people, including department heads, stopped talking to Jim, and even ignored his greetings when they passed him in the hall,’ said the source.

‘They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.’ According to the source, Comey fretted over the problem for months and discussed it at great length with his wife, Patrice. He told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents. The letters reminded him every day that morale in the FBI had hit rock bottom. ‘He’s been ignoring the resignation letters in the hope that he could find a way of remedying the situation,’ said the source. ‘When new emails that appeared to be related to Hillary’s personal email server turned up in a computer used by Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner, Comey jumped at the excuse to reopen the investigation.

‘The people he trusts the most have been the angriest at him,’ the source continued. ‘And that includes his wife, Pat. She kept urging him to admit that he had been wrong when he refused to press charges against the former secretary of state. ‘He talks about the damage that he’s done to himself and the institution [of the FBI], and how he’s been shunned by the men and women who he admires and work for him. It’s taken a tremendous toll on him. ‘It shattered his ego. He looks like he’s aged 10 years in the past four months.’ But Comey’s decision to reopen the case was more than an effort to heal the wound he inflicted on the FBI. He was also worried that after the presidential election, Republicans in Congress would mount a probe of how he had granted Hillary political favoritism.

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Maybe the agents should have spoken out earlier?

FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe (WSJ)

The surprise disclosure that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are taking a new look at Hillary Clinton’s email use lays bare, just days before the election, tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee. Investigators found 650,000 emails on a laptop that they believe was used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, and underlying metadata suggests thousands of those messages could have been sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter.

It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the FBI; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe. Officials had to await a court order to begin reviewing the emails—which they received over the weekend, according to a person familiar with the matter—because they were uncovered in an unrelated probe of Mr. Weiner.

The new investigative effort, disclosed by FBI Director James Comey on Friday, shows a bureau at times in sharp internal disagreement over matters related to the Clintons, and how to handle those matters fairly and carefully in the middle of a national election campaign. Even as the probe of Mrs. Clinton’s email use wound down in July, internal disagreements within the bureau and the Justice Department surrounding the Clintons’ family philanthropy heated up, according to people familiar with the matter.

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“Accidentally removing a single classified message from controlled spaces, without any evidence of intent or exposure to hostile forces, can get you fired and cost you your clearance. Repeated instances will land you in prison.”

Hillary’s Emails Matter: A Retired CIA Officer Explains Why (Hill)

Nobody uses a private email server for official business. Period. Full stop. The entire notion is, to borrow a phrase from a Clinton campaign official, “insane.” That anyone would presume to be allowed to do so is mind-boggling. That government officials allowed Hillary Clinton to do so is nauseating. Classified and unclassified information do not mix. They don’t travel in the same streams through the same pipes. They move in clearly well defined channels so that never the twain shall meet. Mixing them together is unheard of and a major criminal offense. If you end up with classified information in an unclassified channel, you have done something very wrong and very serious.

Accidentally removing a single classified message from controlled spaces, without any evidence of intent or exposure to hostile forces, can get you fired and cost you your clearance. Repeated instances will land you in prison. Every hostile intelligence agency on the planet targets senior American officials for collection. The Secretary of State tops the list. Almost anything the Secretary of State had to say about her official duties, her schedule, her mood, her plans for the weekend, would be prized information to adversaries. It is very difficult, in fact, to think of much of anything that the Secretary of State could be saying in email that we would want hostile forces to know. As we wait for more information on the latest revelations, let’s quickly note what we already know Hillary Clinton did.

While Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private email address for official business. Instead of using a State Department account, she used a personal email account, housed on a private server located in her home in Chappaqua, New York. The Department of State exercised zero control or oversight in this process. No government security personnel were involved in protecting them. When the House Select Committee on Benghazi asked to see these emails, the Department of State said they did not have them. Clinton’s lawyers then went through all the emails on her server. They turned over 30,000 emails they decided were work related and deleted all of the rest. How they made the decision as to which emails to share and which to destroy remains unknown. Active government officials not were involved in this process.

Hillary says she did not use the account to transmit classified information. This has been proven false. The FBI found over 100 messages that contained information that was classified when sent, including numerous email chains at the level of Top Secret/Special Access Programs. They don’t get any more highly classified, it’s the virtual summit of Mt. Everest. [..] While serving in one of the most senior positions in the United States Government, Hillary Clinton was at a minimum, grossly negligent in the handling of classified information and when confronted with this practice, acted immediately to destroy information and prevent a full, fair and complete investigation of any damage to national security. Anyone else who did such things in the government would long ago have been tried, convicted and sent to jail. ou decide if you want to send her to the White House instead.

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A bit of extra juice. And for many a big surprise.

Ex-FBI Official: ‘Intensive Investigation’ Ongoing Into Clinton Foundation (DC)

Tom Fuentes, a former assistant director at the FBI and a CNN analyst, said Saturday that the bureau has an open investigation into the Clinton Foundation. The statement undermines a report from a team of CNN reporters in August that the Justice Department quashed an investigation into the Clinton family’s non-profit earlier this year. “The FBI has an intensive investigation ongoing into the Clinton Foundation,” Fuentes said Saturday, citing current and former senior FBI officials as sources. “The reports that three divisions came in with a request to Washington to open cases and that they were turned down by the Department of Justice, that’s not true,” he said, referring to the CNN report. “What was turned down was that they be the originating office. Headquarters at the FBI made the determination that the investigation would go forward as a comprehensive unified case and be coordinated,” he added.

[..] Fuentes was discussing the investigation in the context of a letter that FBI director James Comey sent to Congress on Friday stating that the bureau was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s emails. [..] Fuentes asserted that the emails could pertain to the original Clinton email investigation, which was closed in July, as well as to the Clinton Foundation probe. “In a sense, it’s almost turned into a one-stop shopping for the FBI as they could have implications affecting three separate investigations on one computer,” said Fuentes, who served as assistant director at the FBI during the George W. Bush administration.

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Precious few voices have dared speaking of a constitutional crisis, though the threat seems obvious. Whoever wins.

Clinton Supporter Doug Schoen Reconsiders, Cites Constitutional Crisis (RCP)

Hillary Clinton supporter, Fox News contributor, and former pollster Doug Schoen told FNC’s Harris Faulkner Sunday night that the newly renewed FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton is forcing him to “reassess” his support for the Democratic candidate. DOUG SCHOEN: As you know, I have been a supporter of Secretary Clinton… But given that this investigation is going to go on for many months after the election… But if the Secretary of State wins, we will have a president under criminal investigation, with Huma Abedin under criminal investigation, with the Secretary of State, the president-elect, should she win under investigation. Harris, under these circumstances, I am actively reassessing my support. I’m not a Trump —

HARRIS FAULKNER, FOX NEWS: Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. You are not going to vote for Hillary Clinton? SCHOEN: Harris, I’m deeply concerned that we’ll have a constitutional crisis if she’s elected. FAULKNER: Wow! SCHOEN: I want to learn more this week. See what we see. But as of today, I am not a supporter of the Secretary of State for the nation’s highest office.

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We don’t need to know reality to survive. So we don’t know it. “..you might believe you are reincarnated from a monk and I might believe my prophet flew to heaven on a winged horse but we can both get through the day just fine.”

James Comey – As Seen Through The Persuasion Filter (Adams)

As my regular readers know, the Persuasion Filter is related to the idea that the human brain never evolved to accurately comprehend reality. In order for us to be here today, our predecessors only needed to survive and procreate. They had no need to understand reality at any basic level. And we have no such need either. That’s why you might believe you are reincarnated from a monk and I might believe my prophet flew to heaven on a winged horse but we can both get through the day just fine. Many different interpretations of reality are good enough for survival. I like to describe reality as each person living their own movie, which works well unless our script’s conflict. When that happens, one of us goes into cognitive dissonance and rewrites our past to make the movies consistent.

That’s how I see the world. Last year in this blog I suggested that the most productive and predictive way to view reality is through what I call the Persuasion Filter. That’s what I have been using to make spooky-good predictions about the election so far. And that’s what I’ll use today to give you an alternate movie about James Comey. Compare it to the movie you are running in your head and see which one better predicts the future. The base assumption of the Persuasion Filter is that people are irrational 90% of the time and only rarely – when no emotions are involved – truly rational. This is the reverse of the common filter for reality, in which people are assumed to be rational 90% of the time and a bit crazy 10% of the time. That’s some background for context.

[..] The way you know the new emails are disqualifying for Clinton is because otherwise our hero would have privately informed Congress and honored the tradition of not influencing elections. Comey is smart enough to know his options. And unless he suddenly turned rotten at his current age, he’s got the character to jump in front of a second bullet for the Republic. According to this movie, no matter who gets elected, we’ll eventually learn of something disqualifying in the Weiner emails. And we can’t say we weren’t warned. Comey took two bullets to do it. So compare this movie to your own movie and see which one does the best job of explaining the observed facts. And when we find out what is in the Weiner laptop emails, compare that news to my prediction that the information is disqualifying.

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Hard hitting Brits.

Theresa May Lied And Lied Again To Become PM (G.)

Theresa May appeals to a stereotype that has a deep grip on the English psyche. Sober and commonsensical, she behaves with the moral seriousness we expect from a vicar’s daughter. She may be a little clunky, but what a relief it is to have a straightforward leader from the heart of the country after the flash, poll-driven phonies of the past. I am not saying her public image is all a pretence. No focus group told her to campaign against the modern slave trade when she was home secretary. There were few Tory votes in stopping the police targeting young black men, either. But the dominant side of Theresa May is more superficial than David Cameron and more dishonest than Tony Blair. It is a tribute to the power of cliches to stop us seeing what is in front of our noses, that so few have noticed that the only reason she’s prime minister is that she put ambition before principle.

Last week, Downing Street spin doctors were trying and failing to downplay the importance of a secret speech she gave to Goldman Sachs on 26 May, which was leaked to Nick Hopkins and Rowena Mason of the Guardian. In private, May was unequivocal. “The economic arguments are clear,” she told the bankers. Companies would leave the UK if the UK left the EU. In public, however, she made just one speech during the referendum campaign. You forgot it the moment you heard it. May never mentioned the danger of companies fleeing. Her economic case, such as it was, came down to a flaccid, pseudo-impartial argument that “there are risks in staying as well as leaving”. As an orator, May was hopeless. As a politician on the make, she was close to perfect.

When Craig Oliver, Cameron’s former chief of communications, wondered if she was secretly an “enemy agent” for the Leave side, he was being too Machiavellian. May was just making the smart move. She kept her views about the economic consequences of Brexit quiet, so that the Conservative right would accept her as leader if Cameron lost. Failing to state your honest opinion on the most important decision Britain has taken in decades may seem cowardly enough. But the consequences of May’s pretence do not stop with one referendum. Her manoeuvres have forced her into a position where she must make arguments she cannot possibly believe, on behalf of causes she cannot possibly believe in.

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Just lovely.

The Dirty Secret Beneath Hong Kong’s Wealth: Slavery (SCMP)

Hong Kong, a city commonly associated with finance and wealth, has one of the highest proportions of people enslaved across Asia, a new report has found. At least 29,500 people out of a population of more than seven million are trapped in modern slavery in one of the 10 richest cities in the world based on its gross domestic product, according to the Global Slavery Index 2016, which assessed the problem in 167 countries and regions. The sobering figures which specifically concern Hong Kong may come as a surprise, but the hard-hitting report stated that the city has become one of the worst places in Asia for its poor response to the problem, performing worse than mainland China.

The city urgently needs tougher laws and a “transparent plan of action” to combat the problem, human rights group Justice Centre Hong Kong said. Jade Anderson, anti-human trafficking coordinator for the campaign group, said the Global Slavery Index, produced by charitable organisation Walk Free Foundation, came as a “shock” to some Hongkongers. But her organisation’s research had found there were major human rights abuses that went unpunished in the city, and the number of slaves could be much higher than researchers have estimated, she said. The Justice Centre’s investigation involving 1,000 migrant domestic workers found 17% were carrying out “forced labor”, which she said equated to about 55,000 of the city’s 320,000 helpers.

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Again: just lovely.

EU And Canada Sign CETA Free Trade Deal (G.)

The EU and Canada signed a free trade deal on Sunday that was almost derailed last week by objections from French-speaking Belgians , exposing the difficulties of securing agreement from 28 member states as Britain prepares for Brexit talks. The European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, said there was no parallel between the deal struck with Canada and looming Brexit talks. “I don’t see any relation between what we are signing today and the Brexit issue,” Juncker said, before greeting Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, in Brussels Trudeau and top EU officials signed the comprehensive economic and trade agreement, known as Ceta, paving the way for most import duties to be removed early next year. However, the treaty needs the approval of at least 38 national and regional parliaments, including the UK’s, to take full force.

Trudeau was meant to fly to Brussels last Wednesday but he stayed at home when the Wallonia region raised objections that held up agreement until Thursday. Belgium’s regional parliaments endorsed a compromise deal, which addressed concerns about competition for Wallonia’s farmers from Canada, on Friday. Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, who stood beside Trudeau at a news conference, said the delay was caused by Belgium’s internal politics and that the deal would be far less contentious when it went before national parliaments. Tusk said: “Fortunately we live in a democratic system and democracy is less predictable than other political systems but I still prefer democracy. My prediction is there is no huge problem with European parliaments. After my talks with all 28 member states’ leaders, I have no doubt Ceta is the least controversial trade agreement you could imagine.”

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Amazing he was still walking free.

Turkey Detains Editor Of Opposition Newspaper Cumhuriyet (AFP)

Turkish police detained the editor-in-chief of the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, state media reported Monday, while CNN Turk said 13 arrest warrants were issued for journalists and executives from the daily. Murat Sabuncu was detained while authorities searched for executive board chairman Akin Atalay and writer Guray Oz, the official news agency Anadolu said. The daily said Oz had already been detained. Police were searching the homes of Atalay and Oz, Anadolu said. The latest detentions came as authorities pressed a massive crackdown over a failed July bid by a rogue faction of the military to oust President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.Tens of thousands of civil servants have since been suspended, fired or detained, with the government pointing the finger of blame for the coup bid at exiled Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen.

The government has also shut more than 100 media outlets and detained dozens of journalists as it presses a purge that has come under fire by Western leaders and human rights organisations. Sabuncu’s arrest also came as the government fought an insurgency from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The government’s operation against the Cumhuriyet daily was launched over its alleged “activities on behalf of” the Gulen movement and the PKK. The PKK — proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Ankara, the EU and US — has waged an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984. Cumhuriyet’s former editor-in-chief is Can Dundar, who was sentenced in May by a Turkish court to five years and 10 months in prison for allegedly revealing state secrets. Dundar is now believed to be in Germany after he was freed earlier this year pending an appeal.

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It’s too late for an October surprise from Erdogan, but this stuff is so insane it makes you wonder.

Erdogan Says Greek Islands ‘Used To Be Ours’ (Kath.)

In what was widely seen as a fresh dig at Greece, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday reiterated that several Greek islands in the eastern Aegean “used to be ours.” The Turkish leader made waves recently in Greece when he said that the Treaty of Lausanne, which set the borders between Greece and Turkey in 1923, was unfair on his country. He returned to the subject on Saturday, saying he didn’t understand why his remarks had raised so many objections. “I said Lausanne and they got annoyed. Why are you annoyed?” he said, adding that “these islands were ours.” “We have our monuments and our mosques there [on the islands],” he said. “Whoever signed [for their passing to Greece] bears the responsibility.”

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Oct 222016
 
 October 22, 2016  Posted by at 11:03 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  Comments Off on Debt Rattle October 22 2016


NPC Fire at S. Kanns warehouse, Washington, DC 1908

Why Corporate America’s Debt Is a ‘Major Risk’ (BBG)
Ignoring the Debt Problem (Volcker/Peterson)
Bank of England Says Authorities Mustn’t Fine Banks Because Groaf (Bill Black)
Think Canada is a Progressive Paradise? That’s Mooseshit (G.)
No, Hillary, 17 US Intel Agencies Did Not Say Russia Hacked Dem E-mails (NR)
Rigged Elections Are An American Tradition (Paul Craig Roberts)
EU Parliament Chief, Canada Minister In Bid To Save CETA Trade Deal (AFP)
Greek Union Files EU Human Rights Case Against Austerity (COE)
Gove Says Criticizing Carney or BoE Policy ‘Equivalent Of A Thought Crime’ (DM)
Up To 25 Feared Dead In Attack On Migrant Boat Off Libya (AFP)

 

 

You guessed it: interest rates.

Why Corporate America’s Debt Is a ‘Major Risk’ (BBG)

Are investors in denial about how dim the outlook is for American businesses? That’s the question Société Générale’s Andrew Lapthorne, global head of quantitative strategy, posed to his bank’s clients. “Asset valuations are extreme; returns are poor, the probability of losses is high and the ability to recover any losses quickly is low,” he writes. In particular, the strategist sounded an alarm over the state of corporate America’s balance sheet. Company spending exceeds cash flow by a near-record amount—a fundamentally unsustainable situation—as net debt continues to increase at a rapid pace.

In many cases, companies have used debt to repurchase their own stock, flattering their bottom-line financial performance. While not all buybacks are financed by debt, Lapthorne did note a correlation between net repurchases and the change in corporate indebtedness. “U.S. corporate balance sheets are a major risk going forward,” he says. “U.S. corporates are massively overspending.” To be fair, servicing this debt load isn’t as onerous as it might appear, because of low interest rates. And despite the recent steepening of corporations’ yield curve, companies have continued to extend duration, which offers them more certainty about what their interest payments will be over the long term. “For corporate credit, there’s very little concern about short-term coverage from the market,” write analysts at Bespoke Investment Group. “We note that maturities continue to creep up slowly; despite higher spread costs, corporates are generally borrowing further out the curve and ‘locking’ low rates.”

