Sunday, September 13, 2015

Two Points: ** China is now acknowledged as a primary leader of global economic trends. ** China will better managed the apparent down-swing much better than everybody else, as its %growth is still in the middle single digits and it has the  means to mollify any domestic disruptions. The message to the rest of us is "Sauve qui peut !" Blaming China has no effect and will not change anything. Can global capitalism 'revive itself' without Chinese - made profits ? The ball is on our court. The bankster's 30 year globalization scam coming home to roost.  There was no economic miracle - all that happened was the banksters shifted tens millions of jobs from west to east so they could pay eastern wages while charging western prices and this made them very rich.  But how could western demand be maintained to pay for all those (now imported) goods if tens of millions of well paid jobs were off-shored?   They got their puppet western politicians to keep the scam going with debt.  And now western credit has run out the off-shored economy has no one to sell to and so it's all going down.  The sickening thing is the banksters responsible for the coming disaster will run off to their private islands when the crash comes and watch the starvation they caused on TV - if there still is TV.  Perhaps instead of blaming one or a few countries for impending monetary problems all governments have to look at their spending. None that I have heard manage to reign in spending and have a balanced budget. Europe wants to keep maximum time off, minimum man hours while maintaining social programs. See Greece as end result. The US has gone down the sewer with profligate spending. Bush's spending was terrible, Obama has more than doubled the trouble Bush left the country. Soon, regardless of wealth, there will not be enough fully employed workers to fund what the government has decided is entitled to leeches. Unless the food chain is broken, economically we would seem doomed. It is not entirely China's fault.

Saturday, September 12, 2015

The European Monetary Union (the Euro) was never going to work without full political union first. For the EU to be able rob Peter to Pay Paul and have the public support, without democracy getting in the way, they needed political union. They decided they could not wait for it, and went ahead with the Euro anyway. They now think they can use the Sub Saharans with welfare tickets & babies in hand as a weapon to bring this about by demoralising and destroying the homogeneity of the nations.
The EU's lack of patience to get the political union in place before the economic union, could cost them everything. I do not think importing 2,500,000-5,000,000 Muslim/Sub Saharans every year is going to save it either. This could trigger the end sooner than it would have occurred otherwise. I hope they have the EU army ready, cause they are going to need it.euro union...It's for the greater good.''- of the unelected, undemocratic, nepotists, submarxist/corporatist, sovereignty scamming, 19th cent social engineering 'Elite' who control the EU...Surely the strangest thing is that anyone in their right mind in the 21st cent would want to be part of a 19th cent POLITICAL social engineering retread like the European Union masquerading as a 'Trading Block' which doesn't believe in democracy, the sovereignty of the individual or the democratically expressed will of the people...but rather that all should be controlled by an unelected, nepotistic, self -serving EU 'elite' ? David Cameron is one of those brainwashed shallow submarxist/corporatist minded weirdos who bought into this '80's cultural marxism claptrap...
.''The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe.”― Mikhail Gorbachev
- and he should know eh?

Friday, September 11, 2015

For investors looking to get the most upside out of a strong dollar trade, Credit Suisse suggests that emerging market currencies are likely to see some of the most dramatic shifts against the greenback in the coming months. Rising rates—or even the threat of them—tend to make life difficult for emerging market economies, particularly those with high current account deficits. Those countries depend on capital inflows to fund their operations, and when rates are low in the United States, as they have been for the past six years, investors are usually happy to oblige. But when rates are rising, investors start shifting their money back to the relative safety of the United States. The South African rand, Brazilian real, Mexican peso, and Turkish lira look particularly vulnerable to capital outflows this time around, the strategists say...Falling prices are a touchier subject for Europe, where the economic recovery is still nascent and fears of sustained deflation prompted the European Central Bank to introduce a bond-buying program earlier this year. If a believable specter of deflation reappears, the central bank would almost certainly extend its commitment to quantitative easing, while economies outside the Eurozone, such as Sweden, would also likely opt for easy policy. The ECB might even add to its stimulus, depending how much further the yuan weakens. At a time when the Federal Reserve and Bank of England are ready to tighten, relatively loose policy would make European stocks attractive. So did you follow that? This is how the butterfly effect of the global economy works these days: China devalues, European stocks look more attractive. They’ve even got a few arguments in their favor that have nothing to do with monetary policy. Fifty-eight percent of European companies that have announced second-quarter earnings have beaten expectations, and investors have also poured $1.3 billion into exchange-traded funds that track the EuroStoxx 600 index over the past month. Small-cap European stocks, which are less exposed to China than large-caps, merit particular attention.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

