- Falling Yield, Rising Asset
by Keith Weiner
Our monetary system is failing, but explaining that isn’t easy. The most popular argument is that the dollar has falling purchasing power and rising inflation. The problem with this argument is that consumer prices aren’t skyrocketing now. So, of course, people remain skeptical.
Meanwhile, yields across all markets are falling worldwide. This causes the income generated from assets to fall. I wrote about this serious problem last time, introducing the concept of yield purchasing power—which is how much you can buy with the interest on your savings.
Today, there is little to no interest, which forces retirees to spend down their principal. This is no accident. It’s the vision of economist John Maynard Keynes. Nearly 80 years ago, he called for the “euthanasia of the rentier,”—his pejorative term for retirees and others on fixed income. Today Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen calls herself a New Keynesian.
To picture the plight of the retiree living on fixed income, let’s use the example of a poor farmer. Every year, his harvest shrinks. With a smaller and smaller crop, it’s harder and harder to live. So he commits the sin of eating some of his seed corn. Smaller plantings only accelerate the decline in his crops.
Our paper currency causes falling productivity, though not in terms of bushels per acre. What falls is productivity per dollar or euro of savings. This is the real meaning of the falling interest rate. When the rate was 10 percent, $1,000 of principal produced $100 of return. When it falls to two percent, then the same capital generates a return of only $20. Now with the Swiss 10-year bond, CHF 1,000 earns only CHF 1.3.
Every farmer understands a falling crop yield. However, few investors see the problem with a falling interest rate. Let’s use another farm example to help clarify. A dealer wants to buy the farmer’s tractor. He offers $10,000 for
it. The farmer says no. Next week, he increases his offer to $11,000. Still no. The dealer keeps coming back with higher offers, until the farmer finally accepts $50,000. He can live for a year on that. Unfortunately, he’s given up
his most important tool. Now he’s not consuming his seed corn, but his capital stock. Next year’s harvest will be even more meager.
Falling interest forces you to spend your principal, because it starves you of return. At the same time it feels rather pleasant, because you can sell your assets at higher and higher prices. Everyone loves a bull market, because they’re all making money. Alas, the process of relentlessly higher asset prices is totally corrupt. Let’s drill down into this, because it’s the key to understanding why our system is failing.
Normally, to make money you must first produce something. This means either working, or else putting your capital to work. Our monetary system now breaks this economic law. Falling yields and rising assets seemingly offer you a profit for doing nothing. You are not putting your capital to work, using your tractor to plant a food crop. You are consuming it, selling the tractor to pay for food. It’s not a real profit. A society cannot live by consuming previously-accumulated capital. Consumption without production is unsustainable.
This is how our money is being devalued, debased, debauched, and destroyed. Money was once a tool to help people coordinate their production and trade. Now, it has devolved into a lever to deprive retirees of the return on their life savings.
Forget about consumer prices. The problem is much more serious than that. We’re destroying the productivity of capital, and rewarding instead its consumption.
This article is from Keith Weiner’s weekly column, called The Gold Standard, at the Swiss National Bank and Swiss Franc Blog SNBCHF.com.
- Guest Post: Why Syriza Will Blink
Authored by Anatole Kaletsy, originally posted at Project Syndicate,
Once again, Greece seems to have slipped the financial noose. By drawing on its holdings in an International Monetary Fund reserve account, it was able to repay €750 million ($851 million) – ironically to the IMF itself – just as the payment was falling due.
This brinkmanship is no accident. Since coming to power in January, the Greek government, led by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza party, has believed that the threat of default – and thus of a financial crisis that might break up the euro – provides negotiating leverage to offset Greece’s lack of economic and political power. Months later, Tsipras and his finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, an academic expert in game theory, still seem committed to this view, despite the lack of any evidence to support it.
But their calculation is based on a false premise. Tsipras and Varoufakis assume that a default would force Europe to choose between just two alternatives: expel Greece from the eurozone or offer it unconditional debt relief. But the European authorities have a third option in the event of a Greek default. Instead of forcing a “Grexit,” the EU could trap Greece inside the eurozone and starve it of money, then simply sit back and watch the Tsipras government’s domestic political support collapse.
Such a siege strategy – waiting for Greece to run out of the money it needs to maintain the normal functions of government – now looks like the EU’s most promising technique to break Greek resistance. It is likely to work because the Greek government finds it increasingly difficult to scrape together enough money to pay wages and pensions at the end of each month.
To do so, Varoufakis has been resorting to increasingly desperate measures, such as seizing the cash in municipal and hospital bank accounts. The implication is that tax collections have been so badly hit by the economic chaos since January’s election that government revenues are no longer sufficient to cover day-to-day costs. If this is true – nobody can say for sure because of the unreliability of Greek financial statistics (another of the EU authorities’ complaints) – the Greek government’s negotiating strategy is doomed.
The Tsipras-Varoufakis strategy assumed that Greece could credibly threaten to default, because the government, if forced to follow through, would still have more than enough money to pay for wages, pensions, and public services. That was a reasonable assumption back in January. The government had budgeted for a large primary surplus (which excludes interest payments), which was projected at 4% of GDP.
If Greece had defaulted in January, this primary surplus could (in theory) have been redirected from interest payments to finance the higher wages, pensions, and public spending that Syriza had promised in its election campaign. Given this possibility, Varoufakis may have believed that he was making other EU finance ministers a generous offer by proposing to cut the primary surplus from 4% to 1% of GDP, rather than all the way to zero. If the EU refused, his implied threat was simply to stop paying interest and make the entire primary surplus available for extra public spending.
But what if the primary surplus – the Greek government’s trump card in its confrontational negotiating strategy – has now disappeared? In that case, the threat of default is no longer credible. With the primary surplus gone, a default would no longer permit Tsipras to fulfill Syriza’s campaign promises; on the contrary, it would imply even bigger cutbacks in wages, pensions, and public spending than the “troika” – the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the IMF – is now demanding.
For the EU authorities, by contrast, a Greek default would now be much less problematic than previously assumed. They no longer need to deter a default by threatening Greece with expulsion from the euro. Instead, the EU can now rely on the Greek government itself to punish its people by failing to pay wages and pensions and honor bank guarantees.
Tsipras and Varoufakis should have seen this coming, because the same thing happened two years ago, when Cyprus, in the throes of a banking crisis, attempted to defy the EU. The Cyprus experience suggests that, with the credibility of the government’s default threat in tatters, the EU is likely to force Greece to stay in the euro and put it through an American-style municipal bankruptcy, like that of Detroit.
The legal and political mechanisms for treating Greece like a municipal bankruptcy are clear. The European treaties state unequivocally that euro membership is irreversible unless a country decides to exit not just from the single currency but from the entire EU. That is also the political message that EU governments want to instill in their own citizens and financial investors.
If Greece defaults, the EU will be legally justified and politically motivated to insist that the euro remains its only legal tender. Even if the Greek government decides to pay wages and pensions by printing its own IOUs or “new drachmas,” the European Court of Justice will rule that all domestic debts and bank deposits must be repaid in euros. That, in turn, will force a default against Greek citizens, as well as foreign creditors, because the government will be unable to honor the euro value of insured deposits in Greek banks.
So a Greek default within the euro, far from allowing Syriza to honor its election promises, would inflict even greater austerity on Greek voters than they endured under the troika program. At that point, the government’s collapse would become inevitable. Instead of Greece exiting the eurozone, Syriza would exit the Greek government. As soon as Tsipras realizes that the rules of the game between Greece and Europe have changed, his capitulation will be just a matter of time.
- Peak Population Growth?
The total number of living humans on Earth is now greater than 7 billion. As Max Roser notes, this large world population size is only a very recent development, as around just 200 years ago the world population was less than 1 billion.
Since the 18th century, Roser continues, the world population has seen a rapid increase; between 1900 and 2000 the increase in world population was three times as great as the increase during the entire previous history of humankind – in just 100 years the world population increased from 1.5 to 6.1 billion. But, Roser concludes, this development is now coming to an end, and we will not experience a similarly rapid increase in population growth over the course of this century…
World history can be divided into three periods of distinct trends in population growth.
The first period (pre-modernity) was a very long age of very slow population growth.
The second period, beginning with the onset of modernity (with rising standards of living and improving health) and lasting until 1962, had an increasing rate of growth.
Now that period is over, and the third part of the story has begun: the population growth rate is falling and will continue to fall, leading to an end of growth before the end of this century.
While The United Nations (UN) sees world population continuing to rise until 2100, some, such as Deutsche's Sanjeev Sanyal, believe world population will peak at 8.7 billion people in 2055 and then decline to 8 billion by 2100… As Sanyal wrote previously, misrepresent underlying demographic dynamics – the future we face is not one of too much population growth, but too little.
According to the United Nations’ Population Division, the world’s human population hit seven billion on October 31. As always happens whenever we approach such a milestone, this one has produced a spike in conferences, seminars, and learned articles, including the usual dire Malthusian predictions. After all, the UN forecasts that world population will rise to 9.3 billion in 2050 and surpass 10 billion by the end of this century.
