Sep 212018
 
 September 21, 2018  Posted by at 9:09 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  6 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Green field 1888

 

Global Economic Growth Has Peaked, Warns OECD (G.)
Why Trump’s Stock Market Cheering Is Dangerous (Colombo)
Post Crisis Measures Have Failed To Tame Derivatives Risks (Yves Smith)
Woodward: “No Evidence Of Trump-Russia Collusion, I Looked Hard” (DV)
Brexit: It’s A Border In The Irish Sea Or The Customs Union (G.)
Emmanuel Macron Calls Brexit Campaign Leaders ‘Liars’ (Ind.)
‘Not Enough Time’ To Hold Referendum On Final Deal Before Brexit Day (G.)
Historical Monuments and Museums Moved to Greece’s Privatization Fund (KTG)
Propping Up Glaciers To Avoid Cataclysmic Sea Level Rise (AFP)
558 Million-Year-Old Fossils Identified As Oldest Known Animal (G.)
Assange’s Last Interview Before Blackout (RT)

 

 

Presented as a surprise.

Global Economic Growth Has Peaked, Warns OECD (G.)

The west’s leading economic thinktank has warned that the expansion in the global economy may have peaked after cutting its growth forecasts for an array of rich and developing countries. In its latest update on the health of the world economy, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said the outlook for both 2018 and 2019 was less good than it had predicted in May. The Paris-based OECD called for immediate action to halt the “slide towards protectionism”, noting that trade tensions were already having an impact on confidence and investment. “The expansion may now have peaked,” the OECD said in its interim economic outlook. “Global growth is projected to settle at 3.7% in 2018 and 2019, marginally below pre-crisis norms, with downside risks intensifying.”

The OECD said it was cutting its 2018 forecast by 0.1 percentage points and its 2019 forecast by 0.3 points. Britain has had its growth forecast shaved by 0.1 points in both years to 1.3% and 1.2%, respectively – with the OECD saying the squeeze on living standards was affecting consumer spending and uncertainty about Brexit leading to soft investment. [..] The US is expected to be the fastest growing of the G7 group of industrialised countries in both 2018 and 2019, and the OECD said that in contrast to the broad-based expansion in late 2017 there were widening differences in growth performance between countries.

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You break it, you own it.

Why Trump’s Stock Market Cheering Is Dangerous (Colombo)

The S&P 500 hit another all-time high today and president Donald Trump tweeted, in his usual fashion, “S&P 500 HITS ALL-TIME HIGH Congratulations USA!” Though I am a conservative myself, president Trump’s stock market cheerleading angers me because he’s fanning the flames of a dangerous asset bubble, which is extremely irresponsible. I believe that the current stock market bubble will cause severe damage to the economy and our society when it ultimately pops. Imagine if George W. Bush constantly touted how surging U.S. housing prices were making Americans rich in the mid-2000s? We all know how that ended. Well, that’s what president Trump is doing with his stock market cheerleading – history will not look kindly upon it.

To make matters worse, Donald Trump knew that we were in a dangerous stock market bubble back in 2016 before he became president – he even called it a “big, fat, ugly bubble.” Now, the S&P 500 is 35% higher (and even more overvalued), but Trump is acting as if it’s an organic, sustainable boom rather than the debt-driven bubble that it really is. This is disingenuous behavior, plain and simple. The S&P 500 has surged over 300% since March 2009 due to the Federal Reserve’s pro-asset inflation policies:

[..] According to the U.S. stock market capitalization-to-GDP ratio (also known as Warren Buffett’s “favorite indicator”), the market is more overpriced and inflated than it was during even the dot-com bubble:

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“..the crisis was a derivatives crisis, and not a housing crisis, as it is too commonly depicted.”

Post Crisis Measures Have Failed To Tame Derivatives Risks (Yves Smith)

One of the frustrating aspects of the orgy of “ten years after Lehman” stories is that writers and pundits, many of whom are old enough to have missed the credit excesses that were evident in 2006 and 2007, are now screeching “A crisis is nigh” without necessarily focusing on likely triggers. As an aside, we are already in the midst of emerging market crises. The IMF agreed to give yet another monster bailout to Argentina. Pakistan is seeking an IMF rescue (or more accurately, trying to get shored up by any one other than the IMF but keeping the agency on the front burner in case other options fail). Turkey is still on the ropes. So calling a crisis is trivial because they are on now.

However, many of these writers are presumably anticipating something more like the global financial crisis, and too often are looking in the wrong places. There is a difference between market crashes that don’t impair the financial system, like the dot-com bust, because the assets that fell in price weren’t highly leveraged. You get real economy damage but not a financial crisis. You can also have lots of loans go bad and not impair the banking system because the credit risk was either well distributed among banks and/or significantly shifted onto investors who losses aren’t leveraged back to the financial system. However, one of the sources of systemic risk being overlooked is derivatives. That is particularly worrisome since the crisis was a derivatives crisis, and not a housing crisis, as it is too commonly depicted.

Even though the US and other housing markets were certain to suffer a nasty bust, a housing crisis alone would have resulted in something like a bigger, badder saving and loan crisis, not the financial coronary of September and October 2008. Derivatives allowed speculators to create synthetic exposures to the riskiest subprime housing debt that were 4-6 times its real economy value. Those bets wound up heavily at systemically important, highly leveraged financial institutions like Citigroup, AIG, the monolines, and Eurobanks.

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“’I did not, and of course, I looked for it, looked for it hard..’

Woodward: “No Evidence Of Trump-Russia Collusion, I Looked Hard” (DV)

After two years of exhaustive research for his book, Woodward says that he has found no evidence of collusion between Putin’s government and Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016. Zilch, nada, zero. And Woodward strained very hard looking for it. This largely ignored blockbuster admission came in a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt reported by Real Clear Politics [..] “In an interview with Hugh Hewitt on Friday, Bob Woodward said that in his two years of investigating for his new book, ‘Fear,’ he found no evidence of collusion or espionage between Trump and Russia. Woodward said he looked for it ‘hard’ and yet turned up nothing.

“’Did you, Bob Woodward, hear anything in your research in your interviews that sounded like espionage or collusion?’ Hugh Hewitt asked Woodward. “’I did not, and of course, I looked for it, looked for it hard,’ Woodward answered. ‘And so you know, there we are. …..’ “’But you’ve seen no collusion?’ Hewitt asked again to confirm. “’I have not,’ Woodward affirmed. “Hewitt would once again ask Woodward about collusion at the conclusion of the interview. “’Very last question, Bob Woodward, I just want to confirm, at the end of two years of writing this book, this intensive effort, you saw no effort, you, personally, had no evidence of collusion or espionage by the president presented to you?’ Hewitt asked. “’That is correct,’ Woodward said.”

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“The most important lesson of the Brexit negotiation is that it is not a negotiation..”

“..no amount of diplomatic politesse can conceal Brexit’s reality: one part of the UK will be economically split from another.”

Brexit: It’s A Border In The Irish Sea Or The Customs Union (G.)

Donald Tusk’s clear rejection of Theresa May’s Chequers plan at the Salzburg summit yesterday should not come as a surprise. The most important lesson of the Brexit negotiation is that it is not a negotiation, and never has been. Blessed with superior size, wealth and power, the EU has been able to dictate the framework and substance of the talks, and has refused any deviation from its red lines. The second most important lesson of the Brexit negotiation is that the EU will prioritise its economic and political cohesion above all else. That cohesion rests on two key outcomes: an undivided single market and an open border on the island of Ireland. It is these principles that have led us to Salzburg. The EU will not accept the Chequers plan, which proposes a single market in goods but not in services, capital or people.

It will also not accept any possibility of border infrastructure in Ireland, which is anathema to Dublin and, according to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, presents a credible risk of sectarian violence. That has duly paved the way for the Brexit endgame, which EU negotiator Michel Barnier has now confirmed: there will be a border for goods in the Irish Sea. The EU does not, however, want to antagonise or humiliate the UK, and has scrambled to defuse the drama of this development. Barnier stresses that most checks between Britain and Northern Ireland will take place in offices and warehouses, and only live animals and food products will need to be examined at ports themselves. But no amount of diplomatic politesse can conceal Brexit’s reality: one part of the UK will be economically split from another.

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“..they left the day after so as not to have to deal with it.”

Emmanuel Macron Calls Brexit Campaign Leaders ‘Liars’ (Ind.)

Emmanuel Macron has branded the leaders of the campaign for Brexit “liars”, in an extraordinary attack at the close of the Salzburg summit. The Leave victory was “pushed by those who predicted easy solutions”, the French president said, adding: “Those people are liars. They left the next day so they didn’t have to manage it.” At the press conference, Mr Macron also made clear he would not accept a “blind deal” – which would leave the nature of the UK’s future trading relationship with the EU to be decided after departure day. The stance is another blow to Theresa May, given that the EU’s rejection of her Chequers plan has increasingly left a “blind Brexit” as the only possible agreement.

Mr Macron did not name the “liars” behind Brexit, but he targeted those who had promised that leaving the EU would “bring a lot of money home”. The Vote Leave campaign, fronted by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, infamously pledged it would deliver an extra £350m a week for the NHS – a claim now widely discredited. “Those who explain that we can easily live without Europe, that everything is going to be alright, and that it’s going to bring a lot of money home, are liars,” Mr Macron added. “It’s even more true since they left the day after so as not to have to deal with it.” Mr Macron made clear the prime minister would need to come up with fresh proposals by the next summit in October. “We all agreed on this today, the proposals in their current state are not acceptable, especially on the economic side of it. The Chequers plan cannot be take it or leave it.”

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Someone’s going to take this to court.

‘Not Enough Time’ To Hold Referendum On Final Deal Before Brexit Day (G.)

A referendum on the Brexit deal would take at least six months to organise legally, making it very difficult to have a second vote before the UK is scheduled to exit the EU on 29 March next year, constitutional experts have said. As EU leaders including the Czech prime minister, Andrej Babis called on Theresa May to change firm government policy and put a vote to the people, academics said there was not enough time if article 50 is enacted as scheduled. There are indications that a delay to the enactment of article 50 could be acceptable to the EU, but without this agreement time stands in the way of a second referendum, experts believe.

“It is just possible to hold one within six months, but the shorter the timescale, the higher the chance of the question or other aspects of the referendum being challenged over their legitimacy,” said Prof Robert Hazell of the constitution unit at the department of political science, University College London. Fresh legislation, testing of the question by the Electoral Commission and a 10-week regulated period for a campaign are all required before a referendum can take place, he pointed out. David Cameron’s Brexit referendum took just over a year to get to the ballot box.

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Liquidation. But: “Monuments are protected by the Constitution, they cannot be transferred or be sold..”

Historical Monuments and Museums Moved to Greece’s Privatization Fund (KTG)

Archaeologists and sites Guards are up in arms after the Greek Finance Ministry issued a decision ordering the trasnfer several historical sites and buildings, museums, monuments and historical buildings to the Super Privatization Fund. “They belong de facto to the state and are off any trade,” the Greek Archaeologists Association said in a statement with the title “No to sale of the country’s monuments” issued on Wednesday. According to the archaeologists a total of 10,119 archaeological sites, museums and historical buildings have been transferred to the Privatization Fund, many of them from the area in and around Chania on the island of Crete.

“Monuments are protected by the Constitution, they cannot be transferred or be sold,” the Association said, adding that this unprecedented transfer became known when the catalogue of the monuments in and around Chania became public. Among those monuments and museums in Chania are the new Archaeological Museum, the archaeological museum located inside the St Francis Church, the National Museum Eleftherios Venizelos, the Historical Archive of Crete, several Venetian and Byzantine moats, fortifications and bastions as well as properties where important Minoan architectural remains have been discovered. “Is Acropolis next?” the Association of Guards at archaeological sites said in an equally angry statement on Thursday adding that also land plot where excavations take place have been transferred. They threaten with strikes.

“Our response will be very tough. Our cultural heritage belongs to all Greeks, no government has the right to negotiate about it or transfer ownership,” they said in their statement.

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Yeah, smart species.

Propping Up Glaciers To Avoid Cataclysmic Sea Level Rise (AFP)

As global warming outpaces efforts to tame it, scientists have proposed building massive underwater structures to prevent an Antarctic glacier the size of Britain from sliding into the sea and lifting the world’s oceans by several metres. The more modest of two engineering schemes — which is still on the scale of a Panama or Suez Canal — to shore up Thwaites Glacier would require the construction of Eiffel Tower-sized columns resting on the seabed to support the glacier’s ocean-facing edge, or ice shelf. Option Two is a 100-metre tall underwater wall, or berm, running 80-100 kilometres (55-60 miles) beneath the ice shelf to block bottom-flowing warm water that erodes the glacier’s underbelly, rendering it unstable.

The ambitious projects, detailed Thursday in the European Geophysical Union journal The Cryosphere, reflect a gathering awareness that slashing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions — while essential — may not happen quickly enough to avoid catastrophic climate change impacts. “Thwaites could easily trigger a runaway ice sheet collapse that would ultimately raise global sea levels by about three metres,” said lead author Michael Wolovick, a researcher at Princeton University’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Nor will reducing carbon pollution be enough: any credible pathway to a world in which global warming is capped below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (3.6º Celsius) — the target enshrined in the 2015 Paris climate treaty — depends on sucking large quantities of CO2 out of the air.

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In the beginning there was nothing.

558 Million-Year-Old Fossils Identified As Oldest Known Animal (G.)

A fossilised lifeform that existed 558m years ago has been identified as the oldest known animal, according to new research. The findings confirm that animals existed at least 20m years before the so-called Cambrian explosion of animal life, which took place about 540m years ago and saw the emergence of modern-looking animals such as snails, bivalves and arthropods. The new fossils, of the genus Dickinsonia, are the remains of an oval-shaped lifeform and part of an ancient and enigmatic group of organisms called Ediacarans. These creatures are some of the earliest complex organisms on Earth, but their place within the evolutionary tree has long puzzled scientists. Suggestions as to what they were have ranged from lichens to failed evolutionary experiments to bacterial colonies.

Now, by identifying the remains of organic matter on newly discovered Ediacaran fossils as ancient cholesterol, the scientists have been able to confirm Dickinsonia was an animal, which makes it the oldest known animal. “It is the exact type and composition of that fat that was the giveaway that Dickinsonia was in fact an animal”, said Jochen Brocks of the Australian National University, one of the authors on the study. He added that the study solves “a decades-old mystery that has been the holy grail of palaeontology”. The fossils were discovered on two surfaces on a cliffside in the remote wilderness of north-west Russia by PhD student Ilya Bobrovskiy, who is lead author on the paper, published in the journal Science.


Dickinsonia fossils found in north-west Russia. Composite: Ilya Bobrovskiy/Ilya Bobrovskiy/ANU

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“This generation being born now… is the last free generation..”

Assange’s Last Interview Before Blackout (RT)

Before his links to the world was cut by his Ecuadorian hosts, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gave an interview on how technological advances are changing humankind. He said global surveillance will soon be totally unavoidable The interview was provided to RT by organizers of the World Ethical Data Forum in Barcelona. Assange, who is currently stranded in the Ecuadorean embassy in London with no outside communication except with his legal team, has a pretty grim outlook on where humanity is going. He says it will soon be impossible for any human being to not be included into global databases collected by governments and state-like entities.

This generation being born now… is the last free generation. You are born and either immediately or within say a year you are known globally. Your identity in one form or another –coming as a result of your idiotic parents plastering your name and photos all over Facebook or as a result of insurance applications or passport applications– is known to all major world powers. “A small child now in some sense has to negotiate its relationship with all the major world powers… It puts us in a very different position. Very few technically capable people are able to live apart, to choose to live apart, to choose to go their own way,” he added. “It smells a bit like totalitarianism – in some way.”

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May 022018
 


Brassaï The Sun King 1930

 

There’s a New Curve in Town and It’s Flashing Red (BBG)
Trump Says Kim Summit Details To Be Unveiled Within Days (AFP)
Apple Delivers Best-Ever Second Quarter Despite Sales Worries (G.)
More Evidence Emerges That Apple Is Killing iPhone X – Analyst (CNBC)
Nissan Shocks With 28% Sales Plunge (BBG)
The Biggest Player in the History of the World (Alistair Crooke)
Debt Is The Great Threat To China’s Development (Michael Hudson)
China’s Petro-Yuan Isn’t Dislodging the Dollar Yet (Barron’s)
China Weakens Its Currency Before US Trade Talks Begin (BBG)
Europeans Cast Doubt On Israel’s Claims About Iran Nuclear Breaches (G.)
Inside Theresa May’s Brexit War Cabinet, Tory Battles Rage (BBG)
UK Home Office ‘Mistakenly Deported 7,000 Foreign Students’ (Ind.)
Theresa May Vetoed Cabinet Pleas Over Visas For NHS Doctors (St.)
OECD Calls For Even Tighter Greek Fiscal Policy To Bolster Growth (K.)
Greece’s Debt Deal To Show How Europe Treats Its Less Fortunate Nations (CNBC)
Facebook’s Dating App Finally Makes Privacy Invasion Sexy (G.)
More Than 90% Of Air Pollution Deaths Occur In Poorer Countries (Ind.)

 

 

The trouble is in corporate bonds.

There’s a New Curve in Town and It’s Flashing Red (BBG)

The private sector may hold the real clues to recession risk. While the flattening U.S. yield curve – the difference between short- and longer-dated Treasuries – has been closely-watched as a potential indicator of a looming contraction, investors might do better to watch a measure of the cost of private credit, according to Charles Gave of Gavekal Capital. An inverted yield curve is thought to signal the “market rate of interest,” (shorter-term rates) exceeding the “natural rate of interest” (longer government rates), but may not be a good proxy for economic activity given that the government can always borrow, Gave said.

Instead, he suggests looking at the corporate credit market. Here, the U.S. economy’s natural rate could be represented by the yield of a longer-dated, seasoned industrial bond rated Baa by Moody’s, and the market rate by the prime lending rate charged by U.S. banks. “The private sector yield curve reading stands at zero, or right on the threshold where trouble can be expected to begin,” Gave wrote in a note published on Tuesday. “Should this spread move into negative territory, I would expect a financial accident to occur outside of the U.S., a U.S. recession, or possibly both.” Either a U.S. recession has taken place within a year of the private sector yield curve inverting, or a “financial accident” has occurred in other economies with currency links to the greenback, according to Gave’s data.

Prime rates below the natural rate of corporate credit have allowed banks to generate “artificial” money, kept “zombie” companies alive, and enabled other corporates to engage in “financial engineering” predicated on cheap borrowing costs that risk toppling over if the curve inverts, Gave said.

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Trump wants to meet in the DMZ. Reportedly, White House officials want Singapore or Mongolia.

Trump Says Kim Summit Details To Be Unveiled Within Days (AFP)

US President Donald Trump seemed pleased Tuesday by a suggestion he should get the Nobel Peace Prize for his upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, promising that a time and place for the historic meeting will soon be announced. “Nobel Peace Prize? I think President Moon was very nice when he suggested it,” Trump said, referring to South Korean President Moon Jae-in. “The main thing, I want to get peace. It was a big problem and I think it’s going to work out well,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. Trump has proposed holding the summit at the truce village in the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas, adding that two or three locations were under consideration.

“We’re setting up meetings right now and I think it’s probably going to be announced over the next couple of days, location and date,” Trump said. The summit, which has come together rapidly after months of tense saber-rattling over the North’s nuclear and missile programs, would be the first ever between a US president and a leader of North Korea. On Monday, Moon had demurred when asked about the prospect of winning the Nobel Peace Prize, suggesting Trump should get it instead. “President Trump can take the Nobel prize. All we need to take is peace,” he said. Trump said it was “very generous of President Moon of South Korea to make that statement and I appreciate it but the main thing is to get it done.” “I want to get it done,” he added.

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Apple has become a capital allocation venture.

Apple Delivers Best-Ever Second Quarter Despite Sales Worries (G.)

Apple on Tuesday shook off worries that its $1,000 iPhone had failed to live up to the hype – but sales of the world’s most valuable company’s most valuable product are slowing, and Apple has announced a plan to buy its way out of trouble. Releasing its latest quarterly report, Apple announced it had sold 52.2m iPhones in the quarter ending 31 March, at an average price of $728.54. Sales were up 3% compared to last year and slightly lower than analysts had expected, but numbers beat the gloomiest forecasts and were enough to deliver Apple its best second quarter ever, with revenues of over $61bn. That beat the record of $58bn set in 2015.