I can't help thinking that the whole sell off (in China) was sparked by the authorities' currency devaluation. Although outside share ownership is limited it is still significant enough if they all act in concert and sell up fearing that the values of their holdings is going to drop in (say) USD terms. A bunch of them headed for €, $ or £ climes and started the snowball rolling.  Long-term low interest rates and QE (because interest rates couldn't be lowered further) has left the West's economies so weak that even a slight breeze from the East is enough to shake them. A wind from the East would blow them away.  Let it only be pointed out that the 173,000 new jobs just reported in the US was totally eclipsed by the whopping 293,000 workers who "dropped out" of the labor force. 94 million people are now "out of the workforce" in the US, signalling record low participation rates. Almost 15 million joined that category since peak employment in 2007, while 4 million jobs were created.  That's why unemployment is "so low"... fewer workers, lower unemployment creates... that's the stuff liberals like Krugman celebrate...most key indicators follow these dismal results that are swept under the rug.  US output is only slightly better than it was almost eight years ago and is now faltering as inventories are piling up and Liar's loans in the automotive industry have peaked.  As for China, Roubini seems to ignore the other Chinese bubble in housing. And the fact that the Chinese equities markets are not in free fall because the authorities in Beijing is willing to suppress any selling trends.  There is a way out for China, but in part, it means the political class has to take a long haircut. The Party bosses won't do this, so slow downward drift can be expected, especially as global customer demand tanks as well.

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Just wait until the costs of all these migrants hits Europes bottom line with the Germans wondering what went wrong. The cost of these migrant hordes will drive down the Euro with countries like Italy and Greece now realising the huge financial costs of being in the front line of the migrant invasion.
Europe is now facing a break up and a return to nation states securing their own borders. They can print what they like but it will solve nothing there are too many countries in or near trouble to make the Euro a good long term bet. Germany itself will soon have self inflicted problems to deal with but that is yet to become apparent.A horrible and exquisite stalemate is emerging wherein the EU can go  neither forward nor back: the members states do not want and probably  will not accept further 'integration' which denies them sovereign control,  and they cannot retreat to former 'independence.'  The current obstruction come from not really having an independent  foreign policy and submitting to the crazy decisions that come out  of Washington (and their happy spokesmen in London). The EU has  passively conformed to allowing its own Near East to become a social  chaos and battlefield for a Holy War, funded by the Saudis and friends, drawing deluded youth from all over to become agents of a neo-barbarism that has culminated in ISIS.  Wise diplomats-- if we had had any-- would have kept Ghaddafi and Saddam in place and the economies of Libya and Iraq intact. They really constituted no threat. How ghastly now to have to weep over the desperation of a father who lost his children trying to flee to safety !  Unpleasant as it is in some quarters to hear this message: it is not the Damascus government that tortured the Chief Archaeologist of Palmyra, cut off his head and hung his headless body from a column. Rather, it was that Assad government which nurtured his work for decades and protected Syria's and the world's patrimony.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Unfortunately, they were not patient enough and jumped the gun.

The incompatibility of countries sharing a single currency goes a lot deeper than mere reforms to achieve the agreed criteria of Eurozone membership. It is cultural.  France for instance will never be able to shift away from its social model and the cradle to grave mentality of the population. Greece is another example where the culture of tax evasion will forever make the country an unreliable partner of the EZ.  The political integration necessary to make the Euro a success, will be to adopt a Teutonic discipline to fiscal rectitude. The Latin members of the Eurozone will never make the grade...Under the Euro and until the financial crisis, your "Teutonic disciple to fiscal rectitude" Germany had an average budget deficit of over 2% - larger than either the "Latin" Portugal or Spain (who ran a surplus). Now struggling Finland ran probably the largest surplus with Ireland, who received one of the largest bailouts, not far behind.  The fiscal positions of Eurozone countries prior to the crisis bear no relation to whether they did or did not have economic problems after it...The leaders of the EU project now see a far greater prize than a United States of Europe on the horizon. The concept of supra-national government, they now see, will assert human rights and 'good enough' economic well being, across not only EU member states but, especially with Obama's support, a far wider field. TTIP is the vehicle by which it will spread well outside countries the EU can reach by its own programs of expansion and bring many US based multi-nationals into the fold of cosy bureaucratic corporatist government that will ensure stability and uniformity, if not actual freedom or democracy. This is the post democracy vision of the EU's leaders: ever widening supra-national government until we have one world government. The eurozone is merely a pilot scheme, a laboratory, and lessons from it will be applied more widely to this end. It's for the greater good.

Monday, September 7, 2015

The Italian energy group Eni has discovered the largest known gas field in the Mediterranean off the Egyptian coast and predicted that the find could help meet Egypt’s gas needs for decades.
Eni said in a statement that the Zohr field, which covers an area of about 60 square miles (100sq km), could hold as much as 30tn cubic feet of gas.  “Zohr is the largest gas discovery ever made in Egypt and in the Mediterranean Sea and could become one of the world’s largest natural-gas finds,” it said, adding that it had full concession rights to the area.  The find follows other significant gas discoveries in the Mediterranean in recent years. They are expected to have a major impact on the region’s economy and potentially offer Europe new supply options, allowing it to reduce its dependence on Russian gas imports. It also represents a major boost for Egypt, where power cuts caused by gas and oil shortages have often fuelled unrest.  Eni said the discovery was at a depth of 1,450 metres (4,757 ft), and that it planned to fast-track development of the site using existing infrastructure. It said yet more gas might be discovered in future drilling.  Eni, which is 30% state-owned, is the biggest foreign oil and gas producer in Africa, where it has significant operations in Libya. In 2011, it made huge finds off Mozambique, with an estimated 85tn cubic feet of gas in place.  It has operated for more than 60 years in Egypt and is one of the main energy producers in the country, with a daily output of 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent.