Baltic Dry Index. 1037 -04
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be
complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and
dance. We’re still dancing.”
Chuck Prince, CEO Citigroup July
10, 2007
It is October 2014, and the Fed’s fat lady is about to
sing, as in end QE forever, though still trying to keep in place ZIRP. What
happens next when the music stops and the Fed’s Great Vampire Squids stop
dancing? Commodities, in the shape of Dr. Copper, iron ore, and crude oil are
already signalling the arrival of a new global slowdown. The BRICs and America’s
“frackers” are about to slam into the wall. Communist China just shot down the
democratic aspirations of Hong Kong, the old order there will now stagger on
until a hard landing sinks all boats.
Sunday morning here in the middle Thames Valley, we got
our first frost of the newly arrived autumn season. Winter is not that far
behind. We all know what is coming next,
it’s just that self delusion is easier. In self delusion lies the next stock
market crash. Getting out early beats getting out late. Getting out orderly
beats getting out in the midst of panic. We are on the cusp of the Great
Reconnect. With much of continental Europe likely to drop into depression
rather than recession this winter, say goodbye to the euro as we know it. Club
Med is likely to crash out this winter, taking down all and sundry with them.
Even Germany can’t bailout France. When the music stops in 2014, 1987s rout will
look like a party.
"We finished the year, and we reported that we had $17 billion of cash sitting at the bank's parent company as a liquidity cushion. As the year has gone on, that liquidity cushion has been virtually unchanged."
Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz. March 12, 2008. Bust March 17, 2008
S&P 500 Companies Spend Almost All Profits on Buybacks, Payouts
Oct 6,
2014 5:00 AM GMT
Companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX)
really love their shareholders. Maybe too much. They’re poised to spend $914 billion on share buybacks and dividends this year, or about 95 percent of earnings, data compiled by Bloomberg and S&P Dow Jones Indices show. Money returned to stock owners exceeded profits in the first quarter and may again in the third. The proportion of cash flow used for repurchases has almost doubled over the last decade while it’s slipped for capital investments, according to Jonathan Glionna, head of U.S. equity strategy research at Barclays Plc.
Buybacks have helped fuel one of the strongest rallies of the past 50 years as stocks with the most repurchases gained more than 300 percent since March 2009. Now, with returns slowing, investors say executives risk snuffing out the bull market unless they start plowing money into their businesses.
“You can only go so far with financial engineering before you actually have to have a business with real growth,” Chris Bouffard, chief investment officer who oversees $9 billion at Mutual Fund Store in Overland Park, Kansas, said by phone on Oct. 2. “Companies have done about all that they can in terms of maximizing the ability to do those buybacks.”
More
The Fed Prisoner’s Dilemma: Sell Now or Keep Dancing?
July 21, 2014
Some
of you may be familiar with game theory and the famous example of the
Prisoner’s Dilemma. In the game, two members of a criminal gang are arrested,
imprisoned, and isolated. They have two options: 1) cooperate with one another
(stay silent), or 2) betray one another (testify that the other committed the
crime). The various payoffs for each decision can be seen below.
The dilemma is as follows. From a purely self-interest perspective, it is in each prisoner’s best interest to defect as they have the opportunity to go free with the other party serving 3 years if other party stays silent. However, as both prisoners are likely to pursue this self-interested option, they are collectively worse off, with each prisoner receiving 2 years in jail. Had they cooperated and remained silent, they would have each served only 1 year in jail, the best possible combined outcome.
The Fed Prisoner’s Dilemma
Many market participants today are faced with a similar dilemma, and they have become prisoners, in recent months, to Federal Reserve policy. After five and a half years of 0% interest rates and three rounds of QE, returns on virtually all asset classes have been pulled forward. This is precisely what the Fed intended to happen as Ben Bernanke made clear in his famous “wealth effect” Op-ed in 2010.
It is debatable whether there has indeed been a “virtuous circle” as Bernanke suggested, where higher stock prices were supposed to “spur spending” and “lead to higher incomes and profits.”
What is not debatable is that bond yields are at/near all-time lows while stock prices are near valuation highs. This suggests that forward returns from here are likely to be significantly below average. As such, market participants are becoming increasingly reliant on the Federal Reserve to maintain the status quo, and to not pullback from unprecedented measures even five years into a recovery. For if asset prices are elevated in large part because interest rates are artificially low, it stands to reason that if interest rates are no longer held down asset prices will have to fall.
The dilemma today is as follows. We know that the end of QE3 is fast approaching in October, as the Fed indicated in its most recent minutes. We also know that following the end of QE1 in 2010 and QE2 in 2011 we saw correction of 17% and 21% respectively in the S&P 500.
