Tag: news

If, as the smart chaps on financial media continuously remind hungry investors, “earnings are the mothers milk of stock market rallies” then WTF is going on in the chart below… (Hint: “perenially too optimistic”)

 

 

As ValueWalk’s Michael Ide notes,

European equities had their 42nd straight month of earnings downgrades in September, with an average of 100 downgrades per working day since March 2011, says a recent report from UBS. That’s not quite as bad as Japan’s 51-month downgrade streak in the early nineties, and fortunately there are signs that estimates could finally turn around.

 

“Bottom-up consensus earnings estimates have tended to be perennially too optimistic across many Global Equity markets. But even by these standards, the sheer persistence of downgrades in Europe over recent years has been dramatic,” write UBS strategists Nick Nelson and Karen Olney.

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Dramatic, persistent, irrelevant… as long as Draghi keeps the dream alive

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Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

The Social Security Administration has just released wage statistics for 2013, and the numbers are startling.  Last year, 50 percent of all American workers made less than $28,031, and 39 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000.  If you worked a full-time job at $10 an hour all year long with two weeks off, you would make $20,000.  So the fact that 39 percent of all workers made less than that amount is rather telling.  This is more evidence of the declining quality of the jobs in this country.  In many homes in America today, both parents are working multiple jobs in a desperate attempt to make ends meet. Our paychecks are stagnant while the cost of living just continues to soar.  And the jobs that are being added to the economy pay a lot less than the jobs lost in the last recession.  In fact, it has been estimated that the jobs that have been created since the last recession pay an average of 23 percent less than the jobs that were lost.  We are witnessing the slow-motion destruction of the middle class, and very few of our leaders seem to care.

The "average" yearly wage in America last year was just $43,041.  But after accounting for inflation, that was actually worse than the year before…

American paychecks shrank last year, just-released data show, further eroding the public’s purchasing power, which is so vital to economic growth.

 

Average pay for 2013 was $43,041 — down $79 from the previous year when measured in 2013 dollars. Worse, average pay fell $508 below the 2007 level, my analysis of the new Social Security Administration data shows.

 

Flat or declining average pay is a major reason so many Americans feel that the Great Recession never ended for them. A severe job shortage compounds that misery not just for workers but also for businesses trying to profit from selling goods and services.

 

Average pay declined in 59 of the 60 levels of worker pay the government reports each October.

And please keep in mind that "average pay" is really skewed by the millionaires and billionaires at the top end of the spectrum.

Median pay in 2013 was just $28,031.02.  That means that 50 percent of American workers made less than that number, and 50 percent of American workers made more than that number.

Here are some more numbers from the report that the Social Security Administration just released…

-39 percent of American workers made less than $20,000 last year.

 

-52 percent of American workers made less than $30,000 last year.

 

-63 percent of American workers made less than $40,000 last year.

 

-72 percent of American workers made less than $50,000 last year.

I don't know about you, but those numbers are deeply troubling to me.

It has been estimated that it takes approximately $50,000 a year to support a middle class lifestyle for a family of four, and so the fact that 72 percent of all workers make less than that amount shows how difficult it is for families that try to get by with just a single breadwinner.

The way that our economy is structured now, both parents usually have to work as hard as they can just to pay the bills.

But there was one group of Americans that did see their incomes actually increase last year.

Those making over 50 million dollars had their pay increase by an average of $12.8 million in 2013.

For everyone else, the news was not good.

And of course this is a trend that has been going on for a long time.

Posted below is a chart that comes from the Federal Reserve.  It shows how real median household income in the United States has declined since the year 2000…

 

Meanwhile, the cost of living has continued to rise at a steady pace.

Needless to say, this is putting a tremendous squeeze on the middle class.  With each passing day, more Americans are losing their spots in the middle class and this has pushed government dependence to an all-time high.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans now live in a home that receives money from the government each month.  This is completely and totally unsustainable, but our long-term economic problems just keep getting worse.

Our politicians have stood by as millions upon millions of good paying jobs have been shipped out of the country.  Millions of other middle class jobs have been lost to technology.  This has resulted in intense competition for the middle class jobs that remain.

And at this point we are even losing lots of lower paying retail jobs.  For example, it is being reported that Sears plans to close 110 more stores and lay off more than 6,000 workers.  Sears says that the report "isn't accurate", but it isn't denying that stores will be closed either…

In an email to USA Today, Sears spokesman Howard Riefs said the store count and closures "isn't accurate,'' but did not provide store closures or layoff numbers.