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As Steve Keen observes, ironically, it’s Volcker and Peterson themselves who ignore the biggest debt problem: private debt. Which is much higher:

Ignoring the Debt Problem (Volcker/Peterson)

Together, the two of us have 179 years of life experience and 13 grandchildren. We have served presidents of both parties. We have seen more campaign seasons than we care to count — but none as strange as this one. Insults, invective and pandering have been poor substitutes for serious debate about the direction in which this country is going — or should be going. And a sound and sustainable fiscal structure is a key ingredient of any viable economic policy. Yes, this country can handle the nearly $600 billion federal deficit estimated for 2016. But the deficit has grown sharply this year, and will keep the national debt at about 75% of GDP, a ratio not seen since 1950, after the budget ballooned during World War II.

Long-term, that continued growth, driven by our tax and spending policies, will create the most significant fiscal challenge facing our country. The widely respected Congressional Budget Office has estimated that by midcentury our debt will rise to 140% of GDP, far above that in any previous era, even in times of war. Unfortunately, despite a brief discussion during the final presidential debate, neither candidate has put forward a convincing plan to restrain the growth of the national debt in the decades to come. Throughout the campaign, Donald J. Trump has called for a combination of deep tax cuts that appear to far exceed proposed spending reductions, at the clear risk of substantially increasing the ratio of debt to GDP. Hillary Clinton has set out more balanced and detailed proposals, but they would still fail to stabilize and reduce our debt burden.

Whoever wins, the new president will eventually face fiscal realities that force him or her to develop strategies for decreasing the national debt as a share of the economy over the long term. Our current debt may be manageable at a time of unprecedentedly low interest rates. But if we let our debt grow, and interest rates normalize, the interest burden alone would choke our budget and squeeze out other essential spending. There would be no room for the infrastructure programs and the defense rebuilding that today have wide support. [..] we’d be dependent on foreign investors’ acquiring most of our debt — making the government dependent on the “kindness of strangers” who may not be so kind as the I.O.U.s mount up.

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Always good to read Bill.

Bank of England Says Authorities Mustn’t Fine Banks Because Groaf (Bill Black)

Elite bankers and the pathetic economists who serve as apologists for their frauds specialize in proving our family saying that it is impossible to compete with unintentional self-parody. The subtitle of the WSJ article providing the latest proof is “Fines on banks translate into $5 trillion of ‘reduced lending capacity,’ bank says.” The “bank” referred to is the Bank of England, which is supposed to be the UK’s primary bank regulator. To be kind, the “study” by BOE is so embarrassing that a better descriptor of the BOE would be “fraud enabler.” “The roughly $275 billion in legal costs for global banks since 2008 translates into more than $5 trillion of reduced lending capacity to the real economy,” Minouche Shafik, a deputy governor of the BoE, told a New York conference of regulators and bankers Thursday.

BOE’s methodology and “logic” (which it did not make public) are easy to guess. It is not sufficient that elite banksters are able to become wealthy from leading the worlds’ most destructive financial frauds with impunity from prosecution, civil suits, and enforcement actions. It is vital that the banks no longer be fined for conducting these massive frauds. When banks are fined they lose some of their profits from these epidemics of frauds, bid-rigging cartels, predatory lending, aiding and abetting elite tax fraud, and money laundering for terrorists and violent drug cartels. For the sake of brevity, I will call these collectively “fraud proceeds.” Banks remain highly leveraged despite modest increases in capital requirements, so the BOE’s staff is assuming that each dollar of fraud proceeds that the banks lose to fines reduces total bank size by $18.18. They are assuming that the typical bank has a miserably inadequate capital requirement of slightly over five percent.

There are a number of fatal problems with BOE’s “logic” and (unstated) methodology. First, under the BOE’s “logic” the more profitable banks become by defrauding their customers the faster the economy will grow. The bank CEOs who led the three most destructive epidemics of financial fraud in history were apparently Soviet-style (pun intended) “Heroes of Capitalism.” Except, of course, what they actually drove was a massive financial bubble that produced the Great Recession. The projected loss of GDP in the U.S. due to the Great Recession is $24.3 trillion – and the loss of eurozone GDP is far larger because their economic losses have occurred over a far longer time and have been far deeper than in the United States. Only central bank economists would be so dogmatically divorced from reality and so moral challenged that they would think that allowing banksters to keep their fraud proceeds and avoid all accountability for their crimes would be good for the economy.

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“When your next-door neighbour is a billionaire celebrity genius with automatic weapons and an undying need for attention, you can get away with all sorts of stuff.”

Think Canada is a Progressive Paradise? That’s Mooseshit (G.)

Quick – picture Canada. What comes to mind? A progressive wonderland of polite manners and majestic moose? What America might be if it evolved a little? That place you’ll move to if Trump wins? If that’s what you think, that’s fine by us. In fact, it’s our brand: not America. The nice guys. Dull, kind and harmless. That’s how we like to be thought of. But it’s mooseshit. We are not the country you think we are. We never have been. The first prime minister and founding father of Canada, John A Macdonald, was a raging alcoholic. He spent entire campaigns fabulously drunk and once vomited on stage during a stump speech. When his rival pointed it out, Macdonald shot back that he hadn’t puked because of booze, but because he had been “forced to listen to the ranting of my honourable opponent”.

It was a deflection worthy of Trump. Macdonald handily won the election. The reason the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (our “Mounties”) ride horses is because during the labour movement of the 30s, horseback was the best way to trample protesting immigrants and miners. By the 60s, the horses were mostly just for show and the Mounties’ regular activities included subjecting suspected homosexuals to the “Fruit Machine”, a device designed to measure erotic responses to gay porn. These days, Canada is the third-largest arms dealer in the world. Our Alberta oil sands produce more carbon emissions each year than the entire state of California. Our intelligence agency is allowed to act on information obtained through torture. And a lot of French Canadians are into blackface comedy.

Little of this is widely known, because we happen to share a border with America. When your next-door neighbour is a billionaire celebrity genius with automatic weapons and an undying need for attention, you can get away with all sorts of stuff. It’s nice to be thought of as the world’s nice guys. And it’s useful – it obscures a lot of dirt.

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When I first hears her make that claim, I was thinking Russia must have been real eager to get caught. Why Trump didn’t jump on it, I can’t tell. Take a look for yourself which agencies are included:

No, Hillary, 17 US Intel Agencies Did Not Say Russia Hacked Dem E-mails (NR)

Hillary Clinton in last night’s presidential debate tried to avoid talking about the substance of the damaging WikiLeaks disclosures of DNC and Clinton campaign officials by claiming 17 U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Russia was responsible for this. After Clinton made this claim, she scolded Trump for challenging U.S. intelligence professionals who have taken an oath to help defend this country. What Clinton said was false and misleading. First of all, only two intelligence entities – the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – have weighed in on this issue, not 17 intelligence agencies. And what they said was ambiguous about Russian involvement. An unclassified October 7, 2016 joint DNI-DHS statement on this issue said the hacks

. . . are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow — the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europa and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.

Saying we think the hacks “are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts” is far short of saying we have evidence that Russia has been responsible for the hacks. Maybe high-level officials would have authorized them if Russian hackers were responsible, but the DNI and DHS statement did NOT say there was evidence Russia was responsible. My problem with the DNI/DHS unclassified statement is that it appeared to be another effort by the Obama administration to politicize U.S. intelligence. Make no mistake, U.S. intelligence agencies issued this unprecedented unclassified statement a month before a presidential election that was so useful to one party because the Clinton campaign asked for it.

The Obama administration was happy to comply. Clinton tried to defend the DNI/DHS statement by repeating the myth that U.S. intelligence officers are completely insulated from politics. She must think Americans will forget how the CIA crafted the politicized Benghazi talking points in 2011 and how SOUTHCOM intelligence analysts were pressured to distort their analysis of ISIS and Syria to support Obama foreign policy. And that’s just under the Obama administration.

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PCR could have done a tad more research, I’m thinking.

Rigged Elections Are An American Tradition (Paul Craig Roberts)

Do Americans have a memory? I sometimes wonder. It is an obvious fact that the oligarchic One Percent have anointed Hillary, despite her myriad problems to be President of the US. There are reports that her staff are already moving into their White House offices. This much confidence before the vote does suggest that the skids have been greased. The current cause celebre against Trump is his conditional statement that he might not accept the election results if they appear to have been rigged. The presstitutes immediately jumped on him for “discrediting American democracy” and for “breaking American tradition of accepting the people’s will.” What nonsense! Stolen elections are the American tradition. Elections are stolen at every level—state, local, and federal.

Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley’s theft of the Chicago and, thereby, Illinois vote for John F. Kennedy is legendary. The Republican US Supreme Court’s theft of the 2000 presidential election from Al Gore by preventing the Florida vote recount is another legendary example. The discrepancies between exit polls and the vote count of the secretly programmed electronic voting machines that have no paper trails are also legendary. So what’s the big deal about Trump’s suspicion of election rigging? The black civil rights movement has fought vote rigging for decades. The rigging takes place in a number of ways. Blacks simply can’t get registered to vote. If they do get registered, there are few polling places in their districts. And so on. After decades of struggle it is impossible that there any blacks who are not aware of how hard it can be for them to vote.

Yet, I heard on the presstitute radio network, NPR, Hillary’s Uncle Toms saying how awful it was that Trump had cast aspersion on the credibility of American election results. I also heard a NPR announcer suggest that Russia had not only hacked Hillary’s emails, but also had altered them in order to make incriminating documents out of harmless emails. The presstitutes have gone all out to demonize both Trump and any mention of election rigging, because they know for a fact that the election will be stolen and that they will have the job of covering up the theft. [..] Don’t vote early. The purpose of early voting is to show the One Percent how the vote is shaping up. From this information, the oligarchs learn how to program the electronic machines in order to elect the candidate that they want.

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Well, it certainly dies hard. How many hours has Obama spent on the phone for this malt minute turn?

EU Parliament Chief, Canada Minister In Bid To Save CETA Trade Deal (AFP)

EU parliament head Martin Schulz and Canada’s trade minister Chrystia Freeland were meeting Saturday, saying they hoped to revive a trade deal threatened by the refusal of a Belgian region to sign on. Schulz wrote on Twitter he would also meet with Wallonia’s socialist government head Paul Magnette, who has moved to stop the bloc’s 28 nations from signing the accord. The meetings in Brussels are aimed at “reviving CETA talks. We can’t stop at the last mile,” Schulz wrote, referring to the agreement’s name. On arriving at the parliament building, Freeland said: “The ball is in Europe’s court. We hope that it is possible to find a solution,” according to the Belga news agency.

Canada blasted the European Union on Friday as incapable of signing international agreements, as the talks to persuade Wallonia to sign up to the huge trade deal broke down. Freeland appeared on the verge of tears after walking out of negotiations with the head of the French-speaking Belgian region on the deal that has been seven years in the making. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had planned to travel to Brussels next week to sign the deal but that visit looks almost certain to be called off.

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May I suggest they get good lawyers.

Greek Union Files EU Human Rights Case Against Austerity (COE)

A public hearing of the European Committee of Social Rights today focused on how austerity in Greece has affected social rights under the guidelines of the European Social Charter. The committee granted the hearing request, which was made by the complainant organisation, the Greek General Confederation of Labour (GSEE) v. Greece.

The complaint alleges that some laws enacted in Greece as part of the austerity programme affect workers’ rights in a manner that is contrary to Article 1 (the right to work); Article 2 (the right to just conditions of work); Article 4 (the right to a fair remuneration); and Article 7 (the right of children and young persons to protection) of the 1961 Social Charter; as well as of Article 3 of the 1988 Additional Protocol (the right to take part in the determination and improvement of working conditions and working environment). Greece’s Minister for Labour, Social Security and Social Solidarity George Katrougalos and GSEE president Yannis Panagopoulos attended the hearing. The Committee, which monitors commitments to the European Social Charter, is expected to issue its decision to the public by mid-2017.

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Brits are funny even if they don’t mean to. Ming dynasty was 14th-17th century.

Gove Says Criticizing Carney or BoE Policy ‘Equivalent Of A Thought Crime’ (DM)

Michael Gove has launched a scathing attack on the Governor of the Bank of England, comparing his arrogance to that of the cruel Ming emperors. The former justice secretary said that like the rulers of medieval China, the pro-EU Mark Carney believed his judgments had ‘near-divine’ status and that he was infallible in his actions. But in reality, many of his policies – such as printing money and cutting interest rates – had been shown to have created significant economic problems, he said. Mr Gove said the Canadian banker should show more humility – as it was technocrats like him who had brought the ‘disaster’ of the euro and failed to predict the 2008 crash. He said Mr Carney should ‘ponder the fate of the Chinese emperors’ who were finally overthrown because they could not bear any criticism.

The attack by Mr Gove, a senior figure in the Leave campaign, echoes his criticism before the referendum of ‘experts’ who predicted a slump if we left the EU. In an article for The Times, he wrote: ‘At different eras in world history there have been sacred figures who, while apparently of flesh and blood, have been elevated to inhabit a special realm of near-divinity above the rest of fallible mankind. In medieval China, they had the Ming Emperor, Lord of Ten Thousand Years, who employed the Mandate of Heaven to decide the fate of millions. ‘His person was held to be inviolable and without imperfections. ‘Those who dared to question his rule were flayed alive, their skin left hanging from a hook to emphasise the emperor would brook no challenge to his authority.

In contemporary Britain we have Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, who employs control over interest rates to decide the fate of millions. ‘His position is held to be independent and without any error. ‘And so any criticism of his actions is regarded as a thought crime – and those who dare to question his rule are flayed in the press with dire warnings left hanging in the air to emphasise the Governor will brook no challenge to his authority.’

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Yeah, it wasn’t crazy enough yet.

Up To 25 Feared Dead In Attack On Migrant Boat Off Libya (AFP)

Up to 25 people were missing, feared drowned, Friday after men on a Libyan coastguard speedboat attacked a packed migrant dinghy during a rescue operation off the north African state. German NGO Sea-Watch, which is taking part in the multinational search and rescue operation in the Mediterranean, said the tragedy happened after its boat Sea-Watch 2 and a passing oil tanker were sent to help the distressed dinghy in the early hours. As the rescue operation proceeded just beyond Libyan territorial waters north of the port of Sabrata, a speedboat bearing the Libyan coastguard insignia arrived and tried to steal the dinghy’s outboard engine, spokesman Ruben Neugebauer told AFP.

The men, who spoke Arabic, beat some of the migrants with sticks and some clambered onto the dinghy, causing panic which resulted in one side of the boat deflating and most of the passengers ending up in the sea. After the assailants left, Sea-Watch said it rescued 120 people and recovered four corpses from the water. Other bodies were seen floating but could not be recovered and it was estimated that between 15 and 25 of the people who had been on the board were unaccounted for. Sea-Watch said in a statement that its two speedboats had been “hassled in an aggressive way” during the attack, “preventing our crew from providing life vests and medical aid to the people in need.” “All of these deaths could have been avoided but for this intervention,” Neugebauer added.

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Oct 142016
 
 October 14, 2016  Posted by at 9:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  Comments Off on Debt Rattle October 14 2016


Lewis Wickes Hine Newsies in St. Louis, N. Broadway and De Soto. 1910

Fed Creates Junk Bond And Stock Market Bubble (SA)
Draghi Sends Corporate Yields So Negative the ECB Can’t Buy Them (BBG)
There’s No Plateau in a Housing Bubble, Not Even in Canada (WS)
30% Junk Rally Gives Traders Heartburn (BBG)
China’s Tough Choice: Supporting Growth Or Controlling Debt (CNBC)
China Export Dip Tempts Policy Makers to Keep Weakening Yuan (BBG)
Shanghai Banks Told To Limit Loans To Property Developers (R.)
Standard & Poor’s Warns On UK Reserve Currency Status As Brexit Hardens (AEP)
Hundreds Of Properties Could Be Seized In UK Corruption Crackdown (G.)
Some of Donald Trump’s Economic Team Diverge From Candidate (WSJ)
Renzi Gambles All on Referendum Haunted by Weak Italian Economy (BBG)
Walloon Revolt Against Canada Deal Torpedoes EU Trade Policy (Pol.)
Germany Proposes North Africa Centers For Rescued Migrants (AFP)

 

 

“..this borrowing to fund buybacks and dividends doesn’t last this long and it has never lasted three years..”

Fed Creates Junk Bond And Stock Market Bubble (SA)

The chart below emphasizes the point that real business investment has declined while commercial and industrial loans are increasing. The leverage in the system is the highest ever as cheap money is not going to the right places. Businesses will only invest in new initiatives if they see sales growth in the future. Low interest rates will not cause a manager to invest in a new initiative. However, managers are still tempted to take the free money, so they pile it into the easiest place: dividends and buybacks.

As you can see, the total payout ratio of dividends and buybacks has exceeded 100% for the past two years. Usually, this borrowing to fund buybacks and dividends doesn’t last this long and it has never lasted three years, so leverage is near its brink.

The chart below shows how levered the balance sheets of corporations are. The leverage on investment-grade balance sheets is at a record high. The three bubbles that you can see in the chart below have all been created by the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies.

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Super Clueless Mario surprises himself.

Draghi Sends Corporate Yields So Negative the ECB Can’t Buy Them (BBG)

The European Central Bank is starting to price itself out of the corporate-bond market as yields plumb such lows that some notes are no longer eligible for its purchase program. ECB President Mario Draghi’s unprecedented buying of corporate debt has sent borrowing costs tumbling to a record and now yields on some securities are so low they fall outside the ECB’s own criteria. Yields on bonds from Paris’s public transport network have already dropped below the threshold of minus 0.4%, while those from Siemens, Europe’s biggest engineering company, France’s train operator SNCF and Sagess, which manages the nation’s strategic oil reserves, are also approaching the cut-off point.

