Oct 272016
 


Marion Post Wolcott. Unemployed coal miner’s mother in law and child. Marine, West Virginia 1938

With 70% Of Wildlife Gone, We Face Mass Extinction On Scale Of Dinosaurs (YP)
Mass Consumption Is Causing Mass Extinction. Can We Stop Ourselves? (TP)
Our Landfill Economy (CH Smith)
Mike Maloney: DEFLATION FIRST! (Max Keiser)
Globalization Goes Into Reverse (BBG)
The Next 10 Years Will Be Ugly for Your 401(k) (BBG)
Deutsche Bank Probes “Misstated” Derivative Valuations, Finds “Divergences” (ZH)
Goldman Sachs Does Mass Layoffs Piece by Piece (BBG)
US Election: Nothing to Lose (Steen Jakobsen)
Hacked Memo Offers Angry Glimpse Into Conflicted ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’ (Pol.)
Clinton Adviser Proposes Attacking Iran to Aid the Saudis in Yemen (NYMag)
Putin Tried to Warn Us About Syria Three Years Ago (TAM)
UK Deploys Hundreds Of Troops And Aircraft To Eastern Europe (G.)
Merkel Accuses Facebook, Google Of “Distorting Perception” (ZH)
Nuclear Power Is Over In The US Without More Government Subsidies (BBG)

 

 

To be correct, we don’t so much face it as live it.

70% Of Wildlife Gone: World Faces Mass Extinction On Scale Of Dinosaurs (YP)

Global wildlife populations will have fallen by more than two thirds on 1970 levels by the end of the decade, conservationists warn today. An assessment of more than 3,700 species of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles reveals a fall of 58% between 1970 and 2012, with no sign of a slowdown in the annual two per cent reduction in numbers. By 2020, populations of vertebrate species could have fallen by 67pc over half a century, unless action is taken to reverse the damaging impacts of human activity, the Living Planet report from WWF and the Zoological Society of London said. The figures prompted experts to warn that nature was facing a global “mass extinction” for the first time since the demise of the dinosaurs.

African elephants in Tanzania have seen numbers decimated by persistent poaching, while maned wolves in Brazil are threatened by grasslands being turned into farmland. Leatherback turtles in the Atlantic have seen populations reduced by up to 95pc, and European eels are also in decline. Wildlife faces further threats from over-exploitation, climate change and pollution, the report warns. Among the species most at risk are tigers, with only 3,900 left in the wild, and Amur leopards, whose numbers have fallen to just 70 in the face of hunting and the destruction of their habitat. Giant pandas have a population of just 1,864 in the wild in China, and although numbers are increasing, the species is still threatened by climate change and impacts of human activity.

Humans themselves are also victims of the deterioration of nature, the report warns, since they depend on breathable air, water and nutritious food. [..] Mike Barrett, director of science and policy at WWF-UK, said: “For the first time since the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, we face a global mass extinction of wildlife. “We ignore the decline of other species at our peril, for they are the barometer that reveals our impact on the world that sustains us. “Humanity’s misuse of natural resources is threatening habitats, pushing irreplaceable species to the brink and threatening the stability of our climate.”


This elephant is thought to have died after eating crops sprayed with pesticides in Assam, India REUTERS

Read more …

No we can’t. But we will be stopped.

Mass Consumption Is Causing Mass Extinction. Can We Stop Ourselves? (TP)

Populations of wild animals have plummeted 58% in the past four decades as humans have pushed them into ever-smaller habitats or killed them for food and financial gain, according to a new report from a leading environmental group. World Wildlife Fund researchers said the losses could be reversed over the 21st century by systematically factoring the value of nature into how we produce and consume goods and services, as well as adopting farming methods that work with ecosystems rather than against or in spite of them. WWF compiled data on more than 14,000 populations of 3,706 vertebrate species for the latest edition of its biennial Living Planet Report and found that global populations of amphibians, birds, fishes, mammals, and reptiles sank by an average of 58% between 1970 and 2012.

These populations could drop another 9% by 2020 based on current trends, the report stated. Freshwater wildlife populations dropped a dramatic 81%—meaning that for every 10 pond frogs that existed during Richard Nixon’s first term in the White House, there were fewer than two at the beginning of Barack Obama’s second. Terrestrial and marine species populations dropped by 38% and 36%, respectively, over the same period. The leading driver of wildlife population losses has been food production—overfishing and natural habitats converted to crop and grazing land—followed by pollution, invasive species, and climate change.

All five threats are symptoms of overconsumption of natural resources, the report stated, which has far outstripped the capacity of ecosystems to restore the fertile soil and clean water that support wildlife as well as human health and welfare. “Humanity currently needs the regenerative capacity of 1.6 Earths to provide the goods and services we use each year,” the report noted, and the short-term goals of most economic systems offer no incentive to change.

Read more …

It had been a while since I last saw that term.

Our Landfill Economy (CH Smith)

Correspondent Bart D. (Australia) captured the entire global economy in three words: The Landfill Economy. Stuff is manufactured, energy is consumed shipping it somewhere, consumers buy it and shortly thereafter it ends up as garbage in the landfill. This is of course the definition of “economic growth”: waste, inefficiency, environmental destruction–none of these matter. Only two things matter: maximize “growth” by any means necessary, and maximize profits by any means necessary. The Landfill Economy now encompasses the entire planet. The swirling gyre of plastic trash the size of Texas between Hawaii and California: it’s just one modest example of the planetary trash dump that “growth” and profit generate as byproducts/blowback.

The planet’s oceans are one giant trash dump. Everything from plastic water bottles to abandoned fishing nets to radiation to containers that fell off ships is floating around even the most distant corners of the seas. Seabirds nesting in remote islands die of starvation as their guts fill with plastic bits of “permanent growth.” Globalization has turned the planet’s land masses and rivers into trash dumps. Want to make a quick profit along a tropical sea coast? Dig some big holes near the coast, dump in baby prawns, food and chemicals to suppress algae blooms and diseases and then harvest the prawns to ship to the insatiable markets of the developed world. Once the prawn farms are poisoned wastelands, move on and despoil another coastline elsewhere.

Globalization has greased the slippery slope from factory to landfill by enabling the global distribution of defective parts. Whether they are pirated, designed to fail or just the result of slipshod quality control, the flood of defective parts guarantee that the entire assembly they are installed in–stoves, vacuum cleaners, transmissions, electronics, you name it–will soon fail and be shipped directly to the landfill, as repairing stuff is far costlier than buying a new replacement.

Read more …

Mike Maloney is one of the very few people who, like the Automatic Earth, have emphasized Deflation and The Velocity of Money as driving forces ever since we both predicted the 2008 fiasco. It’s funny, because Mike is all gold and stuff, and we have been saying all the time that there are more important things, like growing your own food etc etc. But that’s just a matter of who you’re addressing, and our audience unlike Mike’s isn’t necessarily investors, but ‘normal’ people.

Mike Maloney: DEFLATION FIRST! (Max Keiser)

Mike Maloney appears on Keiser Report to discuss how velocity of currency determines what happens next in the cycle. You’ll learn how central banks are manufacturing a crisis of epic proportions.

Read more …

You heard it here first.

Globalization Goes Into Reverse (BBG)

There’s a backlash against globalization underway in many Western countries. Although Americans still say positive things about international trade and immigration, political candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have gotten a lot of support for opposing both to a degree that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Meanwhile, trade deals like the relatively innocuous Trans-Pacific Partnership are suddenly in danger. Britain’s divorce from the European Union is also commonly interpreted as a rejection of globalization. But there’s a likelihood that today’s anti-globalization warriors are fighting yesterday’s war. By many measures, globalization has been in full retreat since the crisis of 2008. First, there’s trade. For many decades up until 2008, global trade volumes had been increasing at a healthy clip. But the crisis and recession stopped trade growth in its tracks, and it hasn’t recovered; 2008 was the all-time peak of world trade as a % of total output:

Read more …

And the next 10 after that.

The Next 10 Years Will Be Ugly for Your 401(k) (BBG)

It doesn’t seem like much to ask for—a 5% return. But the odds of making even that on traditional investments in the next 10 years are slim, according to a new report from investment advisory firm Research Affiliates. The company looked at the default settings of 11 retirement calculators, robo-advisers, and surveys of institutional investors. Their average annualized long-term expected return? 6.2%. After 1.6% was shaved off to allow for a decade of inflation1, the number dropped to 4.6%, which was rounded up. Voilà. So on average we all expect a 5%; the report tells us we should start getting used to disappointment. To show how a mainstream stock and bond portfolio would do under Research Affiliates’ 10-year model, the report looks at the typical balanced portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds.

An example would be the $29.6 billion Vanguard Balanced Index Fund (VBINX). For the decade ended Sept. 30, VBINX had an average annual performance of 6.6%, and that’s before inflation. Over the next decade, according to the report, “the ubiquitous 60/40 U.S. portfolio has a 0% probability of achieving a 5% or greater annualized real return.” One message that John West, head of client strategies at Research Affiliates and a co-author of the report, hopes people will take away is that the high returns of the past came with a price: lower returns in the future. “If the retirement calculators say we’ll make 6% or 7%, and people saved based on that but only make 3%, they’re going to have a massive shortfall,” he said. “They’ll have to work longer or retire with a substantially different standard of living than they thought they would have.”

Read more …

Deutsche senses legal threats, ‘volunteers’ to cooperate.

Deutsche Bank Probes “Misstated” Derivative Valuations, Finds “Divergences” (ZH)

Perhaps the single biggest reason why Deutsche Bank’s stock has been drastically underperforming most of Europe’s banks, in addition to its skyhigh leverage and lack of capital buffer, is the market’s concern about what is hidden on its books, namely whether the bank’s billions in loans and its trillions in derivatives have been marked correctly. Which is why a just released report from Bloomberg that Deutsche Bank is reviewing whether it “misstated” the value of derivatives in its interest-rate trading business, will hardly spark optimism in the bank’s critical asset marking practices; the good news is that according to the report the biggest German lender is sharing its findings with U.S. authorities, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

Zero-coupon inflation swaps are derivatives that help customers bet on, or hedge against, inflation. Two parties agree to exchange a payment in the future whose size is determined by how much an inflation index rose or fell. The issue, however, is not the underlying security, but the total notional involved, which based on the DB’s latest public filings, could be in the hundreds of billions (or more), and how substantial the impact on DB’s P&L any variation from true market values will be. Specifically, DB is looking at valuations on a type of derivative known as zero-coupon inflation swaps. The reason for the probe is that, as has been a recurring case with many of its peers of the last few years, the bank found valuations that “diverged from internal models” at which point it began questioning traders.

The push to finally open its books comes after CEO John Cryan’s vow in February to try to resolve his institution’s legal challenges swiftly. As Bloomberg sarcastically adds, “he is still working on it.” The bank has been facing regulatory and enforcement pressure around the world, including a money-laundering investigation tied to its Russia operations, inquiries into mortgage-bond trading before and after the financial crisis and charges that the bank colluded to help falsify the accounts of Italy’s Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena. More importantly perhaps is the reason why DB has decided to share its internal probe with the US, whose Justice Department asked in September for a $14 billion settlement, an amount the bank said it wouldn’t pay.

The figure was big enough to unleash a selling frenzy in the stock, sending it to all time lows, leading to repeating rumored discussions with outside sources, most recently of Saudi and Chinese origina, about raising capital. The bank last year hired Steven F. Reich as its general counsel for the Americas to help navigate its legal probes. Reich is a former official at the Justice Department and attorney for former President Bill Clinton. Perhaps it is time for Deutsche to make some donations to the Clinton Foundation?

Read more …

Spare a thought for a Goldman banker.

Goldman Sachs Does Mass Layoffs Piece by Piece (BBG)

The first “plant layoff” notice came in February: 43 people would lose their jobs. The second arrived six weeks later, increasing the cuts to 109 workers. Then a third, in April, for 146 more. And a fourth, in June: 98. Three more notices followed, including 20 dismissals announced last week. The “plant” in question – Goldman Sachs. Like all big companies in New York State, the firm is required to file a “WARN notice” with state authorities when it plans to shed large numbers of employees as part of a plant closing, or “mass layoffs” involving 250 or more. Employers also must inform the state of smaller reductions under certain circumstances, and Goldman Sachs cited a “plant layoff” in each case. Last week’s notice brings this year’s job-cut tally to 443.

With the run of notices, seven since the start of the year, the bank has signaled its intention to dismiss hundreds of employees in New York without placing a single, headline-grabbing number on the overall reduction, already its largest since 2008. The company’s approach differs from competitors, including Morgan Stanley, who have shown a preference for larger, one-time cuts. “When there’s a big number, people right away get that something is happening at that firm – it’s a negative,” said Jeanne Branthover, a partner at New York-based executive-search firm DHR International. “This is more, ‘We’re having layoffs and we don’t want to explain it.’ It’s more under the radar screen.”

It also reflects the firm’s philosophy. The company doesn’t see a reason to make announcements about job cuts since it’s part of the normal course of business and something that needs to be done if the environment calls for it, CFO Harvey Schwartz said last year. “You just have to run the business, and if the revenue environment is such that you’re in a period of decline, you just need to take those actions,” Schwartz said in November at a conference. “So, you probably won’t hear us make lots of announcements.”

Read more …

“..the US presidential campaign comes up short in many categories except one: failure is almost guaranteed.”

US Election: Nothing to Lose (Steen Jakobsen)

My present macro speech is titled “Ugly: Don’t fight with ‘ugly’ people as they have nothing to lose”. To me, this is the essence of the US presidential campaign. The ugly truth surrounding this ballot lies in the bigger picture, as whomever becomes president will go down in history as the “non-president” – the president who made us need, see, and demand something else. For all of the colourful headlines, and the almost McCarthy-esque pursuit of Trump by mainstream media, this is not going to be about “Trump, the person” or his more or less moronic views; Trump merely represents the catalyst for change. He is the anti-establishment candidate, yes, but not our vision for the future. Ultimately, Trump may still win despite (rather than because of) being… Trump.

That does not excuse mainstream media for not going after Clinton. If elected, she will be the least-liked president in US history, and I doubt any of her policies will do anything good for America. More Barack Obama-type policy is not what the world needs. Obama may have created more jobs, but the average income for American has actually fallen during his presidency. What does this mean? It means he has presided over an economy that has created more jobs but less valuable ones, and growth during his tenure has been lower than during any other president, with the largest build-up in debt. I am pretty sure that even this economist could create jobs with the amount of money Obama has spent!

Mind you I am 100% agnostic, politically-speaking. In fact, I don’t even think this election really matters! No, this is not a new trend; no, Clinton is not the answer… but what this is a generational repositioning and renegotiation of the social contract. The last time that this happened was in the 1960s, when the children of World War II went for peace, love, and a lot of drugs. Now we have the Berlin Wall generation coming of age, and this time the focus is anti-globalisation and anti establishment sentiment… and yes, again a lot of drugs. The real election issue in America, but also in Europe. is how to deal with a broken social contract.

Society has been pushed so far away from its natural equilibrium in terms of markets, social homogeneity, equality, and productivity that the move back to “normal” will bear both a political price and a penalty in terms of growth and outlook. Put differently, when we look throughout history we know that part of the process of evaluation is to smell, feel, taste, and experience what we don’t need in order to move towards what we do – a better version of society, but mainly a better one of ourselves. The next election cycle is about protest; it will be followed by crisis and then new beginnings.

Read more …

Boy what a mess. And all they can think of is blaming the Russians. And the media just copy that, no questions asked.

Hacked Memo Offers Angry Glimpse Into Conflicted ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’ (Pol.)

As a longtime Bill Clinton adviser came under fire several years ago for alleged conflicts of interest involving a private consulting firm and the Clinton Foundation, he mounted an audacious defense: Bill Clinton’s doing it, too. The unusual and brash rejoinder from veteran Clinton aide and Teneo Consulting co-founder Doug Band is scattered across the thousands of hacked emails published by WikiLeaks, but a memo released Wednesday provides the most detailed look to date at the intertwined worlds of nonprofit, for-profit, official and political activities involving Clinton and many of his top aides.

The memo at one point refers bluntly to the money-making part of Clinton’s life as “Bill Clinton Inc.” and notes that in at least one case a company – global education firm Laureate International Universities – began paying Clinton personally after first being a donor to the Clinton Foundation. The 12-page document, prepared in November 2011 by Band with input from Clinton adviser John Podesta, came as Chelsea Clinton was pressing for changes to the foundation’s governance and complaining that Band, Teneo co-founder Declan Kelly and others were profiting from their ties to her father and the foundation. In the memo, addressed to outside lawyers conducting a review of the foundation’s governance, Band insists that the relationship actually benefited the foundation financially, by bringing in new donors.

[..] A spokesman for the Clinton Foundation declined to comment on the memo or confirm the authenticity of the document, which was apparently stolen in a massive hack of Podesta’s Gmail account. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has taken a similar tack, declining to comment on the emails, while pointing to evidence that their release is part of a Russian government effort aimed at interfering in the presidential election.

Read more …

Morell’s perspective is in line with that of a new report on Middle East strategy released by the Center for American Progress and the thinking of Clinton’s top national-security aide Jake Sullivan, who recently declared, “We need to be raising the costs to Iran for its destabilizing behavior and we need to be raising the confidence of our Sunni partners.” On Tuesday, Morell put this sentiment in terms both more concise and grandiose: “We’re back and we’re going to lead again.”

Clinton Adviser Proposes Attacking Iran to Aid the Saudis in Yemen (NYMag)

Michael Morell is a former acting director of the CIA and a national security adviser to Hillary Clinton — one who is widely expected to occupy a senior post in her administration. He is also an opponent of the Iran nuclear agreement, a defender of waterboarding, and an advocate for making Russia “pay a price” in Syria by covertly killing Putin’s soldiers. On Tuesday, Morell added another title to that résumé: proponent of going to war with Iran, for the sake of securing Saudi Arabia’s influence in Yemen. “Ships leave Iran on a regular basis carrying arms to the Houthis in Yemen,” Morell said, in remarks to the Center for American Progress, the liberal think tank founded by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. “I would have no problem from a policy perspective of having the U.S. Navy boarding their ships, and if there are weapons on them, to turn those ships around.”

Morell did note, per Bloomberg’s Eli Lake, that this policy “raised questions of international maritime law.” Which is a bit like saying, “Breaking into someone’s home, putting a gun in their face, and demanding they hand over all their weapons raises questions about armed-robbery law.” Understatement aside, Morell’s stipulation suggests that he might be dissuaded from initiating a naval war with Iran if the legal issues prove too pesky. But the fact that a person who has Clinton’s ear on national security thinks this proposal makes sense from a “policy perspective” is alarming. Forcibly boarding another nation’s naval or civilian vessels (outside one’s own territorial waters) and confiscating their weapons can reasonably be construed as an act of war, a point that would be unmistakable if the roles here were reversed.

How many Americans (whose paychecks aren’t directly or indirectly subsidized by Gulf State monarchies) think keeping Yemen within Saudi Arabia’s sphere of influence is a cause worth entering another Middle Eastern war over? How many would think so if they knew that the Saudis had recently bombed a Yemeni funeral hall, killing 140 people and leading the Obama administration to reconsider its support for the Saudi intervention? Or that some observers of the conflict contend that the Saudis are exaggerating Iran’s role, in order to justify the kingdom’s own expansionist ambitions?

Read more …

And the west pretend they don’t know this. So we can create chaos and used it to take over resources.

Putin Tried to Warn Us About Syria Three Years Ago (TAM)

As Russia and the United States approach arguably the most dangerous crossroads in history — and as Western media continues to crucify Russia for its actions within Syria — a closer look at the rationale Putin used for intervening in the Syrian war paints a sane explanation of how we ended up at this juncture of a global conflict. Unsurprisingly, the explanation comes from the Russian president himself and was actually offered over 3 years ago. As expected, the Western corporate media and the Obama administration chose to ignore Vladimir Putin’s explanation for Russia’s stance on Syria and continued a number of policies that have completely exacerbated the conflict.

In a live interview with RT in June 2013, Putin was asked for an explanation regarding Russia’s support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria, even though this support has made some people very angry at Russia. Putin’s response was that Russia does not support the Assad government or Assad himself, but before defining Russia’s official position, he explained what Russia does not want to do within Syria or across the Middle East: “We do not want to interfere into the internal schism of Islam, between Shias and Sunnis. These are internal issues of the Islamic world. We have very good relations with much of the Arabic world, Iran for example, and others.” However, according to Putin, what worries Russia can be identified by having a look “at what is going on in the Middle East in general.”

“Egypt is not calm. Iraq is not calm – and it is not assured in its continued existence as one state. Yemen is not calm; Tunisia is not calm. Libya is witnessing inter-ethnic, inter-tribal conflict. So the entire region has been engulfed, at a minimum, into a state of conflict and undecidedness. And now Syria, down the same path.” In Putin’s eyes, these events are no accident. As he puts it, these events happened for a reason: “Some people, from the outside, think that if they can ‘comb’ the region to how they see fit – some of them call this ‘democracy’ – then the region will come into calmness and order. That’s not how it is. Without taking into account the history, the traditions, religious particularities, you must not do anything in the Middle East, especially as an outsider.”

Read more …

Don’t you guys have enough trouble at home?

UK Deploys Hundreds Of Troops And Aircraft To Eastern Europe (G.)

The UK is deploying hundreds of troops, as well as aircraft and armour to eastern Europe as part of the biggest build-up of Nato forces in the region since the cold war. The deployment is taking place during growing tensions over a series of high-profile Russian military manoeuvres. RAF Typhoon aircraft from RAF Coningsby will be sent to Romania for up to four months, while 800 personnel will be sent with armoured support to Estonia, 150 more than previously planned, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said. France and Denmark will also commit more troops, the British government said. The announcement was made soon after a Russian fleet, believed to be bound to take part in the fighting in Syria, passed close to the British Isles.

On Wednesday, Russia withdrew a request to refuel its boats in Spanish territory, as Nato put pressure on Madrid to deny permission. Tensions between Nato members and Russia have been heightened since Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014 and Ukraine descended into civil war as a result. The deployment of British troops to Estonia forms part of a wider Nato commitment to station four new battalions, totalling around 4,000 personnel, on the alliance’s eastern flank. David Cameron confirmed at Nato’s summit in Warsaw in July that the UK was to send 650 troops to Estonia. As well as announcing the extra 150, the MoD on Wednesday gave further details of the deployment, including the Typhoons, a detachment of drones and Challenger tanks.

Read more …

“The algorithms must be made public, so that one can inform oneself as an interested citizen on questions like: what influences my behavior on the internet and that of others?”

Merkel Accuses Facebook, Google Of “Distorting Perception” (ZH)

While Facebook and Google have been repeatedly accused of media bias and manipulating public opinion, especially during the US presidential campaign, an unexpected attack on the two media giants came today not from the US but from Germany, when Chancellor Angela Merkel launched a full-on attack at the two companies, accusing them of “narrowing perspective,” and demanding they disclose their privately-developed algorithms. Merkel previously blamed social media for anti-immigrant sentiment and the rise of the far right. “The algorithms must be made public, so that one can inform oneself as an interested citizen on questions like: what influences my behavior on the internet and that of others?” said Merkel during a media conference in Berlin on Tuesday cited by RT.

What she said next echoed similar complaints lobbed at the media giants by those considered less than mainstream: “These algorithms, when they are not transparent, can lead to a distortion of our perception, they narrow our breadth of information.” In a tech-driven world, Google uses an algorithm to decide which search results are first shown to a user (and which are not, for example when one searches about Hillary’s health), while Facebook arranges the order of the news feed, and decides to include certain posts from a user’s liked pages and friends, at the expense of others. Both sites also promote links to news articles, often based on a user’s own media interests. However, it is still a human’s job to write and calibrate these algorithms which are at the core of the intellectual property of any social media or search website, and comprise some of the most highly-protected trade secrets in the world, potentially worth billions.

No internet giant has ever revealed its inner workings. Merkel did not specifically name Facebook, Google or Twitter, but implied that the large platforms are creating “bubbles” of self-reinforcing views, and squeezing out smaller news providers. One could also call it propaganda. “The big internet platforms, via their algorithms, have become an eye of a needle which diverse media must pass through to reach users,” warned Merkel. “This is a development that we need to pay careful attention to.” In their defense, Google and Facebooks have retorted that the so-called social media bubble is largely a “myth”, and that online users have a wider access to differing views than under a pre-internet model, where most news would be acquired from just a handful of newspapers and one or two TV channels.

