Business Summary Links By Day

Business Summary Links By Day

Bursting The Permabullish Bubble: 11 Out Of 13 Economic Indicators Have Missed Durden 3-22-12 Back in early 2011, even as the global economy was at best flatlining, the one goalseeked explanation to justify a levitating stock market (which was rising solely due to the short-term effect of transitory QE2 liquidity), was soaring corporate profitability (which only lasted as long as companies could trim some residual SG&A fat; they have now cut into the bone in terms of layoffs). This time around, with corporate margins having peaked, there had to be some other validation to explain away the "narrative" of the latest bout of central bank infused stock market levitation: it just happened that this time it was once again that old faithful, and always wrong, justification - decoupling. After all one just has to listen to 5 minutes of CNBC to hear it taken for granted that the US economy is doing oh so swimmingly. Here is a newsflash for all the permabulls out there. It isn't. Not only that, but as David Rosenberg highlights, 11 of the 13 most recent economic indicators have missed consensus expectations, and one can demonstrate that the other 2 - car sales and jobs - have been simplistically manipulated into a favorable outcome. So now that the market is turning over, with Europe and China both solidly into contractionary territory, with Corporate profit margins turning over, and with US data missing virtually every print, how long until the permabullish validations all go up in smoke, and the one true source of stock market "nirvana" - cheap money - is once again in high demand from the central planning cabal. In turn, the Chairsatans of the world will do as requested, as they always do, however not with crude (the real one - Brent, not that Cushing-buffered substitute) at $125, and with the risk that Israel may attack Iran any day now, with or without the blessing of the Fed's Class A director. , Saudi Arabia And China Team Up To Build A Gigantic New Oil Refinery - Is This The Beginning Of The End For The Petrodollar? http://albertpeia.com/beginningofendforpetrodollar.htm ‘The largest oil exporter in the Middle East has teamed up with the second largest consumer of oil in the world (China) to build a gigantic new oil refinery and the mainstream media in the United States has barely even noticed it... Once the petrodollar system collapses, a lot of our underlying economic vulnerabilities will be exposed and it will not be pretty. Tough times are on the horizon. It is imperative that we all get informed and that we all get prepared.’ , Gold Outperforms As Stocks Drop and Volume Pops Durden 3-22-12 , Bernanke Lecture II Decrypted, Inflation 79: Deflation 0 Durden 3-22- The word 'inflation' dominated the words and thoughts of the propagandist-in-chief as he described the Fed's role in the global economy post World War II this afternoon. The 11,400 word speech contained a record-breaking 79 uses of the term 'Inflation' and exactly Zero uses of the word' Deflation'. Subliminally, we notice that the word 'might' is randomized in between the words 'Prices' and 'Inflation' and the words 'War' and 'Risks' are uncommonly tangential. We know in our hearts that the 8 uses of the word 'Paul' was Volcker-related but its proximity to the word ' bit' and 'inflation' leaves us questioning the deus-ex-machina that is Wordle and Bernanke. 'Monetary policy' and 'crisis' pop up a lot and it is evident that we have a 'financial economy' with the word 'Stable' only appearing 0.0015% during the speech. , Guest Post: A Primer For Those Considering Expatriation Durden 3-22-12 A growing number of Americans are frustrated with the way in which their economy has been managed and are becoming increasingly concerned about future measures the government may take to keep its coffers full. A question that is arising with increasing frequency is: does expatriation offer a viable protection to those concerned about a more financially-intrusive US system? The short answer is 'yes' but while it does offer a solution to ending one's obligations to pay US taxes - it's important to understand that it's not suitable for everyone. Mark Nestmann gives a great nuts and bolts breakdown of what's involved and what the benefits and risks are , China, Russia Voice "US In Iran" Ire Durden 3-22-12 In a number of stories in China's top newspapers today, the US has been slammed for its moves to restrict Iran's oil trade which could see Chinese banks sanctioned. As The People's Daily noted, Hong Lei (a Foreign Ministry spokesperson) warned such unilateral action was not only wrong but could exacerbate the stand-off over Iran's nuclear program. Arguing that China 'imports oil based on its economic development needs' without violating relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and undermining the third party's and international community's interests, he noted China will not accept the practice of saddling unilateral sanctions on the third country. Adding to this, China Daily notes the typical UN blah-dom of Wang Min's comments of the "more pragmatic importance to be firmly committed to dialogue and