Tag: finance

The best they can say about today’s meetings in Paris is that all the leaders agree to disagree – both over possible sanctions and over whether Russia is doing anything illegal. Confused yet? US Secretary of State John Kerry will explain it all in his press conference due up soon…

 

 

Lavrov said in his comments today that

“Kerry acknowledged that… in conditions of threats and ultimatums, it is very difficult to work on honest agreements that will then help the Ukrainain people to stabilise the situation.”

Via Xinhua,

U.S. secretary of state, British foreign secretary and Ukrainian interim foreign minister on Wednesday urged Russia to honor the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

 

“The Budapest Memorandum sets out the obligations of signatories in return for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons,” John Kerry, William Hague and Andriy Deshchytsia said in a joint statement while meeting in Paris Wednesday.

 

“The Memorandum also obliges the UK, U.S. and Russia to consult in the event of a situation arising where the memorandum commitments are questioned,” the statement said.

 

The United States had conveyed an invitation to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, but he didn’t attend the meeting, according to the statement.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1cv9tZZ Tyler Durden

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

The Fed’s serial bubble machine has not only bestowed massive speculative windfalls on the 1%, but it has also fostered a noxious culture of plunder and entitlement in the gambling casinos of Wall Street. After each thundering sell-off during the bust phase, crony capitalist gamblers have been gifted with ill-gotten windfalls during the Fed’s subsequent maniacal money printing spree.

Worse still, this trash-to-riches syndrome has unfolded so consistently since the late 1980s that there now exists a marauding gang of permanent vulture-speculators who impudently claim entitlement to any and all action by the state that might be needed to quickly reflate their gleanings from the bottom. The passel of hedge funds led by Elliot Capital which blackmailed the Obama White House into paying billions for the worthless debt of Delphi during the GM bailout is only one especially odious example.

In this context comes Bruce Berkowitz “scolding” and firing “salvos” at Washington from the front page of the Wall Street Journal. As it has happened, the usually craven denizens of the beltway have so far managed to ignore his petulant demands for a multi-billion payday on the worthless Fannie and Freddie preferred stock that his fund scooped up after the housing bust. Recall, these were the securities issued in 2008 at $25 per share to shore up the tottering housing finance agencies just before Hank Paulson’s bazooka sputtered.

Not inappropriately, when the Republican White House nationalized Freddie and Fannie in September 2008 these preferred shares plunged to 25 cents—-their true value all along. The fact is, the so-called GSEs do not “earn” profits; they merely book bloated accounting margins that reflect nothing more profound than the fact that Freddie and Fannie drastically underpay for renting Uncle Sam’s balance sheet. As finally became official when the U.S. Treasury threw them a $180 billion lifeline, the GSEs are now—and have always been—a branch office of the U.S. Treasury Department.

The only reason Freddie and Fannie are not prosecuted for filing fraudulent accounting statements, therefore, is the beltway fiction that they are “off-budget”. This convenient scam was first invented by Lyndon Johnson to magically shrink his “guns and butter” fiscal deficits, but it has since metastasized into a giant business fairy tale—namely, that behind the imposing brick façade of Fannie Mae there is a real company generating value-added services that are the source of its reported profits and current multi-billion pink sheet valuation. In fact, there is nothing behind those walls except a stamping machine that embosses the signature of the American taxpayer on every billion dollar package of securitized mortgages it guarantees and on all the bonds it issues to fund a giant portfolio of mortgages and securities from which it strips the interest.

If we wanted to have honest socialist mortgage finance, a handful of GS-14s could run Freddie and Fannie out of the U.S. Treasury building. Civil servants could emboss the taxpayers’ guarantee on every family’s home mortgage just as proficiently as the make-believe business executives who populate the GSEs today; and in the process we could dispense with the sheer waste involved in applying GAAP accounting to the operations of a mere government bureau.

