Stagflation 2011: Why It Is Here And Why It Is Going To Be Very Painful

by ilene - February 24th, 2011 10:16 pm

Courtesy of Michael Snyder at Economic Collapse 

Are you ready for an economy that has high inflation and high unemployment at the same time? Well, welcome to "Stagflation 2011".  Stagflation exists when inflation and unemployment are both at high levels at the same time.  Of course we all know about the high unemployment situation already.  Gallup’s daily tracking poll says that the U.S. unemployment rate has been hovering around 10 percent all year so far.  But now thanks to rapidly rising food prices and the exploding price of oil, rampant inflation is being added to the equation.

Normally inflation is a sign of increased economic activity, but when the basic commodities that we depend on to run our economy (such as oil) go up in price it actually causes a slowdown in economy activity. When the price of oil goes up high enough, it fundamentally changes the behavior of individuals and businesses.  Suddenly certain types of economic activities that were feasible when oil was very cheap are not profitable any longer.  When the price of oil rises to a new level and it stays there, essentially what is happening is that more "blood" is being drained out of our economy.  Our economy will continue to function when there are higher oil prices, it will just be a lot more sluggish.

In some way, shape or form the price of oil factors into the production of most of our goods and services and it also factors into the transportation of most of our goods and services. A significant rise in the price of oil changes the economic equation for almost every business in the United States.

Today, the price of WTI crude soared past 100 dollars a barrel before closing at $98.10.  The price of Brent crude increased 5.3 percent to $111.25.  The protests in Libya are certainly causing a lot of the price activity that we have seen over the past few days, but the truth is that oil has been going up for a number of months.  Right now we are only seeing an acceleration of the long-term trend.

Things are likely to get far worse if the "day of rage" planned for Saudi Arabia next month turns into a full-blown revolution.  Up to this point, the revolutions that have been sweeping the Middle East have been organized largely on Facebook, and now there are calls all over…

Tags: Commodities, Economic Activities, economic activity, Economy, High Inflation, high unemployment, inflation, Oil, oil prices, Painful, price of oil, Profitable, Rampant Inflation, STAGFLATION, unemployment

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What Most People Don’t Realize About The Fed’s Superpowers

by ilene - January 27th, 2011 2:33 pm

Bob Prechter’s Conquer The Crash reveals whether the Fed really can rescue the US economy 

By Elliott Wave International

Since its creation in 1913, the primary intended role of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank has been that of protector. In theory, the central bank was bestowed with the power to shape monetary policy in a way that would keep both booms and busts in check. The two main tools at its disposal — interest rates and money creation — would provide a "ceiling of normalcy" above expansions AND a "net of safety" below contractions.

To this day, the financial mainstream holds great faith in the Fed’s ability to fulfill its save-the-day duties — as these recent news items make plain:

• "Why Raising Fed Funds Rate Is Positive For Equities." (Seeking Alpha)
• "Fed’s Moves Lift All Asset Classes." (Associated Press)
• "US Stocks Erasing Losses: The aggressive moves of the Fed have been an important driver for the stabilization of stock prices." (Bloomberg)

But of all the variables the Fed creators took into account, there’s one glaring factor they neglected to consider: Namely, it cannot force consumers to spend, creditors to lend, or businesses to borrow. The events of 2007-2009 "credit crunch" and the subsequent "Great Recession" made that obvious. Remember how the government was upset at banks for sitting on the bailout funds instead of lending them out to consumers? And consumers weren’t exactly lining up on the street to get a loan, either.

The Fed’s inability to change social mood is the central theme in Chapter 13 of EWI President Bob Prechter’s NY Times business bestseller book Conquer the Crash. There, Bob describes the Fed’s strategy of lowering the federal funds rate to stimulate spending to be as effective as "pushing on a string." Writes Bob:

"The primary basis for today’s belief in perpetual prosperity and inflation with an occasional recession is what I call the ‘Potent Directors Fallacy.’ It is nearly impossible to find a treatise on macroeconomics today that does not assert or assume that the Federal Reserve Board has learned to control both our money and our economy. Many believe that it also possesses the immense power to manipulate the stock market. The very idea that it can do these things is false."

And so begins one of the most groundbreaking studies into the very real INABILITY of the Fed to fell the great bears of economic declines, or…

Tags: Bailout, Banks, Bernanke, debt, Dollar, Economy, Equities, Financial Crisis, Politics, Stock Market, the Federal Reserve, unemployment, Wall Street

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Stock World Weekly

by ilene - January 23rd, 2011 3:20 pm

Here’s the newest: Stock World Weekly Newsletter. Comments welcome! – Ilene 

Archives here. 

