Dow Breaches 17,000 As VIX Plunges To New Feb 2007 Lows

Stocks ignored yesterday';s spike lower in VIX but didn't today. VIX closed at 10.3 – its lowest close since Feb 2007. Stocks initially dropped on the 'good news is bad news' payrolls report but thanks to ECB jawboning the EUR down (USD up), USDJPY went on a stop-run and blew back through 102 providing just the ignition to get stocks going. Bonds sold off on the jobs print but rallied back all day to close only 2bps higher in yield. The USD rose over 0.4% – its best day in 2 months. Gold, silver, and copper rose after the jobs data. Stocks rallied ~0.4% from the payrolls print and closed with a 'standard' melt-up buying panic into the long-weekend.

 

Stocks rallied ~0.4% from the payrolls print (after an initial drop)

 

and the Russell went totally dead after Europe closed…

 

USDJPY started it but didn't finish…

 

But VIX was large and in charge as it tumbles back to a 10-handle

 

But bonds didn't buy it at all…

 

FX markets were very noisy – the Riksbank surprised with bigger-than-expected rate cut (and SEK dumped) and then Draghi and US jobs sent EUR lower and USD higher (closing +0.55%!)

 

Gold and silver slipped into the print then were jammed lower and rallied for the rest of the day. Copper continues to surge in CCFD unwinds…

 

 

Charts: Bloomberg




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Expropriation Is Back – Is Christine Lagarde The Most Dangerous Woman In The World?

Submitted by Martin Armstrong of Armstrong Economics,

Lagarde-Christine

I have gone on record that the most dangerous organization is the now French led IMF with Christine Lagarde at the helm, which has presented a concept report that debt cuts for over-indebted states are uncompromising and are to be performed more effectively in the future by defaulting on retirement accounts held in life insurance, mutual funds and other types of pension schemes, or arbitrarily extending debt perpetually so you cannot redeem. Yes you read correctly, The new IMF paper is described in great detail exactly how to now allow the private sector, which has invested in government bonds,  to be expropriated to pay for the national debts of the socialist governments.

I have been warning that there is an idea that has been running around behind the curtain that the national debt of the USA could be settled by usurping all pension funds in the country. Here is a remarkable blueprint that throws all previous considerations concerning the purchase of government bonds over the cliff. The IMF working paper from December 2013 states boldly:

“The distinction between external debt and domestic debt can be quite important. Domestic debt issued in domestic currency typically offers a far wider range of partial default options than does foreign currency–denominated external debt. Financial repression has already been mentioned; governments can stuff debt into local pension funds and insurance companies, forcing them through regulation to accept far lower rates of return than they might otherwise demand.”

id/Page 8 (IMF-Sovereign-Debt-Crisis)

Already in October 2013, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), suggested the Euro Crisis should be handled by raising taxes. The IMF lobbied for a property tax in Europe that should be imposed where there are no such taxes. The IMF has advocated for a general “debt tax” in the amount of 10 percent for each household in the Eurozone, which also has only modest savings.

People are blind. They think this is authorization to go get the rich. They are going after everyone for the “rich” are tiny players in the game. People do not want to hear that. They want to think the rich can pay the bills for everyone else. That is not practical and even Julius Caesar recognized that they may be a small group, but they are the engine of the economy that creates jobs. It would have been popular for him to wipe out all the rich who he was against. But in the end, he had to solve the debt crisis by simply retroactively attribute all interest to capital in order to solve the debt crisis that led to the first civil war.

There is no discussion whatsoever of reforming the system. They are merely planning to default on savers expropriating their savings, but continue to borrow forever. Nobody is even bothering to look at the structure that simply cannot work.

The money people have saved the IMF maintains should be used for debt service by sheer force. To reduce the enormous national debt, they maintain that government has the right to directly usurp the savings of citizens. Whether saving money, securities or real estate, about ten percent could be expropriated. This is the IMF view. 

Because the government debt of the euro countries has increased a total of well over 90 percent of gross domestic product, they suggest that the people should sacrifice their savings for the benefit of the state. Socialism is no longer to help the poor against the rich, but to help the government against the people. The definition has changed.