In an alternative political universe not corrupted by crony capitalist mythology about the elixir of homeownership, of course, there would be no need for a Treasury Bureau of Home Mortgage Finance. The decision to own own or rent would be made by 115 million American households based on their best lights, not the inducements and favors of the state. Markets would clear the interest price of mortgage debt and set credit terms and maturities consistent with the risks involved. Undoubtedly, rates would be a few hundred basis points higher and 30-year fixed rates mortgages quite rare. And like in the seemingly prosperous precincts of Germany, the home-ownership rate might be 55% or any other number not selected by pandering politicians of the type who pinned the 70% disaster on the wall during the Clinton-Bush era.

At the end of the day, having 40 million renter-households and 25 million mortgage-free owner-households provide (in their capacity as taxpayers) trillions of subsidized credit to upwards of 50 million mortgage-encumbered households is absurd. Yet it could be dismissed as just another expression of the capricious and random shuffling of income among American citizens that is the tradecraft of the Washington puzzle palace.

Unfortunately, the reality is not so anodyne. In order to hide this random redistribution mischief, the Treasury Bureau of Home Mortgage Finance has been gussied-up to form the simulacrum of a profit-making enterprise—otherwise known as a GSE. In that posture, the GSEs have been repeatedly plundered by insiders like Franklin Rains, the 90 million dollar man who drove Fannie off the cliff; and by fast money stock speculators who managed to drive the combined market cap of Freddie and Fannie to the lunatic level of $140 billion during their hay-day at the turn of the century; and by the Wall Street dealers and so-called fund managers who inventory trillions of GSE debt securities in order to scalp profits from the economically pointless spread between regular treasury bonds and the GSE variant of the same thing.

All of these hundreds of billions were pocketed by adept cronies and speculators in the various debt, equity and preferred securities of the GSEs during the decades culminating in the 2008 financial crisis. Given the trauma of those events, Secretary Paulson’s desperate and ill-disguised nationalization of Freddie and Fannie should have put an end to the plunder.

But it hasn’t because there is no end to the zero cost-of-goods carry trades by which speculators scoop-up and fund financial assets—busted and not—during the Fed’s money printing marathons. Likewise, there is no end to crony capitalist marauders like Berkowitz, who have the temerity to demand make-wholes from the state, and K-Street hirelings—lawyers, accountants and consultants— who are skilled at the manufacture of specious public policy rationalizations for outright thievery.

So now comes the patented crony capitalist rush. The worthless Freddie and Fannie preferreds have lately erupted from $0.25 per share to $12, meaning that some speculators have already garnered a paper return of 48X. And why did this revival miracle transpire? Quite simply because Berkowitz’s Fairholme Capital and his posse of punters—-John Paulson, Perry Capital and Pershing Square, among others—have taken turns bidding up the paper.

Meanwhile, their deplorable plan to do the American people a favor and swap these bogus securities for those of a new tax-payer underwritten, mortgage guarantee stamping machine, has but one objective—that is, to put a statutory floor under the current $12 per share price and enable them to dicker with Capitol Hill staffs for an ultimate take-out at par($25) under the guise of “privatization”. The larceny intended here is not modest: the payday for Berkowitz and his hedge fund posse would amount to $35 billion on toxic paper which was purchased for rounding errors.

To be sure, Berkowitz and his sharpies blather that Freddie and Fannie have now returned $200 billion to the US Treasury, thereby repaying the original $180 billion drawdown, with some change to spare. But what hay wagon do they think even the clueless officialdom of Washington rides upon? Roughly $50 billion of that was for writing-up a “tax asset” that had earlier been written-down, owing to the fact that absent nationalization the GSEs had no prospect of booking even accounting income in the future. And the remaining $150 billion represents dividends paid to the Treasury since 2009 based on using Uncle Sam’s credit card to issue the bonds and guarantees which fund the assets from which these so-called GSE dividends are scalped.

In other words, the Berkowitz Gang wants to be paid a king’s ransom for ownership shares in what amounts to a bureau of the US Treasury. And yet these con men pound the table demanding to “wake up the (GSE) boards” so that they will execute their “fiduciary responsibility”. Indeed, so shameless are Wall Street’s princes of plunder that Berkowitz told a skeptical CNBC questioner last fall “we’ve helped before with AIG”, and that he now merely seeks a “win-win” to “help with jobs, help with the economy, help with the dream of homeownership”!

That gibberish is the measure of the crony capitalist deformation that has infested the nation’s financial markets and system of political governance. The obvious thing for Washington to do is close the doors at Fannie and Freddie and allow their $5 trillion portfolio to run-off in the manner of any liquidation. And if it must subsidize home mortgage credit, just bring back the metal filing cabinets in the Treasury Building where the so-called “secondary mortgage market” was birthed in 1938. Yet what it dare not do is succumb to the bogus bombast of the punters and sharpies who troll the financial wreckage inexorably created by the Fed’s serial bubble machine.

If it does, the people will find their pitchforks and torches – one of these days.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1hMh7yo Tyler Durden

The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain said on Wednesday they were withdrawing their ambassadors from Qatar after it had not implemented an agreement among Gulf Arab countries not to interfere in each others’ internal affairs. The move, unprecedented in the 30-year history of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), follows the Bahrain state minister for information Samira Rajab saying she has evidence of Qatari media provocation against her country. As Gulf News reports, Qatar has been a maverick in the region, backing Islamist groups in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East that are viewed with suspicion or outright hostility by some fellow GCC members. Not a good sign for the oil-generating center of the world.

 

Via Gulf News,

The move by the three countries, conveyed in a joint statement, is unprecedented in the three-decade history of the Gulf Cooperation Council, an alliance of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and Oman.

 

…

 

The statement said GCC members had signed an agreement on November 23 not to back “anyone threatening the security and stability of the GCC whether as groups or individuals – via direct security work or through political influence, and not to support hostile media”.

 

GCC foreign ministers had met in Riyadh on Tuesday to try to persuade Qatar to implement the agreement, it said. Media reports described the meeting as “stormy”.

 

…

 

“But unfortunately, these efforts did not result in Qatar’s agreement to abide by these measures, which prompted the three countries to start what they saw as necessary, to protect their security and stability, by withdrawing their ambassadors from Qatar starting from today, March 5 2013,” the statement said.

 

…

 

The nations have also asked Qatar “not to support any party aiming to threaten security and stability of any GCC member,” it added, citing media campaigns against them in particular.

 

…

 

Media reports have said that Shaikh Tamim was given an ultimatum by Saudi Arabia in the November meeting in Riyadh that was facilitated by the Kuwaiti emir, Shaikh Sabah Al Ahmed. The new emir was told to change Qatar’s ways and bring the country in line with the rest of the GCC with regards to regional issues. The GCC has in particular been concerned about Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood, its close relations with Turkey, its opposition to the new regime in Egypt and its perceived support for Al Houthi rebels in Yemen.

 

…

 

Relations between Qatar and the UAE have been rocky lately. A top UAE court on Monday sentenced Qatari national Mahmoud Al Jidah to seven years in prison followed by deportation after he was convicted with two Emiratis of raising funds for a banned local Muslim Brotherhood-linked group, Al Islah. The move was criticised by Qatar’s National Human Rights Committee, which is close to the government.

 

…

 

Early in February, in a rare move for Gulf countries, the UAE announced that it had summoned Qatar’s ambassador in Abu Dhabi for remarks made by controversial Egyptian-Qatari cleric Yousef Al Qaradawi. Dr Anwar Mohammad Gargash, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, expressed the UAE Government’s “extreme resentment” over Al Qaradawi’s statement. Speaking live on Qatari state TV from a Doha mosque, Al Qaradawi criticised the UAE for supporting the current Egyptian government. He claimed that the UAE “has always been opposed to Islamic rule”.