Such forecasts, however, misrepresent underlying demographic dynamics. The future we face is not one of too much population growth, but too little.
Most countries conducted their national population census last year, and the data suggest that fertility rates are plunging in most of them. Birth rates have been low in developed countries for some time, but now they are falling rapidly in the majority of developing countries. Chinese, Russians, and Brazilians are no longer replacing themselves, while Indians are having far fewer children. Indeed, global fertility will fall to the replacement rate in a little more than a decade. Population may keep growing until mid-century, owing to rising longevity, but, reproductively speaking, our species should no longer be expanding.
What demographers call the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is the average number of live births per woman over her lifetime. In the long run, a population is said to be stable if the TFR is at the replacement rate, which is a little above 2.3 for the world as a whole, and somewhat lower, at 2.1, for developed countries, reflecting their lower infant-mortality rates.
The TFR for most developed countries now stands well below replacement levels. The OECD average is at around 1.74, but some countries, including Germany and Japan, produce less than 1.4 children per woman. However, the biggest TFR declines in recent years have been in developing countries. The TFR in China and India was 6.1 and 5.9, respectively, in 1950. It now stands at 1.8 in China, owing to the authorities’ aggressive one-child policy, while rapid urbanization and changing social attitudes have brought down India’s TFR to 2.6.
An additional factor could depress future birth rates in China and India. The Chinese census suggests that there are 118.6 boys being born for every 100 girls. Similarly, India has a gender ratio at birth of around 110 boys for every 100 girls, with large regional variations. Compare this to the natural ratio of 105 boys per 100 girls. The deviation is usually attributed to a cultural preference for boys, which will take an additional toll on both populations, as the future scarcity of women implies that both countries’ effective reproductive capacity is below what is suggested by the unadjusted TFR.
Indeed, after adjusting for the gender imbalance, China’s Effective Fertility Rate (EFR) is around 1.5, and India’s is 2.45. In other words, the Chinese are very far from replacing themselves, and the Indians are only slightly above the replacement rate. The EFR stands at around 2.4 for the world as a whole, barely above the replacement rate. Current trends suggest that the human race will no longer be replacing itself by the early 2020’s. Population growth after this will be mostly caused by people living longer, a factor that will diminish in significance from mid-century.
These shifts have important implications for global labor supply. China is aging very rapidly, and its working-age population will begin to shrink within a few years. Relaxing the one-child policy might have some positive impact in the very long run, but China is already past the tipping point, pushed there by the combined effect of gender imbalance and a very skewed age structure.
The number of women of child-bearing age (15-49 years) in China will drop 8% between 2010 and 2020, another 10% in the 2020’s and, if not corrected, at an even faster pace thereafter. Thus, China will have to withdraw an increasing proportion of its female workforce and deploy it for reproduction and childcare. Even if China can engineer this, it implies an immediate outflow from the workforce, with the benefits lagging by 25 years.
Meanwhile, the labor force has peaked or is close to peaking in most major economies. Germany, Japan, and Russia already have declining workforces. The United States is one of a handful of advanced countries with a growing workforce, owing to its relative openness to immigration. But this may change as the source countries become richer and undergo rapid declines in birth rates. Thus, many developed countries will have to consider how to keep people working productively well into their seventies.
India, the only large economy whose workforce will grow in sufficient scale over the next three decades, may partly balance the declines expected in other major economies. But, with birth rates declining there, too, current trends suggest that its population will probably stabilize at 1.55 billion in the early 2050’s, a full decade ahead of – and 170 million people below – the UN’s forecast.
Given this, it is likely that world population will peak at nine billion in the 2050’s, a half-century sooner than generally anticipated, followed by a sharp decline. One could argue that this is a good thing, in view of the planet’s limited carrying capacity. But, when demographic dynamics turn, the world will have to confront a different set of problems.
* * *
"The world is approaching a major turning point in its demographic trajectory and we think that the shift is likely to be sooner and sharper than mainstream projections suggest,"
Just remember, it took Japan a very long time to realize the decline in fertility was not 'transitory'…
- Dan Ariely: Why The Next Market Downturn May Quickly Become A Full-Blown Panic
Submitted by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,
Behavioral economist and author of Predictably Irrational Dan Ariely returns to explain the science underlying the continued mismanagement and mal-investment within our financial system, despite 7 years of opportunity to learn from and address the causal factors of the Great Recession.
Behavioral science shows we are our own worst enemies in this story. In a realm where everything is so quantifiable, measurable and trackable, one would expect exceptionally good decision-making. But it's our human wiring, our proclivity for seeing things as we want them to be rather than as they truly are, that makes us vulnerable to influences we often aren't even conscious of. And the bad decisions — and bad outcomes — ensue:
For me, as somebody interested in human behavior, there are two elements that worry me a lot. The first one is Conflicts of interest.
Conflicts of interest is one of those things that get to us without us realizing how powerful it is. Imagine that you invite me to dinner, and you buy me a beer and a sandwich and we talk more and we become friends. To what degree am I going to be able to see the world in an objective way without taking your perspective into account? It turns out conflicts of interest are wonderful because they allow us to create friendship really quite quickly. You can buy someone a beer and a sandwich and they become your friend to some degree. Once you marry this with a complex system like the financial system, all of a sudden some not-so-good things can happen.
I think we really haven't done much to address conflicts of interest in our financial system — there are lots of places where people get paid in all kinds of ways that have conflicts of interest. There are companies that have divisions within them that create tremendous conflicts of interest. And human nature doesn't help. What happens is that you look at yourself and you ask: Do I have conflicts of interest? You say: No. Of course, not. I evaluate everything objectively; therefore, we don't need regulation. But I think we do, and actually to a much higher degree.
The second element that bothers me about which we have done to little is Trust. There are people who are active in the financial system and they understand it better. And there are people who are not. The people who are not have experienced this tremendous devastation. Many people lost lots of money, especially people close to retirement. Many people pulled out their money and basically have lost trust. Now the question is: Under what conditions will people regain this lost trust? This is extremely important for the financial system's long-term viability. If you think about the financial system as a way to accumulate wealth and be able to retire securely and so on, I think we've lost some of the capacity of that system to serve that function, because people are just not trusting anything.
Imagine if we have another beginning of a catastrophe happening, not something as big as we had, but something smaller. Is people's sensitivity right now is going to be so high that they're going to panic very quickly? I think the answer is: Yes. So we haven't done much to eliminate conflicts of interest, and we haven't done anything to earn back trust. And because of that, I deeply worry.
Click the play button below to listen to Chris' interview with Dan Ariely (41m:53s)
- Chinese Firm Reveals World's First 3D-Printed Five Story Apartment Building
While China’s stock market continues levitating at an ever more amusing pace, this is happening at the expense of China’s far more important housing market, which sadly for three-quarters of China’s population (in the US 75% of household assets are in financial products, in China: in real estate) continues to deflate at a rate faster than US housing in the aftermath of Lehman. And for better or worse, Chinese home prices are likely set to drop even more, and not due to something as arcane as glitches in fiscal or monetary policy, but something far more tangible: technological advances, and specifically – 3D printed houses.
Meet WinSun: the Chinese company has been documented to print 10 complete houses in 24 hours, using a proprietary 3D printer that uses a mixture of ground construction and industrial waste, such as glass and tailings, around a base of quick-drying cement mixed with a special hardening agent. But while this in itself is impressive, the punchline is the cost: the houses can be produced for under $5,000, which means that if adopted widely, 3D printing can lead to a collapse in prices of new home construction across China, which while good for new buyers could be catastrophic for the economy and the banking sector where nearly $30 trillion in commercial loans are collateralized almost entirely by China’s overinflated housing sector.
Not content with building single-family houses (and WinSun’s own office), WinSun recently made history when it demonstrated the world’s first entirely 3D-printed five-story apartment building and a 1,100 square metre (11,840 square foot) villa, complete with decorative elements inside and out, on display at Suzhou Industrial Park.
According to CNET, while the company hasn’t revealed how large it can print pieces, based on photographs on its website, they are quite sizeable and ornate. A CAD design is used as a template, and the computer uses this to control the extruder arm to lay down the material “much like how a baker might ice a cake,” WinSun said. The walls are printed hollow, with a zig-zagging pattern inside to provide reinforcement. This also leaves space for insulation.
This process saves between 30 and 60 percent of construction waste, and can decrease production times by between 50 and 70 percent, and labour costs by between 50 and 80 percent. In all, the villa costs around $161,000 to build.
And, using recycled materials in this way, the buildings decrease the need for quarried stone and other materials — resulting in a construction method that is both environmentally forward and cost effective.
WinSun hopes to use its technology on much larger scale constructions, such as bridges and even skyscrapers, which means this is just the beginning of not only conveyer houses, but of massive price deflation across China’s housing market, which judging by the relentless plunge in Chinese inflation and the hard landing the local economy has found itself in, may have come at the worst possible time.
