German Government Approves a Merger of Banks

 

Deutsche Bank and Commerce Bank have announced that they will begin merger talks after the government has finally approved that they can lay off workers. For those unfamiliar with the real world behind the curtain, you must realize the extent of socialism in Europe. A major telecom company in Germany called me and asked me to attend an emergency board meeting. They would not even tell me in advance what was so urgent. I flew in that morning from London and to much shock, the board voted to make me the adviser to the company pension fund and never even asked me for a proposal of a fee structure. Then the majority of members resigned.

The Size of Corporate Debt One Rung Above Junk Has Never Been Greater, Warns Louis Gave

 

Louis Gave at Gavekal Research says the greatest source of potential instability in the years ahead lies with the massive growth of the U.S. corporate debt market, particularly at the BBB-rated (near junk) level.

Venezuela Has 20 Tons of Gold Ready to Ship. Address Unknown

Venezuela Has 20 Tons of Gold Ready to Ship. Address Unknown (Yahoo!)

 

(Bloomberg) — Venezuelan lawmaker Jose Guerra dropped a bombshell on Twitter Tuesday: The Russian Boeing 777 that had landed in Caracas the day before was there to spirit away 20 tons of gold from the vaults of the country’s central bank.

The claim set off a welter of social media speculation and outrage. When asked how he knew this, Guerra provided no evidence.

John Williams: “The Fed Will Crash Markets & The Dollar”

 

Economist John Williams warns the Federal Reserve has painted itself into a very tight no-win corner.

No matter what the Fed does with rates it’s going to be a disaster. Williams explains, “You had some very heavy selling towards the end of the year and when you saw the big declines in the stock market you also saw that accompanied by a falling dollar and rising gold prices.”

In Unprecedented Speech, President Xi Warns Of “Serious Dangers” To Communist Party Rule

 

Since the days of Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese Communist Party has maintained its absolute authority over China’s roughly 1.4 billion people via an explicit social contract: the CCP would engineer an economic miracle that would lift hundreds of millions of people into the middle class, and in return, the Chinese people would accept the limitations on political freedoms demanded by the CCP.

But with China’s economy growing at its slowest pace in three decades and private sector businesses struggling with an unprecedented credit squeeze, President Xi Jinping must scramble to find a way to stabilize the country’s economy in the face of the US’s trade war escalation threats in order to ensure his legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

America Frozen Out of World Trade

 

Yet another trade agreement excludes the U.S.

A new trade agreement that covers more than 13 percent of the world economy, accounting for 15 percent of global trade, was ratified by its first six countries on December 30. The Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (cptpp) will cover 500 million people.

Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore will be joined by another four countries that have already signed but not yet ratified the agreement. Vietnam joins on January 14, while Brunei, Chile, Malaysia and Peru will join the deal 60 days after completing the ratification process.

The Origin of the Next Financial Crisis

 

Today, additional evidence that recession — or worse — is in sight.

But first, it appears the “Powell put” may extend the countdown clock…

Since Jerome Powell’s dovish comments on Friday, the Dow Jones has been up and away… as an addict thrills to the promise of additional stimulant.

It leaped another 256 points today.

Hidden Amongst the Furore: Synchronised Warnings From the BIS and the IMF

It has become a disconcerting trend that as geopolitical events intensify and keep a majority of people engaged in the latest outbreak of political theatre, the words of central bankers fall on increasingly deaf ears.

At a seminar of the European Stability Mechanism this month, Bank for International Settlements General Manager Agustin Carstens delivered a speech called, ‘Shelter from the Storm‘.

Alan Greenspan: Investors should prepare for the worst

 

Alan Greenspan says the party’s over on Wall Street.

The former Federal Reserve chairman who famously warned more than two decades ago about “irrational exuberance” in the stock market doesn’t see equity prices going any higher than they are now.

“It would be very surprising to see it sort of stabilize here, and then take off,” Greenspan said in an interview with CNN anchor Julia Chatterley.

China Intensifies Efforts to Topple U.S. Dollar

China Photos/Getty Images

 

‘The pace of expansion has been explosive’ for China’s new yuan-denominated oil futures contract.

Less than a year after China launched an oil futures contract denominated in the Chinese currency, the contract is beginning to be embraced by global commodities traders.

The Chinese Communist Party has long desired to see the United States dollar sidelined and the Chinese currency, the yuan, take on a more central role in global finance. The latest major push toward that goal came on March 26 when China launched a new oil futures contract on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange denominated in yuan. Now the contract is finding increasing acceptance among multinational commodity traders, which could threaten the dollar’s position.

The Eurozone Banks’ Trillion-Euro Timebomb

(Source: Bloomberg, Bologna, Miglietta, Segura)

 

Eurozone banks have fallen dramatically in the stock market despite the results of the stress tests carried out by the ECB, and the EU Banks Index is down 25% on the year despite year-long bullish recommendations from almost every broker. This should not surprise anyone because we have seen in the past that these tests are only a theoretical exercise. Moreover, stress tests’ results are widely challenged, and rightly so, because the exercise starts with the most ridiculous premise in economics: Ceteris Paribus, or “all else remaining equal”, which never happens. Every asset manager knows that risk builds slowly and happens fast.

60% Of Fortune 1000 Companies Will Be Out Of Business Within 10 Years

 

I had written about some observation from singularity university almost 18 months back and if you look around then it seems everything is falling in place.

The original article below:

Singularity University, based in NASA Campus in Silicon Valley is the world’s leading learning-cum-incubator university for innovation and technology set-up in collaboration with NASA, Stanford etc and we had leading Silicon Valley entrepreneurs presenting here including the guy behind Google Maps.

OBSERVATIONS OF VARIOUS SPEAKERS THERE:

We are witnessing more disruption in human history over next 10-20 years than what we have seen in the last 20,000 years. Their prediction is that 60% of Fortune 1000 companies will be out of business in just next 10 years.

Hedge-fund boss who predicted ‘87 crash says get ready for some ‘really scary moments’

Bloomberg

 

‘From a markets perspective, it’s going to be interesting. There probably will be some really scary moments in corporate credit.’

Paul Tudor Jones, a hedge-fund luminary, said he’s stress-testing his portfolio of corporate debt because he expects a tumultuous road ahead on the back of the Federal Reserve’s apparent commitment to normalizing interest rates and buttressed by corporate tax cuts from the Trump administration.

Rickards: The Fed Is “Triple Tightening” Into Crisis

Shutterstock

 

If you have defective and obsolete models, you will produce incorrect analysis and bad policy every time. There’s no better example of this than the Federal Reserve.

The Fed uses equilibrium models to understand an economy that is not an equilibrium system; it’s a complex dynamic system.

The Fed uses the Phillips curve to understand the relationship between unemployment and inflation when 50 years of data say there is no fixed relationship.

The Fed uses “value at risk” modeling based on normally distributed events when the evidence is clear that the degree distribution of risk events is a power curve, not a normal or bell curve.

European Central Bank In Panic Mode as Economy Stalls

 

The eurozone could not borrow from the momentum of the U.S. economy in the third quarter as economic growth slumped to a tepid 0.2% , the slowest rate in more than four years. With the 19-nation currency bloc beginning to stagnate, and the heavyweights failing to post significant gains, Brussels is in panic mode, likely leaning on the European Central Bank (ECB) for further stimulus.

Economists originally anticipated growth of 0.4%. But global trade woes, tumbling business confidence, Italian distress, and the gradual dissipation of an accommodative monetary policy all contributed to the poor numbers in the July-September period.