Month: April 2019

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

While the crazed and corrupt people who comprise the Democratic Party and US print and TV media continue to insist that Russiagate is real, a very real threat is emerging in Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. The threat arises from the fact that Washington has taught each country to have no trust in America’s veracity. The governments of the four countries have learned that everything Washington says is a lie.

Moreover, the countries have learned that Washington does not accept their sovereignty and objects to their existence. Each of the four countries has experienced sanctions designed to overthrow their governments or cause them to submit to Washington’s will.

Russia long ago saw through Washington’s disingenuous claim that the missile ring that Washington has arrayed around Russia is defensive and directed against (non-existent) Iranian missiles. Putin has said many times that the “defensive” missiles can easily and quickly be converted into nuclear armed offensive missiles that leave Russia no response time. I have always been amazed at the utter stupidity of the Polish and Romanian governments for accepting these American missiles. No doubt the Polish and Romanian officials were paid handsome bribes, but money is no good to a dead person. You can bet your life that the Russians are not going to permit such operable weapons to be on Russian borders during a time of high tensions that exists today between the West and Russia.

Not content with this reckless provocation of Russia, the dumbshits that comprise the US government have announced a program to put weapons in space that can neutralize Russia and China’s nuclear deterrent. This reckless and irresponsible plan did not go unnoticed in Russia. Lieutenant General Viktor Poznikhir, Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff Operative Command, declared last week that Washington’s “on-start interception” program reveals that Washington is preparing a preemptive nuclear attack on Russia and China. You can bet your life that Russia and China are not going to sit there and wait for Washington’s attack, expecially as Russia has coming into deployment hypersonic missiles incapable of interception by any known or deployed means.

What Washington and its corrupt European vassals are doing is preparing the grave for the Western world, a good riddance as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

In the US self-interested political propaganda has succeeded in crowding out all attention to real issues, such as mass displacement of jobs by robotics, global warming whatever the cause, and the rising risk of nuclear war. When the rest of the world looks at the West, it sees an insane asylum in which the two greatest threats to American national security are said to be Venezuela and a Russian agent in the Oval Office.

It is impossible for anyone to take a country this silly seriously. Consequently, American power is collapsing, to everyone else’s relief. Even Washington’s well paid puppets in Germany, Britain, and France are showing signs of independence that have not been seen since the days of Charles DeGaulle.

The Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and North Koreans know that they are dealing with fools, and they are not going to take any chances. They know that no agreement with America means anything and that Washington speaks only with a forked tongue.

Washington is going to be increasingly frustrated abroad as willingness to cooperate with the insane asylum vanishes. The consequence will be increasing tyranny at home.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UTliA1 Tyler Durden

First, two quarters ago, Apple shocked investors when it said it would no longer disclose the number of iPhone it was selling – a clear signal that the selling was slowing dramatically. Shocked investors sold off the stocks… then BTFD with gusto sending AAPL sharply higher. A few months later, on January 3 2019, Apple once again shocked the market when it slashed its revenue guidance by8% for only the first time since this century (naturally, it blamed China). As AAPL stock tumbled, it reveberated across all capital markets, and even prompted a flash crash cascade in most yen and pound pairs. However, just like a quarter earlier, Apple’s “shock” was quickly overcome, and the after hours plunge actually marked the max pain for longs, and as the chart below shows, AAPL has soared 46%. And to think all it had to do was slash revenue guidance…

So with enough action to make an algos’ silicon head spin, everyone was asking just what disaster Apple would announce today to send its stock back to all time high?

Well, the stock is certainly spiking after hours, but this time there was no disaster, or even disappointment; in fact, the company just reported Q2 numbers that beat across the board, while the company guided above the consensus range for Q3, and also announced a new $75 billion stock repurchase authorization.

Here are the details:

• Q2 Revenue of $58.0BN, down from $61.1BN a year ago, but above the $57.49BN expected
• Q2 EPS of $2.46, down from $2.73 a year ago, but also above the $2.37 expected
• Q2 iPhone Revenue of $31.05BN, Exp. $30.50BN, down 17% Y/Y from $37.6BN
• Q2 China revenue $10.22BN, down 22% from $13.0BN Y/Y
• Q2 Service Revenue $11.45BN, up 16% from $9.850BN
• Q2 Gross margin $21.82BN

The company also announced that it is boosting its dividend to 77c/share from 73c/share. In short, ok numbers, but nothing breaktaking, especially when one considers the company’s guidance cut last quarter.

But what the market was far more impressed by was the company’s Q3 guidance, where it now sees revenue between $52.5 and $54.5BN, solidly above the consensus estimate of $52.22BN, on gross margin of 37-38%, in line with the 38% expectation.

Breaking down the numbers in detail, it is perhaps not a surprise that China revenues crashed 22%. even as Europe and Rest of Asia were also disappointing; only Japan and the Americas posted a modest improvement.

Another potentially troubling development: while Service revenue grew to a new record high of $11.45BN, up from $10.9BN in Q1, this was only a 16% increase Y/Y in service revenue, a clear secular decline in service revenue growth. Which begs the question: is Apple, the “service company” also peaking soon?

To summarize: iPhone sales tumbled 17% but this was offset somewhat by the surge in service sales. How long this trade off will continue is the $1 trillion question.

To offset the ongoing China weakness and potential service revenue growth concerns, and to make buying the stock after hours easier, Apple went back to doing what it has done best under Tim Cook: not innovate of course, but buyback its stock: in Q2 the company announced an additional $75 billion in share repurchases.

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2DFf0hj Tyler Durden

Oil prices rallied on the day amid a sliding dollar and increased protests in Venezuela adding to concerns about supply (despite a slowdown in China PMI potentially questioning demand).

“The market is currently witnessing the largest number of barrels subject to potential outage in many years, between Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria, Algeria and Libya,” said Leo Mariani, a KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc. analyst.

API

• Crude +6.81 mm (+1.5mm exp)

• Cushing +1.353mm

• Gasoline -1.055mm (-1.5mm exp)

• Distillates -2.058mm (-1mm exp)

After a surprise crude build last week, expectations were for another small stock rise and yet another gasoline drawdown and API did not disappoint with a large 6.8mm crude build… This is the 11th weekly draw in gasoline (and 7th weekly draw in distillates) in a row…

“We have to keep in mind that with more than 12 million barrels being produced, until we ramp back those refineries up, we will probably see crude stocks build,” Gene McGillian, manager of market research at Tradition Energy, says

WTI hovered around $64 ahead of the API print and kneejerked lower after the

The developments in Venezuela triggered a spate of buying early on Tuesday, but that could reverse just as quickly if the opposition’s chances look shaky, said Michael Hiley, head of OTC energy trading at LPS Futures in New York. In the longer term, Maduro’s ouster could lower prices, he said.

“They have some of the best reserves in the world and you would just need the proper capital investment to crank that up again,” Hiley said. “It will ultimately end up with more oil on the market, but short-term the knee-jerk movement for prices is still up.”

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2J6yBuo Tyler Durden

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

No one seems to care that a government already over $22 trillion in debt is on schedule to borrow another $990 million this year. All of this is occurring as individual Americans further enslave themselves with higher debt loads and retail stores fail over the inability to pay back the money they borrowed. But there are many reasons to be concerned about government spending.

The debt-based system we live under won’t sustain itself forever.  Don’t get us wrong, the sociopaths in government and at the Federal Reserve (central bankers) will prop it up for as long as possible, but it is doomed to fail. That $22 trillion doesn’t include unfunded liabilities either, making the situation even uglier.

According to ABC News, The Treasury Department on Monday projected that borrowing in the April-June quarter would total $30 billion. Borrowing in the July-September period, the final quarter of the budget year will total $160 billion. The $990 billion borrowing total for the 2019 budget year would be down from $1.2 trillion borrowed in 2018. But both years are up from 2017’s $519 billion in government borrowing.

The Foundation for Economic Freedom (FEE) reported that the deficits are likely to double within ten years, making this an issue that could impoverish everyone.  There are 5 reasons why the national debt is a big problem and why everyone should be worried about it.

1. Benefits Spending: Most federal spending is for subsidy and benefit programs, not for activities that increase productivity. Subsidy and benefit programs distort the economy and generally reduce overall output and incomes. Those distortions occur whether spending is financed by debt or current taxes. But the availability of debt financing induces policymakers to increase overall spending, which at the margin goes toward lower-valued activities.

2. Tax Damage Compounded: When taxes are extracted to pay for government spending, it induces people to change their working and investing activities, which distorts the economy and reduces growth. When spending is financed by borrowing, the tax damage is pushed to the future and compounded with interest costs.

3. Investment Reduced. Government borrowing may “crowd out” private investment and thus reduce future output and incomes. Economist James Buchanan said: “By financing current public outlay by debt, we are, in effect, chopping up the apple trees for firewood, thereby reducing the yield of the orchard forever.” The crowd out will be reduced if private saving rises to offset government deficits. But the CBO says “the rise in private saving is generally a good deal smaller than the increase in federal borrowing.” Government debt may also deter investment through expectations—businesses will hesitate to invest if rising debt creates fears of tax increases down the road.

4. Borrowing from Abroad. A decline in private investment due to government borrowing may be avoided if capital is attracted from abroad. Indeed, huge federal borrowing has been facilitated by global capital markets, and today more than 40 percent of the federal debt is held by foreigners. Borrowing from abroad may prevent a fall in domestic investment, but it does not prevent the shifting of costs to future taxpayers. As government debt rises, more of our future earnings will be taxed to pay interest and principal on the government’s debt to foreigners.

5. Macroeconomic Instability. CBO warns that a “large and continuously growing federal debt would … increase the likelihood of a fiscal crisis in the United States.” Experience shows that high levels of government debt tend to reduce growth and increase financial fragility. In their study of financial crises through history, Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff concluded, “again and again, countries, banks, individuals, and firms take on excessive debt in good times without enough awareness of the risks that will follow when the inevitable recession hits.” Government debt, they found, “is certainly the most problematic, for it can accumulate massively and for long periods without being put in check by markets.”

There is no chance that anyone voters choose will correct this situation.  The media is already propagating for the government and has a hissy fit when one even suggests cuts to spending. In fact, politicians are pandering to the illogical masses about creating a huge spending program called “Medicare for All” and wiping out over $1 trillion in student loan debt.  Those will just bring the eventual economic collapse closer as the U.S. is past the point of return. The country will collapse in the future.  It is impossible to say when, but this is an unsustainable trajectory.

There is honestly very little any of us can do, unfortunately.  Voting won’t help as cutting government spending isn’t the way to get oneself elected as a political overlord. As Michael Snyder pointed out recently on The Economic Collapse Blog, individually, there is very little that we can do about our national debt, state and local government debt or corporate debt.  We can try to vote people into office that want to do the right thing, but unfortunately, fiscal responsibility and financial reform are not hot button political issues right now.

Snyder added that what we can do is get our own financial houses in order.  Now is not the time to take on more debt, and paying off any debt that you have already accumulated would be a very good thing when the debt-based economy comes crashing down around us. –SHTFPlan

All we can do is get ourselves prepared and in a position to survive the coming collapse; whenever it may be.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2ZNrGft Tyler Durden

The “Rick Astley” Market keeps on rocking and rolling…

Despite weak China PMI overnight, China stocks trod water

 

Spain surged after yesterday’s early dip…

BTW – it’s not just US markets that entirely decoupled from fun-durr-mentals…

US Stocks lumped into the EU close (after Mulvaney spooked stocks with China trade deal headlines) and then ripped back, extending gains after Trump raised the idea of The Fed slashing rates and QE… S&P was glued to unchanged all afternoon…

 

GOOGL spooked Nasdaq futures (as did weak China PMI and Mulvaney)…

With investors having hugged their margin clerks for months, hoping to chase outsized returns during what many have dubbed a melt up, today they are hugging the toilet bowel instead as the year’s hottest trade in stocks is suffering a huge market-value loss over the previously noted Google ad revenue meltdown.

Led by an earnings-driven sell-off at Alphabet, FAANGs are on track to lose more than $100 billion in combined capitalization, and are set to suffer their second-biggest market cap drop of this year.

The culprit of course was Alphabet, which dropped 8.3% after its its ad revenue growth posted a sharp slowdown, resulting in a $68.3 billion market cap loss.  The rest of the drop was due to Apple, whose 2.1% drop resulted in nearly $20 billion wiped out, and came just ahead of Apple’s own results, due after the market closes. When the FAANGs last saw $100 billion erased from their valuations, it was after Apple cut its outlook in January, which wiped almost $70 billion from the iPhone maker’s valuation.