Tags: AAPL, Apple, Ben Bernanke, debt, Dollar, Economy, Equities, government, inflation, Obama, Stock Market, stocks, the Federal Reserve, unemployment, Wall Street

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Fickle Friday’s Jobs Report

by Phil - January 7th, 2011 8:29 am

 I don’t know what the Jobs will be but I’m betting on disappointment. 

I had said to Members yesterday that I liked the Jan QQQQ $56 puts at .77 and the Weekly (next week, not today) QQQQ $56 puts at .53 as good ways to play a jobs miss.  My comment in Member Chat was that I felt the ADP figures pushed expectations up significantly higher and now we would be much more likely to disappoint with almost any number short of 250,000 jobs added.  

The key is the seasonal adjustments but there was already some very disturbing jobs numbers in the Gallup Poll, which came out last night and showed unemployment RISING from 9.3 to 9.6% in December and, even worse, the number of Underemployed workers shot up from 18.5 to 19%, just 0.5% lower than we were in January of last year.  

Gallups Job Creation index showed no improvement in December but it is holding +10, which is the best net level we’ve had since October of 2008.  So we have ADP going one way, yesterday’s unemployment numbers were flat and Gallup says things are getting worse.  8:30 will be very interesting indeed.  

While we wait for the number, let’s take a look at last week’s post to see how things are tracking.   Monday morning I mentioned we liked FCX short at $120 (a trade that was reiterated Tuesday morning) as we felt the run in copper was overdone.  It was a rough week but FCX is down at $116 now so we’re on track at the moment of course we took a spread in chat, which was the Feb $119/110 bear put spread at $3.60, selling the Jan $120 calls for $3.60.   That spread is now $4.60 and the calls have dropped to $2.30 for a nice net $2.30 gain already.  

I said that $90 was already ridiculous for oil and we shouldn’t go any higher.  We picked up the USO Feb $40 puts on Tuesday morning in Member Chat at $2.10 and those are now $3.70 so a nice $1.60 gain there, which is about the same as if we had just shorted the stock as it dropped from $39 that morning to $37.68 now.  That’s where puts are very useful, you don’t have to commit as much as a short on the stock, you limit…

Tags: AAPL, Copper, CSCO, DBC, FAS, FCX, GLW, QQQQ, SKS, SPY, TBT, unemployment, USO

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Stock World Weekly

by ilene - January 2nd, 2011 8:18 am

Here’s the latest Stock World Weekly Newsletter, New Year’s Edition.

Feedback welcome — please leave comments, we value your input. - Ilene

Picture credit: William Banzai7

For Stock World Weekly archives, click here.   

Tags: Ben Bernanke, CHINA, debt, deflation, Dollar, Economy, Equities, Federal Reserve, Financial Crisis, financial markets, Gold, government, Housing, Mish, Options, Recovery, Stock Market, stocks, the Federal Reserve, unemployment, Wall Street

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The Shadow Banking System: A Third Of All The Wealth In The World Is Held In Offshore Banks

by ilene - December 31st, 2010 5:20 am

Shadow Banking and Tax Avoidance – privileges for the ultra-wealthy…  Ilene 

Courtesy of Michael Snyder of Economic Collapse

You and I live in a totally different world than the ultra-rich and the international banking elite do.  Many of them live in a world where they simply do not pay income taxes.  Today, it is estimated that a third of all the wealth in the world is held in offshore banks.  So why is so much of the wealth of the globe located in places such as Monaco, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Isle of Man?  It isn’t because those are fun places to visit.  It is to avoid taxes.  The super wealthy and the international banking elite think that it is really funny that our paychecks are constantly being drained by federal taxes, state taxes and Social Security taxes while they literally pay nothing at all.  These incredibly rich elitists make a ton of money doing business in wealthy western nations and then they transfer virtually all of their profits offshore where they don’t have to contribute any of it in taxes.  It works out really great for them, but it sucks for the rest of us.

It is estimated that approximately $1.4 trillion is held in offshore banks in the Cayman Islands alone. According to an article in Forbes magazine, there is a total of approximately 15 trillion to 20 trillion dollars in offshore bank accounts, brokerage accounts and hedge fund portfolios.

A recent article in the Guardian stated that a third of all the wealth on the entire globe is held in offshore banks and that the vast majority of international banking transactions take place in these tax havens….

On a conservative estimate, a third of the world’s wealth is held offshore, with 80% of international banking transactions taking place there. More than half the capital in the world’s stock exchanges is "parked" offshore at some point.

All of the biggest banks in the world are involved in playing this game.  All of them have big branches in these various tax havens.  All of them work very hard to ensure that the tax burdens on their ultra-rich clients are as light as possible.

Nobody knows for sure how much money big governments around the globe are missing out on from all this tax avoidance, but everyone agrees the number…

Tags: banking elite, Banks, Dollar, Economy, Goldman Sachs, off-shore banks, Shadow banking, Stock Market, Taxes, unemployment, Wall Street, wealth

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Thrilling Thursday – US Companies Create 1.4M Jobs! (Overseas)

by Phil - December 30th, 2010 8:28 am

 US Corporations are hiring – they are just not hiring you!  

The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, says American companies have created 1.4 million jobs overseas this year, compared with less than 1 million in the U.S. The additional 1.4 million jobs would have lowered the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.9 percent, says Robert Scott, the institute’s senior international economist.  "There’s a huge difference between what is good for American companies versus what is good for the American economy," says Scott.

American jobs have been moving overseas for more than two decades. In recent years, though, those jobs have become more sophisticated — think semiconductors and software, not toys and clothes.  And now many of the products being made overseas aren’t coming back to the United States. Demand has grown dramatically this year in emerging markets like India, China and Brazil.  Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent often points out that a billion consumers will enter the middle class during the coming decade, mostly in Africa, China and India. He is aggressively targeting those markets. Of Coke’s 93,000 global employees, less than 13 percent were in the U.S. in 2009, down from 19 percent five years ago. (see my interview with Kent here). 

We’re anticipating the usual 400,000 jobs lost for the week at 8:30 this morning and I sure didn’t see too many "Help Wanted" signs at the malls this year, or anywhere else now that I think about it.  We also have the Chicago PMI at 9:45, Pending Home Sales at 10:00, Natural Gas Inventories at 10:30 followed by both Oil Inventories at 11 along with the Kansas City Fed’s Manufacturing Index.  Later today (3pm) we get the very inflationary USDA Agriculture Prices where we can short FCOJ like this as the panic that drove prices up this week seems a bit overdone.  

Of course, I’ve been saying the entire commodity rally is overdone as I don’t see how firing 1.4M Americans who made $35,000 and replacing them with 1.4M Chinese workers who make $2,500 means the price of oil should go up.  Only the fact that the US Government is going deeper and deeper into debt to help those 1.4M laid off Americans buy their next tank of gas is keeping demand level – without that support, buses would be MUCH more popular in the US, as they already are in China…

Tags: API, BA, CHINA, DIA, Dollar, GE, GM, inventory, NKD, Oil, unemployment, USO, Yen

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One Investment Strategy for Q1 2011: Cash, Baby, All the Way

by ilene - December 28th, 2010 10:09 pm

Charles Hugh Smith agrees with us on the wisdom of cash: One Investment Strategy for Q1 2011: Cash, Baby, All the Way  - Ilene 

Courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith

In response to readers’ requests, I disclose my own amateur’s Investment Strategy for Q1 2011: cash is king, and the U.S. dollar looks good simply because almost everyone expects it to collapse. 

Despite my oft-avowed amateur-market-observer status, readers often ask me for advice or opinions on where to put their capital. This is not advice (please read the HUGE GIANT BIG FAT DISCLAIMER below), it is a disclosure of my own personal opinion, what we might call "one investment strategy of many possible investment strategies" for the first quarter of 2011: cash, baby, cash all the way.

Why am I in cash? Because I don’t trust the parallel rallies, and I am extremely skeptical of the various "stories" which are driving the rallies. Why am I skeptical? Because everybody and their sister has bought into the stories, and a one-sided trade is rarely the winning one.

Yes, it’s my contrarian nature: when everyone is a believer in a "story" that is too good to be true, then I become skeptical. This often gets me in trouble. When everyone was buying GM at $50, I was shorting it. When everyone was buying Fannie Mae at $60, I was shorting it (via puts). Both GM and FNM were obviously, painfully insolvent, but it took practically forever for reality to intrude on the fantasy/narrative that each firm was a "solid blue chip" investment with numerous analyst recommendations. In the meantime, I lost money treading water for quarter after quarter.

So even though the market is clearly top-heavy, the short-side trade may yet be ground down by the Fed’s prop-job and the Wall Street/Central State partnership’s desperate desire to use a rising stock market as a propaganda proxy for the "recovery."

