May 04

Today’s News 4th May 2016

  • Declining Production Rates for many of the Top 30 Oil Producing Countries (Video)

    By EconMatters

     

    People don`t realize the magnitude of all the Oil Producing Countries with declining Production Rates, and trending the wrong direction compared with the consistent and steady rise in Global Oil Demand Growth.

    The Oil Market is going to ‘unbalance’ in the opposite direction over the next 12 months, and start heading south fast over the next five years. The US probably needs to increase Oil Production to 12 Million Barrels per day in five years just to keep up with global oil demand, as the US is one of the few countries globally capable of increasing capacity given the resource requirements, political stability, and technological requirements necessary to invest in these capital intensive projects.

    But it is going to take a much higher price for a sustained duration to get the US all the way to 12 Million Barrels per day, as much of the low hanging fruit has already been taken out of the ground so to speak.

    © EconMatters All Rights Reserved | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Email Digest | Kindle   

  • US Futures Tumble After China Devalues Yuan By Most Since August Collapse

    The ‘odd’ regime shift in the relationship between USDJPY and US equities continues overnight. Following some visible-handedness and follow-through momentum, Yen is weakening against the USD – normally a big flashing green sign for risk-on pajama traders but China’s biggest Yuan devaluation in 9 months (since the August turmoil) seems to have stolen the jam out of the bull’s donut as US equity futures extend losses, AsiaPac credit risk jumps, and USD strength is weighing on crude prices.

    China sent another strong message tonight…

     

    Weighing on US equities…

     

    Despite Yen weakness…

     

    As the Correlation regime has shifted in Yen Carry…

     

    It seems the message is loud and clear – Stop with the hawkish tone or else August happens again!!

  • ECB Study says US data 'leaked' to key traders

    Apparently, Europeans need to do ‘studies’ to show that markets are rigged.  See the study here.  In Summary:

    We examine stock index and Treasury futures markets around releases of U.S.
    macroeconomic announcements. Seven out of 21 market-moving announcements
    show evidence of substantial informed trading before the official release time. Prices
    begin to move in the “correct” direction about 30 minutes before the release time.
    The pre-announcement price drift accounts on average for about half of the total
    price adjustment. These results imply that some traders have private information
    about macroeconomic fundamentals. The evidence suggests that the preannouncement
    drift likely comes from a combination of information leakage and
    superior forecasting based on proprietary data collection and reprocessing of public
    information. 

    Readers of Splitting Pennies understand Forex and how central banks control Forex markets, which is a superset of all other markets.  So it’s interesting that a working group at the ECB studies stock & treasury futures markets, to show ‘insider trading’ based on ‘price drift’ – are they setting themselves up for the ultimate proof for manipulating the Euro surrounding key ECB data releases?

    Although their conclusion is probably correct, their methodology is ridiculous.  Their proof that there’s insider trading going on is based on ‘price drift’ which accounts for about 50% of the post-data move.

    The European Central Bank published a working paper — which means it hasn’t been peer reviewed as yet — arguing that seven out of 21 market-moving announcements show evidence of “substantial informed trading” before the official release time.The paper identified seven indicators that they said showed “strong” evidence of pre-announcement drift: The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index; the National Association of Realtors’ existing-home sales report and pending-home sales report; the Commerce Department’s preliminary GDP report; the Federal Reserve’s industrial production report; and the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing and nonmanufacturing index.

    The accused, has a more reasonable answer for ‘price drift’ – it’s because the market expects the numbers to be as expected:

    A spokesman for the National Association of Realtors says they take any allegations seriously. He points out that the existing-home-sales report is released from a secure location, that reporters are instructed not to communicate outside of the room, and that the organization monitors the media to make sure data is not disseminated early. He’s said on occasion media organizations have accidentally released data early, apologized to the group and not done so subsequently.  The spokesman also suggested, however, that traders may be making educated guesses. The pending-home-sales release tracks closely what the existing-home-sales report eventually shows.  A Federal Reserve spokesman declined to comment. Messages left with the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis and The Conference Board weren’t returned.