In conclusion, one can only hope that WinSun “Quality Control” checklist is a little broader than some of its Chinese peers whose rush to the finish, often times leads to unfortunate consequences.
h/t Keith
- How China Covered The World In "Liquidity Swap Lines"
As we’ve discussed on a number of occasions and at great length, the market is periodically hit by systemic dollar shortages. For instance, in 2007 European commercial banks found themselves staring down a dollar funding gap on the order of several trillion (all in). Meeting USD funding requirements became immeasurably more difficult as the crisis intensified, necessitating what amounted to a Fed bailout via dollar liquidity lines to foreign central banks.
Then, in November of 2011 (so right around the time when, just like today, the financial world was glued to Greece), the Fed extended its “temporary” swap lines with The Bank of Canada, the BoJ, the BoE, the ECB, and the SNB, and also lowered the price of dollar liquidity.
The most recent global USD funding shortage began to show up earlier this year and as we noted in March, has been ironically created by central banks themselves (for those interested in a detailed account of the conditions which lead to episodic dollar dearths, see the articles linked above).
Central bank liquidity lines like those the Fed used to bailout the world seven years ago have become a fixture of the post crisis financial system and as you can see from the following maps, their growth since 2007 has been remarkable. Perhaps the most striking thing about the following graphics is the extent to which China has (literally) covered the world in renminbi swap lines. Essentially, China has used bilateral swap agreements to help embed the yuan in international trade in the the post-crisis era. As you’ll see below, counterparty countries have also tapped their yuan liquidity lines when they’re cut off from dollar funding, making China a critical lifeline for bolstering FX reserves and helping to alleviate shortages of imported goods.
Click here for the full interactive map
Here’s more from The Council on Foreign Relations on the history of the Fed’s international dollar liquidity bailouts:
During the crisis, banks became highly reluctant to lend to one another, owing to fears about the true financial condition of counterparts. This drove up the cost of borrowing, as lenders demanded higher interest rates to compensate for rising counterparty risk. While central banks could provide local currency to their domestic banks to lower the cost of borrowing in that currency, their ability to provide foreign currency was limited by the amount of foreign currency reserves they held. To address these foreign currency funding issues, developed-economy central banks agreed to provide swap lines to one another.
On December 12, 2007, the Federal Reserve extended swap lines to the European Central Bank (ECB) and Swiss National Bank (SNB). European bank demand for dollars had been pushing up, and creating accentuated volatility in, U.S. dollar interest rates. The swap lines were intended “to address elevated pressures in short-term funding markets,” and to do so without the Fed having to fund foreign banks directly.
On September 16, 2008, two days after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) gave the foreign currency subcommittee the power “to enter into swap agreements with the foreign central banks as needed to address strains in money markets in other jurisdictions.” This enabled the subcommittee to extend swap lines to other central banks and to expand the size of the existing swap lines, without the need for the full FOMC to vote on it.
In 2011, the Bank of Canada, Bank of England, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, Federal Reserve, and Swiss National Bank announced that they had established a network of swap lines that would allow any of the central banks to provide liquidity to their respective domestic banks in any of the other central banks’ currencies. In October 2013, they agreed to leave the swap lines in place as a backstop indefinitely.
If you needed further evidence of China’s growing influence, consider that Beijing has essentially blanketed the globe with yuan liquidity lines, inking swap agreements with nearly three dozen countries with the primary goal of increasing the degree to which the renminbi is used in international trade…
Since 2009, China has signed bilateral currency swap agreements with thirty-one counterparties. The stated intention of these swaps is to support trade and investment and to promote the international use of renminbi.
Broadly, China limits the amount of renminbi available to settle trade, and the swaps have been used to obtain renminbi after these limits have been reached. In October 2010, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) swapped 20 billion yuan (about $3 billion) to enable companies in Hong Kong to settle renminbi trade with the mainland. In 2014, China used its swap line with Korea to obtain 400 million won (about $400,000). The won were then lent on to a commercial bank in China, which used them to provide trade financing for payment of imports from Korea.
…and in fact, Argentina used their swap agreement with Beijing as a bailout mechanism…
In addition to using the swaps to facilitate trade in renminbi, China is also using the swap lines to provide loans to Argentina in order to bolster the country’s foreign exchange reserves. In October 2014, a source at the Central Bank of Argentina reportedly told Telam, the Argentine national news agency, that the renminbi Argentina receives through the swap would be exchanged into other currencies. Argentina has had difficulty borrowing dollars on international markets since it defaulted on its debt in July and has faced shortages on a range of imported goods as a result. Swapping renminbi into dollars enables companies to import more than they would be able to otherwise.
We’ll close with the following two maps which display only swaps lines set up by China. As you can see, the evolution is quite remarkable…
2009
2015
- The Deadliest Jobs In America
The U.S. Department of Labor tracks how many people die at work, and why. The latest numbers were released in April and cover the last seven years. As Bloomberg reports, some of the results may surprise you.
click images for large interactive versions…
Source: Bloomberg
- Billionaire Oil CEO Demands Scientists Terminated After Oklahoma Quake Study
The billionaire CEO of Continental Resources told a dean at the University of Oklahoma that he wanted earthquake researchers fired. In one of the most transparently oligarchic tactics we have seen yet during this ‘recovery’, oil tycoon Harold Hamm demanded certain scientists be dismissed following their findings that fracking wastewater disposal was the cause of the spike in Oklahoma earthquakes. Despite his protestations recently that “I don’t try to push anyone around,” as the following email obtained by Bloomberg, exposes, “Mr. Hamm is very upset at some of the earthquake reporting to the point that he would like to see select OGS staff dismissed.”
As we noted previously, no matter what other problems may or may not be linked to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the disposal of wastewater from oil and gas drilling almost certainly is primarily responsible for the recent spate of earthquakes in Oklahoma, normally a seismologically quiet state.
That’s the conclusion of a report issued April 21 by the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS), in which the state geologist Richard D. Andrews and Dr. Austen Holland, the state seismologist, said the rate of earthquakes near major oil and gas drilling operations that produce large amounts of wastewater demonstrate that the quakes “are very unlikely to represent a naturally occurring process.”
Andrews and Holland concluded that the “primary suspected source” of the quakes is not hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which water and chemicals are injected under high pressure to crack shale to free oil and gas trapped inside. It said the source is more likely the injection of wastewater from this process in disposal wells, because water used in fracking cannot be re-used.
“The OGS considers it very likely that the majority of recent earthquakes, particularly those in central and north-central Oklahoma, are triggered by the injection of produced water in disposal wells,” the statement said. It warned that residents should prepare for “a significant earthquake.”
Oklahoma recorded 585 earthquakes with a magnitude of 3 or greater, the equivalent of the force felt in Oklahoma City at the time of the terrorist bombing in 1995. This is a significant increase from 109 earthquakes of the same magnitude in 2013. Before 2008, when fracking became a popular drilling technique in the state, there were fewer than two earthquakes in Oklahoma each year, on average.
Andrews’ and Holland’s report draws the same conclusions as a study last year by Katie Keranen, an assistant professor of seismology at Cornell University, who found that injecting fracking wastewater into underground disposal sites tends to widen cracks in geological formations, increasing the chances of earthquakes.
Keranen’s study, in turn, reinforces similar conclusions in a previous study by the U.S. Geological Survey, which found that earthquakes in central and eastern parts of the United States between 2010 and 2013 also coincided with the disposal of fracking wastewater.
What’s important about Andrews’ and Holland’s conclusion is that they represent the state of Oklahoma, where energy is an important industry, providing about one-quarter of the state’s jobs. Last autumn, Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican, dismissed the problem as speculative and urged further study.
But in a statement coinciding with Andrews’ and Holland’s report, Fallin said their ability to link wastewater disposal with earthquakes was significant and promised unspecified action. “Oklahoma state agencies already are taking action to address this issue and protect homeowners,” she said.
The state’s energy industry also supports further study of the state’s recent uncharacteristic seismic activity. “Oklahoma’s oil and natural gas producers have a proven history of developing the state’s oil and natural gas resources in a safe and effective manner,” Kim Hatfield, regulatory committee chairman for the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association, said in a statement.
And now, as Bloomberg reports, it is clear the elites were not happy with these findings…
According to the dean’s e-mail recounting the conversation, Oil tycoon Harold Hamm told a University of Oklahoma dean last year that he wanted certain scientists there dismissed who were studying links between oil and gas activity and the state’s nearly 400-fold increase in earthquakes…
He has vigorously disputed the notion that he tried to pressure the survey’s scientists. “I’m very approachable, and don’t think I’m intimidating,” Hamm was quoted as saying in an interview with EnergyWire, an industry publication, that was published on May 11. “I don’t try to push anybody around.”
Kristin Thomas, a spokeswoman for Continental, says the company has no comment.
Worse still the lies and deceit run deep…
Catherine Bishop, the university’s vice president of public affairs and one of the recipients of Grillot’s 2014 e-mail, didn’t respond to requests for an interview, but she defended Hamm in an e-mail: “Mr. Hamm absolutely did not ask to be on the search committee or to have anyone from Continental put onto the committee, nor did he ask that anyone from the Oklahoma Geological Survey be dismissed,” she wrote.
