Here we have occasionally noted the latest iteration in the evolution of state control over the people: incremental violence, under “nonviolent,” “nonlethal” auspices, most publicly on display in Tbilisi, Georgia (yet another of George Soros’s Open Societies gone wrong) when Soros Mikhail Saakashvili needed to secure re-election in the face of a very disillusioned Georgian [...]
Archive for February, 2008
Incremental violence, from Tbilisi to San Jose
Posted in dawn to decadence, politics, volatility on February 28, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Chinese wage-price spiral now fully underway
Posted in china, doomsterism, inflation on February 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — In an effort to calm grousing consumers as prices rise to 11-year highs, China is raising minimum wages across the country, a move analysts fear could further stoke inflation.
Guangdong, China’s richest province, said it plans to raise minimum wages by as much as 18% in some cities starting April 1. [...]
Nigeria quietly discards dollar peg
Posted in dawn to decadence, dollar, doomsterism, federal reserve, inflation, monetary policy on February 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Nigerian states support discontinuing payment in dollars
Submitted by cpowell on Wed, 2008-02-20 16:06. Section: Daily DispatchesBy Kunle Aderinokun
This Day, Lagos, Nigeria
via AllAfrica.com
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
http://allafrica.com/stories/200802200406.html
ABUJA, Nigeria — A few days after President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua stopped the payment of their share of monthly allocations and excess crude proceeds in US dollars as earlier proposed by [...]
NY GOP, RIP
Posted in politics on February 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The New York Republican Party has enjoyed one lifeline over the past century: its control of the state Senate. The NY GOP has always driven hard bargains on redistricting, pork, and other gimmickry to bolster not only their own fortunes, but also the district makeups of NY House Republicans.
As of last night, that’s over.
Dems shocking [...]
Calling junk ‘AAA’ doesn’t change the fact that it’s junk
Posted in doomsterism, haha, inflation, politics, shitigroup, wall street on February 27, 2008 | 1 Comment »
What the debt market believes, and what the ‘Save the Sheeple’ monolines/ banks/ realtors caucus believes, are clearly two very different things.
Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) — Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s say MBIA Inc. has enough capital to withstand losses and justify its AAA rating. MBIA’s debt investors [...]
Dollarcide update
Posted in dollar, doomsterism, euro, federal reserve, inflation, monetary policy on February 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
CURRENCIES
VALUE
CHANGE
% CHANGE
EUR-USD
1.5105
0.0130
0.87
USD-JPY
106.4700
-0.8100
-0.76
GBP-USD
1.9903
0.0032
0.16
COMMODITY FUTURES
VALUE
CHANGE
% CHANGE
Oil
100.68
-0.20
-0.20
Gold
958.40
9.50
1.00
Fannie Mae, Freddie Portfolio Limits to Be Lifted, Ofheo Says
By Jody Shenn
Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two largest providers of money for U.S. home loans, will have restrictions on the sizes of their portfolios removed.
The limits, imposed after accounting errors at the government-chartered companies, will [...]
Fed’s “damn the inflation, full steam ahead,” redux
Posted in dawn to decadence, dollar, doomsterism, federal reserve, inflation, shitigroup, volatility on February 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Fed Vice Chairman Don Kohn:
“I do not expect the recent elevated inflation rates to persist. In my view, the adverse dynamics of the financial markets and the economy have presented the greater threat…
“I expect the run-up in headline inflation to be reversed and core inflation to edge lower over the next few years. [...]
MSM: We couldn’t bend Obama, … so let’s whine about it and make impotent threats
Posted in haha, politics on February 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Drudgico:
EDINBURG, Texas – For all the positive press Barack Obama receives, as he moves closer to clinching the Democratic nomination he is establishing himself as the candidate who keeps the most distance from the national media.
Reporters covering Obama can no longer move freely among the thousands of zealous supporters at his events — unless [...]
Morgan Stanley thrashed for joining China stampede
Posted in china, doomsterism, shitigroup, wall street on February 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I have told anyone who will listen that China is a deflationary depression waiting to happen. Banks that neglected their cultural homework, ignored preposterous P/E valuations, and brushed off gaping macroeconomic inefficiencies, such as Morgan Stanley, are now paying the price of being too fashionable too late in the race.
Morgan Stanley’s Chinese prize loses some [...]