The increasingly negative yields are raising questions about how much more the ECB can do in credit markets to stimulate growth. Yields on €2.6 trillion ($2.9 trillion) of government bonds in Europe have already turned negative after the central bank bought €1.3 trillion of fixed-income assets, including €32 billion of corporate bonds. “This is a sign of how much impact corporate bond buying has had on the credit market,” said Barnaby Martin at Bank of America. “If corporate yields continue to fall, then conceivably it could impact the ECB’s ability to buy bonds. It’s surprising how quickly we’ve reached this situation.”

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“When a bubble pops, the first thing that stops is transactions..”

There’s No Plateau in a Housing Bubble, Not Even in Canada (WS)

Once enough people are priced out of the housing market, demand collapses. This would normally be where housing bubbles deflate in a very painful manner for lenders, homeowners, and everyone getting their cut, including governments and the real estate industry. But there has been a strong influx of mostly Chinese investors that need to get their money, however they obtained it, out of harm’s way at home, and they pile into the market, and they don’t care what a property costs as long as they think they can sell it for more later. But British Columbia threw a monkey wrench in to the calculus this summer when it adopted a 15% real estate transfer tax and other measures aimed squarely at non-resident investors. It hit home, so to speak.

Total sales in Vancouver plunged 32.5% in September from a year ago, with sales of detached homes falling off a cliff – down 47%. Home sales have fallen every month since their all-time crazy peak in February on a seasonally adjusted basis, for a cumulative decline of 44%, according to Marc Pinsonneault, Senior Economist at Economics and Strategy at the National Bank of Canada. But home prices have not yet fallen, he wrote in the note, “because market conditions have just started to loosen from the tightest conditions on records. We see home price deflation starting soon (10% expected over twelve months).” His chart shows the plunge in sales (red line, left scale, in thousands of units) even as active listings have started to rise (blue line, right scale):

In Toronto, the opposite is happening, with sales spiking on a seasonally adjusted basis way past prior record levels, even as new listings have plunged.

For now, “Toronto is now the red hot market,” explains Pinsonneault: “Home sales broke records in each of the last three months. But the historically low supply (in terms of the number of homes listed for sale) is also contributing to market conditions that are the tightest on records.” But the situation can turn on a dime, as Vancouver demonstrated. When a bubble pops, the first thing that stops is transactions. This happens suddenly. Sellers refuse to cut their prices, while buyers refuse to step up to the plate. Things grind to a halt.

Once sellers are forced to relent on price, transactions start rolling again, at lower prices, and each lower price, due to the metrics of comparable sales, pressures down future prices of other transactions. Once Chinese investors figure out that they’re likely to lose a ton of money in Canadian real estate, because their compatriots who’ve piled into the market before them have already lost a ton of money, they’re going to lose their appetite. This is the hot money. It evaporates suddenly and without a trace. As Vancouver shows, bubbles don’t end in a plateau.

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Chasing yield doesn’t look like the best way forward.

30% Junk Rally Gives Traders Heartburn (BBG)

It’s becoming difficult to see how the lowest-rated U.S. junk bonds can continue to rally. They’ve posted their best performance since 2009, with more than a 30% return so far this year. And now investors from Goldman Sachs Asset Management to Highland Capital are starting to become nervous about this debt, and with good reason: If there’s any sort of economic shock at all, these notes are poised to lose a lot. And some sort of shock is entirely possible in the near future. These notes have benefited from two overwhelming factors this year:

1) New stimulus efforts in Japan and Europe have pushed investors into the most-speculative notes, especially those in the U.S.

2) Oil prices have rallied from the lows reached earlier this year, giving some highly indebted energy companies more time to survive after seeing their corporate lives flash before their eyes last year.There are signs that both dynamics are reaching their limits.Central bankers in Europe and Japan are running out of ways to stimulate their economies after deploying negative-rate policies that are eroding the stability of their financial systems. Instead of trying to add stimulus, policy makers in both regions are being forced to tweak existing bond-buying programs to keep them viable. And oil prices have rallied, but not as much as energy junk bonds, which have gained more than 49% since the end of February. This has propelled gains on the broader high-yield market.

[..] current prices aren’t high enough to sustain the current momentum in these bonds. That’s because a “significant amount” of the lowest-rated unsecured bonds of energy companies are pricing in oil at $70 a barrel over the longer term, Jefferies analyst Michael Carley said. Taking a step back, why should the lowest, most-leveraged junk bonds continue to do well? This debt should do best when an economy is steadily growing, interest rates are low and companies have bright futures. But U.S. companies are facing an earnings recession, the Federal Reserve is poised to raise rates again within the next few months and companies are borrowing at a faster pace than they’re increasing their incomes.

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The choice China refuses to make; they do both and run only to move backwards.

China’s Tough Choice: Supporting Growth Or Controlling Debt (CNBC)

China’s economic transition has caused a problem for the government—how to avert a sharp slowdown while keeping a lid on ballooning debt. In a report Thursday, rating agency Standard and Poor’s highlighted the “tough choice between supporting growth and controlling debt sustainability” as China tries to find new ways to fund public investments. “Although aggregate and provincial GDP growth stabilized in the first two quarters of 2016, we believe the fiscal conditions of Chinese local governments are under more pressure given the weakened economy,” S&P analysts wrote in a report. The rising debt pile of local government financing vehicles (LGFV) raised questions on credit risks, said S&P.

“As long as investments remain a growth impetus, it is very hard to shift away from the old public financing model to weaken the LGFVs’ role in public investment,” said S&P credit analyst, Xin Liu. “The growing pile of LGFV debt will add to the fiscal vulnerability of local governments, which already rely on these financing vehicles to execute public investment mandates,” she added. S&P’s warning on local government debt comes amid concerns about overall debt levels in the country as the world’s second-largest economy begins to slow after years of boisterous growth. Corporate debt is also under focus. In another report released on Tuesday, S&P warned that the “unabated growth” of China’s corporate debt could cost the country’s bank “dearly”.

It said the current growth rate of China’s debt “is not sustainable for long”. S&P said if the growth in debt doesn’t slow, the ratio of problem credit to total credit facing China’s banks could triple to 17% by 2020. The banks may then need to raise fresh capital of up to 11.3 trillion Chinese yuan ($1.7 trillion), which is equivalent to 16% of China’s 2015 nominal GDP. The Bank of International Settlements warned recently excessive credit growth in China will increase the country’s risk of a banking crisis in the next three years.

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A plunging reserve currency. What’s not to like?

China Export Dip Tempts Policy Makers to Keep Weakening Yuan (BBG)

China’s renewed export weakness is coinciding with a clampdown on surging home prices and corporate debt, stoking expectations policy makers will allow further yuan depreciation to buffer the economy. Exports in September dropped the most since February amid anemic global demand (-10%), while imports declined 1.9%, leaving a $42 billion trade surplus. Analysts at Bank of America, RBC and Capital Economics estimate further depreciation for the yuan, already near a six-year low. With S&P Global Ratings and the International Monetary Fund among those warning about the threats from rapid credit expansion, policy makers risk cooling the economy with new property restrictions. But their plan for economic growth of at least 6.5% this year leaves little room for maneuver.

The upshot: a weaker yuan is needed to support an industrial sector that’s returning to profitability as it emerges from four years of deflation. “China is running out of options and letting the yuan go is the lowest-cost option for them,” said Sue Trinh, head of Asia FX strategy at RBC Capital Markets in Hong Kong. “We’ve seen them move in this direction. There’s more work to do.” The yuan is headed for the biggest weekly decline since January as mainland markets returned from holiday to face intensified depreciation pressures from a rising dollar. The yuan has dropped 3.4% against the dollar this year, the biggest decline in Asia. While depreciation’s not helping exporters in dollar terms, it cushions the blow when their shipments are counted in local currency terms, underpinning a recovery in industrial profits.

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What’s Chinese for whack-a-mole?

Shanghai Banks Told To Limit Loans To Property Developers (R.)

Banks in China’s financial hub Shanghai have been asked by authorities to limit loans to property developers for land purchases and to scrutinize would-be borrowers suspected of trying to access mortgages by getting divorced, the Shanghai Daily reported on Friday. The steps were the latest in a string of measures around the country to try to cool a property market seen at risk of overheating. Quoting unidentified commercial bankers, the newspaper said banks were told that housing developers should pay at least 30% down on residential projects instead of relying on bank loans.

It said some developers had put only 10% down on projects and raised the remaining funds through bank and gray-market loans. Banks were also asked to reject mortgage applications of people who had divorced within three months, it quoted an internal filing from a Shanghai-based rural commercial bank as saying. A property price rally has prompted a home buying frenzy in parts of China, in some cases prompting couples to get divorced to circumvent buying restrictions and invest in multiple homes. Police last month detained seven property agents in Shanghai for spreading rumours of plans for a new government regulation that caused a rash of divorces and a rush to buy new homes.

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More cause for finger pointing.

Standard & Poor’s Warns On UK Reserve Currency Status As Brexit Hardens (AEP)

Britain is in danger of misreading the political landscape in Europe and faces the possible loss of its reserve currency status if it fails to secure full access to the European single market, Standard & Poor’s has warned. The powerful US rating agency said the British government is treading into hazardous waters in negotiations with the EU and is risks serious damage to economy’s future growth trajectory, with long-term implications for the debt profile and the country’s credit-worthiness. S&P fears that loss of unfettered access to the single market would have incalculable consequences for business, yet the Government so far appears almost insouciant about this.

“There seems to be this view that ‘we’re a big important economy, the Europeans export a lot to us, so they have got to give us what we want’, but is that really true?” said Ravi Bhatia, the director of sovereign ratings in charge of Britain. “Individually most of these countries don’t export that much to the UK, and were seeing a hardening of attitudes,” he said. Mr Ravi said Britain has limited scope for a spree on infrastructure projects and is walking a fine line on budget policy. “Before Brexit, the trajectory was planned fiscal consolidation, but we’re no longer certain we’re going to see that,” he said. “If they ramp up fiscal spending they’ll get a stimulus and that is good in one way as it will help boost growth, but they have to finance that spending; it will raise the deficit, and the debt stock is already high,” he told the Daily Telegraph.

Standard & Poor’s stripped Britain of its AAA status immediately after the Brexit vote in June, slashing the rating by two notches to AA, although the move was well-flagged in advance. It described the vote as seminal event that would lead to a “less predictable, stable, and effective policy framework in the UK”. The agency will issue its next verdict at the end of this month. Any further downgrade at this delicate juncture would be more serious, amounting to a red card on the Government’s hard-nosed rhetoric and negotiating tactics It is unprecedented for a AAA state to lose three notches in a matter on months.

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First they invite them in…

Hundreds Of Properties Could Be Seized In UK Corruption Crackdown (G.)

Hundreds of British properties suspected of belonging to corrupt politicians, tax evaders and criminals could be seized by enforcement agencies under tough new laws designed to tackle London’s reputation as a haven for dirty money. Huge amounts of corrupt wealth is laundered through the capital’s banks. The National Crime Agency believes up to £100bn of tainted cash could be passing through the UK each year. Much of it ends up in real estate, and in other assets such as luxury cars, art and jewellery. The criminal finances bill, published on Thursday, is designed to close a loophole which has left the authorities powerless to seize property from overseas criminals unless the individuals are first convicted in their country of origin.

It will introduce the concept of “unexplained wealth orders”. The Serious Fraud Office, HM Revenue and Customs and other agencies will be able to apply to the high court for an order forcing the owner of an asset to explain how they obtained the funds to purchase it. The orders will apply to property and other assets worth more than £100,000. If the owner fails to demonstrate that a home or piece of jewellery was acquired using legal sources of income, agencies will be able to seize it. The law targets not just criminals, but politicians and public officials, known as “politically exposed persons”. Depending on how quickly it passes through parliament, the bill could come into force as early as spring 2017.

“There are some hundreds of properties in the UK strongly suspected to have been acquired with the proceeds of corruption,” said the campaign group Transparency International, which has been pressing for the new measures. “This will provide low-hanging fruit for immediate action by law enforcement agencies, if those agencies are properly resourced.”

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Whaddayaknow? The WSJ has a Trump story that’s not about genitals. Surrounding yourself with people who don’t agree with you is often not a bad sign.

Some of Donald Trump’s Economic Team Diverge From Candidate (WSJ)

Advisers concede there is a tug-of-war between the supply-siders and the protectionists, but Mr. Kudlow said he saw similar disagreements in the White House as a budget official for President Ronald Reagan. And Mr. Navarro, whose trade skepticism closely reflects Mr. Trump’s public views, said the campaign is “very much united” on trade. When Mr. Navarro ran for Congress two decades ago, Hillary Clinton, then the first lady, campaigned at one of his San Diego rallies. “Pure serendipity—sweet manna from heaven,” he wrote in a book recounting the campaign. He sought to oust the Republican incumbent by making the race a referendum on then-GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Last month, Mr. Navarro flew with Messrs. Trump and Gingrich to a rally in Fort Myers, Fla. He now says he was “seduced” by the Clintons and “over time, that seduction has turned into betrayal and ultimately disbelief.”

Other top advisers include David Malpass, a Reagan administration official, who as chief economist of Bear Stearns in 2007 dismissed concerns that the housing sector would take the economy into a recession, let alone cause the financial crisis that brought down his bank. When he first met Mr. Trump before a rally in an airplane hangar at Dallas’ Love Field last year, conservative economist Stephen Moore pushed back against Mr. Trump’s invitation to join the campaign. “I can’t work for you because I’m free trade, and I know you’re more of a protectionist,” Mr. Moore recalled saying. Mr. Trump said they could “agree to disagree on that issue,” Mr. Moore said. Advisers say Mr. Trump’s decision to hire people he doesn’t fully agree with shows maturity. “Hillary is more like the red army, with everyone marching in lockstep,” said Mr. Kudlow.

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No. 1 concern in Berlin and Brussels.

Renzi Gambles All on Referendum Haunted by Weak Italian Economy (BBG)

Italians are about to have their say on Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and the economy isn’t doing him any favors. When the country holds a referendum on a key constitutional change Dec. 4, many voters will have more than “Yes” or “No” on their mind. They’ll probably take the opportunity to vent their frustration over the snail’s pace of growth after the latest recession. [..] All but one of Italy’s main polling firms signaled this month that “No” will prevail in the referendum, with surveys saying on average that the reform will be rejected by 52.2% of voters, up from 50.4% in September. To make things potentially worse for Renzi, just three days before the vote, Italians will learn whether the recovery resumed after stalling in the three months through June, when the national statistics office publishes its final reading of third quarter GDP.

“We might go to the polling stations in the wake of a negative GDP figure,” said Alberto Bagnai, who teaches economics at Gabriele d’Annunzio University in Pescara. “That could have a direct impact on the vote.” While recent industrial data have exceeded expectations, confidence among households and executives about the outlook is not very optimistic. Renzi himself acknowledged that economic concerns might influence voters and has tried to reassure them. Last week, the premier and his Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan repeatedly defended the government’s above-consensus target of 1% growth next year. The central bank called the goal “very optimistic” – a code phrase signaling difficulties ahead.

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A sorrowful bunch.

Walloon Revolt Against Canada Deal Torpedoes EU Trade Policy (Pol.)

The EU’s once-mighty trade negotiators never dreamed that their powers would be stripped from them so unceremoniously – and possibly for good. The Francophone parliament of the Federation of Wallonia-Brussels – only 10 minutes’ walk from EU headquarters — stands to win a place in history for sinking the EU’s landmark trade deal with Canada and potentially for scuppering the European Commission’s ability to lead the world’s biggest trade bloc for many years. Failure to conclude the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) by this month’s deadline would be a devastating blow to the EU, which has spent seven years working on the tariff-slicing agreement with Ottawa.

“It’s crazy. If we allow a regional parliament to block a trade deal that will benefit the whole EU, where does this lead us to?” said Christoph Leitl, president of the Global Chamber Platform, a worldwide alliance of business chambers. “CETA is not just a deal with Canada, it has model character for Europe’s future trade relations.” The Federation of Wallonia-Brussels parliament, which focuses on the cultural and educational concerns of 4.5 million French speakers in Belgium, voted Wednesday evening to reject CETA because of worries about public services and agriculture. [..] Unless the Belgian central government can find an imaginative compromise quickly, the EU will be unable to corral the signatures of all 28 EU countries before an EU-Canada summit on October 27.

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German efficiency. Send them where you can’t see them.

Germany Proposes North Africa Centers For Rescued Migrants (AFP)

Migrants rescued at sea should be taken to centers in north Africa where their claims for asylum in EU countries can be studied, German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere proposed Thursday. De Maiziere made the suggestion as he arrived for a Luxembourg meeting of EU interior ministers who are trying to slow the migrant flow from Libya to Italy after a March deal with Turkey sharply reduced the influx to Greece, the main entry point for Europe last year. “People who are rescued in the Mediterranean should be brought back to safe accommodation facilities in northern Africa,” de Maiziere told reporters. “Their need for protection would be verified and we would put into place a resettlement to Europe with generous quotas, fairly divided between the European countries,” the minister said.

“The others have to go back to their home countries,” he added. EU countries, confronting populist opposition to refugees, have long feuded over quotas for relocating asylum seekers from Greece and Italy as well as for resettling people from refugee camps. De Maiziere did not mention a specific country in north Africa but EU officials have been discussing efforts to curb the migrant flow with Libya, the main transit point for African migrants heading to Europe. However, Libya’s new national unity government last week rejected calls from some EU countries to build refugee camps on its shores, saying the bloc could not “shirk its responsibility” while it struggled to restore peace and stability.

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Encore.

There’s No Plateau in a Housing Bubble, Not Even in Canada (WS)

Canadian house prices jumped 11.7% in September from a year ago, according to The Teranet–National Bank National Composite House Price Index released today. But the index papers beautifully over the dynamics in each metro. In six of the 11 metro markets of the index, prices have been languishing or even declining over the past couple of years, as they’ve hit the wall of reality after often stupendous price gains in the prior decade: Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Halifax, and Ottawa-Gatineau. In the two largest markets – Toronto and Vancouver, which combined account for 54% of the index – prices have blown through the roof. Both markets are among the hottest, most over-priced housing bubbles in the world.

