Tuesday, May 17, 2016

SALT Conference was and is a clown show

SALT Conference

Last Friday concluded the annual SALT Conference out in Vegas. That's where a bunch of self-important, narcissistic hedge fund types sit around in the desert sun pontificating on the  markets, economy, etc. From what I read out of the discussions the whole thing was pretty pathetic

This conference has increasingly become the new American "Davos." It's not just financial types anymore. It has been attracting high level policy makers, celebrities, journo's, athletes and the like.

Caitlyn Jenner was there. Wow. Now THERE'S a "Strategic Alternative."

The shindig was founded and has been organized by pint-sized, Anthony Scaramucci, a 5'4" world-of-finance impressario who is one helluva schmoozer and community organizer, it appears.

What the conference brought to light was pretty much what we have known and have been reporting here for a long time: that pretty much no one in the world of finance--indeed, its very titans--have a fucking clue as to what the hell they are talking about.

Not only do they suck in terms of their understanding, their track records suck too.

Basically the only thing coming from that conference was a steady stream of incoherent logorrhea. Nothing but doom and gloom. Every crisis or impending crisis you can think of was thrown up there to support all the idiotic and out of touch views that these morons subscribe to.

The China debt crisis. The Japan debt crisis. The U.S. debt crisis. Central bank emasculation. Yada, yada, yada.

Holy shit.

They should have called it the "OOPS" Conference for "Out Of Paradigm Stupid."

As for their dismal performance Roslyn Chang, managing director of the China Investment Corporation (CIC), summed it up politely.

“I’m sort of disappointed with the performance, to say the least, of the industry,” she said. "Only less than 10% of managers are actually capable of adapting to the new reality. Probably 90% of the managers think they are part of the 10% anyway," she said.

Sort of disappointed? Ya think?

No shit, Roslyn. Your CIC has about $800 billion in assets and at this point I don;t know who is dumber: those clueless managers who continue to get everything wrong or your wealth fund that keeps $30 billion parked with these losers. CIC is literally buying their homes in the Hamptons.

Then of course you had Kyle Bass the Japan debt crisis idiot. He's moved on. Maybe it had something to do with negative interest rates (yeah, people are PAYING Japan to hold its paper) and a surging yen.

Now Bass is the new, Mr. China debt crisis. No mention of his disastrous call on Japan. He's still Scarmucci's boy, apparently. "Mooch" was so impressed by his "doubling down" on China that he wrote an article about him and posted it up on Linkedin the other day.

Hayman Capital’s Kyle Bass reiterated his bearish call on China’s yuan currency, saying conditions in the communist nation now feel like they did in the U.S. in early 2007 just before the financial crisis escalated. He says China’s official government data shan’t be trusted, but you can look at the country’s major trading partners in the region like Malaysia and Thailand to get a better picture of the true economic climate.

Cue the vomiting sound.

You had Schiff.

And you had this guy--Milton Berg of MB Advisors. He made headlines with his prediction we are on the cusp of a 30-year bear market” in stocks and bonds. Milton Berg? They guy oughta be called Milton Berle because he's clearly in the business of comedy.

Increasingly I believe that these guys are really selling sensationalism, nothing else. It's a giant scam.

Not a single heterodox point of view. Nothing. No reality. Just idiots running big money...blind.

And then there was former House Speaker, John Boehner. When asked what he was most proud of  he said, "that under his speakership the federal deficit fell as a percentage of GDP."

Wow, you get the picture.

Truly vapid. The whole, damn thing.

5 comments:

Charles DuBois said...

Mike thanks for this rundown on the rich and clueless.

Postkey said...

Hello,

Are you familiar with work of S. Keen. He is a 'follower' of Minsky.

"Using the dynamics of credit–which most other economists ignore–I explain why Japan, the USA and UK are among the “Walking Dead of Debt” and why China, Canada, Australia and South Korea are on their way to joining the Debt Zombies. This presentation is based on work I’m doing for a new 25000 word book for Polity Press entitled “Can we avoid another financial crisis?”, which should be published later this year."
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2016/05/09/zombies-to-be-and-the-walking-dead-of-debt/

Matt Franko said...

Post,

Minsky: "Stability creates instability...."

c'mon man this is worthless garbage...

Compare that nonsense to something like this:

http://www.csimn.com/CSI_pages/PIDforDummies.html

Please.....

Postkey said...

Thanks for your reply.

Tom Hickey said...

Seems to me that it would be possible to write a control system for financial stability based on Minsky's three stages. IF there are three stages or however many, then that should show up in analysis of previous cycles.

Actually, a whole lot of people intuitive realized this in previous crises but the lenders and the regulators didn't have a model so they blew it off, leaving it to "the market."

But to paraphrase Chuck Prince, We all knew it was going to blow up, but no CEO can sit on the side lines (Jamie Dimon did though) while the music is playing, knowing that there are not gong to be enough chairs when the music stops.