Read more …

It’s decomissioning that will be teh most expensive. Hey, US, what’s going on at Yucca mountain?

Nuclear Power Is Over In The US Without More Government Subsidies (BBG)

Nuclear power will come to an end in the U.S. if the industry doesn’t get more government support, according to Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest investment firms. The nation’s nuclear reactors need more subsidies to keep running, such as a federal carbon tax that’ll reward them for their zero-emissions power, Bob Mancini, co-head of Carlyle Group’s power unit, said at a conference in New York. Carlyle, which has $176 billion in assets under management across funds, invests in natural gas- and coal-fired power plants and renewable energy projects. Its outlook comes as nuclear power generators including Exelon and Entergy make plans to shut reactors across the country.

Low power prices, fueled by an abundance of natural gas from shale drilling and weakening demand, have squeezed their profits just as their operating costs rise amid mounting regulation. “We will see the end of the nuclear industry in the next coming decades” without legislation, incentives or other support to keep reactors open or encourage new builds, Mancini said at S&P Global Platts’s Financing U.S. Power Conference on Tuesday.

Read more …

Oct 152016
 


Notre Dame Gargoyle, Paris France, 19th century

Former British diplomat and MI6 ‘ranking figure’ Alastair Crooke quotes my September 26 article “Why There is Trump” so extensively in this article for Consortium News that I thought I might as well post the whole thing here at the Automatic Earth too. The other sources he also quotes -John Gray, Stephen Hadley among them- help to put my points in a solid perspective, which is nice to see. I can only hope that this will open more people’s eyes to the fact that in the end of growth and centralization, we are witnessing the “most important global development in decades.”

Here’s Alastair Crooke:

 

 

Raul Ilargi Meijer, the long-standing economics commentator, has written both succinctly – and provocatively: “It’s over! The entire model our societies have been based on for at least as long as we ourselves have lived, is over! That’s why there’s Trump.

“There is no growth. There hasn’t been any real growth for years. All there is left are empty hollow sunshiny S&P stock market numbers propped up with ultra-cheap debt and buybacks, and employment figures that hide untold millions hiding from the labor force. And most of all there’s debt, public as well as private, that has served to keep an illusion of growth alive and now increasingly no longer can.

Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix, Arizona. June 18, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix, Arizona. June 18, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

“These false growth numbers have one purpose only: for the public to keep the incumbent powers that be in their plush seats. But they could always ever only pull the curtain of Oz [Wizard of Oz] over people’s eyes for so long, and it’s no longer so long.

“That’s what the ascent of Trump means, and Brexit, Le Pen, and all the others. It’s over. What has driven us for all our lives has lost both its direction and its energy.”

Meijer continues: “We are smack in the middle of the most important global development in decades, in some respects arguably even in centuries, a veritable revolution, which will continue to be the most important factor to shape the world for years to come, and I don’t see anybody talking about it. That has me puzzled.

“The development in question is the end of global economic growth, which will lead inexorably to the end of centralization (including globalization). It will also mean the end of the existence of most, and especially the most powerful, international institutions.

“In the same way it will be the end of -almost- all traditional political parties, which have ruled their countries for decades and are already today at or near record low support levels (if you’re not clear on what’s going on, look there, look at Europe!)

“This is not a matter of what anyone, or any group of people, might want or prefer, it’s a matter of ‘forces’ that are beyond our control, that are bigger and more far-reaching than our mere opinions, even though they may be man-made.

“Tons of smart and less smart folks are breaking their heads over where Trump and Brexit and Le Pen and all these ‘new’ and scary things and people and parties originate, and they come up with little but shaky theories about how it’s all about older people, and poorer and racist and bigoted people, stupid people, people who never voted, you name it.

“But nobody seems to really know or understand. Which is odd, because it’s not that hard. That is, this all happens because growth is over. And if growth is over, so are expansion and centralization in all the myriad of shapes and forms they come in.”

Further, Meijer writes: “Global is gone as a main driving force, pan-European is gone, and whether the United States will stay united is far from a done deal. We are moving towards a mass movement of dozens of separate countries and states and societies looking inward. All of which are in some form of -impending- trouble or another.

“What makes the entire situation so hard to grasp for everyone is that nobody wants to acknowledge any of this. Even though tales of often bitter poverty emanate from all the exact same places that Trump and Brexit and Le Pen come from too.

“That the politico-econo-media machine churns out positive growth messages 24/7 goes some way towards explaining the lack of acknowledgement and self-reflection, but only some way. The rest is due to who we ourselves are. We think we deserve eternal growth.”

 

The End of ‘Growth’

Well, is global “growth over”? Of course Raul Ilargi is talking “aggregate” (and there will be instances of growth within any contraction). But what is clear is that debt-driven investment and low-interest-rate policies are having less and less effect – or no effect at all – in producing growth – either in terms of domestic or trade growth, as Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge writes:

President Barack Obama runs onto a stage in Rockville, Maryland, Oct. 3, 2013 (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama runs onto a stage in Rockville, Maryland, Oct. 3, 2013 (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

“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, … This year, the ECB printed nearly €600 billion within the frame of asset purchase programme (QE).”

Central Banks can and do create money, but that is not the same as creating wealth or purchasing power. By channelling their credit creation through the intermediary of banks granting loans to their favored clients, Central Banks grant to one set of entities purchasing power – a purchasing power that must necessarily have been transferred from another set of entities within Europe (i.e. transferred from ordinary Europeans in the case of the ECB), who, of course will have less purchasing power, less discretionary spending income.

The devaluation of purchasing power is not so obvious (no runaway inflation), because all major currencies are devaluing more or less pari passu – and because the authorities periodically steam hammer down the price of gold, so that there is no evident standard by which people can “see” for themselves the extent of their currencies’ joint downward float.

And world trade is grinding down too, as Lambert Strether of Corrente rather elegantly explains: “Back to shipping: I started following shipping … partly because it’s fun, but more because shipping is about stuff, and tracking stuff seemed like a far more attractive way of getting a handle on ‘the economy’ than economics statistics, let alone whatever books the Wall Streeters were talking on any given day. And don’t get me started on Larry Summers.

“So what I noticed was decline, and not downward blips followed by rebounds, but decline, for months and then a year. Decline in rail, even when you back out coal and grain, and decline in demand for freight cars. Decline in trucking, and decline in the demand for trucks. Air freight wobbly. No Christmas bounce at the Pacific ports. And now we have the Hanjin debacle — all that capital tied up in stranded ships, though granted only $12 billion or so — and the universal admission that somehow “we” invested w-a-a-a-a-a-y too much money in big ships and boats, implying (I suppose) that we need to ship a lot less stuff than we thought, at least across the oceans.

“Meanwhile, and in seeming contradiction not only to a slow collapse of global trade, but to the opposition to ‘trade deals,’ warehousing is one of the few real estate bright spots, and supply chain management is an exciting field. It’s disproportionately full of sociopaths, and therefore growing and dynamic!

“And the economics statistics seem to say nothing is wrong. Consumers are the engine of the economy and they are confident. But at the end of the day, people need stuff; life is lived in the material world, even if you think you live it on your device. It’s an enigma! So what I’m seeing is a contradiction: Less stuff is moving, but the numbers say ‘this is fine.’ Am I right, here? So in what follows, I’m going to assume that numbers don’t matter, but stuff does.”

 

Fake Elixir

Or, to be more faux-empirical: as Bloomberg notes in A Weaker Currency is no longer the Elixir, It Once Was: “global central banks have cut policy rates 667 times since 2008, according to Bank of America. During that period, the dollar’s 10 main peers have fallen 14%, yet Group-of-Eight economies have grown an average of just 1%. Since the late 1990s, a 10% inflation-adjusted depreciation in currencies of 23 advanced economies boosted net exports by just 0.6% of GDP, according to Goldman Sachs. That compares with 1.3% of GDP in the two decades prior. U.S. trade with all nations slipped to $3.7 trillion in 2015, from $3.9 trillion in 2014.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping greets President Barack Obama upon arrival for the G20 Summit at the Hangzhou International Expo Center in Hangzhou, China, Sept. 4, 2016. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Chinese President Xi Jinping greets President Barack Obama upon arrival for the G20 Summit at the Hangzhou International Expo Center in Hangzhou, China, Sept. 4, 2016. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

With “growth over,” so too is globalization: Even the Financial Times agrees, as its commentator Martin Wolf writes in his comment, The Tide of Globalisation is Turning: “Globalisation has at best stalled. Could it even go into reverse? Yes. It requires peace among the great powers … Does globalisation’s stalling matter? Yes.”

Globalization is stalling – not because of political tensions (a useful “scapegoat”), but because growth is flaccid as a result of a veritable concatenation of factors causing its arrest – and because we have entered into debt deflation that is squeezing what’s left of discretionary, consumption-available, income. But Wolf is right. Ratcheting tensions with Russia and China will not somehow solve America’s weakening command over the global financial system – even if capital flight to the dollar might give the U.S. financial system a transient “high.”

So what might the “turning tide” of globalization actually mean? Does it mean the end of the neo-liberalist, financialized world? That is hard to say. But expect no rapid “u-turn” – and no apologies. The Great Financial Crisis of 2008 – at the time – was thought by many to mark the end to neo-liberalism. But it never happened – instead, a period of fiscal retrenchment and austerity was imposed that contributed to a deepening distrust of the status quo, and a crisis rooted in a widespread, popular sense that “their societies” were headed in the wrong direction.

Neo-liberalism is deeply entrenched – not least in Europe’s Troika and in the Eurogroup that oversees creditor interests, and which, under European Union rules, has come to dominate E.U. financial and tax policy.

It is too early to say from whence the economic challenge to prevailing orthodoxy will come, but in Russia there is a group of prominent economists gathered together as the Stolypin Club, who are evincing a renewed interest in that old adversary of Adam Smith, Friedrich List (d. 1846), who evolved a “national system of political economy.” List upheld the (differing interests) of the nation to that of the individual. He gave prominence to the national idea, and insisted on the special requirements of each nation according to its circumstances, and especially to the degree of its development. He famously doubted the sincerity of calls to free trade from developed nations, in particular those by Britain. He was, as it were, the arch anti-globalist.

 

A Post-Globalism

One can see that this might well fit the current post-globalist mood. List’s acceptance of the need for a national industrial strategy and the reassertion of the role of the state as the final guarantor of social cohesion is not some whimsy pursued by a few Russian economists. It is entering the mainstream. The May government in the U.K. precisely is breaking with the neoliberal model that has ruled British politics since the 1980s – and is breaking towards a List-ian approach.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sits with British Prime Minister Theresa May in the White Room No. 10 Downing Street in London, U.K., on July 19, 2016. [State Department Photo]

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sits with British Prime Minister Theresa May in the White Room No. 10 Downing Street in London, U.K., on July 19, 2016. [State Department Photo]

Be that as it may (whether this approach swims more widely back into fashion), the very contemporary British professor and political philosopher, John Gray has suggested the key point is: “The resurgence of the state is one of the ways in which the present time differs from the ‘new times’ diagnosed by Martin Jacques and other commentators in the 1980s. Then, it seemed national boundaries were melting away and a global free market was coming into being. It’s a prospect I never found credible.

“A globalised economy existed before 1914, but it rested on a lack of democracy. Unchecked mobility of capital and labour may raise productivity and create wealth on an unprecedented scale, but it is also highly disruptive in its impact on the lives of working people – particularly when capitalism hits one of its periodic crises. When the global market gets into grave trouble, neoliberalism is junked in order to meet a popular demand for security. That is what is happening today.

“If the tension between global capitalism and the nation state was one of the contradictions of Thatcherism, the conflict between globalization and democracy has undone the left. From Bill Clinton and Tony Blair onwards, the center-left embraced the project of a global free market with an enthusiasm as ardent as any on the right. If globalisation was at odds with social cohesion, society had to be re-engineered to become an adjunct of the market. The result was that large sections of the population were left to moulder in stagnation or poverty, some without any prospect of finding a productive place in society.”

If Gray is correct that when globalized economics strikes trouble, people will demand that the state must pay attention to their own parochial, national economic situation (and not to the utopian concerns of the centralizing élite), it suggests that just as globalization is over – so too is centralization (in all its many manifestations).

The E.U., of course, as an icon of introverted centralization, should sit up, and pay attention. Jason Cowley, the editor of the (Leftist) New Statesman says: “In any event … however you define it, [the onset of ‘New Times’] will not lead to a social-democratic revival: it looks as if, in many Western countries, we are entering an age in which centre-left parties cannot form ruling majorities, having leaked support to nationalists, populists and more radical alternatives.”

 

The Problem of Self-Delusion

So, to return to Ilargi’s point, that “we are smack in the middle of the most important global development in decades … and I don’t see anybody talking about it. That has me puzzled” and to which he answers that ultimately, the “silence” is due to ourselves: “We think we deserve eternal growth.”

President Barack Obama answers questions at a press conference at Konstantinovsky Palace during the G20 Summit in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Sept. 6, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama answers questions at a press conference at Konstantinovsky Palace during the G20 Summit in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Sept. 6, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

He is surely right that it somehow answers to the Christian meme of linear progress (material here, rather than spiritual); but more pragmatically, doesn’t “growth” underpin the whole Western financialized, global system: “it was about lifting the ‘others’ out of their poverty”?

Recall, Stephen Hadley, the former U.S. National Security Adviser to President George W. Bush, warning plainly that foreign-policy experts rather should pay careful attention to the growing public anger: that “globalization was a mistake” and that “the elites have sleep-walked the [U.S.] into danger.”

“This election isn’t just about Donald Trump,” Hadley argued. “It’s about the discontents of our democracy, and how we are going to address them … whoever is elected, will have to deal with these discontents.”

In short, if globalization is giving way to discontent, the lack of growth can undermine the whole financialized global project. Stiglitz tells us that this has been evident for the past 15 years — last month he noted that he had warned then of: “growing opposition in the developing world to globalizing reforms: It seemed a mystery: people in developing countries had been told that globalization would increase overall wellbeing. So why had so many people become so hostile to it? How can something that our political leaders – and many an economist – said would make everyone better off, be so reviled? One answer occasionally heard from the neoliberal economists who advocated for these policies is that people are better off. They just don’t know it. Their discontent is a matter for psychiatrists, not economists.”

This “new” discontent, Stiglitz now says, is extended into advanced economies. Perhaps this is what Hadley means when he says, “globalization was a mistake.” It is now threatening American financial hegemony, and therefore its political hegemony too.

 

Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy. He is the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum, which advocates for engagement between political Islam and the West.

Oct 092016
 
 October 9, 2016  Posted by at 8:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  2 Responses »


NPC Balloon at Shriners convention, Washington DC 1923

Less Than Half Of US 22-26-Year-Olds Pay Their Own Rent, Health Insurance (F.)
The Coming Collapse Of US Net Worth Will Wipe Out Millions Of Americans (SRSr)
World Leaders Vow To Boost Growth Despite Brexit, Anti-Globalization (CNBC)
Deutsche Bank CEO Cryan Doesn’t Reach Accord With US (BBG)
Qatari Investors Eyeing Control of Deutsche Bank (Spiegel)
Draghi Points to 2019 as Time for Inflation Mission Accomplished (BBG)
US Unemployment Rate Shows At 5% But More Realistic Rate Is Higher (CNBC)
UK MPs Demand Vote On Hard Brexit Plans (G.)
Britain ‘Ignored Plea By France’ To Aid Stranded Calais Child Refugees (G.)

 

 

Recovery in all its glory.

Less Than Half Of US 22-26-Year-Olds Pay Their Own Rent, Health Insurance (F.)

According to a new survey, people in their 20s and 30s are having trouble “adulting,” or achieving financial independence. Conducted by Bank of America and USA Today, the report says less than half of the 22-26-year-olds surveyed pay their own rent (47%), health insurance (41%), or contribute to a retirement account (27%). One thing they learned from the survey of Millennials (born in the early 1980s to mid ‘90s) and Generation Z’ers (born in the mid-1990s to early 2000s) said Andrew Plepler, the bank’s Enterprise, Social and Governance executive, was that “adulthood” defined by people in their 20s isn’t about age or milestones such as getting married or buying a home. “Instead, the majority said that adulthood really begins when you’re financially independent – when you can find a job, pay your own bills, cover your own rent and stop relying on mom and dad for financial support,” he said.

Indeed, the respondents who did report feeling like adults said it’s because they had help preparing from their parents (60%), because they have a job (60%) or they had a role model to guide the way (49%). They’re also thinking ahead about the economy in the wake of the presidential election : • 65% say economic issues are more important to them than social issues (34%) • Most would choose a candidate that’s best for the country (79%) over one who would improve just their own financial situation (21%) • Job growth/unemployment (27%), health care costs (25%) and college affordability/student debt (24%) rose to the top as young voters’ top campaign issues in this election. • Among those with student debt, nearly 25% say it will impact the way they vote “a great deal”

Read more …

Yeah, maybe net worth vs energy use is a good way to measure reality.

The Coming Collapse Of US Net Worth Will Wipe Out Millions Of Americans (SRSr)

As the Financial Circus continues today, pushing down the precious metals prices, millions of Americans are going to get wiped out when the collapse of U.S. net worth begins in earnest. Anyone with a tad bit of common sense realizes these financial markets today are totally disconnected from reality. With new stories of 40 million Russians to take part in “Nuclear Disaster” drill, the Philippine President telling President Obama “To Go To Hell”, he’s buying weapons from Russia, U.S. Suspends Diplomatic Relations With Russia on Syria, U.S. Ends Fiscal 2014 With $1.4 Trillion Debt Increase: Third Largest In History, Deutsche Bank Troubles Raise Fear of Global Shock, it’s completely hilarious that the gold and silver prices are selling off big time today.

With 90% of the U.S. media now in control by six large mega-corporations, Americans have no idea just how bad the U.S. financial system has become. News stories today that would have caused a stock market crash and a spike in the precious metals years ago… no longer are a realistic barometer of the market today. Instead, the broader Stock, Bond and Real Estate Markets where 99% of Americans are invested, continue to be propped up. How propped up? Well, let’s say by a staggering $31 trillion in the past six years. According to the wonderful folks at the Federal Reserve, U.S. net worth increased from $57.9 trillion Q2 2010, to a stunning $89 trillion Q2 2016:

I would imagine a lot of wealthy Americans believe they are living life “High On The Hog” today. However, that $31 trillion in additional wealth is a nothing more than a “Digital Mirage.” For wealth to grow, more energy must be burned and positive economic activity must be generated. This is the foundation of all economic principles. Unfortunately, Americans did not burn more energy to create this additional $31 trillion in U.S. net worth. Matter-a-fact, total U.S. energy consumption in 2016 will likely turn out to be less than it was in 2010. This chart is very simple to understand. The left axis shows U.S. net worth in trillions of dollars while the right axis indicates total U.S. energy consumption in quadrillion Btu’s (that’s one hell of a lot of energy). As we can see, total U.S. energy consumption has fluctuated a bit, but has been relatively flat for the past six years.

[..] How the U.S. GDP increased nearly 25% in six years while its energy consumption remained flat is one for the record books. Now, this wasn’t always the case. U.S. energy consumption nearly tripled from 34 quad Btu’s in 1950 to 98 quad Btu’s in 2000. Thus, U.S. GDP increased as total energy consumption increased.

Read more …

Obsolete.

World Leaders Vow To Boost Growth Despite Brexit, Anti-Globalization (CNBC)

World finance leaders pledged Saturday to use more resources to try to bolster economic gains as they confront stubbornly slow growth and a rising backlash against globalization. The policy committee for the 189-nation IMF said the world has “benefited tremendously from globalization” but that protectionism is a threat. Increasing anger over globalization dominated the annual meetings of the IMF and its sister lending agency, the World Bank. The unhappiness is evident in Britain’s vote in June to leave the EU and in the U.S. presidential campaign of Republican Donald Trump. Trump has said millions of Americans have lost jobs or seen wages stagnate because of unfair trade practices of countries such as China and Mexico. He is vowing to impose penalty tariffs if those practices are not halted.

The British vote sent shockwaves through financial markets this summer, and there were further troubles Friday when the British pound plunged by 6% against the dollar before recovering. Investors worry whether there will be more turbulence if the British exit proves to be messy and prolonged. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said “growth has been too low for too long, benefiting too few,” and that’s what officials need to address. In their statement, IMF officials committed to designing and putting in place policies “to address the concerns of those who have been left behind and to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to benefit from globalization and technological change.”

Read more …

Raising more debt to pay for legal costs….

Deutsche Bank CEO Cryan Doesn’t Reach Accord With US (BBG)

Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan failed to reach an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to resolve a years-long investigation into its mortgage-bond dealings during a meeting in Washington Friday, Germany’s Bild newspaper reported. The meeting was meant to negotiate the multi-billion-dollar settlement the bank will have to pay to resolve alleged misconduct arising from its dealings in residential-mortgage backed securities that led to the 2008 financial crisis, according to a Bild am Sonntag report. The German lender is still considering seeking damages against Anshu Jain and Josef Ackermann, who are both former CEOs of the bank, the newspaper reported. Bild said the bank froze part of the millions in bonus payments to Jain and other former top managers.

Concerns about Deutsche Bank’s ability to pay the $14 billion opening settlement bid from the Justice Department sent the lender’s stock to a record low last month. The bank, which set aside €5.5 billion ($6.2 billion) for litigation at the end of June, may face additional penalties to wrap up other outstanding investigations, including one into a money-laundering probe tied to its Russia operations. Analysts at Barclays speculate that could cost the bank as much as €2 billion. Cryan, a Briton who speaks fluent German, has sought for the last three weeks to reassure investors that Deutsche Bank can weather the formidable obstacles to its financial health.

The bank is holding informal talks with Wall Street firms about options to deal with legal costs, including a stock sale that could raise €5 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said this week. Qatar’s royal family is also considering increasing its stake in Deutsche Bank to as much as 25%, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Cryan has said the lender may fail to be profitable this year after posting the first annual loss since 2008 last year. With plans to eliminate thousands of jobs and cut risky assets, he called 2016 a peak restructuring year.

Read more …

The state of the German economy: selling off assets.

Qatari Investors Eyeing Control of Deutsche Bank (Spiegel)

On September 15, the Justice Department in the United States ordered the company to pay a $14 billion fine to settle accusations of fraud in Deutsche Bank’s packaging and sale of mortgage-backed securities in the free-wheeling days that led to the global financial crisis. Speculators and politicians have been in a state of near panic since the announcement, with open speculation about the possibility of a government bailout for the prestigious bank. An atmosphere of frustration and depression is currently prevailing inside the bank and Cryan is trying to combat it with messages of perseverance. For a time, Deutsche Bank’s market value plummeted below €15 billion, down from €35 billion a year ago.

Large-scale investor HBJ and his cousin – the former Emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who he has since brought in as an investor as well – are believed to have lost more than a billion euros – on paper, at least. This summer, the two increased their holdings to just under 10% of the company, but Deutsche Bank’s market capital has since continued to slide. And yet, it appears that the low share price is encouraging the sheikhs to invest even more now that it wouldn’t take more than a few billion for them to gain control of Deutsche Bank. Information obtained by SPIEGEL indicates that the al-Thani cousins are considering propping up the bank with a fresh capital infusion and purchasing a blocking stake of 25% together with other investors.

To do this, they could partner with sovereign wealth funds, some of which are apparently willing to invest in the company. But the information obtained by SPIEGEL also suggests that HBJ and the former emir would only be willing to take that risk if they could have a strong say in business decisions at Deutsche Bank. They are said to be deeply frustrated over the fact that the bank has been unable to maneuver itself out of its defensive position. The Qataris are said to be increasingly unhappy with Cryan’s current management team and believe the company’s present course is dangerous. The problems can’t be fixed through cost saving measures alone, they believe, particularly with eroding revenues and profits could. This displeasure manifested itself through the appointment in July of attorney Stefan Simon to the supervisory board. He represents the Qataris’ interests inside the company.

Read more …

Might as well have said 2029. Useless and hollow.