UBS recently ranked Vancouver Number 1 globally on that honor roll. But suddenly the dynamics have changed. Vancouver’s housing market is in turmoil, to use a mild word, as sales have crashed, after the implementation of a real-estate transfer tax this summer by British Columbia, aimed squarely at non-resident investors. In Vancouver, those investors are mostly Chinese. And where do these folks now go to inflate prices? Toronto. Still, the national house price index (red line, right scale), after the 11.7% jump over the past 12 months (blue columns, left scale), has doubled since 2005!

The index, similar to the Case-Shiller Home Price index in the US, is based on repeat sales. It looks at properties that sold at least twice over the years to establish “sales pairs.” It then uses a proprietary formula to deduct price changes from these transactions and extrapolate them into an index for each of the 11 markets and nationally. It’s not perfect, but it offers an alternative view to median prices or Canada’s “benchmark” prices. Prices in Toronto have been spiking (red line, right scale), with double-digit year-over-year%age gains (blue columns, left scale) so far this year, including a breath-taking 16% in September.

Vancouver makes Toronto look practically tame. Vancouver went completely crazy, with year-year-over price gains reaching 26% in the summer. Now a new reality went into effect. Market activity has collapsed, as no one knows what anything is worth, with buyers and sellers jockeying for position. And on a monthly basis, the index was essentially flat (+0.2%):

Most Canadians have not seen their incomes rise anywhere near the rate of the house price inflation of the past many years, if their incomes rose at all. Thus, many of them have been priced out of the housing market, or have access to it only via highly risky financing schemes that put both lenders and borrowers at risk, despite historically low interest rates. Once enough people are priced out of the housing market, demand collapses. This would normally be where housing bubbles deflate in a very painful manner for lenders, homeowners, and everyone getting their cut, including governments and the real estate industry. But there has been a strong influx of mostly Chinese investors that need to get their money, however they obtained it, out of harm’s way at home, and they pile into the market, and they don’t care what a property costs as long as they think they can sell it for more later.

Read more …

Sep 242016
 
 September 24, 2016  Posted by at 8:28 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  Comments Off on Debt Rattle September 24 2016


DPC “Unloading fish at ‘T’ wharf, Boston, Mass.” 1903

 

Austerity Only Benefits Germany But Destroys Europe, Renzi Says (BBG)
€18 In ECB QE Generated Just €1 In GDP Growth (ZH)
IMF Calls For More Greek Pension Cuts, Greater Debt Relief (Kath.)
Plunging Velocity of Money Closes Fed Window (Roberts)
Russia’s Central Bank Criticizes The Easy Money Policies Of Its Peers (CNBC)
BIS, OECD Warn On Canadian Housing Bubble Debt, See No Exit (WS)
Oil Slumps 4% As No Output Deal Expected For OPEC (R.)
Kingdom Comedown: Falling Oil Prices Shock Saudi Middle Class (WSJ)
Health Warning! “Realism” Virus Afflicting Mainstream Economists (Steve Keen)
Obama Vetoes 9/11 Saudi Bill, Sets Up Showdown With Congress (R.)
EU Refuses To Revise Canada CETA Trade Deal (BBC)
NATO’s Expansion Parade Makes America Less Secure (Forbes)

 

 

Renzi should have made these statements years ago. Now they look like cynical ways to get votes.

Austerity Only Benefits Germany But Destroys Europe, Renzi Says (BBG)

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had some fighting words for German leader Angela Merkel: Your obsession with austerity is strangling Europe and your country is the only one profiting. That view, held by others in the EU, rarely gets aired publicly quite so forcefully. Especially by Renzi, who until recently had deployed priceless ancient Roman art and Ferraris in some of Merkel’s recent visits to Italy. But Brexit, which exposed cracks in the European project, has made the EU more vulnerable to jabs. In New York for the United Nations General Assembly, while Merkel hung back at home to face an angry electorate, Renzi lashed out. “Stressing austerity means destroying Europe,” Renzi told an audience of policy experts at the Council on Foreign Relations.

”Which is the only country which receives an advantage from this strategy? The one which exports the most: Germany.” The 41-year-old premier has staked his political future on a referendum on constitutional reform that polls show he could narrowly lose. Confronted with an economy in trouble, he’s stepped up criticism of the EU’s rigid budget deficit limits and of the nations seen as wielding the most power in the 28-nation bloc: Germany and France. His appeal for more flexibility has grown more strident as pressure mounts for him to pick a date for when Italians will vote on cutting back the Senate with the aim of making governments more stable and simplifying the passage of legislation. The referendum is expected to take place by the end of the year, and Renzi has said he would quit if he loses.

Read more …

“..€80 billion have been wasted almost every month!..”

€18 In ECB QE Generated Just €1 In GDP Growth (ZH)

After almost two years of the quantitative easing program in the Euro Area, economic figures have remained very weak. As GEFIRA details, inflation is still fluctuating near zero, while GDP growth in the region has started to slow down instead of accelerating. According to the ECB data, to generate €1.0 of GDP growth, €18.5 had to be printed in the QE, which means that €80 billion have thus been wasted almost every month! This year, the ECB printed nearly €600 billion within the frame of asset purchase programme (QE). At the same time, GDP has increased by… €31 billion; even if up to the end of 2015 the ECB issued €650 billion during its QE program. Needless to say that the Greek debt is “only” €360 billion and there has been no chance of a relief, so far.

The question is where this money from the QE goes and who benefits from it. Clearly it is not the real sector, the so called Main Street of French, Italian or Portuguese cities (Greece is not under the QE program). European stocks are still weak, too, while stock exchanges in the USA are hitting their records. So, is the ECB serving Europeans?

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More pension cuts is an immoral demand.

IMF Calls For More Greek Pension Cuts, Greater Debt Relief (Kath.)

The International Monetary Fund called for Greece to cut pensions and taxes and for its lenders to provide significant debt relief in order for the country to make a convincing exit from the crisis. In its annual report on the Greek economy, following so-called Article Four consultations in Athens, the Fund described the country’s pension system as “unaffordable” despite recent reforms. It argued that the pension system’s deficit remains too high at 11%, compared to a 2.5% average in the eurozone, and that too much of a burden has been placed on Greeks currently in work, while existing pensioners have largely been protected. The Fund also said that Greece’s tax credit system was too generous, exempting around half of salary earners compared to a euro area average of 8%.

The IMF proposes a reduction in taxes and social security contributions, arguing that recent increases created incentives for undeclared work. “Greece needs less austerity, not more,” said IMF mission chief Delia Velculescu as she presented the report in a teleconference with journalists. The Fund, whose role in Greece’s third bailout program has yet to be clarified, also stressed the need for European lenders to deliver on their debt relief pledge as “growth prospects remain weak and subject to high downside risks.” “Even with full implementation of this demanding policy agenda, Greece requires substantial debt relief calibrated on credible fiscal and growth targets,” the report said.

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Plunging velocity is the most important deflation indicator.

Plunging Velocity of Money Closes Fed Window (Roberts)

The problem for the Federal Reserve remains the simple fact there is NO evidence that “Quantitative Easing” actually works as intended. The artificial suppression of interest rates was supposed to spur economic activity by encouraging lending activities through the banks. Such an outcome should have been witnessed by an increase in monetary velocity. As the velocity of money accelerates, demand rises and inflationary pressures increase. However, as you can clearly see, the demand for money has been on the decline since the turn of the century.

The surge in M2V during the 90’s was largely driven by the surge in household leverage as consumers turned to debt to fill the gap between falling wage growth and rising standards of living. The issue for the Fed is the decline in the “unemployment rate,” caused solely by the shrinking labor force, is obfuscating the difference between a “real” and “statistical” full employment level. While it is expected that millions of individuals will retire in the coming years ahead; the reality is that many of those “potential” retirees will continue to work throughout their retirement years. In turn, this will have an adverse effect by keeping the labor pool inflated and further suppressing future wage growth.

[..] It is quiet evident the financial markets, and by extension, the economy, have become tied to Central Bank interventions. As shown in the chart below, the correlations between Federal Reserve interventions and the markets is quite high. Of course, this was ALWAYS the intention of these monetary interventions. As Ben Bernanke suggested in 2010 as he launched the second round of Quantitative Easing, the goal of the program was to lift asset prices to spur consumer confidence thereby lifting economic growth. The problem was the lifting of asset prices acted as a massive wealth transfer from the middle class to the top-10% providing little catalyst for a broad-based economic recovery. Unwittingly, the Fed has now become co-dependent on the markets. If they move to tighten monetary policy, the market sells off impacting consumer confidence and pushes economic growth rates lower. With economic growth already running below 2%, there is very little leeway for the Fed to make a policy error at this juncture.

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The smartest kid on the block.

Russia’s Central Bank Criticizes The Easy Money Policies Of Its Peers (CNBC)

Russia’s economy is facing a different range of issues than those facing the U.S., Japan and the euro zone and so the central bank has to take a different approach, Russia’s central bank governor told CNBC, questioning whether other central banks still had the means to influence their economies. “Whether (other) central banks still have in their possession the types of tools to influence this situation (is the subject of a very broad discussion),” Russia Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina told CNBC in Moscow. “Whether they are already finding themselves on the brink of negative interest rates and some are already in negative interest rate territory. These are most certainly not trivial problems. But as far as the Russian economy is concerned, we find ourselves in a totally different situation,” she said.

Nabiullina was critical of the environment of easy monetary policy that other central banks have created in recent years with their quantitative easing (QE) programs. These were aimed at boosting liquidity, investment and economic growth but they have not necessarily translated into investment in the real economy. Rather, there has been increased liquidity in financial markets, prompting concerns of an equity and bond bubble that will burst when QE programs are eventually wound down and monetary policy “normalized.” Nabiullina warned that “because of the continued easing of monetary policy in many countries there is also the possibility that a higher level of financial market volatility will persist.”

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Tragedy waiting in the wings.

BIS, OECD Warn On Canadian Housing Bubble Debt, See No Exit (WS)

Everyone is fretting about the Canadian house price bubble and the mountain of debt it generates – from the IMF on down to the regular Canadian. Now even the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) and the OECD warn about the risks. Every city has its own housing market, and some aren’t so hot. But in Vancouver and Toronto, all heck has broken loose in recent years. In Vancouver, for example, even as sales volume plunged 45% in August from a year ago – under the impact of the new 15% transfer tax aimed at Chinese non-resident investors – the “benchmark” price of a detached house soared by 35.8%, of an apartment by 26.9%, and of an attached house by 31.1%. Ludicrous price increases!

In Toronto, a similar scenario has been playing out, but not quite as wildly. In both cities, the median detached house now sells for well over C$1 million. Even the Bank of Canada has warned about them, though it has lowered rates last year to inflate the housing market further – instead of raising rate sharply, which would wring some speculative heat out of the system. But no one wants to deflate a housing bubble. During the Financial Crisis, when real estate prices in the US collapsed and returned, if only briefly, to something reflecting the old normal, Canadian home prices barely dipped before re-soaring. And this has been going on for years and years and years.

The OECD in its Interim Economic Outlook warned: “Over recent years, real house prices have been growing at a similar or higher pace than prior to the crisis in a number of countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The rise in real estate prices has pushed up price-to-rent ratios to record highs in several advanced economies.” Canada stands out. Even on an inflation-adjusted basis, Canadian home prices have long ago shot through the roof. The OECD supplied this bone-chilling chart. The top line (orange) represents Canadian house price changes, adjusted for inflation.

[..] Real estate is highly leveraged. It’s funded with debt. Many folks cite down-payment requirements in rationalizing why the Canadian market cannot implode, and why, if it does implode, it won’t pose a problem for the banks. However, an entire industry has sprung up to help homebuyers get around the down-payment requirements. So household debt has been piling up for years, driven by mortgage debt. Statistics Canada reported two weeks ago that the ratio of household debt to disposable income has jumped to another record in the second quarter, to a breath-taking 167.6%:

Read more …

Even if there were a deal, global output would barely fall.

Oil Slumps 4% As No Output Deal Expected For OPEC (R.)

Oil prices tumbled 4% on Friday on signs Saudi Arabia and arch rival Iran were making little progress in achieving preliminary agreement ahead of talks by major crude exporters next week aimed at freezing production. Also weighing on sentiment was data showing the United States was on track to add the most number of oil rigs in a quarter since the crude price crash began two years ago. Lower equity prices on Wall Street and other world stock markets was another bearish factor. Brent crude futures settled down $1.76, or 3.7%, at $45.89 a barrel. For the week, it rose 0.3%, accounting for gains in the past two sessions. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell $1.84, or 4%, to settle at $44.48. On the week, WTI gained 3%.

Crude futures slumped after sources said Saudi Arabia did not expect a decision in Algeria where the OPEC and other big oil producers were to convene for Sept 26-28 talks. “The Algeria meeting is not a decision making meeting. It is for consultations,” a source familiar with Saudi oil officials’ thinking told Reuters. Earlier in the day, the market rallied when Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia had offered to reduce production if Iran caps its own output this year. Oil prices are typically volatile before OPEC talks and Friday’s session was tempered with caution despite market sentiment on a high this week after the U.S. government reported on Wednesday a third straight weekly drop in crude stockpiles. “A ‘No Deal’ result in our definition will be one where OPEC not only failed to get an explicit deal out of the meetings, but also failed to develop a forward plan,” Macquarie Capital said, referring to the Algeria talks. “This would be another epic fail by OPEC.”

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People keep on suggesting that SA has a choice, without acknowledging that any output cut would promptly be filled by some other producer. Cutting output equals losing market share.

Kingdom Comedown: Falling Oil Prices Shock Saudi Middle Class (WSJ)

[..] a sharp drop in the price of oil, Saudi Arabia’s main revenue source, has forced the government to withdraw some benefits this year—raising the cost of living in the kingdom and hurting its middle class, a part of society long insulated from such problems. Saudi Arabia heads into next week’s meeting of major oil producers in a tight spot. With a slowing economy and shrinking foreign reserves, the kingdom is coming under pressure to take steps that support the price of oil, as it did this month with an accord it struck with Russia. The sharp price drop is mainly because of a glut in the market, in part caused by Saudi Arabia itself. The world’s top oil producer continues to pump crude at record levels to defend its market share.

One option to lift prices that could work, some analysts say, is to freeze output at a certain level and exempt Iran from such a deal, given that its push to increase production to pre-sanction levels appears to have stalled in recent months. Saudi Arabia has previously refused to sign any deal that exempts arch-rival Iran. As its people start feeling the pain, that could change. The kingdom is grappling with major job losses among its construction workers—many from poorer countries—as some previously state-backed construction companies suffer from drying up government funding. Those spending cuts are now hitting the Saudi working middle class.

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Funny. What I wonder about is, the criticism of mainstream economics is going mainstream, but the ‘solutions’ are not the same.

Health Warning! “Realism” Virus Afflicting Mainstream Economists (Steve Keen)

Some papers that are remarkably critical of mainstream economics have been published recently, not by the usual suspects like myself, but by prominent mainstream economists: ex-Minneapolis Fed Chairman Narayana Kocherlokata, ex-IMF Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard, and current World Bank Chief Economist Paul Romer. I discuss these papers in a tongue-in-cheek introduction to another key problems of unrealism in economics–the absence of any role for energy in both Post Keynesian and Neoclassical production functions. I also address Olivier Blanchard’s desire for a “widely accepted analytical macroeconomic core”, explain the role of credit in aggregate demand and income, and identify the countries most likely to face a credit crunch in the near future. I gave this talk to staff and students of the EPOG program at the University of Paris 13 on Friday September 23rd.

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He’s stuck. Allowing it would open up one Pandora’s Box, not allowing it opens yet another.

Obama Vetoes 9/11 Saudi Bill, Sets Up Showdown With Congress (R.)

President Barack Obama on Friday vetoed legislation allowing families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia, which could prompt Congress to overturn his decision with a rare veto override, the first of his presidency. Obama said the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act would hurt U.S. national security and harm important alliances, while shifting crucial terrorism-related issues from policy officials into the hands of the courts. The bill passed the Senate and House of Representatives in reaction to long-running suspicions, denied by Saudi Arabia, that hijackers of the four U.S. jetliners that attacked the United States in 2001 were backed by the Saudi government. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

Obama said other countries could use the law, known as JASTA, as an excuse to sue U.S. diplomats, members of the military or companies – even for actions of foreign organizations that had received U.S. aid, equipment or training. “Removing sovereign immunity in U.S. courts from foreign governments that are not designated as state sponsors of terrorism, based solely on allegations that such foreign governments’ actions abroad had a connection to terrorism-related injuries on U.S. soil, threatens to undermine these longstanding principles that protect the United States, our forces, and our personnel,” Obama said in a statement. Senator Chuck Schumer, who co-wrote the legislation and has championed it, immediately made clear how difficult it will be for Obama to sustain the veto. Schumer issued a statement within moments of receiving the veto, promising that it would be “swiftly and soundly overturned.”

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Sure, why don’t you, against the will of your own people. Should work just fine.

EU Refuses To Revise Canada CETA Trade Deal (BBC)

The European Commission has ruled that a controversial EU-Canada free trade deal – CETA – cannot be renegotiated, despite much opposition in Europe. “CETA is done and we will not reopen it,” said EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom. Ms Malmstrom was speaking as EU trade ministers met in Slovakia to discuss CETA and a similar deal with the US, TTIP, which has also faced criticism. A draft CETA deal has been agreed, but parliaments could still delay it. Thousands of activists protested against CETA and TTIP in Germany on Saturday and thousands more in Brussels – outside the EU’s headquarters – on Tuesday. Activists fear that the deals could water down European standards in the key areas of workers’ rights, public health and the environment.