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  • A Whistleblower Manifesto By Edward Snowden

    Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

    In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

     

    The only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the nation all the time, loyalty to the government when it deserves it.

     

    – Quotes by Mark Twain

    Every time I hear from Edward Snowden I’m immediately reminded of how thoughtful, courageous and patriotic he is, and how fortunate we are that he followed his conscience and spilled the beans on a multitude of unaccountable and unconstitutional actions routinely committed by America’s deep state government.

    Earlier today, The Intercept posted a piece written by Edward Snowden pulled from the recently published book Inside the Assassination Complex. It’s a short piece, but extremely powerful and to the point. I saw it as a whistleblower’s manifesto in which Mr. Snowden explains why he felt he had no other choice but to come forward, and why others in similar positions should consider doing the same should they find themselves in a position to defend the U.S. Constitution and inform the general public. We all know that the deep state will never voluntarily work to protect “we the people,” as such, leaking on behalf of the public interest is now a matter of national survival.

    So without further ado, here are excerpts from Snowden’s latest piece, Whistleblowing is Not Just Leaking — It’s an Act of Political Resistance:

    I’ve been waiting 40 years for someone like you.” Those were the first words Daniel Ellsberg spoke to me when we met last year. Dan and I felt an immediate kinship; we both knew what it meant to risk so much — and to be irrevocably changed — by revealing secret truths.

     

    One of the challenges of being a whistleblower is living with the knowledge that people continue to sit, just as you did, at those desks, in that unit, throughout the agency, who see what you saw and comply in silence, without resistance or complaint. They learn to live not just with untruths but with unnecessary untruths, dangerous untruths, corrosive untruths. It is a double tragedy: What begins as a survival strategy ends with the compromise of the human being it sought to preserve and the diminishing of the democracy meant to justify the sacrifice.

     

    A single act of whistleblowing doesn’t change the reality that there are significant portions of the government that operate below the waterline, beneath the visibility of the public. Those secret activities will continue, despite reforms. But those who perform these actions now have to live with the fear that if they engage in activities contrary to the spirit of society — if even a single citizen is catalyzed to halt the machinery of that injustice — they might still be held to account. The thread by which good governance hangs is this equality before the law, for the only fear of the man who turns the gears is that he may find himself upon them.

     

    Hope lies beyond, when we move from extraordinary acts of revelation to a collective culture of accountability within the intelligence community. Here we will have taken a meaningful step toward solving a problem that has existed for as long as our government.

     

    Not all leaks are alike, nor are their makers. Gen. David Petraeus, for instance, provided his illicit lover and favorable biographer information so secret it defied classification, including the names of covert operatives and the president’s private thoughts on matters of strategic concern. Petraeus was not charged with a felony, as the Justice Department had initially recommended, but was instead permitted to plead guilty to a misdemeanor. Had an enlisted soldier of modest rank pulled out a stack of highly classified notebooks and handed them to his girlfriend to secure so much as a smile, he’d be looking at many decades in prison, not a pile of character references from a Who’s Who of the Deep State.

    In the above paragraph, Snowden highlights the most corrosive aspect of modern American society, the institutionalization of a barbaric and un-American two-tierd justice system. For more on the Petraeus angle referenced, see: Some Leaks Are More Equal Than Others – Hypocritical D.C. Insiders Line up to Defend General Petraeus from Prosecution.

    Now back to Snowden.

    This dynamic can be seen quite clearly in the al Qaeda “conference call of doom” story, in which intelligence officials, likely seeking to inflate the threat of terrorism and deflect criticism of mass surveillance, revealed to a neoconservative website extraordinarily detailed accounts of specific communications they had intercepted, including locations of the participating parties and the precise contents of the discussions. If the officials’ claims were to be believed, they irrevocably burned an extraordinary means of learning the precise plans and intentions of terrorist leadership for the sake of a short-lived political advantage in a news cycle. Not a single person seems to have been so much as disciplined as a result of the story that cost us the ability to listen to the alleged al Qaeda hotline.

     

    If harmfulness and authorization make no difference, what explains the distinction between the permissible and the impermissible disclosure?