“We’re thrilled to report our best March quarter ever, with strong revenue growth in iPhone, services and wearables,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive officer. “We are very bullish on Apple’s future,” Cook told analysts after the news broke. Apple sold 9.11m iPads and 4.08m Macs over the quarter. Analysts had worried that the high-priced iPhone X would dent sales. The results came after Apple suppliers including AMS and Taiwan Semiconductors have reported slowing revenues in a sign seen by analysts as proof of shaky demand for iPhone X.

The company announced it would be adding $100bn to its stock buyback programme, plus a 16% increase in its quarterly dividend. Taking advantage of the Trump administration’s new tax laws, Apple is in the process of repatriating the majority of the $252bn in profits it currently holds overseas. The buyback helped Apple’s shares rise over 5% in after-hours trading. The company’s stock has risen by about 80% in the past two years, setting it on course to battle Amazon to become the first company to be valued at $1tn. But Apple’s share price has stumbled recently as fears about slowing iPhone sales took their toll.

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These reports about the ‘second tier’ just won’t stop.

More Evidence Emerges That Apple Is Killing iPhone X – Analyst (CNBC)

More earnings reports from companies linked to Apple have resulted in further evidence that the technology giant could be winding down or stopping production of the iPhone X. Nasdaq-listed Cognex is the latest company to provide clues that Apple may be going down this path. It reported first quarter earnings on Monday that were up 22% year-on-year, a slowdown from the 40% growth seen in the first quarter of 2017. On top of that, guidance for second quarter revenue of between $200 million and $210 million was below Wall Street expectations, according to Neil Campling, co-head of the global thematic group at Mirabaud Securities.

Cognex sells technology that assists factories that assemble the iPhone. Apple’s supply chain relies on this technology to get the OLED screen on the iPhone X fitted perfectly. Campling told CNBC on Tuesday that Apple accounts for about 20% of Cognex revenues, so the slowdown can be attributed to Apple killing off the iPhone X. “Cognex results provide further evidence that the smartphone cycle has turned south, the OLED overcapacity bites and Apple’s iPhone X is over,” Campling wrote in a note Tuesday. “If Apple is stepping back from the iPhone X production cycle, then Cognex is lead indicator of when that is taking place,” the analyst said in a follow-up phone call with CNBC.

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Remember Japanese cars?

Nissan Shocks With 28% Sales Plunge (BBG)

Nissan’s U.S. sales plunged last month, shocking some analysts and dragging on what was otherwise a strong April for auto demand. The Japanese automaker’s deliveries declined 28% in April, with almost every model in the Nissan and Infiniti lineups falling. Nissan shares fell as much as 1.8% in Tokyo trading Wednesday. While Ford and Fiat Chrysler beat analysts’ estimates, their shares reversed gains after Nissan’s report. “Our eyes are bugging out here,” Michelle Krebs, senior analyst for researcher Autotrader, said of the Nissan’s numbers. “They’ve been very heavy with rental-car sales and rich incentives. It looks like they’re pulling back.”

Automakers were going to have a difficult time reporting sales gains in April due to a quirk of the calendar. There were two fewer selling days – which excludes Sundays and holidays – last month than a year ago. So while almost all major carmakers posted declining deliveries, as analysts expected, the annualized sales rate accelerated to 17.1 million, according to researcher Autodata. Calculating the annualized sales pace, which topped last April’s 17 million, is becoming more difficult. General Motors announced last month that it would report U.S. sales only on a quarterly basis, complicating efforts to gauge the health of the world’s most lucrative auto market.

Sales of the Altima sedan, usually Nissan’s top car, dropped by almost half compared with a year ago. And the company’s leading sport utility vehicle, the Rogue, dropped 15%. While deliveries to both retail and fleet customers declined, the automaker expects that its results will improve when the new Kicks crossover and redesigned Altima reach dealers, spokesman Chris Keeffe said.

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Perhaps.

The Biggest Player in the History of the World (Alistair Crooke)

Xi Jinping lies at the apex of the Chinese political system. His influence now permeates at every level. He is the most powerful leader since Chairman Mao. Kevin Rudd (former PM of Australia and longtime student of China) notes, “none of this is for the faint-hearted … Xi has grown up in Chinese party politics as conducted at the highest levels. Through his father, Xi Zhongxun … he has been through a “masterclass” of not only how to survive it, but also on how to prevail within it. For these reasons, he has proven himself to be the most formidable politician of his age. He has succeeded in pre-empting, outflanking, outmanoeuvring, and then removing each of his political adversaries. The polite term for this is power consolidation. In that, he has certainly succeeded”.

And here is the rub: the world which Xi envisions is wholly incompatible with Washington’s priorities. Xi is not only more powerful than any predecessor other than Mao, he knows it, and intends to make his mark on world history. One that equates, or even surpasses, that of Mao. Lee Kuan Yew, who before his death in 2015, was the world’s premier China-watcher, had a pointed answer about China’s stunning trajectory over the past 40 years: “The size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world.”

[..] Made in China 2025 is a broad industrial policy that is receiving massive state R & D funding ($232 billion in 2016), including an explicit potential dual-use integration into military innovation. Its main aim, besides improving productivity, is to make China the world’s ‘tech leader’, and for China to become 70% self-sufficient in key materials and components. This may be well-known in theory, but perhaps the move towards self-sufficiency by both China and Russia suggests something more stark. These states are moving away from the classic liberal trade model to an economic model based on autonomy, and a state-led economy (such as advocated by economists like Friedrich List, before becoming eclipsed by the prevalence of Adam Smith-ian thinking).

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Very long essay from Hudson. Always good.

Debt Is The Great Threat To China’s Development (Michael Hudson)

Subjecting economies to austerity, economic shrinkage, emigration, shorter life spans and hence depopulation, it is at the root of the 2008 debt legacy and the fate of the Baltic states, Ireland, Greece and the rest of southern Europe, as it was earlier the financial dynamic of Third World countries in the 1960s through 1990s under IMF austerity programs. When public policy is turned over to creditors, they use their power for is asset stripping, insisting that all debts must be paid without regard for how this destroys the economy at large. China has managed to avoid this dynamic. But to the extent that it sends its students to study in U.S. and European business schools, they are taught the tactics of asset stripping instead of capital formation – how to be extractive, not productive.

They are taught that privatization is more desirable than public ownership, and that financialization creates wealth faster than it creates a debt burden. The product of such education therefore is not knowledge but ignorance and a distortion of good policy analysis. Baltic austerity is applauded as the “Baltic Miracle,” not as demographic collapse and economic shrinkage. The experience of post-Soviet economies when neoliberals were given a free hand after 1991 provides an object lesson. Much the same fate has befallen Greece, along with the rising indebtedness of other economies to foreign bondholders and to their own rentierclass operating out of capital-flight centers. Economies are obliged to suspend democratic government policy in favor of emergency creditor control.

The slow economic crash and debt deflation of these economies is depicted as a result of “market choice.” It turns out to be a “choice” for economic stagnation. All this is rationalized by the economic theory taught in Western economics departments and business schools. Such education is an indoctrination in stupidity – the kind of tunnel vision that Thorstein Veblen called the “trained incapacity” to understand how economies really work.

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“The trade in renminbi is still a minuscule part of the world currency market..”

China’s Petro-Yuan Isn’t Dislodging the Dollar Yet (Barron’s)

The timing seemed perfect. On March 26, four days after the Trump administration called for new tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports, Beijing launched an oil-futures contract denominated in yuan. The move seemed logical enough. China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s top oil importer last year, so why not start paying in its own currency? But against the backdrop of a brewing trade war, the newly born “petro-yuan” took on the aspect of a nuclear option, at least to Washington’s many ill-wishers around the globe. China’s initiative would put an end to dollar dominance of the $2 trillion annual oil trade, and thus its hegemony as a global reserve currency, so the argument ran. “Petro-Yuan to Kneecap Petro-Dollar,” crowed a headline from Russian state news service RT.

In fact, the petro-yuan is off to a slow start, and the greenback looks destined to remain almighty for a while yet. The reason is contradictions within China, which wants to play a new global role that is co-equal with the U.S. but maintain the old economic controls that got it there. Chinese exchanges have already co-opted much of the global trade in copper and other basic metals. But China is itself a leading copper producer, and volumes in the metal are one-twentieth the size of oil markets. To grab serious real estate from the petrodollar, the yuan would have to be freely convertible on the order of the greenback, euro, or yen—which it assuredly is not. “The trade in renminbi is still a minuscule part of the world currency market,” says Prakash Sharma, China research director for commodities consultant Wood Mackenzie, using an alternative name for the national coin.

“Paying for oil in Chinese currency looks nearly impossible at this stage.” Beijing authorities seemed bent on convertibility until 2015, when a stock market panic in China spurred some $700 billion in capital flight—from families pouring into Western real estate to corporations snapping up overseas acquisitions. The nation’s reserves shrank to a mere $3.3 trillion, and the yuan fell 10% against the dollar over 18 months. President Xi Jinping’s bureaucrats reacted decisively, limiting individuals to $50,000 a year in currency exchange and informally reeling in corporate globalization. “The events of 2015-16 were quite a surprise to the authorities,” says Jens Nordvig, CEO of FX consultant Exante Data. “They nearly lost control of the currency.”

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Because the US will demand it strengthen it.

China Weakens Its Currency Before US Trade Talks Begin (BBG)

China weakened its daily currency fixing by more than traders and analysts had expected before high-ranking U.S. officials arrive in the country to discuss trade issues. The People’s Bank of China cut the reference level to 6.3670 per dollar, weaker than the average estimate of 6.3610 in Bloomberg survey of 21 traders and analysts. The deviation is the biggest since Feb. 7 and continues a pattern set in April when the fixing was weaker than expected on all but one day, according to Bloomberg calculations. “The move in the fixing today is aggressive,” said Ken Cheung at Mizuho Bank in Hong Kong. “China may want to weaken the yuan pre-emptively before the trade talks with the U.S., so that they have room to strengthen the currency” if needed, Cheung said, adding that policy makers may also be keen to arrest the yuan’s advance against a basket of peers.

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Netanyahu plays games with his credibility.

Europeans Cast Doubt On Israel’s Claims About Iran Nuclear Breaches (G.)

European leaders have pushed back against Israel’s claims that it has new evidence showing that Iran is breaching the nuclear deal with the west which was signed in 2015. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, hailed the Israeli claims as significant, as the 12 May deadline approached for the US president, Donald Trump, to decide whether to pull out of the deal. But Pompeo declined to say whether they represented proof that Iran was violating the deal. The overall initial view in European capitals was that the documents did reveal new material about the scale of Iran’s programme prior to 2015 but that there was nothing showing a subsequent breach of the deal.

The French foreign ministry said that the details needed to be “studied and evaluated” but that the Israeli claims reinforced the need for continuation of the deal – which entails Iran accepting nuclear inspections in return for a loosening of economic sanctions. “The pertinence of the deal is reinforced by the details presented by Israel,” a statement said. “All activity linked to the development of a nuclear weapon is permanently forbidden by the deal.” [..] In a bid to push back against Israel, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, Federica Mogherini, said Netanyahu’s allegations had “not put into question” Tehran’s compliance with the deal and that the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) had produced 10 reports saying Iran had met its commitments.

“The International Atomic Energy Authority is the only impartial international organisation in charge of monitoring Iran’s nuclear commitments,” Mogherini said. “If any country has information of non compliance of any kind it should address this information to the proper legitimate and recognised mechanism.” The IAEA said a report by its director in 2015 “stated that the agency had no credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009”, and that the IAEA’s board of governors “declared that its consideration of this issue was closed”. A German government spokesman said it would analyse the Israeli documents, but added that the JCPOA had unprecedentedly strong monitoring mechanisms. The spokesman said: “It is clear that the international community had doubts that Iran was pursuing an exclusively peaceful nuclear programme. That is why the nuclear agreement was reached in 2015.”

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Britain better get rid of all these people.

Inside Theresa May’s Brexit War Cabinet, Tory Battles Rage (BBG)

The prime minister and her inner circle refer to it simply as “The SN.” To everyone else it is Theresa May’s “Brexit war cabinet,” the group of senior ministers who set the U.K.’s course out of the European Union. These eleven Cabinet members meet regularly in closely-guarded privacy to decide the detail of Brexit policies. On Wednesday afternoon, they convene once again to address an explosive question that could blow up May’s government. What to do about the Irish border and the future customs arrangements between the U.K. and the EU? Unless a satisfactory answer can be found soon, it could be enough to derail the negotiations entirely, forcing Britain out of the bloc with no meaningful deal at all.

The key to understanding the dynamic in the room had been that half of them campaigned to stay in the EU during the 2016 referendum, while the other five voted to leave — with the premier herself having the deciding vote. All that changed this week. Until she resigned as Home Secretary on Sunday, Amber Rudd was among the loudest voices in favor of keeping close ties to the EU. She’s been replaced by Sajid Javid, who is far closer to the pro-Brexit lobby, although he did – reluctantly – campaign for Remain two years ago.

Also on the pro-EU side are Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond and Business Secretary Greg Clark — both have been keeping low profiles of late. Pro-Brexit ministers are led by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Environment Secretary Michael Gove, both figureheads of the Leave campaign.

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They deported tens of thousands of students. On the basis of a questionable test.

UK Home Office ‘Mistakenly Deported 7,000 Foreign Students’ (Ind.)

The government may have mistakenly deported more than 7,000 foreign students after falsely accusing them of cheating in English language tests. Most of the students were not allowed to appeal the Home Office decision; nor were theyt able to obtain evidence against them, or given the opportunity to prove the proficiency in English Some were detained by immigration officials, lost their jobs, and were left homeless as a result, despite being in the UK legally, the Financial Times reported. The students’ treatment has been blamed on the “hostile environment” policy introduced by Theresa May during her time as home secretary.

The approach, which aims to push illegal immigrants to leave Britain by making their lives difficult, led to the Windrush scandal that forced Ms May’s successor Amber Rudd to resign. The foreign students were targeted by the Home Office after an investigation by the BBC’s Panorama in 2014 exposed systematic cheating at some colleges where candidates sat the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC). The test is one of several that overseas students can sit to prove their English language proficiency, a visa requirement. After the Panorama broadcast, the government asked the US-based company which runs the test to analyse sound files to investigate whether studies had been enlisting proxies to sit the tests for them.

The firm, English Testing Services, identified 33,725 “invalid” tests taken by students it was confident confident had cheated. The students’ visas were revoked and they were told to leave the country. Another 22,694 test results were classed as “questionable”, meaning the students who sat them were invited for an interview before any action was taken against them.

By the end of 2016, the Home Office had revoked the visas of nearly 36,000 students who took the test. However, when ETS’s automated voice analysis was checked against human analysis, its computer programme was found to be wrong in 20% of cases, meaning that more than 7,000 students were likely to have been wrongly accused of cheating. [..] Immigration barrister Patrick Lewis, who represented several students in successfully appealing their deportation, told the Financial Times: “The highly questionable quality of the evidence upon which these accusations have been based and the lack of any effective judicial oversight have given rise to some of the greatest injustices that I have encountered in over 20 years of practice.”

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NHS is 10,000 doctors short, patients dying on trolleys in hallways.

Theresa May Vetoed Cabinet Pleas Over Visas For NHS Doctors (St.)

Theresa May faces a new immigration crisis after it emerged that she overruled Cabinet ministers pleading for more doctors from overseas to fill empty NHS posts. At least three government departments lobbied for a relaxation of visa rules to let in desperately needed doctors as well as specialist staff sought by businesses, the Evening Standard has learned. The issue erupted on Friday when several NHS trusts went public about fears that patient safety was being put at risk by doctor shortages. The crisis came as then home secretary Amber Rudd was fighting for her political life over the Windrush scandal — but No 10’s hard line meant her hands were tied.

Sources have disclosed that Downing Street was lobbied for several months before the NHS went public to allow a relaxation of the rules. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Ms Rudd are understood to be among those urging No 10 to lift the quota for special cases such as NHS doctors. At the same time Business Secretary Greg Clark was pressing for more exceptions to help firms cope with specialist skills shortages. A Whitehall source said Mrs May “absolutely refused to budge” when asked to lift the cap in recent months. “I think Jeremy and Amber were on the same page on this but No 10 were in a different place entirely,” said a separate source.

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No, really, these people DO understand the effect will be the opposite of what they claim.

OECD Calls For Even Tighter Greek Fiscal Policy To Bolster Growth (K.)

Greece needs to further extend its real age of retirement and to abolish all kinds of tax exemptions, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has recommended in a report published on Monday, so that the growth rate accelerates, fiscal revenues expand and the national debt becomes sustainable. Although the report, presented in Athens on the occasion of OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria’s visit, does speak of a return to growth, it undercuts the official forecast for a 2.3% economic expansion this year, pointing instead to a 2% increase. It adds that a series of reforms could considerably strengthen gross domestic product in the future.

According to the OECD, a four-year rise in the real age of retirement up to 2030 (instead of the already scheduled three-year rise to the age of 65 by the same year) will boost GDP by 10.4 percent points (against 7.5 points with the scheduled extension). The modernization of the public administration and the improvement of the justice system up to OECD standards by 2030 would have an even greater impact, the report says. That would signify a GDP impact of 25.6 percent points, compared to the current plans for a 14.7 percent-point increase.

The organization further recommends new reforms in the commodity markets so that they reach up to Belgium’s level by 2020, and an increase in family benefits to meet the European Union average by 2025. In total, the reforms the OECD has proposed would bolster GDP by 46.1 percent points or almost 100 billion euros per year, against 25.4 percent points projected by the currently planned reforms. Those proposed reforms would also cut the national debt to just 100% of GDP by 2060, the report projects.

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It’s about political control, not finance.

Greece’s Debt Deal To Show How Europe Treats Its Less Fortunate Nations (CNBC)

Speaking in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia last week, European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici told me the EU believes its models may be more accurate, but argued that the best way to win an IMF buy-in would be to agree on a debt repayment mechanism first proposed by his countrymen — and one of his successors as French finance minister — Bruno Le Maire. Macron’s finance chief told me separately that he hoped to win over opponents to his plan, a “growth adjustment mechanism” that would automatically link future debt repayments to Greece’s relative economic success: Athens would repay larger installments if its economy expands quickly, and reduce payments if it slows, a process that its proponents claim provides market participants with greater clarity and transparency.

Arrayed against the French plan is the desire on the part of authorities in countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Austria to maintain a degree of political control over Greece’s required repayments. This might mean the size and scope of future repayments could be assessed by national parliaments, rather than automatically calculated based on factors like GDP growth. The publicly espoused view in Berlin is that such an approach would force the Greeks to continue with their structural reforms and austerity measures that have helped transform what was a 15% budget deficit in 2009 into a recent surplus.

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“Who better to entrust with the most intimate parts of our lives than Mark Zuckerberg, the king of privacy?”

Facebook’s Dating App Finally Makes Privacy Invasion Sexy (G.)

Thank God Facebook is finally offering a dating app. Who better to entrust with the most intimate parts of our lives than Mark Zuckerberg, the king of privacy? I assume Zuck will be building it off of one of the early projects that established him as a wunderkind: FaceMash. You may remember it – it’s the one where he hacked into campus websites, collecting pictures that allowed Harvard students to rank each other by hotness. With Facebook dating, the FaceMash dream is at last becoming reality. This should make it easy for Facebook’s hottest people – if there are any left; my understanding is most hot people have migrated to Instagram – to match with equally attractive people, leaving the rest of us trolls and gnomes to mingle with each other.

And after a few months, you can bet the data will leak, offering us all an opportunity to find out, based on rigorous computer analyses, how hot we are. I’m a four at best, you’re a seven. But those numbers won’t be based just on looks. What this app has over Tinder is its existing knowledge of every facet of our lives. Romance is, of course, transactional, and Zuckerberg can finally determine a precise formula based on the value each person brings to a potential match. How much money does it take to compensate for suboptimal physical attractiveness? How often do I have to post about working out to balance out my penchant for Ben and Jerry’s? How often do you have to donate to charities to make up for the fact that you bought an alarming amount of toilet paper on Amazon last month?

Then there’s the possibility that Facebook engagement could come into play. Will active users get more profile views than those of us who have largely abandoned the site? Would that mean we’re more likely to end up on dates with the kind of person who posts constantly on Facebook? Sign me up.

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7 million per year. That’s just a start.

More Than 90% Of Air Pollution Deaths Occur In Poorer Countries (Ind.)