This was GOOGL’s biggest drop since Jan 2012

 

VIX and Stocks continue to decouple – Call-buying or protection bid?

 

Treasuries were bid, erasing yesterday’s losses…

 

10Y Yield roundtripped 5bps intraday, fading back to 2.50% by the close…

 

The Dollar Index slipped for the 4th day in a row ahead of the FOMC meeting..

 

The Loonie strengthened despite a dismal miss on GDP

 

Good day for cryptos today…

 

Commodities all rose on the day, as the dollar dipped, led by WTI…

 

Green Shoots, shot?

 

Finally, the S&P 500 is up 17.4% in 2019, making it the fourth best start to a year in history.

However, that may be a bearish signal. Because historically when the January-April return exceeds 15%, the performance for the rest of the year is paltry at best and, at times, a disaster.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WhsoQe Tyler Durden

Authored by Jared Dillian via MaludinEconomics.com,

I am never going to retire. Oh sure, I say that now, but what about when I am 80? No. I will never stop working.

Every morning, I get out of bed when the alarm goes off, take a shower, put on dress clothes (a suit, usually), and drive 35 minutes to work in an office that I rent in an office building.

I write newsletters. I can just as easily do that on the couch, in a pair of gym shorts, with a cup of coffee. Why spend over an hour a day commuting and dealing with all the brain damage of putting on a suit and going to work?

Because I like work!

In short, if it doesn’t feel like a job, then it’s not a job.

The reality is that I am the furthest thing from a working stiff. I travel plenty; I make my own schedule. But unless I feel like a working stiff, it doesn’t feel like I am working, or being productive.

Work is good.

The Absurdity of Universal Basic Income

If you go back to the 1970s sci-fi flicks (like Logan’s Run), in the future, nobody has to work.

That’s one prediction that never came true. This is the future, and here we are, still working. Maybe a little less, but not much.

We have more time-saving inventions, but we mostly use the extra time to work more.

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang says we should all get $1,000 a month so that work can be optional. As the UBI people like to say, that will free us up to pursue our dreams.

That is a terrible idea. People are very, very bad with unstructured free time. And human nature being what it is, people don’t pursue their dreams without a little bit of motivation.

One form of motivation might be not knowing where your next meal is coming from. In a society that is capable of producing so much wealth, that seems downright undignified.

Idleness Ruins People

Idleness is so bad for individuals (and society as a whole) that top-down command-and-control make-work programs would be preferable to basic income. That’s how much I believe in the benefits of work.

And according to Tyler Cowen: “Earning and spending money is fun, and many jobs are more rewarding, more social and safer than they used to be. Even with much higher living standards now than in the immediate post-war era, Americans still basically want to stay on the job.”

Spend some time at home playing video games, and within a few months, you will be utterly convinced of the meaninglessness and pointlessness of life. Multiply that by 100 million people, and you have a big problem.

It’s why we care about unemployment so much. Again, according to Cowen, involuntary unemployment is one of the most traumatic things that someone can experience—even worse than divorce.

It has debilitating psychological effects. Getting people back to work after a recession is a top priority. Of course, lengthening unemployment benefits has the exact opposite effect, but not a lot of people in D.C. know much about economics.

I Will Never Retire

To my earlier point, I am not a big fan of retirement.

I have seen some bad retirements. Situations where people didn’t really have a plan, and ended up spending a lot of time at home with cable news on at top volume.

Even when there is a plan, can you realistically chase a white ball around for 10 hours a day? Or travel every day? Or go out with friends for three meals a day? Even if you had the financial resources to do that, would you want to?

Unstructured free time isn’t just bad for 20-somethings, it’s also bad for 70-somethings.

We have all heard stories of someone who had a tremendous career with lots of responsibility, then they retire and they’re dead within a few years. If you don’t have a purpose, there aren’t just psychological effects, there are physical effects, too.

One of the reasons I am not too concerned about Social Security “being there” for me when I retire is because I am not going to retire!

For sure, I expect my business to be smaller and my responsibilities to be reduced, but I will never, ever stop working.

*  *  *

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via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2XWWqt2 Tyler Durden