     

    The answer is control. A leak is acceptable if it’s not seen as a threat, as a challenge to the prerogatives of the institution. But if all of the disparate components of the institution — not just its head but its hands and feet, every part of its body — must be assumed to have the same power to discuss matters of concern, that is an existential threat to the modern political monopoly of information control, particularly if we’re talking about disclosures of serious wrongdoing, fraudulent activity, unlawful activities. If you can’t guarantee that you alone can exploit the flow of controlled information, then the aggregation of all the world’s unmentionables — including your own — begins to look more like a liability than an asset.

     

    At the other end of the spectrum is Manning, a junior enlisted soldier, who was much nearer to the bottom of the hierarchy. I was midway in the professional career path. I sat down at the table with the chief information officer of the CIA, and I was briefing him and his chief technology officer when they were publicly making statements like “We try to collect everything and hang on to it forever,” and everybody still thought that was a cute business slogan. Meanwhile I was designing the systems they would use to do precisely that. I wasn’t briefing the policy side, the secretary of defense, but I was briefing the operations side, the National Security Agency’s director of technology. Official wrongdoing can catalyze all levels of insiders to reveal information, even at great risk to themselves, so long as they can be convinced that it is necessary to do so.

     

    Reaching those individuals, helping them realize that their first allegiance as a public servant is to the public rather than to the government, is the challenge. That’s a significant shift in cultural thinking for a government worker today.

     

    At the heart of this evolution is that whistleblowing is a radicalizing event — and by “radical” I don’t mean “extreme”; I mean it in the traditional sense of radix, the root of the issue. At some point you recognize that you can’t just move a few letters around on a page and hope for the best. You can’t simply report this problem to your supervisor, as I tried to do, because inevitably supervisors get nervous. They think about the structural risk to their career. They’re concerned about rocking the boat and “getting a reputation.” The incentives aren’t there to produce meaningful reform. Fundamentally, in an open society, change has to flow from the bottom to the top.

     

    And when you’re confronted with evidence — not in an edge case, not in a peculiarity, but as a core consequence of the program — that the government is subverting the Constitution and violating the ideals you so fervently believe in, you have to make a decision. When you see that the program or policy is inconsistent with the oaths and obligations that you’ve sworn to your society and yourself, then that oath and that obligation cannot be reconciled with the program. To which do you owe a greater loyalty?

     

    As a result we have arrived at this unmatched capability, unrestrained by policy. We have become reliant upon what was intended to be the limitation of last resort: the courts. Judges, realizing that their decisions are suddenly charged with much greater political importance and impact than was originally intended, have gone to great lengths in the post-9/11 period to avoid reviewing the laws or the operations of the executive in the national security context and setting restrictive precedents that, even if entirely proper, would impose limits on government for decades or more. That means the most powerful institution that humanity has ever witnessed has also become the least restrained. Yet that same institution was never designed to operate in such a manner, having instead been explicitly founded on the principle of checks and balances. Our founding impulse was to say, “Though we are mighty, we are voluntarily restrained.”

    For more on the judicial system as the “limitation of last resort,” see: Can You Say ‘Rubber Stamp?’ FBI and NSA Requests Never Denied by Secret Court.

    When you first go on duty at CIA headquarters, you raise your hand and swear an oath — not to government, not to the agency, not to secrecy. You swear an oath to the Constitution. So there’s this friction, this emerging contest between the obligations and values that the government asks you to uphold, and the actual activities that you’re asked to participate in.

     

    By preying on the modern necessity to stay connected, governments can reduce our dignity to something like that of tagged animals, the primary difference being that we paid for the tags and they’re in our pockets. It sounds like fantasist paranoia, but on the technical level it’s so trivial to implement that I cannot imagine a future in which it won’t be attempted. It will be limited to the war zones at first, in accordance with our customs, but surveillance technology has a tendency to follow us home.

     

    Unrestrained power may be many things, but it’s not American. It is in this sense that the act of whistleblowing increasingly has become an act of political resistance. The whistleblower raises the alarm and lifts the lamp, inheriting the legacy of a line of Americans that begins with Paul Revere.