Air pollution is involved in the deaths of around seven million people every year, with the vast majority of fatalities taking place in poorer countries. The latest figures released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) show that nine out of 10 people are breathing air containing dangerous levels of pollutants. These results largely echo those released in another global air pollution report in April, and experts have once again pointed to the particular burden falling on the world’s most vulnerable people. “Air pollution threatens us all, but the poorest and most marginalised people bear the brunt of the burden,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO.

The new figures come as reports emerge concerning residents of Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, drinking “oxygen cocktails” in an effort to ward off the harmful effects of air pollution. Ranked by Unicef as the most polluted capital city in the world, Ulaanbaatar is one of the many Asian and African cities highlighted as particularly susceptible to the toxic effects of air pollution by WHO. According to Dr Maria Neira, who leads public health efforts at WHO, many of the world’s megacities – such as Beijing, Delhi and Jakarta – exceed guideline levels for air quality by more than five times.

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Oct 072017
 
 October 7, 2017  Posted by at 8:39 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  4 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Landscape at twilight 1890

 

BLS Caught Fabricating Wage Data (ZH)
Tropical Storm Nate Heads Into The Heart Of US Offshore Oil Industry (CNBC)
It’s ‘Crunch Time’ For Australian Households (BI)
JPMorgan Paid Fine for 2008 Mortgage Crisis With .. Phony Mortgages (N.)
EU Official Warns War a Possibility in Catalonia (VoA)
Spain Apologizes, Tone Softens In Catalonia Independence Crisis (R.)
OECD New Approaches to Economic Challenges (Steve Keen)
Mainstream Economists Live In A Parallel Universe (Ren.)
Light It Up (Jim Kunstler)
Russiagate Is More Fiction Than Fact (Nation)
Your Local Bank Could Be the Central Bank (BBG)
US Escalates Trade Dispute With UK And Canada Over Bombardier (G.)
Canada Will Pay Compensation To Thousands Of Indigenous ‘Stolen Children’ (R.)
FDP Chief Says Schaeuble ‘Not Tough Enough’ On Greece (K.)
Greece’s Ruling Syriza Party Falls Apart (K.)
Overcrowded Greek Refugee Camps Ill-Prepared For Winter: UNHCR (R.)

 

 

And loses 33,000 jobs while unemployment falls?! And 935,000 full time jobs are added. Time to stop paying any attention to the B(L)S. You can’t trust it.

BLS Caught Fabricating Wage Data (ZH)

[..] the BLS reported that the annual increase in Average Weekly Earnings was a whopping 2.9%, above the 2.5% expected, and above the 2.5% reported last month. On the surface this was a great number, as the 2.9% annual increase – whether distorted by hurricanes or not – was the highest since the financial crisis. However, a problem emerges when one looks just one month prior, at the revised August data. What one sees here, as Andrew Zatlin of South Bay Research first noted, is that while the Total Private Average Weekly Earnings line posted another solid increase of 0.2% month over month, an upward revision from the previous month’s 0.1%, when one looks at the components, it become clear that the BLS fabricated the numbers, and may simply hard-coded its spreadsheet with the intention of goalseeking a specific number.

Presenting Exhibit 1: Table B-3 in today’s jobs report. What it shows is that whereas there was a sequential decline in the Average Weekly Earnings for Goods Producing and Private Service-producing industries which are the only two sub-components of the Total Private Line (and are circled in red on the table below) of -0.8% and -0.1% respectively, the BLS also reported that somehow, the total of these two declines was a 0.2% increase! Another way of showing the July to August data: • Goods-Producing Weekly Earnings declined -0.8% from $1,118.68 to $1,109.92 • Private Service-Providing Weekly Earnings declined -0.1% from $868.80 to $868.18 • And yet, Total Private Hourly Earnings rose 0.2% from $907.82 to $909.19. What the above shows is, in a word, impossible: one can not have the two subcomponents of a sum-total decline, while the total increases. The math does not work.

This, as Zatlin notes, undermines not only the labor inflation narrative, but it puts into question the rest of the overall labor data, and whether there are other politically-motivated, goalseeked “spreadsheet” errors. We have sent an email to the BLS seeking an explanation for the above data fabrication, meanwhile here is what likely happened: a big, juicy fat-finger error, whether on purpose or otherwise because if one looks at the finalized July weekly earnings of $907.82, it’s precisely the same as what the August preliminary wage number was as released last month, also $907.82. For the excel fans out there, it means that the August totals were simply hard coded when the BLS shifted cells in the spreadsheet, becoming July.

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Will probably be a Cat 2-3 hurricane by then.

Tropical Storm Nate Heads Into The Heart Of US Offshore Oil Industry (CNBC)

As Tropical Storm Nate continued on its course toward the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, energy companies shut down offshore oil and gas platforms, while Louisiana braced for a potential hurricane. Nate is forecast to strengthen as it enters the Gulf and develop into a hurricane by the time it reaches the northern Gulf Coast on Saturday evening, the National Hurricane Center said Friday. Hurricane and storm surge watches are in effect for southeastern Louisiana, including New Orleans, through the Mississippi-Alabama border. The Gulf is home to nearly one-fifth of all U.S. oil output. Drillers who pump crude from offshore platforms have lately produced at record levels above 1.7 million barrels a day. The region already had to contend with Hurricane Harvey in August.

“The major difference between Harvey and Nate is that the trajectory of Nate brings it right through the heart of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil and gas producing region,” said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates. BP and Chevron are ceasing production on all platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, Reuters reported. Royal Dutch Shell and Anadarko Petroleum dialed back activity, while Exxon Mobil, Statoil and others are withdrawing workers. If Nate develops into a Category 2 or 3 hurricane, it could impact up to 80% of the Gulf’s output, Lipow forecast. The storm also has the potential to affect about 15% of U.S. refining capacity in the New Orleans area, Mississippi and Alabama. The region’s biggest refineries include Exxon Mobil’s Baton Rouge facility and Marathon Petroleum’s Garyville, Louisiana, plant, both capable of turning out more than 500,000 barrels a day.

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A whole nation full of debt slaves in denial. And not the only nation either.

It’s ‘Crunch Time’ For Australian Households (BI)

Australian households are in a vulnerable financial position, especially those who have taken out a mortgage. And in an era of weak incomes growth, soaring energy prices and high levels of indebtedness, with the prospect of higher interest rates on the way, many intend to cut discretionary spending in anticipation of even tighter household budgets. That’s the finding of the latest AlphaWise survey conducted by Morgan Stanley, which paints an unsettling picture on the outlook for not only Australia’s retail sector, but also the broader economy. Yes, the weakness in retail sales over the past two months may soon become entrenched. The “crunch time” for Australian households, as Morgan Stanley puts it, has begun. “In early June, we expressed the view that the Australian consumer faces a domestic cash flow and credit crunch,” the bank wrote in a note released this week.

“Income growth has not recovered, ‘cost of living’ inflation is re-accelerating and ‘macro-prudential’-related tightening of credit conditions is extending from housing into consumer finance.” In order to test how households may respond to higher interest rates, whether as a result of macroprudential measures to slow investor and interest-only housing credit growth or official moves from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), Morgan Stanley conducted a national survey of 1,836 mortgagors to identify household conditions during late July and early August. Australia’s 2016 census found that 34.5% of households were currently paying off a mortgage. Morgan Stanley says the survey was designed to provide insight into the health of the household balance sheet, including their spending intentions as a result of higher mortgage rates. The news was not good.

“Findings from the AlphaWise survey confirm the stresses in the consumer sector we have been highlighting for some time now,” it says. “Most households have minimal buffers against a shock to their income, and expect to respond to higher debt servicing costs by drawing down on savings and cutting back on expenditure. “Other sectors of the economy may be able to offset some of the headline weakness, but the concentrated exposure of the household sector and economy to an extended housing market is posing an increasingly important structural and cyclical risk to consumer spending.” Of those households surveyed, 54% said they intended to cut back on expenditure in response to higher interest rates, with a further 25% planning to draw down on their savings to cope with higher servicing costs, a pattern that has been seen in Australia’s savings ratio which fell to a post-GFC low in the June quarter.

Somewhat alarmingly, 40% of those surveyed indicated that they did not save at all over the past year, particularly among low-income households. [..] “Only around 13% of respondents expect to be able to save more in the next 12 months..”

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Read the whole thing. It’s completely insane.

JPMorgan Paid Fine for 2008 Mortgage Crisis With .. Phony Mortgages (N.)

You know the old joke: How do you make a killing on Wall Street and never risk a loss? Easy—use other people’s money. Jamie Dimon and his underlings at JPMorgan Chase have perfected this dark art at America’s largest bank, which boasts a balance sheet one-eighth the size of the entire US economy. After JPMorgan’s deceitful activities in the housing market helped trigger the 2008 financial crash that cost millions of Americans their jobs, homes, and life savings, punishment was in order. Among a vast array of misconduct, JPMorgan engaged in the routine use of “robo-signing,” which allowed bank employees to automatically sign hundreds, even thousands, of foreclosure documents per day without verifying their contents.

But in the United States, white-collar criminals rarely go to prison; instead, they negotiate settlements. Thus, on February 9, 2012, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced the National Mortgage Settlement, which fined JPMorgan Chase and four other mega-banks a total of $25 billion. JPMorgan’s share of the settlement was $5.3 billion, but only $1.1 billion had to be paid in cash; the other $4.2 billion was to come in the form of financial relief for homeowners in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. The settlement called for JPMorgan to reduce the amounts owed, modify the loan terms, and take other steps to help distressed Americans keep their homes. A separate 2013 settlement against the bank for deceiving mortgage investors included another $4 billion in consumer relief.

A Nation investigation can now reveal how JPMorgan met part of its $8.2 billion settlement burden: by using other people’s money. Here’s how the alleged scam worked. JPMorgan moved to forgive the mortgages of tens of thousands of homeowners; the feds, in turn, credited these canceled loans against the penalties due under the 2012 and 2013 settlements. But here’s the rub: In many instances, JPMorgan was forgiving loans on properties it no longer owned. The alleged fraud is described in internal JPMorgan documents, public records, testimony from homeowners and investors burned in the scam, and other evidence presented in a blockbuster lawsuit against JPMorgan, now being heard in US District Court in New York City.

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Big demos today against Catalans.

EU Official Warns War a Possibility in Catalonia (VoA)

The team captain of Spain’s storied football club Barcelona, which has become a focal point of secessionist Catalan sentiment, is urging politicians in Madrid and the Catalan capital to start negotiating about the future of Spain’s restive northeast province. “Before we do ourselves more damage, those in charge must open dialogue with each other. Do it for all of us. We deserve to live in peace,” Andrés Iniesta wrote on his Facebook page, apologizing at the same time for weighing in on “situations that are complex.” His appeal came as a top EU official Thursday warned that the separatist dispute, exacerbated by Catalan secessionists holding an illegal independence referendum Sunday, risks escalating into armed conflict.

“The position is very, very alarming. Civil war is conceivable there, in the middle of Europe,” Gunther Oettinger, the Germany EU commissioner said at an event in Munich. Oettinger and the EU Commission, the European bloc’s governing body, which fears Catalan independence might stir up separatism elsewhere in Europe, have also urged the authorities in Madrid and Barcelona to start negotiations and to avoid further provocations. But there are little signs of that happening. Both sides appear to be standing firm in Spain’s worst constitutional crisis since an attempted coup in 1981. [..] Nationalist sentiment is deepening fast: in Madrid observers have noted more buildings are sporting the Spanish national flag. Spaniards have long harbored an historical fear of dismemberment – Catalan nationalist sentiment was a key factor behind the Spanish civil war of the 1930s.

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Wonder how long that holds.

Spain Apologizes, Tone Softens In Catalonia Independence Crisis (R.)

Spain apologized on Friday for a violent police crackdown on Catalonia’s independence referendum, in a conciliatory gesture as both sides looked for a way out of the nation’s worst political crisis since it became a democracy four decades ago. Spain’s representative in northeast Catalonia, which accounts for a fifth of the national economy, made the apology just as Catalonia’s secessionist leader appeared to inch away from a plan to declare independence as early as Monday. “When I see these images, and more so when I know people have been hit, pushed and even one person who was hospitalized, I can’t help but regret it and apologize on behalf of the officers that intervened,” Enric Millo said in a television interview.

[..] Moments earlier, a Catalan parliament spokeswoman said the regional government’s leader, Carles Puigdemont, had asked to address lawmakers on Tuesday, in timing that appeared at odds with earlier plans to move an independence motion on Monday. Puigdemont wanted to speak on the “political situation”. The softer tone contrasted with remarks earlier on Friday from Catalonia’s head of foreign affairs who told BBC radio it would go ahead with an independence debate in the regional parliament. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has offered all-party political talks to find a solution, opening the door to a deal giving Catalonia more autonomy. But he has ruled out independence and rejected a Catalan proposal for international mediation.

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Steve in the lion’s den. “The OECD was one of the formal economic policy groups that wildly misinterpreted the economic data of 2007..”

OECD New Approaches to Economic Challenges (Steve Keen)

This is one of the highlights so far of my life as a rebel economist: giving an invited talk at the OECD. The OECD was one of the formal economic policy groups that wildly misinterpreted the economic data of 2007, believing that it heralded “sustained growth in OECD economies … underpinned by strong job creation and falling unemployment.” Five years later, they established the New Approaches to Economic Challenges (NAEC) initiative, and they’re trying to expand the horizons of economics beyond the narrow and fallacious confines of Neoclassical economics. Being invited to speak there, and getting such a positive reception from OECD Ambassadors, confirmed my belief that if change is to come in economics, it will come from formal economic bodies (the OECD, IMF, Central Banks and Treasuries) rather than university departments.

Formal bodies have to wear the consequences of being wrong about the economy, whereas Neoclassical-dominated university departments can retreat into isolation when the real world fails to conform to their fantasies about it. Nothing is certain however. The desire to fall back into ideologically comfortable but practically false ways of thinking about the economic system is strong. Groups like NAEC within the OECD need support, and they themselves need to support the young students in Rethinking Economics, who are far more amenable to a new paradigm than their hidebound academic instructors in the major Universities.

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“Neoclassical economists are not experts on money but experts in finding reasons to believe you can model capitalism as though money banks and debt don’t exist. “And then you give them the right to control the banking system.”

Mainstream Economists Live In A Parallel Universe (Ren.)

Neoclassical economic theory claims that the human being is a rational self-serving profit maximising unit. It claims to prove the market can handle anything. Classical economists model the economy based on the concept of rational consumers maximising utility and firms maximising profits. Their vision of the world claims that equilibrium is reached and the world functions best if there is no government, no trade unions and no monopolies. Professor Keen says mainstream economist change reality to fit their model. University campuses used to be about education, challenging people exposing them to ideas they didn’t necessarily have in the first instance. But Professor Keen says economics actually leads away from this possibility. “Economics starts by inculcating a view of how you should think about the economy that rules out a whole range of alternatives,” he said.

“It rules out thinking about the sort of work that I do, working from the top down, looking at the overall economy and modelling that way. They say ‘no, you’ve got to start from the isolated individual and you have to talk about individuals for maximising utility’. We’re talking about them as consumers or firms who are maximising profits. “In their mind that is the definition of a perfectly functioning system, but it is not the definition of the world in which we live. “Once you’ve got the mathematical structure of trying to do that, you have a very hard time treating anything else as a sensible analysis of capitalism. They rule out a whole lot of other ways of thinking.”

[..] “Imagine capitalism with no banks, no debt, and no money,” says Professor Keen. “You’re getting pretty close to being a neoclassical economist.” “Neoclassical economists are not experts on money but experts in finding reasons to believe you can model capitalism as though money banks and debt don’t exist. “And then you give them the right to control the banking system.”

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“..with half of the flyover population in an opiate daze, and chain-stores shuttering to the tune of 10,000 this year, and car leases expiring into a car market dependent on liar loans bundled into janky securities, and the debt problem festering away like a something dead under the floor boards.”

Light It Up (Jim Kunstler)

Grinning like Wonderland’s Cheshire Cat, the Golden Golem of Greatness pronounced this interval of fine fall weather “the calm before the storm.” Hmmmm. Talk about cryptic. This was less than a week after he verbally smacked down Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for “wasting his time” trying to diplomatically reach “Little Rocket Man… “ whereby Rex riposted, calling the President a “moron.” Ordinarily — say, during the past 220-odd years of this nation’s existence — talk like that would prompt a resignation (though, there are no other instances of talk like that). illerson must think that for the good of the country he can’t resign, and God knows what kind of desperate notes are being swapped around between the State Department and the Pentagon.

[..] We are entering a slot of time where an awful lot of things might go wrong. What gets me is seeing the stock markets make new record highs every other day, whether Puerto Rico is destroyed overnight or hundreds of people are shot in a Las Vegas parking lot — and notwithstanding the overall phony-baloney condition of the American economy, with half of the flyover population in an opiate daze, and chain-stores shuttering to the tune of 10,000 this year, and car leases expiring into a car market dependent on liar loans bundled into janky securities, and the debt problem festering away like a something dead under the floor boards. Some kind of financial accident with a this-sucker-is-going-down flavor feels like it’s waiting to happen.

I don’t think Trump was referring to that either, but what if it came down around the same moment that we decided to light up North Korea? Or, alternately, if Rex Tillerson, Mike Pence, and a score of other senior politicos decide that its time for Trump to go? The president is looking mighty friendless these days, and more than a little reckless. I mean, for the good of the country, ladies and gentlemen, what are they waiting for? Will his generals defend him? Nah. Fuggedabowdit. I wonder what the code-name for their action will be. Operation Moron Overboard? The whole spectacle is starting to look like a Coen Brothers movie. When the time comes, I hope they will make the documentary about these strange days of October, 2017.

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But it will just keep going.

Russiagate Is More Fiction Than Fact (Nation)

In the electrified aftermath of the election, aides to Hillary Clinton and Obama pored over polling numbers and turnout data, looking for clues to explain what they saw as an unnatural turn of events. One of the theories to emerge from their post-mortem was that Russian operatives who were directed by the Kremlin to support Trump may have taken advantage of Facebook and other social media platforms to direct their messages to American voters in key demographic areas in order to increase enthusiasm for Trump and suppress support for Clinton. These former advisers didn’t have hard evidence that Russian trolls were using Facebook to micro-target voters in swing districts—at least not yet—but they shared their theories with the House and Senate intelligence committees, which launched parallel investigations into Russia’s role in the presidential campaign in January.

The theories paid off. A personal visit in May by Democratic Senator Mark Warner, vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, “spurred the company to make some changes in how it conducted its internal investigation.” Facebook’s announcement in August of finding 3,000 “likely” Russian ads is now an ongoing “scandal” that has dragged the company before Congressional committees. Other election threats loom. A recent front-page New York Times article linking Russian cyber operations to voting irregularities across the United States is headlined, “Russian Election Hacking Efforts, Wider Than Previously Known, Draw Little Scrutiny.” But read on and you’ll discover that there is no evidence of “Russian election hacking,” only evidence-free accusations of it.

Voting problems in Durham, North Carolina, “felt like tampering, or some kind of cyberattack,” election monitor Susan Greenhalgh says, and “months later…questions still linger about what happened that day in Durham as well as other counties in North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Arizona.” There is one caveat: “There are plenty of other reasons for such breakdowns—local officials blamed human error and software malfunctions—and no clear-cut evidence of digital sabotage has emerged, much less a Russian role in it.” The evidence-free concern over Russian hacking expanded in late September when the Department of Homeland Security informed 21 states that they had been targeted by Russian cyber-operations during the 2016 election. But three states have already dismissed the DHS claims, including California, which announced that after seeking “further information, it became clear that DHS’s conclusions were wrong.” Recent elections in France and Germany saw similar fears of Russian hacking and disinformation—and similar results.

In France, a hack targeting the campaign of election winner Emmanuel Macron ended up having “no trace,” of Russian involvement, and “was so generic and simple that it could have been practically anyone,” the head of French cyber-security quietly explained after the vote. Germany faced an even more puzzling outcome: Nothing happened. “The apparent absence of a robust Russian campaign to sabotage the German vote has become a mystery among officials and experts who had warned of a likely onslaught,” the Post reported in an article headlined “As Germans prepare to vote, a mystery grows: Where are the Russians?” The mystery was so profound that The New York Times also explored it days later: “German Election Mystery: Why No Russian Meddling?”

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RIpping apart the blockchain.

Your Local Bank Could Be the Central Bank (BBG)

In practice it is difficult to envisage a sustainable digital currency that would not be accessible to all; cryptocurrencies are increasingly attractive to the general public. As for privacy, a decentralized ledger, on top of the security advantage it brings, makes the anonymity attached to cash transactions technically possible, and is thus nothing new. The BIS acknowledges as much: While it may look odd for a central bank to issue a cryptocurrency that provides anonymity, this is precisely what it does with physical currency, i.e. cash. Perhaps a key difference is that, with a retail CBCC, the provision of anonymity becomes a conscious decision.

Some might argue that an anonymous payment network would run against the current trend in anti-money-laundering regulation, where the origin of invested cash is carefully vetted to avoid criminal or tax evasion activities. Technically, there is nothing to prevent central bank digital currencies from being fully traceable. Even a decentralized ledger (where transactions are recorded digitally across many computers) only provides the potential for anonymity but does not guarantee it. But if there is no desire for anonymity, then there would be no need for the ledger to be decentralized. The logical outcome would be for central banks themselves to offer retail services, taking deposits from the general public. The BIS considers this possibility:

“We argue that the main benefit that a consumer-facing retail CBCC would offer, over the provision of public access to (centralized) central bank accounts, is that the former would have the potential to provide the anonymity of cash. In particular, peer-to-peer transfers allow anonymity vis-à-vis any third party. If third-party anonymity is not of sufficient importance to the public, then many of the alleged benefits of retail CBCCs can be achieved by giving broad access to accounts at the central bank.” A central bank e-minting monopoly would fundamentally change the structure of the banking system, leading to an increased monetary basis and seigniorage. Any temptation to abuse the enhanced minting monopolies would be reduced not by new technology but by the competitive alternatives offered by other countries’ digital currencies, or even, if necessary, old-fashioned valuable commodities.

The introduction of CBBCs that are traceable would also bring about a revolutionary transformation of the financial system architecture. This is, quite obviously, the opposite of the libertarian ideology underpinning the original cryptocurrencies. It would also accelerate the dismantling of the banking system as we know it. With central banks offering retail services, commercial banks would lose deposits, and with it their ability to lend. It would curtail or end the role of the money multiplier – whereby banks lend more than they receive in deposits, thus increasing the overall money supply – in the economy, and so necessitate massive monetary creation to maintain levels of liquidity in the market. Lending would increasingly be made by regulated specialized funds.

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Strange and ugly.

US Escalates Trade Dispute With UK And Canada Over Bombardier (G.)

The US has escalated its trade dispute with Britain and Canada by announcing plans to slap a further 80% duty on the export of planes built by Bombardier. The move follows complaints by Boeing that Canadian-owned Bombardier, which employs more than 4,000 people in Belfast, had dumped its C Series jets at “absurdly low” prices. Bombardier is facing a planned 220% tariff as part of a separate investigation, the US Department of Commerce confirmed. A second levy of 80% is also being applied to Bombardier’s sales to the US after a preliminary finding that the jets were sold below cost price to Delta Air Lines in 2016. Boeing claimed that 75 aircraft were sold at nearly £10.6m below cost price. Bombardier dismissed the claim as “absurd”. The company is due to begin delivering a blockbuster order for up to 125 new jets to Atlanta-based Delta next year.

The US commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, said: “The United States is committed to free, fair and reciprocal trade with Canada, but this is not our idea of a properly functioning trading relationship. We will continue to verify the accuracy of this decision, while doing everything in our power to stand up for American companies and their workers.” [..] The proposed duties would not take effect unless affirmed by the US International Trade Commission (ITC) early next year. To win its case before the ITC, Boeing must prove it was harmed by Bombardier’s sales, despite not using one of its own jets to compete for the Delta order. Bombardier said it was confident that the ITC would find Boeing had not been harmed, calling the Department of Commerce decision a case of “egregious overreach”. Delta said the decision was preliminary and it was confident the ITC “will conclude that no US manufacturer is at risk” from Bombardier’s plane.

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Australia next?! US?

Canada Will Pay Compensation To Thousands Of Indigenous ‘Stolen Children’ (R.)

Canada will pay up to C$750m in compensation to thousands of aboriginals who were forcibly removed as children from their families decades ago, promising to end “a terrible legacy”. The move is the latest attempt by the Liberal government of the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to repair ties with Canada’s often-marginalised indigenous population, which says it has been the victim of systemic racism for centuries. In the so-called “Sixties Scoop”, welfare authorities took about 20,000 aboriginal children from their homes between the 1960s and 1980s and placed them in foster care or allowed them to be adopted by non-indigenous families. The compensation package is designed to settle many of the lawsuits launched by survivors, who say the forced removal deprived them of their heritage and led to mental disorders, substance abuse and suicide.

“Language and culture, apology, healing – these are essential elements to begin to right the wrong of this dark and painful chapter,” said Carolyn Bennett, the federal minister in charge of relations with the indigenous population. Canada’s 1.4 million aboriginals, who make up about 4% of the population, experience higher levels of poverty and incarceration and have a lower life expectancy than other Canadians. They are often victims of violent crime and addiction. Indigenous activists complain Trudeau has broken repeated promises to improve their lives since taking office in late 2015. He reshuffled his cabinet in August to put more emphasis on helping aboriginal people. Bennett, at times fighting back tears, told a news conference she had heard “truly heartbreaking stories” about loss of identity and alienation.

Marcia Brown Martel, an aboriginal chief who led the campaign for compensation, lamented the “stealing of children” and noted some of those involved lived as far away as New Zealand. “Think of it as a puzzle, a great big puzzle. Pieces, people are missing,” she told reporters. [..] Trudeau and other Canadian leaders have already apologized for the many abuses committed over a 150-year period when 150,000 aboriginal children were forcibly separated from their parents and sent to church-run residential schools. In 2015, an official report said the schools were an attempt to end the existence of aboriginals as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious and racial entities in Canada.

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A look at the future.

FDP Chief Says Schaeuble ‘Not Tough Enough’ On Greece (K.)

The leader of Germany’s Free Democrats (FDP), Christian Lindner, seen as a likely successor at the finance ministry if his pro-business party enters a coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), has criticized outgoing Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble for not being tough enough on Greece. “Mr Schaeuble did not manage to impose himself over the chancellor in many questions of European policy. Just remember the third aid package for Greece, which he originally did not want to do,” Lindner told German daily Handelsblatt in an interview Friday. The 38-year-old politician managed to lead the FDP back into parliament after a four-year absence on the back of a pledge to limit financial perils from the eurozone and an illiberal assault on Merkel’s open-doors refugee policy.

In the same interview, Lindner called for the creation of an insolvency law for eurozone states, while arguing that countries should be able to leave the common currency area while remaining in the European Union. In May, the FDP chief said that Greece should leave the euro temporarily until its economy was back on track. If the Greek debt is not sustainable as the IMF claims, Lindner said at the time, then it has to be restructured – and this cannot take place within the eurozone. Lindner avoided to say if his party would push to take over the Finance Ministry. “For us a change in fiscal policy is more important than a new minister,” said Lindner, who also expressed doubts about the prospects of a three-way alliance between CDU, FDP and the Greens, known as the “Jamaica coalition.”

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Due to lack of identity.

Greece’s Ruling Syriza Party Falls Apart (K.)

An overwhelming majority of SYRIZA’s “Socialist Trend” faction under MEP Costas Chrysogonos have voted to part ways with the ruling leftists over differences in policy. In a ballot held on Friday, the proposal was backed by 1,678, or 82.6%, of the faction’s 2,032 members. Only 31 wanted to stay with SYRIZA. Officials said the faction will take steps to transform into an independent political grouping. They added that more details will be announced next week. Representatives of the faction also accused SYRIZA of turning into “a true replica of the centralized mainstream parties.”

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“..four of the five island camps are hosting two or three times as many people as they were designed for..”

Overcrowded Greek Refugee Camps Ill-Prepared For Winter: UNHCR (R.)

Greece must speed up winter preparations at refugee camps on islands in the Aegean Sea where there has been a sharp rise in arrivals, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. Nearly 5,000 refugees, mostly Syrian or Iraqi families, crossed from Turkey in September – a quarter of all arrivals this year, UNHCR data shows. While that is a fraction of the nearly 1 million who arrived in 2015 – due to a European Union deal with Turkey to block that route – four of the five island camps are hosting two or three times as many people as they were designed for. “UNHCR urges action on the islands to ease overcrowding, improve shelter, and stock and distribute appropriate and sufficient aid items,” said Philippe Leclerc, UNHCR representative in Greece.

In the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos, one of the main entry points, more than 1,500 people are in makeshift shelters or tents without insulation, flooring or heating, UNHCR said. They include pregnant women, people with disabilities, and very young children. On nearby Samos, about 400 people are living in “very difficult” conditions and another 300, including families and lone children, are sleeping in tents in the woods due to a lack of space in the camp, UNHCR said. More than 3,000 people on Samos are crammed into facilities designed to hold 700. In January, refugees in Greece suffered sub-zero temperatures when an icy spell gripped parts of the country and scores of summer tents were weighed down by snow. More than 60,000 refugees and migrants have been trapped in Greece since Balkan countries along the northward overland route to western Europe sealed their borders in March 2016.

UNHCR has been gradually reducing its involvement on the islands since national institutions took over most services in August.

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Jun 082017
 
 June 8, 2017  Posted by at 9:37 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  1 Response »


Roy Lichtenstein Femme d’Alger 1963

 

UK Press Gang Up On Jeremy Corbyn In Election Day Coverage (G.)
US Market Risk Is Highest Since Pre-2008 Crisis – Bill Gross (BBG)
Global Financial System More Leveraged Than 2008 – Paul Singer (BBG)
UK Housing Weakens Further as Market Emits ‘Ominous’ Signals (BBG)
The Cost of Getting It Wrong (Claire Connelly)
The UAE Needs Qatar’s Gas to Keep Dubai’s Lights On (BBG)
Oil Prices Drop More Than 4% On Surge In Stockpiles (CNBC)
China’s Top Property-Bubble Prophet Says Prices Set to Soar 50% (BBG)
Banco Popular Wipeout Leaves CoCo Bonds On The Drawing Board (BV)
A Reform Beyond Macron’s Grip: The Revolving Door of French Politics (BBG)
OECD Puts Greek Growth At Just 1.1% This Year (K.)
Athens To Seek Growth Package At Eurogroup Meeting (K.)
Greece Says Colombian Gangs Plundering Hospitals Europe-Wide (AP)
Greek Room Owners Threaten To Return Permits in Airbnb Challenge (K.)
Bid For EU States To Stop Migrants, Refugees ‘Asylum Shopping’ (K.)

 

 

The Daily Mail ran 13 pages yesterday on the theme of Corbyn and Labour being terrorist apologists. No shame, no morals. In the same vein, I tried to find an objective piece on the Comey testimony, but couldn’t find one. The UK press has no faith in its voters, the US press has none in its Senate: the press draws the conclusions before anyone else can. The media cares little about credibility, it’s all echo chambers all the way down.

UK Press Gang Up On Jeremy Corbyn In Election Day Coverage (G.)

The Sun has urged its readers not to “chuck Britain in the Cor-bin” on its final front page before the country votes in the general election. The tabloid, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, published an editorial on its front page under the headline “Don’t Chuck Britain in the Cor-bin” alongside 10 bullet points that described the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as a “terrorists’ friend”, “useless on Brexit”, “puppet of unions” and “Marxist extremist”. The article said readers could “rescue Britain from the catastrophe of a takeover by Labour’s hard-left extremists”. The Daily Mail front page roared, “Let’s reignite British spirit” on the back of a Theresa May speech and also promoted a feature inside called “Your tactical voting guide to boost the Tories and Brexit”.

The Daily Mirror reiterated its support for the Labour party with a front page headline of “Lies, damned lies, and Theresa May”, while the Daily Telegraph ran a story headlined “Your Country Needs You” based on an editorial by the prime minister that urged “patriotic” Labour supporters to vote Conservative. The Daily Express front page said: “Vote for May Today”. Meanwhile, the Times reported that the Conservatives had a seven-point in the final opinion poll before the election, and the Guardian covered May and Corbyn’s late attempts to win support from voters. Thursday’s front pages come after the Daily Mail devoted 13 pages to attacking Labour, Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and John McDonnell on Wednesday under the headline: “Apologists for terror”. The tabloid urged readers to support the Conservatives in an editorial on its first and second pages, but concentrated its fire on Labour’s leadership, compiling hostile anecdotes dating back to the 1970s.

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“Instead of buying low and selling high, you’re buying high and crossing your fingers…”

US Market Risk Is Highest Since Pre-2008 Crisis – Bill Gross (BBG)

U.S. markets are at their highest risk levels since before the 2008 financial crisis because investors are paying a high price for the chances they’re taking, according to Bill Gross, manager of the $2 billion Janus Henderson Global Unconstrained Bond Fund. “Instead of buying low and selling high, you’re buying high and crossing your fingers,” Gross, 73, said Wednesday at the Bloomberg Invest New York summit. Central bank policies for low-and negative-interest rates are artificially driving up asset prices while creating little growth in the real economy and punishing individual savers, banks and insurance companies, according to Gross. The U.S. economy is expected to grow 2.2% this year and 2.3% in 2018, according to forecasts compiled by Bloomberg. Trump administration officials have said their policies will boost annual growth to 3%.

Despite being concerned about high asset prices, Gross said he feels required to stay invested and sees value in some closed-end funds. Examples he gave are the Duff & Phelps Global Utility Income Fund and the Nuveen Preferred Income Opportunities Fund. He also said he has about 2% to 3% in exchange-traded funds to get yield and add diversification. “They’re appetizers, not entrees,” he said in an interview outside the conference. Gross’s fund has returned 3.1% in the year through June 6, outperforming 22% of its Bloomberg peers. It has posted a total return of 5.4% since Gross took over management in October 2014 after he was ousted from PIMCO. ”If there’s a common factor it’s the expansion of credit,” Gross said on Bloomberg TV Wednesday. “And the credit that’s being generated by central banks. Money is being pumped out into the system and money that is yielding less than nothing seeks a haven not only in bonds that are under-yielding but in stocks that are overpriced.”

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We know.

Global Financial System More Leveraged Than 2008 – Paul Singer (BBG)

Billionaire investor Paul Singer said “distorted” monetary and regulatory policies have increased risks for investors almost a decade after the financial crisis. “I am very concerned about where we are,” Singer said Wednesday at the Bloomberg Invest New York summit. “What we have today is a global financial system that’s just about as leveraged – and in many cases more leveraged – than before 2008, and I don’t think the financial system is more sound.” Years of low rates have eroded the effectiveness of central banks to contend with downturns, Singer said at the event in an interview with Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein. “Suppressive” fiscal, regulatory and tax policies have also exacerbated income inequality and led to the rise of populist and fringe political movements, he added. Confidence “could be lost in a very abrupt fashion causing conceivably a ruckus in bond markets, stock markets and in financial institutions,” said Singer, founder of hedge fund Elliott Management, which is known for being an activist investor.

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Volatility is back.

UK Housing Weakens Further as Market Emits ‘Ominous’ Signals (BBG)

While the general election had an impact on activity in May, damping buyer demand and new sellers coming to the market, RICS used its latest monthly report to highlight broader, and more damaging, risks. That includes the dearth of homes for sale, which has pushed up values in recent years, cutting off many potential first-time buyers. RICS Chief Economist Simon Rubinsohn said the report shows the issue of affordability may even worsen further.“Perhaps the most ominous signal is that contributors still expect house prices to increase at a faster pace than wages over the medium term despite the difficulty many first-time buyers are clearly having,” he said. On the shortage, “it’s hard to see this as anything other a major obstacle to the efficient functioning of the housing market.”

In May, RICS’s monthly price index fell to 17 – the lowest since August – from 23 in April, indicating modest price gains. A gauge for London, where prime properties have been under pressure, remained below zero for a 14th month. Nationally, the supply-demand imbalance means it’s a sellers’ market and recent reports show that any uncertainty about the election had little effect on U.K. asking prices, which according to Rightmove jumped 1.2% to a record in May. For some, it’s reminiscent of the overheating seen before the financial crisis.“Prices are too expensive,” Josh Homans at surveyors Valunation said in the RICS report. “Excessive” valuations are increasing and “we are now in a 2007 situation,” he said.

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One of those must reads. Economics is all but dead, but not entirely yet.

The Cost of Getting It Wrong (Claire Connelly)

What most of us have long believed about how the economy works is based on a set of fundamental myths, supported by a series of inappropriate and misleading metaphors, from which it is difficult to escape. The emotional investment we have made in these myths has allowed for levels of unemployment, underemployment, inequality and relative poverty which would have seemed incredible a generation ago. Somehow we have convinced ourselves of the following:
– Governments need taxpayers’ money to pay for things.
– Governments, like households, need to at least balance their budgets.
– Deficits are bad and government surpluses are good.
– Deficits paid for by printing money causes inflation.
– Surpluses set aside savings which can be spent in the future.
– Lower wages promote full employment.

Wrong, wrong, all wrong. The federal government does not need taxpayers’ money. Actually, it is the other way around. The government issues the currency. We use it. Taxes help to control inflation and stop us spending too much. (It can also be used to control behaviour, as witnessed by taxes on cigarettes and alcohol). Professor Steve Keen says the government, and the public, have the most basic fundamentals of macroeconomics backwards. “Expenditure is what causes income,” he said. “Reducing expenditure also reduces income.” “Individuals can save (without a significant effect on national income), but if you extrapolate that to the whole economy, you are going to make a huge error.” Similarly, the economist says the idea that the government can save by paying down the national debt is misleading.

“Believing that government saving will increase employment or growth is like believing the Earth sits at the centre of the universe”, he says. All it does is destroy spending which would otherwise have created private sector incomes. “If you don’t understand where income comes from, then it means you don’t understand economics, or the economy.” “Individuals can save money by spending less than they earn but if everyone decides to do that, income falls by precisely as much as you try to save. If the government does the same thing, by saving money at a national level, you cause a recession.”

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As solid as the Saudi grip on OPEC cuts: “Abu Dhabi’s Petroleum Ports Authority removed the ban on Wednesday – just one day after announcing it.”

The UAE Needs Qatar’s Gas to Keep Dubai’s Lights On (BBG)

When it comes to natural gas shipments, the United Arab Emirates needs Qatar more than Qatar needs the U.A.E. The U.A.E. joined Saudi Arabia in cutting off air, sea and land links with Qatar on Monday, accusing the gas-rich sheikhdom of supporting extremist groups. But the U.A.E., which depends on imported gas to generate half its electricity, avoided shutting down the pipeline supplying it from Qatar, which has the world’s third-largest gas deposits. Without this energy artery, Dubai’s glittering skyscrapers would go dark for lack of power unless the emirate could replace Qatari fuel with more expensive liquefied natural gas. Qatari natural gas continues to flow normally to both the U.A.E. and Oman through a pipeline, with no indication that supplies will be cut, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.

Qatar sends about 2 billion cubic feet of gas a day through a 364-kilometer (226-mile) undersea pipeline. Dolphin Energy, the link’s operator, is a joint-venture between Mubadala Investment, which holds a 51% stake, and Occidental Petroleum and Total, each with a 24.5% share. Since 2007, the venture has been processing gas from Qatar’s North field and transporting it to the Taweelah terminal in Abu Dhabi, according to Mubadala’s website. Dolphin also distributes gas in Oman. Apart from preserving gas shipments from Qatar, the U.A.E. on Wednesday actually eased efforts to isolate its smaller neighbor. The oil-port authority in Abu Dhabi, the U.A.E. capital, lifted restrictions on international tankers that have sailed to Qatar or plan to do so. Abu Dhabi’s Petroleum Ports Authority removed the ban on Wednesday – just one day after announcing it.

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The Saudi-Qatar spat is growing and oil plunges? Huh?

Oil Prices Drop More Than 4% On Surge In Stockpiles (CNBC)

U.S. crude prices plunged toward $46 a barrel on Wednesday after weekly government data left the oil market with virtually nothing to cheer. West Texas Intermediate futures dropped more than 4% as stockpiles of oil in the US surged by 3.3 million barrels in the week ended June 2, according to the Energy Information Administration. That confounded analysts’ estimates for a 3.5 million-barrel decline. WTI prices fell as far as $45.92, a four-week low, following the report. The drop below $47 was a “big deal” said John Kilduff at energy hedge fund Again Capital. The next level to watch is the March low just below $44 a barrel, struck after oil prices fell through a number of key technical levels, culminating in a flash crash to $43.76. The bad news kept on coming below the headline figure. Gasoline stocks also jumped by 3.3 million barrels, more than five times the expected increase. Inventories of distillate fuels like diesel and heating oil rose by 4.4 million barrels, 15 times the anticipated rise.

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Author of “China’s Guaranteed Bubble”.

China’s Top Property-Bubble Prophet Says Prices Set to Soar 50% (BBG)

China’s home prices could rise by another 50% in the nation’s biggest cities, as the latest measures to rein them in are likely to be eased by policy makers seeking to support the broader economy. So says Zhu Ning, deputy director of the National Institute of Financial Research at Tsinghua University in Beijing and author of “China’s Guaranteed Bubble: How Implicit Government Support Has Propelled China’s Economy While Creating Systemic Risk.” As measures to curb housing prices drag on growth in the second half and early next year, he says, the government will resort to its old playbook of dialing them back again to shore up expansion. “We’re living through a bubble,” Zhu said. “If we don’t engage in more meaningful reform, which we haven’t, we’re very likely to have a financial crisis or a burst of the bubble. It’s a matter of sooner or later.”

Real estate prices in major cities will surge again “by another 50% or so” after measures to rein them in are eased, said Zhu, without specifying a time. Because policy makers have previously imposed curbs only to ease them again, people see them as a bluff, he said. Last year 45% of new loans went to mortgages. Local authorities have boosted down-payment requirements, restricted purchases by non-residents, and capped the number of dwellings that a household can own. Since March, at least 26 cities have imposed resale lock-up periods, with Hebei’s Baoding city slapping a decade-long ban on some homes, according to Shanghai-based Tospur Real Estate Consulting.

Zhu said he arrived at the 50 percent estimate based on the average price appreciation after past curbs were lifted, an ever-stronger belief among buyers that housing prices will rise, China’s humongous supply of credit, and tighter controls on capital outflows. Over the past year, however, Zhu, who earned his doctorate in finance at Yale, said he’s had more doubts over whether the thinking of western-trained economists applies to a nation that’s proven naysayers wrong “with its might and its determination” for three decades. “Over the past 12 months my confidence has really been shaken,” he said, adding that a crisis remains probable. “Could China be the black swan that we’ve never seen before?”

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Where would the EU be without creative accounting?

Banco Popular Wipeout Leaves CoCo Bonds On The Drawing Board (BV)

Banco Popular’s wipeout has left CoCo bonds on the drawing board. The Spanish lender’s failure and rescue by rival Santander did not provide the expected test for bonds which convert into equity under stress: the securities were wiped out before they could be triggered. It’s still not clear whether the bonds work as intended. The collapse of Spain’s sixth-largest bank by assets marked the first big loss for investors in so-called contingent convertible bonds. The securities were created after the 2008 financial crisis to provide an extra buffer when banks are struggling. They permit lenders to preserve capital by suspending dividends, and convert into ordinary shares when capital ratios run low.

The Popular trauma has eased one fear: that investors would panic when a CoCo bond went down, creating a spiral of contagion to other lenders. Similar securities issued by other Spanish banks actually rose in value on June 7, suggesting that investors see Popular as an isolated case. Yet in another way, Popular’s bonds fell short. The securities are supposed to provide extra capital before a bank fails, allowing it to absorb losses over time without failing or requiring a government bailout. But regulators deemed Popular non-viable before any of the triggers in its bonds could blow. The CoCo bonds suffered the same fate as other, more senior bonds that only suffer losses when a bank goes bust.

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Civil servants and jobs for life. It’s like talking about dinosaurs.

A Reform Beyond Macron’s Grip: The Revolving Door of French Politics (BBG)

French President Emmanuel Macron has promised to change how politics is done in France, starting with the parliament to be elected beginning Sunday. Half of the 500-plus candidates for his young party are women. Half have never held office. They all had to apply online. But he isn’t taking the biggest step: requiring that anyone running for parliament resign from his or her government job. Unlike many other other developed countries, France allows bureaucrats to hold political office—multiple offices, in fact—without having to quit the civil service. And they have a guaranteed right to return. Should the bureaucrat-candidate lose an election, there’s a job for life waiting back at the Agriculture Ministry or the Ministry for Overseas Territories. And a pension at retirement.

Having lawmakers remain part of the civil service creates conflicts of interest, said Dominique Reynie, head of Fondapol, a political research institute. “You have lawmakers making funding decisions about institutions such as universities and hospitals where they are still officially employed,” he said. “We have a parliament that’s inbred.” Among the many beneficiaries of the system: Macron’s prime minister, Edouard Philippe, several others in the cabinet and fully 55% of the parliament that just finished its five-year term. Macron himself, though he’s never been in parliament, kept bureaucrat status through several government and private jobs until he resigned last year to start his political party.

[..] “France is one of the rare countries in Europe where a civil servant can serve an elected mandate without resigning, and with the certainty of going back to their job in case of failure,” said Luc Rouban, a professor at Sciences Po in Lille who has compiled a database of all 2,857 French members of parliament back to 1958. “The absence of professional risk encourages employees from the public sector to run for office.”

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And that will make any agreements with the Troika impossible. All growth assumptions are wrong.

OECD Puts Greek Growth At Just 1.1% This Year (K.)

The OECD has further doused hopes regarding Greek growth this year, forecasting an expansion of 1.1%, and stresses the need to implement reforms and for the national debt to be lightened. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development wrote in its annual report on the global economy published on Wednesday that “delays in reform implementation and reaching an agreement on debt relief would weigh on confidence, hampering investment,” while adjusting its Greek GDP forecast. The 1.1% growth it expects contrasts with the 2.7% growth the budget provides for, the recent European Commission estimate for 2.1% and even the 1.8% forecast included in the midterm fiscal plan the government voted for last month.

Still, the OECD says in its Global Economic Outlook that the economy will expand by 2.5%. It anticipates the primary budget surplus to slide from last year’s 3.8% of GDP, but no lower than 2.5% of GDP for the next few years. The report notes that the Greek economy is beginning to recover although uncertainty remains over the country’s growth prospects. Further progress in reforms is necessary for productivity and exports to grow, the OECD argues. It makes special reference to the reforms in the products markets and in the reduction of nonperforming loans, which could lead to more exports and investments. It also warns that “the expansion of exports depends largely on the pace of world trade growth. Geopolitical tensions among Greece’s neighbors and a renewed large influx of refugees would pose additional risks.”

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Who does any of the parties involved think they’re fooling? A serious question.

Athens To Seek Growth Package At Eurogroup Meeting (K.)

Ahead of yet another crucial Eurogroup on June 15, the government has its mind set on seeking a package of growth-inducing measures which it hopes may, finally, pry open the door that will ultimately put Greece on the road to recovery. Athens believes that securing such a package could work to bridge the difference between the country’s EUpartners, and lead to an agreement which could pave the way for Greece to access international markets. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos outlined three basic principles that should govern any proposal that comes Greece’s way at the meeting of the eurozone finance ministers. Firstly, he insisted that the proposal must specify, in the clearest possible way, what midterm debt relief measures Greece should expect.

Secondly, these measures should also allow all the institutions, including the ECB, to proceed with positive sustainability studies of the Greek debt. Finally, he said, a proposal must include specific measures that will boost growth. The government reckons that a growth-oriented agreement will prompt the IMF to positively revise its projections on the Greek economy, reduce its demands with regard to the Greek program, and open the way for an agreement. Athens believes the formula that is being promoted to get the Fund to join the Greek bailout will stipulate that it will not have to provide immediate funding. Instead, the IMF’s contribution will be placed in a fund of sorts, which will be made available at a later date, on the condition that the midterm debt relief measures are implemented.

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Why have none of the other countries involved ever said a word?

Greece Says Colombian Gangs Plundering Hospitals Europe-Wide (AP)

Greek authorities say Colombian organized crime rings were behind a string of heists targeting costly medical diagnostic equipment from hospitals in Greece and another 11 European countries. Police say three Colombian suspects have been identified in connection with last month’s four thefts in Greece. Four out of about a dozen stolen pieces of equipment, worth more than half a million euros, have been recovered in Colombia. There were similar thefts in the past four years in France, Germany, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Croatia and the Czech Republic, Major-General Christos Papazafeiris said. Papazafeiris, head of security police for the greater Athens region, said Wednesday the stolen equipment had been mailed to Colombia, and was seized in cooperation with local authorities.

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Airbnb is huge in Athens. Must cost the government a fortune in taxes. Why then liberalize laws even more?

Greek Room Owners Threaten To Return Permits in Airbnb Challenge (K.)

Owners of rooms for rent are threatening to return their operating licenses to the state unless the government withdraws legal clauses that fully liberalize the short-term urban lease market where accommodation is advertised through platforms such as Airbnb and Homeaway. According to a statement by the Confederation of Greek Tourism Accommodation Entrepreneurs (SETKE), if the room owners do hand in their licenses they will be able to enjoy the special privileges of the short-term rental market, which, it argues, has created unfair competition at the expense of legal accommodation. In its statement it claims this will lead to the elimination of the tourism accommodation sector’s 30,000 small entrepreneurs. “Instead of withdrawing the semi-liberal status of the short-term urban lease market under the 2016 law, the government is fully liberalizing it with a 2017 law abolishing the quantitative and qualitative limitations and permitting the rental for tourism purposes of all properties of all owners year round without any income limits,” SETKE says.

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The EU keeps thinking reality is whatever it wants it to be. The European Parliament President says: “The rules have to be the same for everybody.”. They’re not. They’re obviously different for Greece, and that’s not Greece’s doing.

Bid For EU States To Stop Migrants, Refugees ‘Asylum Shopping’ (K.)

As Greece continues to struggle to host thousands of migrants, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani on Wednesday called for a common agreement from all European Union member-states on the implementation of asylum procedures aimed at stopping migrants traveling from one country to another “shopping for asylum status.” “At the moment the rules are not properly harmonized,” Tajani told reporters. “The rules have to be the same for everybody. Otherwise we will end up with people shopping for asylum status, which undermines our credibility.” He noted that many refugees who have been accepted in European countries as part of an EU relocation program have continued their journeys to more prosperous nations such as Germany or Sweden.

Latvia welcomed 380 refugees as part of the relocation program but most of those – 313 – have already moved on to Sweden or Germany, according to Agnese Lace from Latvia’s Center for Public Policy. She said low salaries, a lack of jobs and language barriers meant asylum seekers had little incentive to remain in the country. Meanwhile Andras Kovats of the Hungarian Association for Migrants said Hungary’s failure to support integration was pushing new arrivals abroad. In a related development, Nils Muiznieks, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, expressed concern at reports of collective expulsions of asylum seekers from Greece to Turkey. “I urge the Greek authorities to cease immediately the pushback operations and uphold their human rights obligation to ensure that all people reaching Greece can effectively seek and enjoy asylum,” Muiznieks said in a statement.

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Feb 192016
 
 February 19, 2016  Posted by at 8:36 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  3 Responses »


Richardson Hope for a New Life: Man passes baby through fence, Serbia/Hungary border 2015

Negative Interest Rates Set The Stage For The Next Crisis (Stephen Roach)
Why Negative Interest Rates Spell Doom For Capitalism (Romano)
Central Banking Is In Crisis. Can The World Economy Be Far Behind? (Economist)
Bank of Japan Baffled by Negative Reaction to Negative-Rate Policy (WSJ)
Nomura Sees Yen Falling More Than 10% on BOJ Negative Rates (BBG)
Abenomics? How About Kurodanomics? (BBG)
OECD Calls for Urgent Increase in Government Spending (WSJ)
China Bears Say the Capital Outflow Is Just Beginning (BBG)
Red Ink In China (Economist)
Overproduction Swamps Smaller Chinese Cities, Revealing Depth of Crisis (WSJ)
You Cannot Print Your Way to Prosperity (Ron Paul)
The Real Economy Is Talking, but Treasuries Aren’t Listening (BBG)
Number Of UK Homes Worth More Than £1 Million Set To ‘Triple By 2030’ (G.)
400,000 Americans In Jeopardy As Giant Pension Fund Plans 50% Benefit Cuts (ZH)
The Political War on Cash (WSJ)
Swiss MPs Want New 5,000-Franc Banknotes To ‘Save Privacy And Freedom’ (L.)
The Stressed-Out Oil Industry Faces an Existential Crisis (BBG)
Oil Gives Up Gains as Inventories Build (WSJ)
Anglo American Cut to Junk for Third Time This Week (BBG)
Wary On Turkey, EU Prepares For Refugee Crisis In Greece (Reuters)

As QE and ZIRP did before them. This started years ago.

Negative Interest Rates Set The Stage For The Next Crisis (Stephen Roach)

In what could well be a final act of desperation, central banks are abdicating effective control of the economies they have been entrusted to manage. First came zero interest rates, then quantitative easing, and now negative interest rates — one futile attempt begetting another. Just as the first two gambits failed to gain meaningful economic traction in chronically weak recoveries, the shift to negative rates will only compound the risks of financial instability and set the stage for the next crisis. The adoption of negative interest rates — initially launched in Europe in 2014 and now embraced in Japan — represents a major turning point for central banking. Previously, emphasis had been placed on boosting aggregate demand — primarily by lowering the cost of borrowing, but also by spurring wealth effects from appreciating financial assets.

But now, by imposing penalties on excess reserves left on deposit with central banks, negative interest rates drive stimulus through the supply side of the credit equation — in effect, urging banks to make new loans regardless of the demand for such funds. This misses the essence of what is ailing a post-crisis world. As Nomura economist Richard Koo has argued about Japan, the focus should be on the demand side of crisis-battered economies, where growth is impaired by a debt-rejection syndrome that invariably takes hold in the aftermath of a “balance sheet recession.” Such impairment is global in scope. It’s not just Japan, where the purportedly powerful impetus of Abenomics has failed to dislodge a struggling economy from 24 years of 0.8% inflation-adjusted growth in GDP.

It’s also the U.S., where consumer demand — the epicenter of America’s Great Recession — remains stuck in an eight-year quagmire of just 1.5% average real growth. Even worse is the eurozone, where real GDP growth has averaged just 0.1% over the 2008-2015 period. All of this speaks to the impotence of central banks to jump-start aggregate demand in balance-sheet-constrained economies that have fallen into 1930s-style “liquidity traps.” As Paul Krugman noted nearly 20 years ago, Japan exemplifies the modern-day incarnation of this dilemma. When its equity and property bubbles burst in the early 1990s, the keiretsu system — “main banks” and their tightly connected nonbank corporates — imploded under the deadweight of excess leverage.

But the same was true for over-extended, saving-short American consumers — to say nothing of a eurozone that was basically a levered play on overly inflated growth expectations in its peripheral economies — Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain. In all of these cases, balance-sheet repair pre-empted a resurgence of aggregate demand, and monetary stimulus was largely ineffective in sparking classic cyclical rebounds. This could be the greatest failure of modern central banking. Yet denial runs deep. then-Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan’s “mission accomplished” speech in early 2004 is an important case in point. Greenspan took credit for using super-easy monetary policy to clean up the mess after the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, while insisting that the Fed should feel vindicated for not leaning against the speculative madness of the late 1990s.

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“When, not if, central banks go completely negative, they will wind up paying banks to borrow money from them. That’s quantitative easing by another name.”

Why Negative Interest Rates Spell Doom For Capitalism (Romano)

Interest rates in Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, the European Central Bank and now the Bank Japan have now plunged into negative territory, starting a new phase in the era of central banking that is very much uncharted. Time will tell if it leaves the global economy lost at sea. So far, banks are primarily being charged for keeping excess reserves on account at these central banks, a policy designed to jumpstart lending by making it more expensive for banks to sit on reserves. In some cases, like Sweden, the deposit rates have gone negative, too. Whether it will all work out or not remains to be seen — initiating inflation and economic growth. Maybe it will, but so far it’s not really looking good. So what if it doesn’t work? The longer term implication is that central banks will then feel compelled to move their discount rates and other rates negative, too.

Once that Pandora’s Box is open, it will mean that when financial institutions borrow money from the central bank, they will earn interest instead of owing it. You read that right. When, not if, central banks go completely negative, they will wind up paying banks to borrow money from them. That’s quantitative easing by another name. Say, the interest rate is -1%. For every $1 trillion that is lent, the central bank in theory would owe an additional $10 billion in interest to the borrowing banks. Fast forward 10 or 20 years into the future. Can you imagine a world where commercial banks pay their customers to borrow money? Sure, scoff now. But mark my words. Central banks are so desperate to kick start the economy and credit creation, they will do almost anything. So, if they have to bribe you to borrow money to start acquiring more things, then that’s exactly what they’ll do.

A few problems immediately emerge. If it ends up costing money for banks to lend money, how will they make any profits? The answer might be that the profits will be the difference between the interest earned from that bank borrowing the money from the central bank less the interest owed to the borrowing customer. So, say the bank borrowed from the central bank at -5% and then issued a loan with that money at -1%. The customer still earns 1%age point of negative interest, and the bank still gets to pocket the remaining 4%age points of negative interest from the central bank. But what about savers? Would they be charged just to put money into the bank? If so, why would they keep it there? Since banks depend on deposits to make up their capital requirements, they would have a powerful disincentive against charging customers to keep deposits, lest it provoke a run on the banks. But why invest in bonds? This is where the real rub comes.

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Chicken and the egg. Central bankers incompetence will drag us all down.

Central Banking Is In Crisis. Can The World Economy Be Far Behind? (Economist)

A world of helicopter drops is anathema to many: monetary financing is prohibited by the treaties underpinning the euro, for example. Incomes policies are even more problematic, as they reduce flexibility and are hard to reverse. But if the rich world ends up stuck in deflation, the time will come to contemplate extreme action, particularly in the most benighted economies, such as Japan’s. Elsewhere, governments can make use of a less risky tool: fiscal policy. Too many countries with room to borrow more, notably Germany, have held back. Such Swabian frugality is deeply harmful. Borrowing has never been cheaper. Yields on more than $7 trillion of government bonds worldwide are now negative.

Bond markets and ratings agencies will look more kindly on the increase in public debt if there are fresh and productive assets on the other side of the balance-sheet. Above all, such assets should involve infrastructure. The case for locking in long-term funding to finance a multi-year programme to rebuild and improve tatty public roads and buildings has never been more powerful. A fiscal boost would pack more of a punch if it was coupled with structural reforms that work with the grain of the stimulus. European banks’ balance-sheets still need strengthening and, so long as questions swirl about their health, the banks will not lend freely. Write-downs of bad debts are one option, but it might be better to overhaul the rules so that governments can insist that banks either raise capital or have equity forced on them by regulators.

Deregulation is another priority—and no less potent for being familiar. The Council of Economic Advisors says that the share of America’s workforce covered by state-licensing laws has risen to 25%, from 5% in the 1950s. Much of this red tape is unnecessary. Zoning laws are a barrier to new infrastructure. Tax codes remain Byzantine and stuffed with carve-outs that shelter the income of the better-off, who tend to save more. The problem, then, is not that the world has run out of policy options. Politicians have known all along that they can make a difference, but they are weak and too quarrelsome to act. America’s political establishment is riven; Japan’s politicians are too timid to confront lobbies; and the euro area seems institutionally incapable of uniting around new policies.

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Makes sense, since they have no idea what they’re doing. Then again, since this is a double negative…

Bank of Japan Baffled by Negative Reaction to Negative-Rate Policy (WSJ)

A clash Thursday between Japan’s central-bank chief and lawmakers highlighted the downside of negative interest rates: They are making the Japanese public feel negative. Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda, who announced the nation’s first move into minus rates three weeks ago, found himself dodging a concerted attack in Parliament from lawmakers who charged the policy was victimizing consumers and sending a message of despair. Even a ruling-party member, Masahiro Ishida, called the policy hard to grasp. “It could have the opposite effect of confusing the market,” he said. The criticism has come as a surprise to central-bank officials who thought their efforts to spark lending and faster economic growth would gain more public support.

“Those who understand this policy are criticizing us, and those who do not are also criticizing us,” said one official this week. It is a symptom of a global problem. The more central banks move into unconventional policies, the harder it becomes to get their message across. That is a particular problem when the policies are supposed to work in part by inspiring confidence. It also highlights an open question about negative rates: Commercial banks, for the most part, haven’t started charging depositors to hold their cash, despite increasing pressure on margins. But what happens if they do? Under new rules that took effect Tuesday, the Bank of Japan started imposing an interest rate of minus -0.1% on some deposits it holds for commercial banks, meaning the banks have to pay to store their money.

The goal was to bring down interest rates generally, including long-term rates charged for home loans. The move followed years of attempts to defeat deflation and stimulate moribund spending, including by pumping ¥80 trillion ($701 billion) of cash annually into the economy with purchases of government bonds. The immediate impact was muted as global markets swooned and the yen, seen as a haven in times of trouble, rose against the dollar, threatening the profits of Japanese exporters. This week, markets have stabilized, but the central bank is struggling with a different and equally hard-to-control force: public opinion.