Asked about the difference between her statement and Grillot’s 2014 e-mail, Bishop responded: “Please note that the bottom line is that University of Oklahoma will not tolerate any possible interference with academic freedom and scientific inquiry.” She added in a subsequent message: “Neither Mr. Hamm nor anyone from Continental Resources served on the search committee.”
…
Hamm has been a generous donor to the University of Oklahoma, including a 2011 gift of $20 million for a diabetes research center named after the oilman. University President David Boren, a former U.S. senator, sits on the board of directors of Hamm’s Continental Resources.
In the e-mail he wrote about his meeting with Hamm, Grillot—who himself sits on the board of Pioneer Natural Resources, an Irving (Tex.)-based oil and gas company—noted that he saw Boren leaving Continental’s corporate offices before he went in to see the CEO.
Profits – once again – it would appear come before public safety and while money may not be able to buy happiness, it seems to be able to buy pretty much everything else.
- Lapdogs, Redux: How The Press Tried To Discredit Seymour Hersh’s Last Bombshell Report
By Mark Ames, first posted in Pando Daily
Lapdogs, Redux: How The Press Tried To Discredit Seymour Hersh’s Bombshell Reporting On CIA Domestic Spying
Seymour Hersh found himself in the middle of an F-5 shitstorm this week after breaking his biggest blockbuster story of the Obama Era, debunking the official heroic White House story about how Navy SEALs took out Osama Bin Laden in a daring, secret nighttime raid in the heart of Pakistan.
According to Hersh’s account, OBL was given up by one of his Pakistani ISI prison wardens—our Pakistaini allies had been holding him captive since 2006, with backing from our Saudi allies, to use for leverage. Hersh’s account calls into question a lot of things, starting with the justification for the massive, expensive, and brutal US GWOT military-intelligence web, which apparently had zilch to do with taking out the most wanted terrorist in the world. All it took, says Hersh, was one sleazy Pakistani ISI turncoat walking into a CIA storefront in Islamabad, handing them the address to Bin Laden’s location, and picking up his $25 million bounty check. About as hi-tech as an episode of Gunsmoke.
The celebrated Navy SEAL helicopter raid and killing of OBL was, according to Hersh, a stage production co-directed by the US military and Pakistan’s intelligence agency, who escorted the SEALs to Bin Laden’s room, pointed a flashlight at the captive, and watched the SEALs unload hot lead on the old cripple, turning him into spaghetti bolognese. (Raising other disturbing questions—such as, why would the White House want to silence forever the one guy with all the names, the most valuable intelligence asset in the world… unless of course that was the whole point of slaughtering him in his Abbottabad cell? Which leads one to wonder why the US wanted to make sure Bin Laden kept his secrets to himself, should one bother wondering.)
Hersh has pissed off some very powerful people and institutions with this story, and that means the inevitable media pushback to discredit his reporting is already underway, with the attacks on Hersh led by Vox Media’s Max Fisher, CNN’s Peter Bergen, and even some on the left like Nation Institute reporter Matthieu Aikins. Yesterday Slate joined the pile-on, running a wildly entertaining, hostile interview with Hersh.
Such attacks by fellow journalists on a Sy Hersh bombshell are nothing new—in fact, he used to relish them, and probably still does. He got the same hostile reaction from his media colleagues when he broke his biggest story of his career: The 1974 exposé of the CIA’s massive, illegal domestic spying program, MH-CHAOS, which targeted tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of Americans, mostly antiwar and leftwing dissidents.
Hersh is better known today for his My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib exposés, but it was his MH-CHAOS scoop, which the New York Times called “the son of Watergate,” that was his most consequential and controversial—from this one sensational exposé the entire intelligence apparatus was nearly taken down. Hersh’s exposés directly led to the famous Church Committee hearings into intelligence abuses, the Rockefeller Commission, and the less famous but more radical Pike Committee hearings in the House, which I wrote about in Pando last year. These hearings not only blew open all sorts of CIA abuses, assassination programs, drug programs and coups, but also massive intelligence failures and boondoggles.
They also revealed to the public for the first time the NSA’s secret programs targeting Americans, including co-opting all the major US telecoms and cable telex companies— AT&T, ITT, Western Union and RCA—in a program “vacuuming” all electronic communications, as well as “Project Minaret,” in which the NSA wiretapped hundreds or perhaps tens of thousands (depending on the source) of antiwar and leftwing American dissidents. Those hearings led briefly to some real reforms and some half-assed reforms in the intelligence community during the Carter years, all of which were undone as soon as Reagan came to power. (I wrote about the history of Hersh’s MH-CHAOS exposé for NSFWCorp here and here.)
That is what effective journalism looks like. But if Hersh’s media peers at the time had their way, none of that would’ve happened. Rather than supporting Hersh, journalists across the spectrum, led by the Washington Post, did everything to discredit and undermine his reporting. “I was reviled,” is how Hersh later put it to UC Davis professor Kathryn Olmsted, author of the excellent “Challenging the Secret Government.”
It was mostly thanks to the CIA director’s own admission in January 1975 that Hersh’s reporting was correct that other journalists backed off, and joined in the adversarial feeding frenzy. Yes: the CIA saved Hersh’s biggest scoop from the lapdog press. Times were strange.
And it was the Washington Post that led the attacks on Hersh’s reporting. In early January 1975, the WaPo ran an editorial, “The CIA’s ‘Illegal Domestic Spying,’” attacking Hersh for relying on anonymous sources—this from the same paper that relied on the most famous anonymous source in history, Deep Throat. The WaPo editorial went on:
“While almost any CIA activity can be fitted under the heading of ‘spying,’ and while CIA activities undertaken on American soil can be called ‘domestic spying,’ it remains to be determined which of these activities has been conducted in ‘violation’ of the agency’s congressional charter or are ‘illegal.’”
The WaPo’s top intelligence reporter, Laurence Stern, took to the Columbia Journalism Review to attack Hersh in an article titled “Exposing the CIA (Again)”—alleging a “dearth of hard facts” in Hersh’s reporting, and a “remarkably febrile succession of follow-ups.” While in the Post, Stern alleged that it wasn’t the CIA that was keeping files on the 9,000 Americans that Hersh orginally reported, but rather the Justice Department—making it therefore legal. Pulitzer Prize winner Jack Anderson followed up in the WaPo confirming Stern’s false allegation, in a piece titled, “CIA’s Files Said to Support Denials”.
The two major news weeklies, Time and Newsweek, piled on Hersh’s reporting too. Newsweek, in a piece headlined “A New CIA furor,” quoted a number of anonymous intelligence sources to discredit and downplay the significance of Hersh’s MH-CHAOS scoop: “There’s something to Hersh’s charges, but a hell of a lot less than he makes of it.” Time’s article, “Supersnoop,” snarked:
“[T]here is a strong likelihood that Hersh’s CIA story is considerably exaggerated and that the Times overplayed it.”
A common line of attack was to call Hersh’s series “overwritten and under-researched.” Gossip in the Washington press corps at the time claimed that WaPo’s famous editor Ben Bradlee denounced Hersh’s stories as “overwritten and under-researched”; and when Hersh was passed over for the Pulitzer that year, to everyone’s surprise, one columnist wrote Hersh didn’t deserve it anyway, calling his MH-CHAOS exposes “overwritten, overplayed, under-researched and under-proven.”
Hersh might’ve been buried by his own press colleagues, who were only interested in discrediting his reporting, if not for CIA director William Colby’s testimony before the Senate in mid-January, 1975. Hersh himself reported it for the Times, which led:
“William E. Colby, Director of Central Intelligence, acknowledged at a Senate hearing today that his agency had infiltrated undercover agents into antiwar and dissident political groups inside the United States as part of a counterintelligence program that led to the accumulation of files on 10,000 American citizens.”
After the CIA chief’s confirmation of Hersh’s story, his media detractors had no choice but to grudgingly walk back their criticism. Quoting again from Kathryn Olmsted’s book, after Colby’s admission,
“The Washington Post reported that Colby’s disclosure had ‘confirmed major elements’ of Hersh’s stories, and Newsweek agreed that Colby’s testimony had substantiated ‘many basic elements of the original story if not all the adjectives.’”
Today we’re seeing some of the same grudging, qualified acceptance of Hersh’s Bin Laden bombshell from the establishment press.
Later in 1975, the great Bill Greider—who was then an editor at the WaPo—summed up the attitude of the press to Hersh’s revelations:
“the press especially tugs back and forth at itself, alternately pursuing the adrenal instincts unleashed by Watergate, the rabid distrust bred by a decade of out-front official lies, then abruptly playing the cozy lapdog.”
My how we’ve grown so much in the 40 years since.
- "When Enough Is Never Enough" – What Do Millionaires Want?
The simple answer: moar.
While hardly a scientific study, it should come as no surprise that in a recent poll of high net worth clients by UBS, the “recidivist” bank found that the more money a high net worth individual has, the more money that same individual needs to retire comfortably.
Or, as the saying goes, “appetite comes with eating” even though according to that other saying: “the rat race has no exit.”