(Hey, just borrow and squander roughly 13% of GDP, year after year after year (roughly 45% of the entire Federal budget), and you might stimulate a modest "recovery," too.)

So let’s examine each of the "stories" driving the rallies.

1. The global recovery is solid, and Central State stimulus and quantitative easing will keep growth rising and interest rates low. This narrative drives capital into "risk assets," i.e. stock markets, commodities, FX carry trades, Chinese real estate, junk bonds, etc.

I’m not really sure…

Tags: Banks, Cash, Dollar, Economy, Equities, Financial Crisis, investment, investor strategy, Obama, Politics, Recovery, Stock Market, stocks, the Federal Reserve, unemployment, Wall Street

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2011 – What’s Coming

by ilene - December 28th, 2010 9:57 pm

Courtesy of Bruce Krasting

Oh boy is 2011 going to be an exciting year! Some things that I think might happen:

• -Volatility is going up across the board. If you have the stomach for the swings that are coming across all markets there is a ton of money to be made; balls and timing are all that are necessary. The markets will create dozens of opportunities to make and lose.
• -There will be 50 days with a swing in the S&P greater than 1%. There will be 10 days where gold swings $50. There will be two days with a drop greater than 100 bucks. Most of the big moves will be down moves. Bonds will not be spared the volatility.
• -Gold will be higher a year from now but off its peak. At some time in the fall, gold will be near 1,800 and the New York Times will do a front-page story that gold is on its way to 2,000. That will be the high point of the year.
• -Copper will continue to rise. This metal will benefit as the poor man’s gold. Why buy an ounce of something for $1,600 when you can have a whole pound of something else for only $5? The logic is compelling only because there is no logic. Increasingly, it will become understood that money does not hold value. Copper will do a better job of storing value then a Treasury Bond.
• -The US bond market is in for a heck of a year. The 30-year will trade at BOTH 3% and 5%. Higher rates will come early in the year, then the deflation trade will come back into vogue.
• -Spain will be the next sovereign debtor that falls prey to the market. This will happen before the end of the 1st Q. The package to bail them out will exceed $500b. This will exhaust the EU resources. There will be very high expectations that contagion will then move to Italy. That will not happen in 2011 (2012?) The European Central Bank will step up to the table (finally) and support the market for Italy. Sometime between March and June Italian bonds will be a great buy.
• -The IMF will contribute $125b to the Spanish bailout. The US portion

…

Tags: Banks, Ben Bernanke, debt, deflation, Dollar, ECB, Economy, Equities, Euro, Financial Crisis, government, inflation, mortgage gate, QE2, Stock Market, stocks, the Federal Reserve, Tim Geithner, unemployment, Wall Street, ZIRP

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Thoughtful Thursday – The True Meaning of Christmas

by Phil - December 23rd, 2010 8:19 am

 Why it’s almost Christmas Eve, Mr. Scrooge!  

The Global markets are closing for the weekend and we’re bound to have a very slow day – if you are waiting for a Santa Clause rally on today’s trading, you are very likely to be disappointed.  Today is a day for relaxation and reflection.  Remember, the words of Jacob Marley, who said:

Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!

Marley was a man who worked and worked until the day he died and regretted it every day after.  If you don’t believe in an afterlife and you don’t believe in leaving behind the World a better place than you found it, at least find some time for yourself so people don’t call you "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner" after you’re gone.  

I was inspired this morning by a post on Barry’s site titled "Give and You Will Receive" listing 13 good ways we can all give every day.  ’Tis the season of giving and goodwill to all man and all that and my children just completed their annual ritual of wrapping up all the toys they are done with to give to children who need them more than they do.  It’s a little thing, but if you want your kids to learn the benefits of charity, actually parting with things they like or liked and physically giving them to kids who clearly appreciate it is much more gratifying than writing a check to some anonymous organization.  The same goes for volunteering some time (and money!) at a local shelter and helping some people come in from the cold for a nice, warm meal – it makes you appreciate your family dinner a LOT more! 

Anyway, end of commercial.  Let’s just see who’s being naughty and who’s being nice this morning.   We have quite a bit of data today with November Durable Goods at 8:30 (which have been tailing off) along with Personal Income and Spending.  2010 has NOT been an exciting year so far with monthly gains of about 0.4% but, on the bright side, there were only small negative months but this report only covers November and will not…

Tags: AMZN, C, home sales, HOV, IWM, NFLX, PCLN, QQQQ, TBT, unemployment, USO, XLF

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