In January 2014, the Bundesbank joined the IMF project focusing on a “wealth tax”. In its monthly report they had announced: “In the exceptional situation of an imminent state bankruptcy a one-time capital levy could but cheaper cut than the then still relevant options” if higher taxes or drastic limitations of government spending did not meet or could not be implemented.

In the latest June 2014 working paper of the IMF, they have set forth yet another scheme – extending maturity. So you bought a 2 year note? Well, the IMF possible solution would be to simply extend the maturity. Your 2 year note now become 20 year bond. They do not default, you just can never redeem.

Possible remedy. The preliminary ideas in this paper would introduce greater flexibility  into the 2002 framework by providing the Fund with a broader range of potential policy responses in the context of sovereign debt distress, while addressing the concerns that  motivated the 2002 framework. Specifically, in circumstances where a member has lost  market access and debt is considered sustainable, but not with high probability, the Fund would be able to provide exceptional access on the basis of a debt operation that involves an extension of maturities (normally without any reduction of principal or interest). Such a “reprofiling” operation, coupled with the implementation of a credible adjustment program, would be designed to improve the prospect of securing sustainability and regaining market access, without having to meet the criterion of restoring debt sustainability with high probability.

(THE FUND’S LENDING FRAMEWORK AND SOVEREIGN June 2014)

Now the June 2014 report has a new, far-reaching proposal. This shows how lawyers think in technical definitions of words. There is no actual default if they extend the maturity. You could buy 30-day paper in the middle of a crisis and suddenly find under the IMF that 30 day note is converted to 30 year bond at the same rate.

The huge national debts could be reduced also according to the IMF by just expropriating all private pension funds. The vast amount of people are watching TV shows, sports, or something other than government and they know that. The press will not report the real risk for that is boring news. Hence, where his occupational pensions exist, you can suddenly wake up and find your future is now applied as a contribution to government – thank you for your patriotism. They have successfully convinced the evil is the rich so pay attention to them and you will miss the political hand in your back pocket.

What investor can really judge what is hidden in his fund when the government is denying democratic processes and control the press?

One thing is certain: For years, all pension funds bought government bonds because they were “conservative” and “safe”. I have been warning that the threat would be the Sovereign Debt Crisis. The idea of a pension fund is really now seriously an outdated assumption that government bonds are extremely safe. And you want to even think that the stock markets are over priced and will crash? Where will money go? Government bonds again?

The IMF is an unelected dictatorship over people’s lives and it is now calling the “New profile” of the strategy for public debt must be reassessed. The paper is nothing more than an orderly liquidation of government debt – at the expense of bondholders who can be forced pensioners without their knowledge. The focus is on countries that either have no access to the financial market, or “whose debt is considered sustainable, but not with a high probability.”

The Eurozone is trying to federalize because they know what is coming. The IMF is telling them the path of options ahead but all are designed to sustain the power-base, not what is good for the people. The Euro-leaders have now given up and decided to make more debt while maintaining lip-service to savings. Thus, the Eurozone is likely to soon be directly affected by the IMF plans for when the market get wind of this on the horizon, it will be too late. For you see, pension funds do not THINK out of the box. Nobody will be the first to sell-out government bonds entirely. What if they are wrong and nothing happens? Then the manager loses their job. Even if they find themselves trapped by government either extending their maturities or expropriating all their assets, they will justify themselves as everybody else lost so they did nothing wrong.

Obviously, these ideas from the IMF would mean that if the debt is no longer manageable, then the power of government entitles them to just usurp everything to maintain the power-base. The plan of the IMF I believe will result in widespread civil unrest AFTER the fact. The mere fact that these proposals target investors in government bonds who must adjust to debt forgiveness or negative interest rates shows this is all about sustaining government power. Recently, the IMF has argued the ECB must purchase government bonds in the euro countries to sustain the Eurozone. They are like the terrorist leaders who brainwash kids to blow themselves up for the good of the cause while they would never do the same thing themselves.