     

    The individuals who make these disclosures feel so strongly about what they have seen that they’re willing to risk their lives and their freedom. They know that we, the people, are ultimately the strongest and most reliable check on the power of government. The insiders at the highest levels of government have extraordinary capability, extraordinary resources, tremendous access to influence, and a monopoly on violence, but in the final calculus there is but one figure that matters: the individual citizen.

     

    And there are more of us than there are of them.

    Amen and perfectly said. We can only hope a handful of government employees and contractors with a conscience and a real dedication to the U.S. Constitution will read this and act accordingly.

  • Mapping The Most Dangerous Places To Live In The World

    Based on the world risk index, which takes into account not only the frequency of natural disasters in each country (known as exposure) but also how well equipped the country is to cope with and recover from the effects of a disaster, The Guardian reports Vanuatu is the riskiest country to live in, with natural disasters on average affecting more than a third of the population each year. If you want to be safe from natural disasters, move to Qatar (the lowest disaster risk country in the world)…

     

    Source: The Guardian

    More than one-third of Vanuatu’s population at risk every year

     As a small Pacific island nation with a population of only 260,000 people, a disaster risk of 36.72% places almost 95,000 people at risk from natural disasters each year.

    In 2015 Vanuatu was hit by an earthquake, volcanic eruption and Cyclone Pam in the space of a few weeks, but it’s not just the frequency of disasters that causes problems for the tiny nation. Unlike in larger countries such as the Philippines, a single storm can cause widespread destruction, including in the capital, Port Vila, meaning relief efforts have to be spread across the entire country. Cyclone Pam left 75,000 people in need of emergency shelter and destroyed 96% of food crops.

    If you want to be safe from natural disasters, move to Qatar

     With no reported disasters in EM-DAT, a database of more than 11,000 disasters since 1900, Qatar has the lowest disaster risk of any country, at only 0.08%. It enjoys this status mostly because of its location away from the disaster hotspots in Oceania, south-east Asia and Central America.

    North America and Europe generally rank as significantly low on the list. The United States had a risk level of 3.87% while Canada had a level of 3.14%.

    *  *  *

    Of course – these are just the 'natural' disasters… this does not account for the potential for policy-maker-created catastrophe.

  • Ron Paul: "Our Economic System Is Designed To Fail"

    Submitted Op-Ed via RT.com,

    The current economic system is designed to fail, but so was socialism. That’s according to former GOP Congressman Ron Paul, who told RT’s Boom Bust show that we need to go toward a system of property ownership, voluntary contracts and individual liberty, while getting rid of central banks.

    Ron Paul begins at 14:35…

    A new Harvard University poll shows that 51 per cent of young adults aged 18-29 oppose capitalism in its current form.

    RT: Do you think this poll is just politics, or do you agree that there is something wrong with the US economic system as it operates today?

    Ron Paul: I think the problem is all in semantics. When they say they oppose today’s capitalism, I oppose today’s so-called capitalism. I don’t even like the world “capitalism,” I like “free markets.” But if you say “free markets” and “capitalism” together, we don’t have that. We have interventionism. We have a planned economy, we have a welfare state, we have inflationism, we have central economic planning  by a central bank, we have a belief in deficit financing. It is so far removed from free-market capitalism that it’s foolish for people to label it free market and capitalize on this and say: “We know it’s so bad. What we need is socialism.” That is a problem.

    That is a problem in definitions and understanding of what kind of policies we have. I am a champion of free markets, but not of the current system that we have today. I am highly critical of it, because it is designed to fail. It is designed to reward the rich; it is designed inevitably to destroy the middle class, and also to finance some of the worst things in government: all the deficits with the welfare state and for the warfare state. So yes, it’s failing. People should reject what we have, but they shouldn’t reject liberty and freedom and sound economic policies, because that is not the problem. The problem is we don’t have enough free markets.

    RT: In the same poll it is said that Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, has been the most popular candidate for America’s 18-29 year olds. Despite the fact that he is now losing steam, as we’ve seen on the campaign trail, what does it really say to you about what’s driving this voting pattern?