The monoline “resolution” and PPI
Posted in dollar, doomsterism, federal reserve, inflation, monetary policy, shitigroup on February 26, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Producer price inflation has advanced 7.8 percent in the past twelve months, including 1 percent in January alone (compared to January a year earlier). And as usual, professional economists were the only ones who were surprised.
Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks fell for the first time in three days [...]
Foreclosure and asset stripping
Posted in culture, dawn to decadence, doomsterism on February 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
More grist for us bears.
Mike Burgur returned from work last month to interrupt a break-in at his rented Clearwater Beach condominium.
The intruders were stripping fans off the ceiling and the knobs off the doors. They had carted out the refrigerator and yanked up a toilet. They’d even pulled the plates off electrical outlets and unscrewed [...]
If your only tool is a hammer, …
Posted in dollar, federal reserve, haha, inflation, monetary policy, volatility on February 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
From Merrill Lynch forecaster-in-chief David Rosenberg’s morning memo:
“… New York Times article by Louis Uchitelle in December 1990 on the housing and credit crunch. In the article, there is a quote that goes like this –
“This is different from the experience of the Great Depression, but something related to the 1930’s is beginning [...]
Waiting for Goredot: where did global warming go?
Posted in environment, haha, politics, volatility on February 25, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Any enviros want to refresh me on how well the 2007-8 temperature forecasts of Pope Al and the cardinals of climatology stacked up to reality?
Anyone?
Bueller?
Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities [...]
Printing press update, ECB ed.
Posted in dawn to decadence, doomsterism, inflation, monetary policy, politics, shitigroup, volatility on February 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The antideflationist occult reigns sadly supreme chez Trichet … and has hamstrung the hesitant hawk in Mervyn King:
Lloyds accesses European Central Bank funding
By Jonathan Sibun and Philip Aldrick
Last Updated: 10:30am GMT 25/02/2008
Investment banks are secretly profiting from emergency European Central Bank funding by acting as brokers to funnel billions of euros of much needed [...]
Debunking decoupling
Posted in china, doomsterism, inflation, monetary policy, volatility on February 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Satyajit Das:
Trompe L’oeil Markets
Emerging market equities, especially the Shanghai and Mumbai markets, have decoupled. Bizarrely, they “de-couple” only if the US markets fall but “re-couple” if the US market goes up!
Increases are driven by substantial short-term capital flows fleeing developed markets and the US dollar. The assumption is that valuations and earning growth are [...]
The Alpine monarch who gave Berlin the middle finger
Posted in haha, politics on February 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Hans-Hermann Hoppe couldn’t have stated it any better.
Although a quiet, reflective man, the prince decided to take a rare public stand. Accused of aiding and abetting tax fraud – the banking principality does not recognise it as a criminal offence [where do I apply for citizenship?--ed] – he shot back that Germany had “trafficked in [...]
The Ambac bailout
Posted in dollar, doomsterism, inflation, shitigroup, wall street on February 23, 2008 | 1 Comment »
It was all quiet on the information front today, even if you include all the hullabaloo over the proposed Ambac bailout.
Ambac Rescue by Banks May Be Announced Next Week, Person Says
By Erik Holm and Bryan Keogh
Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) — Ambac Financial Group Inc., the bond insurer in rescue talks with banks, may announce an [...]
The PBGC’s signalling effect
Posted in politics, wall street on February 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the bleeding behemoth charged with insuring against shortfalls in private-sector pension plans, is moving massively into equities to help meet a $14 billion shortfall.
From a flow perspective, the shift would be large enough to
alter prices if the reallocation took place in a compressed
time frame. At the end of September, the [...]
Now Marty tells us
Posted in dawn to decadence, dollar, doomsterism, federal reserve, inflation, monetary policy, shitigroup, wall street on February 22, 2008 | 4 Comments »
It’s hard to find a group of people who are so wrong, so often, given the time and money investment they have made in themselves, as academic economics.
Marty Feldstein has been one of my favorite targets, along with Ben Bernanke and Larry Summers. His proposed “remedies” for the current “crisis” (i.e.: cut! cut! cut!) have [...]
Klaus Baader (MER): Trichet will not cut rates
Posted in euro, inflation, monetary policy, volatility on February 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Klaus Baader was one of the professional forecasters who defied conventional wisdom in 2006 and predicted that Trichet would continue raising interest rates, despite mounting political pressure.
He was proven correct then. Now he is going against the grain again, saying that Trichet will not cut rates, i.e., the euro is too cheap at the moment.
Trichet [...]
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