UBS’ explanation:
Satisfaction goes up as net worth increases, reaching 85% for those with $5 million or more. But enough is not enough for many millionaires to be fully satisfied, because lifestyle expectations rise along with net worth. Fifty-eight percent of millionaires say their expectations for their standard of living have increased in the last 10 years. Those whose wealth has increased significantly during this time period are even more likely to feel their standard of living expectations have gone up (64%). As a result, the majority of millionaires want more. Those with $1 million want $2 million; those with $10 million want $25 million.
And those with $100 million want $1 billion; those with $1 billion want to move AAPL with a single tweet and to stop being so bored with their lives, and so on.
The bottom line, when UBS asks “When is enough…enough?” and “Why the wealthy can’t get off the treadmill“…
… the answer is: never.
But there is good news, because all those overburdened millionaires now live in a crony capitalist system which rewards wealth above all else, and as a result the rich are assured of becoming even richer as the following summary of America’s record class divide explains.
For the not so wealthy, well… this is your “chance” to get off the treadmill for the simple reason that when it comes to the US middle class becoming wealthy, the lights were turned off the day the Fed’s printed was turned on.
- Jim Rogers On The Coming Water Wars
Submitted by Erico Matias Tavares of Sinclair & Co.
Water – An Interview with Jim Rogers
Jim Rogers, Jr. is an American businessman, investor and author. He is currently based in Singapore. Rogers is the Chairman of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests, Inc. He was the co-founder of the Quantum Fund and creator of the Rogers International Commodities Index (RICI).
Erico Tavares: Jim, thank for being with us today. We would like to talk about water and other agricultural inputs, something you have been very vocal about in recent years.
To set the stage for today’s topic, a few years ago we worked on a biofuels project which took us all around the world. In a trip to Bolivia a pioneering Austrian engineer involved in the sector told us something very interesting. At that time the price of vegetable oils was much cheaper than diesel, prompting many people to start building biofuels facilities across Europe. He said this was crazy and in no way sustainable because crude oil is and always will be the lowest common denominator in an economy.
He was right, and many biofuels today need government support in order to be viable. But looking at the world we can argue that the lowest common denominator is in fact water. Even crude oil increasingly depends on it, particularly in the US with all the fracking. You are known for being ahead of the curve in many markets. As you look at the water situation across the globe, what do you see?
Jim Rogers: Water is one of the great opportunities of our times. If you look at the world there are some huge shortages developing in some parts but there is also a lot of water in other parts, just in the wrong place – like water in Siberia for instance, which is not where most people are.
There are going to be wars in the Middle East over oil east of the Red Sea, but west of that there will be wars over water since there are serious water problems in that region. We will also have problems in the western parts of the US with the depletion of a big aquifer, from what I read.
So we have a lot of water problems in a lot of places. California is making the news right now, but that is not the only place at risk. And if you can figure out ways to clean or transport or pump water you are going to do very well.
ET: Let’s focus on China first, a country you know well. There are reports that a vast proportion of their pure water resources is contaminated, an unfortunate outcome of their rapid industrialization process. Do you have a view on the situation there? Is the Chinese government starting to address the issue?
JR: China has got gigantic water problems. First they have the water in the wrong place and second the water is filthy, terribly polluted in many cases. So the Chinese know that and they are spending a lot of money trying to figure that out. So someone is going to make a lot of money in China helping them to solve their own water problems.
That’s the opportunity right now. Figure out how to get the water from the wrong place to the right place, clean it up and you can get very rich.
ET: We have been involved with companies that are developing innovative ways to do just that. However, one recurring issue is cost. Water ends up being much more expensive once you treat or transport it. So do you think we could actually face some constraints on how to improve access to that resource despite the significant opportunity?
JR: There is no question that we are facing constraints. They are already here in many parts of the world. Water, I presume, is going to get very expensive or else we are going to move to where the water is. This is how societies and civilizations have developed. Once upon a time there was a lot of farming in the Sahara desert that we now know of. It is now a desert and everybody moved away because there is no more water there.
Water is the single most important determination of civilization. I travelled around the world a couple of times and I have seen whole societies that disappeared because the water disappeared. People can survive recession and war, revolution and famine, plague, but they cannot survive without water. That ends the whole story, no matter how smart you think you are.
We have to move or it becomes very expensive, but you have to move because you got to have the water.
ET: Well here in Singapore it rains quite a bit so you guys might do OK.
JR: Actually Singapore is one of the most advanced places for solving water problems, because they have to. They recycle water, figured out ways to capture the water. One of the worries is that if they go to war with Malaysia that would be the end of the story, because Malaysia would just cut off the water. Fortunately, they are not at war and Singapore has been hard at work – I believe that we are now 90% self-sufficient, but still, you got to have the water.
ET: India has been one of the very bright spots in the emerging markets sector lately. Food is obviously very important there, given its weight on disposable income and so forth. A food security professor told us that he recently flew over a large agricultural area there, and salty spots were starting to become very apparent as a result of over-drainage from underground reservoirs. Once salt takes over those lands become unproductive, and this is being reported in other areas as well. Are you aware of this issue? More broadly, is food prices one of the things you track when considering investing in an emerging economy?
JR: To repeat, if you don’t have water you can’t make it. I’m wildly bullish on China but if they don’t solve the water problem there’s no China story. Likewise India has a water problem, worse in fact. There’s no question that India will be in worse shape than China. Northern India has gigantic problems. And that’s a nation of a billion people. Add another 1.3 billion in China and you have a big water problem.
There are great opportunities in water. I haven’t found one that is publicly listed as of yet. I am sure there are several, I am just too lazy to find them. But I would love to find water plays that are substantial and serious.
The problem with water is that you can’t own it. Because if you do, when the crisis comes the politicians will hang you in the public square because you are exploiting Man’s God given right to water. And they will curse and scream at you. But if you find a way to solve the water problem they will build a monument for you. You will be very, very rich. But for goodness sake don’t own the water because if you do they will take it away from you, torture you and execute you.
ET: It looks like California might have yet another dry year ahead. As we all know, the Golden State produces an incredible amount of all varieties of food, which will be impacted if they don’t start getting a lot of water soon. Major reservoirs are already at extremely low levels, and we may be seeing a reversion to a much drier period which actually has been prevalent over the last 1000 years in that region. Is this something that concerns you, not only as an American but also looking at global food supplies as a whole?
JR: The whole Southwest is facing a serious water problem. The aquifer, based on what I read, is drying up out there. And not just in California but all over the Southwest. And if that happens America will have to absorb a gigantic change. If you have water and productive land you will be very, very rich. Because whether we like it or not – now this is not going to happen next year, I don’t think California is going to become a desert any time soon – it is a process which is going on, from what I can read.
And from what I can see nobody in the government seems to know or care about it. The government of California is learning but they are not solving the problem, they are deliberating about the problem. But again it is just not the US, there many places in the world with problems – China, India, the Middle East, many places have big water problems.
ET: Switching gears a bit, you are also a director of a fertilizer company. Do you see constraints developing on that side of the equation going forward?
JR: Well, we all read the same thing, that the supply of phosphorous, which is a vital fertilizer, is not unlimited and will run out at some point in the future. I’m a director of a phosphorous fertilizer company.
This is another reason for people to learn about farming and agriculture. You can farm without fertilizer, people have done that for a long time. But it is less efficient and if you start having phosphorous problems, fertilizer problems and water problems then, my God, there are 7 billion people in the world and there haven’t always been 7 billion people in the world. We may have gigantic changes again.
Civilization shifts again. Not might, we will. This is something that has been going on since the beginning of time. If you see where Mankind has lived over the centuries, I mentioned the Sahara, you mentioned California. There will be great investment opportunities; but longer term there are staggering implications.
ET: You have spoken about the advanced age of many farmers in key countries around the world, such as in the US, Canada, Great Britain and Japan. The demographics in this sector look particularly appalling. What needs to happen so that young people start getting more interested in this activity? Technology development? Higher prices? Do you see a shift occurring here in all your discussions around the world?
JR: There is very little shift. Farming has been a terrible business for 30 years. And when that happens people go to where the money is. They go to Wall Street, wherever the money is.
In America the average age of farmers is 58 because nobody wants to be a farmer anymore. There are farms in Japan that are empty because there is nobody to farm them; they are even experimenting bringing in workers from China, and they don’t like foreigners at all but they have little choice. The average age in Australia is 58. Canada has the oldest age for farmers in recorded history. In the UK the highest rate of suicide is in agriculture. I guess we all know that millions of Indian farmers commit suicide because things are so terrible.
More people in America study public relations than agriculture, because it has been a terrible business. The only that is going to change is for it to become very profitable and for young people to see the farmers getting rich. Of course they will say “those guys are driving Lamborghinis and I want one too so I will become a farmer”.
But it’s not going to happen until it becomes an exciting and profitable business. The Soviets tried to make people farm, they had all these coops or whatever they called them; Mao Tse Tung tried the same thing and eventually ruined Chinese agriculture by forcing people to become farmers. It doesn’t work.
The only way it works is for people to become motivated to become farmers and that will only happen when they get rich. There have been many periods in history where farmers got rich and powerful. It will happen again.