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But if that’s true for all negative rates, who would the yen fall against?

Nomura Sees Yen Falling More Than 10% on BOJ Negative Rates (BBG)

Nomura is sticking to its forecast for the yen to weaken to 130 per dollar by year-end on the view Japan’s negative interest-rate policy will prompt investors to buy more overseas assets and U.S. borrowing costs will rise. Japan’s biggest brokerage has maintained the projection since December 2014, when the yen completed a six-month slide to 119.78 after the central bank boosted its debt purchases to a record. The yen has rallied 5.5% this year against the dollar, about 14% stronger than Nomura’s target, as a flight to haven assets from tumbling global stocks burnished the currency’s allure. “There is nothing convincing yet to alter the outlook,” said Yunosuke Ikeda at Nomura Securities in Tokyo. “The most important check points for now are a set of U.S. data in early March. If we can confirm recession risks are low, the 130-yen forecast can be maintained.”

The yen’s recent strength was partly driven by the dollar’s weakness as concerns over a slowdown in China and the health of banks in Europe caused traders to pare bets that the Federal Reserve will raise rates again this year after moving in December. There’s a 41% probability the Fed will boost rates by the end of December, according to futures data compiled by Bloomberg. The odds were more than 90% at the end of last year. The yen’s advance is being driven by “low conviction” risk aversion, according to Nomura’s Ikeda, a trend that may lose momentum should the U.S. show signs of strength when economic figures are released next month. “The worst case scenario is the low-conviction risk off will become high-conviction should the U.S. economy become decisively bad,” he said. “ For this, ISM manufacturing and non-manufacturing as well as jobs data due in early March are very significant.”

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I’ve suggested seppuku before.

Abenomics? How About Kurodanomics? (BBG)

Despite all Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has done, Japan’s economy contracted an annualized 1.4% in the final three months of 2015, the government announced on Feb. 15. Consumer prices rose just 0.2% year to year, perilously close to deflation. Japanese consumers, hurt by tepid growth in wages and bonuses and a 3%age point rise in the consumption tax in 2014, are holding on to their wallets, with private consumption dropping 0.8% in the quarter. The yen has gained 5.6% against the dollar since the start of the year, eroding profits for exporters such as Toyota Motor and Panasonic. These companies have benefited from the yen’s weakness since the prime minister came to office in late 2012 and began the policy changes known as Abenomics.

“There’s no clear driver to support Japan’s economy,” says Yuichi Kodama at Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance in Tokyo. Yet on the same day the government announced the economy’s contraction, the benchmark Nikkei stock index rose more than 7%. Investors hope that the weak data could spur Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, who pushed through a negative interest rate last month, to move even deeper into negative territory, or purchase even more bonds. They also hope Abe will postpone another hike in the consumption tax. Handpicked by Abe in 2013, Kuroda has aggressively implemented the monetary policy envisioned by Abenomics. He has championed a quantitative easing program of bond and other asset purchases by the central bank that has left the BOJ with a balance sheet about three-quarters the size of Japan’s $4.6 trillion economy.

Kuroda’s bold and unconventional moves helped drive down the yen, contributing to an increase in corporate earnings and stock prices. In January, the Bank of Japan started charging 0.1% on part of the cash deposited at the central bank by big financial institutions. The idea is to encourage banks to lend instead of watching their cash lose value. “Kuroda is doing everything he can,” says Marcel Thieliant, Japan economist for Capital Economics. Abe’s program has what he calls three “arrows”: an easy-money policy, fiscal stimulus, and structural reforms. Although the BOJ has done its part in terms of interest rates and bond purchases, Abenomics has been a disappointment in the other two areas. The government has moved slowly on reforms of labor laws and other regulations.

As for fiscal stimulus, Abe has increased spending, but also raised the consumption tax to 8%. He wants to raise it to 10%. “Abe and the government have no choice but to depend on Bank of Japan policy,” says Kazuhiko Ogata at Crédit Agricole. But with the BOJ rate negative, Kuroda has little room to maneuver. GDP growth for the fiscal year ending in March will be just 0.8%, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, lower than the central bank’s target of 1.1%. Confidence in Abenomics is falling. In a Yomiuri poll published on Feb. 16, approval of Abe’s economic policies fell to a record low of 39%.

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Can we talk about timing here, OECD?

OECD Calls for Urgent Increase in Government Spending (WSJ)

Governments in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere should take “urgent” and “collective” steps to raise their investment spending and deliver a fresh boost to flagging economic growth, the Organization for Economic Growth and Development said on Thursday. In its most forceful call to action since the financial crisis, the OECD said the global economy is suffering from a weakness of demand that can’t be remedied through stimulus from central banks alone. Releasing its first economic forecasts of 2016, it urged governments that can borrow at very low interest rates to boost their spending on infrastructure. The OECD said that if governments work together, fresh borrowing could have such a positive impact on growth that it would reduce rather than increase their debts relative to economic output.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, OECD Chief Economist Catherine Mann said that without such action, governments will be unable to honor their pledges to deliver a “better life” for young people, adequate pensions and health care for old people, and the returns anticipated by investors. “The economic performance generated by today’s set of policies is insufficient to make good on these commitments,” said Ms. Mann, who has worked at the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Council of Economic Advisers. “Those commitments will not be met unless there is a change in policy stance.” The Paris-based think tank lowered its forecasts for global growth this year and next. It now expects the U.S. economy to grow by 2.0% in 2016 and 2.2% in 2017, having in November projected expansions of 2.5% and 2.4%, respectively.

The OECD lowered its eurozone growth forecasts to 1.4% and 1.7% from 1.8% and 1.9%, and nudged down its Japanese growth forecast for this year to 0.8% from 1.0%. It left its growth forecasts for China unchanged. Overall, it expects the global economy to grow by 3% this year, the same rate of expansion as in 2015 but slower than the 3.3% it anticipated in November. “The downgrade in forecasts is broadly based, reflecting a wide range of disappointing incoming data for the fourth quarter of 2015 and the recent weakness and volatility in global financial markets,” the OECD said. “These trends have been apparent in both advanced and emerging economies.” Last month, the IMF cut its global growth forecast for this year, but still expected a pickup from 2015.

Ms. Mann said the sharp and varying falls in prices of assets and commodities since the start of the year largely reflect a delayed response to weaker growth prospects around the world, and not just in China. “We should have had a decline starting a year ago,” she said. “We can see in those different rates of decline both investor views of prospects, but some over shooting.” The OECD said that budget policy in a number of major economies -including Japan, the U.K. and the U.S.- is “contractionary,” while some developing economies had also made recent budget decisions that will slow growth. It urged governments to reverse course.

“Governments in many countries are currently able to borrow for long periods at very low interest rates, increasing fiscal space,” the OECD said. “Many countries have room for fiscal expansion to strengthen demand. This should focus on policies with strong short-run benefits and that also contribute to long-term growth. A commitment to raising public investment collectively would boost demand while remaining on a fiscally sustainable path.”

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Seems obvious.

China Bears Say the Capital Outflow Is Just Beginning (BBG)

Yuan bears say this month’s rally shouldn’t be taken as a sign China’s great reversal in capital flows has finished. Goldman Sachs warns that any further shock depreciation will only accelerate the exit. Daiwa Capital Markets, which predicted the outflow risks back in 2014, says less than half of the $3 trillion of dollar debt that ended up in China has been repaid. Commerzbank said record new yuan loans in January showed companies are raising money to repay more debt abroad. Corporate bond sales onshore have more than doubled this year, as offshore issuance in the greenback dropped about 30%. Goldman Sachs says there have been $550 billion of outflows in the second half of 2015, and that every 1% yuan weakening risks $100 billion more.

The yuan’s appreciation in the four years through 2013 prompted companies to borrow dollars offshore and use the money to profit from a strong currency and higher interest rates in China. The one-way bets began to fade in 2014 as the exchange rate to the dollar plunged the most since 1994. This month’s 0.9% rally hasn’t dissuaded analysts from forecasting a further 3.4% drop by year-end. “We’re less than halfway done” in terms of carry trade unwinding, said Kevin Lai at Daiwa. “My main focus is not about unwinding, but the reverse carry trade. People are taking fresh positions to sell the yuan. We’re talking about a massive deflationary scenario now, which is very bad for the market, economy, for everything.” Daiwa’s estimate for the carry trade is on the high side because it includes borrowing by companies outside China, such as Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Oversea-Chinese Banking economist Tommy Xie estimates the positions at around $1 trillion, based on data from the Bank of International Settlements and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Chinese companies’ total foreign-currency debt dropped by about $140 billion in the second half of 2015 to $1.69 trillion, including corporate borrowing from onshore banks, Goldman estimates. That was dwarfed by the $370 billion outflows by Chinese residents buying foreign currencies, it said. “A risk is that any further shocks to renminbi confidence and the perception of policy uncertainty could sharply compound the outflow pressure and render any subsequent stabilization attempts much less effective,” Goldman wrote in a note released to media on Jan. 26.

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Much worse now: “As of 2014, according to an estimate by the McKinsey Global Institute, total debt in China stood at 282% of GDP.”

Red Ink In China (Economist)

This week began with the release of a staggering number. In January, new debt issued in China rose to just over $500 billion, an all-time high. Not all of the “new” debt was actually new; some represented a move out of foreign-currency loans and into local-currency borrowing (in order to reduce foreign-currency risk). But the flow of red ink is not a mirage. China’s government opened the credit taps early in 2016 in order to reduce the odds of a sharp economic slowdown. Private borrowing in China has grown rapidly and steadily since 2008, even as nominal output growth has slowed. As of 2014, according to an estimate by the McKinsey Global Institute, total debt in China stood at 282% of GDP. China is rapidly becoming one of the most indebted countries in the world.

So what? There is a cottage industry of analysts out there gaming out the ways in which a crisis of some sort might unfold within China. But with debts of this magnitude accumulating, you don’t need to posit a looming crisis to draw some reasonably strong, and reasonably gloomy conclusions about the near-term future of the Chinese economy—and the world as a whole. At some point, Chinese corporates will need to deleverage. It is hard to say precisely when or why, but a deleveraging at some point is inevitable. The result of that deleveraging, when it occurs, will be a big drag on demand growth within China. That, in turn, will translate into much slower GDP growth, unless some other source of demand can be found. China could try to boost demand by encouraging more spending and investment by non-corporates.

This probably wouldn’t work especially well, if the history of other economies in such circumstances is any guide. Households have also been adding debt at a good clip. To get them to borrow at an even faster pace, especially at a time when (presumably, given the corporate deleveraging) animal spirits are not at their most spirited, the Chinese government would basically have to force new loans down households’ throats. Certainly, we could expect China to hit the zero lower bound on interest rates and to begin QE. Zero rates and QE would place significant downward pressure on the value of the yuan. That’s just as well, since another thing history tells us is that demand-deficient, deleveraging economies depreciate their currencies and rely on exernal demand to support growth.

Of course, most countries in the situation we’re imagining here aren’t already running big trade surpluses. It is possible, given the importance to China of supply-chain trade, that even a big depreciation wouldn’t boost demand in the economy very much, since it would make imported components more expensive even as it made exports cheaper. If those arguments are right, they suggest that a Chinese adjustment would require either a really big depreciation, or would be slower and more painful, or a bit of both. Conventional wisdom has it, however, that China does not want to depreciate the currency. Depreciation might not boost net exports by much, but it would make dollar-denominated loans more expensive (increasing the pressure on some of those deleveraging corporates), it would squeeze Chinese consumers, and it would represent a big loss of face for the government.

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Delusional: “The government aims to urbanize 100 million lower-income people within five years to expand a middle class that can afford movies and medicine, and sustain China’s upward trajectory.”

Overproduction Swamps Smaller Chinese Cities, Revealing Depth of Crisis (WSJ)

Even in China’s remotest places, relentless overproduction—here it is mushrooms and cement trucks—is clouding the country’s path to prosperity and jolting the global economy. When 48-year-old farmer Yang Qun began trading at Suizhou’s bustling morning mushroom market a half decade ago, the fungus industry was expanding, even attracting a rural lending arm of British financial giant HSBC. Ms. Yang saved enough to buy a minivan. When wet snow fell last month, she was settling for closeout prices to unload six bags of dried mushrooms that took a half year to cultivate. For Xu Song, a clanging sound was once a welcome reminder that his 200 colleagues were busy pounding steel into the giant barrels used on cement trucks.

On a recent day, he sat alone watching videos in an unheated office, the only worker left on an abandoned factory floor where dozens of rusting barrels were stacked like multi-ton footballs. “The decline was steep,” says Mr. Xu, standing inside the all-but-defunct Hubei Aoma Special Automobile Co. factory, where he was hired to do quality control. “I don’t know what had really happened to us.” Beyond the glut of steel and apartments that weighed down growth in recent years, China’s economy is also saturated with surplus goods from farms and factories. Numerous small and midsize cities such as Suizhou, which boomed on easy credit and government support for agribusiness and construction, were supposed to provide the second wave in China’s growth story. Instead they are now sputtering, wearing down prices, profits and job opportunities.

The struggles in Suizhou show how China’s slowdown is broad and deep and hard to fix. It has fueled volatile market trading around the world and has contributed to anxiety about potentially stalled U.S. growth. Domestic overproduction means China is now spending less overseas, while businesses that sell to China are bracing for possible protectionist moves aimed at propping up local companies. And with Chinese demand at risk, its industrial giants with idle capacity are looking to capture market share abroad, including construction and railway equipment makers. The government has made a priority of eliminating “zombie companies,” kept alive with loans to produce unneeded goods, to clear the path for more vibrant parts of the economy. The squeeze won’t be easy because in small, remote places such as Suizhou, overbuilt industries are often the economic backbone.

[..] China’s future is dependent on spreading opportunity more widely. While Shanghai and other gleaming metropolises on the coast powered the first decades of market liberalization, Beijing is now counting on smaller cities for the next phase. The government aims to urbanize 100 million lower-income people within five years to expand a middle class that can afford movies and medicine, and sustain China’s upward trajectory.

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How many times have we said this?!

You Cannot Print Your Way to Prosperity (Ron Paul)

Last week US stock markets tumbled yet again, leaving the Dow Jones index down almost 1500 points for the year. In fact, most major world markets are in negative territory this year. There are many Wall Street cheerleaders who are trying to say that this is just a technical correction, that the bottom is near, and that everything will be getting better soon. They are ignoring the real message the markets are trying to send: you cannot print your way to prosperity. People throughout history have always sought to acquire wealth. Most of them understand that it takes hard work, sacrifice, savings, and investment. But many are always looking for that “get rich quick” scheme. Monetary cranks throughout history have thought that just printing more money would result in greater wealth and prosperity. Every time this was tried it resulted in failure.

Huge economic booms would be followed by even larger busts. But no matter how many times the cranks were debunked both in theory and practice, the same failed ideas kept coming back. The intellectual descendants of those monetary cranks are now leading the world’s central banks, which is why the last decade has seen an explosion of money creation. And what do the central bankers have to show for it? Lackluster employment numbers that have not kept up with population growth, increasing economic inequality, a rising cost of living, and constant fear and uncertainty about what the future holds. The past decade has been a lot like the 1920s, when prices wanted to drop but the Federal Reserve kept the price level steady through injections of easy money into the economy. The result in the 1920s was the Great Depression.

But in the 1920s prices were dropping because of increased production. More goods being produced meant lower prices, which the Fed then tried to prop up by printing money. Unlike the “Roaring 20s” however, the economy isn’t quite as strong today. It’s more of a gasp than a roar. Production today is barely above 2007 levels, while heavily-indebted households already hurt during the financial crisis don’t want to keep spending. The bad debts and mal-investments from the last Federal Reserve-induced boom were never liquidated, they were merely papered over with more easy money. The underlying economic fundamentals remain weak but the monetary cranks who run the Fed keep trying to pump more and more money into the system. They fail to realize that easy money is the cause, not the cure, of recessions and depressions. [..] The more money the Federal Reserve creates, the more ordinary Americans will end up suffering.

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What happens when you make it all up.

The Real Economy Is Talking, but Treasuries Aren’t Listening (BBG)

There’s a massive divergence between recent economic data and U.S. Treasury yields. Amid widespread risk aversion, the yield on 10-year debt fell below 1.60% this month before recovering to back over 1.75% on Thursday. According to Deutsche Bank Chief International Economist Torsten Sløk, that’s still far too low. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow indicator provides an estimate for quarterly economic growth based on recently released economic data, which currently stands at 2.6% for the first quarter: “Using the historical relationship between the Atlanta Fed GDP Now estimate and 10y rates shows that 10y rates today should not be 1.82% but instead 2.3%,” he wrote. “Put differently, markets are currently pricing a deep recession, but that is simply not what the data is showing.”

Some caveats apply: The sample size depicted here is quite small, so there’s no guarantee the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow will prove accurate, and the composition of growth, not merely the headline rate, is important in assessing economic health. Additionally, while it makes intuitive sense for there to be a relationship between yields on sovereign debt, it’s worth remembering what goes into a bond yield: expectations regarding short-term interest rates, market-based measures of inflation compensation, and the term premium (what investors demand for taking on more duration). At present, market-implied expectations for the federal funds rate and inflation are quite low. Term premiums are also suppressed, due in part to strong demand for U.S. assets that are perceived as a safe haven, particularly in times of market turmoil. Those assets also provide a yield that’s more attractive than most other advanced economies.

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How the Anglo model of ownership obsession ritually murders itself.

Number Of UK Homes Worth More Than £1 Million Set To ‘Triple By 2030’ (G.)

The number of properties in Britain worth £1m or more is set to more than triple by 2030, widening the gap between the housing haves and have-nots, according to a report. Less than half a million homes in the UK are currently valued at £1m-plus, but a study by high street lender Santander claims this number will rise to more than 1.6m in the next 15 years. The report also warns that affordability will worsen considerably by the end of the next decade as house price rises far outstrip growth in household incomes. The average property price amounts to 7.9 times the average income at present, but by 2030 this is expected to hit a multiple of 9.7. Santander said: “By 2030 the UK will be even more starkly divided into the housing wealthy and the housing poor than it is now.”

There is a stark geographical divide among the projected members of the £1m club, according to Santander. One in four homes in London will cost £1m-plus by 2030, rising to 70% in two boroughs in the capital – Kensington and Chelsea and the City of Westminster. More than half of homes in three more London boroughs – Camden, the City of London and Hammersmith and Fulham – will also be worth more than £1m. Across the south-east, 7% of homes are expected to be valued at that level. However, many areas of the UK – the north-east, north-west, Yorkshire and Humber, Scotland and the East Midlands – are expected to host a negligible number of such expensive houses (less than 1%). One area, Torfaen in Wales, home to more than 90,000 people, will have none.

The report, carried out in partnership with Paul Cheshire, professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, predicts that prices in London, which are currently 11.5 times average incomes, will soar to a multiple of 16.5 by 2030. Cheshire said: “By 2030, the divide between housing haves at the top and the have-nots at the bottom will be even wider than it is now. More owners will enjoy millionaire status, as homes that many would consider modest fetch seven figure prices in sought-after areas. “It will make entering the market more difficult still for new buyers, further highlighting the importance of the right timing, advice, support and financial planning; and not just having a mum and dad who bought a house, but a grandparent, too.”

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Make that the entire western world; pensions are Ponzi’s: “What’s happening to us is a microcosm of what’s going to happen to the rest of the pensions in the United States..”

400,000 Americans In Jeopardy As Giant Pension Fund Plans 50% Benefit Cuts (ZH)

Dale Dorsey isn’t happy. After working 33 years, he’s facing a 55% cut to his pension benefits, a blow which he says will “cripple” his family and imperil the livelihood of his two children, one of whom is in the fourth grade and one of whom is just entering high school. Dorsey attended a town hall meeting in Kansas City on Tuesday where retirees turned out for a discussion on “massive” pension cuts proposed by the Central States Pension Fund, which covers 400,000 participants, and which will almost certainly go broke within the next decade. “A controversial 2014 law allowed the pension to propose [deep] cuts, many of them by half or more, as a way to perhaps save the fund,” The Kansas City Star wrote earlier this week adding that “two much smaller pensions also have sought similar relief under the law, and still more pensions are significantly underfunded.”