More
Hans-Werner Sinn: eurozone doomed to 'decade of crises'
Hans-Werner Sinn, the president of the respected Ifo think-tank, says France could put the future of the single currency at risk and warns that the Ukrainian crisis threatens to trigger a "triple-dip depression" in parts of the bloc
The eurozone is doomed to a
decade or more of economic stagnation and civil unrest that could destroy the
single currency if countries such as France do not implement vital reforms,
according to one of Europe’s most influential economists.
Hans-Werner Sinn, the president
of Germany’s Ifo
Institute for Economic Research think-tank, said policymakers would continue to
misuse capital to finance the higher living standards unlocked by joining the
euro, while dragging their heels on reform.
“My prediction is not that the
euro will fall apart, but that it leads to a stagnation and animosity even more
than we see today among the people of Europe,” he said. “You see this very
strongly in southern Europe, where people face this mass unemployment, in
France, where Marine le Pen in the polls has the strongest party and with Syriza
in Greece which is presenting radical decisions and has the most support in the
polls.”
In an interview with the
Telegraph, Mr Sinn
also warned that while the Ukrainian crisis would hit German growth, the pain for its
neighbours, many of which rely on Europe's largest economy, would be more
severe.
"Germany is obviously
affected by the Russian crisis. More than 40pc of German companies have eastern
European connections and this will have repercussions on the rest of the
eurozone also, because they have their own problems and when Germany, which is
one of their main customers, has difficulties, they will also be affected.
"There is now a risk of a
triple-dip recession in some southern European countries, if not a triple-dip
depression."
He warned that
if French policymakers failed to implement the vital supply side reforms needed
to stimulate growth, it could be the final nail in the coffin for the euro. Mr
Sinn said it was vital that France shrank its bloated public sector, which
currently represents 55pc of gross domestic product (GDP), by at least 10
percentage points.
----Mr Sinn, who presents a bleak picture of the 18-nation bloc in his latest book, the Euro trap, suggests countries should adopt a “breathable euro”, where struggling nations could temporarily leave the single currency, write-off some of their debts, devalue, and then re-enter.
"Greece would have done
better had they exited the eurozone in 2010, but not permanently," he
said. "The proposal is that the exit is only temporary and that the
country stays legally part of the eurozone. It devalues its currency, carries
out reforms and returns when it has recovered. I see this status of being outside
the euro as a sort of hospital stage.
More
World on the brink of oil war as Opec bickers over price
Oil prices ended last week in freefall as the world’s largest group of producers from petro-states in the Middle East dithered over whether to cut output
A secretive group of the world’s
most powerful oil ministers will soon gather in Vienna to take arguably one of
the most important decisions that could affect the still fragile world economy:
whether to cut production of crude to defend prices at $100 per barrel, or keep
open the spigots as winter looms among the biggest energy-consuming nations?
A sudden slump in the price of
crude has exposed deep divisions within the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (Opec) ahead of its final scheduled meeting of the year next month to
decide on how much oil to pump.
Some members, led by Iran, have
called for immediate action to stem the drop in oil prices, while the Arab
sheikhdoms of the Gulf have so far argued that it could be another three months
before it becomes clear whether the group should cut production for the first
time since December 2008.
Whatever they decide, oil remains
the lifeblood of the global economic system due to its direct impact on
inflation and input prices. Brent crude – a global benchmark of oil drawn from
15 fields in the North Sea, dipped last week to multi-year lows below $92 per
barrel as a perfect storm of a strong US dollar, oversupply in the system and
declining demand shattered confidence in the market. Brent has tumbled 20pc in
the last three months after touching $115 per barrel in June.
In the US – the world’s biggest
consumer – crude for November delivery at one point last week dropped below the
psychologically important $90 pricing level, raising fears that a prolonged
slump could put many of America’s shale drillers out of business. Shale oil,
which can cost up to $80 per barrel to produce, has spurred an energy
revolution in the US, which has started to threaten the dominance of producers
in the Middle East.
However, at current price levels
many of these new so called “tight oil” wells are approaching the point when
they will soon become unprofitable
More
We close for the day with a hint of the future in
mining, or rather lack of future for much of the world’s diggers. The real
problem lies in fiat currency, central banksters, ZIRP and QE Forever pushing
on a string in the real world, and fuelling asset bubbles for the Great Vampire
Squids. Stay long fully paid up physical gold and silver for the coming
eventual reconnect in money.
There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.
J. K. Galbraith
Robots replace humans in mines as commodity slump forces cost cuts
Major mining firms could have converted around 40pc of their machinery to operate autonomously by the end of the decade
The world’s biggest mining
companies are poised to aggressively slash production costs and introduce more
automation into their most productive pits as slowing demand in China threatens
to force almost a third of the industry out of business.