Draghi Points to 2019 as Time for Inflation Mission Accomplished (BBG)

Inflation in the euro area should return to the European Central Bank’s target by early 2019 at the latest, ECB President Mario Draghi said. “Our inflation rate will pick up during the course of 2017, and then will continue moving in 2018 toward the objective which is close but below 2%,” Draghi said on Saturday at a press conference during the annual meeting of the IMF in Washington. “This is predicated on maintaining the extraordinary support of our monetary policy.” While the ECB hasn’t met its own definition of its mandate on inflation since early 2013, an unprecedented wave of stimulus measures during Draghi’s tenure including the current asset-purchase pace of €80 billion per month has helped keep the currency bloc away from outright deflation.

Draghi’s comments imply that fresh staff forecasts due in December – which build-in the impact of current stimulus – will show a 2019 inflation rate in line with the goal. Achieving that target would mark the end of Draghi’s fight against the euro area’s stubbornly low inflation after more than six years. The ECB has deployed negative rates, asset purchases and cheap long-term loans to banks to rein in inflation. The December round of staff forecasts may serve as the basis for a decision on whether the ECB intends to continue its quantitative easing program at the current rate beyond the end date in March 2017, whether the program will be wound down gradually after that, or if it could be stopped completely.

Read more …

Update. No escape. No velocity.

US Unemployment Rate Shows At 5% But More Realistic Rate Is Higher (CNBC)

The national unemployment rate rose slightly to 5% in September, the Labor Department reported Friday. But relying on that one headline number as an indicator of the economy’s direction leaves a lot of important information below the surface. Every month on “Big Jobs Friday,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases a boatload of data, each point of which provides its own unique perspective on a facet of the nation’s employment situation. Economists look past the official unemployment rate — that 5% figure, which is known as the “U-3” rate — to other metrics that provide their own nuanced views of the state of jobs. One of those figures is called the U-6 rate, which has a broader definition of what unemployment means. That figure remained unchanged at 9.7% in September.

The official unemployment rate is composed of “total unemployed, as a% of the civilian labor force,” but doesn’t include a number of employment situations in which workers might find themselves. The U-6 rate is defined as all unemployed, plus “persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a% of the labor force.” In other words: That’s the unemployed, the underemployed and the discouraged. The U-3 rate has in the past few months returned to the prerecession levels that economists consider full employment. The U-6 rate has remained above precession levels, though it has seen significant improvement in the past few years. Economists expected 176,000 jobs to be added in September, according to a late Reuters estimate. The report showed that the market added 156,000 jobs.

Read more …

I see busy lawyers in your future…

UK MPs Demand Vote On Hard Brexit Plans (G.)

Theresa May is under massive cross-party pressure to grant MPs a vote on any decision to leave or limit UK involvement in the European single market, amid growing outrage at the prospect that parliament could be bypassed over the biggest economic decision in decades. Tory MPs joined forces with former leaders of Labour and the Liberal Democrats, the SNP and Greens to insist that parliament have a say and a vote, pointing out that, while the British people had backed leaving the EU, they had not chosen to leave the biggest trading market in the western world. Former Labour leader Ed Miliband held discussions with pro-EU Tory MPs on Saturday, and was said to be considering tabling an urgent question in the Commons, demanding that May appear before parliament to explain its future role in Brexit decisions, when MPs return on Monday.

The SNP and pro-EU Tory MPs Nicky Morgan and Anna Soubry were also considering tabling questions, while former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, now the party’s Brexit spokesman, said it would be appalling if detailed terms of Brexit, including the UK’s future relations with the single market, were not voted on by MPs. Miliband told the Observer: “Having claimed that the referendum was about returning sovereignty to Britain, it would be a complete outrage if May were to determine the terms of Brexit without a mandate from parliament. “There is no mandate for hard Brexit, and I don’t believe there is a majority in parliament for [it] either. Given the importance of these decisions for the UK economy … it has to be a matter for MPs.”

Clegg said: “My great worry is that while there will be a vote on repealing the 1972 European Communities Act, which is about the decision to leave the EU, it will be left to the executive alone to decide the terms of Brexit. That would not be remotely acceptable.”

Read more …

It’s becoming a lovely nation.

Britain ‘Ignored Plea By France’ To Aid Stranded Calais Child Refugees (G.)

The Home Office has refused to respond to official requests from the French authorities to accept unaccompanied child refugees stranded in Calais who are eligible to come to Britain, the British Red Cross has said. With the planned demolition of Calais’s refugee camp only weeks away, the Red Cross says the Home Office is turning down “take charge” requests by the French on often pedantic grounds. Once such a request has been accepted by the UK government it is in effect responsible for a child who is seeking asylum. In some cases British officials claim to have “misplaced” requests from the French to help children, raising questions over Britain’s approach to what humanitarian experts call an urgent child protection issue.

The camp is scheduled to be demolished this month, with no provision agreed by the British and French for most of the 1,000 unaccompanied minors there, of whom at least 400 are eligible to enter the UK. A new report damningly articulates the Home Office’s intransigence, with research by the Red Cross revealing it takes up to 11 months on average to bring a child to the UK under an EU scheme to reunite families. Lawyers say there is no reason why the process should take more than several weeks. The report also identifies “problems ranging from basic administrative errors causing severe delays to a shortage of human resources on the French side”. It accuses the Home Office of unnecessarily forcing vulnerable children to stay in the camp for months after their case is rejected because of a basic administrative error or lack of documents. “Insufficient discretion or consideration is made for the child’s vulnerability and circumstances,” says the report, No Place For Children, released on Sunday.

Read more …

Oct 072016
 


Andre Kertesz Bumper cars at amusement park in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris 1930

I read a lot, been doing it for years, about finance and affiliated topics (a wide horizon of them), which means I’ve inevitably seen a wholesale lot of nonsense fly by. But for some reason, and I think I know why, Q3 2016 has been gunning for a top -or bottom- seat in that regard, and Q4 is looking to do it one better/worse.

Apart from the fast increasingly brainless political ‘discussions’ that don’t deserve the name, in the US and UK and beyond, there are the transnational organizations, NATO, IMF, EU and all those things, all suffocating in their own hubris, things I’ve dealt with before in for instance Globalization Is Dead, But The Idea Is Not and Why There is Trump. But none of it still seems to have trickled through anywhere that I can see.

The end of growth exposes the stupidity and ignorance of all but (and even that’s a maybe) a precious few (of our) ‘leaders’. There is no other way this could have run, because an era of growth simply selects for different people to float to the top of the pond than a period of contraction does. Can we agree on that?

‘Growth leaders’ only have to seduce voters into believing that they can keep growth going, and create more of it (though in reality they have no control over it at all). Anyone can do that. So ‘anyone’ who’s sufficiently hooked on power games will apply.

‘Contraction leaders’ have a much harder time; they must convince voters that they can minimize the ‘suffering of the herd’. Which is invariably a herd that no-one wants to belong to. A tough sell.

Any end to growth will and must therefore inevitably change the structure of a democracy, any democracy, any society for that matter. It will lead to new leaders, and new parties, coming to the front. And it should not surprise anyone that some of these new leaders and parties will question the very structure of the democracy they are part of, if only because that structure is already undergoing change anyway.

The tight connection between an era of economic growth (and/or contraction) and the politicians that ‘rule’ during that era is reflected in Hazel Henderson’s“economics is nothing but politics in disguise”.

 

On the one hand you have the incumbent class seeking to hold on to their waning power, churning out false positive numbers and claiming that theirs is the only way to go (just more of it), and on the other hand you have a loose affiliation – to the extent there’s any affiliation at all- of left and right, individuals and parties, who smell change that they can use to their own benefit.

They just mostly don’t know how to use it yet. But they’ll find out, or some of them will. Blaming people and groups of people for what’s gone wrong will be a major way forward, because it’s just so easy. It’s another reason why the incumbents class, the traditional parties, will go the way of the dodo: they will be blamed, and rightly so in most cases, for the fall of the economic system.

That’ll be the number one criteria: if you’re -perceived as- part of the old guard, you’re out. Not at the flick of a switch, but nevertheless the rise of Trump and Farage and all those folks has been much faster than just about anyone would have thought possible until very recently.

They feed on discontent, but they can do so only because that discontent has been completely ignored by the ruling classes everywhere. Which has a lot to do with the rulers in all these instances we see pop up now still being well-off, while the lower rungs of societies definitely are not.

Moreover, if most people still had comfortable middle-class lives, the dislike of immigrants and refugees would have been so much less that Trump and Wilders and Le Pen and Alternative for Deutschland could never have ‘struck gold’. It’s the perception that the ‘new’ people are somehow to blame for one’s deteriorating living conditions that makes it fertile ground for whoever wants to use it.

And since the far left can’t go there, the right takes over by default. Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn have brave ideas on redistribution of wealth, but there is still too much resistance, at the moment, to that, from the incumbent class and their voters, to have much chance of getting anywhere.

Of course the traditional right wing smells the opportunity too, so Hillary (yeah, she’s right wing) and Theresa May and Sarkozy and Merkel are all orchestrating sharp turns to the right, away from their once comfortable seats in the center. They all sense that power will not be emanating from the center going forward, and it’s power, much more than principles, that they are after.

 

But enough about politicians and their parties, who can and will all be voted out of power. Much harder to get rid of will be the transnational organizations, like the EU and IMF (there are many more), though they represent the ‘doomed construction’ perhaps even more than mere local or national power-hungries. The leading principle is simple: What has all the centralization led to? To today’s contracting economies.

To that end, let’s just tear into a recent random Bloomberg piece on this week’s IMF meeting, and the ‘expert opinions’ on it:

Existential Threat To World Order Confronts Elite At IMF Meeting

Policy-making elites converge on Washington this week for meetings that epitomize a faith in globalization that’s at odds with the growing backlash against the inequities it creates. From Britain’s vote to leave the EU to Donald Trump’s championing of “America First,” pressures are mounting to roll back the economic integration that has been a hallmark of gatherings of the IMF and World Bank for more than 70 years. Fed by stagnant wages and diminishing job security, the populist uprising threatens to depress a world economy that IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde says is already “weak and fragile.”

The calls for less integration and more trade barriers also pose risks for elevated financial markets that remain susceptible to sudden swings in investor sentiment , as underscored by recent jitters over Deutsche Bank’s financial health. “The backlash against globalization is manifesting itself in increased nationalistic sentiment, against the outside world and in favor of increasing isolation,” said Louis Kuijs at Oxford Economics in Hong Kong, a former IMF official. “If we lose consensus on what kind of a world we want to have, the world will probably be worse off.”

Oh, but we do have consensus, Louis: Ever more people don’t want what they have now. That too is consensus. And since you said that what it takes is consensus, we should be fine then, right?!

Also, I find the term ‘elevated markets’ interesting, even if I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean. I can only guess.

In its latest World Economic Outlook released Tuesday, the fund highlighted the threats from the anti-trade movement to an already subdued global expansion. After growth of 3.2% in 2015, the world economy’s expansion will slow to 3.1% this year before rebounding to 3.4% in 2017, according to the report, keeping those estimates unchanged from July projections. The forecasts for U.S. growth were cut to 1.6% this year and 2.2% in 2017.

“We’d like to see an end to the creeping protectionism in the world and more progress on moving ahead with free-trade agreements and other trade-creating measures,” Maurice Obstfeld, director of the IMF’s research department, said in a Bloomberg Television interview with Tom Keene. Lagarde said last week that policy makers attending the Oct. 7-9 annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank have two tasks. First, do no harm, which above all means resisting the temptation to throw up protectionist barriers to trade. And second, take action to boost lackluster global growth and make it more inclusive.

I can see how a vote against the likes of Hollande, Hillary or Cameron constitutes a “the backlash against globalization”. What I don’t see is how that has now become the same as the anti-trade movement. When did Trump express any feelings against trade? Against international trade deals as they exist and are further prepared, yes.

But those deals don’t define ‘trade’ to the exclusion of all other definitions. As for ‘protectionism’, that’s just a term designed to make something perfectly fine and normal look bad. Every single society on the planet should protect its basic necessities from being controlled by foreigners, either for money or for power.

Nothing good can come of relinquishing that control for any society, ever. There‘s not a thing wrong with protecting your control of your own water and food and shelter, and these are indeed things that should never be traded or negotiated in global markets.

So claiming that ‘do no harm’ equals NOT protecting your basics is nothing but a self-serving and dangerous kind of baloney coming your way courtesy of those people whose sociopathic plush seats and plusher bank accounts depend on your ongoing personal loss of control over what you need to survive.

It’s what any ‘body’ does that has reached the limits of its growth: it starts feeding on its host. Be it a cancerous tumor, the Roman Empire or our present perennial-growth driven economic models, they’re all the same same thing because they are fueled by the same -thoughtless- principle.


Ilargi: See that upward line at the end? Well, it’s an IMF growth ‘forecast’. Which are always so wrong, and always revised downward, that you must wonder if the term ‘forecast’ is even appropriate

 

Achieving even those modest objectives may prove elusive. Free trade has become polling poison in the U.S. presidential campaign, with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton now criticizing a trade deal with Pacific nations, which isn’t yet ratified in the U.S., that she had praised when it was being negotiated. Republican challenger Trump has lashed out at Mexico and China, threatening to slap big tariffs on imports from both nations. Rattled by the U.K.’s June vote to leave the EU, European leaders know it may just be the start of a political earthquake that’s threatening the continent’s old certainties.

In case you didn’t catch it, “..the continent’s old certainties” is a goal-seeked term. Old in this case means not older than, say, 1950, if that. Look back 100 years and “the continent’s old certainties” dress in a whole other meaning.

Next year sees elections in Germany and France, the euro area’s two largest economies, and in the Netherlands. In all three countries anti-establishment forces are gaining ground. With growing resentment of the EU from Budapest to Madrid, policy makers have described the current surge in populism as the greatest threat to the bloc since its creation out of the ashes of World War II. There are also growing signs that the union and Britain are heading for a so-called “hard exit” that would sharply reduce the bloc’s trade and financial ties with the island nation. U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May said on Oct. 2 that she’ll begin her country’s withdrawal from the EU in the first quarter of next year.

I have addressed the misleading use of the term ‘populism’ before. In its core, it simple means something like: for, and by, the people. How that can be presented as somehow being a threat to democracy is a mystery to me. They should have picked another term, but settled on this one.

And in the western media consensus, it comprises anything from Trump to Beppe Grillo, via Hungary’s Orban and Nigel Farage, Spain’s Podemos, Greece’s Syriza and Germany’s AfD. All these completely different movements have one thing only in common: they protest the failed and fast deteriorating status quo, and receive a lot of support from their people for doing that.

Because it’s the people that bear the brunt of the failure, not the leadership; even Greece’s politicians still pay themselves a comparatively lush salary.

As for Britain, it’s the textbook example of utter blindness. Those who were/are well provided for, be they politically left or right, missed out on what was happening around them so much they had no idea Brexit was a real option. And in the 15 weeks since the Brexit vote, all anyone has done in the UK is seeking to blame someone, anyone but themselves for what they all failed to see coming.

Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of free trade over the past generation, China, still restricts access to many of its key industries, with economists worried about increasingly mercantilist policies. It’s also seeking a larger role in the existing global framework, with entry of the yuan into the IMF’s basket of reserve currencies on Oct. 1 the most recent example. An all-out trade war would be a disaster for China’s economy, with Trump’s threatened tariff potentially wiping off almost 5% of its GDP, according to a calculation by Daiwa Capital Markets.

John Williamson, whose Washington Consensus of open trade and deregulation was effectively the governing ethos for the IMF and World Bank for decades, said the 2008-09 financial meltdown had undercut support for economic integration. “There was agreement on globalization before the crisis and that’s one thing that’s been lost since the financial crisis,” said Williamson, a former senior fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics who is now retired.

The growing opposition to economic integration has been fueled by a sub-par global recovery. “Perhaps the most striking macroeconomic fact about advanced economies today is how anemic demand remains in the face of zero interest rates,” former IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard wrote last week in a policy brief for the Peterson Institute.

These ‘experts’ seem to have an idea there’s something amiss, but they don’t have the answers. Which is impossible to come and say out loud if you’re an expert. Experts must pretend to know it all, or at least know why they don’t know. “There was agreement on globalization before the crisis”, and now it’s no longer there. That they see.

That they ain’t coming back, neither the agreement on it nor globalization itself, is a step too far for them. To publicly acknowledge, at least. That Blanchard expresses surprise about ‘anemic demand’ at the same time that interest rates are equally anemic is something else.

That both are two sides of the same coin, or at least may be, is something he should at least mention. That is to say, low rates induce deflation, though they are allegedly supposed to induce the opposite. Economists are mostly very misguided people.

 

The world economy is getting some lift after rising at an annual rate just shy of 3% in the first half of this year, according to David Hensley, director of global economics for JPMorgan. But much of the boost will come from a lessening of drags rather than from a big burst of fresh growth, said Peter Hooper at Deutsche Bank Securities, a former Federal Reserve official. Recessions in Brazil and Russia are set to come to an end, while in the U.S. cutbacks in inventories and in oil and gas drilling will wane.

Please allow me to chip in here. ‘Lessening of drags’ in a nonsense term. And so is the idea that “..recessions in Brazil and Russia are set to come to an end”. That’s all goal-seeked day-dreaming. Smoke or drink something nice with it and you’ll feel good for a few hours, but that doesn’t make it real.

“I’m characterizing the global economy as something akin to a driverless car that’s stuck in the slow lane,” said David Stockton, a former Fed official and now chief economist at consultants LH Meyer. “Everybody feels like they’re being taken for a ride but they’re pretty nervous because they can’t see anybody in control.”

I really like this one, because off the bat I thought Stockton had it all wrong. What I think is the appropriate metaphor, is not “a driverless car that’s stuck in the slow lane”, but one of those cars in a carousel at a carnival, a merry-go-round, where you can sit in it forever and you always end up in the same spot. And the only one who’s in control in the boss who hollers that you need to pay another quarter if you want to keep on riding.

Or, alternatively, and to stay at the carnival, it’s a bumper car, which allows you to hit other cars and get hit, but never to leave the rink. That’s the global economy. Not getting anywhere, and running out of quarters fast.

Still, for the first time in the past few years, Stockton said he sees a real upside risk to his forecast of continued global growth of around 3% next year. And that’s coming from the possibility of looser fiscal policy in the U.S. and Europe. In the U.S., both Clinton and Trump have pledged to boost infrastructure spending on roads, bridges and the like. In Europe, rising populism provides a powerful incentive for governments to abandon austerity ahead of the elections next year – and perhaps beyond. Whether such a shift will be enough to mollify those who have been on the losing side of globalization for decades is debatable, however.

“The consensus in policy-making circles was that more trade meant better economic growth,” said Standard Chartered head of Greater China economic research Ding Shuang, who worked at the IMF from 1997 to 2010. “But the benefits weren’t shared equitably, so now we see a round of anti-globalization, anti-free trade. “Globalization will stall for the moment, until we can find a way to share those benefits,” he added.

Globalization is done. And while we can discuss whether that’s of necessity or not, and I continue to contend that the end of growth equals the end of all centralization including globalization, fact is that globalization was never designed to share anything at all, other than perhaps wealth among elites, and low wages among everyone else.

The EU and IMF have not delivered on what they promised, in the same way that traditional parties have not, from the US to UK to basically all of Europe. They promised growth, and growth is gone. They may have delivered for their pay masters, but they lost the rest of the world.

Anything else is just hot air. But that doesn’t mean they will hesitate to use their control of the military and police to hold on to what they got. In fact, that’s guaranteed. But it would only be viable in a dictatorial society, and even then.

We are transcending into an entirely different stage of our lives, our economies, our societies. Growth is gone, it went out the window long ago only to be replaced with debt. And that’s going to take a lot of getting used to. But there’s nothing that says we couldn’t see it coming.

Sep 152016
 
 September 15, 2016  Posted by at 8:59 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  Comments Off on Debt Rattle September 15 2016


Jack Delano Jewish stores in Colchester, Connecticut 1940

Bond Yields Are Surging Despite Deflation, And That Is Dangerous (AEP)
Wall Street ‘Fear Gauge’ Suggests Stock Market Is About To Get Wild (MW)
‘There’s Only So Much You Can Squeeze Out Of A Debt Cycle’: Ray Dalio (CNBC)
China Debt Default Looms As Growth Options Run Out: Nomura (VW)
PBOC Yuan Positions Drop to Lowest Since 2011 (BBG)
The Closing of the World Economy (Satyajit Das)
Wall Street’s Newest Money-Making Scheme Targets Your Home (MW)
Ford Shifting All US Small-Car Production To Mexico (DFP)
Vancouver Tax on Empty Homes to Target Near-Zero Rental Supply (BBG)
US Confidence In Media Hits Fresh Low (AFP)
US Rooftop Solar Boom Is Grinding To A Halt (BBG)
Latest Estimate Pegs US Cost of Wars at Nearly $5 Trillion (I’Cept)
Juncker Denies Alcohol Problem In Interview, Drinks 4 Glasses Of Champagne
Helping Homeless People Starts With Giving Them Homes (G.)

 

 

The Great Disconnect.

Bond Yields Are Surging Despite Deflation, And That Is Dangerous (AEP)

The growth rate of nominal GDP in the US has fallen to 2.4pc, the lowest level outside recession since the Second World War. It has been sliding relentlessly for almost two years, a warning signal that underlying deflationary forces may be tightening their grip on the US economy. Given this extraordinary backdrop, the violent spike in US and global bonds yields over the last four trading days is extremely odd. It is rare for AAA-rated safe-haven debt to fall out of favour at the same time as stock markets, and few explanations on offer make sense. We can all agree that oxygen is thinning as we enter the final phase of the economic cycle after 86 months of expansion. The MSCI world index of global equities has risen to a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 17, significantly higher than on the cusp of the Lehman crisis.

“We think that too much complacency has crept in,” says Mislav Matejka, equity strategist for JP Morgan. “After seven years of having a structural overweight stance on global equities, we believe the regime has fundamentally changed. We think that one should not be buying the dips any more, but use any rallies as selling opportunities,” he said. The correlation between bonds and equities has reached unprecedented levels, and that has the coiled the spring. The slightest rise in yields now has a potent magnifying effect across the spectrum of assets. Hence the angst over what is happening to US Treasuries. Yields on 10-year Treasuries – the benchmark borrowing cost for international finance – have jumped 19 basis points to 1.72pc since the middle of last week.

The amount of global government debt trading at rates below zero has suddenly fallen from $10 trillion to $8.3 trillion, with parallel effects for corporate bonds. You would have thought that inflation was picking up in the US and that the Fed was about to slam on the brakes, but that is not the case. The markets are pricing in a mere 15pc chance of a rate rise next week, and the figure has been falling.  If anything, the US inflation scare has subsided. There were grounds for worrying earlier this year that Fed would have to act. In February, core CPI inflation was steaming ahead at a rate of 2.9pc on a three-month annualized basis. This has since dropped back to 1.8pc. Other core measures are lower.

Read more …

Probably not going to calm down before next year.

Wall Street VIX ‘Fear Gauge’ Suggests Stock Market Is About To Get Wild (MW)

So much for the those calm markets. Wall Street’s “fear gauge” is rearing higher as U.S. equities logged a second sharp selloff in the past three sessions, as hand-wringing over central-bank monetary policy contributes to a renaissance of volatility. The CBOE Volatility Index often used as a measure of fear in the market, rose 18% on Tuesday at 17.85—its highest level since June 28 and implying that investors are starting to dial up bets that stocks could suffer further near-term swings turbulent. The VIX has hovered around 12 since mid-July. That level usually signals quiescence, while a reading of 20 or above indicates that investors are bracing for moves sharply south

The rise in the VIX comes as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 index and the Nasdaq Composite relinquished all of the sharp gains racked up 24 hours ago. Monday’s rally followed another tumble on Friday that saw the VIX jump 40%—the largest daily move since Brexit on June 23. On Tuesday, volume in an exchange-traded fund that tracks the VIX, Barclays Bank PLC iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures exceeded that of stocks on the S&P 500 for the first time ever, as Bloomberg highlights:

On Wednesday, the VIX ticked higher as the Dow and S&P 500 lost momentum to trade lower late in the session. Three straight days of swings of at least 1% for stocks, marks the first time since 1963 that the S&P 500 followed an extended period of calm—43 days—with a trio of such choppy trading days, according to Dow Jones data. That was the two-day period before and immediately following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Dow Jones data show. “The pickup in volatility is notable, and typically characterizes pullbacks,” said Katie Stockton, chief market technician at BTIG.

Read more …

“We are to various degrees close to pushing on a string..”

‘There’s Only So Much You Can Squeeze Out Of A Debt Cycle’: Ray Dalio (CNBC)

The debt market is in a “dangerous situation” as central banks around the world lose their ability to stimulate growth, hedge fund giant Ray Dalio said Tuesday. As the world faces more than $11 trillion in negative-yielding debt, Dalio said central banks like the Fed, the ECB and the BOJ are facing a dilemma. “There’s only so much you can squeeze out of the debt cycle, and we’re there globally,” the head of Bridgewater Associates said at the Delivering Alpha conference presented by CNBC and Institutional Investor. “You can’t lower interest rates more.” Dalio spoke as Fed officials contemplate a rate hike at some point this year. Market-implied probability indicates that the Fed won’t hike until at least December. Its September meeting is next week. While monetary policy has been used as a fuel for growth and asset price appreciation, Dalio said its effectiveness is waning. “We are to various degrees close to pushing on a string,” he said.

Read more …

“..there is essentially only one practical way to reduce the stock of outstanding debts: defaults.”

China Debt Default Looms As Growth Options Run Out: Nomura (VW)

To alleviate its debt problem, China should adopt appropriate macro-economic policies encompassing currency depreciation and cutting interest rates to an ultra-low-level within two to three years, believe Nomura analysts. Yang Zhao and team said in their September 14 research piece titled “China: Solving the debt problem” that they believe RMB depreciation will continue and forecast USD/CNH at 7.1 at the end of 2017. Zhao and team highlight that debt-to-GDP ratio can be lowered either through reducing the numerator or increasing the denominator.

They believe that to contain or even reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio, the gap between debt growth and nominal GDP growth must shrink or turn negative. They believe lowering the ratio has to be premised on the acceptance of a slower rate of GDP growth: The Nomura analysts argue that default is the only practical way to trim the stock of outstanding debts. Instead of an outright default, per se, they suggest other approaches such as renegotiating terms, lowering interest rates, and tenure extension.

“Since increasing the denominator is unfeasible, policymakers must therefore look to lower the numerator. The only practical measures that can be taken to reduce the debt ratio are those aimed at reducing the growth of debt to below that of nominal GDP growth. “The outstanding stock of debt can only be reduced through either repayment or indeed default. One argument is that China’s corporate sector and/or local governments can, or should, simply repay their debts by selling the huge amount of assets that they have accumulated, but again, this is not a feasible solution.

The key reason behind the low level of corporate leverage despite the huge amount of debt is that asset prices have not collapsed. If the corporate sector or local governments repaid their debts by selling their assets – which are predominantly in real estate – their leverage will almost certainly spike higher due to the subsequent decline in the value of their remaining asset base. Hence, there is essentially only one practical way to reduce the stock of outstanding debts: defaults.”

Read more …

Selling USD to prepare for SDR basket?!

PBOC Yuan Positions Drop to Lowest Since 2011 (BBG)

The Chinese central bank’s yuan positions – which reflect the amount of foreign currency held on its balance sheet – fell to the lowest since 2011 in August, a sign that it sold dollars to support the yuan. The People’s Bank of China has been seen intervening in the market to stem the currency’s slide, with Bank of East Asia and Natixis saying that policy makers will prevent the exchange rate from slipping past 6.7 per dollar before its admission into the IMF’s basket of reserves on Oct. 1.

Read more …

The only thing left of globalization is a vague idea.

The Closing of the World Economy (Satyajit Das)

Pundits and policymakers everywhere are bemoaning the rise of a new, inward-looking populism. Led by the likes of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, those who’ve felt only globalization’s ill effects, not its benefits, have mounted a fierce counterattack. Border-hopping elites fret that the whole process of opening up and knitting together the world through trade, capital flows and immigration may soon go into reverse. They’re missing the point. Support for freer trade and greater openness had in fact begun to falter well before economic nationalists like Trump and Farage took center stage. The same governments that count themselves among globalization’s greatest champions have been rolling it back steadily since the global financial crisis.

Their excuses are innocent-sounding and several: to protect national industries and iconic businesses; to secure export markets and competitive advantage; and above all, to prop up employment and incomes. Despite oft-repeated warnings about avoiding the beggar-thy-neighbor policies of the 1930s, these governments allowed global trade talks – the so-called Doha Round – to stall as early as 2008. Nations including the U.S. have instead pursued narrower bilateral and regional deals where they don’t have to satisfy so many different negotiating partners and can continue to protect key sectors. If these pacts are better than nothing, they more or less foreclose the possibility of a more ambitious multilateralism.

Meanwhile, between 2009 and 2015, three times as many discriminatory trade measures were introduced as liberalizing ones. In the first 10 months of 2015 alone, the latest Global Trade Alert database recorded 539 such initiatives adopted by governments worldwide that harmed foreign traders, investors, workers or owners of intellectual property – a record. Efforts to control trade flows have grown increasingly sophisticated. Most governments no longer impose tariffs or other crude roadblocks that would violate WTO rules. Instead countries from the U.S. – with the auto bailouts – to the U.K., China, Brazil, Canada and several EU members have funneled aid to domestic industries. State procurement rules – which in China, say, forbid buying strategic and defense technology from abroad – favor domestic suppliers, as do “buy local” campaigns like the ones launched since 2009 in the U.S., U.K. and Australia.

Read more …

Innovation!?

Wall Street’s Newest Money-Making Scheme Targets Your Home (MW)

Do you want Wall Street to get a piece of your house? On Tuesday, the noted venture capitalist Marc Andreesen announced that he’d invested in a startup called Point. Point casts itself as a solution to an intrinsic problem with home ownership: Most Americans have most of their wealth tied up in their home. There are mechanisms for “taking out” some of the equity built up as a mortgage is paid down, such as home-equity lines of credit or home-equity loans. But they require paying interest – not to mention having good credit. They also don’t help homeowners diversify their investments. Diversification was the driver behind an earlier version of what Point offers. Allan Weiss, who helped create the S&P/Case-Shiller price indexes, created a platform he calls “indexed fractional ownership.”

His idea came in part from a conversation with a neighbor who said he was looking forward to “cashing out” of an expensive home he’d owned for a long time – just before the housing market crashed. If you own a home and offer some of the equity to an investor like Point, the idea goes, you could take that money and invest it in a different asset class, like stocks. And what does Point get? If the house appreciates before it is sold, Point benefits. If the house depreciates, according to Andreessen Horowitz’s website, “Point gets paid back after the bank, but before the homeowner, in the event of a sale.” A blog post on Point’s site notes that, in addition to an initial appraisal, Point may require a “risk adjustment” that “offsets the chance that the home will depreciate before the end of the term.”

Yet Weiss and Andreessen Horowitz both envision their products gaining the critical mass to move beyond one-off agreements between investors and individual homeowners into what the latter calls a “broad basket” of homes. “It’s rethinking the fundamentals of residential real estate ownership – making single-family residential real estate a liquid, tradeable asset class,” the venture capitalists wrote.

Read more …

By now, this is crazy.

Ford Shifting All US Small-Car Production To Mexico (DFP)

Ford is shifting all North American small-car production from the U.S. to Mexico, CEO Mark Fields told investors today in Dearborn. “Over the next two to three years, we will have migrated all of our small-car production to Mexico and out of the United States,” Fields said. The industry has known for decades that domestic manufacturers struggle to make a profit on small cars. Shifting their assembly to Mexico can reduce costs to a point. But some of these cars are over-engineered. For example, Field said the current Ford Focus can be ordered in 300 different configurations of options and colors. Ford wants to reduce that to 30, which will make the production process simpler and less expensive.

But Americans prefer larger vehicles, especially pickups and higher-riding SUVs and crossover vehicles for their personal use. The future of smaller cars in the U.S. may depend on the ability to electrify their powertrains and introduce them to ride-sharing fleets where they can generate revenue from fares paid by multiple riders. Along those lines, Fields and other Ford executives Wednesday outlined an aggressive plan to invest $4.5 billion over the next four years. These will include new models in segments such as commercial vehicles, trucks, SUVs and performance vehicles. Ford also reiterated its commitment to developing an autonomous vehicle by 2021. The company believes that autonomous vehicles could account for up to 20% of vehicle sales by 2030.

Read more …

Smart. But it may make prices fall even faster.

Vancouver Tax on Empty Homes to Target Near-Zero Rental Supply (BBG)

Vancouver, suffering from a near-zero supply of homes available for rent, plans to slap investors sitting on vacant properties with a new tax in an effort to make housing more accessible in Canada’s most-expensive property market. The levy, which would start in January, may be as high as 2% of the property’s assessed value, Kathleen Llewellyn-Thomas, the city’s general manager of community services, told reporters Wednesday. That would mean a minimum C$20,000 ($15,000) annual payment for the typical C$1 million-plus detached home in Vancouver based on July 2015 assessment data, the most recent available. “Vancouver is in a rental housing crisis,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson, whose announcement follows a separate measure by the province in July to impose a 15% tax on foreign buyers.

“Dangerously low vacancy rates across the city are near zero.” While the city, ranked the world’s third-most-livable, has drawn attention for its sky-high purchase prices fomented by global money flows, the rental market has been just as contentious locally. Vacancies can get scooped up within hours, while bidding wars drive up the cost of leases. Public scrutiny has focused on absentee landlords, particularly from overseas, who are accused of sitting on investment properties where windows remain dark throughout the year. Robertson estimated that more than 10,000 homes are empty and an additional 10,000 are “under-utilized.” The tax aims to get those properties into the rental supply so that the vacancy rate rises to about 3 to 5% from near zero today, he said. The city expects to raise about C$2 million from the tax in the first year.

Read more …

People do recognize propaganda to an extent.

US Confidence In Media Hits Fresh Low (AFP)

Americans’ trust in the media has sunk to a new low, and a bitter presidential race may be to blame, a Gallup survey showed Wednesday. The poll asking whether the media report the news “fully, accurately and fairly” found just 32% of Americans have a great deal or fair amount of trust, the lowest level in Gallup polling history and 8 percentage points below last year. Gallup began asking the question in 1972, and has polled Americans on a yearly basis since 1997. Trust and confidence in the media hit its highest point in 1976, at 72% following the investigative journalism coverage of the Vietnam and the Watergate scandal, according to the research group. But confidence has been below 50% since 2007.

“While it is clear Americans’ trust in the media has been eroding over time, the election campaign may be the reason that it has fallen so sharply this year,” Gallup said in its report. “With many Republican leaders and conservative pundits saying (Democratic presidential nominee) Hillary Clinton has received overly positive media attention, while (Republican nominee) Donald Trump has been receiving unfair or negative attention, this may be the prime reason their relatively low trust in the media has evaporated even more.” Gallup said Trump’s sharp criticism of the press may also have had an impact on public opinion.

Just 14% of Republicans said they trust the media, down sharply from 32% a year ago and the lowest level of confidence among Republicans in 20 years, according to Gallup. Among Democrats, 51% expressed confidence in the media, down from 55% a year ago, while the number of independents trusting news organizations fell to 30% from 33%. Trust was also low among younger adults: just 26% of those between the ages of 18 and 49 said they felt confidence in the media compared with 38% of those 50 and older.

Read more …

Bubble.

US Rooftop Solar Boom Is Grinding To A Halt (BBG)

Rooftop solar, which has surged more than 1,000% since 2010, will barely grow at all next year. Residential installations are expected to increase by 21% this year, but in 2017 the figure will inch upward by about 0.3%. The change comes as utilities push back against mandates to buy the electricity and shifting tax policies curb demand. Throw in sliding electricity rates and it’s clear the economic benefits of rooftop panels are no longer so obvious to consumers. That’s forcing rooftop developers including Vivint Solar, Sunrun and Elon Musk-backed SolarCity to focus on profitability instead of growth.

“Much like PC manufacturers in the 1990s, solar installers need to realize substantial new customer sales each year just to tread water in terms of annual revenue,” Hugh Bromley at Bloomberg New Energy Finance said. Residential installations are already slowing from the 79% expansion in 2015. Developers are expected to add 2.76 gigawatts this year and that will inch upward to 2.77 gigawatts in 2017 as investment slips 6.4% to $6.8 billion, according to estimates from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “After growing as much as it has, sustaining high double-digit growth rate forever is not realistic,” said Pavel Molchanov at Raymond James Financial.

Read more …

US can’t afford to go to war anymore.

Latest Estimate Pegs US Cost of Wars at Nearly $5 Trillion (I’Cept)

The total US budgetary cost of war since 2001 is $4.79 trillion, according to a report released this week from Brown University’s Watson Institute. That’s the highest estimate yet. Neta Crawford of Boston University, the author of the report, included interest on borrowing, future veterans needs, and the cost of homeland security in her calculations. The amount of $4.79 trillion, “so large as to be almost incomprehensible,” she writes, adds up like this:

• The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and other overseas operations already cost $1.7 trillion between 2001 and August 2016 with $103 billion more requested for 2017 • Homeland Security terrorism prevention costs from 2001 to 2016 were $548 billion. • The estimated DOD base budget was $733 billion and veterans spending was $213 billion. • Interest incurred on borrowing for wars was $453 billion. • Estimated future costs for veterans’ medical needs until the year 2053 is $1 trillion.

Crawford carried out a similar study in June 2014 that estimated the cost of war at $4.4 trillion. Her methodology mirrors that of the 2008 book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict by Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz. There are even more costs of war that Crawford does not include, she writes. For instance, “I have not included here state and local government expenses related to medical care of veterans and homeland security. Nor do I calculate the macro economic costs of war for the U.S. economy.” She also notes that she does not add the cost of war for other countries, nor try to put a dollar figures on the cost in human lives.

Read more …

How did he land that job again?

Juncker Denies Alcohol Problem In Interview, Drinks 4 Glasses Of Champagne

The controversial head of the European Commission has denied that he has a problem with alcohol during an interview in which he drank four glasses of champagne. Allegations have circulated around Brussels in recent years about Jean-Claude Juncker’s drinking and one senior diplomatic source has said he “has cognac for breakfast”. In an interview with a French newspaper he defended his record as he consumed numerous classes of champagne. In 2014 it emerged that Mr Juncker’s drinking habits had been discussed at the highest levels by European leaders who privately have concerns over his lifestyle. A week before the UK referendum vote a video emerged of an apparently-drunk Mr Juncker taken at a May 2015 EU summit welcoming Viktor Orban, the hardline Hungarian PM, as “the dictator” before giving him a playful slap on the cheek.

“The dictator is coming,” Mr Juncker is heard to say, before locking a shocked Mr Orban in a clumsy embrace while Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council looked on, visibly embarrassed. Defending himself in an interview with the Liberation, he said: “Orban, I always call dictator, I am like this. As soon as someone breaks the mould they are obviously crazy or an alcoholic. “You think I’d still be in office if I was having cognac for breakfast? It really makes me sad and it has even led my wife to question if I lie to her, as I do not drink when I’m home.” He also went on to blame his unsteady walking on problems with his leg after a serious car accident.

Read more …

Basic. Better. Cheaper.

Helping Homeless People Starts With Giving Them Homes (G.)

Finland is the only European country where homelessness has decreased in recent years. At the end of 2015 the number of single homeless people was for the first time under 7,000 and this number includes people living temporarily with friends and relatives, who constitute 80% of all homeless people. This development is mainly due to a national programme to reduce long-term homelessness. The main explanation for this success is quite simple: when the national programme started housing first was adopted as a mainstream national homelessness policy. This common framework made it possible to establish a wide partnership of state authorities, local communities and non-governmental organisations. Cooperation and targeted measures in the implementation of the programme led to the aforementioned results, which were backed up by independent international evaluations.

Implementing housing first is not reasonable without proper housing options. It should go without saying that you can’t offer homeless people homes if the homes do not exist. It is this scarcity of homes that engenders the system in Britain, with demand outstripping supply, and people in crisis forced to jump through hoops to avoid sleeping on the street. In Finland, housing options included the use of social housing, buying flats from the private market to be used as rental apartments for homeless people, and building new housing blocks for supported housing. An important part of the programme was the extensive conversion of shelters and dormitory-type hostels into supported housing, to address the huge need for accommodation that offered help to tenants.

The last big hostel for homeless people in Helsinki with 250 bed places was run by the Salvation Army. A couple of years ago this hostel was renovated and now consists of 80 independent apartments with on-site staff. The disappearance of temporary solutions like hostels has completely changed the landscape of Finnish homelessness policy in a very positive way, for vulnerable individuals and in combatting antisocial behaviour. All this costs money, but there is ample evidence from many countries that shows it is always more cost-effective to aim to end homelessness instead of simply trying to manage it. Investment in ending homelessness always pays back, to say nothing of the human and ethical reasons.

Read more …

Sep 142016
 
 September 14, 2016  Posted by at 9:24 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  2 Responses »


LoC Old Patent Office model room, Washington DC 1865

The US Consumer Will Cause The Next Crisis (Vallee)
Shares Crumble As Oil Falls, Bond Yields Soar On Stimulus Doubts (R.)
How ‘Zombie’ Oil Companies Stay Alive in Life-or-Death Debt Markets (BBG)
Negative Rates May Do More Harm Than Good (BBG)
Why Democrats in Western Pennsylvania Are Voting Trump (Atlantic)
How Much It ‘Costs’ To Get An Ambassadorship (ZH)
Buffett Loses $1.4 Billion as Wells Fargo Tumbles on Scandal (BBG)
Hanjin Brings One of World’s Busiest Shipping Terminals to Near Standstill (BBG)
IMF’s Lagarde Slams Globalization (ZH)
Bayer To Announce Acquisition Of Monsanto On Wednesday (R.)
Hillary’s 9/11 “Medical Episode” Looks More Like Parkinson’s Than Pneumonia (ZH)
An ‘Amicable Divorce’ For The Eurozone? (Varoufakis)
Expel Hungary From EU For Hostility To Refugees, Says Luxembourg (G.)
Greece Has Exposed The NGO Aid Community’s Failures (G.)

 

 

If you still need this spelled out, this is quite good. Lots of graphs too.

The US Consumer Will Cause The Next Crisis (Vallee)

The market is materially mispricing the strength of the US consumer whose weakness will lead the US economy into a recession in Q117. The divergence is a result of the top 40% of earners who have accrued 84% of all new income and only 34% of new debt since 2013. This strength has driven headline sales figures and accounted for nearly all deleveraging since the financial crisis. That said, the market has extrapolated the health of top 40% to all consumers, as it corresponds to the current narrative of low unemployment and rising average hourly earnings leading to higher rates of consumption and balance sheet strength. Due to this misconception, we believe the market has overlooked the deterioration of lower and middle income households who have historically preceded the fall of the top. We see this disparity being corrected over the next 6-9 months, as a series of disappointing retail sales and consumption figures lead market participants to the realization that their thesis is imperfect.

Read more …

Markets won’t get quiet again at least before November 8, and more likely 2017.

Shares Crumble As Oil Falls, Bond Yields Soar On Stimulus Doubts (R.)

Asian stocks fell to fresh six-week lows on Wednesday and the greenback stood strong against a broad swathe of currencies including the Japanese yen as concerns grew about the fading impact of the world’s major central banks to stimulate growth. Losses in stock markets across Asia deepened as rising bond yields and soaring volatility forced investors to unwind positions. The MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slid 0.2%, extending its decline since late last week to 4.2%. Within the region, Japan’s Nikkei led losers with a 0.3% decline as uncertainty grew ahead of a central bank policy meeting next week. The BOJ plans to make its controversial negative interest rate policy the centerpiece of future monetary easing, promising to weigh further rate cuts as expansions to asset buying near their limits, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Wednesday.

“The moves in developed market fixed-income, which are largely behind the volatility, have stemmed from Japan and the potential changes in monetary policy,” said Chris Weston at IG Markets. “Secondly, some of the biggest systematic funds have had to alter their portfolios. The rest of the market participants have had to simply react.” Stock markets have come under pressure as investors cut positions after large inflows in recent weeks betting on a long period of low volatility and suppressed bond yields. Inflows into emerging market equity funds amounted to $24 billion dollars over the past 10 weeks, the highest on record according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch flow data. An index of market volatility soared to its highest level in three months.

Read more …

The refusal to restructure will come back to bite the US.

How ‘Zombie’ Oil Companies Stay Alive in Life-or-Death Debt Markets (BBG)

Beneath the surge in corporate defaults lies a surge in distressed exchanges. Such exchanges – defined by Moody’s as when a troubled company offers its lenders new or restructured debt, securities, cash, or other assets, that amount to a smaller commitment than the original IOU – could have big implications for debt markets as they stretch out the current credit cycle and result in even greater losses for investors. The trend is most apparent in the energy sector where oil and gas companies have been deploying a raft of creative measures to stay afloat amid lower crude prices that have crimped profits and threatened their survival. Such measures have included swapping unsecured debt for secured, offering discounted buybacks of existing debt, or junior-lien debt that gets paid after other creditors.

“While these [distressed exchanges] do result in some level of loss to bondholders, unlike missed payments and bankruptcy filings the bonds typically remain eligible for inclusion in the high-yield index,” Kai Gilkes and Anneli Lefranc, analysts at CreditSights, wrote in new research. They note that the 12-month default rate rose to 7.2% for U.S. junk-rated bonds in August. That’s an increase of 30 basis points compared to July’s default rate of 6.9%, spurred on by six corporate defaults last months – including a trio of U.S. energy companies. “Distressed exchanges have contributed greatly to the rise in default rates,” they add, with 38 of the 75 U.S. high-yield defaults over the last 12 months coming from such deals. The degree to which distressed exchanges are propelling defaults higher is apparent in the below CreditSights chart, which shows the U.S. and European default rate excluding the swaps.

The question now will be whether such exchanges actually help companies improve their balance sheets and reduce their debt long enough to enjoy a recovery in oil prices or the market’s appetite for energy-related assets. If they don’t, then truly troubled companies will only have succeeded in putting off the inevitable and their lenders risk suffering greater losses further down the line.

Read more …

You think? Again, there’s one solution only: take away central banks’ powers.

Negative Rates May Do More Harm Than Good (BBG)

The negative interest rate strategy that Japan and Europe’s central banks have embraced may do more harm than good, according to John Taylor, the creator of an eponymous rule for guiding monetary policy. “What we are learning is that, in my view, negative rates may not have helped and may have hurt,” Taylor, a professor at Stanford University in California, said in a telephone interview this week. “It could be counterproductive, no question.” A potential problem is that the strategy of charging banks for a portion of their reserves squeezes the availability of credit. Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda last week rejected the idea that the negative-rate policy adopted in January had hurt banks’ “intermediary functions” – their ability to channel savings to lending.

Even so, he acknowledged that the move had spurred a powerful drop in long-term yields. That, in turn, hurt earnings on savings including pensions, generating some risk for the “sustainability of the financial function in a broad sense.” “The macro models we have don’t really incorporate that financial-sector behavior, so it’s hard to give a magnitude to it,” Taylor said. While some companies may boost investment, others could pare it back, and saving rates could be affected, said Taylor, who served as the U.S. Treasury’s top international official from 2001 to 2005.

Read more …

Joe Bageant meets Brexit. Excellent from the Atlantic. Nothing learned from Project Fear that helped shape Brexit.

Why Democrats in Western Pennsylvania Are Voting Trump (Atlantic)

Lee Supply is a third-generation family-owned business, operating since 1954. “My dad started it servicing the coal industry,” Lee said. Nestled in a glen between the rolling hills of the Alleghenies and the Monongahela River, the company bustles with workers moving about the plant. Today, it sells pipe and pumping systems used in everything from traditional applications, such as water distribution and sewage treatment, to highly specialized applications such as horizontal directional drilling, slip lining, leachate and methane collection, gas extraction, and water transport. One man wearing a florescent-yellow Lee Supply safety shirt, with grease smudged on his arms and face, registered to vote for the first time in his 61 years.

His eyes watered as he put down the pen. “This is about me,” he said, declining to give his name. “I am doing this for me, my hometown.” “Sheik” Shannon, 55, a 17-year employee at the company, believes the political class fundamentally misunderstands what this election cycle is all about. “They think it is the celebrity of Trump. It’s not. They think we’ve all gone mad. We’ve not,” he said, emphasizing each sentence with passion. “Communities like where I live do not need to shutter and die. We lead solid, honest lives, we work hard, we play hard, we pray hard … we love where we are from, and we feel a duty to make sure that it is here for generations.” Paul Sracic, a Youngstown State University political scientist, believes there are two categories of voters rallying to support Trump.