ET: Given all the issues that we have discussed, if these trends persist we will see higher food prices, perhaps significantly so. How can people hedge against this? Should they start growing their own food, purchase the appropriate securities in the markets, buy water treatment companies…?
JR: That’s why you should become a farmer. Buy some land and become a farmer if you like the outdoors. Otherwise you can lease it to a farmer. Make sure you buy land where it is going to rain and that you lease it to a competent farmer, otherwise you will suffer.
There are many ways. You can invest in seed companies, or you can become a tractor salesman, or set up restaurants for the farmers because they will have a lot more money down the road. Buy yourself a second home by a lake in the farm belt, in the places where the farmers are going to be.
There are many ways to participate and to get involved – to hedge if you will. Becoming a stockbroker is not the best way. Farming is the way of the future. But don’t do it unless you like it. If you don’t like it you will find out it’s a lot of hard work and will go broke, like many other farmers. Certainly many have gone broke, committed suicide and so forth over the last 30 years.
Instead you can become a journalist covering the farming sector. Depends on what your skills and interests are. As you look at your life, figure out a way to orient it towards agriculture. If you want to sell, sell something to the farmers.
ET: A quick comment on possible macro implications. The US Federal Reserve excludes food from its core inflation definition, but if prices rise quickly there could be repercussions on the rest of the economy. It seems that Western central banks have spent so much time and effort printing money to avoid deflation that when they finally start getting inflation, driven by a food crisis or any other shock, they will be in a very weak position to tackle it. For one, raising interest rates will put a lot of pressure on government finances given the huge debt loads that they are now carrying. What do you think could happen here?
JR: Throughout history we have had economic slowdowns every four to seven years, every so often. Always have, and always will. Nobody has solved that problem, not even the central banks. We are going to have another one in the world. We are going to have more I should say, and they will get worse because the debt situation is higher and higher. We hear all this talk about austerity and cutting back but every country in the world has higher debt now than it had last year and will have higher debt next year.
The buildup of debt in the US alone is staggering; Japan is staggering, everywhere is staggering. So the next time we have an economic slowdown it is going to be much worse than the last time, and if the world survives that one, the one after that is going to be worse and worse.
Because as you point out, if interest rates go higher – and they will; this current level of interest rates is not only abnormal but absurd, it has never been so low anywhere in the world – with the gigantic amount of debt we are going to have gigantic problems worldwide: more turmoil, we will probably have wars, governments fail, countries fail. This is going to be a mess.
So buy yourself a farm. Be prepared! It’s going to be a serious mess. And hopefully your farm will be far away from the marauding hordes.
ET: Final question. You are also known as the “investment biker”, after driving thousands of miles around the world. Is this how you have generated your best investment ideas, being on the ground and seeing what was actually happening? These days, how do you keep close tabs on the markets?
JR: I drove around the world not for investing but for adventure. Because of who I am, when I go some place I do look around, I do observe. And in my travels I would see opportunities just by the nature of who I am. If I saw something changing I would pursue it.
And that’s a good way to do it. If you have the time and the money to go around the world in a car or a motorcycle do it. It’s a great adventure, at least for me. I’ve done it twice. The investing was a sideline.
But just walking down the street, if you can be observant you can find investment ideas. Sometimes I missed them but other times not, and I capitalized on it. And I read a lot. I don’t know much about basketball but I know what’s going on around the world because I read and that’s my passion.
Start with what interests you. Find the changes in the industry you like and figure out ways to invest and profit from it. This will you put you ahead of Wall Street because this is your passion, so you can get in before anybody else. You can also get out sooner, because Wall Street is always late in getting out.
Over the course of your life you can spot 25 or so good investment opportunities. Concentrate your efforts on understanding them rather than jumping around and you will do very well.
ET: Jim, thank you very much for sharing your knowledge on these important topics. We’ll go drink some water and eat an apple while they’re still cheap!
JR: All the best to you.
- If Numbers Don’t Lie Then…
If Numbers Don’t Lie Then…
There’s an old saying that “numbers don’t lie.” However, when we apply simple common sense to the way we hear numbers spun across the financial media what doesn’t add up is precisely that: the numbers.
Once again I was left slack-jawed countless times as I heard one after another economist, analyst, chief investment big bank guru, et al tout their reasoning and pontificate why we’re on the verge of breaking out of this stagnant economic malaise of sub 1% GDP prints.
The reasonings were laughable when applying common sense rather than math skills to the arguments. Yet, as I’ve stated and wrote before. When it comes to this set of supposed number mavens: “They can add – but they can’t put two and two together.”
One argument now being proposed to help bolster the projections that Q2 will be closer to 3% as opposed to the abysmal print of Q1 is (even as the Atlanta Fed. is now predicting the same if not worse) that this jump will be fueled by (wait for it…) “Cap-ex spending relating to the bump up in crude prices over the recent weeks…” (insert rimshot here)
This wasn’t coming from some ancillary small fund manager. This line of thought and analysis was coming from one of our “too big to fail” taxpayer-funded bail-out houses of financial acumen.
As this “insight” was simultaneously broadcast throughout television and radio, heralded as “This is why we have people like you on – for exactly this type of insightful analysis and perspective.” I couldn’t help myself but to agree. For this is what “financial” brilliance across the financial media now represents: Financial spin.
My analysis? With analysis like this? Taxpayers better get ready – again!
This objective “seasoned” analysis is being professed by one of the same that expected the prior GDP print to show “great improvement” based on “the gas savings made possible from lower crude prices.” The result? If the build in inventory hadn’t been “adjusted” in formulations Pythagoras would marvel at – the print would have been negative.
So now you’re being led to believe with the recent rise in crude prices: drillers, refiners, etc., etc., are going to load up on cap-ex only months after many have scuttled rigs, buildings, employees, and more? Again, soon enough to effect Q2?
If cap-ex can be effected that soon, and to that degree as to pull GDP prints from near negative to 3% in a single quarter all by itself – as every other macro data point is collapsing? Why would lower gas prices have ever been wanted let alone touted as “good for the economy?”I’ll just remind you that this “insightful analysis” was coming from one of the many who loved to tout endlessly how the U.S. economy is based on “consumer spending” and “more money in consumers wallets based on lower prices at the pump was inevitable.” All I’ll ask is: when does “inevitable” materialize? Before? Or, after the next revisions?
Again, now since it’s been shown that the “inevitable consumer” spent nothing of their gas savings to help prop up the prior GDP. (sorry I forgot, yes they did in higher health insurance costs) Where the case was made to bludgeon any doubters of their analysis: i.e., “lower crude prices resulting in lower gas prices = more consumer spending.” We are now supposed to embrace the inverted narrative where: “GDP for Q2 will show growth of around 3% based on higher crude prices resulting in increased cap-ex?”
Maybe it’s just me since some in the financial media refer to people like myself who question their reasoning as “idiots.” Doesn’t that calculation (as well as the conflicting narrative) render their previous argument they’ve professed ad nauseam: GDP growth in a consumer based economy is hindered by high gas prices – moot?
For if higher GDP expectations is now predicated on higher crude – than higher prices paid by the consumer at the pump is the answer to our whoa’s – not the other way around. Is it not? Oh yes, plus the added driver of increased insurance premiums. No additional car required. Remember: It’s not math – It’s magic!
Again, using the logic chain espoused by the so-called “smart crowd” the afore example is absolutely well within their “reasonable expectations of analysis.” My analysis? Sure, as long as it’s your money at risk – not theirs.
The above math is not erroneous. However, when it’s used to obfuscate the true meaning of those numbers where deception is more in line rather, than explaining the true calculations? Then my saying of “If the numbers don’t lie then…” takes on far more “truth in numbers” than the projections as well as their quantitative analysis would portend.
If you doubt this; just change the premise (or narrative) but keep the numbers the same. i.e., “We calculate and project GDP growth to triple from here. Up from under 1% nearer to 3%…” to “We miscalculated and our projections were wrong for Q1 by as much as 300% in the wrong direction, from a projected 3% print to a now less than 1% with possible revisions to negative” and you are far closer to the truth. For that is where, “The numbers didn’t lie.” Because if the truth be told, for Q1 – that’s precisely what happened.
As egregious to the sensibility of entrepreneurs, business people, and others everywhere. It’s far from the only example. And for my money one of the worst offences used is: The relevance to past data sets and their implied meanings to today’s since the emergence of QE.
This is when I have my most imaginative sessions of imitating Elvis. No, not on stage. Rather, when he took his frustrations out while watching a television.
Here is where “cherry picking” numbers takes on a whole new meaning nevermind qualitative “apples to apples” relevancy.
Of all the data points used across the financial media, the rationale to compare one set of data points (e.g., comparing numbers from any prior multi-year period to today) is so outrageously comical, it borders on near criminal assault to one’s common sense.
I hear one after another so-called “brilliant economist” or “top-tier analyst” tout data points, or sets such as, “Well back in the 70’s from 1972 thru 1978 this metric was identical to where we are now and then we rocketed higher in GDP growth, employment, blah, blah, blah.” (You can use any data sets you like for example; they’re all the same. i.e., If not the 70’s it’s the 80’s, or 50’s, or 20’s, or 30’s etc., etc.)