Experts expect that the major
mining companies could have converted around 40pc of their machinery to operate
autonomously by the end of the decade as high-tech robots and drones replace
humans in a drive to maintain the bottom line and operating profits.
So far, companies like BHP
Billiton and Rio Tinto – the world’s top two iron ore producers – are taking
the lead in introducing drone technologies such as autonomous haulage systems
(AHS) to achieve greater efficiency and higher production.
From nerve centres in Perth,
Western Australia, operators can monitor the next generation of giant trucks
that are being manufactured by Caterpillar and Komatsu. These revolutionary
vehicles require no human control whatsoever, instead finding their way to
giant excavators, which load them up with tonnes of ore and minerals destined
for Chinese factories, using computer telemetry and radar.
Rio – the world’s largest
producer of seaborne iron ore – is already assembling a vast fleet of AHS
trucks in its Australian mines. The company has 53 of these gigantic vehicles
working in its Pilbara mines with plans to almost triple this number in the
near future.
More
Ludwig von Mises
At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 65.59 Moz,
Eligible 116.34 Moz, Total 181.93 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, the reality behind Friday’s “good news” US
employment figures.
We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
September Jobs: Some Numbers Bubblevision Didn’t Mention
by David Stockman • October 3, 2014
The September establishment
survey showed a 248k job gain, but that was the seasonally maladjusted,
preliminarily guesstimated version which will be revised in October and
November, and then re-benchmarked several more times in the coming years.
So let’s take a pass on the enthusiasm with respect to this fleeting monthly
delta and consider a couple of trend points evident in this morning’s
release—-data points which aren’t going to get revised away and which actually
provide some fundamental insight about the actual “employment situation” and
the true condition of the US economy.
My favorite number is right at
the top of the BLS table and it’s 155.9 million. That is
the civilian labor force number for September and it compares to
154.9 million reported for October 2008 way back when the financial crisis
was just erupting. The reason that rather tepid gain of 1 million labor
force participants over the course of six years is important is that during the
same period the working age civilian population (over 16 years) rose from
234.6 million to 248.4 million—-or by 14 million in round terms.
That’s right, the labor
force grew by only 7% of the gain in adult population. That explains, of
course, why the labor force participation rate of 66.0% back at the time of the
crisis has plunged to a 36-year low of 62.7% in September. Or to put it
another way, the employment-to-population ratio of 59.0% last month compared to
just under 62% six years ago and 64.2% in the year 2000.
Needless to say, that huge 500
basis point decline in the true jobs ratio is dramatically more important than
the monthly jobs delta—even if the later did trigger a run-the-stops burst
by the robo traders within seconds of the release. The fact is, the plummeting
rate of employment among the adult population means that the effective
rate of taxation on labor hours worked has risen sharply, and will continue to
do so as the baby boom ages.
So you don’t have to be a
raving supply-sider to realize that a rising tax rate on labor—expressed
as either current taxes or future debt service— as far as the eye can see
is not a formula for the kind of perpetual earnings growth that is being
capitalized by today’s bubblicious stock markets; and that’s especially true
in a world crawling with cheap workers and massive excess production
capacity stimulated by 14 years of financial repression and ultra-cheap
capital by the world’s central banks.
Indeed, the single most important
number in today’s report is 102 million, which is the rounded sum of adults
either not in the labor force or unemployed, and it amounts to
41% of the adult population. Stated differently, that’s the number of adults who
do not contribute to current production and must be supported either by family
breadwinners or the state—-and nowadays especially the latter.
----Among other things, these dismal employment ratio numbers tells you why the Wall Street patter about PE multiples being at or below historical norms is so wrong-headed. The capitalization rate for the American economy should be falling because the dependency burden faced by workers and entrepreneurs is soaring at rates never before witnessed. Going back to September 2000, for example, there were only 76 million adults not in the labor force or unemployed, and that represented just 35.8% of the adult population of 213 million.
This means there has been a 26
million gain in the number of adults not working—-even part-time—during
that 14 year period. About 10 million of that gain is accounted for by retired
workers on social security—-a figure which has risen from 28.5 million to
38.5 million during the interim. But where are the other 16 million?
The answer is on disability (+4.5 million), food stamps (+25 million), survivors
and dependents benefits, other forms of public aid, living in parents’
basements on student loans or not, or on the streets.
More
Of course, our vision and our aims go far beyond the complex arguments of economics, but unless we get the economy right we shall deny our people the opportunity to share that vision and to see beyond the narrow horizons of economic necessity. Without a healthy economy we cannot have a healthy society. Without a healthy society the economy will not stay healthy for long.
Margaret Thatcher.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished September.
DJIA: +141 Down. NASDAQ: +289 Down. SP500: +216 Down.
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