It is noteworthy that the IMF imagines this haircut on private creditors as a kind of condition that bankrupt states must do to get any further loans from official creditors. Do as we direct of else. This is what the IMF is doing to Ukraine, no less what they did to Cyprus.

However, unlike private corporate debt where there are the real balances and tangible assets secured by real products and business, the IMF proposal amounts to a global nationalization of public finances, which are unsecured debt. This distinction is important. You get nothing from defaults in government debt but a portion of what remains in private debt. Because the states with the this infinite loop of perpetual borrowing with no intent on paying anything back, we are captured in a world of financing that has become completely corrupted.

The debt load of governments on a global basis is so oppressive, we are rapidly approaching not just the collapse in Democracy, but the collapse or the elimination of all market mechanisms in the public finance. If they cannot sustain the debt, default and FORCE the so many unsuspecting pensioners to surrender their future to allow politicians to live comfortably. They see no problem with people holding government debt should be punishable with massive losses, and are blame for extorting government even demanding interest.

The IMF proposal comes during the World Cup knowing that the press will not cover it much and the average person cares more about who wins what than the sneak attack upon their own lives. This far-reaching plan for the expropriation of savers, investors and retirees clearly shows the reality of socialism.

 




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Baylen Linnekin on the Campaign to Free the Haggis

Haggis is the sort of food that some
people love to mock, and others love to eat—if they have the
stomach for it (and other unlikely ingredients). But authentic
haggis contains lungs, and their use in dishes prepared for humans
has been forbidden in the United States since 1971.

Well, that just gets the Scots’ tempers in an ferment, and
they’ve enlisted the British government to push once again to
overturn the ban. Frequent Reason contributor Baylen
Linnekin
has the story over at Vice
:

The reasoning behind the USDA’s ban on lungs is generally
couched in terms of food safety. Fluids—specifically, ones that
might make you squeamish, including stomach fluids—sometimes make
their way into the lungs of an animal during the slaughtering
process.

An 1847 treatise recommends parboiling the lungs “to permit the
phlegm and blood to disgorge from the[m],” one issue the USDA
regulations sought to address.

The USDA ban has succeeded not only in halting the import of
authentic haggis prepared in Scotland, but also on the sale of
sheep lungs for use in haggis made in this country.

Notably, the US ban doesn’t just target haggis. While often
painted as a “haggis ban,” the USDA rule also bans traditional
lung-containing dishes from a variety of cultures, including those
common to China, Nepal, and several European countries.

Linnekin notes that the British government’s participation in an
effort to overturn this particular U.S. food rule may well be
driven by a desire to influence the upcoming vote on Scottish
independence. But if political pragmatism expands your right to
choke down an authentic national delicacy seemingly invented on a
dare, so be it!

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Which Sectors, Styles And Strategies Are Working In 2014

Remember when stable, self-sustaining recoveries were led by Utility stocks outperforming every other asset class and sector (and returning 3x Financials)? Neither do we. But as the following chart showing the performance of all the sectors, styles and strategies in the first half of 2014, it just doesn’t matter.

The reason: with virtually every asset class generating positive returns, there was something for everyone in the first half. Well, everyone except macro hedge funds: they were the only asset class (since we are not quite sure how to classify the EURUSD) that was down so far in 2014 with the broader hedge fund universe barely doing much better at just up 2% in the first half, continuing its inability to outperform the S&P for the 6th consecutive year – an S&P which as we keep repeating, simply needs no hedges – after all, it is m[i|a]ro managed by the biggest Chief Risk Officer of all, the global central bank consortium. And when the Fed finally fails, no amount of short hedges will be able to offset what comes next.

Source: Goldman Sachs




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Some Obamacare Health Plans in New York Request Double-Digit Increases

The
state of New York was one of Obamacare’s clearest winners: In the
years prior to the enactment of the federal health law, the state
had all but
ruined
its individual insurance market with a handful of strict
regulations that caused premiums to skyrocket and enrollment in
individual insurance plans to dwindle to a fraction of what was
normal. So when Obamacare arrived, it helped bring individual
market premiums down. 