 

“We have held back so that our neighbour can clearly reject such insult, extend sufficient clarifications and guarantee that such provocation and defamation will not recur,” Gargash said then.

 

…

 

Qatar, which used to enjoy close relations with Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Turkey and Bashar Al Assad’s Syria, has in recent years found itself isolated after relations with Hezbollah, Iran and Al Assad deteriorated. The GCC’s decision is expected to further isolate the new emir.

Arab Spring 2.0?

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1kyU517 Tyler Durden

Question Everything, Believe Nothing

Chapter One

Suspending Disbelief

By

Cognitive Dissonance

 

 

Introducing a new portal into the mind of Cognitive Dissonance

www.TwoIceFloes.com

 

Where are the outer boundaries of our mental box, that comforting space where we ‘believe’ the uniquely individual ‘me’ can be found? What is the limit of our ability to think and perceive beyond our current ‘belief’ system, to think outside the lines of our own perceptional box? Can we ever locate a clearly defined line of demarcation where we cross over from all that ‘we’ believe is ‘me’ and where the herding ‘we’ bulls ‘us’ over?

Is ‘our’ belief system entirely ‘yours’ or is it for the most part indoctrinated into you by ‘our’ culture and those who directly or indirectly influence our culture, thus by extension ‘you’? Who, or more accurately, what are ‘you’ if very little of substance differentiates ‘you’ from ‘us’? In many ways this is a chicken or egg question and it appears that a decent method by which we may answer it is to work backwards and examine what is ‘belief’ and what it means for us to ‘believe’.

One of the ways we have been mentally, emotionally and spiritually hijacked is through our language, a concept brilliantly described in Orwell’s classic work ‘1984’. For many, the words ‘believe’ or ‘belief’ are seen as strictly religious or fantastical thinking, and certainly not for the logical or scientific mind. In the worldview of most, which neatly encompasses their ‘belief’ system, there are ‘facts, science and math’, and then there is ‘belief’ and ‘faith’.

Sadly this is the Achilles heel of the average person (we are all more or less average when it comes to self awareness, though we love to ‘believe’ we are well above that mark) because by thinking this way, by believing in this manner, we create our own blind spots and exclude ourselves from what in many aspects we actually practice, essentially complete and total blind faith and belief in nearly all facets of daily thought and living.

How much of our thought, of our daily thinking, is original or organic and how much is slightly modified, then enthusiastically regurgitated, cultural beliefs indoctrinated into us from an early age. Reinforced by the echo chamber of news, advertising and TV programming as well as movies, books, social media, science, economics and politics, can any of us ever really tell which thoughts are ‘ours’ and which were created to be ours via cultural conditioning. Unless we force ourselves to first obtain, and then maintain perspective, it all becomes a blur of flashing lights and background noise to be willingly, even eagerly, accepted as just the way things are.

Our society is obsessed with the holy grail of facts, absolutes, and conclusive answers. We are taught as soon as we can comprehend that this is the way things are and we know these things to be true. We view our recent ancestors as backwards and uninformed, cavemen for all practical purposes, yet we never seriously consider that we are just as uninformed and will be considered so by the future ‘us’ in twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now.

 

There is no respect given (because none is seriously offered by ‘us’) to the inquiring mind willing to step outside the boundaries of conventional thinking, only empty vessels that wish to be fully indoctrinated into the present day belief system. The herd demands we believe what the herd believes and increasingly that belief is divorced from reality.

I suspect there are several reasons for this phenomenon. As I discussed in “The Science Delusion” the spectacular success of materials science (the mass production of ten million things) has contributed to the delusion that we know it all, that we have arrived, that there is certainty in many if not all things, and that we ‘know’ this ‘certainty’ with near absolute precision. All it needs is a few small tweaks here and there.