There is also great anxiety about proposed special courts where investors will be able to sue governments if they feel that legislation hurts their business unfairly. Critics say the mere existence of such courts – an alternative to national courts – will have a “chilling” effect on policymakers, leading to slacker regulation on the environment and welfare. Ms Malmstrom said CETA would dominate Friday’s meeting in Bratislava. The Commission hopes the deal can be signed with Canada at the end of October, so that it can then go to the European Parliament for ratification. But it will also need to be ratified by national parliaments across the EU. “What we are discussing with the Canadians is if we should make some clarifications, a declaration so that we can cover some of those concerns,” Ms Malmstrom said. She acknowledged fears in some countries that politicians might see their “the right to regulate” diluted. “Maybe that [right] needs to be even clearer in a declaration,” she said, admitting that the CETA negotiations were still “difficult”.

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Surprisingly lucid overview. Not everyone’s turned into a Putin basher yet.

NATO’s Expansion Parade Makes America Less Secure (Forbes)

The transatlantic alliance was created in 1949 to protect war-ravaged Western Europe from the Soviet Union, an opportunistic predator after its victory over Nazi Germany. The threat to America reflected both Moscow’s control over Eastern and Central Europe and the USSR’s role as an ideologically hostile peer competitor. The end of the Cold War changed everything. The Soviet subject nations were freed, a humanitarian bonanza. More important, the successor state of Russia went from hostile superpower to indifferent regional power. NATO lost its essential purpose, since the U.S. no longer needed to shield Western Europe from Moscow. Yet the alliance proved to be as resilient as other government bureaucracies. NATO officials desperately sought new reasons to exist.

Explained Vice President Al Gore: “Everyone realizes that a military alliance, when faced with a fundamental change in the threat for which it was founded, either must define a convincing new rationale or become decrepit.” The latter was viewed as inconceivable, not even worth considering. So the alliance expanded both its mission (to “out-of-area” activities) and membership (inducting former Warsaw Pact members). Washington’s military obligations multiplied even as the most important threat against it dissipated. Objections to this course were summarily rejected. Not a single Senator voted against admitting the three Baltic states. Then no one imagined that the U.S. might be expected to fight on their behalf. The alliance was seen as the international equivalent of a gentleman’s club, to which everyone who is someone belongs.

Those who pointed to possible conflicts with Moscow were dismissed as scaremongers. Expansion was expected to be all gain, no pain. Alas, Russia did not perceive moving the traditional anti-Moscow alliance up to its borders as a friendly act. Despite coming from the KGB, Vladimir Putin originally didn’t seem to bear the U.S. or West much animus. However, NATO compounded expansion with an unprovoked war against Serbia, a traditional Slavic ally of Moscow, and proposals to include Georgia and Ukraine, the latter which long had especially close historical, cultural, economic, and military ties with Russia. Over time Putin, as well as many of his countrymen, came to view the transatlantic alliance as a threat.

Read more …

Sep 012016
 
 September 1, 2016  Posted by at 9:31 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  1 Response »


F.A. Loumis, Independence (Bastille?!) Day 1906

Collapse of Hanjin, World’s 7th-Biggest Shipping Line, Upsets Global Trade (R.)
Investors Miss Out On $500 Billion As Global Bond Yields Plunge (CNBC)
In Case Of Recession, The Fed Might ‘Need’ To Cut Rates To Minus 2% (CNBC)
Eurozone Core Inflation Fall Raises Prospect Of ECB Stimulus Measures (G.)
Bank of Japan Has an $84 Billion Yen Gap in Balance Sheet (BBG)
Admitting Ignorance Is Better Than Groupthink For Central Bankers (BBG)
An 809% Debt Ratio And Investors Are Serene? It Must Be China (BBG)
Austria Says Will Start ‘Conflict’ In EU About Canada Trade Deal (R.)
Apple Travesty Is A Reminder Why Britain Must Leave The Lawless EU (AEP)
UK Defined Benefit Pension Fund Deficit Grows By £100 Billion In A Month (G.)
London’s Elite ‘Pushed Out Of Exclusive Postcodes By Super Rich’ (G.)
A Third Of Africa’s Elephants Were Wiped Out In Just 7 Years (CNN)

 

 

Excellent. We’re far too independent on the idiocy of 10,000 mile shipping lines. They’re heavily polluting (in more ways than one) and entirely unnecessary.

Collapse of Hanjin, World’s 7th-Biggest Shipping Line, Upsets Global Trade (R.)

The collapse of South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping sent ripples though global trade on Thursday, as the country’s largest port turned away its ships and as some manufacturers scrambled for freight alternatives. Hanjin on Wednesday filed for court receivership after its banks decided to end financial support, and ports from China to Spain, the United States and Canada have refused entry to Hanjin vessels in what is traditionally the industry’s busiest season ahead of the year-end holidays. An official with Hanjin Shipping in Busan confirmed that its vessels were not entering the southern city’s port as container lashing providers deny service on concerns that they will not be paid. The company was also worried that the ships may be seized by creditors.

LG Electronics, the world’s No.2 maker of TVs, told Reuters it was cancelling orders with Hanjin and was seeking alternatives to ship its freight. An executive at the Korea International Freight Forwarders Association said on Wednesday he had been inundated with calls from cargo owners worried about the fate of their shipments in transit to the United States and Europe. While mobile phones and semiconductors are carried by air, other electronics like home appliances are shipped by sea. “This will have an impact on the entire industry,” the official said.

South Korea’s maritime ministry said on Wednesday that Hanjin’s woes would affect cargo exports for two or three months, with about 540,000 TEU of cargo already loaded on Hanjin vessels and facing delays. It would be difficult to find alternative ships given high seasonal demand from August to October. The ministry said it would ask local rival Hyundai Merchant Marine to supply vessels to cover some of Hanjin’s routes to the United States and Europe, while also seeking help from overseas carriers.

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How central bankers kill pensions.

Investors Miss Out On $500 Billion As Global Bond Yields Plunge (CNBC)

Investors have seen their interest income squeezed as global bond yields plunge. On the flipside, governments aren’t complaining. Relative to yields in 2011, global investors are foregoing more than $500 billion in annual income on roughly $38 trillion in sovereign debt that is outstanding, Fitch Ratings said in a report on Wednesday. “Cash flow benefits have effectively been transferred from global investors to sovereign issuers, as sovereign borrowing costs have dropped in response to central bank monetary stimulus,” Fitch said in the report. “This has posed new challenges for income-reliant investors, such as insurers and pension funds, while enabling governments to borrow at increasingly attractive rates.”

Borrowers would realize benefits only slowly, however, as bonds with higher coupon rates matured and newer bonds with lower interest rates were issued, the rating agency said. According to Fitch, investors who tended to buy assets and hold them onto maturity would have to invest new cash in bonds that paid lower interest rates, blunting the money they earned from coupon payments. Government bond yields, which move inversely to prices, have plummeted around the world as central banks in many developed economies scooped up bonds in order to provide stimulus to their economies. These purchases have sparked a scramble for government debt, enabling many countries to flog bonds while cutting the interest rates they have to pay to lure investors.

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In itself a reasonable argumant re the history of spreads, but that does not make the conclusion alright, or logical.

In Case Of Recession, The Fed Might ‘Need’ To Cut Rates To Minus 2% (CNBC)

The U.S. Federal Reserve might need to cut interest rates to as low as negative 2%, far lower than levels other global central banks have tested, a former Fed economist said. That’s what would likely be needed to engineer a recovery if the U.S. economy were to fall into a recession in the next couple of years, Marvin Goodfriend, who was an economist and policy advisor at the Federal Reserve’s Bank of Richmond from 1993-2005, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday. Goodfriend, who is currently a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University, pointed to data on the eight recessions in the U.S. since 1960.

“In eight of those recessions, the Fed had to push the short rate 2.5 percentage points below the long term rate. Today, the 10-year rate in the U.S. is 1.5%,” he noted, saying that would indicate that during the next recession, the Fed would need to cut rates as low as minus 1% at a minimum. “In five of those recessions, the Fed had to push the federal funds rate 3.5 percentage points below the 10-year bond rate,” he said. “So if that happens this time around, we would have to push the federal funds rate to minus 2%.” That’s well below where any other central banks have ventured so far. Sweden’s central bank, an early adopter of negative rates, has set its benchmark at negative 0.5%.

The Bank of Japan’s rate was set at minus 0.1% earlier this year, while the ECB, which first moved its rates into negative territory in 2014, currently has a deposit rate of negative 0.4%. The Fed funds rate has remained in positive territory, with the U.S. central bank last increasing interest rates in December of 2015, its first hike since 2006. That raised the Fed’s target rate to a range of 0.25 to 0.5%. To be sure, Goodfriend didn’t expect the Fed would be headed there anytime soon, noting that he believed the central bank should actually raise rates before the end of the year.

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More more more.

Eurozone Core Inflation Fall Raises Prospect Of ECB Stimulus Measures (G.)

Speculation is growing that the European Central Bank could take action to stimulate the eurozone economy after official figures showed an easing in underlying inflation last month. Pressure on the ECB increased when the European commission’s statistical agency, Eurostat, published figures that showed core inflation in July was lower than in same month last year, despite aggressive action by the Frankfurt-based bank over the past 18 months. With concerns that the eurozone recovery was losing momentum, Eurostat said the headline rate of inflation remained unchanged at 0.2% in August. Core, or underlying inflation, which excludes energy, goods, alcohol and tobacco, fell from 0.9% in July to 0.8%.

Separate Eurostat data showed that eurozone unemployment was unchanged at 10.1% in July, the latest month for which figures are available for all 19 countries that use the euro. The jobless rate in the eurozone has fallen from 10.8% over the past year, but financial markets had been expecting the reduction to continue to 10% last month. The ECB has been using negative interest rates and quantitative easing in an attempt to increase activity and push inflation back towards its target of just below 2%. Analysts said the inflation and unemployment figures would be discussed when the ECB meets to discuss policy options next week.

Stephen Brown of consultancy Capital Economics said: “The unchanged headline inflation rate in August highlights the fact that price pressures in the eurozone remain weak and boosts the case for more monetary easing from the ECB. “With [the] survey data also pointing to a marked slowdown in growth ahead, there is a strong case for the ECB to announce further policy easing. This could come as soon as the bank’s meeting next week.”

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Abe and Kuroda won’t even take it serious.

Bank of Japan Has an $84 Billion Yen Gap in Balance Sheet (BBG)

There’s an 8.7 trillion yen ($84 billion) gap between the value of government bond holdings on the Bank of Japan’s balance sheet and their face value. While not an immediate problem because the BOJ’s income can cover the losses, the widening gap raises questions about the sustainability of the central bank’s bond purchases, which Governor Haruhiko Kuroda has said could be expanded. The costs of the central bank’s record stimulus are mounting, while its chief goal – spurring inflation to 2% – appears as far away as it was when Kuroda took the helm in 2013. The BOJ is in the midst of reviewing its policy before a board meeting later this month, but the governor has said there will be no scaling back of his monetary program.

“These numbers show the distortions of the BOJ’s current policies,” said Sayuri Kawamura, a senior economist at the Japan Research Institute in Tokyo. “The annual amortization losses are going to increase and consume the BOJ’s profits, and the risk is increasing that the bank’s financial stability will be shaken.” The bonds the BOJ owns are worth almost 326.7 trillion yen when taken at face value, but were marked at almost 335.4 trillion yen on the balance sheet in August. That gap is 42% bigger than before the introduction of negative rates in January, according to an analysis of the balance sheet and list of the bonds the central bank owns. Tadaaki Kumagai, a spokesman for the central bank, said “the BOJ releases half-yearly and yearly accounts,” while declining to comment further.

The gap exists because, unlike the Federal Reserve, the BOJ counts its bond holdings at the purchase price, minus amortization costs. This number is diverging more from the face value because the central bank’s purchases and negative rate policy are pushing up prices. The face value is what the BOJ will receive when the bonds mature. At the end of the 2015 fiscal year on March 31, the gap between the two valuations was 6.4 trillion yen and the BOJ wrote down 874 billion yen, according to documents seen by Bloomberg. That was covered by the 1.29 trillion yen in coupon income the bank received that year, a situation that may not continue indefinitely.

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Groupthink is all they have.

Admitting Ignorance Is Better Than Groupthink For Central Bankers (BBG)

If the Fed’s objective last week was to put its September meeting back into play as the potential venue for a rate increase, it can claim a partial success. Prices in the futures market show traders now see about a 34% chance of a hike on Sept. 21, up from 22% two weeks ago. But you still have to go out to December before the likelihood rises above 50%. There’s a very good reason for that market skepticism. Raising rates at a time when inflation is dormant and miles away from the central bank’s 2% target seems somewhat perverse, especially when the forecast is for prices to remain subdued for many months to come:

The Jackson Hole Symposium (and let us note in passing what a great word symposium is, adding gravitas to what would otherwise be a mere conference) was an opportunity, as the event title said, to consider “Designing Resilient Monetary Policy Frameworks for the Future.” Instead, Fischer’s comment suggests it’s business as usual at the Federal Open Market Committee, with no room at present for such innovations as changing the inflation goal or targeting nominal GDP. That’s a shame. There’s a consensus that monetary policy is becoming impotent, and that governments need to step in with fiscal stimulus. But until central banks admit that their firepower is waning, politicians can continue to evade responsibility. “You can’t expect us to do the whole job,”

Christopher Sims, a Nobel Prize-winning economist from Princeton University, said at Jackson Hole last week. “Fiscal expansion can replace ineffective monetary policy at the zero lower bound. So long as the legislature has no clue of its role in these problems, nothing is going to get done. Of course, convincing them that they have a role and there is something they should be doing, especially in the U.S., may be a major task.” Finance – particularly in an era of fractional reserve banking – is essentially a confidence trick. Depositors have to be confident their money will be there when they try to withdraw it. Businesses have to be confident that the economy is on a sound footing otherwise they won’t invest and hire. Central bankers aren’t just economists and policy makers; they’re also salespeople, selling a story.

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China is a giant debt bubble.

An 809% Debt Ratio And Investors Are Serene? It Must Be China (BBG)

Prudence dictates that a compulsive shopper who runs up a hazardous amount of debt should think about cutting the credit card in half and staying home for a while. Try telling that to China’s acquisition-hungry companies.Two prime examples were on show this week when China Evergrande Group, one of the nation’s biggest developers, and Fosun International, an expanding Shanghai-based conglomerate, reported first-half earnings. The results show just how hard it is to kick the buying habit in an environment where compliant lenders stand ready to advance seemingly unlimited sums. Total borrowings at junk-rated Evergrande jumped by 28% from the end of December to 381 billion yuan ($57 billion).

That pushed the Guangzhou-based company’s ratio of net debt to shareholders’ equity to 142%, above the average 108% for China’s overleveraged property developers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Count Evergrande’s perpetual bonds as debt rather than equity and even that ratio starts to look benign. The total debt to common equity ratio rose to 809% at the end of June, from 582% six months earlier. The developer added about 40 billion yuan more perpetual notes during the period. So, time to rein things in somewhat?

Not a bit of it. Evergrande wants to acquire brokerage and trust companies as well as smaller rivals, Chief Executive Officer Xia Haijun told reporters in Hong Kong Tuesday. That would be on top of more than $5 billion of purchases so far this year, including building a stake in larger developer China Vanke and acquiring a chunk of Shenyang-based Shengjing Bank. First-half profit, meanwhile, fell 23% excluding property revaluations and foreign-exchange losses.The debt buildup wouldn’t be so striking if Evergrande were acquiring cash-generating assets that can help pay down borrowings. If anything, things seem to be moving in the opposite direction.

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Good. Kill that too.

Austria Says Will Start ‘Conflict’ In EU About Canada Trade Deal (R.)

Austria is ready to confront other European Union members states over its opposition to a free trade deal with Canada, Chancellor Christian Kern said, because it sees it containing many of the same problems as one being negotiated with the United States. “This will be difficult, this will be the next conflict in the EU that Austria will trigger… We must focus on making sure… we don’t shift the power balance in favor of global enterprises,” Kern told broadcaster ORF late on Wednesday. Austria opposes a proposed free trade deal with the United States, and Kern said the deal with Canada, called the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), bore many of the same problems.

Ministers from Germany and France have also called for a halt in negotitations on the EU-U.S. deal, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). “We will have to see where the weaknesses of (CETA) are. Many are the same as with TTIP,” Kern, a social-democrat, said, without elaborating. Kern is expected to address issues surrounding TTIP at a news conference on Friday. There are widespread concerns in Austria that the TTIP could compromise food safety standards. Kern also opposes the idea that the agreement could allow companies to challenge government policies if they feel regulations put them at a disadvantage.

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There are multiple truths in this case. In the end, though, this is about Brussels seeking to supersede member states’ sovereign law. For that, the constitutions of 27 nations should be held to the light. I would venture that what Brussels does here, and in many other fields, violates a fair number of these constitutions. And that is not legal no matter what their respective governments say or do. That’s an issue for their judicial systems. There’s a reason why the political and judicial systems have been made separate entities.

Apple Travesty Is A Reminder Why Britain Must Leave The Lawless EU (AEP)

Europe’s Competition Directorate commands the shock troops of the EU power structure. Ensconced in its fortress at Place Madou, it can dispatch swat teams on corporate dawn raids across Europe without a search warrant. It operates outside the normal judicial control that we take for granted in a developed democracy. The US Justice Department could never dream of acting in such a fashion. Known as ‘DG Comp’, it acts as judge, jury, and executioner, and can in effect impose fines large enough to constitute criminal sanctions, but without the due process protection of criminal law. It misused evidence so badly in pursuit of the US chipmaker Intel that the company alleged a violation of human rights. Apple is just the latest of the great US digital companies to face this Star Chamber.