“First, there are people who don’t normally vote,” he said. “Nearly half the voting-age population was either not registered to vote, or was registered and decided not to vote in 2012. And if even 10% of that group was to show up and vote this year, it could easily change the outcome in the important swing states.” Sracic—who frankly admits he obsesses over opinion polls—wonders whether these voters are even represented in the endless presidential surveys: “If people aren’t registered voters, they won’t be picked up by most polls. If they are registered voters but don’t normally vote, they may be eliminated by ‘likely voter’ screens pollsters use.” Romney lost Pennsylvania in 2012 by about 300,000 votes out of about 5.5 million cast; in Ohio, he lost by less than 200,000. “So bringing new people in can make a difference,” Sracic said.

Potentially more significant, however, are those voters who “flip”—Sracic’s second category. “Remember,” he said, “taking a Democratic voter and having them vote Republican is both a +1 and a -1. In other words, if Romney lost Pennsylvania by 300,000 voters, all you have to do [this time] is flip slightly more than 150,000 votes.” Between Ohio and Pennsylvania, if approximately 225,000 voters (out of the 11 million who are expected on Election Day) switch parties, they could tip the entire election.

Read more …

For names, amounts and photos click the link.

How Much It ‘Costs’ To Get An Ambassadorship (ZH)

After addressing a cybersecuirty conference in London, notorious hacker ‘Guccifer’ shared over 500Mb of documents detailing 100,000 DNC donors contact info and donations. A large number of the largest donors received senior diplomatic or political positions following thge donations, ranging from UK Ambassador to Assistant Attorney General. The DNC released a statement pre-emptively claiming that this was the work of Russia (and reigniting Trump’s links to Putin). Probably just coincidence… The dcoments contained detailed lists of 100,000 alledged donors, addresses, and phone numbers, and well as amounts donated…

[..] The DNC responded to the latest hack claim Tuesday through its Interim Chair Donna Brazile, who stated that the “DNC is the victim of a crime,” which she blamed on “Russian state-sponsored agents,” while also cautioning that the hacked documents were still being authenticated by the DNC legal team, as “it is common for Russian hackers to forge documents.” DNC pre-emptively published a statement in an attempt to change the narrative… [..] Once again blaming Russia (and Trump)… As RT reports, it’s not the first time that the name of Vladimir Putin has been brought up in the US presidential campaign, but this time the US president used this “argument” while openly campaigning for Clinton against Trump. The situation has become “really ludicrous and it borders on the ridiculous,” believes Gregory R. Copley, editor of Defense & Foreign Affairs.

“In my 50 odd years covering the US government, I have never seen this level of partisanship within the administration where a sitting president actually regards the opposition party as the enemy of the state,” Copley told RT. [..] The US establishment is “sacrificing key bilateral relationships in order to win [a] domestic election,” believes Copley. He added that neither Obama nor Clinton are interested in unifying the country, but they are rather “interested in winning and engaging in what modern democracy seems to have become – the tyranny of the marginal majority over the marginal minority.”

“When you think about the number of times that the Clinton campaign has brought up President Putin and the alleged Russian hacking of Hillary Clinton’s service, it makes you wonder just how desperate they are,” Copley noted. “President Obama has lost literally all prestige in an international community…with the loss of prestige he has become desperate.”

Read more …

Is there anything more boring in the world than billionaires?

Buffett Loses $1.4 Billion as Wells Fargo Tumbles on Scandal (BBG)

Warren Buffett had $1.4 billion wiped from his fortune Tuesday after Wells Fargo fell 3.3% as the fallout continued from revelations that bank employees had opened more than 2 million accounts without clients’ approval. Berkshire Hathaway, the lender’s biggest shareholder, fell 2%, causing the 86-year-old’s fortune to drop more than anyone else’s on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The U.S. investor is the world’s fourth-richest person with a net worth of $65.8 billion. Tuesday’s decline came amid a global equity sell off that has wiped out $93 billion from the world’s 400 biggest fortunes since Friday. The billionaires shed $37.3 billion Tuesday as stocks and bonds both slumped, and oil sank after the IEA’s prediction that a glut will extend into next year.

The world’s second-richest person, Inditex founder Amancio Ortega, leads the 400 richest people with a decline of $3.3 billion since the sell off began, according to the index. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the world’s richest person with $87.3 billion, has lost $2.4 billion. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s third-richest person with $66.2 billion, has shed $1.9 billion. Buffett, whose fortune is mostly in Berkshire shares, has lost $1.6 billion in the sell off. Wells Fargo was overtaken by JPMorgan as the world’s most valuable bank on Tuesday. It has fallen 5.9% since Thursday, when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced fines stemming from the fake accounts. The drop since Thursday compares with a 2.5% fall for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

Read more …

Good example of why systems need redundancy, but don’t have it.

Hanjin Brings One of World’s Busiest Shipping Terminals to Near Standstill (BBG)

The Hanjin Shipping Co. terminal at South Korea’s largest port used to be one of the world’s busiest. Dozens of container carriers would line up to ferry boxes to and from the giant cranes that loaded and unloaded the world’s biggest ships.
Last week the terminal, as big as 100 football fields, came to a virtual standstill. In front of hundreds of containers stacked four-high, Seo Seong Deok, a 35-year-old driver of the port tractors, wondered if he would ever get to move them again. “We have no work now,” said Seo, one of about 1,000 tractor drivers without work. “This Hanjin terminal used to be always bustling with trucks and ships. Now, I heard some fresh food such as mango or banana is rotting in Hanjin container ships drifting somewhere in the ocean.”

Since the world’s seventh-largest container line filed for protection from creditors on Aug. 31, the port has been paralyzed as unshipped boxes piled up. The collapse has come at the worst time: September is peak season for the industry as manufacturers look to stock store shelves for holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Port officials say cargo owners have been scrambling to find alternative ways to send goods. The port in Busan, on the tip of the Korean peninsula about 200 miles southeast of Seoul, handles more than 70% of the containers that enter or leave South Korea, according to local government data. Until last week, Hanjin alone accounted for about 10% of goods that flow through its wharves. “The biggest concern is Busan losing its longtime reputation as a maritime hub in Asia,” said Kim Kyu-Ok, the city’s vice mayor for economic affairs. Hanjin’s collapse “could make ship owners shun Busan.”

Read more …

A good take from Tyler: turn Christine on her head.

IMF’s Lagarde Slams Globalization (ZH)

Two months after consultancy giant McKinsey dramatically flip-flopped on its long held position of praising globalization, cautioning that – as Britain’s vote to exit the European Union exemplified what happens when people feel like the system is letting them down – the system is on the verge of “explosion”, comparing the buildup of resentment over globalization to a dangerous natural gas leak in a row of houses, today it was the IMF’s turn. In a speech titled “Making Globalisation Work For All”, IMF managing director Chrstine Lagarde became the latest in a growing chorus of senior policymakers urging governments to take heed of rising discontent and economic insecurity in the advanced world.

Lagarde said that governments in the developed world should focus their attention on boosting support for low income workers and reducing inequality, amid a “groundswell of discontent” against globalisation. Effectively reiterating the McKinsey report, Lagarde said that there is “a growing sense among some citizens that they “lack control,” that the system is somehow against them”, a system which she now slams, even though the IMF been instrumental in helping create and grow precisely this system ever since its inception, saying that “growing inequality in wealth, income, and opportunity in many countries has added to a groundswell of discontent, especially in the industrialized world.” She then slammed both banks, tax regimes and pervasive corruption, saying that “financial institutions are being seen as unaccountable to society. Tax systems allow multinational companies and wealthy individuals not to pay what many would consider a fair share. Corruption remains endemic.”

Last but not least she warned about the “challenge” from migration flows: And there is the challenge from uncontrolled migration flows, contributing to economic and cultural anxieties.” To be sure, Lagarde did have some kinds words for globalisation, highlighting the opening up of world trade and the entry of the likes of China and India into the global economy, which has had “far reaching effects” for low-income workers in the likes of Europe and the US, however even here she highlighted the negatives saying that “the size of the global workforce effectively doubled, putting downward pressure on wages, especially for lower-skilled workers in advanced economies…. Some local labour markets that have faced deep, long-lasting effects from overseas competition.” We are confident this is a bullet point that Trump will be delighted to use during the upcoming debates.

Read more …

This is very dangerous. We should not allow it.

Bayer To Announce Acquisition Of Monsanto On Wednesday (R.)

Chemicals and healthcare group Bayer is poised to announce the acquisition of U.S. seeds company Monsanto on Wednesday for more than $66 billion, clinching the biggest deal of the year, people familiar with the matter said. By accepting Bayer’s offer, the largest cash acquisition proposal on record, Monsanto is set to give the German company a shot at grabbing the top spot in the fast-consolidating farm supplies industry, combining its crop science business with Monsanto’s strength in seeds. It will also set the stage for the deal to be closely scrutinized by antitrust regulators. The breakthrough in negotiations, which follows more than four months of talks, came after Bayer further improved on the sweetened offer of $127.50 per share in cash it disclosed last week, the people said.

However, the deal will still value Monsanto at less than $130 per share, which the company was previously hoping to fetch, the people added. Once Monsanto’s board of directors approves the deal on Tuesday, Bayer’s supervisory board will meet on Wednesday to also authorize the transaction, with an announcement expected before the stock market opens in New York on Wednesday. It is still possible the board of either company could decide to walk away from the deal at the last minute, the people cautioned. Bayer’s bid to combine its crop chemicals business, the world’s second-largest after Syngenta, with Monsanto’s industry leading seeds business, is the latest in a series of major consolidation moves in the agrochemical sector. U.S. chemicals giants Dow Chemical and DuPont have agreed to merge and spin off their respective seeds and crop chemicals operations into a major agribusiness.

Read more …

I don’t want to get into this too much, but the good doctor makes a convincing case.

Hillary’s 9/11 “Medical Episode” Looks More Like Parkinson’s Than Pneumonia (ZH)

A few weeks back, Dr. Ted Noel, an anesthesiologist with 36 years of experience, gained notoriety by sharing his opinion on his website, Vidzette, that Hillary likely had Parkinson’s disease. Now, Dr. Noel has posted a new video in which he explains how Hillary’s behavior on 9/11 and the subsequent decisions made by her campaign staff and secret service detail are more consistent with Parkinson’s disease than pneumonia. Among other things, Noel points out that if Hillary actually was suffering from such a severe case of pneumonia that it forced her to literally collapse on a sidewalk, it’s extremely unlikely that she could make a seemingly full recovery after only 90 minutes at Chelsea’s apartment and feel well enough to great onlookers and snap a selfie with a child.

Per Noel, Hillary’s recovery timing is more consistent with how long it would take her to ingest a dosage of Levodopa and wait for her Parkinson’s symptoms to subside. Noel also points out that sunglasses with dark blue lenses, like the ones Hillary wore this weekend despite the cloud cover, have been noted by doctors to help treat patients with major motion disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. With that preview, here is the full analysis

Read more …

I’m looking at doing another article on the political restraints on an EU ‘redesign’. Wrote on that years ago, don’t know if I can find any of it back. Nothing much has changed, other than tensions have increased.

Yanis looks at the economic/financial side. I think I’m more convinced that a ‘divorce’ is inevitable than he is, ugly as it may be.

An ‘Amicable Divorce’ For The Eurozone? (Varoufakis)

Stefano Fassina points out that in my article ‘Europe’s Left After Brexit’ I did not discuss his preferred option for Eurozone member-states: Stay in the EU but leave the euro. Of course the reason my article did not discuss that position is that it was focusing on Brexit and addressing Lexiteers like Tariq Ali and Stathis Kouvelakis who are arguing, from a left-wing position, for leaving the EU altogether – i.e. Brexit-like moves. But I am more than happy to comment on Stefano’s preferred option (In the EU, Out of the Euro) here. Stefano invokes Joe Stiglitz who, in his recent book on the euro, recommends an ‘amicable divorce’ that would lead to the creation of at least two new currencies (one for the deficit and one for the surplus countries).

Since I have recently discussed this with Joe Stiglitz it is perhaps useful to share the gist of our discussion with Stefano and our readers. In my email to Joe, I expressed scepticism that an ‘amicable divorce’ is at all possible. The moment it becomes public that a ‘divorce’ is under discussion, a wall of money will leave the banks of the countries destined for devaluation, heading for Frankfurt. At that point, the banks of the deficit member-states will collapse (as they run out of ECB-acceptable collateral) and the member-states will impose stringent currency and capital controls – complete with officials at airports checking suitcases and/or harsh limits in cash withdrawals. This would spell the end not only of monetary union but also of (the already injured) Schengen Treaty.

Meanwhile, as bank deposits are being redenominated, huge assets belonging to the Bundesbank and the central banks of other surplus countries (e.g. the Netherlands), which are the liabilities of the deficit countries, will disappear, causing an uproar of indignation in Germany and the Netherlands. Under such circumstances, and given the already advanced stage of the EU’s disintegration, it is almost certain that the dissolution of the Eurozone will be anything but amicable. Joe Stiglitz responded to me thus: “You are absolutely right that the moment any country contemplated leaving, capital controls would have to be imposed… The rush out will occur presumably before–when a party advocating a referendum looks like it might win.

So the hard decisions about imposing capital controls are likely to be faced ironically by a pro-Euro government. If it delays, by the time the election occurs, the country may be in shambles. The picture ahead for Europe is not a pretty one.” In conclusion, it is a fantasy to think that the EU can oversee an amicable disintegration of the Eurozone. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the EU surviving a Eurozone breakdown.

Read more …

Yeah, about that EU divorce…

Expel Hungary From EU For Hostility To Refugees, Says Luxembourg (G.)

Luxembourg’s foreign minister has called for Hungary to be thrown out of the EU over its increasingly hostile approach to refugees, as campaigners accuse Viktor Orbán’s hardline government of whipping up xenophobia to block a European plan to relocate asylum seekers. Jean Asselborn said Hungary should be temporarily or even permanently expelled from the EU for treating asylum seekers “worse than wild animals”. In an interview with German daily Die Welt, he said: “Anyone who, like Hungary, builds fences against refugees from war or who violates press freedom and judicial independence should be excluded temporarily, or if necessary for ever, from the EU.”

Asselborn called for EU rules to be changed to make it easier to expel Hungary as this was “the only way of preserving the cohesion and values of the EU”. Hungary’s foreign affairs and trade minister Péter Szijjártó dismissed Asselborn as “an intellectual lightweight” and his comments as “sermonising, pompous and frustrated”. He said only Hungarians have the right to decide who they wish to live with, adding that no Brussels bureaucrat can deprive them of this right. In a statement issued by the Hungarian government, Szijjártó added: “It is somewhat curious that Jean Asselborn and Jean-Claude Juncker – who both come from the country of tax optimisation – speak about jointly sharing burdens. But we understand what this really means: Hungary should take on the burden created by the mistakes of others.”

Read more …

This is what I have observed in Greecem, and why I support Konstantinos so strongly. His is the much better model for aid, not the massive overhead NGO one. But they get the millions, and he gets nothing, except from the Automatic Earth and a few minor other sources. NGOs have become corporations entrenched in a system that’s as expensive as it is a failure. And guess who the victims of this failure are?

Greece Has Exposed The NGO Aid Community’s Failures (G.)

The aid community has over many years developed a habit of finding reasons for why the school was not built in the Afghan village, why the women’s agricultural businesses never made any profits, why the toilets took three months to set up in the refugee camp. When it comes to our shortcomings, we have become very comfortable with, and rely upon the shopping list of excuses that we find ourselves using in Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the other contexts we’re flown into. The humanitarian excuses list includes, but is not limited to: a fragile context, ongoing war and conflict, poor infrastructure, a corrupt government, dictatorship (current or past), insufficient funding, and values that are not akin to our own.

Or if all else fails, that other favourite go-to, the overwhelming scale and number of people, such as the 1,033,513 registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon, 655,990 Syrian refugees in Jordan or 3.9 million internally displaced people in Iraq. But in Greece we are without the humanitarian excuse list to fall back on. The aid community has already received €83m to improve conditions for refugees in Greece with €214m to come from the European Commission alone in the next few months. This makes it hard to suggest we are underfunded, especially when you look at the scale of the crisis. At the time of writing, the number of refugees in Greece is approximately 60,000. The problem is not overwhelming. This time we are in an EU country.

I feel safe wherever I am – this means I can conduct a visit to monitor the impact of a programme or ensure I am consulting refugees about what they want. But I don’t, because it is something we have talked about but not done for many years, and there is little pressure to change. The disconnect between the sector’s standards and the reality on the ground is more stark here than in any other mission I’ve been involved in. We have historically been unaccountable, failing to sufficiently consult and engage affected communities. In Greece we are continuing to operate in the same ways as before, but without the traditional excuses to rely on.

Across Greece there are volunteers working both independently and as organised groups, meeting needs and filling gaps. They take over abandoned buildings to ensure refugees have somewhere to sleep, provide additional nutrition to pregnant and breastfeeding women, organise and manage informal education programmes, including setting up schools inside camps. All of this while INGO staff sip their cappuccinos in countless coordination meetings – for cash distribution, protection, water, sanitation and hygiene, food distribution and child-protection.

Read more …

Aug 102016
 


Dorothea Lange Youngest little girl of motherless family 1939

 

We can, every single one of us, agree that we’re either in or just past a -financial- crisis. But that seems to be all we can agree on. Because some call it the GFC, others a recession, and still others a depression. And some insist on seeing it as ‘in the past’, and solved, while others see it as a continuing issue.

I personally have the idea that if you think central banks -and perhaps governments- have the ability and the tools to prevent or cure financial crises, you’re in the more optimistic camp. And if you don’t, you’re a pessimist. A third option might be to think that no matter what central bankers do, things will solve themselves, but I don’t see much of that being floated. Not anymore.

What I do see are countless numbers of bankers and economists and pundits and reporters holding up high the concept of globalization (a.k.a. free trade, Open Society) as the savior of mankind and its economy.

And I’m thinking that no matter how great you think the entire centralization issue is, be it global or on a more moderate scale, it’s a lost case. Because centralization dies the moment it can no longer show obvious benefits for people and societies ‘being centralized’. Unless you’re talking a dictatorship.

This is because when you centralize, when you make people, communities, societies, countries, subject to -the authority of- larger entities, they will want something in return for what they give up. They will only accept that some ‘higher power’ located further away from where they live takes decisions on their behalf, if they benefit from these decisions.

And that in turn is only possible when there is growth, i.e. when the entire system is expanding. Obviously, it’s possible also to achieve this only in selected parts of the system, as long as if you’re willing to squeeze other parts. That’s what we see in Europe today, where Germany and Holland live the high life while Greece and Italy get poorer by the day. But that can’t and won’t last. Of necessity. It’s an inbuilt feature.

Schäuble and Dijsselbloem squeezed Greece so hard they could only convince it to stay inside the EU by threatening to strangle it to -near- death. Problem is, they then actually did that. Bad mistake, and the end of the EU down the road. Because the EU has nothing left of the advantages of the centralized power; it no longer has any benefits on offer for the periphery.

Instead, the ‘Union’ needs to squeeze the periphery to hold the center together. Otherwise, the center cannot hold. And that is something those of us with even just a remote sense of history recognize all too well. It reminds us of the latter days of the Roman Empire. And Rome is merely the most obvious example. What we see play out is a regurgitation of something the world has seen countless times before. The Maximum Power Principle in all its shining luster. And the endgame is the Barbarians will come rushing in…

Still, while I have my own interests in Greece, which seems to be turning into my third home country, it would be a mistake to focus on its case alone. Greece is just a symptom. Greece is merely an early sign that globalization as a model is going going gone.

Obviously, centralists/globalists, especially in Europe, try to tell us the country is an exception, and Greeks were terribly irresponsible and all that, but that will no longer fly. Not when, just to name a very real possibility, either some of Italy’s banks go belly up or the upcoming Italian constitutional referendum goes against the EU-friendly government. And while the Beautiful Brexit, at the very opposite point of the old continent, is a big flashing loud siren red buoy that makes that exact point, it’s merely the first such buoy.

But Europe is not the world. Greece and Britain and Italy may be sure signs that the EU is falling apart, but they’re not the entire globe. At the same time, the Union is a pivotal part of that globe, certainly when it comes to trade. And it’s based very much on the idea(l) of centralization of power, economics, finance, even culture. Unfortunately (?!), the entire notion depends on continuing economic growth, and growth has left the building.

 

 

Centralization/Globalization is the only ideology/religion that we have left, but it has one inbuilt weakness that dooms it as a system if not as an ideology. That is, it cannot exist without forever expanding, it needs perpetual growth or it must die. But if/when you want to, whether you’re an economist or a policy maker, develop policies for the future, you have to at least consider the possibility, and discuss it too, that there is no way back to ‘healthy’ growth. Or else we can just hire a parrot to take your place.

So here’s a few graphs that show us where global trade, the central and pivotal point of globalization, is going. Note that globalization can only continue to exist while trade, profits, benefits, keep growing. Once they no longer do, it will go into reverse (again, bar a dictator):

Here’s Japan’s exports and imports. Note the past 20 months:

 

 

Japan’s imports have been down, in the double digits, for close to 3 years?!

Next: China’s exports and imports. Not the exact same thing, but an obvious pattern.

 

 

If only imports OR exports were going down for specific countries, that’d be one thing. But for both China and Japan, in the graphs above, both are plunging. Let’s turn to the US:

 

 

Pattern: US imports from China have been falling over the past year (or even more over 5 years, take your pick), and not a little bit.

 

 

And imports from the EU show the same pattern in an almost eerily similar way.

Question then is: what about US exports, do they follow the same fold that Japan and China do? Yup! They do.

 

 

And that’s not all either. This one’s from the NY Times a few days ago:

 

 

And this one from last year, forgot where I got it from:

 

 

Now, you may want to argue that all this is temporary, that some kind of cycle is just around the corner and will revive the economy, and globalization. By now I’d be curious to see how anyone would want to make that case, but given the religious character of the centralization idea, there’s no doubt many would want to give it a go.

Most of the trends in the graphs above have been declining for 5 years or so. While at the same time the central banks in these countries have been accelerating their stimulus policies in ways no-one could even imagine they would -or could- just 10 years ago.

All of the untold trillions in stimulus haven’t been able to lift the real economy one bit. They instead caused a rise in asset prices, stocks, housing, that is actually hurting that real economy. While NIRP and ZIRP are murdering 95% of the people’s hope to retire when they thought they could, or ever, for that matter.

No, it’s a done deal. Globalization is pining for the fjords. But because it’s become such a religion, and because its high priests have so much invested in it, it’ll be hard to kill it off even just as an -abstract- idea. I’d say wherever you live and whenever your next election is, don’t vote for anyone who promotes any centralization ideas. Or growth. Because those ideas are all in some state of decomposing, and hence whoever promotes them is a zombie.

 

 

Lastly, The Economist had a piece on July 30 cheerleading for both Hillary Clinton and ‘Open Society’, a term which somehow -presumably because it sounds real jolly- has become synonymous with globalization. As if your society will be hermetically sealed off if you want to step on the brakes even just a little when it comes to ever more centralization and globalization.

The boys at Saxo Bank, Mike McKenna and Steen Jakobsen, commented on the Economist piece, and they have some good points:

Priced Out Of The ‘Open Society’

[..] The biggest problem facing globalism, however, is neither its hypocrisy nor its will-to-power – these are ordinary human failings common to all ideologies. Its biggest problem is much simpler: it’s very expensive. The world has seen versions of the wealthy, cosmopolitan ideal before. In both Imperial Rome and Achaemenid Persia, for example, societies characterised by extensive trade networks, multicultural metropoli and the rule of law (relative to the times) eventually succumbed to rampant inequality, inter-community strife, and expensive foreign wars in the case of Rome and a death-spiral of economic stagnation and constant tax hikes in the case of Persia.

That’s the center vs periphery issue all empires run into. US, EU, and all the supra-national organizations, IMF, World Bank, NATO, (EU itself), etc, they’ve established. None of that will remain once the benefits for the periphery stop. McKenna is on to this:

It seems near-axiomatic that, in the absence of the sort of strong GDP growth that characterised the post-World War Two era, the pluralist ideal might begin to show strains along the seams of its own construction. Such strains can be inter-ethnic, ideological, religious, or whatever else, but the legitimacy of The Economists’s favoured worldview largely came about due to the wealth and living standards it was seen to provide in the post-WW2 and Cold War era. Now that this is beginning to falter, so too are the politicians and institutions that have long championed it. In Jakobsen’s view, the rising tide of populist nationalism is in no way the solution, but it is a sign that globalisation’s elites have grown distant from the population as a whole.