But I suspect something else is going on here and I don’t recall it being discussed much in the virtual circles I frequent. Until the advent of mass media, ‘modern’ man lived an existence surrounded almost entirely by physical reality, up close and very personal. In fact, until sometime after World War Two most homes did not even have central heat, indoor plumbing or a house wired for electricity. Life, to put it simply, was very raw.

There was once a mostly solitary and desperate immediacy to daily living (the present day homeless are quite familiar with this condition) and a mind that dwelled in fantasy and not focused on the needs of the here and now was often severely punished by Mother Nature. Dawdle too long in the petunias and you might die of exposure later because you did not put up enough firewood and salt away enough food.

Presently we trade our regimented labor for easily convertible script, also known as currency, which in turn we redeem for fundamental basics, creature comforts and desirable wants (as opposed to ‘needs’) that until 100 years ago were almost exclusively the realm of the very wealthy. This in turn has greatly diminished the immediacy of the here and now, and thus its apparent relevance and importance. While there is great debate over whether idle or free time has increased or decreased over the last hundred years, what we ‘do’ with our free time has dramatically changed, and in my opinion not for the better.

While man has always devoted some of his play time to alternative reality fantasy thinking, whether it was simply daydreaming on a warm spring day or reading a classic work of fiction, never in the history of ‘modern’ man has such a huge percentage of the population devoted hours upon hours every day exclusively to ‘suspending disbelief’. Nor have we done so in such a mentally and emotionally intrusive manner. I am, of course, speaking about television, movies and other forms of immersive mass media mind warping.

 

 

If you were to ask the average person if they understood the difference between ‘real world’ reality and TV or movie reality, you would be hard pressed to find someone who wasn’t absolutely certain they could tell the difference. And yet so much of the mass media we consume is integrated into our daily living so seamlessly that no longer can we clearly see the fine line of demarcation between reality and fantasy.

Just talk to an attorney, public defender or police officer about the public’s perception of justice and police processes after the public has drunk deeply from the CSI media cup for well over a decade and you will get an earful. We aren’t talking about ignorance here, as in a lack of knowledge, but rather deliberately distorted perceptions and programmed ignorance, a far more dangerous and easily controlled state of mind.

The only thing worse than someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about is someone who believes they do because they have been conditioned to think so, but still does not. The serially convinced are so much more dangerous to themselves and to others than the merely deluded delusional.

I don’t necessarily object to fantasy or fantastical thinking, of suspending disbelief in order to enjoy a depiction of alternative reality, which is essentially the altered mental and emotional state we enter into when consuming ‘pulp fiction’ mass media. In fact I was (and still am) a rabid fan of science fiction when I was a younger man. My problem is in the method of media immersion, completely passive rather than interactive and creative.

While reading (science) fiction, daydreaming or engaging in truly creative thought or artistic expression, the activity itself requires that we co-create the reality, to engage our creative energy and thinking process and actively interact. On the other hand mass media consumption requires of us, demands of us, very little (if any) real intellectual or creative effort on our part, only a willing suspension of disbelief and the near total surrender of our mind. Just turn on, tune out and tumble in.

The mass media alternative reality world is already imagined, produced and packaged for us by others and we are simply a passive recipient of the information download, or programming as the networks readily admit it is called. We are just along for the ride so buckle up, open your eyes wide and fully disengage the discerning mind. Suspending disbelief in three, two, one………

Do some research on brainwaves during different activities, then compare the mind while reading, writing, even dreaming, and when passively watching the television or a movie. Even when the brain absorbs so called ‘educational’ documentaries, when viewed through the brain imaging MRI, the results are little different from “CSI” or “Days of our Lives”. Garbage in garbage out makes for a garbage mind, with the body soon to follow.

 

 

Not only are we being deeply programmed into hundreds of alternative realities, the cumulative effect of which we are increasingly unable to discern, but we are also being conditioned to remain in a near constant state of belief suspension, the most psychically, emotionally and spiritually vulnerable condition we could possibly allow ourselves to remain in.