 

"As we stated in our (second quarter earnings report), we disclosed that we would be closing unprofitable stores as leases expire and in some cases will accelerate closings when it is economically prudent. And that we would consider closing additional stores during the remainder of the year,'' Riefs said. "Make no mistake, we believe the store will continue to play an integral role in our transformation, however, if a store is not generating a profit, it is straightforward that the store should be considered for closure."

No matter how many stores Sears does end up closing over the next few months, the truth is that our economy is a complete and total mess at this point.

Our politicians and the mainstream media are trying to put a happy face on everything, but the cold, hard numbers prove that we are not anywhere close to where we were prior to the last recession.

Because it is so difficult to find a good job in America today, I often recommend to people that they should consider starting their own businesses.

But thanks to the bureaucratic control freaks in the Obama administration and in our state governments, small business ownership in America today is at an all-time low.  It is almost as if they don't want the "little guy" to win.  Every avenue of prosperity for the middle class is under assault, and there does not appear to be much hope that this will change any time soon.

And the truly frightening thing is that this is about as good as things are going to get for the middle class.  We are rapidly approaching the next major wave of our long-term economic decline, but that is a topic for a future article.

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

For all the headline fodder surrounding the arrival of Ebola in the US, or any other developed nation for that matter, the key issue surrounding the worst Ebola epidemic in history has little to do with what the virus is doing on the western side of the Atlantic, and everything to do with containing the source of contagion on the eastern side.

It is this issue that a paper in today’s edition of The Lancet: Infectious Diseases tackles. It’s conclusion:

The number of beds at EVD treatment centres needed to effectively control EVD in Montserrado substantially exceeds the 1700 pledged by the USA to west Africa. Accelerated case ascertainment is needed to maximise effectiveness of expanding the capacity of EVD treatment centres. Distributing protective kits can further augment prevention of EVD, but it is not an adequate stand-alone measure for controlling the outbreak. Our findings highlight the rapidly closing window of opportunity for controlling the outbreak and averting a catastrophic toll of EVD cases and deaths.

The authors do not specify if the catastrophic toll would impact only Africa, but they don’t have to: as long as the original epidemic continues unabated and in fact grows larger, the risk of a carrier sliding undetected into any developed nation rises exponentially.

The Yale News summarizes the full paper:

The Ebola virus disease epidemic already devastating swaths of West Africa will likely get far worse in the coming weeks and months unless international commitments are significantly and immediately increased, new research led by Yale researchers predicts.

The findings are published in the Oct. 24 issue of The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

A team of seven scientists from Yale’s Schools of Public Health and Medicine and the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in Liberia developed a mathematical transmission model of the viral disease and applied it to Liberia’s most populous county, Montserrado, an area already hard hit. The researchers determined that tens of thousands of new Ebola cases — and deaths — are likely by Dec. 15 if the epidemic continues on its present course.

“Our predictions highlight the rapidly closing window of opportunity for controlling the outbreak and averting a catastrophic toll of new Ebola cases and deaths in the coming months,” said Alison Galvani, professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health and the paper’s senior author. “Although we might still be within the midst of what will ultimately be viewed as the early phase of the current outbreak, the possibility of averting calamitous repercussions from an initially delayed and insufficient response is quickly eroding.”

The model developed by Galvani and colleagues projects as many as 170,996 total reported and unreported cases of the disease, representing 12% of the overall population of some 1.38 million people, and 90,122 deaths in Montserrado alone by Dec. 15. Of these, the authors estimate 42,669 cases and 27,175 deaths will have been reported by that time.

Much of this suffering — some 97,940 cases of the disease — could be averted if the international community steps up control measures immediately, starting Oct. 31, the model predicts. This would require additional Ebola treatment center beds, a fivefold increase in the speed with which cases are detected, and allocation of protective kits to households of patients awaiting treatment center admission. The study predicts that, at best, just over half as many cases (53,957) can be averted if the interventions are delayed to Nov. 15. Had all of these measures been in place by Oct. 15, the model calculates that 137,432 cases in Montserrado could have been avoided.

There have been approximately 9,000 reported cases and 4,500 deaths from the disease in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea since the latest outbreak began with a case in a toddler in rural Guinea in December 2013. For the first time cases have been confirmed among health-care workers treating patients in the United States and parts of Europe.

“The current global health strategy is woefully inadequate to stop the current volatile Ebola epidemic,” co-author Dr. Frederick Altice, professor of internal medicine and public health added. “At a minimum, capable logisticians are needed to construct a sufficient number of Ebola treatment units in order to avoid the unnecessary deaths of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people.”

Other authors include lead author Joseph Lewnard, Martial L. Ndeffo Mbah, Jorge A. Alfaro-Murillo, Luke Bawo, and Tolbert G. Nyenswah.

The National Institutes of Health funded the study.

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

With The Royals and The Giants flip-flopping scores like an HFT-trader on FOMC day, we thought a glance at the two teams’ local real estate markets might give some context for who comes out the weekend the winner… As RealtyTrac notes, the San Francisco Giants may have one of the most Equity Rich real estate regions, but the Kansas City Royals hit a home run with home prices.

 

 

Source: RealtyTrac

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Submitted by Martin Armstrong via Armstrong Economics blog,

 

If you want to hide something in plain view, exaggerate it to the point it becomes extreme and convert it to a conspiracy theory. This is a very standard in how to create propaganda and if you keep saying a lie, its becomes the truth to many without ever having to prove anything. To uncover the truth, takes digging. This I have discovered both in politics as well as market fundamentals.

The two big conspiracy theories to be exaggerated that cover up the truth are the 911 WTC Attack and the Kennedy Assassination. With the former, people take it to the extreme and claim there was not even an attack by terrorists and the whole thing was made up. Sorry, there was an attack and the government knew it was coming and allowed it to for three purposes

• (1) eliminate the evidence on many cases in WTC7 including all my evidence that documented EVERY  market manipulation up to 1999 by the investment banks et al for which they are getting fined all the time today
• (2) wipe out the evidence that would have exposed the missing $2 trillion in the Pentagon budget, and
• (3) generate more power for government by allowing Americans to be victims as originally proposed in Operation Northwoods.

Now, that is far closer to the truth than claiming there was no Middle East terrorists involved at all, Strange, for that does not jive with Saudi Arabia threatening Russia with terrorism or the funding of ISIS to overthrow Syria which has now overthrown most of Iraq.

 

Then there is the Kennedy Assassination spun to be the product of the Mafia or with Oswald’s Russian connection. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address warned of the vast military complex that had grown out of World War II employing over 3 million people. There was no such industry before that war and the view was now Communism would take the world. My father was a Colonel under General Patton and you to tell me all the time about him as a child how he read the books of his opponent and how he accurately predicted that the real enemy would be Stalin and wanted to go all the way to Moscow.

In the Third 1960 Presidential Debate, Kennedy exposed the truth behind the decline in the Bretton Woods System – it was the vast expenditure on the military. Her said:

Now on the question of gold. The difficulty, of course, is that we do have heavy obligations abroad, that we therefore have to maintain not only a favorable balance of trade but also send a good deal of our dollars overseas to pay our troops, maintain our bases, and sustain other economies. 

The price of silver was rising and Kennedy set in motion the withdraw of silver from the monetary system. This too has been spun into a conspiracy theory  Here they have spun JFK’s Executive Order 11110 into the Federal Reserve killed Kennedy because he was taking their power to print currency away. You just can’t get any more far-fetched than that one.

Simply put, JFK also said the US current account deficit could be stopped at any time if the government stopped expanding its military worldwide for that was sending dollars offshore. If anyone had a motive, it was the very same people behind the NSA abuse of power – not the Federal Reserve, Mafia, or Russians. Just follow the money and you get closer to the truth – i.e. Halliburton, Cheney and the Iraq War against a nation who was against religious fanatics, the very terrorists who attacked the USA – go figure that one out without following the money. We took out two dictators who kept religious fanatics in check -Saddam Hussein and Muammar al-Gaddafi.

BTW, as soon as Halliburton was to be investigated, they moved to Dubai. Just follow the money.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/12tElpq Tyler Durden

Taking inspiration from the fear of Ebola, AP reports that a Dallas-area man has stacked up barrels marked “biohazard,” surrounded his yard with yellow caution tape and crossed his door and windows with white tape marked “quarantine.”

 

 

“There’s negative people everywhere and they are going to give me grief about it but it’s all in good fun,” James Faulk told reporters Thursday while standing outside his home wearing a face shield and white protective suit with the label “CDC Trainee” and d gripping a clipboard and red plastic bag marked “biohazard infectious waste.”

 

 

“So the next step is: Let’s have fun on Halloween and scare some people in the process,” said Faulk, who on Thursday added a banner reading “Happy Halloween.”