    RP: He’s tapped into something, something that I’ve talked about for years and tapped into when I was a candidate. And that is to describe the frustrations, the evil, and the nonsense of what we have. The problem with Bernie and myself is that he sees it quite differently. He thinks that it’s too much freedom and too much capitalism. And I see it as too much government; it’s too much of interventionist planned economy, which leans itself to fascism. But the young people might not understand the economics and what free markets are really all about, and they don’t understand central banking. And Bernie doesn’t understand that we have to get rid of central planning – from the Central Bank – if we want to help these people.

    The current economic system is designed to fail, but so was socialism. What we need to go toward is property ownership, voluntary contracts and individual liberty in getting rid of the central bank.

    But yes, I am not a bit surprised – it is a good sign that they are upset and they ought to be. What I have in mind is to show them the difference between what we have and what we should have. And believe me, it is not going toward this ancient tradition of government and socialism. We’ve tested socialism. Socialism has been a complete failure. That is what the 20th century was all about, whether it was a fascist system in Germany, or the Soviet system of communism – this all has been a failure. So you don’t want to go toward socialism, you have to go toward property ownership, volunteer contracts and individual liberty in getting rid of the central bank. Then you might talk about a real alternative. But the young people have a justification; they are justified in detesting what we have, because it has served the rich and has really hurt the poor and the middle class.

    RT: Some would argue that the data does signal a generational shift is under way here, in which more young people are receptive to bigger government, rather than smaller government right now. And the issues that young people care at this moment are low wages, jobs, student debt, income inequality, etc. You would probably argue that libertarianism can still best tackle those problems. How so?

    RP: I don’t think the young people would. They might be sucked into believing that the government can give them a temporary benefit by raising a wage, but they just need a better understanding. But they are not for the big government when it comes to their personal liberties, their sexual habits, the civil liberties that they like. They like their privacy. So I don’t think they are looking for bigger government. The young people that I talked to – they are not looking for a bigger government and more militarism; they are not championing the person that wants to spend a lot more money on military and rebuild the military – that’s all big government. 

    But yes, they are tempted because of this lack of understanding to go along with bigger government, when it comes to trying to have a better economic system. This is a result of a hundred years of teaching our young people that government is necessary to redistribute wealth. And they do – they redistribute wealth –  the more they try, the more the wealthy get wealthier. It redistributes it upward, and it ruins the middle class. That is what they have to understand. But they’re onto something and they should be justified in looking at this. But, as a group of people, the millennials are not looking for more government. Only in that economic sphere are they tempted to look at this. There are many others who declare themselves libertarians. They want less government in their lives and they want more privacy and they want [fewer] wars.

    RT: When you ran for president four years ago, you had a message that resonated with young people. Your comments that fixing the economy should start with fixing foreign policy were very popular. Do those voters still exist and where did they go?

    RP: I think a lot of them are sitting on their hands and rightfully so. How could they pick somebody that would champion those same views? But some who are just loosely connected, not well-informed and get led into believing that we have to have a super military force to rule the world, and police the world, and be occupying these countries – yes, they get tempted to go along with this. But the true believer in a free society – they are not champing at the bit to champion the cause of any of these candidates right now…

    RT: Some of those voters might have gone over to Donald Trump. He is the frontrunner on the GOP side. The economy is still the most important issue for voters, and he has been most vocal about amending NAFTA, reducing taxes, building a wall between the US and Mexico, and so on. What is it really do you think at the end of the day? What is so appealing here to his voters?

    RP: He has a personality, he has a megaphone, and he is getting the attention, and you don’t have anybody in particular out there talking about the real economic issues. But he is regressive… he is falling backward. He is going to the dark ages of thinking that he can go into mercantilism, protect natural resources, put on tariffs, and just bash and blame everybody else: The Mexicans, the Chinese. That is going to be devastating to the economy – it has nothing to do with freedom. It has to do with the opposite – it is an exaggeration of economic planning that we already have. So he is going in the wrong direction, just as Bernie is, even if they are both tapping into the disenchantment that… a lot of people have with what is happening.