“What’s happening to us is a microcosm of what’s going to happen to the rest of the pensions in the United States,” said Jay Perry, a longtime Teamsters member. Jay is probably correct. Public sector pension funds are grossly underfunded in places like Chicago and Houston, while private sector funds are struggling to deal with rock bottom interest rates, which put pressure on expected returns and thus drive the present value of funds’ liabilities higher. Illinois’ pension burden has brought the state to its knees financially speaking and in November, Springfield was forced to miss a $560 million payment to its retirement fund. In the private sector, GM said on Thursday that it will sell 20- and 30-year bonds in order to meet its pension obligations.

“At the end of last year GM’s U.S. hourly pension plan was underfunded by $10.4 billion,” The New York Times writes. “About $61 billion of the obligations were funded for the plan’s roughly 360,000 pensioners.” Maybe it’s time for tax payers to bail themselves out. Speaking of GM, Kenneth Feinberg – the man who oversaw the distribution of cash compensation to victims who were involved in accidents tied to faulty ignition switches – is now tasked with deciding whether the Central States Pension Fund’s proposal to cut benefits passes legal muster. “Central States’ proposal would allow the retirees to work and still collect their reduced benefits. But some are no longer able to work, and the idea didn’t seem plausible to others,” the Star goes on to note.

“You know anybody hiring a 73-year-old mechanic?” Rod Heelan asked Feinberg. “I’m available.” “I’ll have to go find a job. I don’t know. I’m 68,” Gary Meyer of Concordia, Mo said. “It would probably be a minimum-wage job.” To be sure, retirees’ frustrations are justified. That said, the fund is simply running out of money. “We simply can’t stay afloat if we continue to pay out $3.46 in pension benefits for every $1 paid in from contributing employers,” a letter to retirees reads. The fund is projected to go broke by 2026. Without the proposed cuts, no benefits at all will be paid from that point forward.

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Not even the WSJ is fooled.

The Political War on Cash (WSJ)

These are strange monetary times, with negative interest rates and central bankers deemed to be masters of the universe. So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that politicians and central bankers are now waging a war on cash. That’s right, policy makers in Europe and the U.S. want to make it harder for the hoi polloi to hold actual currency. Mario Draghi fired the latest salvo on Monday when he said the ECB would like to ban €500 notes. A day later Harvard economist and Democratic Party favorite Larry Summers declared that it’s time to kill the $100 bill, which would mean goodbye to Ben Franklin. Alexander Hamilton may soon—and shamefully—be replaced on the $10 bill, but at least the 10-spots would exist for a while longer. Ol’ Ben would be banished from the currency the way dead white males like him are banned from the history books.

Limits on cash transactions have been spreading in Europe since the 2008 financial panic, ostensibly to crack down on crime and tax avoidance. Italy has made it illegal to pay cash for anything worth more than €1,000, while France cut its limit to €1,000 from €3,000 last year. British merchants accepting more than €15,000 in cash per transaction must first register with the tax authorities. Fines for violators can run into the thousands of euros. Germany’s Deputy Finance Minister Michael Meister recently proposed a €5,000 cap on cash transactions. Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan predicted last month that cash won’t survive another decade. The enemies of cash claim that only crooks and cranks need large-denomination bills. They want large transactions to be made electronically so government can follow them.

Yet these are some of the same European politicians who blew a gasket when they learned that U.S. counterterrorist officials were monitoring money through the Swift global system. Criminals will find a way, large bills or not. The real reason the war on cash is gearing up now is political: Politicians and central bankers fear that holders of currency could undermine their brave new monetary world of negative interest rates. Japan and Europe are already deep into negative territory, and U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said last week the U.S. should be prepared for the possibility. Translation: That’s where the Fed is going in the next recession. Negative rates are a tax on deposits with banks, with the goal of prodding depositors to remove their cash and spend it to increase economic demand. But that goal will be undermined if citizens hoard cash. And hoarding cash is easier if you can take your deposits out in large-denomination bills you can stick in a safe. It’s harder to keep cash if you can only hold small bills.

So, presto, ban cash.

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First Austria, now Switzerland. 5000 francs is well over $5000.

Swiss MPs Want New 5,000-Franc Banknotes To ‘Save Privacy And Freedom’ (L.)

Two MPs from the canton of Zug’s parliament are calling on the Swiss federal government to create 5,000-franc banknotes to “save the privacy and freedom” of citizens. Philip Brunner and Manuel Brandberg, members of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, have proposed a motion that they hope Zug will support for a cantonal initiative seeking changes to the federal currency law. They argue that the creation of 5,000-franc notes will ensure that the Swiss franc maintains its status as a safe haven currency. The move goes in the opposite direction of in the European Union, where finance ministers have talked about withdrawing 500-euro bills from circulation to deter their use for financing terrorism, money laundering and other illegal activities.

But Brunner and Brandberg maintain that the tendency in the EU and in OECD member countries is to “weaken individual liberties” and to exercise greater control over citizens. In this context “cash is comparable to the service firearm kept by Swiss citizen soldiers,” the pair argued in their motion, saying they both “guarantee freedom”. “In France and Italy already cash payments of only up to 1,000 euros are allowed and the question of the abolition of cash is being seriously discussed and considered in Europe, “ Brunner said on his Facebook page. The move toward electronic payments allows governments “total surveillance” over individuals, the pair claim. Switzerland already has a 1,000-franc note (worth around $1,008), which is the most valuable banknote in Europe and second in the world only to the Singapore $10,000 note among currencies in general circulation.

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“You can’t have these conversations when oil is $125 because then you can’t get it out of the ground quickly enough. And you can’t have it at $27 because you’re just trying to survive.”

Hmmm. Looks to me like it’s at $27 that you can’t get it out of the ground quickly enough.

The Stressed-Out Oil Industry Faces an Existential Crisis (BBG)

The Saudis may go public, OPEC’s in disarray, the U.S. is suddenly a global exporter, and shale drillers are seeking lifelines from investors as banks abandon them. Welcome to oil’s new world order, full of stresses, strains and fractures. For leaders gathering in Houston next week at the IHS CERAWeek conference – often dubbed the Davos of the energy industry – a key question is: what will break first? Will it be the balance sheets of big U.S. shale companies? The treasuries of Venezuela and Nigeria? The resolve of Saudi Arabia, whose recent deal with Russia to freeze output levels offered the first hint of a rethink? After watching prices crash through floor after floor in the worst slump for a generation, the industry is eager for answers.

Insiders say it’s not too hard to visualize what markets might look like after the storm – say five years down the line, when today’s cost-cutting creates a supply vacuum that will push up prices. But it’s what happens in the meantime that’s got them scratching their heads. “This is a weird thing for a market analyst to say because it’s usually the opposite case, but I have more conviction in my five-year outlook than my one-year outlook,” said Mike Wittner at Societe Generale. “Maybe I’m letting my head get turned upside down by the last couple months.” Seeking clarity at closed-door sessions, cocktail hours and water-coolers in Houston will be some of the industry’s biggest players, from Saudi Petroleum Minister Ali al-Naimi to Shell CEO Ben Van Beurden.

In a less volatile year, the long-term viability of fossil fuels might have been high on their agenda after December’s breakthrough climate deal in Paris. But within the industry, that debate has “fallen into the abyss of $27 oil,” said Deborah Gordon, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s energy and climate program. “It seems like it’s never a good time,” she said. “You can’t have these conversations when oil is $125 because then you can’t get it out of the ground quickly enough. And you can’t have it at $27 because you’re just trying to survive.”

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Keep watching below.

Oil Gives Up Gains as Inventories Build (WSJ)

U.S. oil prices eked out a gain Thursday as the U.S. government’s weekly oil-inventory report showed another increase in stockpiles of crude oil. U.S. crude inventories rose by 2.1 million barrels last week to 504.1 million barrels, a new weekly record high, the Energy Information Administration said. In monthly data, which don’t line up exactly with weekly data, inventories last exceeded 500 million barrels in 1930. Light, sweet crude for March delivery settled 0.4%, at $30.77 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent, the global benchmark, slipped 0.6% to $34.28 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. Both benchmarks had been up about 3% ahead of the government data, which was delayed one day due to the Presidents Day holiday. Oil prices are down more than 70% since a peak in June 2014, driven lower by a mismatch between ample supplies and tepid demand for crude around the globe.

“U.S. and global inventories are nearing maximums, and global production is showing little sign of slowing,” said Rob Haworth at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in a note. Price moves have been especially volatile in recent weeks amid uncertainty about the pace of global demand growth. The U.S. oil benchmark settled up or down by 1% or more for 23 straight sessions until Thursday, the longest such streak since 2009. U.S. crude stockpiles have climbed since the start of the year as production continued to outpace demand. Inventories fell in the week ended Feb. 5 as imports declined, but imports rose again last week, the EIA data show. ”It’s back to business as usual,” said Bob Yawger at Mizuho. He predicted that prices “will eventually cave under the weight of these storage numbers.”

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Better come clean before you’re forced to?!

Anglo American Cut to Junk for Third Time This Week (BBG)

Anglo American’s credit rating was cut to junk by Standard & Poor’s, following similar downgrades by Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings this week, amid questions about the miner’s ability to sell assets. The company’s rating was reduced to BB from BBB- with a stable outlook, S&P said in a statement Thursday. Moody’s cut Anglo to Ba3, and Fitch lowered the rating to BB+ earlier in the week. The shares slid 4.6% as of 2:25 p.m. in London. Anglo, which became the first major London-based miner to be rated junk, has said it’s looking to speed up sales of coal and iron ore assets after losses bled into a fourth year. It’s trying to engineer a turnaround by focusing on its best mines that produce diamonds, platinum and copper. The company wants to raise $4 billion from mine sales and cut net debt to less than $10 billion this year.

Anglo said on Thursday it will start a tender for a maximum of $1.3 billion of bonds to reduce debt and interest costs. It may purchase $1 billion of notes maturing in 2016, 2017 and 2018 in euros and pounds as well as a maximum of $300 million in dollar-denominated securities, according to company statements.= On Tuesday, Anglo added mines including coal in Australia and nickel in Brazil to an already long list of assets for sale as it seeks to scale back its $12.9 billion debt. CEO Mark Cutifani expects to sell 10 assets by the first half of 2016 and because there are so many up for sale, Anglo wouldn’t be forced to accept any offer, he said.

“Although the program should enable Anglo to lower its debt levels, the depressed market means that we view the proceeds and timeline as very uncertain,” S&P said in the statement. “Because other companies are also seeking to divest assets at this time, we remain very cautious about the timing of any sales and the level of proceeds they will generate.” Goldman Sachs said Tuesday that the miner’s plan to sell off assets was “ambitious” in such a tough environment. Bank of America questioned whether the market trusted the management team to execute sales, while Citigroup said the process was coming too late.

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Translation: Dump ’em all in Greece. And then dump Greece itself.

Wary On Turkey, EU Prepares For Refugee Crisis In Greece (Reuters)

The European Union hopes Turkey will prevent as many migrants reaching Greece as last year but is readying “contingency” plans to shelter large numbers who may arrive but can no longer trek north toward Germany. Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told Reuters on Thursday that it was unclear how far Turkey could reduce numbers once the weather improves and, with efforts under way to prevent a repeat of last summer’s chaotic treks through the Balkans, the EU was working with Athens to shelter refugees in Greece. “As long as our cooperation agreement we made with Turkey doesn’t start giving results, the situation will not be easy at all. The flows will continue,” said Avramopoulos. “That is why we have already started working on contingency planning.”

“If this happens, we are going to be confronted with a huge humanitarian crisis and this has to be avoided.” When more than 800,000 people, many Syrian refugees, arrived in Greece last year, most moved north through the Balkans to Germany. Berlin does not want a repeat, leaving states to the south along the route tightening borders and raising a prospect that a large proportion of new arrivals may be halted in Greece. Assessing how far Turkey will help reduce the flow in return for cash and closer ties with the EU is difficult. Avramopoulos noted that arrivals had dropped sharply in the past week or so, despite good sailing weather, but spiked again on Wednesday.

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Nov 162014
 
 November 16, 2014  Posted by at 1:15 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  1 Response »


Wyland Stanley Indian guides and Nash auto at Covelo stables, Mendocino County, CA 1925

We Need To Ramp Up Global Growth: OECD (CNBC)
G-20 Plans $2 Trillion Growth Boost to Uneven Global Economy (BW)
The G-20 Doesn’t Need a Growth Target (Bloomberg)
How The UK Coalition Has Helped The Rich By Hitting The Poor (Observer)
The Centre Is Falling Apart Across Europe (Observer)
Across Europe Disillusioned Voters Turn To Outsiders For Solutions (Observer)
How Can The Eurozone Escape A Lost Decade? (Guardian)
Europe Should Fear The Spectre Of Austerity, Not Communism (Observer)
Putin Leaves G20 After Leaders Line Up To Browbeat Him Over Ukraine (Guardian)
Why We Need Stock Prices To Fall 25% (MarketWatch)
Time to Hide Under the Covers (Martin Armstrong)
Forex Banks Prepare To Claw Back Bonuses (FT)
JPMorgan Settles Claims It Cheated Shale-Rights Owners (Bloomberg)
EC Says Starbucks’ Dutch Tax Deal At Odds With Competition Law (Guardian)
Shipbrokers In Merger Talks After 30% Plunge In Oil Price (Guardian)

Blind clowns run this world, and we let them. Don’t tell me you don’t deserve what you’re going to get.

We Need To Ramp Up Global Growth: OECD (CNBC)

The global economy should be growing at a much faster pace, the chief economist of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warned on Sunday, as world leaders agreed on hundreds of measures they hope will boost expansion. “As the emerging markets become a greater share of the global economy, we really ought to be seeing the global economy growing at 4% or more, so the tone is dour,” said OECD Chief Economist Catherine Mann, speaking to CNBC at the G-20 summit in Brisbane over the weekend. Growth of 4% is well behind the group’s projected global gross domestic product (GDP) of 3.3% for this year. In its latest Economic Outlook, published earlier this month, the OECD warned of “major risks on the horizon” for the world’s economy, such as further market volatility, high levels of debt and a stagnation in the euro zone recovery.

Mann’s comments come as world leaders at the G-20 agreed on measures they said will equate to 2.1% new growth, inject $2 trillion into the world economy and create millions of jobs. The Paris-based OECD has previously outlined a target of adding around 2 percentage points to global gross domestic product (GDP) by 2018, relative to the 2013 level. To achieve a faster growth rate, Mann said that countries had given the OECD a range of commitments – and the focus was now on holding them accountable. “Our job is to say to countries: OK, you’ve told us what you’re going to do, so next year we’re going to look at what you’ve said you’re going to do and determine whether or not you’ve done it. It’s challenging. It’s absolutely a process,” she said. World leaders at the summit in Brisbane agreed on around 800 new measures on issues including employment, global competition and business regulations.

Mann was optimistic that job creation would increase in tandem with global growth, as countries ramped up infrastructure investment. “We know that there’s usually a relationship between growth and jobs. It’s not always a tight relationship. There’s always an issue about the distribution, where the jobs are being created, what sectors, what countries and some of the disconnect there can be,” she said. “Mismatch can be a problem, but I do think we are going to see job creation go hand in hand with global growth.” One way to boost global growth is a renewed focus on infrastructure, and Mann stressed there was a “significant deterioration” in infrastructure around the world. “Every country needs to have more bridges, or rebuild bridges and ports,” she said.

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Because, as we all know, all it takes to foster growth is deciding to have some. The emptiness that emanates from this is blinding.

G20 Says Growth Plans To Boost GDP By 2.1% If Implemented (BW)

Group of 20 leaders agreed to take measures that would boost their economies by a collective $2 trillion by 2018 as they battle patchy growth and the threat of a European recession. Citing risks from financial markets and geopolitical tensions, the leaders said the global economy is being held back by lackluster demand, according to their communique following a two-day summit in Brisbane. The group submitted close to 1,000 individual policy changes that they said would lift growth and said they would hold each other to account to ensure they are implemented. “There are some worrying warning signs in the global economy that are threats to us and our growth,” U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said after the meeting ended. “If every country that has come here does the things they said they would in terms of helping to boost growth,” including trade deals, then growth will continue, he said.

Action to bolster growth comes as policies around the world are diverging with the U.S. tapering its monetary easing as it boasts the strongest economy among advanced nations, while Europe and Japan add further stimulus to ward off deflation. The IMF last month cut its projection for world economic growth next year to 3.8%. The mostly structural policy commitments spelled out in each country’s individual growth strategy include China’s plan to accelerate construction of 4G mobile communications networks, a A$476 million ($417 million) industry skills fund in Australia and 165,000 affordable homes in the U.K. over four years.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told the leaders that in order to avoid the “new mediocre” of low growth, low inflation, high unemployment and high debt, all tools should be used at all levels. “That includes not just monetary policy, which is being significantly used, particularly in the euro zone, but also fiscal policy, structural reforms and, under certain conditions, infrastructure,” she said. The IMF and OECD assessed the policy commitments and said they would raise G-20 gross domestic product by an additional 2.1% from current trajectories by 2018, according to the communique. “It’s a worthy objective for the G-20 as global growth is still lagging,” said Shane Oliver, head of investment strategy at AMP Capital, which manages about $125 billion. “But a lot of those measures might not be fully implemented and, even if they do, they may not deliver the results.”

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But Pesek still thinks it needs growth.

The G-20 Doesn’t Need a Growth Target (Bloomberg)

Group of 20 host Tony Abbott went to great lengths to keep one topic — climate change — off the agenda at this weekend’s confab in Brisbane. There’s little mystery why: While the world hails China and the U.S. for moving forward on curbing carbon emissions, Australia is backsliding by scrapping a tax on carbon and resisting pressure to expand the use of renewables. Abbott’s justification? The need for growth. In fact, Australia’s prime minister wants the rest of the G-20 also to pledge to grow by an additional 2% or more over five years. The goal sounds unobjectionable, until one considers how much trouble arbitrary growth targets are already causing China. The mainland government’s annual pledge to generate a fixed expansion in gross domestic product – 7.5% this year – is also the biggest roadblock to clearing its air and eventually reducing emissions.

Pressure to meet that arbitrary target leads local officials to ignore anti-pollution directives. It could prompt additional stimulus, a second wind for investment in smokestack industries and even more smog. China may be considering a reduction in next year’s target; it shouldn’t set one at all. Neither should the broader G-20. This indiscriminate emphasis on a specific data point encourages short-term policy behavior. In the quest for higher growth at the lowest political cost, governments from Washington to Tokyo have abdicated their responsibility to unelected central bankers. The reliance on monetary easing to prop up growth is clearly dangerous. Too much liquidity chasing too little demand for credit and too few productive investments can only lead to fresh bubbles in a world already filled with them. The consequences are worryingly unpredictable.

Chinese officials like Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao have begun to warn that “divergence” in monetary policies – ultra-loose ones among developed economies, tighter conditions among emerging ones – could have unforeseen effects. “It will create new risks and uncertainties for the global economy,” Zhu told Bloomberg yesterday, calling the global financial environment “uneven and brittle.” Ceding control to central banks relieves political leaders of the pressure to make more difficult changes – the kind that will sustain growth in the long run and broaden its benefits. The only way China can make good on its climate targets, for example, is by rebalancing the economy way from heavy industry. That requires a level of political will Xi has yet to display.

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All the talk about growth serves only to implement more of this.

How The UK Coalition Has Helped The Rich By Hitting The Poor (Observer)

A landmark study of the coalition’s tax and welfare policies six months before the general election reveals how money has been transferred from the poorest to the better off, apparently refuting the chancellor of the exchequer’s claims that the country has been “all in it together”. According to independent research to be published on Monday and seen by the Observer, George Osborne has been engaged in a significant transfer of income from the least well-off half of the population to the more affluent in the past four years. Those with the lowest incomes have been hit hardest. In an intervention that will come as a major blow to the government’s claim to have shared out the burden of austerity equally, the report by economists at the London School of Economics and the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex finds that:

• Sweeping changes to benefits and income tax have had the effect of switching income from the poorer half of households to most of the richer half, with the poorest 5% in the country in terms of income losing nearly 3% of what they would have earned if Britain s tax and welfare system of May 2010 had been retained.

• With the exception of the top 5%, who lost 1% of their potential income, it is the better-off half of the country that has gained financially from the changes, with an increase of between 1.2% and 2% in their disposable income.

• The top 1% in terms of income have also been small net gainers from the changes brought in by David Cameron’s government since May 2010, which include a cut in the top rate of income tax.

• Two-earner households, and those with elderly family members, were the most favourably treated, as a result of direct tax changes and state pensions respectively.

• Lone-parent families did worst, losing much more through cuts in benefits and tax credits and higher council tax than they gained through higher income tax allowances. Families with children in general, and large families in particular, also did much worse than the average.