Before the advent of QE these data sets were relative to extract some quantitative analysis. Today? Rubbish. They’re like comparing cherries to pineapples. Sure they are both fruit, but other than that they are far from anything “similar,” And using them in a form of “quantitative” analysis without mentioning nor adjusting for “relevance in qualitative” objective analysis is just outright malfeasance in my opinion.
Before QE and the outright intervention of monetary policy directly influencing stocks – people bought stocks reflective of the economy. Today? Central Banks across the globe are now openly manipulating markets as a “matter of policy.”
The dwindling volume along with the capital outflows that has continued since the beginning of the financial crisis as the markets once again set new all time historic records proves prima facie, without adjusting for that metric alone (e.g., QE) and it’s quantitative, as well as qualitative impact (if it could be calculated) all – and I do mean all – relevance to prior economic examples is outright “junk science.” Or better yet: Outright bunk. Period.
Who cares (except for one whose salary is based on the commission paid if one buys in) what the numbers were in any given data set relative to the advent of QE? They are meaningless.
Just like a 5.4% print in unemployment is outright “voodoo economics” when used when trying to extrapolate what an economy did when 5.4% was measured at any time prior without the qualitative adjustment of what 5.4 today actually means relative to 5.4% ten, twenty years ago, let alone even further.
This type of extrapolation I hear now so often is insulting. And this comes from people touted as “smart” while they proclaim us as “idiots.”
Here we are, once again at “never before seen in human history” highs. Yet, since the ending of QE last November – the markets have virtually gone nowhere.
Over this same period GDP expectations have not only been ratched down, they’ve been revised from prints of abysmal – to pathetic.
Various social media stocks that were touted as the bastion of “everything is awesome” indicators have dropped like “dead canary’s” overnight after reporting “earnings.” Some losing near 30% and have yet to find any buyers at these now “On Sale” bargain prices.
What was once touted as “bad for the markets” (e.g., falling macro data points) is now touted as “great for stocks!” i.e. The Federal Reserve wouldn’t dare raise rates now.
Less real people making trades, and more HFT algorithmic front running means ever more “liquidity and stability” by those more involved with protecting their “cut” rather than the stability of our financial markets.
Just remember that other well-worn bromide they like to use when one ever questions their math: “It’s different this time.” And for their sakes as well as commissions – they had better hope so. Because, if we exclude relevant numbers as well as their qualitative measures. How does one square the circle today with the announcement as we once again hit never before seen heights in the markets – AOL™ is back in the news where merger, synergies, eyeballs, and ad revenues are once again the focus?
Do we use quantitive, qualitative, or both to figure out the implications for such a deal? Should we be nervous? Or, is once again: “Different this time?” And the “numbers” truly do add up.
- When The Class Divide Gets Too Wide: Another Look At The French Revolution
Two months ago, legendary trader and investor Paul Tudor Jones, when observing the growing chasm between the 1% and the rest of America, and between the US and the rest of the world, said that this gap “cannot and will not persist” and ominously added that “historically, these kinds of gaps get closed in one of three ways: by revolution, higher taxes or wars.”
And while the US government is doing its best to push both the war and higher tax “mandate”, it is the revolution that nobody expects, and everyone is shocked when it happens, despite what is clearly an unprecedented level of class, wealth, religious, educational, age, gender and – after a quick stroll through St. Louis or Baltimore – racial division.
It is therefore appropriate that the following documentary reminder of what happens when the class divide gets too wide, in this case captured by the French Revolution, carries the following words of caution: “no one could have foreseen the turbulent times ahead on one spring day in 1770. The shadow of Versailles is packed to its gilded rafters with the glittering crowds of the royal court.”
Replace Versailles with modern day Monte Carlo, New York or St. Barts, and the “crowds of the royal court” with the “0.001%”, and one can easily see why ‘nobody’ can foresee that which in retrospect will have been all too obvious, only not 250 years ago, but this very moment.
So for those who would prefer to learn from the past which they may have forgotten as they follow every tick higher in the stock ‘market’, here is NatGeo’s documents on the French Revolution.
- Final Pillar Of Bull Market Showing Cracks?
By Dana Lyons, partner at J. Lyons Fund Management and founder of My401kPro.com
Final Pillar Of Bull Market Showing Cracks?
We have repeated ad nauseam the litany of concerns we have regarding the longer-term fate of the U.S. stock market. These concerns include metrics pertaining to price proximity to trend, valuation, sentiment, investor allocation, investor leverage, corporate profligacy and on and on and on. Our biggest problem with these conditions are that such excesses of the prior secular bull market, in our view, were not adequately corrected in the subsequent secular bear market. Thus, we find it a reach to consider that the necessary conditions were in place to support a new sustainable secular bull market – particularly one in which many of the same excesses have so hastily reemerged. That said, we have also taken great care to emphasize the one factor which has remained favorable and which trumps all of the concerns above: price action. Unfortunately for the bulls, this last and most crucial pillar of the bull market is now too potentially showing signs of vulnerability.
The most bullish thing stocks can do is go up, especially to an all-time high. And as recently as last month, many of the broad stock averages were continuing to make new highs, including the Russell 2000 small cap index, the NYSE Composite, the S&P 500 Equal-Weight Index and even the NYSE Advance-Decline Line. This was important as it showed that the persistence of the bull market rally was evident across a wide range of stocks, not just a few top-heavy large cap indexes.
Another broad index at new highs was the Value Line Geometric Composite (VLG). The VLG is an unweighted index of approximately 1700 stocks and is a favorite of ours in gauging the level of participation among the broad universe of stocks. We posted a piece on it July 2 of last year noting the fact that it was bumping against the same level that saw the index top out at in both 1998 and 2007. Sure enough, the VLG peaked the very next day, setting up the makings of a possible but most improbable 26-year triple top. That July peak held until February when the index finally broke above the triple top level. After a test of the breakout level in March, the index moved to new highs again in April. However, over the last few weeks, the VLG’s triple top breakout has shown initial signs of cracking.
The recent bout of market weakness has hit the small cap stocks especially hard. This has had an impact on the VLG. Not only has the index now lost the level signifying the 26-year triple top, it has also violated the up trendline from the October low of last year.
Now of course this weakness is very short-term and does not guarantee the longer-term failure at these levels. That is why we say it is showing “initial” signs of cracking. Who knows, the index could be up 4% next week to an all-time high and this development will be irrelevant. However, considering the level at which this weakness is occurring as well as the list concerns already in place, the risk is that this too will develop into trouble of a longer-term nature. It would also put the 26-year triple top potential back on the table considering the possible false breakout.
This, again, is just a preliminary breakdown in price. However, it is concerning as positive price action has been the one remaining pillar supporting the bull market – and the only one that can overcome all of the ancillary concerns pertaining to stocks. However, it too is potentially starting to show some cracks.
- Belligerent US Refuses To Cede Control Over IMF In Snub To China
One story that’s been covered extensively in these pages over the past several months is the emergence of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The bank began to attract quite a bit of attention in early March when the UK decided, much to Washington’s chagrin, to make a bid for membership. The dominoes fell quickly after that and within a month it was quite clear that The White House’s effort to discourage its allies from supporting the new institution had failed in dramatic fashion.
Since then, China has been careful not to jeopardize the overwhelming support the bank has received. While Beijing is keen on expanding China’s regional influence and promoting the widespread use of the yuan, downplaying the idea that the new bank will become a tool of Chinese foreign policy is critical if it hopes to enjoy the long-term support of the many traditional US allies who have become early adopters so to speak. Similarly, China must be sensitive to the perception that the AIIB is the first step towards usurping the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and although Beijing has dispelled the notion of “yuan hegemony” as nonsensical, it’s clear that the renminbi will play a key role in loans made from the new bank.
So while the AIIB certainly represents an attempt on China’s part to realize its regional ambitions (what we’ve described as the establishment of a Sino-Monroe Doctrine) and carve out a foothold for the yuan on the global stage, it’s also a product of Washington’s failure to adapt to a changing world. That is, the establishment of new supranational lenders suggests the US-dominated multilateral institutions that have characterized the post-war world are proving unable (for whatever reason) to meet the needs of modernity.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the IMF, where reforms aimed at making the Fund more reflective of its membership have been stymied by Congressional ineptitude for years. As Bloomberg reports, the US has apparently learned very little from the AIIB experience:
The Obama administration signaled it won’t jeopardize the U.S. power to veto IMF decisions to achieve its goal of giving China and other emerging markets more clout at the lender, according to people familiar with the matter.
That message was delivered at the International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings in Washington last month, the people said, where officials discussed how to overcome congressional opposition to a 2010 plan to overhaul the lender’s voting structure.
