QUESTION: Marty,
Any thoughts/comments regarding the impending water shortage in Capetown? As a person who has much historical knowledge, are you aware of a major city such as Capetown ever running out of water? Or is this truly a historical first? Continue reading
Iran has a very rich history that lends itself to tremendous insight into the long-term future of the Middle East. It was Cyrus the Great who conquered Lydia which was the birthplace of money issued by the state. The Persians adopted the practice and then continued to produce coins with the same design as the Lydians until they were changed in 510BC and the image of Darius I appears as an archer. Continue reading
Societe Generale SA
- HSBC, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley say end of market boom is nigh
- Breakdown in trading patterns is signal to get out soon
HSBC Holdings Plc, Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley see mounting evidence that global markets are in the last stage of their rallies before a downturn in the business cycle.
Analysts at the Wall Street behemoths cite signals including the breakdown of long-standing relationships between stocks, bonds and commodities as well as investors ignoring valuation fundamentals and data. It all means stock and credit markets are at risk of a painful drop. Continue reading
“We could now be at a crossroads,” warns Deutsche Bank in its annual default study report. As the ‘artificial bond market’ is exposed and yield curves flatten on Fed rate hikes so carry risk-reward is reduced and default cycles have often been linked to the ebbing and flowing of the YC through time with a fairly long lead/lag. With HY defaults having spent 12 of the last 13 years below their long-term average (with the last 5 years the lowest in modern history), “a perfect default storm could be created for 2018 if the Fed raises rates in 2015.”
Defaults will stay unusually low so long as current artificial conditions continue. However, as Deutshe Bank explains, the benign default environment of the last few years may be about to change… Continue reading
“I think it is a truly scary time,” Andy Redleaf, CEO of $4.2 billion hedge and mutual fund manager Whitebox Advisors, said in an internal memo Sunday night obtained by CNBC.com.
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“We do not know exactly where all the credit creation of this cycle has gone. Certainly money sits idly as excess reserves, but just as certainly money that would not exist but for unconventional monetary policy has distorted prices and resource allocation,” Redleaf wrote.
The following is an article published originally in German, translated in the best way Google can offer. Because this is fresh off the German press, don’t expect it to hit American news outlets until another week or so — and likely not on the major national outlets.
When the BIS speaks, markets listen. This is essentially a jaw dropper of an announcement. They realize that all the QE heroin injections are not working and that there is no way to financially turn the American economy around — it’s mathematically impossible. They also know that the US financial leadership knows. The day of reckoning is near and it’s not just the US that will be affected and, although it will suffer the worst, the entire world over is going to go through a change unheard of in its entire history.
(Für die Lesern, dass deutschen sind, klicken Sie bitte auf dem original Link.)
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is the current situation on the financial markets as worse than before the Lehman bankruptcy. The warning of the BIS could be the reason why the U.S. Federal Reserve decided to continue indefinitely to print money: Central banks have lost control of the debt-tide and give up.
The decision by the U.S. Federal Reserve to continue indefinitely to print money (here ) might have fallen on “orders from above”.
Apparently, the central banks dawns that it is tight.
Very narrow.
The most powerful bank in the world, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has published a few days ago in its quarterly report for the possible end of the flood of money directly addressed – and at the same time described the situation on the debt markets as extremely critical. The “extraordinary measures by central banks” – aka the unrestrained printing – had awakened in the markets the illusion that the massive liquidity pumped into the market could solve the fundamental problems (more on the huge rise in debt – here ). Continue reading
Global Geopolitics 