• A quarter of the lowest paid 10% have shouldered a particularly heavy burden, losing more than 5% of what would have been their income without the coalition’s reforms.

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Brussels is blowing itself up. It’s not going to be pretty.

The Centre Is Falling Apart Across Europe (Observer)

Wednesday morning in Brussels and Beppe Grillo has brought his anti-establishment roadshow to the European parliament. The committee room is packed, standing room only for the former standup act. Once he gets going, Grillo resembles a force of nature. He declines to sit on the parliamentary rostrum alongside the other participants. Instead he prowls the floor, spitting out a staccato torrent of abuse and grievance, unscripted, unstoppable, laugh-a-minute. “I’m a bit over the top,” Grillo admits when he first pauses to draw breath after half an hour. “Maybe I should stop here.” Grillo is the Mr Angry of Italian and, increasingly, European politics. His Five Star Movement is running a consistent second in the opinion polls at around 20% behind the modernising centre-left of the Democratic Centre of prime minister Matteo Renzi.

If Grillo is hammering on the establishment’s doors, across Europe upstarts, populists, mavericks, iconoclasts and grassroots movements are performing even more strongly, radically changing the face of politics, consigning 20th-century bipartisan systems to the history books, and making it ever trickier to construct stable governing majorities. Fragmentation is the new norm in the parliaments and politics of Europe. Voter volatility, the death of deference, the erosion of party loyalties,, the dissolution of the ties of class make for a chaotic cocktail and highly unpredictable outcomes. Especially during and in the aftermath of economic slump.

“The crisis has shredded voters’ trust in the competence, motives and honesty of establishment politicians who failed to prevent the crisis, have so far failed to resolve it, and who bailed out rich bankers while imposing misery on ordinary voters, but not on themselves,” said Philippe Legrain, a former adviser to the head of the European commission and author of European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics are in a Mess – and How to Put Them Right. If elections were held tomorrow in half a dozen EU countries, according to current polls, the biggest single parties would be neither the traditional Christian nor social democrats of the centre-right and centre-left, but relative newcomers on the far right or hard left who have never been in government – from Greece and Spain, where far-left anti-austerity movements top the polls, to anti-EU, nationalist, anti-immigrant parties of the extreme right in France, the Netherlands, Austria and Denmark.

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Lengthy article with reports fom France, Italy, Greece, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, Spain.

Across Europe Disillusioned Voters Turn To Outsiders For Solutions (Observer)

Ever since Matteo Renzi became Italy’s youngest prime minister at 39 in February, styling himself as a political outsider and promising to prise open Italy’s closed-shop economy, commentators have been writing off Italy’s other great anti-establishment figure, Beppe Grillo. The former standup comedian, who rose to fame with rants at the establishment and a wildly popular blog, won a staggering 8.7 million votes in the 2013 elections to Italy’s lower house, running the centre-left Democratic Party a close second. But since then, the MPs and senators who flooded into parliament to represent him have been criticised for refusing to team up with other parties on key legislation. The few that did risked expulsion from his Five Star Movement. “There are continual divisions within Grillo’s parliamentary group – it’s pretty chaotic,” says Roberto D’Alimonte, a professor of politics at LUISS university in Rome. “They are still waiting for Renzi to fail so they can inherit whatever’s left after the disaster.”

Furthermore, Grillo’s anti-Europe rhetoric is now being matched by a resurgence of the rightwing Northern League. After being decimated by scandals, this party has dropped its focus on autonomy for northern Italy, and charismatic new leader Matteo Salvini is now picking up votes nationally with attacks on immigration. So why, despite the setbacks, are Grillo’s poll ratings still healthy? A survey of voting intentions this month put his movement at 19.9%, more than double the Northern League’s, albeit trailing Renzi’s 38.9%. “Until the economy turns around, Grillo will win votes – there is so much frustration in Italy,” says D’Alimonte, who adds that Grillo’s raging against corruption continues to strike a chord. “We still read every day about scandalous misuses of public funds.” Silvio Berlusconi’s decline is also helping the tousle-haired comedian, says D’Alimonte. “Grillo cuts across the political spectrum, taking votes from the left and the right, just like Ukip.”

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There’s only one answer to that question: by disbanding itself.

How Can The Eurozone Escape A Lost Decade? (Guardian)

It says something about the diminished expectations that the reaction to the latest growth figures for Germany and France was one of relief. Such is the gloom that has descended on the eurozone in the past few months, there was a fear that the data from the eurozone’s two biggest economies could have been worse. That’s true. Germany might now be in technical recession had the 0.1% contraction in the second quarter been followed by a further fall in gross domestic product in the third. As it was, growth of 0.1% was eked out. Similarly, France’s 0.3% expansion was a tad better than feared. But the headline growth number disguised underlying weakness. The growth was entirely due to government spending and the build-up of unsold stocks of goods.

The private sector in France remains painfully weak. What’s true of Germany and France is true of the 18-nation eurozone as a whole. Unlike the US and the UK, the eurozone has never really shown signs of emerging strongly from the financial crisis and recession of 2008-09. The recovery that began in 2013 has petered out. There are a number of reasons for that. The European Central Bank has been slower than the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve in taking action to boost growth – and less imaginative in its choice of weapons. Quantitative easing is now in the offing for the eurozone – almost six years after it was deployed in Britain and America. Blanket austerity for the eurozone has weakened domestic demand.

Attempting to slash budget deficits before growth returned has been a terrible mistake, and one for which Germany has to take the blame. With consumers not spending and businesses not investing, the eurozone has been dependent on exports to keep growth ticking over. But the slowdown in some of the world’s leading emerging markets this year – China, Brazil and Russia to name but three – has made it harder to sell goods overseas. Internal eurozone trade has also faltered. All is not completely lost. The plunge in oil prices will reduce energy bills and boost the real disposable incomes of consumers. A sharp fall in the value of the euro will make exports to the rest of the world more competitive.

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The Observer sounds as hollow as the rest of them here.

Europe Should Fear The Spectre Of Austerity, Not Communism (Observer)

The approach to macroeconomic policy in Brussels is dominated by Germany. The problem is that the Germans are urging further cuts on economies that are rapidly nearing the end of their tether. One close observer of policymaking in Germany says, only half jokingly, that advice is dominated by a combination of “those who don’t understand Keynes and those who do but are too scared to admit it”. The Tories, who may yet save the beleaguered Ed Miliband by tearing themselves apart over Europe, would be well advised to heed the words of one George Soros, who has pointed out that by being members of the European Union but not of the eurozone, we in Britain enjoy “the best of both worlds”. The Bank of England pointed out in the inflation report that “the potential positive impact of ECB policy actions” is likely to be outweighed in the near term by the factors that are already depressing growth in the euro area.

Carney, who has not hesitated on occasion to acknowledge that Osborne’s fiscal policy impeded the British recovery, manifested some sympathy with Draghi’s view that there needs to be a relaxation of fiscal policy. This means at the very least going easy on budget cuts, but ideally adopting a major expansionary policy involving much-needed infrastructure projects. Indeed, even Germany itself is crying out for renewal of its infrastructure. For “structural reform” read “infrastructure reform”! This does not seem to be understood in Berlin – or, for that matter, in Brussels. They go on relentlessly about the need to honour the EU’s “stability and growth pact”, with its strict targets for budgets and debt. But that pact was drawn up in what were reasonably normal times. The financial crisis changed everything. I always thought it significant that the word “stability” came before “growth” when the pact was signed. The problem now is that there is precious little growth, even in Germany itself, and the danger is that stability may soon turn into deflationary instability.

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Fools like Harper, Cameron, Abbott are not going to make Putin nervous. All they’ve done over the summit is show him face to face just how stupid they are. Harper allegedly told Putin to get out of Russia. Nobody in the room wanted to provide his reply, but it may well have been: ‘You first’.

Putin Leaves G20 After Leaders Line Up To Browbeat Him Over Ukraine (Guardian)

Vladimir Putin quit the G20 summit in Brisbane early saying he needed to get back to work in Moscow on Monday after enduring hours of browbeating by a succession of Western leaders urging him to drop his support for secessionists in eastern Ukraine. With the European Union poised this week to extend the list of people subject to asset freezes, the Russian president individually met five European leaders including the British prime minister, David Cameron, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, where he refused to give ground. Putin instead accused the Kiev government of a mistaken economic blockade against the cities in eastern Ukraine that have declared independence in votes organised in the past month. He said that action was short-sighted pointing out that Russia continued to pay the salaries and pensions of Chechenya throughout its battle for independence.

Justifying his early departure Putin said: “It will take nine hours to fly to Vladivostok and another eight hours to get Moscow. I need four hours sleep before I get back to work on Monday. We have completed our business.” In an interview with German TV he also accused the west of switching off their brains by imposing sanctions that could backfire. Putin said: “Do they want to bankrupt our banks? In that case they will bankrupt Ukraine. Have they thought about what they are doing at all or not? Or has politics blinded them? As we know eyes constitute a peripheral part of brain. Was something switched off in their brains?” The Russian leader also complained he had not been consulted by the EU about the recognition of Ukraine. However, British officials insisted behind Putin’s bluster, that they detected a new flexibility about the Ukraine orientating towards the EU so long as this did not extend to Nato assets being placed on Ukrainian soil.

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Because that’s by how much, at the very least, they have been distorted (?!)

Why We Need Stock Prices To Fall 25% (MarketWatch)

In early October, as share prices wobbled, I had high hopes that U.S. stocks would plummet to attractive levels. Instead, shares have shot higher, adding to the rip-roaring bull market that has seen stocks triple since March 2009. The long rally has done wonders for my portfolio’s value. But it also means stocks are now more richly valued—and expected returns are lower. Unless you never again plan to add to your stock portfolio, you should have mixed feelings about the market’s heady gains. Think about all the money you’ll invest in stocks in the years ahead, whether it’s with new savings, reinvested dividends or by shifting money from elsewhere in your portfolio. Wouldn’t you rather buy at 2009 prices than at today’s nosebleed valuations? Indeed, I find it hard to get enthused about the prospects for U.S. stocks over the next 10 years. Consider the three components of the market’s return: the dividend yield, corporate-earnings growth and the value put on those earnings, as reflected in the market’s price/earnings ratio.

We already know the dividend yield: It’s 2% for the S&P 500. But big question marks hang over the other two components of the market’s return. How fast will earnings grow? Over the 10 years through mid-2014, the per-share earnings of the S&P 500 companies grew 6.3% a year, far ahead of the 3.6% nominal (including inflation) growth in GDP. But there are three reasons to fear slower earnings growth over the next 10 years. First, the recent gains have been driven by rising profit margins. After-tax corporate profits rose from 7.9% of GDP in mid-2004 to 10.6% in early 2014. Without that boost, the S&P 500’s earnings would have lagged behind GDP growth. Suppose profits remain at 10.6% of GDP, rather than reverting to 7.9%. Even in that scenario, investors likely wouldn’t be happy, because corporate profits would grow no faster than the economy. That brings us to the second reason for worry: Economic growth may disappoint.

Over the past 50 years, roughly half the economy’s 3% after-inflation growth has come from increases in the working population and half from productivity gains. But the labor force is now growing more slowly, as the entrance of new workers barely outpaces retiring baby boomers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the civilian labor force will expand 0.5% a year over the 10 years through 2022, versus 0.7% for 2002-12 and 1.2% for 1992-2002. On top of that, many American families simply can’t afford to spend freely, either because they’re unemployed or underemployed or they remain handcuffed by hefty amounts of debt. That, too, could crimp economic growth. A third reason to worry: Over the past 10 years, companies have bought back as much stock as they’ve issued. That’s unusual—and it may not last. Historically, shareholders have seen their claim on the nation’s profits diluted by two percentage points a year, as new companies emerge and existing companies issue new shares.

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“The liquidity is still off by 50% from 2007. Retail participation in the US share market is at historic lows. When the global economy turns down, it will drop faster than ever before BECAUSE liquidity is not there. We NEED to RESTRUCTURE the world economy NOW – RIGHT THIS VERY INSTANT.”

Time to Hide Under the Covers (Martin Armstrong)

The USA may not be as all-powerful as its tells its people or our politicians believe. For all the spying going on against American citizens to hunt them down for taxes intercepting all cell phone calls, the USA is vulnerable on many fronts. The Chinese have been able to compromise the US defense systems. Meanwhile, in the Black Sea, Russia sent a Su-24 jet which then simulated a missile attack against the USS Donald Cook. It carried a new device that rendered the ship literally deaf, dumb, and blind. The Russian aircraft repeated the same maneuver 12 times before flying away. Obama better wake up. This is not some video game. The world is on the brink of war and governments need this war because they are dead in the water economically. The government in Ukraine has told its people it cannot reform now, it is in war. So be patient. We will see this same excuse migrate to Europe and the USA. Government NEED such a diversion. It also does not hurt to kill off those anticipating being taken care of by the state.

The US economy is holding up the entire world economy right now and the growth rate is minimal. When we turn the economy down, look out below. These morons have been hunting taxes everywhere and as a result they have shut down global capital flows. Government lives in an illusion. They simply assumed they could always tax and never funded anything presuming they could always shake money from us. It has been the FREEDOM of investment capital on a global basis that built the economies of the world after World War II. This was the same aspect that built the Roman Empire. Conquering everything enabled global capital flows. Capital flows around the globe at all times and has done so since ancient times. Cicero commented that any event in Asia (Turkey) be it financial or natural disaster, sent waves of panic running through the Roman Forum. If capital has been restricted in movement as it is today, no American would have ever been able to invest in Europe or Asia. Where would the world be today had FATCA been around in 1945?

These idiots have destroyed the world economy and we will only understand this full impact after 2015.75. If you outlaw short-selling, there is nobody to buy during a panic. This is the same problem. The liquidity is still off by 50% from 2007. Retail participation in the US share market is at historic lows. When the global economy turns down, it will drop faster than ever before BECAUSE liquidity is not there. We NEED to RESTRUCTURE the world economy NOW – RIGHT THIS VERY INSTANT. Raising taxes and stopping global flows is the absolute worse case scenario you can possibly ever do in times like the present. This is turning VERY ugly. You better buy some extra heavy blankets because you are going to want to just hide in your bed when this chaos erupts. There are boggy-men under the bed and in the closet and he is listening and watching everything you do. Why? Because he is scared to death he may be losing power. They are in the final stages of insanity – the Stalin Phase where they are paranoid about what everyone even thinks and says.

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Let’s hope this pisses off the traders enough to tell on their bosses.

Forex Banks Prepare To Claw Back Bonuses (FT)

Five banks at the heart of the forex rate rigging probe are preparing to claw back millions of dollars in bonuses from traders as the City seeks to shore up its reputation in the wake of the latest scandal to hit the banking industry. This would be the first time that banks have applied this draconian measure on such a large scale. Under European rules, they have the power to take this step, but in practice they have largely restricted themselves to withholding as yet unpaid bonuses. This week’s move, however, by UK, US and Swiss regulators to fine six banks $4.3bn for their role in the global foreign exchange scandal has reignited calls for the sector to take tougher action against wrongdoers.

Royal Bank of Scotland, Citigroup, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase and UBS, five of the banks fined this week, are all looking at taking back bonuses from dozens of traders – although people familiar with their thinking say the plans are subject to internal reviews of the individuals’ cond[uit]. RBS is considering going even further by reducing this year’s overall bonus pool for the whole investment bank. Such a move would echo RBS’s stance last year after the Libor rate-rigging scandal, when the state-owned bank reduced its incentive pool by £300m after paying a £390m penalty to UK and US regulators. The forex scandal revealed that groups calling themselves “the players”, “the three musketeers” and “a co-operative” tried to rig key currency benchmarks including at least one provided by central banks, according to the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.

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JPMorgan fraud no. 826.

JPMorgan Settles Claims It Cheated Shale-Rights Owners (Bloomberg)

JPMorgan settled a lawsuit by Texas mineral-rights owners who accused it of cutting sweetheart deals with oil company clients to cheat them out of $681 million in compensation. The dispute centered on payments for rights to drill in the Eagle Ford, a shale formation underlying much of central and southwest Texas that has helped put the U.S. in competition with Saudi Arabia and Russia for title of world’s largest oil producer. Beneficiaries of the South Texas Syndicate Trust accused the bank, which was supposedly working on their behalf, of instead hatching favorable deals with commercial-banking clients Petrohawk Energy and Hunt Oil for cut-rate prices on the trust’s rights in the Eagle Ford, the highest-yielding oil field in the U.S. Deal talks between the bank and the trust stalled and forced the start of a trial Nov. 12 in state court in San Antonio while negotiations continued.

The settlement was completed Nov. 14 as jurors heard a third day of testimony, according to lawyers for both the bank and trust’s beneficiaries. “The case was resolved with some conditions, and the jury was excused,” Dan Sciano, a lawyer for the trust beneficiaries, said yesterday in a phone interview. Sciano said he was optimistic “a sufficient number of beneficiaries” will sign the accord at their annual meeting in San Antonio this weekend. “Otherwise, we would not have dismissed the jury,” he said. Sciano declined to discuss the amount of the settlement. [..] The San Antonio Express News reported that the beneficiaries would receive $40 million from the bank. The trust beneficiaries claimed they got only $32.5 million on rights that yielded benefits worth $1.1 billion because JPMorgan wanted to curry favor with its oil company clients at their expense. The bank rejected the claims as speculation and hindsight.

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Luxembourg, Holland, Ireland, they’re all doing the same, and they all claim it’s fully legal. Morals don’t enter the picture.

EC Says Starbucks’ Dutch Tax Deal At Odds With Competition Law (Guardian)

Brussels has accused the Dutch government of cooking up an illegal deal with Starbucks that allowed the coffee chain to pay a very low rate of tax. In a preliminary report into an alleged sweetheart deal the European commission said the coffee shop’s tax arrangements in the Netherlands were at odds with EU rules on competition, which are intended to stop a government using state funds to give a company an unfair advantage. The report, published today, had been sent to the Dutch government on 11 June, when the commission officially launched its investigation into the tax affairs of Apple, Starbucks and Fiat. Starbucks ran into a political furore when it emerged in 2012 that it had paid just £8.3m in corporate taxes since coming to the UK in 1998, despite racking up sales of more than £3bn.

The British subsidiary of the coffee chain was classified as loss-making – so did not pay taxes on profits – largely because it made payments to other companies in the Starbucks group for its coffee supplies, use of the Starbucks logo and shop format, and interest on loans within the group. The commission’s investigation is focusing on these so-called transfer payments and has homed in on the role of the coffee chain’s roasting facility in Amsterdam and its relationship with other parts of the Starbucks business. Officials have also expressed doubts about the legality of a decision by the Dutch tax authorities to allow Starbucks to book in the Netherlands revenues it has earned in other countries. In 2012, Starbucks’ chief financial officer, Troy Alstead, told the UK’s public accounts committee of MPs that the group had legitimately secured a tax deal with the Netherlands that allowed it to pay tax at a “very low rate”. According to the commission, the coffee chain’s Dutch companies paid €716,000 (£570,000) of tax in 2011 in the Netherlands and between €600,000 and €1m in 2012.

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An insanely overbuilt market faces reality.

Shipbrokers In Merger Talks After 30% Plunge In Oil Price (Guardian)

Plunging oil prices have triggered merger talks among London’s shipping and offshore brokers, with key companies including Clarkson, Icap and Howe Robinson all in discussions. With shipping in the doldrums, brokers have been relying over the last couple of years on the offshore oil industry to boost profits but a 30% plunge in the crude price has caused panic. Clarkson, the world’s largest shipbroker, confirmed on Friday it was hoping to acquire RS Platou, a major Norwegian-based rival which also controls a significant operation in the UK. Icap and Howe Robinson are also understood to be looking at options and sources predicted some kind of merger deal between those firms could be unveiled as early as next week.

Clarkson said the purchase of privately-owned Platou, which some believe could cost up to £200m, made commercial sense: “Given the complementary activities, in terms of geographic locations, operations and industry specialisation, the boards of both Clarksons and Platou believe the enhanced offering of the combined business positions the enlarged group as a leading integrated global shipping and offshore group.” The move could have reunited Clarkson with its flamboyant former chief executive, Richard Fulford-Smith, who left and joined Platou, but the Ferrari-driving shipbroker has unveiled his own plans to buy out Platou’s UK business. While key parts of the shipping market such as dry bulk carriers and container ships have continued to struggle against massive overbuilding of tonnage and tepid volume growth, Clarkson has continued to prosper.

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