A solution backed by Brazil would have enabled an end-run around Congress — while potentially sacrificing the veto the U.S. has held since World War II. With that option off the table, the people said, IMF member nations are considering a watered-down proposal that risks alienating China and India, which are already challenging the postwar economic order by setting up their own lending and development institutions…
The 2010 plan calls for increasing the emerging markets’ sway through a doubling of the IMF’s capital, with the U.S. contribution subject to approval by Congress. Without that approval, the plan wouldn’t have the support of the required 85 percent of members’ voting shares, because the U.S. has 16.7 percent. Voting rights are proportional to capital shares at the fund.
China, the world’s second-largest economy, currently ranks sixth in its voting shares at the IMF, behind Japan, Germany, France and the U.K. Under the 2010 plan, China would jump to third, while India would climb to eighth from 11th and Brazil would move up four spots to 10th.
The option backed by Brazil and other countries would have pushed through the changes without requiring Congress to ratify them. The catch was that the U.S. veto over major IMF decisions may have been at risk if Congress failed to react by approving the 2010 plan, because America’s voting share would potentially fall below the 15 percent threshold needed to maintain the power…
The fund is now considering a capital increase of just 10 percent, said the people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are confidential. Most of the boost would go to emerging nations that are underrepresented based on the size of their economies.
The solution is unlikely to satisfy some emerging economies because the capital increase is too small, said Truman, now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
In a column last month, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers cited Congress’s failure to pass the IMF reforms as one of the reasons why China is pushing to reshape the global economic order with new institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
* * *
In many ways, the above represents everything that’s wrong in Washington. First, Congress’ famous inability to do what they were elected to do (i.e. legislate) is on full display. Second, the President is unwilling to bypass an ineffectual group of lawmakers in the name of accomplishing something worthwile because the end-around would require the US to give up absolute control over an institution that by its very nature should not be controlled by one nation. Finally, you have yet another example of the US learning absolutely nothing from egregious foreign policy mistakes even when they occurred less than two months ago.
This is all par for the course in Washington so we suppose the real question is what this means for China’s IMF SDR bid. That is, will Beijing simply lose interest if the US-controlled IMF can’t agree on a structure which reflects China’s growing influence on the world stage?
- Martin Armstrong Warns Of The Coming Crash Of All Crashes
Submitted by Martin Armstrong via Armstrong Economics,
Why are governments rushing to eliminate cash?
During previous recoveries following the recessionary declines, the central banks were able to build up their credibility and ammunition so to speak by raising interest rates during the recovery. This time, ever since we began moving toward Transactional Banking with the repeal of Glass Steagall in 1999, banks have looked at profits rather than their role within the economic landscape.
They shifted to structuring products and no longer was there any relationship with the client. This reduced capital formation for it has been followed by rising unemployment among the youth and/or their inability to find jobs within their fields of study. The VELOCITY of money peaked with our Economic Confidence Model 1998.55 turning point from which we warned of the pending crash in Russia.
The damage inflicted with the collapse of Russia and the implosion of Long-Term Capital Management in the end of 1998, has demonstrated that the VELOCITY of money has continued to decline.
There has been no long-term recovery. This current mild recovery in the USA has been shallow at best and as the rest of the world declines still from the 2007.15 high with a target low in 2020, the Federal Reserve has been unable to raise interest rates sufficiently to demonstrate any recovery for the spreads at the banks between bid and ask for money is also at historical highs. Banks will give secured car loans at around 4% while their cost of funds is really 0%. This is the widest spread between bid and ask since the Panic of 1899.
We face a frightening collapse in the VELOCITY of money and all this talk of eliminating cash is in part due to the rising hoarding of cash by households both in the USA and Europe.
This is a major problem for the central banks have also lost control of the ability to stimulate anything.The loss of traditional stimulus ability by the central banks is now threatening the nationalization of banks be it directly, or indirectly.
We face a cliff that government refuses to acknowledge and their solution will be to grab more power – never reform.
- Is This The Chart Of A Healthy Stock Market?
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
If fundamentals like profits and sales no longer matter, then all that’s left is faith that central banks will never let stock markets fall ever again.
Is this the chart of a healthy stock market? The consensus view is either 1) yes, by definition, because charts don’t matter because the central banks will never let markets fall ever again, or 2) the market has been choppy due to a “soft patch” in the economy, which is about to start growing at 3% instead of .3%.Nice, but this chart says distribution to me: beneath the jolly surface of new highs, the smart money is selling to greater fools who believe the consensus.
This chart is characterized by lengthy chop-fests in which wild gyrations up and down make a mockery of trends.December 2014 to January 2015 was such a chop-fest, and March to May has been another chop-fest in which Bulls have been unable to put together an uptrend of more than a few days.The script for insiders distributing (selling) shares to greater fools hasn’t changed in decades. First, juice the market higher with some big orders, then sell into that buying until the market weakens. Reverse the downtrend with another big order, and then resume selling.This process is even easier in the current era of high-frequency trading and machines executing most of the trades. A few big buy orders is all that’s needed to trigger more buy orders from the trading bots, which are essentially trend-followers, and the smart money can sell into that automated buying.Despite the occasional new closing high that’s notched to assure the greater fools who have been buying, the market has gone nowhere for months. Beneath the surface, many market internals have been weakening for months–for example, MACD and Chaiken Money Flow.Those selling into strength can always cherry-pick some market internal that supports the Bull case–if you were selling, wouldn’t you encourage buyers to take the shares you’re dumping off your hands?Wedges usually break big up or down The current wedge has been formed by the Bulls inability to break out decisively into a new uptrend and the distributors managing to limit any declines lest the herd of greater fools get spooked by the deteriorating fundamentals of stagnating profits, sales, etc. or the painfully obvious blow-off tops forming in global markets.If fundamentals like profits and sales no longer matter, then all that’s left is faith that central banks will never let stock markets fall ever again. Never, ever; that is of course the language of fairy tales.
- Leading German Keynesian Economist Calls For Cash Ban
It’s official: the world has gone central-planner crazy.
Monetary policy, whether in the form of “conventional” methods such as the micromanagement of policy rates or so-called “unconventional” measures such as QE, has proven utterly ineffective when it comes to both “smoothing out” the business cycle and reigniting economic growth in the wake of severe downturns. If anything, recent history has shown the exact opposite to be true. That is, the Fed helped to engineer the housing bubble and has now succeeded in inflating a similar bubble in stocks and fixed income. Meanwhile, the Japanese experience with QE has plunged the country into what we have affectionately dubbed “The Kuroda Zone”, wherein the BoJ has cornered both the stock and bond markets while failing to promote wage growth or meaningfully raise inflation expectations. In China, the PBoC has taken to cutting policy rates at the first sign of weakness in the stock market, helping to sustain what will perhaps go down in history as the second coming of the tulip bulb mania, while the ECB has taken the insane step of adopting a trillion euro bond buying program while simultaneously demanding fiscal discipline, meaning the central bank’s bond monetization efforts are set against a backdrop of meager supply.
In sum, the collective actions of the world’s most influential central banks have done wonders when it comes to inflating asset bubbles but have done very little to revive robust economic growth. In fact, far from smoothing out the business cycle and resuscitating DM demand, post-crisis monetary policy has actually had the exact opposite effect: it has set the stage for an even more spectacular collapse while simultaneously creating a worldwide deflationary supply glut.
At this stage, a sane person might be tempted to call it a day on the monetary experiments, especially considering that at this point, the limits have been reached. That is, there are literally no more assets to buy and rates have hit the effective lower bound where rational actors will eschew bank deposits in favor of the mattress. But not so fast, say folks like Citi’s Willem Buiter and economist Ken Rogoff: the world could always ban cash because if you eliminate physical currency and force people to use a debit card linked to a government controlled bank account for all transactions, you can effectively centrally plan everything. Consumers not spending? No problem. Just tax their excess account balance. Economy overheating? Again, no problem. Raise the interest paid on account holdings to encourage people to stop spending. So with Citi, Harvard, and Denmark all onboard, we bring you the latest call for a cashless society, this time from German economist and member of the German Council Of Economic Experts Peter Bofinger.
Via Spiegel (Google translated):
Coins and bills are obsolete and only reduce the influence of central banks. This position represents the economy Peter Bofinger. The federal government should stand up for the abolition of cash, he calls in the mirror…
The economy Peter Bofinger campaigns for the abolition of cash. “With today’s technical possibilities coins and notes are in fact an anachronism,” Bofinger told SPIEGEL.
If these away, the markets for undeclared work and drugs could be dried out. In addition, it would have the central banks easier to enforce its monetary policy.The teaching in Würzburg economics professor called on the federal government to promote at the international level for the abolition of cash. “That would certainly be a good topic for the agenda of the G-7 summit in Elmau,” he said. (Click here to read the full interview in the new mirror .)
Even the former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and economist pleaded for an end to the already cash . Likewise, the US economist Kenneth Rogoff . He also argued that the interest rates of central banks have less clout when banks or consumer credit rather than hoard cash.
Critics warn, however , such debates would only distract from the real problems of the current monetary policy.
Yes, the “real problems” with current monetary policy. Like the fact that by design it can’t possibly work (but it can and will push stocks to unprecedented highs). Paging Mr. Weidmann, your countrymen are going Keynesian crazy.
- A PiCTuRe OF THe FuTuRe…
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