President Obama just made a melodramatic appeal at the United Nations for global measures to dramatically curb what he called “the climate threat,” current euphemism for what is more popularly known as Global Warming, the theory that man-made CO2 emissions from cars, coal plants and other man-made sources are causing the earth to warm to the point the polar icecaps are irreversibly melting and threatening to flood a quarter or more of the earth’s surface. There’s only one thing wrong with Mr. Obama’s dramatic scenario: it is scientifically utterly wrong. Since 2007 the polar icecaps have been growing not melting and the earth has been cooling, not warming.
Traders should be watching this leading measure of shipping rates for clues of how indices will move
Jessica Mead
GLOBAL trade volumes have dried up since the start of the financial crisis as Western demand for East Asian goods languished, depressing shipping activity as measured by the Baltic Dry Index. Read the rest of this entry »
A landmark ruling in a recent Kansas Supreme Court case may have given millions of distressed homeowners the legal wedge they need to avoid foreclosure. In Landmark National Bank v. Kesler, 2009 Kan. LEXIS 834, the Kansas Supreme Court held that a nominee company called MERS has no right or standing to bring an action for foreclosure. MERS is an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a private company that registers mortgages electronically and tracks changes in ownership. The significance of the holding is that if MERS has no standing to foreclose, then nobody has standing to foreclose – on 60 million mortgages. That is the number of American mortgages currently reported to be held by MERS. Over half of all new U.S. residential mortgage loans are registered with MERS and recorded in its name. Holdings of the Kansas Supreme Court are not binding on the rest of the country, but they are dicta of which other courts take note; and the reasoning behind the decision is sound. Read the rest of this entry »
Is the Afghan war already lost? Well, not quite, says the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, but almost:
“Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) – while Afghan security capacity matures – risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”
That’s the gist of a memo [.pdf] sent to the White House by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, which was leaked to Bob Woodward and published – with “unclassified ” stamped all over it – in redacted form (redacted, according to Woodward, “at the request of the government”). The fact that it was leaked is receiving far more attention than the actual content, as everyone tries to decipher who leaked it and why. The conventional explanation is the simplest: it was leaked by someone who supports McChrystal’s position – more troops, more resources, more casualties – in order to back the president into a corner. Then there are those who speculate this was a “reverse leak,” i.e., someone was trying to get the president mad at the general for presumably having something to do with the leak. Not to forget the “fake leak” theory, whose adherents accuse the administration itself of being the source of the leak: the assumption being they’re trying to back themselves into a corner and cut short any congressional debate. Read the rest of this entry »
Iran’s President Ahmadinejad addressed the UN General Assembly saying that the role of single powers and capitalism are over, and he will go the way of communism. Libya’s leader, Colonel Gaddafi, came down on the UN. Read the rest of this entry »
Central bankers: forever blowing bubbles
Stock markets continue to expect the best of all worlds.
There will be a V-shaped recovery. Everything is headed back to normal. At least, that’s what you’d believe if you just look at the way stocks have surged. Read the rest of this entry »
While most hedge funds traditionally have an on-shore and an off-shore investment vehicle, the bulk of investable capital is allocated to accounts domiciled in the Caymans, Bahamas, Isle of Man, or some other tax “friendly” country, as LPs are never too crazy about that little snag known as taxes, and offshoring provides some nice and useful alternatives to said snag. Distressed hedge funds, those that acquire either secured or unsecured debt with the hope of equitization, are no exception. Yet equitization by essentially foreign vehicles is starting to get some dirty looks by regulators, which limit “foreign” equity investments in traditionally American companies and sectors. Some developments in the upcoming restructurings of media companies may put a new wrinkle on what is promptly becoming the most prevalent and profitable means for hedge funds to invest capital (not by necessity but for the simple reason that if a sector is not too big to fail, it is likely failing massively). The case of Citadel Broadcasting, which Zero Hedge discussed recently as commentary highlighting the lunacy of the current investment climate, is just such an example. Read the rest of this entry »
While all the hubbub here in the US has centered around abominations such as cash 4 clunkers, tax credits for buying homes, and the other machinations directed at returning the US to the blissful year of 2005, other portions of the world have taken notice and have been conducting some activities of their own. They have been locking down ever-growing stockpiles of critical basic materials needed to run their economies. These strategic moves have certainly not been done in secret, but given how we spend our intellectual energies here in America, they might as well have been. Leading the pack has been China, but there have certainly been others. Read the rest of this entry »
The sun is setting on the US dollar as the ultra-loose monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve forces China and the vibrant economies of the emerging world to forge a new global currency order, according to a new report by HSBC.
“The dollar looks awfully like sterling after the First World War,” said David Bloom, the bank’s currency chief.
“The whole picture of risk-reward for emerging market currencies has changed. It is not so much that they have risen to our standards, it is that we have fallen to theirs. It used to be that sovereign risk was mainly an emerging market issue but the events of the last year have shown that this is no longer the case. Look at the UK – debt is racing up to 100pc of GDP,” he said Read the rest of this entry »
Citywire
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Sterling continues to fall against the euro as increasing numbers of market watchers believe a move to parity is on the cards.
At 10.44, sterling was trading at €1.1031 against the euro – within spitting distance of all-time lows of €1.0193 last December.
Ian Williams, strategist at Altium Securities, says yesterday’s quarterly report from the Bank of England has put extra pressure on sterling. Read the rest of this entry »
In These New Times 