But how long will that last? Some customers are already
experiencing “sticker shock” regarding next year’s rate increases,

according
to The New York Times

Some New Yorkers are in sticker shock after receiving notices
from their insurance companies saying that they have asked for
significant rate increases through the state’s health exchange next
year.

The exchange, which has prided
itself
 on being affordable, is now facing requests for
increases as high as 28 percent for some customers of MetroPlus, a
new entry to the individual insurance market and one of the least
costly — and most popular — plans on the exchange this year.

Beth Leibson, a Manhattan resident, received a letter from
MetroPlus saying it was working on raising her rate by 28 percent.
She said this was a higher one-year increase than any rate rise she
had had with previous insurance, including insurance under the
federal law known as Cobra, where she paid the entire bill. “It
seems to me that this defeats the purpose of ‘affordable’ health
insurance,” Ms. Leibson said.

Over all, including plans inside or outside the exchange,
insurance companies asked for average
rate increases
 of 13 percent in 2015, the state’s
Financial Services Department said Wednesday. The requests cover
individual and small-group plans, but not large-group plans like
those offered by large companies and government employers.

These rate increases don’t factor in subsidies, and it’s
possible that they will be reduced before going into effect. And
some smaller insurers aren’t asking for hikes quite as large. But

according
to the New York Post, the bigger health
plans are asking for larger hikes. Which makes a certain sort of
sense: They already have a built in customer base, and now can
proceed with ratcheting up rates, while smaller competitors may be
looking to draw in customers. 

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Steve Chapman on the Real Meaning of the Hobby Lobby Decision

Hobby LobbyOrganizations concerned with public policy have a
habit of hyping developments that relate to their concerns. When
the Supreme Court ruled that some corporations are exempt from
paying for employees’ contraceptive coverage under Obamacare, both
sides loudly trumpeted its importance.

The right celebrated the verdict as a stinging defeat for an
administration at war with religion, while the left decried it as
the latest offensive in the conservative war on women. There was no
one to say the decision is not a terribly big deal.

But, as Steve Chapman argues, the truth is: It’s not a
terribly big deal.

View this article.

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The Arms Race Is Back… With A Twist: US Congressman Urges NATO To Purchase French Warship Destined For Russia

The saga of the French Mistral amphibious assault warship which was ordered by Russia years ago, and whose delivery – at least according to Putin – was the reason behind the US record $9 billion DOJ fine of French BNP (which the Russian president called “blackmail” by the US designed to intimidate France and prevent it from completing the transaction) just took a turn for the bizarre. In a note written in the Atlantic Council’s website, Democrat representative for New York’s 16th district, Eliot Engel, has proposed that instead of letting France conclude its deal with Russia, now that even the BNP “blackmail” has failed to dent Hollande’s intention to see the delivery to its end, that NATO (read the US) should step up and “collectively purchase or lease the warships as a common naval asset.

In other words, with cajoling, threats and even fines failing to make an impression on France, and thus US foreign policy, it is time to start throwing away taxpayer money in order to spoil Putin’s party.

Of course, this begs the question: what happens with the next order placed by Russia: will NATO step in and overbid Russia in the final instant (using US bond issuance proceeds to fund the transaction of course – bonds which are largely purchased by China, the Fed and, of course, “Belgium”) again, and then again, and so on?

We wonder: are we the only ones who now see this as nothing more than the cold war arms race, in which the two sides would merely stockpile nuclear weapons in an attempt to have the greater “Mutually Assured Deterrence” fear factor, and which ultimately ended up bankrupting the USSR (or so conventional wisdom goes)? If so, who is getting the short end of the stick this time: because just how many useless and unnecessary military vessels can “NATO” accumulate before it finds they have zero impact on how Russia is truly waging New Normal warfare – using European energy flows?

Keep a close eye on this proposal to see if it gains traction.

Full letter by Eliot Engel below:

NATO Should Buy French-built Warships

 

[L]ast month I wrote to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, urging a plan by which the alliance would collectively purchase or lease the warships as a common naval asset.

 

This avenue would give us a win-win-win solution.