  • EliminaTED: Cruz Drops Out Of Presidential Race, Leaving Trump Republican Presidential Candidate

     

     

    As Politico reports,

    Ted Cruz is quitting the presidential race, according to campaign manager Jeff Roe, ending one of the best-organized campaigns of 2016 after a series of stinging defeats left Donald Trump as the only candidate capable of clinching the nomination outright.

     

    Cruz had appeared likely to go all the way to the Republican convention, but a string of massive losses in the Northeast, and his subsequent defeat in Indiana, appear to have convinced him there’s no way forward.

    His wife bore thr brunt of his frustration…

    And of course, Kasich is sticking with it…

    John Kasich, however, pledged on Tuesday night to stay in the race until a candidate reaches 1,237 bound delegates.

    And finally…

    Most importantly, with Cruz's withdrawal from the race, this means that barring something completely unexpected, the Republican party's presidential candidate is now Donald Trump.

     

    And it's official…

    But, but, but…

    h.t @tinderboxcap

  • ReaDY FoR SoDoMY…

    READY FOR SODOMY

  • The Hire That Could Be The Difference Between A Fed Rate Hike And BoJ Helicopter Money

    Back in March, Japan's Global Pension Investment Fund appointed Norihiro Takahashi as its new president. Few paid much attention to it, but it may very well end up being one of the most significant events that occurred as we look back in twelve to eighteen months.

    The GPIF manages roughly $1.2 trillion in assets, with over 60% currently allocated domestically between equity and fixed income. Given the state of the stock market and the negative interest rate policy in Japan, it would make sense that an incoming president would take a hard look at the current asset mix policy and adjust it to best suit the needs of its members, something outgoing president Takahiro Mitani has been vocal about in recent years.

    Recall that back in 2014 under pressure from Prime Minister Abe to move the fund into riskier assets, Mr. Mitani reluctantly rebalanced its portfolio away from domestic bonds, and into domestic equities, something that clearly did not make him happy. "Our sole objective is not to invest so that the Japanese economy will be better; our job is to invest with the people's money in a safe and efficient manner so we can protect and manage their funds" the Financial Times quoted him as saying.

    The policy asset mix change was dramatic, slashing target domestic bond allocation from 60% to 35%, and increasing target domestic stock allocation from 12% to 25%. Also not to be lost in that policy change is the fact that the target allocation to international stocks increased from 12% to 25%.

     

    Today, the policy remains intact, with actual allocation percentages within the permissible range.

    Which brings us to performance. The fund returned $42 billion in the three months ending December 2015, but in looking at the current state of the Japanese economy with future returns in mind, one would see where it is reasonable to assume that incoming president Takahashi would take a hard look at the current policy asset mix, and perhaps propose a rebalance away from domestic assets and into international – presumably U.S. bonds and equities.

    As a result of NIRP, JGB's are now seeing negative yields prevail throughout the entire front end of the curve, and the long end at best will produce perhaps just under 50bps, and that's if the BoJ doesn't continue to push those into negative territory.

     

    From the equity side of things, despite the BoJ's best efforts to push stocks up with their ETF purchases, the Nikkei is down double digits, with no real catalyst for improvement in sight.

    If outgoing president Mitani had any words of advice to Mr. Takahashi, they were probably along the lines of making sure he does what's right for those pensioners the fund represents, and given the status of the asset classes above, what's right may very well mean another rebalance into international fixed income and equities (presumably U.S. given that nearly everyone else is enacting NIRP at the moment as well). If a move as drastic as the 2014 rebalance is seen during the first 12-18 months of Mr. Takahashi's tenure, it could mean hundreds of billions transferred into international assets, and out of Japan. This could have a significant impact on the investment landscape for everyone involved.

    At the end of the day, the GPIF's hire could either make it easier for the Federal Reserve to hike rates (as the market is bid with the rebalanced funds), or it could trigger the use of helicopter money in Japan at the very hint of such a rebalance, something that Kuroda of course says the BoJ "isn't thinking about at all."

    Time will tell the answer to this, but one thing is certain, the hire made by the GPIF in March of 2016 could certainly prove to be pivotal.

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