Comparable to Pavlov’s dogs responding predictably to specific stimuli, we willingly and eagerly suspend disbelief while consuming pulp fiction on TV and other mass media. While we claim the ability to re-enter the ‘real’ world when the news or a commercial comes on, from what I have learned our brain wave pattern doesn’t change all that much when we switch from ‘True Blood’ to the bloody evening news and then back again.

And make no mistake about it; mass media news and other ‘real’ programming is just another form of prepackaged pulp fiction that we vacantly consume with little or no discernment between one alternative reality and another. The principal difference is that we have been conditioned to believe that the news is ‘real’, thus it is even more deeply absorbed into our psyche as ‘truth’ where it mixes and melds with other deeply programmed beliefs we mistakenly call facts, reality and truth.

Similar to an inch worm’s incremental progress, as long as the latest alternative reality conditioning is similar to the old one (it doesn’t need to be exact) we inch our ‘real world’ perception further and further away from reality and closer to the world our handlers create for us. This is one of the reasons predictive programming is so successful. Repeatedly plant the suggested meme seed now and reap the harvested alternative reality later.

Reflexively we fall into a state of passive receptivity when plopped in front of the boob tube. And as much as we may protest to the contrary, there is less of a tendency to apply critical thinking when in front of the glowing conditioning apparatus then when reading the exact same material or discussing it with others.

The brilliance behind this type of deep conditioning is that it targets our natural tendency to rationalize away any negative aspects under the guise of entertainment. “Hey, we’re just having some fun. It’s a TV show for crying out loud, not real life.” The programmer doesn’t need to convince us to suspend disbelief when we willing do so under the cover of fun for all. Open wide and say “Please sir, may I have moar”.

The latest programming phase started more than a dozen years ago with so called ‘reality TV’ programming, which supposedly features ‘real life’ people dealing with contrived difficulties in purportedly unscripted situations. While I agree that every action seen on the viewing screen is not strictly or rigidly scripted, both the characters and producer, along with the editing room, insert false conflicts and drama where little or none would normally exist, all under the pretence of a ‘game’ show. More importantly we are shown, and expressly informed, that something is ‘real’ when clearly it is not. So once again belief is engaged by suspending disbelief in order to swallow whole the patently unbelievable.

 

 

If we examine the term ‘suspending disbelief’ we realize that what we are asked to do, what is demanded of us in order to ‘enjoy’ a harmless little activity and accept our programming, is to ‘believe’ what we are seeing in order to internalize and embody it as real. Our imagination is the creator of our own personal reality so hijack that and you and I are effectively controlled.

Only if we accept what we are seeing and hearing as ‘real’ will we express emotion and empathy and fully engage in the alternative reality. This in turn enables and allows our ‘self’ to be fully assimilated Borg like into the proffered fantasy hook, line and sinker. When all the moving parts click the programming results are spectacular. Just watch the apparatus work its magic when imminent war is being announced or the next financial crisis ‘suddenly’ occurs.

Every twelve to fifteen minutes during prime conditioning time our primary programming is interrupted for commercial breaks during which, while our empathy and emotions are fully exposed and vulnerable, we are showered with sales ads precisely designed to do the same. Meaning we are programmed to desire whatever it is they are selling using our own fully exposed emotion and empathy as leverage against us. Talk about striking while the fire is hot.

I looked up ‘belief’ and ‘believe’ in several dictionaries and found near universal definitions that often had little to do with religion and much to do with everyday living and thinking. For example, from Merriam-Webster comes the following.

be·lief: noun, a feeling of being sure that someone or something exists or that something is true; a feeling that something is good, right, or valuable; a feeling of trust in the worth or ability of someone; a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing; a tenet or body of tenets held by a group; conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence.

be·lieve: verb, to accept or regard (something) as true, to accept the truth of what is said by (someone), to have (a specified opinion), to have a firm religious faith, to accept something as true, genuine, or real; to have a firm conviction as to the goodness, efficacy, or ability of something; to consider to be true or honest; to accept the word or evidence of.