negotiations in order to properly solve the Iranian nuclear issue". While China is clearly 'disappointed' in the US efforts, Russia turns the dial to 11 with its comments that the US efforts are inflaming, as Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday, "Scientists in nearly all countries....are convinced that strikes may slow down the Iranian nuclear program. But they will never cancel it, close it down or eliminate it" warning that Iran will have no option but to develop nuclear weapons should the US strike. Well you can't please all the people all the time eh? Just ask Ben. , HFT Has Disconnected Commodities From Fundamentals Durden 3-22-12 High-frequency traders have caused U.S. commodity futures prices to disconnect from market fundamentals of supply and demand since the 2008 financial crisis. An extensive and detailed analysis by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development just confirms what we have shown again and again (most recently here in Silver) that HFT's impact on the world is not all unicorn-tears and liquidity-providing. Markets are more exposed to 'sudden and sharp' corrections, and as Reuters notes "The strategy of those involved in high-frequency trading tends to reinforce the correlation between equities and commodities". In a somewhat stunning conclusion from an academic treatise, the authors find "We are not saying that it's all about speculators and (that) fundamentals don't matter. But we are saying that they tend to matter less, except in extreme cases,". Unlike other studies on the linkages, the UNCTAD study uses tick-data and finds correlations rising and trade size dropping as frequency increased dramatically since the crisis in 2008. Critically, one final consequence is that investors seeking to diversify or hedge against other investments in their portfolio are often disappointed as the increased HFT creates a destabilizing effect on commodities (increasing volatility) and can often create bubbles. , Guest Post: What Is President Obama So Afraid Of? Durden 3-22-12 Quietly, and with little fanfare, President Obama signed a “National Defense Resources Preparedness” Executive Order on Friday. As the name suggests, the order intends to shore up the country’s national defense resources in advance of a national emergency. To be fair, this is not the first time that such an order has been written. President Obama’s order, however, takes things much, much further.This is all playing out with nearly perfect historical precision. Time and time again throughout history as once great empires accelerated their declines, governments have taken steps to protect their interests against the people. In the past, they have imposed curfews, disarmed the population, curtailed civil liberties, and declared national emergencies, usually against some great faceless enemy from abroad who threatens their way of life. As it turns out, though, our great faceless enemy is not some mythical boogeyman living in a cave, nor some angry brown person who hates us for our freedoms… but the very people within the system who’ve taken an oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’ Have you hit your breaking point yet? Two Charts On Why The LTRO Is A 'Real' Failure Durden 3-22-12 , Guest Post: The One Chart That Says It All Durden 3-22-12 Depending on debt to fuel nominal growth leads to an economic death spiral. Sometimes one chart says it all. Charted against consumer credit, the S&P 500 (SPX) collapsed after the 2000 dot-com bubble burst and has been tracing out a descending channel since then. The Fed's injections of liquidity via trillion-dollar purchases of toxic mortgages and Treasury bonds does not funnel money into productive investments--all it accomplished was to further incentivize speculative churning and financialization to enriched the few at the expense of the many. So sit back, tighten your seatbelts and enjoy the death spiral ride, brought to you by the Federal Reserve and your elected servants of the financial Elite. , Home Prices Miss Large On 9th Consecutive Downward Revision Durden 3-22-12 It will come as no surprise to many that the warm-weather-induced ebullience and renaissance in the US housing market is perhaps floundering as all that demand was dragged forward. Today's notable miss in the FHFA Home Price Index (at unch vs an expectation of +0.3%) is ugly but the huge downward revision from +0.7% to merely +0.1% in the previous month is now the ninth consecutive notable downward revision.Add to that the fact that FreddieMac just reported mortgage rate cracking over 4% (from 3.92% to 4.08%) and the ugly data on MBA applications and...well at least we're decoupling. , Art Cashin Takes On Critics Of His Seasonal Adjustment Seasoning Durden 3-22-12 We have covered the topic of BLS seasonal adjustment to death and beyond, as well as the endless expansion of those dropping out like flies from the labor pool (did those not in the US labor force, one way or another, whether due to mistracking, statistical aberrations, or outright data manipulation, increase by 1.2 million in January? It did? Next question... or does the government now desperately need an apologist for its own upwardly biased data 'mismanagement'?). Yet some of the formerly relevant elements at the less than cutting edge of asset management-cum-blogging decided to call out Art Cashin for daring to point out just this glaringly obvious seasonal adjustment issue. Of course, Art does not need us rushing to his defense. He can do a good enough job on his own. , Initial Claims Beat Expectations, To Miss Next Week Following Revision Durden 3-22-12 Same old, same old from the BLS: with initial claims expected to print at 350K, we get a number that is just better, or 348K - supposedly the best since February 2008, however one which will be revised to about 351K next week, hence a miss, in line with the perpetual +3K upward statistical bias each and every week demonstrated by the BLS, which is no longer even funny. To be sure, last week's 351K was just raised to 353K, just so that headlines can announce a 5K drop in claims week over week. Continuing claims printed at 3.352MM, down from an upward revised 3.361MM. And yes, initial claims are lowest since February 2008... Until one adds the continuing claims, EUCs and Extended Claims as seen in the chart below. The 99 week cliff saw a total of 18K drop from total rolls: these are now 1MM lower compared to a year ago, Europe's 'Success Story' Double Dips: Irish Economy Re-Contracts, As Predicted Durden 3-22-12 Remember Europe's so-called success story - Ireland? Time to scratch it off the list, as the "best performing" PIIG, and "peripheral reform" wunderkind, just reminded everyone that the only true success story in Europe is that other I country - Iceland, after its fourth quarter GDP unexpectedly dropped 0.2%, well below consensus estimates of a 1.0% GDP boost. Odd - recall that back in October, following the announcement that Greece would be allowed to extract a bondholder haircut, initially at 50% and ultimately at 78.5%, we said that "this means that Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy will promptly commence sabotaging their economies (just like Greece) simply to get the same debt Blue Light special as Greece." Looks like Ireland is well on its way to doing just that, and the GDP slide is actually not all that surprising. Next: prepare for more "surprising" GDP misses from Portugal, Spain and, of course, Italy. , Dave’s Daily: http://www.etfdigest.com CHINA THROWS BULLS A CURVE 3-22-12 ‘China’s PMI declined to 48.1 vs 49.6 indicating a much sharper contraction that “soft landing” proponents believed. This created a ripple effect throughout global markets. Retail Sales in the U.K. were also poor (-.8% vs -.5% expected) which also included energy. Even Canada’s Retail Sales (.5% but ex-auto declined .5%) which missed expectations. Back in the eurozone old fears (debt and economic contraction) bubbled again to the surface driving markets there lower.In the U.S. Jobless Claims (348K vs 350 expected & another revision higher for prior 352K) allowed for a minor beat and some overhyped headlines. FHFA House Price Index came in absolutely flat which shouldn’t surprise given the inventory overhang. Leading Indicators (LEI) were higher (.7% vs .6% expected & prior revised lower to .2%) [Thanks to contrived bubble stock market weighting/bootstrap]. Together, not so bad, but U.S. markets can’t take a solo walk higher given high levels of global integration and correlation.Bonds rallied as stocks, gold, the euro, oil and most commodities sold-off as bullish sentiments about economic growth take a holiday. All one can conclude for now is markets rose too far too fast on dreadfully light volume with the latter being the most troubling.An ETN blow-up occurred Thursday with TVIX (Velocity Shares 2 X VIX Long ETN) as Credit Suisse suspended new share creation. The ETN should have been rising with as the VIX rose today. Investors should have been making great returns either through speculation or hedging have been disadvantaged in a major way. Here is our write-up and that of Yahoo and ZeroHedge.http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff171/flyfry/ETF%20Digest/image004-28.jpg Volume on selling was only slightly more impressive than on recent melt-up days. But more selling is due to open trailing stops getting executed generally. Breadth per the WSJ was negative…’ , Student-Loan Debt Reaches Record $1 Trillion, Report Says Mar 22nd, 2012 (Bloomberg) — U.S. student-loan debt reached the $1 trillion mark, as young borrowers struggle to keep up with soaring tuition costs, according to the initial findings of a government study., Morning Snapshot Mar 22nd, 2012 (USAGOLD) — Gold fell to new 10-week lows following further troubling signs of an economic slowdown in China. HSBC/Markit Flash manufacturing PMI fell to a 4-month low of 48.1 in Mar, tempering expectations that China will experience a “soft landing”. Given China’s voracious appetite for commodities, heightened growth risks tend to weigh on the complex. While gold is unquestionably seen more as money in China, rather than a commodity, lower commodity prices diminish inflation expectations and therefore the yellow metal’s appeal as a hedge.Recent PMI data also suggests Europe has fallen back into recession.