 

First, we deprive Putin of this valuable military asset. Such a step would help reassure nervous allies and partners in Central and Eastern Europe that would most feel vulnerable by this force multiplier in the hands of the Russian military.

 

Second, we would greatly enhance NATO capabilities at a moment when many of its members have been cutting defense expenditures. There is already ample precedent for NATO to purchase shared assets, including the alliance’s fleet of E-3A AWACS aircraft. If Russia does indeed remain an aggressive force, NATO will have to refocus its energy and resources on European defense. The future success of the alliance in turn will depend on all NATO members sharing this burden and commitment. Purchasing these ships would give NATO a much needed shot in the arm.

 

Lastly, this purchase wouldn’t leave France holding the bill. At a time when the European economy remains fragile, we shouldn’t allow one of our allies to endure such a heavy financial blow.

 

Eliot Engel is a member of the US House of Representatives for the 16th District of New York and the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.




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Is This A Self-Sustaining Recovery Or As Good As It Gets?

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of ofTwoMinds blog,

The reality is that nothing has been done to address the structural rot at the heart of the U.S. economy.

Opinions about the U.S. economy boil down to two views: 1) the recovery is now self-sustaining, meaning that the Federal Reserve can taper and end its unprecedented interventions without hurting growth, or 2) the current uptick in auto sales, new jobs, housing sales, etc. is as good as it gets, and the weak recovery unravels from here.

Believers in the self-sustaining recovery have multiple data they can point to: the aforementioned auto and housing sales, and a number of other upticks in fundamentals such as jobs, household income, industrial production and so on.

The basic dynamic in this story is the Federal Reserve had to shoot the patient full of monetary heroin (free money to financiers, zero interest rates, quantitative easing, unlimited liquidity not just to financiers but foreign banks, etc.) to stabilize the patient (the U.S. economy), but now that the patient has been restored to health via the monetary heroin addiction, the heroin can now be slowly tapered and the patient will not experience cold turkey withdrawal symptoms.

Though it is never stated openly, this is a precise replay of Japan's monetary policies, only on a grander scale. The Fed's leadership (Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen et al.) concluded that the Japanese had failed to revive their dysfunctional economy because the monetary heroin doses they injected weren't large enough.

So the Fed upped the ante and injected unlimited quantities of monetary heroin into the U.S. (and thus the global) financial system.

The problem with this "cure" is that it leaves all the fundamental causes of the economy's dysfunction untouched. This is precisely what Japan has done for 20+ years: put aside the difficult task of structural reform that necessarily disrupts the vested interests profiting handsomely from the bloated, corrupt, crony-capitalist Status Quo and instead did the easy fix of flooding the dysfunctional economy with monetary heroin.

Giving a patient riddled with structural cancer heroin eases the pain but does not cure the disease. Addicting the patient to monetary heroin only makes the problem worse, as now the patient is suffering from both addiction to monetary heroin and a host of structural diseases.

The U.S. has done essentially nothing to address the structural issues that are crippling its economy:

— Higher education funded by $1.2 trillion in student loans continues to be unaffordable and disconnected from the emerging economy, that is, the parts of the economy that don't need monetary heroin to prosper;

— Sickcare (a.k.a. healthcare) continues to squander almost 20% of the nation's GDP while performing poorly when compared to other developed-nation healthcare systems;

— Concentrated wealth continues to set the agenda and pull the strings in Washington D.C. and state/local governments;

— The foundations of a free and flexible economy such as Net Neutrality continue to erode under the ceaseless assault of wealthy corporate vested interests;

— Failed programs such as the F-35 Lightning fighter aircraft continue consuming hundreds of billions of tax dollars due to crony-capitalist lobbying and bureaucratic worship of sunk costs;

— Banking "reforms" did nothing to restructure a fragile, parasitic financial sector–all they did was add costs while maintaining the sources of fragility such as mark to fantasy methods of calculating asset values;

This is only a partial list of the structural problems that are begging for deep, systemic reforms. But since each real reform would step on the toes of powerful vested interests, the "fixes" are cosmetic public-relations ploys or new layers of central-state bureaucracy that add costs but do nothing to change the sources of dysfunction.