Wow, I could not have said it better myself. Who among us has the courage and internal steadiness to examine ourselves for any and all traces of unexamined belief, then thoroughly remove all threads from our everyday use, all while maintaining some semblance of continuity in relationships, work, play and growth. Personally I find the task daunting at best and just about impossible at worst. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t even try.

 

Chapter Two to follow soon.

 

03-05-2014

Cognitive Dissonance

www.TwoIceFloes.com is unlike anything you will find on the web, a truly unique destination. There you will find distinctive Premium Members only articles as well as discussions on wellness and health, homesteading, spirituality & philosophy and most importantly ‘safe’ forums not found anywhere else. Come by for a peek and stay a while.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1orw0q5 Cognitive Dissonance

With even Warren Buffett saying it’s a bad idea, we can’t wait to hear how President Obama will explain how his move to raise the minimum wage will create jobs and save the middle class….

 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/Nx0dJa Tyler Durden

The soon-to-be-renamed-Boring-Book, for its constant uniformity of mediocre Goldilocks data offered little to strengthen bulls or bears (as usual) but it seems weather was the key once again. With 119 references to “weather” (6 times more than the January report), they remind us that:

• *FED SAW ECONOMY GROW EVEN AS HARSH WEATHER SLOWED HIRING, SALES
• *FED SAYS OUTLOOK ‘AMONG MOST DISTRICTS REMAINED OPTIMISTIC’

But – the “m” words continue to dominate:

• *FED SAYS MOST REPORTS OF IMPROVEMENT WERE ‘MODEST TO MODERATE’

As 8 of the 12 districts “reported improved levels of activity”… but but but the weather. Healthcare concerns were cited 16 times.

After removing filler words, only one thing matters…

 

More to come…

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1orpU9e Tyler Durden

With the UK rapidly backing away from sanctions against the Russians (and the Russians suggesting the confiscation of US and EU assets should sanctions occur), it appears President Obama is becoming increasingly isolated in his calls for sanctions. As the CEO of Siemens – Germany’s massive industrial conglomerate explains Russian natural gas provides “lifeblood” to western Europe and there is substantial “dependency.”

 

Via WSJ,

The head of German industrial conglomerate Siemens AG said he doesn’t expect European governments will press hard for sanctions against Russia in response to the Kremlin’s authorization to potentially deploy  troops into Ukraine.

 

Siemens President and Chief Executive Joe Kaeser was asked about the situation in Ukraine during an appearance at the IHS CERAWeek energy conference in Houston, Texas. He said it was important to remember that Russian natural gas provides “lifeblood” to western Europe and there is substantial “dependency.”

 

“Maybe the American people or the government or whoever raises their eyebrows can say how could the Europeans be so moderate on the debate over sanctions. Guess what? You don’t want to sanction anyone you depend on,” Mr. Kaeser said.

 

...

Mr. Kaeser went on to say the U.S. is in a better position to consider economic sanctions against Russia because of its recent surge in oil and gas production.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1orpTSC Tyler Durden

Assuming that the dismal non-farm-payrolls print in January was “due to the weather,” we suspect economists, strategists, and weather-forecasters everywhere are holding their breaths over the February print given the following 2 charts…

 

The weather looked like this during the January week when the NFP survey was taken…

 

And in February (the week of the survey) it looked like this…

 

So if weather is to blame for this entirely status quo unsupportive collapse in jobs data (from NFP to Initial Claims to ADP to ISM Services), then February should be disaster, right? Unless…

 

Charts: NOAA and @Not_Jim_Cramer

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1ds6C1S Tyler Durden

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

All those focusing on the West's lack of leverage are forgetting that the Empire retains multiple way of striking back.