I’d venture that the elites were always distant from the people, but as long as the people saw their wealth grow they either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“The world has become elitist in every way,” says Saxo Bank’s chief economist. “We as a society have to recognise that productivity comes from raising the average education level… the key thing here is that we need to be more productive. If everyone has a job, there is no need to renegotiate the social contract.” Put another way, would the political careers of Trump, Le Pen, Viktor Orban, and other such nationalist leaders be where they are if the post-crisis environment had been one of healthy wage growth, inflation, an increase in “breadwinner” jobs, and GDP expansion?

Here I have to part ways with Steen (and Mike). Why do ‘we’ need to be more productive? Why do we need to produce more? Who says we don’t produce enough? When we look around us, what is it that tells us we should make more, and buy more, and want more? Is there really such a thing as “healthy wage growth”? And what says that we need “GDP expansion”?

Most people do not spend a great deal of time imagining ideal economic and political systems. Most just want to live satisfying lives among their friends and family, and to feel as if their leaders are doing all they can to enable such a situation. What matters are the data, and if these are not made to become more encouraging, calls for this particular empire’s downfall will come with the same fervour and the same increasing frequency that they have throughout history.

The problem is not that people are choosing the wrong system, it is that they are unhappy enough to want to change course at all. Unless the developed world can find a way to reform itself out of its present malaise, no amount of media-class vituperation over xenophobia, insularity or “the uneducated” will be sufficient to turn the tide.

McKenna answers my question, unwillingly or not. Because, no, ‘Most just want to live satisfying lives among their friends and family..’ is not the same as “they want GDP expansion”, no matter how you phrase it. That’s just an idea. For all we know, the truth may be the exact opposite. The neverending quest for GDP expansion may be the very thing that prevents people from living “satisfying lives among their friends and family”.

How many people see the satisfaction in their lives destroyed by the very rat race they’re in? Moreover, how many see their satisfaction destroyed by being on the losing end of that quest? And how many simply by the demands it puts on them?

The connection between “satisfying lives” and “GDP expansion” is one made by economists, bankers, politicians and other voices driven by ideologies such as globalization. Whether your life is satisfying or not is not somehow one-on-one dependent on GDP expansion. That idea is not only ideological, it’s as stupid as it is dangerous.

And it’s silly too. Most westerners don’t need more stuff. They need more “satisfying lives among their friends and family”. But they’re stuck on a treadmill. If you want to give your kids decent health care and education anno 2016, you better keep running to stand still.

Mike McKenna and Steen Jakobsen seem to understand exactly what the problem is. But they don’t have the answer. Steen thinks it is about ‘more productivity’.

And I think that may well be the problem, not the solution. I also think it’s no use wanting more productivity, because the economic model we’re chasing is dead and gone. A zombie pushing up the daisies.

But since it’s the only one we have, and even smart people like the Saxo Bank guys can’t see beyond it, it seems obvious that getting rid of the zombie idea may take a lot of sweat and tears and, especially, blood.

 

 

Aug 082016
 
 August 8, 2016  Posted by at 9:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  6 Responses »


NPC Dr. H.W. Evans, Imperial Wizard 1925

The US Market Has Been And Remains Today, The Last Ponzi Game Standing (Adler)
Priced Out Of The ‘Open Society’ (McKenna)
Shrinking Imports And Exports—A Far More Meaningful Counterpoint To BLS (Alh.)
China’s July Exports, Imports Fall More Than Expected (R.)
China Crude Imports Fall to 6-Month Low, Fuel Exports Surge (BBG)
China’s Great River of Steel Swells as Trade Tensions Build (BBG)
Draghi Jumps Brexit Hurdle to Find Oil Damping Price Outlook (BBG)
Bond Market’s Big Illusion Revealed as US Yields Turn Negative (BBG)
China’s Marshall Plan (BBG)
Earnings Beats Are Concealing Bad Results (MW)
We’re in a Low-Growth World. How Did We Get Here? (NYT)
Musical Chairs in a Depression (Thomas)

 

 

Great piece from Lee Adler. “It’s abstract impressionism. It’s a joke.”

The US Market Has Been And Remains Today, The Last Ponzi Game Standing (Adler)

I’m not here to argue whether the July report was lousy or not. The US economy may well be spawning big numbers of crappy low paying jobs. Withholding tax collections were huge in the last 4 weeks of July. We know that that didn’t come from big wage gains by existing workers. They’re running at about a 2.5% annual growth rate. So when tax collections increase by a significant margin over a similar period a year ago, it suggests that there were new jobs, maybe a lot of them. I’m also not here to argue that the headline number bears any semblance of reality. The headline number is the seasonally adjusted month to month gain in the estimated number of jobs. The whole process of seasonal adjustment is a bogus attempt to smooth a jagged trend with peaks and valleys into a continuous modified moving average.

The number is a fiction. Because it’s based on a moving average it has a built in lag, for which statisticians try to compensate with a bunch of statistical hocus pocus. That includes constantly revising the number based first on subsequent surveys, and then on benchmarking the data with actual tax collections in the 5 subsequent years. Not only is the number revised twice after the first month it’s issued, but it’s then fit to the curve of actuality for the next 5 years until the reading is finalized. July’s reading won’t be final until July 2021. The process is really “seasonal finagling.” It’s abstract impressionism. It’s a joke. What I have come to argue here is that the not seasonally adjusted (NSA) numbers, which I have always relied upon in my analysis of the jobs trend, is probably also a joke.

Look at this chart. Do those railroad tracks look like the real world to you, or are these some kind of computer generated auto-numbers that merely make a pretense of reality. Law of Large Numbers or not, I have never seen any other economic series behave with such regularity. This is a joke, a farce, a sham. But it doesn’t matter because the economy doesn’t matter. The world’s central banks have attempted, and largely succeeded, in rigging the financial markets. One of the consequences, intended or unintended, is that the bulk of the benefit of that rigging flows to the US financial markets. That has been so been since 2009. The US market has been and remains today, the Last Ponzi Game Standing. All roads lead to the US.

Read more …

Saxo Bank’s Mike McKenna comments on an Economist cheerleading piece on ‘Open Society’, which somehow -presumably because it sounds positive- has become synonymous to globalization. McKenna’s conclusion: the world can’t afford globalization. Which is what I’ve been saying: without growth there can be no centralization. The Saxo boys seem to think that a return to growth is still possible/desirable. I think not.

Priced Out Of The ‘Open Society’ (McKenna)

The biggest problem facing globalism, however, is neither its hypocrisy nor its will-to-power – these are ordinary human failings common to all ideologies. Its biggest problem is much simpler: it’s very expensive. The world has seen versions of the wealthy, cosmopolitan ideal before. In both Imperial Rome and Achaemenid Persia, for example, societies characterised by extensive trade networks, multicultural metropoli and the rule of law (relative to the times) eventually succumbed to rampant inequality, inter-community strife, and expensive foreign wars in the case of Rome and a death-spiral of economic stagnation and constant tax hikes in the case of Persia.

It seems near-axiomatic that, in the absence of the sort of strong GDP growth that characterised the post-World War Two era, the pluralist ideal might begin to show strains along the seams of its own construction. Such strains can be inter-ethnic, ideological, religious, or whatever else, but the legitimacy of The Economists’s favoured worldview largely came about due to the wealth and living standards it was seen to provide in the post-WW2 and Cold War era. Now that this is beginning to falter, so too are the politicians and institutions that have long championed it. In Jakobsen’s view, the rising tide of populist nationalism is in no way the solution, but it is a sign that globalisation’s elites have grown distant from the population as a whole.

“The world has become elitist in every way,” says Saxo Bank’s chief economist. “We as a society have to recognise that productivity comes from raising the average education level… the key thing here is that we need to be more productive. If everyone has a job, there is no need to renegotiate the social contract.” Put another way, would the political careers of Trump, Le Pen, Viktor Orban, and other such nationalist leaders be where they are if the post-crisis environment had been one of healthy wage growth, inflation, an increase in “breadwinner” jobs, and GDP expansion?

Read more …

Globalization crashing head first into its inherent limits.

Shrinking Imports And Exports—A Far More Meaningful Counterpoint To BLS (Alh.)

In the first six months of 2005, the US imported 27.2% more in Chinese goods than the first six months of 2004, and that was 28.8% more than the first six months of 2003. In the first six months of 2016, the US imported 6.5% less than the first six months of 2015, itself only 6.1% more than the first six months of 2014. The US actually imported slightly less from China so far this year than two years ago.

As we know very well from US production levels it’s not as if some native “buy American” grassroots opposition has successfully convinced American buyers to ditch the cheaper Chinese alternatives, redistributing “strong” consumer spending toward American products. There is much less goods being produced and traded with and within the United States – alarmingly so. Further, as you can see above and below, the timing of this most recent change from plain weakness to dangerous weakness is significant.

Starting September 2015, meaning dating back to August, US imports from China have dropped off a cliff. While year-over-year growth was slightly positive in September, it has been negative in every month since except February 2016 and that was due to calendar effects here and holiday weeks there (and was easily wiped out by the massive contraction in March). The mainstream reading of the payroll reports up to that point indicated that US demand would and should be nothing but strong. Instead, it has been much worse than it already was.

It isn’t just China that is feeling the increasing absenteeism of the US consumer. US imports from Europe contracted for the third straight month, where the -1.8% 6-month average is the lowest since 2010 and the initial recovery from the Great Recession. Imports from Japan were up for the first time in three months, but overall for the first half of 2016 are down nearly 5% in total.

Read more …

But that’s only due to who does the ‘expecting’.

China’s July Exports, Imports Fall More Than Expected (R.)

China’s exports and imports fell more than expected in July in a rocky start to the third quarter, suggesting global demand remains weak in the aftermath of Britain’s decision to leave the EU. Exports fell 4.4% from a year earlier, the General Administration of Customs said on Monday, while adding that it expects pressure on exports is likely to ease at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Imports fell 12.5% from a year earlier, the biggest decline since February, suggesting domestic demand remains sluggish despite a flurry of measures to stimulate growth. That resulted in a trade surplus of $52.31 billion in July, versus a $47.6 billion forecast and June’s $48.11 billion.

Read more …

Trying to keep the teapots alive…

China Crude Imports Fall to 6-Month Low, Fuel Exports Surge (BBG)

China’s crude imports fell to the lowest level in six months as demand from independent refineries eased. Net fuel exports surged to a record. The world’s biggest energy user imported 31.07 million metric tons of crude in July, according to data released by the General Administration of Customs on Monday. That’s about 7.35 million barrels a day, the slowest pace since January. Meanwhile, net fuel exports jumped to 2.49 million tons last month.

The nation’s appetite for overseas crude, which increased 14% in the first half year from the same period of 2015, may be weaker in the near term as insufficient infrastructure and scheduled maintenance at some independent refiners will likely hinder their crude purchases, BMI Research said in a report dated Aug. 4. “Teapots’ crude buying has slowed in the third quarter amid maintenance,” Amy Sun, an analyst with ICIS China, said before data were released. “Some plants have also seen their crude-import quotas filling up.”

Read more …

They have no intention of halting this either.

China’s Great River of Steel Swells as Trade Tensions Build (BBG)

There’s a river of steel flooding from China despite the best efforts of governments around the world to dam the flow from the world’s top producer, with data on Monday showing that overseas shipments held above 10 million tons in July. Sales increased 5.8% on-year to 10.3 million metric tons last month, compared with 10.9 million tons in June, according to China’s customs administration. Exports in the first seven months expanded 8.5% to 67.4 million tons, a record volume for the period. That’s in line with what South Korea, the world’s sixth-largest producer in 2015, makes in an entire year.

The robust export showing by China’s mills contrasts with the country’s broader performance last month, which fell in dollar terms, and risks further stoking trade tensions with partners from India to Europe after they imposed curbs to keep out the alloy. Premier Li Keqiang has defended the country’s growing presence in overseas steel markets, saying last month that overcapacity isn’t the fault of a single country. “Orders from abroad have held up relatively well as steelmakers in China have a cost advantage,” Dang Man, an analyst at Maike Futures Co. in Xi’an, said before the data. “Attention is still on global trade friction as the number of cases against Chinese exports is quite large.”

Read more …

The graph illustrates one thing alright. Food, Alcohol and Tobacco prices rise only because of taxes. That suggests governments could get rid of deflation just by raising taxes. Which, really, is nonsense. Therefore, so is the graph and the methodology it is based on. Rising prices don’t equal inflation.

Draghi Jumps Brexit Hurdle to Find Oil Damping Price Outlook (BBG)

Whenever Mario Draghi clears a hurdle on his path to higher inflation, a new one appears. Just as the 19-nation economy sends encouraging signals that challenges from Brexit to terrorism won’t derail the modest recovery, a new decline in oil prices is casting a shadow over an expected pick-up in inflation. With growth not strong enough to generate price pressures, the ECB president may have to revise his outlook yet again. Inflation remains far below the ECB’s 2% goal after more than two years of unprecedented stimulus and isn’t seen reaching it before 2018.

Staff will begin to draw up fresh forecasts in mid-August, and while officials are in no rush to adjust or expand their €1.7 trillion quantitative-easing plan in September, economists predict Draghi will have to ease policy before the end of the year. “Now that the euro-area economy seems to have shrugged off the Brexit vote, focus will again shift on inflation, against the background of those negative news from oil prices,” said Johannes Gareis, an economist at Natixis in Frankfurt. “Yes, the ECB has managed to dispel deflation fears, but all the uncertainty means inflation will stay lower for longer – and Draghi will have to take notice.”

Read more …

Maybe Zimbabwe bonds still offer some yield?

Bond Market’s Big Illusion Revealed as US Yields Turn Negative (BBG)

For Kaoru Sekiai, getting steady returns for his pension clients in Japan used to be simple: buy U.S. Treasuries. Compared with his low-risk options at home, like Japanese government bonds, Treasuries have long offered the highest yields around. And that’s been the case even after accounting for the cost to hedge against the dollar’s ups and downs – a common practice for institutions that invest internationally. It’s been a “no-brainer since forever,” said Sekiai, a money manager at Tokyo-based DIAM. That truism is now a thing of the past. Last month, yields on U.S. 10-year notes turned negative for Japanese buyers who pay to eliminate currency fluctuations from their returns, something that hasn’t happened since the financial crisis.

It’s even worse for euro-based investors, who are locking in sub-zero returns on Treasuries for the first time in history. That quirk means the longstanding notion of the U.S. as a respite from negative yields in Japan and Europe is little more than an illusion. With everyone from Jeffrey Gundlach to Bill Gross warning of a bubble in bonds, it could ultimately upend the record foreign demand for Treasuries, which has underpinned their seemingly unstoppable gains in recent years. “People like a simple narrative,” said Jeffrey Rosenberg at BlackRock. “But there isn’t a free lunch. You can’t simply talk about yield differentials without talking about currency differentials.”

Read more …

Imagine the enormous amounts of debt that would be involved in this. Then look at China’s current debt. Then draw your conclusions. More globalization nonsense. The next Chinese bubble.

China’s Marshall Plan (BBG)

China’s ambition to revive an ancient trading route stretching from Asia to Europe could leave an economic legacy bigger than the Marshall Plan or the EU’s enlargement, according to a new analysis. Dubbed ‘One Belt, One Road,’ the plan to build rail, highways and ports will embolden China’s soft power status by spreading economic prosperity during a time of heightened political uncertainty in both the U.S. and EU, according to Stephen L. Jen, CEO at Eurizon SLJ Capital, who estimates a value of $1.4 trillion for the project. It will also boost trading links and help internationalize the yuan as banks open branches along the route, according to Jen.

“This is a quintessential example of a geopolitical event that will likely be consequential for the global economy and the balance of political power in the long run,” said Jen, a former IMF economist. Reaching from east to west, the Silk Road Economic Belt will extend to Europe through Central Asia and the Maritime Silk Road will link sea lanes to Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. While China’s authorities aren’t calling their Silk Road a new Marshall Plan, that’s not stopping comparisons with the U.S. effort to rebuild Western Europe after World War II. With the potential to touch on 64 countries, 4.4 billion people and around 40% of the global economy, Jen estimates that the One Belt One Road project will be 12 times bigger in absolute dollar terms than the Marshall Plan.

China may spend as much as 9% of GDP – about double the U.S.’s boost to post-war Europe in those terms. “The One Belt One Road Project, in terms of its size, could be multiple times larger and more ambitious than the Marshall Plan or the European enlargement,” said Jen. It’s not all upside. Undertaking an expansive plan like this one will inevitably run the risk of corruption, project delays and local opposition. Chinese backed projects have frequently run into trouble before, especially in Africa, and there’s no guarantee that potential recipient nations will put their hand up for the aid. In addition, resurrecting the trading route will need funding during a time of slowing growth and rising bad loans in the nation’s banks. Sending money abroad when it’s needed at home may not have an enduring appeal.

Still, at least China has a plan. “The fact that this is a 30-40 year plan is remarkable as China is the only country with any long-term development plan, and this underscores the policy long-termism in China, in contrast to the dominance of policy short-termism in much of the West,” said Jen. And that’s a win-win for soft power. “The One Belt One Road Project could be a huge PR exercise that could win over government and public support in these countries,” he said.

Read more …

“The beat on earnings is due at least in part to negative earnings revisions heading into earnings season, similar to what we have seen for the last 29 quarters..”

Earnings Beats Are Concealing Bad Results (MW)

Investors shouldn’t be fooled by this season’s “better-than-expected” earnings—they are still pretty bad. With nearly 90% of the S&P 500 companies having reported second-quarter results through Friday morning (437 out of 505), aggregate earnings-per-share for the group are on course to decline 3.5% from a year ago, according to FactSet. Many Wall Street strategists are pleased, because that is a lot better than expectations of a 5.5% decline on June 30, just before earnings reporting season kicked off. So are investors, as the S&P and Nasdaq Composite Index closed in record territory Friday, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed less than 0.3% away. But that is like saying you should be happy with the “D” you got, because it would really be a “B” if the teacher changed the scale to grade on a curve.

“The beat on earnings is due at least in part to negative earnings revisions heading into earnings season, similar to what we have seen for the last 29 quarters with aggregate upside to expectations,” Morgan Stanley equity strategists wrote in a recent note to clients. Earnings might be beating lowered expectations, but they are still worse than the aggregate FactSet consensus of a 3.1% decline at the end of the first quarter on March 31. It also means S&P 500 earnings will suffer the fifth-straight quarter of year-over-year declines, the longest such streak since the five-quarter stretch from the third quarter of 2008 through the third quarter of 2009, the heart of the Great Recession.

Read more …

By fooling ourselves into thinking we’d never get there again?

We’re in a Low-Growth World. How Did We Get Here? (NYT)

One central fact about the global economy lurks just beneath the year’s remarkable headlines: Economic growth in advanced nations has been weaker for longer than it has been in the lifetime of most people on earth. The United States is adding jobs at a healthy clip, as a new report showed Friday, and the unemployment rate is relatively low. But that is happening despite a long-term trend of much lower growth, both in the United States and other advanced nations, than was evident for most of the post-World War II era. This trend helps explain why incomes have risen so slowly since the turn of the century, especially for those who are not top earners. It is behind the cheap gasoline you put in the car and the ultralow interest rates you earn on your savings.

It is crucial to understanding the rise of Donald J. Trump, Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, and the rise of populist movements across Europe. This slow growth is not some new phenomenon, but rather the way it has been for 15 years and counting. In the United States, per-person gross domestic product rose by an average of 2.2% a year from 1947 through 2000 — but starting in 2001 has averaged only 0.9%. The economies of Western Europe and Japan have done worse than that. Over long periods, that shift implies a radically slower improvement in living standards. In the year 2000, per-person G.D.P. — which generally tracks with the average American’s income — was about $45,000.

But if growth in the second half of the 20th century had been as weak as it has been since then, that number would have been only about $20,000. To make matters worse, fewer and fewer people are seeing the spoils of what growth there is. According to a new analysis by the McKinsey Global Institute, 81% of the United States population is in an income bracket with flat or declining income over the last decade. That number was 97% in Italy, 70% in Britain, and 63% in France.

Read more …

“Since 2007, the world has been in an unacknowledged depression.”

Musical Chairs in a Depression (Thomas)

Economics is a bit like musical chairs. In a recession, the economy takes a hit and there are some casualties. Some players fail to get a chair in time and are out of the game. The game then goes on without them. The economy eventually recovers. But a depression is a different game entirely. Since 2007, the world has been in an unacknowledged depression. A depression is like a game of musical chairs in which ten children are walking around, but suddenly nine of the chairs are taken away. This means that nine of the children will soon be out of the game. But it also means that all ten understand that the odds of them remaining in the game are quite slim and that desperate times call for desperate measures. It’s time to toss out the rule book and do whatever you have to, to get the one remaining chair.

Of course, the pundits officially deny that we have even been in a depression. They regularly describe the world as “in recovery from the 2008–2010 recession,” but the “shovel-ready jobs” that are “on the way” never quite materialize. The “green shoots” never seem to blossom. So, what’s going on here? Depressions do not occur all at once. It takes time for them to bottom and, if an economy is propped up through economic heroin (debt), the Big Crash can be a long time in coming. In that regard, this one is one for the record books. As Doug Casey is fond of saying, a depression is like a hurricane. First there are the initial crashes, then a calm as the eye of the hurricane passes over, then, we enter the trailing edge of the other side of the hurricane.

This is the time when things really get rough—when even the politicians will start using the dreaded “D” word. We have entered that final stage, as the economic symptoms demonstrate, and this is the time when the game of musical chairs will evolve into something quite a bit nastier. In normal economic times, even including recession periods, we observe financial institutions maintaining their staunchly conservative image. For the most part, they deliver as promised. But, as we move into the trailing edge of the second half of the hurricane, we notice more and more that the bankers are rewriting the rule book in order to take possession of the wealth that they previously held in trust for their depositors.

And they don’t do this in isolation. They do it with the aid of the governments of the day. New laws are written in advance of the crisis period to assure that the banks can plunder the deposits with impunity. Since 2010, such laws have been passed in the EU, the US, Canada and other jurisdictions. Trial balloons have been sent up to ascertain to what degree they will get away with their freezes and confiscations. Greece has been an excellent trial balloon for the freezes and Cyprus has done the same for the confiscations. The world is now as ready as it’s going to be for the game to be played on an international level.

So what will it look like, this game of musical chairs on steroids? Well, first we’ll see the sudden crashes of markets and/or defaults on debts. Shortly thereafter, one Monday morning (or more likely one Tuesday after a long weekend) the financial institutions will fail to open their doors. The media will announce a “temporary state of emergency” during which the governments and banks must resolve some difficulties in order to “assure a continued sound economy.” Until that time, the banks will either remain shut, or will process only small transactions.

Read more …

Aug 072016
 
 August 7, 2016  Posted by at 9:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  1 Response »


NPC KKK services, Capital Horse Show grounds, Arlington 1938

Globalization and its New Discontents (Stiglitz)
Brexit: This Backlash Has Been A Long Time Coming (O’Rourke)
The US LOST 1,030 Million Jobs in July -Teachers’ Summer Break- (Sanders)
China’s July Forex Reserves Fall To $3.20 Trillion (R.)
Bitcoin’s Latest Economic Problem – (Worstall)
Theft And Mayhem In The Bitcoin World (Coppola)
Over 100 Americans Are Rich Enough to Buy the Election Outright (I’Cept)
Frozen Loans Trigger Australian Property Funding Crisis (AFR)
First Sept 11, Now Saudi Arabia Linked To German Terrorist Attacks (ZH)
Obama Expands ISIS Bombing to 4th Country, the Media Barely Notice (Nation)
Behold, a Pale Horse and its Rider’s Name Was Death (PCR)

 

 

How obvious does it have to get?

Globalization and its New Discontents (Stiglitz)

Fifteen years ago, I wrote a little book, entitled Globalization and its Discontents, describing growing opposition in the developing world to globalizing reforms. It seemed a mystery: people in developing countries had been told that globalization would increase overall wellbeing. So why had so many people become so hostile to it? Now, globalization’s opponents in the emerging markets and developing countries have been joined by tens of millions in the advanced countries. Opinion polls, including a careful study by Stanley Greenberg and his associates for the Roosevelt Institute, show that trade is among the major sources of discontent for a large share of Americans. Similar views are apparent in Europe.

How can something that our political leaders – and many an economist – said would make everyone better off be so reviled? One answer occasionally heard from the neoliberal economists who advocated for these policies is that people are better off. They just don’t know it. Their discontent is a matter for psychiatrists, not economists. But income data suggest that it is the neoliberals who may benefit from therapy. Large segments of the population in advanced countries have not been doing well: in the US, the bottom 90% has endured income stagnation for a third of a century. Median income for full-time male workers is actually lower in real (inflation-adjusted) terms than it was 42 years ago. At the bottom, real wages are comparable to their level 60 years ago.

The effects of the economic pain and dislocation that many Americans are experiencing are even showing up in health statistics. For example, the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, this year’s Nobel laureate, have shown that life expectancy among segments of white Americans is declining. Things are a little better in Europe – but only a little better. [..] .. if globalization is to benefit most members of society, strong social-protection measures must be in place. The Scandinavians figured this out long ago; it was part of the social contract that maintained an open society – open to globalization and changes in technology. Neoliberals elsewhere have not – and now, in elections in the US and Europe, they are having their comeuppance.

Read more …

And everyone was busy doing something else. They still are by the looks of it.

Brexit: This Backlash Has Been A Long Time Coming (O’Rourke)

The main point of my 1999 book with Jeff Williamson was that globalisation produces both winners and losers, and that this can lead to an anti-globalisation backlash. We argued this based on late-19th century evidence. Then, the main losers from trade were European landowners, who found themselves competing with an elastic supply of cheap New World land. The result was that in Germany and France, Italy and Sweden, the move towards ever-freer trade that had been ongoing for several years was halted, and replaced by a shift towards protection that benefited not only agricultural interests, but industrial ones as well. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, immigration restrictions were gradually tightened, as workers found themselves competing with European migrants coming from ever-poorer source countries.

While Jeff and I were firmly focused on economic history, we were writing with an eye on the ‘trade and wages’ debate that was raging during the 1990s. There was an obvious potential parallel between 19th-century European landowners, newly exposed to competition with elastic supplies of New World land, and late 20th-century OECD unskilled workers, newly exposed to competition with elastic supplies of Asian, and especially Chinese, labour. In our concluding chapter, we noted that economists who base their views of globalisation, convergence, inequality, and policy solely on the years since 1970 are making a great mistake. The globalisation experience of the Atlantic economy prior to the Great War speaks directly and eloquently to globalisation debates today – and the political lessons from this are sobering.

“Politicians, journalists, and market analysts have a tendency to extrapolate the immediate past into the indefinite future, and such thinking suggests that the world is irreversibly headed toward ever greater levels of economic integration. The historical record suggests the contrary.” “Unless politicians worry about who gains and who loses,î we continued, ìthey may be forced by the electorate to stop efforts to strengthen global economy links, and perhaps even to dismantle them … We hope that this book will help them to avoid that mistake – or remedy it.”

Read more …

Yup, it’s seasonal adjustments again.

The US LOST 1,030 Million Jobs in July -Teachers’ Summer Break- (Sanders)

To better understand the July Jobs report, one has to understand the seasonal adjustments that the Bureau of Labor Statistics employs. Nonfarm payroll jobs added in July on a seasonally adjusted basis were +255,000 in July. But the raw or NON seasonally adjusted numbers were -1,030,000 jobs. Or 1.03 million jobs lost.

Notice in the above chart that you get big downward dips in the nonfarm payroll numbers in January and July. And it repeats every year. For January, this is the release of seasonal employment for the holidays. For July, this is the transformation to summertime employment, mostly for teachers. Local government education NSA fell by -1,093,000 in July. Total PRIVATE jobs added amounted to +85,000. So, the BLS smoothes the data using Seasonal Adjustments since January temporary workers being terminated or teachers not working during the summer is hardly newsworthy or surprising. Food and drinking services actually fell by -35,000 jobs added. Bartender blues. The bottom line is that the July jobs report was all about teachers going on summer break and low wage jobs being added.

Read more …

The real interesting question is what channels are now used to get money out.

China’s July Forex Reserves Fall To $3.20 Trillion (R.)

China’s foreign exchange reserves fell to $3.20 trillion in July, central bank data showed on Sunday, in line with analyst expectations. Economists polled by Reuters had predicted reserves would fall to $3.20 trillion from $3.21 trillion at the end of June. China’s reserves, the largest in the world, fell by $4.10 billion in July. The reserves rose $13.4 billion in June, rebounding from a 5-year low in May. China’s gold reserves rose to $78.89 billion at the end of July, up from $77.43 billion at end-June, data published on the People’s Bank of China website showed. Net foreign exchange sales by the People’s Bank of China in June jumped to their highest in three months, as the central bank sought to shield the yuan from market volatility caused by Brexit.

China’s foreign exchange regulator recently said China would be able to keep cross-border capital flows steady given its relatively sound economic fundamentals, solid current account surplus and ample foreign exchange reserves. China’s foreign reserves fell by a record $513 billion last year after it devalued the yuan currency in August, sparking a flood of capital outflows that alarmed global markets. The yuan has eased another 2% this year and is hovering near six-year lows, but official data suggests speculative capital flight is under control for now, thanks to tighter capital controls and currency trading regulations. However, economists are divided over how much money is still flowing out of the country via other channels, with opaque policymaking and some inconsistency in the data raising suspicions that the fall in the yuan may be masking capital outflow pressure.

Read more …

When will the whole thing be declared a failure?

Bitcoin’s Latest Economic Problem – (Worstall)

[..] And that’s where Bitcoin has the problem, in that very existence of the blockchain: The first relates to the ongoing legal recourse rights of Bitfinex victims. Even though they may have lost their right to pursue Bitfinex for compensation, they are still going to be entitled to track the funds across the blockchain to seek recourse from whomsoever receives the bitcoins in their accounts. That’s good news for victims, but mostly likely very bad news for bitcoin’s fungible state and thus its status as a medium of exchange.

Just one successful claim by a victim who tracks his funds to an identifiable third party, and the precedent is set. Any exchanges dealing with bitcoin in a legitimate capacity would from then on be inclined to do much stronger due diligence on whether the bitcoins being deposited in their system were connected to ill-gotten gains. This in turn would open the door to the black-listing of funds that can not prove they were originated honestly via legitimate earnings. Of course, people should not steal things. And yet for a currency to work it has to be possible to take the currency at its face value. Thus it may well be that the bank robber paid you for his beer with stolen money but you got it fair and square and thus the bank doesn’t get it back as an when they find out.

Another way to put this is that the crime dies with the criminal. And yet the blockchain upends all of that. Because every transaction which any one bitcoin has been involved in is traceable. I’ve said before that bitcoin has significant economic problems associated with it. The most important being that it is a deliberately deflationary currency which is a really, really, terrible idea. But the more we wander through the actual use in the real world of this idea the more we find other problems with it. As here, that blockchain, the basic defining point of bitcoin in the first place, making it something which isn’t going to work well as a currency over time. Because that very blockchain means that we’ll not be able to make the necessary compromises about justice in favour of efficiency in the event of crime.

Read more …

Will a bunch of unknowns, likely Bitfinex insiders, get away with stealing $60 million?

Theft And Mayhem In The Bitcoin World (Coppola)

The schadenfreude of Bitcoin enthusiasts over Ethereum’s recent troubles ended abruptly last week. A major Bitcoin exchange, Bitfinex, was hacked and nearly 120,000 BTC (around $60m) was stolen. The price of Bitcoin promptly crashed, and Bitfinex was forced to suspend trading. Suddenly, Ethereum was not the only basket case cryptocurrency around. It appears that Bitfinex’s security was seriously compromised. Customer coins were held in individual wallets secured with a 2 of 3 multisig arrangement: keys were held by Bitfinex itself and Bitgo, a professional custodian and signatory, with a third (backup) key held in secure offline storage. Customers could not withdraw funds from the wallets until any borrowings had been cleared. It was, if you like, a form of escrow. And it should have been secure.

But it wasn’t. Somehow, the hacker managed to gain access to hundreds of customer wallets. Not only did the hacker gain access to the wallets, he/she also overrode Bitgo’s withdrawal limits. It was a well-planned and comprehensive security breach by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. Funds were moved to thousands of addresses over a short period of time. Bitfinex, it seems, was powerless to stop it. This is one of the largest Bitcoin heists ever, dwarfed only by Mt. Gox in 2014. It is comparable in size to Ethereum’s DAO theft only a couple of weeks ago. And it is going to result in a lot of people losing a lot of money. All of Bitfinex’s customers, in fact. The company has announced a haircut of 36.067% across the board:

“After much thought, analysis, and consultation, we have arrived at the conclusion that losses must be generalized across all accounts and assets. This is the closest approximation to what would happen in a liquidation context. Upon logging into the platform, customers will see that they have experienced a generalized loss percentage of 36.067%. In a later announcement we will explain in full detail the methodology used to compute these losses.” Although the loss is estimated as the amount the customers would receive if the company were liquidated, this is a bail-in. Bitfinex has no plans to cease trading: “We intend to come online within 24-48 hours with limited platform functionality. Additional announcements will be made as we progressively enable more platform features and return to full operations.”

Read more …

Club 106.

Over 100 Americans Are Rich Enough to Buy the Election Outright (I’Cept)

Two billion dollars, the estimated cost of this year’s presidential election, is big money, but it is not huge money. Two billion is one-tenth of NASA’s annual budget, one-twentieth of the Harvard endowment, one-thirtieth of the personal wealth of Warren Buffett. Buffett is number two on the 2015 Forbes list of 106 Americans who hold personal fortunes of $5 billion or more, the Club of 106. These billionaires are rich enough to pay for the campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and still have $3 billion left over. A lot of the money in Club 106 is family money. The Club includes two Kochs, four Waltons, three Marses, two Newhouses, and three Ziffs. Donald Trump was also born into big money. With a supposed net worth of $4.5 billion, he is brushing up against the velvet rope outside of Club 106.

The Clintons, both born to families with ordinary incomes, are now worth around $110 million, which puts them way off from Club 106 and pretty far from you and me as well. In the political off-season the Clintons have borrowed private jets from friends and relied on book advances and speaking fees to maintain two residences, to summer in East Hampton, and reportedly to help their daughter and son-in-law purchase a $10 million Manhattan apartment. The Obamas will soon be devising their own approach to making their way in a billionaire’s world with a mere $20 million. At least four of the members of Club 106 (Buffett, the Kochs, Bloomberg) have openly voiced their thoughts on who should be president.

Five members (Soros, Simons, Cohen, Ellison, Bloomberg) are among the top 25 donors to the outside groups that have poured tens of millions of dollars into the campaign. Seven members (Bezos, Zuckerberg, Page, Brin, Murdoch, the Newhouses, Bloomberg) own large media and internet companies — Amazon, the Washington Post, Facebook, Google, Fox News, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, Condé Nast, Bloomberg — with the power to shape public opinion. (By way of disclosure, an eighth member, Pierre Omidyar, founded The Intercept’s parent company, First Look Media.)

For the Club of 106, elections are a game they can easily afford to play.

Read more …

From July 25, but interesting enough.

Frozen Loans Trigger Australian Property Funding Crisis (AFR)

Off-the-plan buyers of Australian apartments are in crisis as tough new borrowing rules mean thousands of investors who have paid a deposit are struggling to complete their purchases, according to local and overseas mortgage brokers and financiers. Shanghai-based financiers claim their Chinese clients’ funding from Australian banks has been frozen and they face foreclosure – or usurious interest rates – from private financiers. Australian financiers claim their local clients, many of them Asian, have had their settlements deferred by three months to find alternative funding. “All the deals have been frozen,” said Mark Yin, an agent with Shanghai-based Home Tree Group, about his Shanghai clients’ funding with Australian banks. “We are now looking for finance all over the world.”

Mr Yin said this represented nearly 100 per cent of his clients who were waiting for properties to be completed in Australia and that most of the apartments were in the Melbourne CBD. Melbourne-based Marshall Condon, CEO of mortgage broker Neue Black and who also has off-shore and local Asian investors, added: “In the next three to 12 months, many investors will be applying for funding to complete their deals, however, they will be become increasingly concerned as they discover funding is limited.” Billions of dollars has been invested in tens-of-thousands of high-rise apartments that are reshaping the skylines of the nation’s major capitals, particularly Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Most have been sold off-the-plan, which means purchasers buy off the blueprint with a deposit and complete when it is built, which requires a second valuation and financing commitment by the lender.

Read more …

“..both men were not only influenced by but also took instructions from people, as yet unidentified, up until the attacks..”

First Sept 11, Now Saudi Arabia Linked To German Terrorist Attacks (ZH)

Several weeks after the US government finally released a redacted version of the secret “28 pages”, which confirmed Saudi Arabia’s key role behind the September 11 attack, even as both the Obama administration and Saudi Arabia claimed no such connection exists (when it clearly did for anyone who actually read the disclosure), a trail has now emerged linking the recent surge in deadly terrorist attacks in Germany to Saudi Arabia. According to Der Spiegel, both the terrorist from the Wurzburg train axe attack, and the Ansbach suicide bomber who blew up an explosive-filled backpack, had multiple chat contacts with persons in Saudi Arabia.

As a result, Reuters adds, Saudi authorities are now in contact with their German colleagues, responding to these potentially explosive new findings which once again implicate the Saudi state with more state-sponsored terrirms, and show at least two attackers were in close contact via a chat conversation with possible Islamic State backers from Saudi Arabia. Traces of the chat, which investigators have been able to reconstruct, indicate that both men were not only influenced by but also took instructions from people, as yet unidentified, up until the attacks, the report said. It may not come as a surprise that the state exposed as facilitating and coordinating the September 11 terrorist attack, and which admitted to have created the Islamic States (with US knowledge), is now trying to provoke a terrorist backlash in Europe too.

Recall that after the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to a lightning Isis offensive in 2014, the late Prince Saud al-Faisal, then the Saudi foreign minister when speaking to John Kerry admitted that “Daesh [Isis] is our [Sunni] response to your support for the Da’wa” — the Tehran-aligned Shia Islamist ruling party of Iraq. One can only speculate what Saudi Arabia is “responding” to with the recent surge in European terrorist attacks. For now, however, the all too “generous” Saudi government has “offered to help German investigators find those behind Islamist bomb and ax attacks in July”, Spiegel adds. We can only imagine how accurate Saudi “findings” will be, especially if – like in the case of Sept 11 – those involved include members from the very top of Saudi power echelons.

Read more …

“A campaign that began two years ago this Sunday has now, 50,000 bombs and 25,000 dead ISIS fighters later, expanded to a whole new continent.”

Obama Expands ISIS Bombing to 4th Country, the Media Barely Notice (Nation)

The Obama administration announced on Monday the beginning of US air strikes in Libya against ISIS targets, marking the fourth country the United States is currently bombing with the goal of “degrading and destroying” the terror group. A campaign that began two years ago this Sunday has now, 50,000 bombs and 25,000 dead ISIS fighters later, expanded to a whole new continent. You’d hardly notice, however, if you followed US media. While the air strikes themselves were reported by most major outlets, they were done so in a matter-of-fact way, and only graced the front pages of major American newspapers for one day.

[..] The question pundits should be asking themselves is this: Had Obama announced on August 7, 2014, that he planned on bombing four countries and deploying troops to two of them to fight a war with “no end point,” would the American public have gone along with it? Probably not. To authorize his perma-campaign, Obama’s administration has dubiously invoked the 15-year-old, one-page Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed three days after 9/11. The president has to do this, the White House and friendly media claim, because Congress “refuses” to act to authorize the war (notice that’s a rubber-stamp question of when, not if). But such apologism largely rests on a tautology: Congress doesn’t have a sense of urgency to authorize the war because the public doesn’t, and the public doesn’t because the media have yawned with each new iteration.

What’s lacking is what screenwriters call “an inciting incident.” There’s no clear-cut moment the war is launched, it just gradually expands, and because media are driven by Hollywood narratives, they are victims to the absence of a clear first act. This was, to a lesser extent, the problem with the last bombing of Libya, in 2011. What was pitched to the American public then was a limited, UN-mandated no-fly zone to protect civilians (that even the likes of Noam Chomsky backed), which quickly morphed, unceremoniously, into all-out, NATO-led regime change three weeks later. Then, as now, there was no public debate, no media coming-to-Jesus moment. Obama just asserted the escalation as the obvious next step, and almost everyone just sort of went along—an ethos summed up in Eric Posner’s hot take at Slate the day after Obama expanded the ISIS war to Syria: “Obama Can Bomb Pretty Much Anything He Wants To.”

Read more …

“Is it possible that Washington did not want to clear ISIL out of Iraq because Washington intended to use ISIL to clear Assad out of Syria?”

Behold, a Pale Horse and its Rider’s Name Was Death (PCR)

I just listened to Obama give Washington’s account of the situation with ISIL in Iraq and Syria. In Obama’s account, Washington is defeating ISIL in Iraq, but Russia and Assad are defeating the Syrian people in Syria. Obama denounced Russia and the Syrian government—but not ISIL—as barbaric. The message was clear: Washington still intends to overthrow Assad and turn Syria into another Libya and another Iraq, formerly stable and prosperous countries where war now rages continually. It sickens me to hear the President of the United States lie and construct a false reality, so I turned off the broadcast. I believe it was a press conference, and I am confident that no meaningful questions were asked.

If Helen Thomas were still there, she would ask the Liar-in-Chief what went wrong with Washington’s policy in Iraq. We were promised that a low-cost “cakewalk” war of three or six weeks duration would bring “freedom and democracy” to Iraq. Why is it that 13 years later Iraq is a hellhole of war and destruction? What happened to the “freedom and democracy?” And the “Cakewalk”? You can bet your life that no presstitute asked Obama this question. No one asked the Liar-in-Chief why the Russians and Syrians could clear ISIL out of most of Syria in a couple of months, but Washington has been struggling for several years to clear ISIL out of Iraq. Is it possible that Washington did not want to clear ISIL out of Iraq because Washington intended to use ISIL to clear Assad out of Syria?

No one asked the Liar-in-Chief why Washington sent ISIL to Syria and Iraq in the first place, or why the Syrians and Russians keep finding US weapons In ISIL’s military depots, or why Washington’s allies were funding ISIL by purchasing the oil ISIL is stealing from Iraq. It seems to be the case that ISIL originated in the mercenaries that Washington organized to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya and were sent to Syria to overthrow Assad when the UK Parliament refused to participate in Washington’s invasion of Syria and the Russians put a stop to it.

Read more …

 

 

Apr 252016
 
 April 25, 2016  Posted by at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  4 Responses »


Mathew Brady Three captured Confederate soldiers, Gettysburg, PA 1863

The Revenge Of Globalisation’s Losers (Münchau)
Obama and Merkel Unite Over TTiP (FT)
China Debt Load Reaches Record High As Risk To Economy Mounts (FT)
China’s Fresh Boom Nears Peak Just As Amateurs Pile In (AEP)
Warnings Flash for China’s Red-Hot Steel Market on 47% Surge (BBG)
China’s Steel Mill Margins Surge to 7-Year High on Boom (BBG)
Draghi’s Growth and Inflation Conundrum Will Be Displayed Friday (BBG)
Stunted Growth: The Mystery Of The UK’s Productivity Crisis (G.)
The Tokyo Whale Is Quietly Buying Up Huge Stakes in Japan Inc. (BBG)
Goldman Expects The Japanese Yen To Collapse Within 12 Months (ZH)
How Argentina Settled a Billion-Dollar Debt & Paul Singer Made 392% (NY Times)
You Don’t Own That! The Evolution of Property (Roth)
UN To Urge Media To Take More ‘Constructive’ Approach To News (G.)
World Heads For Catastrophe In Failure to Prepare For Natural Disasters (G.)

Globalization has already died, it perished with the economic system. But it may take a long time until this is recognized, since that recognition would threaten vested interests.

The Revenge Of Globalisation’s Losers (Münchau)

Globalisation is failing in advanced western countries, where a process once hailed for delivering universal benefit now faces a political backlash. Why? The establishment view, in Europe at least, is that states have neglected to forge the economic reforms necessary to make us more competitive globally. I would like to offer an alternative view. The failure of globalisation in the west is in fact down to democracies failure to cope with the economic shocks that inevitably result from globalisation — such as the stagnation of real average incomes for two decades. Another shock has been the global financial crisis — a consequence of globalisation — and its permanent impact on long-term economic growth.

In large parts of Europe, the combination of globalisation and technical advance destroyed the old working class and is now challenging the skilled jobs of the lower middle class. So voters’ insurrection is neither shocking nor irrational. Why should French voters cheer labour market reforms if it could result in the loss of their jobs, with no hope of a new one? Some reforms have worked, but ask yourself why. Germany’s acclaimed labour market reforms in 2003 succeeded in the short term because they raised the country’s cost competitiveness through lower wages relative to other advanced countries. The reforms produced a state of near full employment only because no other country did the same. If others had followed, there would have been no net gain. The reforms had a big downside.

They reduced relative prices in Germany and pushed up net exports in turn generating massive savings outflows, the deep cause of the imbalances that led to the eurozone crisis. Reforms such as these can hardly be the recipe for how advanced nations should address the problem of globalisation. Nor is there any factual evidence that countries that have reformed are performing better or are more able to cope with a populist insurrection. The US and the UK have more liberal market structures than most of continental Europe. Yet the UK may be about to exit the EU; in the US the Republicans may be about to nominate an extreme populist as their presidential candidate. Finland leads all the competitiveness rankings but the economy is a non-recovering basket case — and it has a strong populist party.

The economic impact of reforms is usually subtler than its advocates admit. And there is no straight connection between reforms and support for established political parties. My diagnosis is that globalisation has overwhelmed western societies politically and technically. There is no way we can, or should, hide from it. But we have to manage the change. This means accepting that the optimal moment for the next trade agreement, or market liberalisation, may not be right now.

Read more …

TTiP is just a leftover chicken walking a few more steps after its head is chopped off.

Obama and Merkel Unite Over TTiP (FT)

Barack Obama and Angela Merkel have called for talks over a transatlantic trade deal to be completed this year as fears mount that the opportunity to reach an agreement is slipping away. The US president used a visit to Hanover in Germany on Sunday to try to breathe new life into the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which has been beset by political opposition in the US and Europe. “I am confident we will get this done,” Mr Obama said, talking about completing the negotiations this year. But he said time was “not on our side”, calling on all European leaders to support the deal and not “let this opportunity close”. President Obama was in Germany after a visit to Saudi Arabia and the UK where he waded into the Brexit debate, urging Britain to remain in the EU.

Speaking at a joint press conference, Mr Obama went out of his way to praise the German chancellor, who has been one of his closest confidants among international leaders but whose domestic political standing has been undermined by the migrant crisis. The German decision to allow more than 1m people to enter the country last year had put Ms Merkel “on the right side of history” despite the political backlash, he said. “She is giving voice to principles that bring people together rather than divide them. I’m very proud of her for that and I’m proud of the German people for that,” he added. In return, Ms Merkel showered her American counterpart with praise for his leadership on the Paris climate accords. “Barack, a personal thanks to you,” she said. “Without the United States of America, this would not have come to pass.”

The TTIP negotiations, which were launched in July 2013, have progressed slowly as opposition in Europe has grown and some member states have begun expressing scepticism. Ms Merkel said she wanted to speed up the negotiations, as a deal would be helpful in allowing the German and eurozone economies to grow. “We should do our bit,” she said. The chancellor added that she would canvas widely to get the deal back on track and pledged to “inject this with a new dynamism from the European side”. Mr Obama said that although he hoped the negotiations would be concluded this year, it would take longer for countries to ratify a deal.

[..] The closer the talks get to 2017, the more difficult life will become for EU trade negotiators. Chancellor Merkel faces re-election in parliamentary polls and French president François Hollande is at risk of losing in presidential elections, with National Front leader Marine Le Pen comfortably ahead in opinion polls. With TTIP divisive in both countries, officials, especially France, are unlikely to want to press ahead with the talks. Matthias Fekl, France’s trade minister, on Sunday reiterated previous threats to withdraw from the talks if there was not sufficient progress on a number of issues in the months to come. France has constantly put forward criteria, conditions, demands, Mr Fekl told the country’s i-Tele news channel. If these conditions are not fulfilled…France will withdraw.