Miscellaneous Business Headlines

AP Business Highlights

...Yahoo Market Update…

_______________________________________

{ some prior links of current interest }

A Warning Sign For The World http://albertpeia.com/warningsignfortheworld.htm, 20 Signs You Might Be A Typical American Worker http://albertpeia.com/20signsoftypicalamericanworker.htm , 10 Signs That America Is Decomposing Right In Front Of Our Eyes http://albertpeia.com/10signsamericadecomposing.htm , 8 Reasons Why The Greek Debt Deal May Not Stop A Chaotic Greek Debt Default http://albertpeia.com/8reasonsgreekdebtdefaultstillcoming.htm , 55 Interesting Facts About The U.S. Economy In 2012 http://albertpeia.com/55factsaboutus2012economy.htm , http://albertpeia.com/debtpercapita.jpg , Double-dip recession setting in across eurozone: EU , America 1950 vs. America 2012 http://albertpeia.com/downhillslideofamerica.htm , Society’s Five Stages of Economic Collapse http://albertpeia.com/5stagesofcollapse.htm , No Housing Recovery - Case Shiller Shows 8th Consecutive Month Of House Price Declines Durden , Goldman: Germany Is Now On The Hook By €1 Trillion (Or 40% Of GDP) Durden, , 20 Economic Statistics To Use To Wake Sheeple Up From Their Entertainment-Induced Comas http://albertpeia.com/20ecostatstowakesheeple.htm , Central bank balance sheet expansion since end 2007 Mar 1st, 2012 by News (ZeroHedge) — SNB +230%; Fed +222%, BOJ +125%, BOE +87%, PBOC +93%, ECB +51%. USA Gold / PG View: Pretty strong evidence that the rally in bonds — and by extension the rally in stocks — is nothing but a charade. , 10.7 Percent: Unemployment In Europe Is Worse Than It Was At The Peak Of The Last Recession http://albertpeia.com/europeunemploymentworsethanrecession.htm , Inflation Is A Tax And The Federal Reserve Is Taxing The Living Daylights Out Of Us http://albertpeia.com/inflationisatax.htm , 15 Potentially Massive Threats To The U.S. Economy Over The Next 12 Months http://albertpeia.com/15massivethreatstoeconomy.htm , 1 Through 30 – The Coming U.S. Financial Crisis By The Numbers http://albertpeia.com/1-30usfinancialcrisiscoming.htm , Greece Has Defaulted - Which Country In Europe Is Next? http://albertpeia.com/greecehasdefaultedwhonext.htm , Five Charts That Prove We’re in a Depression and That the Federal Reserve and Washington Are Wasting Money gpc1981 http://albertpeia.com/usindepressionfedandgovwastingmoney.htm , Broken Promises: Pensions All Over America Are Being Savagely Cut Or Are Vanishing Completely .http://albertpeia.com/uspensionscutorvanishing.htm , America Is Being Transformed From A Wealthy Nation Into A Poor Nation At Breathtaking Speed http://albertpeia.com/ustransformedfromwealthytopoor.htm , ECRI Stays with Recession Call New American | The vicious cycle is starting where lower sales, lower production, lower employment and lower income [leads] back to lower sales…BOB ADELMANN New American Tuesday, March 13, 2012 http://albertpeia.com/ecricallsrecession.htm , Consumer prices rise on high gas costs But outside higher pump prices, inflation stayed mild. (Washington Post) [ Wake up! They’d have a hard time denying what’s in plain sight for everyone to see. Yet, apparently they’ve not gone grocery shopping lately; you know, all that catered food for fools in Washington. , Financial Crisis Phase II Is Ahead at Forbes Bert Dohmen ‘ In late 2007, I wrote the book Prelude To Meltdown, predicting the global crisis that occurred the following year. I now see a similar confluence of events that warns of phase II of the global crisis… My work shows that “the new recession has started.”