The Myth Of Liquidity And Bubbles In Financial Markets [View article]
Sustained currency debasement in all major economies is an important driver. In nominal terms the prices of real assets(those that are proven stores of value or wealth creating capacity) must rise to maintain purchasing power. It is money illusion that makes many people believe that real asset prices have greatly appreciated....
Mild Weather Makes Big Natural Gas Build Look Worse Than It Was, Prices Dip Below $4 [View article]
What the weather gives, it takes away. It has been so in the natural gas industry for about 25 years now.
However, $3.50 natural gas is no longer has the financial fear it held for E&P companies five years ago. Revenues from natural gas now account for only about a quarter of E&P revenues in the US. The industry is now mostly a liquids dependent industry in terms of cash flow, operating margins and valuation.
Natural gas is now largely a co-product not the main event for many E&P companies and the unit cost of production has also declined impressively in real terms over the past 5 years.
Market Rally A Function Of Liquidity And Speculation [View article]
Cheap Liquidity + Speculation = Bubble or maybe just the manipulation we have come to expect from Big Money with access to limitless, free credit, vast inside information and dominating technology. The "market" as efficient, honest allocator of resources and mediator of risk and reward ceased to be 5 years ago.
The residential real estate industry is driven by access to capital more than anything else. When consumers can access debt they buy often independent of their real ability to service the debt or pay for taxes, insurance, maintenance etc. When they cannot, they rent. Today, in several zip codes property markets, especially for single family homes, are being driven by the entry of Big Money with access to vast amounts of very cheap credit or by foreign money with very low cost of capital speculating on rising rents. Single family homes have become just another bundled Wall St yield product for the greedy and the ignorant.
Despite Disappointing April Industrial Production Report, Oil And Gas Sector Booming; Reaches 40-Year High [View article]
The oil and gas sector is booming and will continue to grow because of genuine innovation, true entrepreneurship and authentic risk capital intersecting with mineral rights on Private lands(there is no boom on Public lands, except deep offshore). Oil (crude and NGLS) and refined products are a global industry and dry natural gas is increasingly more of a co-product of crude and NGL production. The wealth, jobs and income creation contribution of the oil and gas industry is impressive and unless Big Government and Big Media sabotage this great industry it will continue to add jobs, income and wealth at rates well above that of any other major industry. There is hardly any other industry where not only are North American companies the dominant source of business creativity, financial ingenuity and deep technological innovation but where their lead is actually increasing over foreign companies. Within a few years the US will be the largest producer of crude+liquids in the world and Texas alone will be the third largest producer in the world, far ahead of Iran or Iraq. Within ten years, it seems, North Dakota will be a more significant producer than several OPEC members.
There are thousands individual stocks and then there is the synthetic "market" driven by a relatively small number of readily manipulated securities. The "market" is increasingly decoupled from the real economy of the middle class and driven by bad debt, bad money and sustained, unnatural ,arbitrages in the cost of debt between the inside few and the outside many. As credit and currency markets are perverted so equity markets are perverted.
Acting IRS chief Steven Miller resigned Wednesday in the wake of the agency's admission it unfairly screened Tea Party groups seeking tax exempt status from 2010 onward. President Obama called the screening "inexcusable" and emphasized that the IRS was the very last place where he would "tolerate this kind of behavior." The White House also released the letter from Treasury Secretary Jack Lew in which Miller's resignation was demanded. [View news story]
In a Soviet every arm of the Regime is an agent of spying, repression and domestic terrorism.
This was not the action of "rogue" agents but a matter of deliberate and vicious policy designed and approved at the top of the Regime.
Accumulating bad debt; oceans of bad money; bad government and a weak currency are not signs of strength but of deep strategic and structural weakness. The sun is now setting on Japan; the long dimming will be followed by an even longer night.
If You Liked Turkey On No Inflation, You'll Love India [View article]
India has its deep strengths, especially its ancient culture; functioning democracy; apolitical military and deep tradition of entrepreneurship but its has multiple pathologies that keep it weak and poor: endemic corruption; abysmal infrastructure; third rate educational system; pervasive shortages of electricity; and routine exploitation of its most helpless people.
India's time as a major economy will come no doubt but in typically Indian fashion it will be slow and late but then time has never held any fear for Indians
Greece catches an upgrade - to B- from CCC at Fitch which cites the rebalancing of the economy with "clear progress" made on eliminating the fiscal and current account deficits. "The price has been high in terms of lost output and rising unemployment and the capacity for recovery is still in doubt." The Greek ETF (GREK +1.7%). [View news story]
The only honest rating for Greece is "F" for failed state
Insiders at JPMorgan (JPM +1.1%) believe Jamie Dimon has the votes to support his dual roles of CEO and Chairman, reports Charlie Gasparino. Key will be big votes from BlackRock and T. Rowe Price due in a few days, and execs feel they have won those. If Dimon loses? "He won't leave them in the lurch ... he will groom a successor." [View news story]
The lust for power is insatiable. How can a Chairman via the Board effectively supervise and scrutinize management when he is also the CEO?
The lack of accountability and vanity among the Money, Media and Govt elites is both towering and destructive but then in a Soviet, the Kremlin is supreme.
In an empire of lies, any abatement in financial deception and economic fraud is frightening for the kleptocrats and oligarchs. A Soviet depends on ever bigger lies to perpetuate itself
Yes as a "market" meaning an efficient and honest allocator of resources and mediator of risk and reward but not as an engine of manipulation designed to further aggrandize the kleptocratic elite and transfer wealth from outside small money to inside big money
How Fake Exports Caused The Yuan Rally [View article]
As China's economic model comes to the end of its lifecycle increasingly brazen statistical fraud will occur both at the national and company level to perpetuate the lie that all is well and China has many more years of high growth ahead. China now faces a choice: change the model , which means depriving the Communist Party of its political monopoly and more personal and property rights OR enter into a long period of slowing and slow growth with all that implies for Chinese social stability and geo strategic imperial ambitions.
The Myth Of Liquidity And Bubbles In Financial Markets [View article]
In nominal terms the prices of real assets(those that are proven stores of value or wealth creating capacity) must rise to maintain purchasing power.
It is money illusion that makes many people believe that real asset prices have greatly appreciated....
Mild Weather Makes Big Natural Gas Build Look Worse Than It Was, Prices Dip Below $4 [View article]
However, $3.50 natural gas is no longer has the financial fear it held for E&P companies five years ago. Revenues from natural gas now account for only about a quarter of E&P revenues in the US. The industry is now mostly a liquids dependent industry in terms of cash flow, operating margins and valuation.
Natural gas is now largely a co-product not the main event for many E&P companies and the unit cost of production has also declined impressively in real terms over the past 5 years.
Market Rally A Function Of Liquidity And Speculation [View article]
The "market" as efficient, honest allocator of resources and mediator of risk and reward ceased to be 5 years ago.
What Is Normal In Housing? [View article]
Today, in several zip codes property markets, especially for single family homes, are being driven by the entry of Big Money with access to vast amounts of very cheap credit or by foreign money with very low cost of capital speculating on rising rents.
Single family homes have become just another bundled Wall St yield product for the greedy and the ignorant.
Despite Disappointing April Industrial Production Report, Oil And Gas Sector Booming; Reaches 40-Year High [View article]
Oil (crude and NGLS) and refined products are a global industry
and dry natural gas is increasingly more of a co-product of crude and NGL production.
The wealth, jobs and income creation contribution of the oil and gas industry is impressive and unless Big Government and Big Media sabotage this great industry it will continue to add jobs, income and wealth at rates well above that of any other major industry.
There is hardly any other industry where not only are North American companies the dominant source of business creativity, financial ingenuity and deep technological innovation but where their lead is actually increasing over foreign companies.
Within a few years the US will be the largest producer of crude+liquids in the world and Texas alone will be the third largest producer in the world, far ahead of Iran or Iraq. Within ten years, it seems, North Dakota will be a more significant producer than several OPEC members.
Stocks Ignore Still Weak Economy [View article]
The "market" is increasingly decoupled from the real economy of the middle class and driven by bad debt, bad money and sustained, unnatural ,arbitrages in the cost of debt between the inside few and the outside many.
As credit and currency markets are perverted so equity markets are perverted.
Acting IRS chief Steven Miller resigned Wednesday in the wake of the agency's admission it unfairly screened Tea Party groups seeking tax exempt status from 2010 onward. President Obama called the screening "inexcusable" and emphasized that the IRS was the very last place where he would "tolerate this kind of behavior." The White House also released the letter from Treasury Secretary Jack Lew in which Miller's resignation was demanded. [View news story]
This was not the action of "rogue" agents but a matter of deliberate and vicious policy designed and approved at the top of the Regime.
Japan GDP Q1: +3.5% (annualized) vs. 2.7% expected. [View news story]
Abenomics Is Paying Off [View article]
The sun is now setting on Japan; the long dimming will be followed by an even longer night.
If You Liked Turkey On No Inflation, You'll Love India [View article]
India's time as a major economy will come no doubt but in typically Indian fashion it will be slow and late but then time has never held any fear for Indians
Greece catches an upgrade - to B- from CCC at Fitch which cites the rebalancing of the economy with "clear progress" made on eliminating the fiscal and current account deficits. "The price has been high in terms of lost output and rising unemployment and the capacity for recovery is still in doubt." The Greek ETF (GREK +1.7%). [View news story]
Insiders at JPMorgan (JPM +1.1%) believe Jamie Dimon has the votes to support his dual roles of CEO and Chairman, reports Charlie Gasparino. Key will be big votes from BlackRock and T. Rowe Price due in a few days, and execs feel they have won those. If Dimon loses? "He won't leave them in the lurch ... he will groom a successor." [View news story]
How can a Chairman via the Board effectively supervise and scrutinize management when he is also the CEO?
The lack of accountability and vanity among the Money, Media and Govt elites is both towering and destructive but then in a Soviet, the Kremlin is supreme.
Is A QE Exit Really Scary? [View article]
A Soviet depends on ever bigger lies to perpetuate itself
A Puzzling And Irrational Market [View article]
How Fake Exports Caused The Yuan Rally [View article]
China now faces a choice: change the model , which means depriving the Communist Party of its political monopoly and more personal and property rights OR enter into a long period of slowing and slow growth with all that implies for Chinese social stability and geo strategic imperial ambitions.