Category: zerohedge

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via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1jiIcIY williambanzai7

With your local friendly asset-gatherer constantly promoting the cheapness of stocks of the TINA (there is no alternative) to BTFATH, TV talking-heads jabbering over ‘stock-pickers’ markets (infuriating Cliff Asness), and CEOs trotted out day after day to espouse how bright the future looks (even if outlooks in the immediate future are down-down-down-graded); it is hardly surprising that sentiment among the sheeple is so extremely bullish. So, when we saw the chart below… we could only ask – what do the insiders know that the average-joe-investor doesn’t?

 

Of course, we are sure someone will try and explain away this avalanche of insider-selling with “tax-related” factors or “taking-profits” but none of that negates the less-than-optimistic tone that it implies about what the short- or medium-term expectations are from management of the firms that comprise the US equity market…

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1fN8HbB Tyler Durden

With your local friendly asset-gatherer constantly promoting the cheapness of stocks of the TINA (there is no alternative) to BTFATH, TV talking-heads jabbering over ‘stock-pickers’ markets (infuriating Cliff Asness), and CEOs trotted out day after day to espouse how bright the future looks (even if outlooks in the immediate future are down-down-down-graded); it is hardly surprising that sentiment among the sheeple is so extremely bullish. So, when we saw the chart below… we could only ask – what do the insiders know that the average-joe-investor doesn’t?

 

Of course, we are sure someone will try and explain away this avalanche of insider-selling with “tax-related” factors or “taking-profits” but none of that negates the less-than-optimistic tone that it implies about what the short- or medium-term expectations are from management of the firms that comprise the US equity market…

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1fN8HbB Tyler Durden

The Central Bank rig of the last five years appears to finally be ending.

 

Since the Great Crisis erupted in 2007-2008, Central Banks around the world have resorted to two primary tools in their efforts to reflate the system:

 

1)   Lowering interest rates

2)   Quantitative Easing or QE

 

Regarding #1, since 2007, Central Banks have cut interest rates an incredible 520 times. One could write a multi-volume book on the consequences of this, however, painting in broad strokes lower rates do the following:

 

1)   Punish savers and others whom depend on fixed income for retirement

2)   Continue to concentrate asset ownership in the hands of the elite  who can leverage up at near zero rates to acquire more

3)   Continue to encourage poor investment

4)   The mispricing of assets across the board as rates no longer reflect

 

In the US, the Fed has now kept interest rates at zero since late 2008. The end result is that housing is once again in a bubble (home prices relative to disposable income is in fact high than in 2007) while economic growth remains anemic (GDP has not expanded at 3%+ for a single year since 2007) and employment continues to fall (the employment ratio or percentage of Americans of working age who are gainfully employed remains at levels last seen in the early ’80s.

 

The second most popular monetary tool employed by the world’s Central Bank is Quantitative Easing or QE.

 

If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, it works as follows:

1)   Central Banks print money

2)   They use this money to buy assets (usually sovereign bonds or mortgage backed securities)

 

Doing this provides liquidity to those financial institutions that own the assets the Central Bank buys. QE also allows the Government to run a massive deficit as the Central Bank becomes the de facto buyer of sovereign debt.

 

The entire concept of QE is based on the idea that the best means of fighting an economic contraction is monetary easing. The Fed does this to attempt to smooth the troughs from contractions.

 

The only problem is that QE doesn’t work. In fact, I cannot find a single instance in which it has in history.

 

The UK has announced QE efforts equal to an amount greater than 20% of its GDP and has not seen any meaningful job or GDP growth.

 

However, Japan has outdone even the UK in terms of monetary madness. Over the last 20 years has announced nine rounds of QE for a combined effort equal to 20% of its GDP. During that period GDP growth has actually slowed while unemployment has failed to fall.

 

 

Convinced that the answer to its problems is more QE, Japan launched a $1.4 trillion QE effort last month.

 

To put this amount into perspective, Japan’s entire GDP is $5.8 trillion. So the country effectively launched a QE program equal to 24% of its GDP in a SINGLE PROGRAM.

 

The end result is that by the time this program is completed, Japan will have spent QE equal to well over 40% of its GDP.

 

And with what results?

 

Inflation is rising in Japan as evinced by the increased cost of living there. Incomes have failed to rise accordingly, resulting in Japanese consumers getting squeezed.

 

The evidence is clear, QE has been a failure for Japan. It’s been a failure for the UK. And it’s now a failure in the US. Eventually the stock markets will figure this out. At that point the markets will collapse.

 

For a FREE Special Report outlining how to set up your portfolio from this, swing by: http://ift.tt/170oFLH

 

Best Regards

Phoenix Capital Research 

 

 

 

 

 

 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1fN8J3e Phoenix Capital Research

A few days ago, when we reported that the existing main IT contractor behind Obamacare, CGI Federal, was kicked out and replaced by Accenture, we wondered the reason was that the government was unable to go through the “full and open competition process” before awarding them with a $91 million contract. Recall that “because of time constraints, CMS is awarding the Accenture contract on a sole-source basis.” Naturally in a process plagued with mistake after mistake, awarding an express contract with no RFP or contract bidding, is merely the latest one.

So how does the Federal government explain this scramble to hand over the “sole-sourced” healthcare.gov IT contract (to a company made possible thanks to Enron) so late in the process? Simple: the usual mutually assured destruction tactic used so “effectively” in all other recent rushed decisions. As The Hill reports, unless Accenture finishes (and fixes) the back-end of the HealthCare.gov portal by mid-March, the healthcare law will be jeopardized, according to a procurement document posted on a federal website. The punchline: “It says insurers could be bankrupt and the entire healthcare industry threatened if the build out is not completed.” In other words, a newly retained consulting company has less than three months to fix all the errors of coding by a different company, and make sure healthcare.gov is working properly… all 500 million lines of healthcare.gov’s code?

Good luck.

The Hill has more:

The document says officials realized in December that the need to bring on Accenture is so urgent that there is no time to go through the “full and open competition process” before awarding them with a $91 million contract.

“There is limited time to build this functionality and failure to deliver…by mid-March 2014 will result in financial harm to the government,” the document says.

“If this functionality is not complete by mid-March 2014, the government could make erroneous payments to providers and insurers,” it continues. “Additionally, without a Financial Management platform that accounts for enrollments and associated program costs that integrates with the existing CMS Accounting platform, the entire healthcare reform program is jeopardized.”

Many of those who have signed up for ObamaCare are eligible for federal subsidies, which the government pays directly to the insurers. The document says that failure to complete the project by mid-March can result in “inaccurate issuance of payments to health plans which could seriously put them at financial risk; potentially leading to their default and disrupting continued services and coverage to consumers.”

Wow: so some pretty dire consequences if an outside third party fails at its task? So what exactly will Accenture have to fix :

According to the document, the system is vulnerable to “inaccurate forecasting” of the risk mitigation programs in place to pay insurers who enroll a higher-than-expected number of sick patients with expensive bills, “potentially putting the entire health insurance industry at risk.”

 

By mid-March, Accenture must build a financial management platform that tracks eligibility and enrollment transactions, accounts for subsidy payments to insurance plans, “provides stable and predictable financial accounting and outlook for the entire program,” and that integrates with existing CMS and IRS systems.

 

Accenture will also have to clean up some aspects of the project that CGI failed to complete, such as the notorious 834 enrollment transmissions to insurance companies that in October and November were transmitting inaccurate and garbled data.

 

In November, CMS deputy chief information officer Henry Chao told lawmakers that 30 percent of HealthCare.gov was still under construction, but the specifics and consequences remained murky.

Perhaps a better question is “what it won’t have to fix” as it is absolutely impossible that in under three months the new consultancy will be able to fix all the errors in coding left over by the former contractor. Which is why we find it quite surprising that suddenly the fate of Obamacare and the “Entire Healthcare Reform Program” lies in the hands of a measly $91 million contract. Although, if the intention is to merely have a scapegoat for a failed ponzi scheme, then this is precisely the way one would go about it. And if indeed Obama drops the hammer on Accenture, well… we hear the name Andersen Consulting is available.

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

A few days ago, when we reported that the existing main IT contractor behind Obamacare, CGI Federal, was kicked out and replaced by Accenture, we wondered the reason was that the government was unable to go through the “full and open competition process” before awarding them with a $91 million contract. Recall that “because of time constraints, CMS is awarding the Accenture contract on a sole-source basis.” Naturally in a process plagued with mistake after mistake, awarding an express contract with no RFP or contract bidding, is merely the latest one.

So how does the Federal government explain this scramble to hand over the “sole-sourced” healthcare.gov IT contract (to a company made possible thanks to Enron) so late in the process? Simple: the usual mutually assured destruction tactic used so “effectively” in all other recent rushed decisions. As The Hill reports, unless Accenture finishes (and fixes) the back-end of the HealthCare.gov portal by mid-March, the healthcare law will be jeopardized, according to a procurement document posted on a federal website. The punchline: “It says insurers could be bankrupt and the entire healthcare industry threatened if the build out is not completed.” In other words, a newly retained consulting company has less than three months to fix all the errors of coding by a different company, and make sure healthcare.gov is working properly… all 500 million lines of healthcare.gov’s code?

Good luck.

The Hill has more:

The document says officials realized in December that the need to bring on Accenture is so urgent that there is no time to go through the “full and open competition process” before awarding them with a $91 million contract.

“There is limited time to build this functionality and failure to deliver…by mid-March 2014 will result in financial harm to the government,” the document says.

“If this functionality is not complete by mid-March 2014, the government could make erroneous payments to providers and insurers,” it continues. “Additionally, without a Financial Management platform that accounts for enrollments and associated program costs that integrates with the existing CMS Accounting platform, the entire healthcare reform program is jeopardized.”

Many of those who have signed up for ObamaCare are eligible for federal subsidies, which the government pays directly to the insurers. The document says that failure to complete the project by mid-March can result in “inaccurate issuance of payments to health plans which could seriously put them at financial risk; potentially leading to their default and disrupting continued services and coverage to consumers.”

Wow: so some pretty dire consequences if an outside third party fails at its task? So what exactly will Accenture have to fix :

According to the document, the system is vulnerable to “inaccurate forecasting” of the risk mitigation programs in place to pay insurers who enroll a higher-than-expected number of sick patients with expensive bills, “potentially putting the entire health insurance industry at risk.”

 

By mid-March, Accenture must build a financial management platform that tracks eligibility and enrollment transactions, accounts for subsidy payments to insurance plans, “provides stable and predictable financial accounting and outlook for the entire program,” and that integrates with existing CMS and IRS systems.

 

Accenture will also have to clean up some aspects of the project that CGI failed to complete, such as the notorious 834 enrollment transmissions to insurance companies that in October and November were transmitting inaccurate and garbled data.

 

In November, CMS deputy chief information officer Henry Chao told lawmakers that 30 percent of HealthCare.gov was still under construction, but the specifics and consequences remained murky.

Perhaps a better question is “what it won’t have to fix” as it is absolutely impossible that in under three months the new consultancy will be able to fix all the errors in coding left over by the former contractor. Which is why we find it quite surprising that suddenly the fate of Obamacare and the “Entire Healthcare Reform Program” lies in the hands of a measly $91 million contract. Although, if the intention is to merely have a scapegoat for a failed ponzi scheme, then this is precisely the way one would go about it. And if indeed Obama drops the hammer on Accenture, well… we hear the name Andersen Consulting is available.

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

Germany’s blowback against gold manipulation is accelerating. Following yesterday’s report that Bafin took a hard line against precious metals manipulation, after its president Eike Koenig said possible manipulation of precious metals “is worse than the Libor-rigging scandal“, today the response has trickled down to Germany and Europe’s largest bank, Deutsche Bank, which announced that it would withdraw from the appropriately named gold and silver price “fixing”, as European regulators investigate suspected manipulation of precious metals prices by banks. As a reminder, Deutsche is one of five banks involved in the twice-daily gold fix for global price setting and said it was quitting the process after withdrawing from the bulk of its commodities business. The scramble away from gold fixing was certainly assisted by the recent first (of many) manipulation expose in the legacy media, when Bloomberg revealed “How Gold Price Is Manipulated During The “London Fix.” And sure enough, with Germany already very sensitive to the topic of its gold repatriation, and specifically why it is taking so long, it was only a matter of time before any German involvement in gold manipulation escalated to the very top.

Reuters has more:

“Deutsche Bank is withdrawing its participation in the gold and silver benchmark setting process following the significant scaling back of our commodities business. We remain fully committed to our precious metals business,” it said in a statement.

 

In mid-December, German banking regulator Bafin demanded documents from Deutsche Bank under an inquiry into suspected manipulation of benchmark gold and silver prices by banks, the Financial Times reported, citing sources.

 

Bafin declined to comment on Friday, but its President Elke Koenig said the previous day that it was understandable that the topic was attracting widespread concern.

 

“These allegations (about currencies and precious metals) are particularly serious, because such reference values are based – unlike LIBOR and Euribor – typically on real transactions in liquid markets and not on estimates of the banks,” she said in a speech

Needless to say, manipulation of the gold market would not be exactly novel to a bank which has also been named in cases related to the sub-prime crisis, credit default swaps, mortgages, tax evasion and a decade-old lawsuit suit brought by the heirs of late media mogul Leo Kirch, who accuse the bank of undermining the business.

Reuters also reports that Deutsche is now actively marketing its gold and silver fixing seats to another LBMA member, however now that the cat is out of the bag on the gold fixing manipulation scheme (the first of many), it is likely that others will seek to follow in Deutsche’s footsteps and seek to put as much distance between themselves and the wood-paneled room once located in the Rothschild office on St. Swithin’s Lane in London.

We wonder which of these five gentlemen is from Deutsche?

So if everyone exits the London fixing market, what happens then?

“It wouldn’t surprise me if the other banks were looking at pulling out as well. Why would they want the aggravation?” said the source, who declined to be named.

 

“The more worrying point is that, if you don’t have the fixing, what do you have? There’s a lot of contractual business done on the gold fix, and if you’ve got no basis for where the price is, someone is going to lose out.“

Well considering that the fixing process over the years was manipulation pure and simple, those who will lose out are the… manipulators? it would seem rather logical. And speaking of manipulation, if indeed Germany is so keen on breaking the manipulators’ back, perhaps it can demand that the pace of its gold returns from the NY Fed and Paris accelerates. It may be surprised at what it finds.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1eX0ahm Tyler Durden

Reggie Middletons UltraCoin

As should be obvious to many, I’m quite serious about recreating today’s financial system. I’d like to introduce what some in the media have coined (no pun intended) Bitcoin 2.0 (which is actually just the true implementation of bitcoin), otherwise known as UtlraCoin. UltraCoin is the derivative layer that we’re writing on top of Bitcoin to enable Bitcoin holders, buyers and sellers to do some pretty amazing things.

Here’s the latest Max Keiser in which he and Stacey Herbert to a good job of explaining what I have in mind. Of course, I get to speak my mind in the second half of the show (~13:08 minute mark).

I am pushing very hard to have the Zero Trust Currency Contracts, the first implementation of UltraCoin, to go into open public beta by the end of next week. That means you will be able to short, leverage, go long and arbitrage BTC. The strategies I and my analysts and developers have come up with will blow… your… mind! Here’s a screen shot of the early beta trading desk:

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/KtEAqV Reggie Middleton

Reggie Middletons UltraCoin

As should be obvious to many, I’m quite serious about recreating today’s financial system. I’d like to introduce what some in the media have coined (no pun intended) Bitcoin 2.0 (which is actually just the true implementation of bitcoin), otherwise known as UtlraCoin. UltraCoin is the derivative layer that we’re writing on top of Bitcoin to enable Bitcoin holders, buyers and sellers to do some pretty amazing things.

Here’s the latest Max Keiser in which he and Stacey Herbert to a good job of explaining what I have in mind. Of course, I get to speak my mind in the second half of the show (~13:08 minute mark).

I am pushing very hard to have the Zero Trust Currency Contracts, the first implementation of UltraCoin, to go into open public beta by the end of next week. That means you will be able to short, leverage, go long and arbitrage BTC. The strategies I and my analysts and developers have come up with will blow… your… mind! Here’s a screen shot of the early beta trading desk:

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/KtEAqV Reggie Middleton

For months, rumors have been floating that China is building a second aircrafit carrier. It is not a fact. Reuters cites Chinese and Hong Kong media reports that China is building its second aircraft carrier, which is expected to take six years. While it is constructing this one, China plans to build at least two more, as it aims to have four aircraft carriers in the near future.

As a reminder, the country’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning – a Soviet-era ship bought from Ukraine in 1998 and re-fitted in a Chinese shipyard – has long been a symbol of China’s naval build-up, and recently saw its maiden voyage in the South China Sea when in a clear demonstration of naval force, it crossed through the Taiwan straits. The Liaoning successfully executed more than 100 tests, including those of its combat systems, during drills in the disputed South China Sea last month. The exercises off the coast of Hainan Island marked not only the first time China had sent a carrier into the South China Sea but the first time it had maneuvered with the kind of strike group of escort ships U.S. carriers deploy, according to regional military officers and analysts.

However, since the Lioning was a retrofit and not China’s own creation, the country’s navy has been scrambling to get beyond the ridicule it can only “reverse engineer” its crowning ship. Hence the push for a second one.

From Reuters:

After two decades of double-digit increases in the military budget, China’s admirals plan to develop a full blue-water navy capable of defending growing economic interests as well as disputed territory in the South and East China Seas.

 

Successfully operating the 60,000-tonne Liaoning is the first step in what state media and some military experts believe will be the deployment of locally built carriers by 2020.

 

In comments carried on Chinese news websites, Wang Min, the Communist Party boss of the northeastern province of Liaoning, where the first carrier is based, said the second carrier was being built in the port city of Dalian.

 

Its construction would take about six years, and in future China would have a fleet of at least four carriers, Wang told members of the province’s legislature on Saturday, the reports added.

 

Dalian is the port where the existing carrier was re-fitted for use by the Chinese navy.

Of course, the parallels to the cold war build up of nuclear weapons between the US and the USSR are quite obvious making one wonder if the same strategy is in play once more, especially when one considers that the US itself is also building three Ford-class supercarriers, the CVN-78, 79 and 80.

Finally, as we showed before, here are leaked photos of the second aircraft carrier in construction from China Defense.

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