 

 

University Park spokesman Steve Mace said police so far have gotten just one call about the house and an officer drove by to check out the situation. He said no laws were being broken.

 

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Having grown weary of reality in America (after becoming the biggest landlord in the land of the free to borrow cheaply), Wall Street moved into the distressed property purchase ponzi in Spain (as we noted here) and, surprise, the Spanish are not happy with their new slumlords. After Madrid's local government sold 5,000 rent-controlled apartments to Goldman and Blackstone, having told tenants their rental conditions would remain the same, dozens of people have received demands for higher rent, been told their rents will increase dramatically, been threatened with eviction or moved out to escape the insecurity as old contracts expire.

 

As Reuters reports,

Last year Madrid’s city and regional governments sold almost 5,000 rent-controlled flats to private equity investors including Goldman Sachs and Blackstone. At the time, the tenants were told their rental conditions would remain the same.

 

But as old contracts expire, dozens of people have received demands for higher rent, been told their rents will increase dramatically, been threatened with eviction or moved out to escape the insecurity. Thousands of Spain’s poor now depend for their homes on the generosity of private equity.

 

…

 

In the buildings sold to the funds, Reuters has spoken to more than 40 households who face similar difficulties. They include some of Madrid’s most vulnerable people: an unemployed single mother of five with a severely disabled daughter, for example, and an HIV patient with one lung. Both faced evictions that were temporarily halted at the last minute.

 

There is no suggestion the buyers have acted illegally. Having bought around 15 percent of Madrid’s publicly held social housing, the new owners are simply exercising their right to charge commercial rents once reduced rents that tenants have paid expire.

 

However, Socialist councillors in Madrid have launched lawsuits directed at the state bodies that sold the rent-controlled homes, and tenants meet weekly to organize street protests. Evictions ordered and postponed by the new owners are an increasingly common sight in Spain’s media.

For the private equity firms that bought the flats, the deal was good business. For tenants, less so.

The public-sector real estate workout is creating winners and losers. Spain needs new investment to put a floor under its property market – a necessary condition for a broader recovery – and at the same time its social safety net needs funds. Economist Miguel Hernandez said foreign investors play an important role by providing cash to public institutions.

 

“These funds may appear to be acting like vultures, but they are also helping the system, because the administrations had very few options to get the cash they needed,” said Hernandez, professor at IE Business School.

 

…

 

Six sources involved in the bidding process told Reuters that bidders knew the straitened circumstances of the tenants. The funds that entered final bidding – nine in all – were given detailed information. The sale terms, seen by Reuters, show the regional government stressed that the new owners must honor all the tenants’ rights and obligations.

 

Goldman went for the Madrid homes after a successful pair of similar deals in Germany, a person familiar with the matter said. Goldman looked at the profiles of the tenants and considered whether the properties were “under-managed from a yield perspective” and whether new ownership could “improve rents.”

 

Read more here…

Here is Mike Krieger explaining how it works…

See how this game works? Financial oligarchs always get access to free money from Central Banks, as well as discounts during privatizations, and then turn around and demand the plebs pay the market rate.

Unemployed hairdresser and mother-of-three Yasmin Rubiano lives in a flat now owned by Goldman and Azora. Rubiano said she stopped getting a printed rent bill once her reduced rent of 50 euros per month ended in December, but got no word from the new owners.

 

In January she started to receive monthly text messages from her bank, which she showed a reporter, advising that it had received a demand for 498.18 euros. She has been paying 100 euros a month to show goodwill, but cannot pay more. In March, Rubiano said, she received a letter from Encasa Cibeles demanding full payment or threatening legal action.

 

On Aug. 6, the 20 tenants in Arriba’s block signed new contracts with Fidere, some of them seen by Reuters, which stipulate a rise of more than 40 percent in rent over three years. Blackstone referred inquiries to Fidere.

 

Some local politicians say IVIMA acted illegally by selling the flats cheap. IVIMA Director Ana Gomendio declined to comment.

Wolves will always eat sheep, and until the sheep decide enough is enough, the wolves will continue to feast.

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The irony, of course, is that Spain has been boasting about its housing recovery because Blackstone and Goldman have been buying cheap real estate hand over first. The problem is that now they are sending out the eviction notices. Let's see how this works out for Rajoy…

With youth unemployment at record highs, corruption allegations against the Prime Minister, and regions seeking secession, it appears Goldman and Blackstone may be just the tinder to start more social unrest as reality starts to bite that a recovery never happened.

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