… Over the past 33 years, we have called the start of every recession, often on the exact month, or within one month, of the official start as determined one year later by the official arbiter of recession, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)… However, inflation is far understated for political reasons. Currently, the GDP deflator is 1.8%, which hardly reflects the true rise in prices. Therefore, what is counted as “growth,” is actually price increases. Actual inflation, according to free market economists who calculate inflation as it was done in 1980 before the politician re-engineered it, is now more than 11%. Using that to adjust GDP for inflation, would show that the economy is now in a very sharp contraction…’ , Conned 2012: Joseph Kony Is A CIA Contractor [ Yeah, cia, mossad, kony, they look like and are a bunch of spooks. ] Saman Mohammadi | Former European MP, journalist, and author Richard Cottrell says Lord Resistance Army is backed by CIA and Mossad. , 11 Reasons Why America Would Be A Better Place Without Goldman Sachs [ If only it was just 11 and not an endless number of reasons why the aforesaid is true! And, though america particularly, not just america, but the entire world as well! ] http://albertpeia.com/americabetterwithoutgoldmansachs.com , The Obama Flag: Who Decided That It Was Okay To Replace The Stars On The American Flag With The Face Of Barack Obama? http://endoftheamericandream.com http://albertpeia.com/monkeyflag.htm [Aside from the desecration issues, from a purely aesthetic perspective, that picture on the flag of that ugly monkey obama is an absolute disgrace and affront to any rational person’s aesthetic sensibilities!] , Who Decided That It Would Be A Good Idea.... http://albertpeia.com/misplacedfaith.htm , As US Rakes Largest Monthly Deficit In History, 2012 Tax Revenues Net Of Refunds Trail 2011 Durden, Guest Post: Money from Nothing - A Primer On Fake Wealth Creation And Its Implications (Part 1) Durden 3-12-12 What is fraud except creating “value” from nothing and passing it off as something? Frauds interlink and grow upon each other. Our debt-based money system serves as the fraud foundation. In our debt-based money system, debt must grow in order to create money. Therefore, there is no way to pay off aggregate debt with available money. More money must be lent into the system to make the payments for old debts. This causes overall debt to expand as new money for actual people (vs. banks) always arrives at interest and compounds exponentially. This process is called financialization. Financialization: The process of making money from nothing in which debt (i.e. poverty, lack) is paradoxically considered an asset (i.e. wealth, gain). In current financialized economies “wealth expansion” comes from the parasitic taxation of productivity in the form of interest on fiat lending. This interest over time consumes a greater and greater share of resources, assets, labor, and livelihood until nothing is left., Guest Post: Money from Nothing - A Primer on Fake Wealth Creation and its Implications (Part 2) ZeroHedge.com 3-14-12 Only in a debt-based money system could debt be curiously cast as an asset. We’ve made “extend and pretend” a quaint phrase for a burgeoning market for financial lying and profiteering aimed toward preventing the collapse of a debt- (or lack-) based system that was already doomed by its initial design to collapse. , Guest Post: The Audacity of Bonuses At MF Global Durden 3-12-12 In the spirit of George Orwell’s Animal Farm commandment: “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal then others” comes the galling news that bankruptcy trustee, Louis Freeh, could approve the defunct, MF Global to pay bonuses to certain senior executives. This, despite the fact that nearly $1.6 billion of customer funds remains “missing” or otherwise partially accounted for, yet beyond the reach of those customers, perhaps forever, since before the firm declared bankruptcy on October 31, 2011... ,