It has vowed to appeal the monster €13bn fine handed down from Brussels this week for violation of EU state aid rules, but the only recourse is the European Court of Justice. This is usually a forlorn ritual. The ECJ is a political body, the enforcer of the EU’s teleological doctrines. It ratifies executive power. We can mostly agree that Apple, Google, Starbucks, and others have gamed the international system, finding legal loopholes to whittle down their tax liabilities and enrich shareholders at the expense of society. It is such moral conduct that has driven wealth inequality to alarming levels, and provoked a potent backlash against globalisation. But the ‘Double Irish’ or the ‘Dutch Sandwich’ and other such tax avoidance schemes are being phased out systematically by the G20 and by a series of tightening rules from the OECD.

The global machinery of “profit shifting” will face a new regime by 2018. We can agree too that Apple’s cosy EU arrangements should never have been permitted. It paid the standard 12.5pc corporate tax on its Irish earnings – and is the country biggest taxpayers – but the Commission alleges that its effective rate of tax on broader earnings in 2014 was 0.005pc, achieved by shuffling profits into a special ‘stateless company’ with its headquarters in Ireland. “The profits did not have any factual or economic justification. The “head office” had no employees, no premises and no real activities,” said Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition chief.

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Someone will find a way to blame this on Brexit.

UK Defined Benefit Pension Fund Deficit Grows By £100 Billion In A Month (G.)

The combined deficit of the UK’s 6,000 defined benefit pension funds has grown by £100bn in the last month, bringing the total deficit to £710bn, according to a new report. The research, by the accountants PricewaterhouseCooper, found that the pension schemes have total assets of £1,450bn but are liable to pay out about £2,160bn in contractual promises to existing and former workers. Pension deficits have worsened since the EU referendum because companies use the interest rate on gilts, otherwise known as the yield, as the main tool in estimating how much they will have to pay out in pensions in the future. The lower the gilt yield, the more that companies have to set aside to meet their future costs.

The scale of the problems facing companies offering final salary pension schemes was underlined on Wednesday by the Yorkshire-based manufacturer Carclo, which issued a statement to the stock exchange to say that the recent increase in its pension deficit meant that a dividend payout to shareholders announced in June and due to be paid in October could not now go ahead. Carclo, which is based near Leeds and employs about 1,300 people making plastics and LED products, said in its statement: “If the corporate bond yield remains at its current low level then this will result in a significant increase in the group’s pension deficit.” It said this would have the effect of “extinguishing the company’s available distributable reserves”. The announcement immediately wiped almost 15% off the company’s share price.

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How to kill a city, Chapter 826.

London’s Elite ‘Pushed Out Of Exclusive Postcodes By Super Rich’ (G.)

London’s traditional elite, such as lawyers, architects and academics, are being pushed out of their enclaves in Mayfair, Chelsea and Hampstead by an influx of global super rich investors, causing a chain reaction of gentrification across the capital, according to research by the London School of Economics. An influx of extremely wealthy overseas buyers is leading the old elite to sell up and move from London’s most exclusive postcodes and buy in areas they previously considered undesirable, said Dr Luna Glucksberg, of the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute. This displacement of old money and affluent middle class professionals is in turn pricing neighbourhoods in south and east London out of the reach of average Londoners and threatening to push those on low incomes to the margins of the city and beyond, she added.

“The changes happening at the top end of the market are real, and although they do not affect large numbers of people directly, the ripple effects they generate do resonate across London,” Glucksberg said. “In terms of the impact on London as a whole, this represents a very different kind of ‘trickle down’ effect from what politicians across the spectrum have long argued would be the benefit of the ‘super rich moving into our city’,” said Glucksberg. “Affordability for average Londoners in the rest of the city is likely to become an even more difficult issue to solve.” The trend was contributing to dramatic house price rises in areas ranging from Battersea and Clapham to Acton, as the old elite bought property there with the significant profits – usually in the millions – made from selling up to the global uber wealthy, the researcher found.

“The study shows that the wealthy individuals and families that live in London’s most exclusive areas no longer feel able to compete at the top end of the capital’s property market,” said the researcher. “Instead they feel like they are being pushed out of elite neighbourhoods. For the first time, this elite group are buying flats for their children in areas they never would have previously considered.”

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We need the death penalty for poachers and buyers, the entire chain, not just in Africa but everywhere, also in China and Japan. If they don’t comply, no more trade and full isolation.

A Third Of Africa’s Elephants Were Wiped Out In Just 7 Years (CNN)

Scanning Botswana’s remote Linyanti swamp from the low flying chopper, elephant ecologist Mike Chase can’t hide the anxiety and dread as he sees what he has seen too many times before. “I don’t think anybody in the world has seen the number of dead elephants that I’ve seen over the last two years,” he says. From above, we spot an elephant lying on its side in the cracked river mud. From a distance it could be mistaken for a resting animal. But the acrid stench of death hits us before we even land. Up close, it is a horror. He was a magnificent bull right in his prime, 45 to 50 years old. To get at his prized ivory tusks, poachers hacked off his face. Slaughtered for their ivory, the elephants are left to rot, their carcasses dotting the dry riverbed; in just two days, we counted the remains of more than 20 elephants in a small area.

Visitors and managers at the tourist camps here are frequently alarmed by the sound of gunshots nearby. And Chase worries that if Botswana can’t protect its elephants, there’s little hope for the species as a whole. Chase, the founder of Elephants Without Borders (EWB), is the lead scientist of the Great Elephant Census, (GEC) an ambitious project to count all of Africa’s savannah elephants – from the air. Before the GEC, total elephant numbers were largely guesswork. But over the past two years, 90 scientists and 286 crew have taken to the air above 18 African countries, flying the equivalent of the distance to the moon – and a quarter of the way back – in almost 10,000 hours.

Prior to European colonization, scientists believe that Africa may have held as many as 20 million elephants; by 1979 only 1.3 million remained – and the census reveals that things have gotten far worse. According to the GEC, released Thursday in the open-access journal PeerJ, Africa’s savannah elephant population has been devastated, with just 352,271 animals in the countries surveyed – far lower than previous estimates. Three countries with significant elephant populations were not included in the study. Namibia did not release figures to the GEC, and surveys in South Sudan and the Central African Republic were postponed due to armed conflict. In seven years between 2007 and 2014, numbers plummeted by at least 30%, or 144,000 elephants.

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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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Jul 202016
 
 July 20, 2016  Posted by at 9:09 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  8 Responses »


Harris&Ewing Newsie, Washington DC 1920

To the Mattresses: Cash Levels Highest In Nearly 15 Years (CNBC)
The Financial System Is Breaking Down At An Unimaginable Pace (Black)
This ‘Market’ Discounts Nothing Except Monetary Cocaine (Stockman)
These Sicilian Mortgages Show How Hard It Is to Rescue Italian Banks (BBG)
Deal With Canada On The Brink as German Party Sues EU Over CETA (Exp.)
The Long, Sad, Corrupted Devolution Of The GOP (Intercept)
The World Is Taking Revenge Against Elites. When Will America’s Wake Up? (G.)
The Secret History of Glass-Steagall (WSJ)
We Need More Borders And More States (Mises Inst.)
June 2016 Was 14th Consecutive Month Of Record-Breaking Heat (G.)
This Year’s Record Arctic Melt Is a Problem For Everybody (Stone)

 

 

Breaking point.

To the Mattresses: Cash Levels Highest In Nearly 15 Years (CNBC)

Despite the post-Brexit market rally, fund managers have gotten even more wary of taking risks. The S&P 500 has jumped about 8.5% since the lows hit in the days after Britain’s move to leave the EU, but that hasn’t assuaged professional investors. Cash levels are now at 5.8% of portfolios, up a notch from June and at the highest levels since November 2001, according to the latest BofA Merrill Lynch Fund Manager Survey. In addition to putting money under the mattress, investors also are looking for protection, with equity hedging at its highest level in the survey’s history. Indeed, fear is running high as investors believe that global financial conditions are tightening, despite nearly $12 trillion of negative-yielding debt around the world and the U.S. central bank on hold perhaps until 2017.

In fact, fear is running so high that BofAML experts think that it’s helping fuel the recent market rally. “Record numbers of investors saying fiscal policy is too restrictive and the first underweighting of equities in four years suggest that fiscal easing could be a tactical catalyst for risk assets going forward,” Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist, said in a statement. Positioning changed, with a rotation from euro zone, banks and insurance companies shifting to the U.S., industrials, energy, technology and materials stocks. Fund managers believe that so-called helicopter money will become a reality, with 39% now anticipating the move compared to 27% in June.

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“..the total sum of negative-yielding debt in the world has increased in the last sixteen days alone by an amount that’s larger than the entire GDP of Russia.”

The Financial System Is Breaking Down At An Unimaginable Pace (Black)

Now it’s $13 trillion. That’s the total amount of government bonds in the world that have negative yields, according to calculations published last week by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Given that there were almost zero negative-yielding bonds just two years ago, the rise to $13 trillion is incredible. In February 2015, the total amount of negative-yielding debt in the world was ‘only’ $3.6 trillion. A year later in February 2016 it had nearly doubled to $7 trillion. Now, just five months later, it has nearly doubled again to $13 trillion, up from $11.7 trillion just over two weeks ago. Think about that: the total sum of negative-yielding debt in the world has increased in the last sixteen days alone by an amount that’s larger than the entire GDP of Russia.

Just like subprime mortgage bonds from ten years ago, these bonds are also toxic securities, since many of are issued by bankrupt governments (like Japan). Instead of paying subprime home buyers to borrow money, investors are now paying subprime governments. And just like the build-up to the 2008 subprime crisis, investors are snapping up today’s subprime bonds with frightening enthusiasm. We’ll probably see $15 trillion, then $20 trillion, worth of negative-yielding subprime government debt within the next few months. So this trend will continue to grow for now, until, just like in 2008, the bubble bursts in cataclysmic fashion. It took several years for the first subprime bubble to pop. This one may take even longer. But even still, we can already see the consequences today.

A few months ago I told you about the remarkable $3.4 trillion funding gap in the US pension system. Remember, we’re not talking about Social Security– that has its own $40+ trillion shortfall. I’m talking about private companies’ retirement pensions, or public service worker pensions at the city and state level. (By the way, this is NOT strictly a US phenomenon. Europe suffers its own $2 trillion pension shortfall.) There’s zero mathematical probability that these pensions will be able to meet their obligations. They’re already underfunded. And the problem is getting worse, thanks in part to this plague of low and negative interest rates.

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“Regardless of whether the November winner is Hillary or the Donald, there is one thing certain. There will be no functioning government come 2017.”

This ‘Market’ Discounts Nothing Except Monetary Cocaine (Stockman)

[..]..whether the central banks buy public debt from the inventories of the 23 prime dealers and other market speculators or directly from the US treasury makes no technical difference whatsoever. The end state of “something for nothing” finance is the same in both cases. In fact, “helicopter money” is just a desperate scam emanating from the world’s tiny fraternity of central bankers who have walked the financial system to the brink, and are now trying to con the casino into believing they have one more magic rabbit to pull out of the hat. They don’t. That’s because it takes two branches of the state to tango in the game of helicopter money.

The unelected monetary central planners can run the digital printing presses at whim, and continuously “surprise” and gratify the casino gamblers with another unexpected batch of the monetary drugs. That has been exactly the pattern of multiple rounds of QE and the unending invention of excuses to prolong ZIRP into its 90th month. The resulting rises in the stock averages, of course, were the result of fresh liquidity injections and the associated monetary high, not the discounting of new information about economics and profits. By contrast, helicopter money requires the peoples’ elected representatives to play.

That is, the Congress and White House must generate large incremental expansions of the fiscal deficit—so that the central bankers can buy it directly from the US treasury’s shelf, and then credit the government’s Fed accounts with credits conjured from thin air. To be sure, the cynics would say – no problem! When have politicians ever turned down an opportunity to borrow and spend themselves silly, and to than be applauded, not chastised, for the effort? But that assumes we still have a functioning government and that today’s politicians have been 100% cured of their atavistic fears of the public debt. Alas, what is going to cause helicopter money to be a giant dud – at least in the US – is that neither of these conditions are extant.

Regardless of whether the November winner is Hillary or the Donald, there is one thing certain. There will be no functioning government come 2017.

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Rewriting the law to save your banks?

These Sicilian Mortgages Show How Hard It Is to Rescue Italian Banks (BBG)

Down the cobbled streets of Palermo, past baroque churches and gothic palaces, a lesson is lurking for Italy’s government as it hatches a plan to save the country’s banks. Sicily’s biggest city is the focal point of a 2007 securitization of non-performing loans, or NPLs, that shows just how long it can take to resolve soured loans in the country. The deal, known as Island Refinancing, should also act as a warning for investors of the dangers of buying similar securities as Italian banks gear up to sell more of them. The Island bonds are backed by two portfolios of NPLs originated by a Sicilian bank that’s now a subsidiary of UniCredit SpA. Just under half of the loans originated in the 1990s and they include residential mortgages as well as loans financing hotels and industrial buildings.

Unlike other asset-backed securities where interest and principal are paid through cash flows from mortgage or auto credit borrowers, investors in NPL securitizations depend on getting money back from soured loans – typically through the courts. And that’s where the problem lies. A court may auction the loan collateral and use the proceeds to pay the bonds, but that is a slow process. Italy is almost as well known these days for its sluggish and cumbersome insolvency procedures as it is for the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the AC Milan soccer club. Italian bankruptcy proceedings last an average of 7.8 years, compared to an average of just over two years for the rest of Europe.

Efforts are currently being made to speed up the process, with Prime Minister Matteo Renzi saying recent reforms to insolvency laws will shorten recovery times on NPL collateral to as little as six months. Still, the thus-far glacial pace of cash collections from NPLs has resulted in multiple credit ratings downgrades for the Island Refinancing deal, which will expire in 2025.

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The time for trade deals is over.

Deal With Canada On The Brink as German Party Sues EU Over CETA (Exp.)

Centre-left Die Linke has launched legal action to block the controversial Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) pact, saying it is unconstitutional under German law. The party’s attempt to torpedo the hated deal is just the latest in a series of devastating trade blows for the EU, which is unravelling following the Brexit vote. And it reveals once more the cavernous differences opening up between different member states which have effectively rendered the European project unworkable. Earlier this month Canada’s despairing Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland asked: “If the EU cannot do a deal with Canada, I think it is legitimate to say who the heck can it do a deal with?”

But now there is a very real prospect that CETA will be torpedoed before it has even left port in a development which will throw the future of a much bigger deal with America into serious doubt. Negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have ground to a halt, with impatient American officials warning Brussels to stop dragging their heels. The US chief negotiator said the proposed deal was nowhere near as enticing to Washington now that Britain has left the bloc, comparing a Europe without the UK to an America without California. Britain will not be affected by either calamity after voting to leave the EU, and is now free to begin informal talks on sealing its own trade deals with Canada, the US and the rest of the world.

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Lincoln, too, was a Republican.

The Long, Sad, Corrupted Devolution Of The GOP (Intercept)

In August 1956, the Republican Party gathered in San Francisco to re-nominate President Dwight D. Eisenhower as its candidate in the upcoming presidential election. The party that year adopted a platform that emphasized that the GOP was “proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs.” This included boasting that Eisenhower had overseen a hike in the federal minimum wage that raised incomes for 2 million Americans while expanding Social Security to 10 million more people and increasing benefits for 6.5 million others.

Today’s Republican Party has made weakening labor unions a priority, but the 1956 platform noted that under Eisenhower, “workers have gained and unions have grown in strength and responsibility, and have increased their membership by 2 millions.” It also touted an increase in federal funding for hospital construction and expanded federal aid for health care for the poor and public housing. The platform also pointed out that Eisenhower had asked for “the largest increase in research funds ever sought in one year” to tackle ailments like cancer and heart disease. Rather than opposing self-governance for Washington, D.C., 1956’s Republicans encouraged it, saying they “favor self-government national suffrage and representation in the Congress of the United States” for those living there.

The platform also asked Congress to submit a constitutional amendment establishing “equal rights for men and women.” The platform boasted proudly of the African-Americans who had been appointed to positions in Eisenhower’s administration, and of ending racial discrimination in federal employment. At no point did the document call for any restrictions on immigration; rather, by contrast, it asked Congress to consider an extension of the 1953 Refugee Act, which brought tens of thousands of war-weary European refugees to American shores. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the face of the Republican Party in the 1950s. He had served as the supreme commander of the Allied forces as they retook Europe from fascist militaries in the decade before.

Experiencing two global wars shaped Eisenhower’s worldview, turning him into an advocate of peace. Eisenhower cut the military budget by 27% following the Korean War, and used his bully pulpit to highlight the trade-offs of military spending. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” he said in a 1953 speech. In his farewell address on January 17, 1961, he highlighted the rise of what he called a “military-industrial complex” — a war industry that he cautioned could exert “undue influence” on the government.

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When indeed?

The World Is Taking Revenge Against Elites. When Will America’s Wake Up? (G.)

A snapshot of America in the middle of June 2016. It is several days before the first great shock of the summer, the Brexit vote, and here in America, all is serene. The threat posed by Senator Bernie Sanders has been suppressed. The Republicans have chosen a preposterous windbag to lead them; the consensus is that he will be a pushover. For all the doubts and dissent of the last year, the leadership faction of the country’s professional class seem to have once again come out on top, and they are ready to accept the gratitude of the nation. And so President Barack Obama did an interview with Business Week in which he was congratulated for his stewardship of the economy and asked “what industries” he might choose to join upon his retirement from the White House.

