Category Archive: 5) Global Macro

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Change is in the air for oil and gas companies

2016-09-12

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Pressure to reduce carbon emissions is putting the future of fossil-fuel giants in jeopardy Click here to subscribe to The Economist on YouTube: http://econ.trib.al/rWl91R7 The Disrupters is an original series exploring how major industries – from music and cars to hospitality – are currently being disrupted by the latest wave of digital innovation. As well …

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If Everything Is So Great, How Come I’m Not Doing So Great?

2016-09-12

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2016-09-12

National health expenditures, Gross Domestic Product, Wages
While the view might be great from the top of the wealth/income pyramid, it takes a special kind of self-serving myopia to ignore the reality that the bottom 95% are not doing so well. We're ceaselessly told/sold that the U.S. economy is doing phenomenally well in our current slow-growth world -- generating record corporate profits, record highs in the S&P 500 stock index, and historically low unemployment (4.9% in July 2016).

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Control What You Can and the Asset Ownership of the Wealthy

2016-09-11

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2016-09-11

Our society does not make it easy to control what you can control. Assets are controlled increasingly by a smaller and smaller part of our society. Here's a couple of thoughts on productively controlling what we can control.

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Emerging Markets: What has Changed

2016-09-09

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2016-09-09

India has a new central bank head. North Korea detonated a nuclear device. The Turkish government may be eyeing the central bank for the next purge. Mexican Finance Minister Videgaray resigned. Incoming Mexican Finance Minister Meade announced new spending cuts.

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Our Selfie Society Is Incompatible with Democracy

2016-09-08

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2016-09-08

Now that the U.S. is a neoliberal selfie society, we have the worst of all possible worlds in terms of a failed, doomed democracy. Each individual's liberty to do whatever you want, be whatever you want, go wherever you want, etc. (within the legal boundaries set by the state) is the core of the American Dream. The individual's civil liberties and right to the unlimited pursuit of happiness is sacrosanct.

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Our Impoverished, Pathological Society

2016-09-06

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2016-09-06

If asked what's intrinsic to human happiness, most people in consumer societies will offer up answers such as money, status, a nice house, etc. But as Sebastian Junger observes in his book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, what's actually intrinsic to human happiness is: meaningful relationships within a community (i.e. a tribe); opportunities to contribute to the group and to be appreciated; being competent at useful tasks and opportunities for...

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Intriguing Eruditions: The weak month of the stock market

2016-09-02

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2016-09-02

On Tuesday, I noted the end of summer and the entrance into one of the weakest months of the year statistically speaking. “We can confirm BofAML’s point by looking at the analysis of each month of September going back to 1960 as shown in the chart below."

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MACRO ANALYTICS – 08-26-16 – “Fly-In-The-Ointment”! – w/Charles Hugh Smith

2016-09-02

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ABSTRACT: http://financialrepressionauthority.com/2016/09/01/charles-hugh-smith-the-fly-in-the-ointment-stagnant-wages-hidden-inflation/

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The “Secret Sauce” of the Byzantine Empire: Stable Currency, Social Mobility

2016-09-01

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2016-09-01

One of my reading projects over the past year is to learn more about empires:how they are established, why they endure and why they crumble. To this end, I've recently read seven books on a wide variety of empires. The literature on empires is vast, so this is only a tiny slice of the available books. Nonetheless I think these 7 titles offer a fairly comprehensive spectrum:

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The Fly-in-the-Ointment – 08-26-16 – FRA- w Charles Hugh Smith

2016-09-01

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ABSTRACT: http://financialrepressionauthority.com/2016/09/01/charles-hugh-smith-the-fly-in-the-ointment-stagnant-wages-hidden-inflation/

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Central Banks = Welfare for the Wealthy

2016-08-30

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2016-08-30

The fact that central banks provide welfare for the wealthy is now entering the mainstream. The fact that all central bank policies since 2008 have dramatically increased wealth and income inequality is now grudgingly being accepted as reality by mainstream economists and the financial media. The central banks' PR facade of noble omniscience on behalf of the great unwashed masses has cracked wide open.

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Mission Creep – How the Fed will justify maintaining its excessive balance sheet

2016-08-30

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2016-08-30

FOMC have changed their normalizing strategy several times and we now see the contours of yet another shift. The Federal Reserve was supposed to reduce its elevated balance sheet before moving interest higher as it would be impossible to increase the fed funds rate in the old fashioned way when the market was saturated with trillions of dollars in excess reserves.

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Trump By a Landslide?

2016-08-29

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2016-08-29

If we believe the mainstream media and the Establishment it protects and promotes, Trump has no chance of winning the presidential election. For starters, Trump supporters are all Confederate-flag waving hillbillies, bigots, fascists and misogynists. In other words, "good people" can't possibly vote for Trump.

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Emerging Markets: Preview of the Week Ahead

2016-08-28

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2016-08-28

EM ended last week on a soft note, as Fed tightening expectations ratcheted up.The December Fed funds futures contract has an implied yield of 0.5%,the highest since June 2. Note that on June 3, US rates plunged after the May jobs shocker (+38k). If the hawkish Fed storyline can be maintained, then EM will have trouble getting traction. This Friday’s jobs report for August will be key, with consensus at +185k vs. +255k in July.

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Emerging Markets: What has Changed

2016-08-27

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2016-08-27

Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor Patel has been named to succeed Governor Rajan. Political risk is back in South Africa. The Colombian government and the FARC rebels have reached a final peace agreement. S&P cut the outlook on Mexico’s BBB+ rating from stable to negative.

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China’s Great Divide: A New Cultural Revolution?

2016-08-26

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2016-08-26

In Asia, it's generally seen as unpatriotic to criticize one's country in public, even if you disagree with its direction and leadership. The cultural norm is to maintain the "face" of one's country by hiding its ills from outsiders. This reticence is especially evident in China, which suffers from the memory of being subjugated by the Western imperialist powers in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

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What Are the Odds that the 2020-2022 Olympics Will Be Cancelled?

2016-08-24

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2016-08-24

In the modern era (1896-present), the Olympics have only been cancelled in wartime: 1916 (World War I), 1940 and 1944 (World War II). But world war is not the only circumstance that could derail the Olympics; a global crisis in energy, finance or geopolitics could send the risks and costs of the Olympics beyond the reach of most participants.

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The Deep State’s Catch-22

2016-08-22

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2016-08-22

What happens if the Deep State pursues the usual pathological path of increasing repression? The system it feeds on decays and collapses. Catch-22 (from the 1961 novel set in World War II Catch-22) has several shades of meaning (bureaucratic absurdity, for example), but at heart it is a self-referential paradox: you must be insane to be excused from flying your mission, but requesting to be excused by reason of insanity proves you're sane.

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Emerging Markets: Preview of the Week Ahead

2016-08-22

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2016-08-22

EM ended last week on a soft note.Fed tightening expectations were buffeted first by hawkish Dudley comments and then by the more balanced FOMC minutes. On net, the markets adjusted the odds for tightening by year-end a little higher from the previous week, and stand at the highest odds since the Brexit vote. Yet despite the strong jobs data in June and July, odds of a move on September 21 or November 2 are still low, with the December 14 meeting...

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The Dos Santos Succession Saga

2016-08-21

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2016-08-21

Arguably one of the easier calls for us to make after 37 years in power was that President dos Santos would find ways of affording himself another 5 years in. Like any ‘effective’ leader, Mr. Santos made sure the final deal to do just that was stitched up long before the Party Congress formally convenes in Luanda, with a lower level MPLA ‘Central Committee’ already rubber stamping his name in mid-August.

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