Read more …

Tyler Durden’s comment: the real debt is not 237% of GDP, but 350%.

China Debt Load Reaches Record High As Risk To Economy Mounts (FT)

China’s total debt rose to a record 237% of GDP in the first quarter, far above emerging-market counterparts, raising the risk of a financial crisis or a prolonged slowdown in growth, economists warn. Beijing has turned to massive lending to boost economic growth, bringing total net debt to Rmb163 trillion ($25 trillion) at the end of March, including both domestic and foreign borrowing, according to Financial Times calculations. Such levels of debt are much higher as a proportion of national income than in other developing economies, although they are comparable to levels in the U.S. and the eurozone. While the absolute size of China’s debt load is a concern, more worrying is the speed at which it has accumulated — Chinese debt was only 148% of GDP at the end of 2007.

“Every major country with a rapid increase in debt has experienced either a financial crisis or a prolonged slowdown in GDP growth,” Ha Jiming, Goldman Sachs chief investment strategist, wrote in a report this year. The country’s present level of debt, and its increasing links to global financial markets, partly informed the International Monetary Fund’s recent warning that China poses a growing risk to advanced economies. Economists say it is difficult for any economy to deploy productively such a large amount of capital within a short period, given the limited number of profitable projects available at any given time. With returns spiralling downwards, more loans are at risk of turning sour. According to data from the Bank for International Settlements for the third quarter last year, emerging markets as a group have much lower levels of debt, at 175% of GDP.

The BIS data, which is based on similar methodology to the FT, put Chinese debt at 249% of GDP, which was broadly comparable with the euro zone’s figure of 270% and the US level of 248%. Beijing is juggling spending to support short-term growth and deleveraging to ward off long-term financial risk. Recently, however, as fears of a hard landing have intensified, it has shifted decisively towards stimulus. New borrowing increased by Rmb6.2tn in the first three months of 2016, the biggest three-month surge on record and more than 50% ahead of last year’s pace. Economists widely agree that the health of the country’s economy is at risk. Where opinion is divided is on how this will play out. At one end of the spectrum is acute financial crisis — a “Lehman moment” reminiscent of the U.S. in 2008, when banks failed and paralyzed credit markets.

Other economists predict a chronic, Japan-style malaise in which growth slows for years or even decades. Jonathan Anderson, principal at Emerging Advisors Group, belongs to the first camp. He warns that banks driving the huge credit expansion since 2008 rely increasingly on volatile short-term funding through sales of high-yielding wealth management products, rather than stable deposits. As Lehman and Bear Stearns proved in 2008, this kind of funding can quickly evaporate when defaults rise and nerves fray. “At the current rate of expansion, it is only a matter of time before some banks find themselves unable to fund all their assets safely,” Mr Anderson wrote last month. “And at that point, a financial crisis is likely.”

Read more …

The greater fools are getting fleeced. “..But how much longer can Beijing go on creating debt at a breakneck pace?”

China’s Fresh Boom Nears Peak Just As Amateurs Pile In (AEP)

Elite global banks have begun to warn clients that China’s latest credit-driven boom is nearing its peak and will lose momentum by late summer, dashing hopes for a genuine cycle of fresh economic growth and commodity demand. Morgan Stanley, Nomura, and Societe Generale have all issued cautionary notes just as amateur investors belatedly turn bullish again on China and start to pile into both commodities and emerging market equities. “While the mini-recovery is likely to last another 3-4 months, our economists expect a renewed slowdown in the second half of the year, as stimulus efforts fade,” said Morgan Stanley. The US bank said record credit growth over the last quarter will keep growth humming for a little longer but the fiscal blitz is already ebbing and the government is imposing property curbs in the Eastern cities to prevent a speculative bubble.

China’s reflation drive has been explosive. New home sales jumped 64pc in March from a year earlier. House prices have risen 28pc in Beijing, 30pc in Shanghai, and 63pc in the commercial hub of Shenzhen. The rush to buy has spread to the Tier 2 cities such as Hefei – up 9pc in a single month. “The housing market is on fire,” said Wei Yao, from Societe Generale. “In the first quarter, increases in total credit exploded to 7.5 trilion yuan, up 58pc year-on-year. There is no bigger policy lever than this kind of credit injection.” “This looks like an old-styled credit-backed investment-driven recovery, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the beginning of the“four trillion stimulus” package in 2009. The consequence of that stimulus was inflation, asset bubbles and excess capacity. We still think that this recovery will not last very long,” she said.


China’s housing market is on fire

The signs of excess are visible everywhere as the Communist Party once again throws caution to the wind . Cement production jumped 24pc in March and infrastructure investment rose 19pc. Yang Zhao from Nomura said the edifice is becoming more dangerously unstable with each of these stop-go mini-booms. “Structural problems and financial imbalances are worsening. We believe this debt-fueled growth is not sustainable,” he said. Nomura said the law of diminishing returns is setting in as the economy nears credit exhaustion. The ‘incremental credit-output ratio” has deteriorated to 5.0 from 2.3 in 2008. Loans are losing traction and the quality of investment is falling. “Be careful. We are nearing the point where things are as good as they get for the first half of 2016. We recommend taking some money off the table,” said Wendy Liu and Vicky Fung, the bank’s equity strategists.

Despite the stimulus, defaults among private companies and state entities (SOEs) have jumped to 11 so far this year from 17 last year, and the defaults are getting bigger. China Railway Materials has just suspended trading on $2.6bn of debt. Michelle Lam from Lombard Street Research said Beijing has retreated from reform and resorted to pump-priming again. “This may last for one or two quarters. But how much longer can Beijing go on creating debt at a breakneck pace?” she said. Capital Economics says there has typically been a lag of six to nine months after each burst of credit, suggesting that economic growth will roll over in the late Autumn. Markets do not move in lockstep, and may anticipate this.


China’s M1 money supply is growing at the fastest pace since the post-Lehman stimulus

Read more …

Must we wait till they run out of storage space for this too?

Warnings Flash for China’s Red-Hot Steel Market on 47% Surge (BBG)

Warnings are stacking up fast after China’s eye-popping steel rally. Fitch Ratings said prices lifted in part by heightened speculation are destined to slump, while a bank in Singapore flagged the risk of a boom-bust cycle reminiscent of China’s equity market. The rapid advance isn’t sustainable as mills are expected to bring back idled capacity, raising supply, Fitch said in a report on Monday. Price gains have been driven by a seasonal recovery in activity that’s been exacerbated by increased speculation in the futures market, according to analyst Laura Zhai. Steel prices have surged in 2016, with reinforcement-bar up 47%, after policy makers in China talked up growth and added stimulus, helping to lift property prices and ignite a speculative frenzy. The gains have helped to restore mills’ profitability, boosting their incentive to increase output.

Singapore-based Oversea-Chinese Banking warned on Monday that there may be parallels between the sudden jump in steel trading and last year’s performance in equities, citing the potential for a boom-bust scenario. “The rapid increase in Chinese steel prices so far this year is not sustainable, as it is largely due to a seasonal pick-up in construction and elevated speculation in the steel futures market,” Fitch said. “With prices now surging, many of the suspended plants have resumed production.” Futures for rebar extended gains, rallying as much as 6.2% to 2,781 yuan ($427) a metric ton on the Shanghai Futures Exchange, before trading 0.2% higher on Monday. The price of the product used to strengthen concrete advanced for the 11th straight week through Friday, adding 14%. Steel output in the world’s largest supplier may see a further increase this month as more furnaces are fired up, according to Fitch.

Read more …

Pon. Zi.

China’s Steel Mill Margins Surge to 7-Year High on Boom (BBG)

China’s steel mills are making more money on each ton produced than at any time since 2009 after the government embarked on 4 trillion yuan ($615 billion) in infrastructure spending. A surprise rebound in China’s property and construction sectors has left steel buyers facing a shortage, and handed embattled mills a sudden boost to margins, according to data from Bloomberg Intelligence. The rally in steel prices is unsustainable as higher profits draw idled plants back into operation, says Fitch Ratings.

Read more …

The lack of understanding of what inflation is, and what drives it, among both central bankers and media, is baffling.

Draghi’s Growth and Inflation Conundrum Will Be Displayed Friday (BBG)

A suite of euro-area data on Friday will provide Mario Draghi with his first simultaneous dispatches from both fronts in his struggle to boost inflation – showing how he still has a fight on his hands. GDP numbers, in a newly accelerated publication just one month after the first quarter ended, will coincide with the usual end-of-the-month inflation statistics to present a snapshot of what the ECB president still has to achieve. It’s likely to show the euro area has now completed a dozen quarters of consecutive growth – though that momentum isn’t strong enough to produce faster price gains. Euro-area inflation hasn’t hit its target since 2013, when the economy was contracting. But now that it’s expanding, weak global demand, cheap commodity costs and a lack of investment are weighing down prices.

It’s a conundrum that Draghi hasn’t been able to solve, even after he’s cut interest rates to record lows, expanded bond purchases and started an additional loan program for banks. “The big story on inflation is that it’s flat, and going nowhere in the short term,” said Anatoli Annenkov, senior economist at Societe Generale in London, adding that cheap oil is behind the restraint and prices should move up later in the year. “We don’t doubt that the ECB’s measures are helping – they should have an impact on inflation and growth. The question is how big.” The region’s inflation rate probably stayed at zero in April, based on a Bloomberg survey of economists. That’s far below policy maker’s near-2% goal. By contrast, first-quarter growth probably picked up to 0.4% from 0.3% in the previous quarter.

Read more …

Mystery? Not here.

Stunted Growth: The Mystery Of The UK’s Productivity Crisis (G.)

Our economic future isn’t what it used to be. In March the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) revised down its growth estimates for each of the next five years. The chancellor was quick to blame a weakening world economy but the true driver lies closer to home. The problem isn’t a loud global economic crash but something much quieter: engine trouble. Productivity growth, the long-term motor of rising living standards, is slowing. The fact that this appears to be happening across the globe offers scant consolation. What’s worse is that no one is entirely sure what is causing the problem or how to fix it. And it is coming at about the worst time imaginable: global demographics are changing, with the supply of new workers set to slow and the older share of the population rising.

The future is of course inherently unknowable, but the reasons for longer-term pessimism on economic growth are starting to stack up. Productivity – the amount of output produced for each hour worked – rose at a fairly steady annual rate of about 2.2% in the UK for decades before the recession. Since the crisis though, that annual growth rate has collapsed to under 0.5%. The OBR has decided to revise down its future assumption on productivity from that pre-crisis 2.2% to a lower 2%. That small revision was enough to give the chancellor a large fiscal headache in his latest budget, but it still assumes a big rebound in productivity growth from its current level. What if that rebound doesn’t come? The near death of the British steel industry is a tragedy. But for all the political heat it has generated, its long-term consequences wouldn’t be as serious as the wider crisis. For while closing mills are highly visible, slipping productivity is not.

Looking at the global picture shows that while there are of course national nuances, the overall impression is grim and dates back to before the 2008 crash. Everywhere from the “dynamic” United States to “sclerotic” France, productivity growth has dropped considerably in recent years. The UK is an outlier with a bigger fall than many, but not by much. Some of this could be explained by measurement issues. To use every economist’s favourite example, it is straightforward to measure the inputs, the outputs – and hence the productivity – of a widget factory, even if no one is really sure what a widget is. It is harder to do the same with an online widget brand manager. But the mismeasurement would have to be on an unprecedented scale to explain away the problem.

What we are left with is a bewildering array of theories as to what has driven the fall but no clear answer. We know the productivity slowdown is broad based and happening across most sectors of the economy. Lower corporate and public investment than in the past almost certainly explains some of the shortfall. Weaker labour bargaining power than in previous decades might also be playing a role. Low wages are allowing low-skill, low-productivity business models to expand and deincentivising corporate spending on new kit. Why spend on expensive labour-saving technology when labour itself is cheap?

Read more …

How does this differ from China again?

The Tokyo Whale Is Quietly Buying Up Huge Stakes in Japan Inc. (BBG)

They may not realize it yet, but Japan Inc.’s executives are increasingly working for a shareholder unlike any other: the nation’s money-printing central bank. While the Bank of Japan’s name is nowhere to be found in regulatory filings on major stock investors, the monetary authority’s exchange-traded fund purchases have made it a top 10 shareholder in about 90% of the Nikkei 225 Stock Average, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg from public data. It’s now a major owner of more Japanese blue-chips than both BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, and Vanguard Group, which oversees more than $3 trillion. To critics already wary of the central bank’s outsized impact on the Japanese bond market, the BOJ’s growing influence in stocks risks distorting valuations and undermining efforts to improve corporate governance.

Proponents, meanwhile, say the purchases provide a much-needed boost to investor confidence. With the Nikkei 225 down 8.3% this year and inflation well below official targets, a majority of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg predict the BOJ will boost its ETF buying – a move that could come as soon as Thursday. “For those who want shares to go up at any cost, it’s absolutely fantastic that the BOJ is buying so much,” said Shingo Ide at NLI Research Institute in Tokyo. “But this is clearly distorting the sanity of the stock market.” Under the BOJ’s current stimulus plan, the central bank buys about 3 trillion yen ($27.2 billion) of ETFs every year.

While policy makers don’t disclose how those holdings translate into stakes of individual companies, estimates can be gleaned from publicly available central bank records, regulatory filings by companies and ETF managers, and statistics from the Investment Trusts Association of Japan. The estimates reveal a presence in Japan’s top firms that’s rivaled by few others, with the BOJ ranking as a top 10 holder in more than 200 of the Nikkei gauge’s 225 companies. The central bank effectively controls about 9% of Fast Retailing, the operator of Uniqlo stores, and nearly 5% of soy sauce maker Kikkoman. It has an estimated shareholder rank of No. 3 in both Yamaha, one of the world’s largest makers of musical instruments, and Daiwa House, Japan’s biggest homebuilder.

Read more …

A state run economy has a limited lifespan, but it can be stretched beyond expectations.

Goldman Expects The Japanese Yen To Collapse Within 12 Months (ZH)

Forget the G-20 agreement on no “competitive devaluations” – the full court press on the Bank of Japan to engage in the next round of aggressive currency devaluation is on, just three months after Kuroda unveiled Japan’s first negative interest rate. Recall that it was Goldman who not only brought forward its forecast for a first rate hike from July to April and first suggested earlier this week that it is time for the Bank of Japan to forget about caution and to more than double its purchases of equities in the form of ETFs (and which the BOJ already owns a majority of all available securities) as doing either more NIRP and more QE may no longer have a favorable outcome:

… we think the BOJ is most likely to ease mainly via the qualitative measure, with increasing ETF purchasing the central pillar, with a view to improving business confidence. We think the market is already factoring in an increase in annual purchasing from ¥3.3 tn to ¥5-6 tn, and we thus think the BOJ may look to slightly more than double its current figure to around ¥7 tn.

This pushed both the USDJPY and the S&P off their overnight lows when it was first floated in the early morning of April 20. Then, on Friday, the Yen had its biggest one day surge since the announcement of the expanded QQE in October 2014 when Bloomberg reported of the latest BOJ trial balloon whereby “the Bank of Japan may consider helping banks lend by offering a negative rate on some loans, according to people familiar with talks at the BOJ.” This happened just as the net spec short position in the USDJPY hit record short, forcing yet another massive squeeze in the currency which soared higher by nearly 300 pips in one day.

Which brings us to today, when in its latest attempt to throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks, Goldman Sachs’ FX team – whose trading recommendations in the past 6 months have been an unmitigated disaster – is predicting that the $/JPY will “move higher again in the near term and continue to forecast $/JPY at 130 a year from now.” Why does Goldman expect a collapse in the Yen by nearly 20 big figures? Because as analysts Sylvia Ardagna and Robin Brooks note, “the BoJ faces an important challenge: it needs to reaffirm that the monetary easing arrow of Abenomics is still on course, or the market will price that the central bank is backtracking from the 2% inflation goal. This could be extremely disruptive for the Japanese economy. Using markets jargon, the BoJ is already so long into ‘the reflationary trade’ that it has to continue to deliver further accommodation for the time being.”

Read more …

The vulture as the Apex predator.

How Argentina Settled a Billion-Dollar Debt & Paul Singer Made 392% (NY Times)

The Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan has long been a location for secret diplomacy, but few meetings there would have seemed as unlikely as the one that took place one day in early December. In a hotel conference room, a top Argentine politician drank coffee with two hedge fund executives — a meeting that was nothing short of remarkable after more than a decade of bitter legal skirmishes between Argentina and a group of disgruntled debt holders who at one point seized an Argentine Navy ship. The previous Buenos Aires government reviled the hedge funds as “vultures.” That meeting on Dec. 7 between Luis Caputo, who days later would be sworn in as Argentina’s finance secretary, and Jonathan Pollock and Jay Newman from Elliott Management, the $27 billion hedge fund founded by Paul E. Singer, was the start of a rapprochement leading to a momentous debt deal that has now allowed Argentina to rejoin the global financial markets that it had been locked out of for 15 years.

Last week, Argentina successfully sold $16.5 billion in bonds to international investors, a record amount for any developing country. And on Friday, Elliott and the other bondholders finally received their reward in the form of billions of dollars in repayment, representing returns worth hundreds of times their original investments. “Today, we have put a definitive close to this chapter,” Alfonso Prat-Gay, Argentina’s economic minister, told an Argentine radio station on Friday. The negotiations that led to the deal were set in motion by the election in November of President Mauricio Macri, who ran on a promise to reignite Argentina’s flailing economy. Striking a deal with the country’s aggrieved bondholders was central to getting that done.

How Argentina and the hedge funds were able to break the long stalemate and reach a deal in a matter of weeks is a story of furious back-channeling and clashes that nearly derailed an agreement. Details of those negotiations have emerged from interviews with eight people who were involved in those meetings, as well as court filings and emails reviewed by The New York Times. Many of those people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. There were moments when the talks nearly fell apart. Three days before a deal was signed with Elliott, Mr. Caputo, exasperated by a back-and-forth with bondholders over whether they would return government assets they had seized, emailed the court-appointed mediator: “THIS IS A JOKE; NO DEAL.”

Read more …

” The whole world’s financial machinery [..] all comes down to (the threat of) physical force.”

You Don’t Own That! The Evolution of Property (Roth)

There are a large handful of things that make humans uniquely different from animals. In many other areas — language, abstract reasoning, music-making, conceptions of self and fairness, large-scale cooperation, etc. — humans and animals vary (hugely) in degree and kind. But they still share those phenotypic behavioral traits. I’d like to explore one of those unique differences: ownership of property. Animals don’t own property. Ever. They can and do possess and control goods and territories (possession and control are importantly distinct), but they never “own” things. Ownership is a uniquely human construct. To understand this, imagine a group of tribes living around a common water source. A spring, say. There’s ample water for all the tribes, and all draw from it freely. Nobody “owns” it.

Then one day a tribe decides to take possession of the spring, take control of it. They set up camp surrounding it, and prevent other tribes from accessing it. They force the other tribes to give them goods, labor, or other concessions in return for access to water. The other tribes might object, but if the controlling tribe can enforce their claim, there’s not much the other tribes can do about it. And after some time, maybe some generations, the other tribes may come to accept that status quo as the natural order of things. By eventual consensus (however vexed), that one tribe “owns” the spring. Other tribes even come to honor and respect that ownership, and those who claim and enforce it. That consensus and agreement is what makes ownership ownership. Absent that, it’s just possession and control.

It’s not hard to see the crucial fact in this little fable: property rights are ultimately based, purely, on coercion and violence. If the controlling tribe can’t enforce its claim through violence, their “ownership” is meaningless. And those claimed rights are not just inclusionary (the one tribe can use the water). Property rights are primarily or even purely exclusionary. Owners can prevent others from doing anything with the owners’ property. Get off my lawn! When push comes to shove (literally), when brass tacks meet the rubber on the road (sorry, couldn’t resist), ownership and property rights are based purely on violence and the threat of violence. Full stop, drop the mic.

In the modern world we’ve largely outsourced the execution of that violence, the monopoly on violence, to government. If a family sets up a picnic on “your” lawn, you can call the police and they’ll remove that family — by force if necessary. And we’ve multiplied the institutional and legal mechanics and machinery of ownership a zillionfold. The whole world’s financial machinery — the immensely complex web of claims, claims on claims, and claims on claims on claims, endlessly and densely iterated and interwoven — all comes down to (the threat of) physical force.

Read more …

Newspeak goes global.

UN To Urge Media To Take More ‘Constructive’ Approach To News (G.)

The United Nations is to call for the world’s media to take a more “constructive” and “solutions-focused” approach to news to combat “apathy and indifference”. UN director general Michael Møller is to meet broadcast, print and online journalists in London on Wednesday to to discuss how new ways of covering the world with the help of the UN and the Constructive Voices programme run by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. Constructive Voices incorporates an online resource designed to help journalists find case studies that provide practical solutions to problems. The UN has separately launched GAVDATA, an online portal providing access to a huge store of information from the the UN and other international organisations and NGOs. Speaking ahead of the event, director general Michael Møller said many people feel “disempowered” by the news and unable to influence decisions.

He said: “The choices we make are determined by the information we are given. These are fundamental to how we shape a better world together.” “In a world of 7 billion people, with a cacophony of voices that are often ill-informed and based on narrow agendas, we need responsible media that educate, engage and empower people and serve as a counterpoint to power. We need them to offer constructive alternatives in the current stream of news and we need to see solutions that inspire us to action. Constructive journalism offers a way to do that.” “It’s vital too that we have data and different points of view.” The UN and the NCVO also claims that the public are turned off by overwhelmingly negative news, and are more likely to share stories that offer solutions to problems, providing a commercial incentive for media organisations to include more positive stories.

NCVO chair Sir Martyn Lewis, a former BBC News presenter in the 80s and 90s who covered the death of Princess Diana, said the organisations were not asking the media to abandon its traditional approach, but to supplement it with journalism that helps solve problems. “It’s 23 years almost to the day that I first spoke out about the need for more balanced news agenda. I have been misunderstood in the past, with people believing I just wanted fluffy, feelgood news at the expense of covering real news,” said Lewis. “This is not the case at all. I’d like to see the media engage in solutions-driven journalism which not only reports problems but explores potential solutions to those problems as well.” “I would stress that this approach absolutely does not mean giving up the traditional approach to journalism, but is complementary to it and, interestingly, there is growing evidence that it makes a lot of commercial sense as well.”

Read more …

How the human brain is designed.

World Heads For Catastrophe In Failure to Prepare For Natural Disasters (G.)

The world’s failure to prepare for natural disasters will have “inconceivably bad” consequences as climate change fuels a huge increase in catastrophic droughts and floods and the humanitarian crises that follow, the UN’s head of disaster planning has warned. Last year, earthquakes, floods, heatwaves and landslides left 22,773 people dead, affected 98.6 million others and caused $66.5bn of economic damage. Yet the international community spends less than half of one per cent of the global aid budget on mitigating the risks posed by such hazards. Robert Glasser, the special representative of the secretary general for disaster risk reduction, said that with the world already “falling short” in its response to humanitarian emergencies, things would only get worse as climate change adds to the pressure.

He said: “If you see that we’re already spending huge amounts of money and are unable to meet the humanitarian need – and then you overlay that with not just population growth … [but] you put climate change on top of that, where we’re seeing an increase in the frequency and severity of natural disasters, and the knock-on effects with respect to food security and conflict and new viruses like the Zika virus or whatever – you realise that the only way we’re going to be able to deal with these trends is by getting out ahead of them and focusing on reducing disaster risk.” Failure to plan properly by factoring in the effects of climate change, he added, would result in a steep rise in the vulnerability of those people already most exposed to natural hazards. He also predicted a rise in the number of simultaneous disasters.

“As the odds of any one event go up, the odds of two happening at the same time are more likely. We’ll see many more examples of cascading crises, where one event triggers another event, which triggers another event.” Glasser pointed to Syria, where years of protracted drought led to a massive migration of people from rural areas to cities in the run-up to the country’s civil war. While he stressed that the drought was by no means the only driver of the conflict, he said droughts around the world could have similarly destabilising effects – especially when it came to conflicts in Africa. “It’s inconceivably bad, actually, if we don’t get a handle on it, and there’s a huge sense of urgency to get this right,” he said. “I think country leaders will become more receptive to this agenda simply because the disasters are going to make that obvious. The real question in my mind is: can we act before that’s obvious and before the costs have gone up so tremendously? And that’s the challenge.”

Read more …