The president replied as follows: “… what I will say is that – just to bring things full circle about innovation – the conversations I have with Silicon Valley and with venture capital pull together my interests in science and organization in a way I find really satisfying.” In relating this anecdote, I am not aiming to infuriate because the man we elected in 2008 to get tough with high finance and shut the revolving door was now talking about taking his own walk through that door and getting a job in finance. No. My object here is to describe the confident, complacent mood of the country’s ruling class in the middle of last month. So let us continue. On the morning after British voters chose to leave the EU, Obama was in California addressing an audience at Stanford University, a school often celebrated these days as the pre-eminent educational institution of Silicon Valley.

The occasion of the president’s remarks was the annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit, and the substance of his speech was the purest globaloney, flavored with a whiff of vintage dotcom ebullience. Obama marveled at the smart young creative people who start tech businesses. He deplored bigotry as an impediment that sometimes keeps these smart creative people from succeeding. He demanded that more power be given to the smart young creatives who are transforming the world. Keywords included “innovation”, “interconnection”, and of course “Zuckerberg”, the Facebook CEO, who has appeared with Obama on so many occasions and whose company is often used as shorthand by Democrats to signify everything that is wonderful about our era.

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“The law was seen as protecting the specialized securities firms from having to compete with large national banks..”

The Secret History of Glass-Steagall (WSJ)

The Republican party platform calls for a revival of the Glass-Steagall Act, a depression-era banking law repealed in 1999. Glass-Steagall was the brainchild of Sen. Carter Glass (D-VA), best known as the principal architect of the Federal Reserve system. It erected a firewall between deposit-taking/loan-making banks and securities activities such as underwriting and trading. Its original goal was to prevent three things: purchasing of risky securities with government-insured deposits, extending bad loans to shaky companies owned by a bank, and pushing underwritten securities onto naïve bank customers. The provision became law when the Banking Act of 1933 was passed within days of President Franklin Roosevelt taking office in March 1933 in an effort to restore public confidence in the banking system.

The same act created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which insures bank deposits, as well as the Federal Open Market Committee, the monetary policy making board of the Federal Reserve. The act also banned banks from paying interest on checking accounts and granted the Fed authority to put ceilings on interest rates offered for other deposits. Far from resisting Glass-Steagall, Wall Street securities firms embraced and became its most vocal supporters. The law was seen as protecting the specialized securities firms from having to compete with large national banks funded by cheap retail and commercial deposits.

The law was strengthened by a 1956 law that put bank holding companies under the purview of the Federal Reserve and made it clear they could not control both a commercial bank and an investment bank. As the years passed, however, the wall separating securities firms and banks developed cracks—primarily because of pressure from banks wanting to expand into securities dealing. Banks won regulatory approval for their affiliates to underwrite government securities, mortgage-backed securities and commercial paper. They were allowed to provide brokerage services to customers and market insurance. Banks began providing advice and assistance on mergers, acquisitions and financial planning. All this occurred without the law being changed.

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The perks of decentralization.

We Need More Borders And More States (Mises Inst.)

In the context of trade and immigration, borders are often discussed as a means of excluding foreign workers and foreign goods. In one way of thinking, borders provide an opportunity for states to exclude private actors such as workers, merchants, and entrepreneurs. On the other hand, borders can also serve a far more endearing function, and this is found in the fact that borders represent the limits of a state’s power. That is, while borders may exclude goods and people, a state’s borders also often exclude other states. For example, East Germany’s border with West Germany represented the limits of the East German police state, beyond which the power of the Stasi to kidnap, torture, and imprison peaceful people was far more limited than it was within its native jurisdiction.

The West German border acted to contain the East German state. Similarly, the borders of Saudi Arabia delineate a limit to the Saudi regime’s ability to behead people for sorcery or for making critical remarks about the blood-soaked dictators known as the House of Saud. Even within a single nation-state, borders can illustrate the benefits of decentralization, as in the case of the Colorado-Nebraska border. On one side of the border (i.e., Nebraska) state police will arrest you and imprison you for possessing marijuana. They may kill you if you resist. On the other side of the border, the state’s constitution prohibits police from prosecuting marijuana users. The Colorado border contains Nebraska’s war on drugs.

Certainly, there are ways for regimes to extend their power even beyond their borders. This can be done by cozying up with the regimes of neighboring countries (or intimidating them), or through the organs of international quasi-state organizations. Or, as in the case of the US and EU, imposing broader policies upon a number of supposedly sovereign states. Nevertheless, thanks to the competitive nature of states, many states will often find it difficult to project their power into neighboring states, and thus borders represent a very-real impediment to a state’s power. This can then open the door to greater freedom, and even save lives as certain states impoverish or make war on their own citizens.

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When this streak is over everyone will think we’re safe.

June 2016 Was 14th Consecutive Month Of Record-Breaking Heat (G.)

As the string of record-breaking global temperatures continues unabated, June 2016 marks the 14th consecutive month of record-breaking heat. According to two US agencies – Nasa and Noaa – June 2016 was 0.9C hotter than the average for the 20th century, and the hottest June in the record which goes back to 1880. It broke the previous record, set in 2015, by 0.02C. The 14-month streak of record-breaking temperatures was the longest in the 137-year record. And it has been 40 years since the world saw a June that was below the 20th century average.

The string of record-breaking monthly temperatures began in April 2015, and was pushed along by a powerful El Niño, where a splurge of warm water spreads across the Pacific Ocean. But the effects of El Niño have receded, and the effects of global warming are clear, said Nasa’s Gavin Schmidt. “While the El Niño event in the tropical Pacific this winter gave a boost to global temperatures from October onwards, it is the underlying trend which is producing these record numbers,” he said.

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“..a Texas-sized chunk of sea ice has disappeared from our planet’s north pole between the early 1980s and today.”

This Year’s Record Arctic Melt Is a Problem For Everybody (Stone)

If your life has felt like a hot mess this year, you’re not alone. Same goes for the Arctic, which month after month has seen its ice cover contract to new lows. By late September, Arctic sea ice may reach its lowest extent since satellite record-keeping began. And that’s got scientists in a tizzy, because if there’s one thing geologic history has taught us, it’s that sudden drops in Arctic ice cover are often the tip of the proverbial iceberg for a whole slew of planetary feedbacks. It’s difficult to keep up with all the climate-related records our world has been smashing, so here’s a quick recap of what’s been happening up north.

At the close of 2015 (currently the hottest year in recorded history, but not for long), the Arctic was already sweating iceberg-shaped bullets, thanks to freakishly warm weather brought on by a combination of a monster El Niño and the underlying global warming trend. Then 2016 burst on the scene, with temperatures at the North Pole rising some fifty degrees Fahrenheit above normal. The Arctic stayed exceptionally hot through January and February. By the time March rolled around, the atmosphere was loaded with heat, and Arctic sea ice was already starting to look thin. NASA confirmed that it was indeed the smallest wintertime Arctic sea ice extent on the record books, peaking at some 5.6 million square miles (14.5 million square km).

Then, the Arctic started to melt. And it kept going, and going, and going, smashing record after record, month after month. As of this writing, we’ve just come off the fifth record-low sea ice month this year. Every month except March has marked an all-time monthly low, with June sea ice maxing out a full 100,000 square miles (260,000 square kilometers) below the previous record low, set in 2010. June sea ice was also 525,000 square miles (1.36 million square km) below the 1981-2010 average. Put another way, a Texas-sized chunk of sea ice has disappeared from our planet’s north pole between the early 1980s and today.

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Jul 062016
 
 July 6, 2016  Posted by at 10:56 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  12 Responses »


LOOK Detroit’s 1960 look. Sneak preview of the new models. Dodge Polara 1959

Remember the referendum in April in which voters in the Netherlands rejected the EU-Ukraine trade deal? Seems forever ago, doesn’t it? But to date nothing has been done with the outcome of the vote, even though Dutch law requires a government to implement referendum outcomes as swiftly as possible.

PM Mark Rutte told parliament this week that ‘changing’ the deal would be very difficult, and that talks on the topic in the European Council ‘don’t make him happy’. Since one of the things Rutte has demanded from the EU is a pledge that Ukraine will not become an EU member, none of this should be surprising.

But more importantly, the Dutch didn’t vote for Rutte to renegotiate the deal, they outright rejected it. Ergo, Rutte is playing fast and loose with the integrity and credibility of the Dutch legal and political systems as much as the FBI does with America’s in the Clinton email sleight of hand, and as later today Britain will do with its credibility following the Chilcot report on Tony Blair et al.

As if the Brexit fall-out hasn’t done enough damage to that credibility. One might get the distinct impression that the powers-that-be could get awfully annoyed with the riff-raff out there wanting a say in their own lives. But the riff-raff don’t just want a say anymore, they are getting mighty annoyed with the powers-that-be too.

And that is guaranteed to increase if more ‘incidents’ happen like FBI director Jim Comey’s announcement yesterday that Hillary won’t be charged. At some point credibility must come with accountability, or else. The Hillary files bring the US awfully close to that point, as well as to ‘or else’.

Eric Zuesse explains very well why that is:

In Clinton Case, Obama Administration Nullifies 6 Criminal Laws

There can be no excuse for Obama’s depriving the public, via a grand jury decision, of the right to determine whether a full court case should be pursued in order to determine in a jury trial whether Hillary Clinton’s email system constituted a crime (or several crimes) under U.S. laws. The Obama Administration’s ‘finding’ that “clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information” would need to have been proven, in order for her to have been prosecuted under any U.S. criminal law, is a flagrant lie..

[..] anyone who in the future would be charged with violating any one of those six laws could reasonably cite the precedent that Ms. Clinton was not even charged, much less prosecuted, for actions which clearly fit the description provided in each one of those U.S. criminal laws. Anyone in the future who would be charged under any one of these six laws could prove discriminatory enforcement against himself or herself.

It is highly irresponsible for any government to play such games, and it’s skating on the edge of the law, something a government should always attempt to avoid. That is essential.

Someone who’s not known to be overly bothered by accountability or integrity is everybody’s favorite wino, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. But Juncker, whatever else may be wrong with him, is not a stupid man. And unless I’m gravely mistaken, he has just saddled the European Union with a problem that could well trigger its undoing.

What happened was that at some point last week, reports started coming out that several parties, especially in Germany, were planning to oust Juncker from his plush job. He read them too, of course. And he may have gotten other signals as well in Brussels backrooms.

Then, Germany and France began to clamor for their parliaments to have a say in the ratification of CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada. And Juncker must have seen his chance for revenge. Because yesterday he announced that all 27 parliaments of EU member nations get to have a crack at CETA.

That is Pandora’s box, and I don’t believe for a second that Juncker is not aware of it. Here’s what Deutsche Welle had to say:

EU Commission: CETA Should Be Approved By National Parliaments

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker is expected to scrap plans to fast-track a trade agreement with Canada through the EU. After pressure from Germany and France, Juncker appears to be backtracking. Juncker will reportedly propose a mixed agreement – one that requires both the approval of the European parliament and national legislatures – at an European Commission meeting on Tuesday. Last week he was reported saying he “personally couldn’t care less” whether lawmakers get to vote on the deal. A report in the Financial Times noted that Germany and France wanted their national parliaments to be involved, which would inevitably lengthen the process.

That Juncker quote indicates something had been brewing for a while. Given the position he’s in, it’s quite funny, though

The deal was scheduled to be signed at the end of October during a summit in Brussels with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and it was due to be implemented in 2017. Trade ministers in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and UK have reportedly said they will support the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA. CETA is similar to the agreement under negotiation between the EU and US and has drawn strong criticism in EU countries. Canadian and EU leaders concluded CETA in 2014, but implementation was delayed due to last-minute objections in Europe. This was related to an investment protection system to shield companies from government intervention.

Yes, CETA is TTiP on a smaller scale. A sort of test. The nonsensical audacity of ‘an investment protection system to shield companies from government intervention’ says it all.

With opposition to the EU’s impending free trade deal with Canada apparently growing, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said recently that the German parliament should be consulted on the EU’s free trade deal with Canada. “It is a highly political agreement that has been widely discussed,” said Merkel, adding that the “Bundestag is allowed to be involved of course… in national decisions”. German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel told the Tagesspiegel daily that Juncker’s comment was “incredibly stupid” and “would stoke opposition to other free trade deals,” including with the US. German media has also described Juncker’s position as badly timed given the growing skepticism among European voters about the EU.

What Gabriel actually said was that Juncker was “unglaublich töricht”, I looked it up. And it wasn’t his reaction to a ‘comment’, but to Juncker’s initial decision to NOT let national parliaments get their say on CETA. It’s brilliant and hilarious, isn’t it? I think I think quite a bit higher of Juncker now.

Because it was Germany itself that insisted they wanted the Bundestag to get involved (under domestic pressure). But they thought that would be it, that and the French parliament. And Jean-Claude threw it right back in their faces. Since they were going to get rid of him anyway, he decided to leave them the perfect parting gift, the ultimate poisoned chalice.

Getting back to the Dutch referendum on EU and Ukraine, one of the things to know about how this works is that the Dutch can ask for a referendum not on any topic, but only on bills the government sends to parliament to discuss. CETA will now be such a case, and a referendum looks at least quite possible.

I don’t know what comparable legislation is in other EU countries, but no doubt in many countries it’s enough to have their parliaments discuss the issue, to cause havoc. That will mean huge delays and/or worse (just what Juncker initially sought to prevent).

The ‘worse’ in this regard -in the eyes of the politicians- is the possibility of referendums, on CETA, and then on TTiP. And before you know it somewhere in Europe such a referendum will be combined with the question whether the country where it’s held should Remain in the EU or Leave it. It seems for all intents and purposes, inevitable.

How the EU can be kept together is a behemoth conundrum already, even without all these new issues. But now we can be absolutely sure that Brexit is only the beginning.

Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement (M5S) came out as no. 1 in a poll in Italy yesterday. When I visited Beppe almost 5 years ago in Genoa he was still torn over the EU and the euro, but he has since made up his mind: he’s determined to take Italy out of the unholy Union. Europe’s powers-that-be are in for troubled times.

And Jean-Claude Junker will be sitting somewhere in the world in a beach chair by one of his luxurious summer homes, with a big smile on his face and a stiff drink in his hand.

Jul 062016
 
 July 6, 2016  Posted by at 8:35 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  Comments Off on Debt Rattle July 6 2016


Arnold Genthe San Francisco, “Grant Avenue at Sacramento Street.” 1930

British Pound Sterling Plunges As Brexit Fears Continue To Swirl (CNBC)
Asia Markets Tumble As Investors Scurry Into Safe-Haven Plays (CNBC)
Third London Asset Manager Suspends Trading in Property Fund (BBG)
The Big Unravel: US Commercial Bankruptcies Skyrocket (WS)
In London, Banker Bonuses Are Set To Disappear (ZH)
Deutsche Bank: The Downfall Of An Institution (Deutsche Welle)
Inequality, Debt and Credit Stagnation (Steve Keen)
Eurosceptic 5 Star Movement Biggest Party In Italy: Survey (EP)
EU Commission: CETA Should Be Approved By National Parliaments (DW)
The Beauty Beneath Brexit’s Bedwetting (Welsh)
Spain’s Social Security Program Will Go Bust in 2018 (Mish)
In Clinton Case, Obama Administration Nullifies 6 Criminal Laws (Zuesse)
FBI Director Comey Preempts Justice Department (Intercept)
The Department Of “Just Us” (Martin Armstrong)

 

 

It’s just a bubble popping.

British Pound Sterling Plunges As Brexit Fears Continue To Swirl (CNBC)

The British pound plunged to fresh 31-year lows on Wednesday, swamped by continued fears over the U.K. leadership vacuum and the country’s potential exit from the EU. The pound tumbled as low as $1.2796 during Asia trade on Wednesday, it’s lowest since 1985, after ending Tuesday’s trade around $1.2960. The U.K. currency later recovered to trade around $1.2881 at 12:27 p.m. SIN/HK. Analysts were concerned that the continued political uncertainty will hurt capital inflows and spur companies to delay investments, potentially tipping the economy into a recession. The Bank of England (BOE) had begun taking preemptive steps to protect the British economy in the wake of June 23 U.K. referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU).

On Tuesday, BOE Governor Mark Carney sent a clear message to Britain’s cautious bankers: They needed to start lending more money. The central bank cut the amount of capital it required banks to hold in reserve, which freed up an extra 150 billion pounds ($196 billion) for lending. Carney had previously signaled more monetary easing would likely be put in place in the near term. But that wasn’t assuaging the market much, analysts said. “As Carney as put it himself, there isn’t so much he can do. Monetary policy, which the Bank of England is in charge of, cannot fix structural issues. It’s very apparent with Brexit that investors will stay away from the U.K. because of the certainty,” Axel Merk, chief investment officer at Merk Investments, told CNBC’s “Rundown” on Wednesday.

He noted that not only has the U.K. yet to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which will formally start negotiations for an exit from the EU, it wasn’t clear who the country’s next leader would be. The ruling Conservative party is in the midst of finding a successor to Prime Minister David Cameron, who resigned after his “remain” camp lost the referendum. “You’re not going to make a big investment decision if you don’t have that sort of certainty,” Merk said. “The only thing the Bank of England can do obviously is provide the ability of banks to lend, but if there are no takers, it doesn’t help all that much.”

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And if one bubble pops….

Asia Markets Tumble As Investors Scurry Into Safe-Haven Plays (CNBC)

Markets in Asia were sharply lower on Wednesday, as investors scurried into safe-haven plays on global growth concerns, sending bond yields to record lows. Renewed Brexit jitters also sent the British pound tumbling to a fresh 31-year low. The British pound dropped to a fresh 31-year low early Wednesday amid Brexit concerns, trading at $1.2860 as of 11:04 a.m. HK/SIN, after dropping as low as $1.2796 earlier. The tumble began overnight as investors flocked to safe-haven assets such as U.S. Treasurys, the yen and the greenback after three U.K. real estate funds halted selling and the Bank of England relaxed regulations to encourage banks to lend out more money.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 2.96%, after earlier tumbling some 3.2% on the back of fresh yen strength. The Japanese yen, a safe-haven asset, traded at 100.71 against the dollar as of 11:04 a.m. HK/SIN, compared with levels near 103 on Friday. “There’s a high level of complacency in dollar/yen trade as the markets have no defined direction other than chasing risk sentiment,” said Stephen Innes, a senior trader at OANDA. “I expect further probes lower as the latest Brexit sell-off is simply the tip of the iceberg.” The yen strength saw Japanese exporters tumble, with shares of Honda off 5.9%, Toyota down 3.09% and Nissan down 3.82%.