Many observers have focused on the relative paucity of the West's diplomatic and military options in Ukraine. Others focus on Russia's sources of leverage: cutting off natural gas to western Ukraine and Europe and/or dumping its reserves of U.S. dollars: Putin Adviser Urges Dumping US Bonds In Reaction to Sanctions.

That applying such leverage could backfire on Russia receives less coverage. Does anyone doubt the Federal Reserve's ability to print $200 billion to buy the entire Russian holdings of Treasuries? What's another $200 billion on top of $4 trillion?

Recall that Russia holds those Treasuries/U.S. dollars as reserves for its own benefit. Dumping the dollars simply creates the need for an immediate replacement, especially as the ruble craters.

All those focusing on the West's lack of leverage are forgetting that the Empire retains multiple way of striking back. For example, bringing the costs of misadventure home to Russia's politically influential 1/10th of 1%.

A knowledgeable correspondent submitted these observations:

1. After Edward Snowden the entire "intelligence community" is looking for major payback. Here is a heavy weight added to Ukraine's side of the scales. This is leading edge satellite and electronic intelligence, plus a detailed order of battle on actual Russian forces available and their locations. NATO can also provide access to advanced command and control facilities and advanced battle planning cells. In addition to numbers and morale the Ukraine will be able to mass their forces at the right spots and ignore unthreatened areas.

2. Are you a heavy hitter 0.1%'er New Russian supporting Vladimir Putin? Your entire financial and personal history could soon appear on internet social media, too. In Russian.

US and British agencies have collected many millions of dirty selfies almost by accident. Imagine what they've collected on purpose against major intelligence targets. For instance, every member of the Russian Duma, the cabinet and all their top staffers.

3. Precision guided financial and visa sanctions applied throughout the entire western world. This is not the USSR in 1979 anymore. The entire upper strata of Russia's elite, including all of Putin's United Russia Party, are now extremely international. They and their extended families travel frequently to all the world class watering holes to sun, dine and shop. They have offshore bank accounts and credit cards (as witnessed in Cyprus). They own vacation homes in Spain, Miami, Italy, the Greek Aegean Islands et al. Their children by the tens of thousands attend western universities on student visas. They have massive investments in stock and real estate throughout the entire 'west'.

As a result, they are personally vulnerable to sanctions pressure in a way the Soviet nomenklatura never was. This Ukrainian adventure could carry uniquely painful and personal high price tags.

The media would not be alerted; the targets will simply start getting messages like this:

"Your passport and visa are invalid for entry. Please follow this officer…"
"I'm sorry ma'am, your credit card was declined."
"Invalid PIN number."
"User ID & Password are invalid. Please reenter correct user ID and password".

Massive materialism and corruption is the basis of Putin's elite domestic support. Once he can't deliver the goodies anymore they'll drop him.

The EU previewed this class of soft weapon when it began compiling blacklists of Ukrainian officials deemed responsible for the shootings on the Maidan in late February.

Consider the massive personal financial corruption on Yanukovych's part that was subsequently exposed. It seems likely the tailored sanctions threat played a major role in disaffecting his key political lieutenants and allies. That band of thieves also all had significant offshore assets at stake.

Yanukovych's government was a scale model of Putin's own political patronage and government system. It is more robust but has many of the same weaknesses.

Thank you, A.C. Discussions of modern warfare often revolve around asymmetric warfare in which the side with few conventional assets is able to leverage unconventional assets against a conventionally superior force. There are all sorts of asymmetric advantages that can be pressed home, and those targeting the wealthy will not be mentioned in speeches.

This is not to suggest this kind of asymmetric leverage is being applied or will be applied or should be applied; I am simply pointing out that it could be applied, and with very little fanfare or effort.

Others have referenced the same capabilities: U.S. has options for Russia’s declaration of war on Ukraine.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1cCh973 Tyler Durden