The true believers in the self-sustaining recovery naively believe that the only problem was a lack of monetary heroin. They naively assume all the structural illnesses of the U.S. economy will heal themselves once the monetary heroin has generated more subprime auto loans, more shadow banking skimming, more margin debt, more junk bonds, more corporate buy-backs of stocks and more private-equity fund buying of homes-to-rent–all the "good stuff" enabled by monetary heroin.

Those of us in the this is as good as it gets camp recognize all these results of monetary heroin are self-liquidating: the subprime auto loans supporting vehicle sales will default; the shadow banking system will trigger another credit crisis caused by risky overleveraged bets; the private-equity rentier skim that has boosted housing will find renting houses in a recession is a money-losing proposition; margin debt will fund risky purchases of stocks at the top of the cycle; corporate buy-backs will gut the finances of companies that pursued buy-backs as a means of boosting the value of their stock; junk bonds will default and so on down the line.

The reality is that nothing has been done to address the structural rot at the heart of the U.S. economy. Pumping the economy full of monetary heroin hasn't generated a self-sustaining recovery–all it has done, and indeed, all it could ever have done, is enable the exact same risk-laden malinvestments that triggered the global financial meltdown in 2008.

You keep shoving in the same inputs, and you guarantee the same output: another crash of credit bubbles and all the malinvestments enabled by monetary heroin.




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Berkeley Turns Medical Marijuana From a Treatment to an Obligation

"So what you call insanity, we call solidarity!"Dammit, Berkeley! America is
getting more and more comfortable with legalizing marijuana, and
then you had to turn around and Britta
the whole thing! Via
KCBS
in San Francisco:

The city of Berkeley will require medical marijuana
dispensaries to give away two percent of the amount of
cannabis they sell each year free to low-income patients.

The City Council voted unanimously at Tuesday’s meeting to amend
the city’s medical pot rules, which would also allow for a fourth
dispensary in Berkeley.

“Basically, the city council wants to make sure that low-income,
homeless, indigent folks have access to their medical marijuana,
their medicine,” said Berkeley City Councilmember Darryl Moore.

Under the proposal, at least two percent of all medical weed
dispensed at a club would have to be provided at no cost to very
low-income members — and it must be the same quality that’s
dispensed to regular paying customers.

Not only is it intrusive regulation, it’s probably also
unnecessary. KCBS points out that one local dispensary, the
Berkeley Patients Group, has been giving away free marijuana to the
poor and has been for 15 years, but they’ll actually have to
increase the amount in order to comply with this rule.

In the interview Moore notes that medical marijuana is not as
cheap as non-users might think it is. True, but this City Council
vote is likely to end up driving those prices up further.

Critics of medical marijuana like to try to delegitimize its use
by arguing the ease by which somebody can land a prescription,
particularly in California, where they’ve got pot shops next door
to funnel cake vendors on Venice Beach. The libertarian response is
not that the argument is wrong but that it’s irrelevant. People
should be able to consume what they want anyway.

Ordering pot dispensaries to provide their goods for free to one
select group changes the dynamic. Now one group of marijuana users
is subsidizing another. Now, suddenly, whether the prescription is
legitimate means something. And the fact that the subsidy has a
limit also means something. What if it turns out there is enough of
a demand for medical marijuana among the poor to actually consume
five percent of a dispensary’s merchandise? Will those with medical
marijuana prescriptions for actual ailments lose out to those who
just said the right words to a friendly doctor? Leave it to
Berkeley to make a libertarian worry about fake medical marijuana
prescriptions.

On the other hand, Berkeley is Berkeley, and the residents there
all know as much. The KCBS reporter went looking around for
residents opposed to this plan and could find only one woman whose
sole concern was marijuana falling into the “wrong hands.” She was
fine with it as long as they had a prescription. Being Berkeley,
it’s entirely possible that paying medical marijuana users there
don’t mind subsidizing the poor. But if that’s the case, doing so
doesn’t require city action.

(Hat tip to Tom Palmer)

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