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What? I can’t have Schadenfreude? First they blow a giant bubble and when it pops they all come to mama? Know what I think? “Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets..”

“The problem these funds face is that it takes time to sell commercial property to meet withdrawals, and the cash buffers built up by the managers have been eroded by investors heading for the door.”

Third London Asset Manager Suspends Trading in Property Fund (BBG)

Three of the U.K.’s largest real estate funds have frozen almost £9.1 billion ($12 billion) of assets after Britain’s shock vote to leave the European Union sparked a flurry of redemptions. M&G Investments, Aviva Investors and Standard Life Investments halted withdrawals because they don’t have enough cash to immediately repay investors. About £24.5 billion is allocated to U.K. real estate funds, according to the Investment Association. “The dominoes are starting to fall in the U.K. commercial property market,” said Laith Khalaf, a senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. “The problem these funds face is that it takes time to sell commercial property to meet withdrawals, and the cash buffers built up by the managers have been eroded by investors heading for the door.”

The pound fell to its weakest level in three decades against the dollar Tuesday, surpassing lows reached in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, as the freezing of the property funds spooked global markets. Bank of England Governor Mark Carney pledged to shore up financial stability on a day when a survey showed a plunge in U.K. business confidence. The rush by private investors to withdraw money prompted M&G, which held 7.7% in cash before the vote, to suspend its £4.4 billion Property Portfolio fund and Aviva Investors to freeze its £1.8 billion Property Trust on Tuesday. Standard Life halted trading on its£ 2.9 billion U.K. real estate fund on Monday. The cash position for Aviva and Standard Life’s funds at the end of May was 9.3% and 13.1% respectively, documents showed.

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“Total US commercial bankruptcy filings in June soared 35% from a year ago..”

The Big Unravel: US Commercial Bankruptcies Skyrocket (WS)

This year through June, there have been 91 corporate defaults globally, the highest first-half total since 2009, according to Standard and Poor’s. Of them, 60 occurred in the US. Some of them are going to end up in bankruptcy. Others are restructuring their debts outside of bankruptcy court by holding the bankruptcy gun to creditors’ heads. In the process, stockholders will often get wiped out. These are credit fiascos at larger corporations – those that pay Standard and Poor’s to rate their credit so that they can sell bonds in the credit markets. But in the vast universe of 19 million American businesses, there are only about 3,025 companies, or 0.02% of the total, with annual revenues over $1 billion; they’re big enough to pay Standard & Poor’s for a credit rating.

About 183,000 businesses, or less than 1% of the total, are medium-size with sales between $10 million and $1 billion. Only a fraction of them have an S&P credit rating, and only those figure into S&P’s measure of defaults. The rest, the vast majority, are flying under S&P’s radar. About 99% of all businesses in the US are small, with less than $10 million a year in revenues. None of them are S&P rated and none of them figure into S&P’s default measurements. So how are these small and medium-size businesses doing – the core of American enterprise? Total US commercial bankruptcy filings in June soared 35% from a year ago, to 3,294, the eighth month in a row of year-over-year increases, the American Bankruptcy Institute (in partnership with Epiq Systems) reported today.

During the first half, commercial bankruptcy filings soared 29% to 19,470. Among the various filing categories: Chapter 11 filings (company “restructures” its debt at the expense of stockholders and unsecured creditors by shifting ownership to creditors, but continues to operate) soared 36% to 499 in June and 25% in the first half to 3,220. Chapter 7 filings (company throws in the towel and “liquidates” by selling its assets and distributing the proceeds to creditors) jumped 28% in June to 1,909, and 25% in the first half to 11,211.

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Then so will the bankers.

In London, Banker Bonuses Are Set To Disappear (ZH)

Not only will Brexit be used as an excuse for companies to lower earnings guidance and for central banks to provide more quantitative easing, but it may also be a scapegoat for banker bonuses in London being slashed – everyone can let out their collective gasp now. As we have been covering, banker jobs have been getting cut for quite some time now, most recently with RBS announcing it will be cutting another 900 jobs. Times have been difficult for banks leading up to Brexit, but now, as Bloomberg reports, the message London’s investment banks are giving staff this year is that in the aftermath of Brexit, just be thankful to have a job, and forget a fat bonus at the end of the year.

“It’s a great opportunity to blame Brexit, giving people the message ‘you’re lucky enough to have a job'” said Stephane Rambosson, managing partner at DHR executive search firm in London, adding that bonuses could fall 30% or more in some areas. Jason Kennedy, CEO of recruitment firm Kennedy Group in London said “Reality is going to kick in, today it’s about job preservation, rather than bonuses. Things are going to change, and some people shouldn’t expect any bonuses.”

Jon Terry, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers in London, at least admits that things were falling apart even before Brexit: “If we hadn’t had the referendum results, this year was looking pretty tough anyway. We haven’t seen an end to various fines and compensation related to payment protection insurance and Libor. There are still billions of pounds being charged to the accounts. Ever since the financial crisis, there has been a need for reshaping the spend on compensation costs. Brexit is possibly one of the biggest catalysts for the next stage of reduction.”

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From a German source, no less. Throw that towel!

Deutsche Bank: The Downfall Of An Institution (Deutsche Welle)

It has been nearly a year since John Cryan assumed the leadership of Germany’s still-largest bank. He took the reins from Anshu Jain, who was chosen to realize his own predecessor Josef Ackermann’s dream of 25% returns. Jain did what he was expected to do. And the bank is still dealing with the consequences. 7,800 lawsuits have been carried out against the bank worldwide. Most of them are pretty manageable, some were settled for billions upon billions. But a few still carry a destructive power that would cost the bank its existence – money laundering accusations in Russia, for example, or investigations by the SEC over peculiar dealings with mortgage-backed securities.

Cryan is making a tremendous effort, portraying himself at times as the man behind the wrecking-ball, at others as the chief builder. He has almost completely replaced the bank’s leadership. With an iron broom, he has swept away many of his inherited messes, accepting record losses of over $6 billion in the process. But his efforts have yet to yield any success. Deutsche’s share price has halved itself once again this year. Employee moral is in the cellar. Even the technology is breaking down – in June, double-bookings were recorded on three million accounts, ATMs stopped giving out cash, card purchases weren’t going through. Meanwhile the bank keeps talking away about an “image problem.”

So it’s clear that things continue to get worse. Cryan stresses over and over that he doesn’t see the bank as a takeover candidate. Certainly oversight authorities would take a very close, very skeptical look at such a deal. But even if a competitor from the US or China were able to afford Deutsche Bank out of pocket, they likely wouldn’t want anything to do with it in its current condition. As of now, that’s the only real insurance against an acquisition.

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Pretty funny too.

Inequality, Debt and Credit Stagnation (Steve Keen)

This was my keynote speech at the French Association for Political Economy (AFEP) annual conference in Mulhouse, France (the other keynote was given–in French–by my good friend Marc Lavoie, who is now based at the University de Paris 13). In this presentation, I:
• Disparage the “secular stagnation” explanation that Larry Summers has regurgitated for the tepid level of economic growth today. As did Hansen in the 1930s, Summers ponders “why growth would remain anaemic in the absence of major financial concerns?“, when financial concerns are obvious if you understand credit;
• Explain why credit plays a crucial role in both aggregate demand and aggregate income, once you understand that banks originate loans rather than act as financial intermediaries; and
• Show that my 1992 complex systems model of Minsky’s “Financial Instability Hypothesis” can be derived by working from strictly true macroeconomic identities, in an alternative to Lucas’s “microfoundations” approach to building macroeconomic models.

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Beppe!

Eurosceptic 5 Star Movement Biggest Party In Italy: Survey (EP)

Beppe Grillo‘s movement would be the first Italian party, overtaking PD (Socialists) with 32% of consensus, according to a new survey by Demos. 5 Star Movement won in two of the most important Italian cities (Rome and Turin) in the last administrative election in Italy.

Demos for Repubblica:
• 5 Star Movement (EFDD): 32%
• Partito Democratico (S&D): 30%
• Lega Nord (ENF): 11,8%
• Forza Italia (EPP): 11,5%
• Fratelli d’Italia (-): 3%

With the new electoral system, the runoff would see 5 Star Movement winning against PD (54,7% vs. 45,3%)

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Down goes Jean-Claude. He ain’t no Van Damme.

EU Commission: CETA Should Be Approved By National Parliaments (DW)

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker is expected to scrap plans to fast-track a trade agreement with Canada through the EU. After pressure from Germany and France, Juncker appears to be backtracking. Juncker will reportedly propose a mixed agreement – one that requires both the approval of the European parliament and national legislatures – at an European Commission meeting on Tuesday. Last week he was reported saying he “personally couldn’t care less” whether lawmakers get to vote on the deal. A report in the Financial Times noted that Germany and France wanted their national parliaments to be involved, which would inevitably lengthen the process.

The deal was scheduled to be signed at the end of October during a summit in Brussels with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and it was due to be implemented in 2017. Trade ministers in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and UK have reportedly said they will support the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA. CETA is similar to the agreement under negotiation between the EU and US and has drawn strong criticism in EU countries. Canadian and EU leaders concluded CETA in 2014, but implementation was delayed due to last-minute objections in Europe. This was related to an investment protection system to shield companies from government intervention.

With opposition to the EU’s impending free trade deal with Canada apparently growing, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said recently that the German parliament should be consulted on the EU’s free trade deal with Canada. “It is a highly political agreement that has been widely discussed,” said Merkel, adding that the “Bundestag is allowed to be involved of course… in national decisions”. German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel told the Tagesspiegel daily that Juncker’s comment was “incredibly stupid” and “would stoke opposition to other free trade deals,” including with the US. German media has also described Juncker’s position as badly timed given the growing skepticism among European voters about the EU.

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“The end result is a mess, but a strangely inevitable and even curiously beautiful one.”

The Beauty Beneath Brexit’s Bedwetting (Welsh)

If democratic aliens came down from Mars and looked at the EU referendum result, they’d be compelled to take the view that the UK, hopelessly fragmented by de-industrialisation and neoliberalism, is now finished as a political entity. The debate will rage on about the extent to which leave voters gave the smug, complacent neoliberal establishment a kicking, or were duped by toytown fascists into swallowing the same policies of the past 30 years, only significantly amped up. Whatever side you come down on, the process has bolstered a toxic, chauvinistic right wing, not just in England, but also Europe and beyond. The EU referendum redesignated the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as Little England.

Scottish voters, favouring the emotional and practical investment in the European ideal, decisively rejected this approach. The end result is a mess, but a strangely inevitable and even curiously beautiful one. We live in an era of great turbulence, with economic decline running in paradoxical tandem with technological advance. It is only to be expected that our antiquated institutions haven’t been able to keep up, and our nation states, political parties and supranational bodies are starting to unravel. Politicians now seem perennially in the business of chaos management, and the suspicion must be that this process has only just begun. The inevitable chorus of voices crying out for “a period of stability” sadly misses the point: we aren’t at that place in our history, and trying to impose inertia on those fluid times may only be inviting further discord.

As has been postulated, with much hand-wringing, it was obvious to many that the leave campaign didn’t believe it would win, merely wishing to register a protest, and was thus left thinking: what have we done? But let’s remember that no democrat can defend the commission-led EU, and nobody in the remain camp had a serious reforming vision of Europe, any more than those in leave offer much of clue as to what they’ll do with their increasingly hollow-looking victory. Remain’s leaders would have kept us straitjacketed into the EU’s current death-by-a-thousand-cuts version of corporate neoliberalism. At least now, shed of that distraction, we have our governmental elites much more clearly in our sights.

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The shape of things to come.

Spain’s Social Security Program Will Go Bust in 2018 (Mish)

Spain’s Social Security system is expected to go broke by 2018. In the US, concerns over such matters are virtually nonexistent. But Spain cannot print Euros, and is already deep in the hole on meeting budget deficit targets. Via translation from El Confidencial, Spain’s Social Security Reserve Fund Exhausted by 2018:

The Social Security reserve fund will run out of money in 2018. The cause in bonus payments to pensioners, which consumes every six months (in December and July) over €8.5 billion. Revenue from social security contributions are not sufficient to meet the payment obligations. Starting in 2018, only an extraordinary contribution by the State would make it possible for Social Security can meet its commitments.

The financial problems of Social Security are not a temporary problem. The government itself expects that this year the public pension system will register equivalent to 1.1% of GDP deficit (about 11 billion euros ), while in 2017 planned is an imbalance equivalent to 0.9% of GDP. In 2016, revenues from social security contributions recorded an accumulated a deficit of 12.24% compared to expectations. The deviation is even higher than the already recorded in 2015.

Spain has missed watered down budget deficit targets a half-dozen times. Spain is already under pressure from Brussels to cut spending or hike taxes, by 8 billion euros. Something has to give.

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Extremely damning.

In Clinton Case, Obama Administration Nullifies 6 Criminal Laws (Zuesse)

There can be no excuse for Obama’s depriving the public, via a grand jury decision, of the right to determine whether a full court case should be pursued in order to determine in a jury trial whether Hillary Clinton’s email system constituted a crime (or several crimes) under U.S. laws. The Obama Administration’s ‘finding’ that “clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information” would need to have been proven, in order for her to have been prosecuted under any U.S. criminal law, is a flagrant lie: none of the above six U.S. criminal laws requires that, but the only way to determine whether even that description (“clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information”) also applies to Clinton would be to go through a grand jury (presenting the above-cited six laws) and then to a jury case (to try her on those plus possibly also the charge that there was “clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information”).

But now, those six laws are effectively gone: anyone who in the future would be charged with violating any one of those six laws could reasonably cite the precedent that Ms. Clinton was not even charged, much less prosecuted, for actions which clearly fit the description provided in each one of those U.S. criminal laws. Anyone in the future who would be charged under any one of these six laws could prove discriminatory enforcement against himself or herself. (In the particular case discussed there, discriminatory enforcement was ruled not to have existed because the enforcement of the criminal law involved was judged to have been random enforcement, but this condition would certainly not apply in Clinton’s case, it was clearly “purposeful discrimination” in her favor, and therefore enforcement of the law against anyone else, where in Clinton’s case she wasn’t even charged — much less prosecuted — for that offense, would certainly constitute discriminatory enforcement.) So: that’s the end of these six criminal laws.

The U.S. President effectively nullified those laws, which were duly passed by Congress and signed into law by prior Presidents. And that’s the end, the clear termination, of a government “of laws, not of men”.

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Yeah, that is strange. Why go public with that unless you want to influence opinion? Which is not your job…

FBI Director Comey Preempts Justice Department (Intercept)

FBI Director James Comey took the unprecedented step of publicly preempting a Justice Department prosecution when he declared at a press conference Tuesday that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server. The FBI’s job is to investigate crimes; it is Justice Department prosecutors who are supposed to decide whether or not to move forward. But in a case that had enormous political implications, Comey decided the FBI would act on its own. “Although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case,” he said. Prosecutors could technically still file criminal charges, but it would require them to publicly disagree with their own investigators.

One of Comey’s likely motivations was avoiding the appearance that Department of Justice lawyers had biased the investigation due to their desire to avoid prosecuting a major party’s presidential nominee. He repeatedly assured the audience that “no outside influence of any kind was brought to bear.” Comey’s announcement also satisfied the public’s desire for a resolution sooner rather than later. But Matthew Miller, who was a spokesman for the Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder, called Comey’s press conference an “absolutely unprecedented, appalling, and a flagrant violation of Justice Department regulations.” He told The Intercept: “The thing that’s so damaging about this is that the Department of Justice is supposed to reach conclusions and put them in court filings. There’s a certain amount of due process there.”

Legal experts could not recall another time that the FBI had made its recommendation so publicly. “It’s not unusual for the FBI to take a strong positions on whether charges should be brought in a case,” said University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck. “The unusual part is publicizing it.”

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“James Comey was the chief prosecutor in the Southern District of New York between 2003 and 2005. He had no problem keeping me in Federal Prison on contempt of court without any charges, indictment, or a civil complaint..”

The Department Of “Just Us” (Martin Armstrong)

To indict someone, the criteria is supposed to be “intent.” Comey has used that to pretend there is no evidence that Hillary “intentionally” erased anything. Comey also stated that Hillary’s lawyers erased her emails using a keyword search program and they did not “read” the emails. He added that he would not recommend charges against Hillary or her aides. “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” Comey declared.

It was Comey who indicted Frank Quattrone for claiming he instructed his people to erase emails in his technology-industry banking group at Credit Suisse Group’s Credit Suisse First Boston, based upon a single email that read “clean up those files” in December 2000. That was more than enough for his “intent” requirement to obstruct justice. This further illustrates the double standard of justice for them vs. us.

[..] James Comey was the chief prosecutor in the Southern District of New York between 2003 and 2005. He had no problem keeping me in Federal Prison on contempt of court without any charges, indictment, or a civil complaint describing any crime whatsoever that they even admitted openly in court. There were never any charges or complaint filed, and they publicly stated, “[T]here is no description of criminal liability.” Yet, Comey allowed me to be held in prison, entirely arbitrarily, with absolutely nothing whatsoever; Comey completely violated my civil rights, those of my family, and all 240 employees. So he is not someone who upholds the Constitution when it goes against government or the banks. As they say, the Department of Justice is really “Just Us” in reality. He has proven that once again.

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