Stocks & Equities
Mr. Market is a phony. He advertises himself as a mechanism for buying and selling securities.
He sells his wares as price discovery when it’s only sport speculation.
Mr. Market really is a great arena for self-discovery; or conversely, an opium den whose denizens are addicted to ticks — the almighty distraction for those self-medicating through the gleam on the screen… or the the glean on the scream.
They say markets hate uncertainty.
‘They’ are liars…. CLICK HERE for the complete article
Russia seems to be in for a bout of economic free-fall at the moment, thanks to tumbling oil prices and a severely battered ruble.
That hasn’t fazed President Vladimir Putin, though, who said in his year-end media conference last week that his country has seen worse times and will bounce back within two years.
Those who lived through the economic hardships of the 1990s might agree, but Russia’s monied class must be wondering whether the era of excess, propelled by huge oil revenues, are winding down.
That period has no better chronicler than Peter Pomerantsev, a British writer whose parents emigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
He returned to Russia in recent years to work as a reality television producer, and to make entertainment programs like “How to Marry a Millionaire” that were Western in style, but avoided politics.
In his new book Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of The New Russia, Pomerantsev explores the cynical, brutal, and dazzling world of the nouveau riche…. CLICK HERE for the complete article
Today KWN interviewed a man who has been uncovering critical information for 25 years who said “yes,” what Dr. Paul Craig Roberts told King World News is true, “Russia will unleash black swans against the West, but here is the scary part.”
…read more HERE
The Greek financial/political crisis is becoming an annual event. For a sense of just how long this unfortunate little country has been struggling to survive under the relative sound money regime of the eurozone, here’s a Greek Crisis Timeline that CNN published in 2011. Even back then the pattern of near-collapse followed by temporary respite had been repeating for seven years.
The most recent lull seemed longer than usual, so long in fact that many people probably assumed that Greece had been “fixed” and was now a more-or-less fully-functioning member of the eurozone, ready to settle back into its enviable lifestyle of hosting tourists, drinking ouzo and avoiding taxes.
But no. Nothing has really changed. Youth unemployment remains around 50% — which is even more astounding when you consider that tourism is generally a pretty good sector for young people looking for entry-level service work. And the government is still running deficits, piling new debt atop its already unmanageable 175% of GDP.
As a result, anti-euro political parties are still gaining adherents and now seem to have enough clout to start dictating terms. This month a series of elections are being held that, if I’m understanding correctly, have to go the government’s way to avoid regime change in which the far left takes over and pulls Greece out of the eurozone. The first round in this voting trilogy didn’t go the government’s way, making the next two highly problematic. And last week the situation got even more complex:
Greek lawmaker alleges bribery attempt in presidential vote
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A lawmaker from a small right-wing party claimed Friday he had been offered a bribe worth up to 3 million euros ($3.68 million) to vote in favor of electing Greece’s new president, in the latest twist in the bailed-out country’s fraught presidential vote.
Greece faces early general elections if its 300-member parliament fails to elect a president by the third round of voting on Dec. 29. In Wednesday’s first round, the sole candidate and government nominee garnered 160 votes; 180 are needed for election.
Actor Pavlos Haikalis of the Independent Greeks claimed during a phone-in to a live television program that he was offered about 700,000 euros in cash, a loan repayment and advertising contracts, with the alleged bribe’s total value amounting to about 2-3 million euros ($2.4-$3.7 million). He didn’t identify the person, but said he had informed a prosecutor about two weeks ago and had turned over audio and video material.
Haikalis later alleged that the man who contacted him claimed to be acting on behalf of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and a banker.
So, let’s take the status quo’s worst-case scenario, in which Greece ditches the euro and returns to the easy-to-manipulate drachma. It converts all its outstanding euro-denominated debt to drachmas and then devalues its new/old currency by 30 or so percent, pricing its hotel rooms, charter boats and restaurants back into attractive territory. That’s okay on balance for the Greek people, who benefit more from rising tourism than they’re hurt by devalued savings.
But it’s very bad for European banks and US hedge funds that now own tons of Greek debt and will therefore suffer big losses. More damaging still, once the precedent is set everyone will start looking around for the next domino to fall and will find plenty, with Italy (now in the throes of a political crisis of its own) leading the list. That’s a much bigger economy with way more euro-denominated debt, so an Italian exit from the eurozone would be apocalyptic for the whole global financial system.
Will it come to that in 2015? History says probably not. Remember, Greece has been on the verge of imploding for a decade, and each time the money has been found to save it. With the ECB inching towards a multi-year, multi-trillion euro debt monetization plan, the entire Greek economy could be tucked into that expanding balance sheet without a ripple. So expect another wealth transfer from Germany to Greece in the near future. And then perhaps one from Germany to Italy. But also expect some drama along the way.
Last week we learned that the key to a strong economy is not increased production, lower unemployment, or a sound monetary unit. Rather, economic prosperity depends on the type of language used by the central bank in its monetary policy statements. All it took was one word in the Federal Reserve Bank’s press release — that the Fed would be “patient” in raising interest rates to normal levels — and stock markets went wild. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average had their best gains in years, with the Dow gaining nearly 800 points from Wednesday to Friday and the S&P gaining almost 100 points to close within a few points of its all-time high.
Just think of how many trillions of dollars of financial activity that occurred solely because of that one new phrase in the Fed’s statement. That so much in our economy hangs on one word uttered by one institution demonstrates not only that far too much power is given to the Federal Reserve, but also how unbalanced the American economy really is.
While the real economy continues to sputter, financial markets reach record highs, thanks in no small part to the Fed’s easy money policies. After six years of zero interest rates, Wall Street has become addicted to easy money. Even the slightest mention of tightening monetary policy, and Wall Street reacts like a heroin addict forced to sober up cold turkey.
While much of the media paid attention to how long interest rates would remain at zero, what they largely ignored is that the Fed is, “maintaining its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in agency mortgage-backed securities.” Look at the Fed’s balance sheet and you’ll see that it has purchased $25 billion in mortgage-backed securities since the end of QE3. Annualized, that is $200 billion a year. That may not be as large as QE2 or QE3, but quantitative easing, or as the Fed likes to say “accommodative monetary policy” is far from over.
What gets lost in all the reporting about stock market numbers, unemployment rate figures, and other economic data is the understanding that real wealth results from production of real goods, not from the creation of money out of thin air. The Fed can rig the numbers for a while by turning the monetary spigot on full blast, but the reality is that this is only papering over severe economic problems. Six years after the crisis of 2008, the economy still has not fully recovered, and in many respects is not much better than it was at the turn of the century.
Since 2001, the United States has grown by 38 million people and the working-age population has grown by 23 million people. Yet the economy has only added eight million jobs. Millions of Americans are still unemployed or underemployed, living from paycheck to paycheck, and having to rely on food stamps and other government aid. The Fed’s easy money has produced great profits for Wall Street but it has not helped — and cannot help — Main Street.
An economy that holds its breath every six weeks, looking to parse every single word coming out of Fed Chairman Janet Yellen’s mouth for indications of whether to buy or sell, is an economy that is fundamentally unsound. The Fed needs to stop creating trillions of dollars out of thin air, let Wall Street take its medicine, and allow the corrections that should have taken place in 2001 and 2008 to liquidate the bad debts and malinvestments that permeate the economy. Only then will we see a real economic recovery.
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