Q1 results for this activity.
$SPX share count reduction continued strongly into Q1,'16 via buybacks, pushing up EPS; currently 30% increased Y/Y EPS by at least 4%
— Howard Silverblatt (@hsilverb) April 25, 2016
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Share Count Reductions in Q1
Q1 results for this activity.
US Cheese Inventory at 30 year highs
This type of news helps support the Buffet (imo materialist) view that "America is already great...". No shortages of real product to be seen.
$USO First there was the #oil glut.... and now there's a #cheese glut https://t.co/1eCfcHozqc $OIL $DWTI $UWTI $SPY pic.twitter.com/lVglJYzxeR
— David Moadel (@davidmoadel) April 30, 2016
Monday, May 2, 2016
Matthew Yglesias — Hillary Clinton will be the most-disliked nominee ever — except for Donald Trump
Christopher Massie — Trump Says U.S. Should Shoot Barrel-Rolling Russian Planes “At A Certain Point”
“At a certain point, when that sucker comes by you, you gotta shoot,” Trump said of Russian planes barrel-rolling over U.S. Air Force planes.
BuzzFeed
Trump Says U.S. Should Shoot Barrel-Rolling Russian Planes “At A Certain Point”
Christopher Massie, BuzzFeed News Reporter
Christopher Massie, BuzzFeed News Reporter
McCain: ”This may sound a little tough, but should we make an announcement to the Russians that if they place the men and women on board Navy ships in danger, that we will take appropriate action?”
[General] Scaparrotti: “That should be known, yes.”
Donnelly: “Is there a point…where we tell them in advance enough, the next time it doesn’t end well for you?”
Scaparrotti: “We should engage them and make clear what is acceptable. Once we make that known we have to enforce it.”
For the Americans, the Russian flyby was “aggressive.” For the Russians, U.S. military forces getting within spitting range of their Baltic Fleet is the very definition of “aggressive.” What if someone on the destroyer panicked and shot down the plane?
Would the Russians have responded with an anti-ship missile? Would the U.S. have retaliated and invoked Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, bringing the other 27 members into the fray? Faced by the combined power of NATO, would the Russians—feeling their survival at stake—consider using a short-range nuclear weapon? Would the U.S. then attempt to take out Moscow’s nuclear missiles with its new hypersonic glide vehicle? Would that, in turn, kick in the chilling logic of thermonuclear war: Use your nukes or lose them?
Far-fetched? Unfortunately, not at all. The world came within minutes of a nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis and, as researcher Eric Schlosser demonstrated in his book “Command and Control,” the U.S. came distressingly close at least twice more by accident.
One of the problems about nuclear war is that it is almost impossible to envision. The destructive powers of today’s weapons have nothing in common with the tiny bombs that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so experience is not much of a guide. Suffice it to say that just a small portion of world’s nukes would end civilization as we know it, and a general exchange could possibly extinguish human life.
Foreign Policy In Focus
NATO’s Dangerous Game: Bear-Baiting RussiaConn Hallinan
Running with scissors.
BBC — Australian Craig Wright claims to be Bitcoin creator
Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright has publicly identified himself as Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.…
Mr Wright has provided technical proof to back up his claim using coins known to be owned by Bitcoin's creator.
Prominent members of the Bitcoin community and its core development team say they have confirmed his claims.Looks legit this time.
At the meeting with the BBC, Mr Wright digitally signed messages using cryptographic keys created during the early days of Bitcoin's development. The keys are inextricably linked to blocks of bitcoins known to have been created or "mined" by Satoshi Nakamoto.
BBC
Australian Craig Wright claims to be Bitcoin creator
But.…
Vox
Craig Wright really wants you to think he invented Bitcoin. Don't believe him.
Australian Craig Wright claims to be Bitcoin creator
But.…
Vox
Craig Wright really wants you to think he invented Bitcoin. Don't believe him.
Timothy B. Lee
Bill Mitchell — The metamorphosis of the IMF as a neo-liberal attack dog
Today, we consider the role way in which the IMF reinvented itself after its raison d’être was terminated with the collapse of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system. The next part of the story will examine the growing US influence on the IMF and the way it used the IMF to further its ‘free market’ agenda on a global scale.…Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The metamorphosis of the IMF as a neo-liberal attack dog
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
Outlaw Chinese Steel
HuffPo article from the International President, United Steelworkers. Are we now going to call this guy a "xenophobia!" person?
Outlaw Chinese steel https://t.co/USbsIsNcJJ @HuffingtonPost pic.twitter.com/Syt4QuSJsM
— Modern Metals (@ModernMetalsMag) May 2, 2016
April finishes with $413 billion net spending. That's $40 billion ABOVE last April!
The numbers are in for April and the Federal government spent a net, $413 billion for the month. That was $39.8 billion more than last April.
The "pool" is really filling up with water...fast!
You should be long stocks and other risk assets (gold, currencies, commodities, etc).
You should be short Treasuries.
Get my MMT Trader report.
30-day free trial here.
I love this...some NYSE trader says "we won't see new all-time highs anytime soon." Bet against him! Flows are strong!!
You gotta bet against this guy. His view is based on what? Looking at charts? Market "action" whatever that means?
My view is based on the ONE THING that definitely CAN power this market to all-time highs, and SOON, for that matter and that is fiscal flows. They're really starting to ramp up now.
Bet against the pessimists.
And, oh yeah, for all you deficit watchers...the deficit is rising.
Alexander Hagelüken and Alexander Mühlauer — TTIP Documents Revealed
The United States government is putting more intense and significantly more far-reaching pressure on the European Union than previously thought during the ongoing negotiations to reach an accord on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). This has become evident from copies of confidential negotiation documents that have been made available to Süddeutsche Zeitung and the German radio and television stations WDR and NDR. The material, consisting of 240 pages, was provided by Greenpeace and will be published this coming Monday. Several people familiar with the negotiations confirm that the documents provided are current.
According to the documents, Washington is threatening to prevent the easing of exports for the European car industry in order to force Europe to buy more U.S. agricultural products. The U.S. government concurrently has criticized the fundamental prevention principal of the EU Consumer Centre which protects 500 million Europeans from consuming genetically modified food and hormone-treated meat. The documents further reveal the fact that the U.S. has blocked the urgent European call to replace the controversial private arbitration tribunals, responsible for corporative lawsuits, with a public State model; instead, Washington has made a suggestion on the matter that had hitherto not been disclosed to the public.
The publication of these TTIP documents provides citizens with an unfiltered insight into the negotiations between the U.S. and Europe. Ever since the start of negotiations three years ago, the public could only try to guess what both sides were discussing, which has prompted millions of people to take to the streets in protest of TTIP. While the EU is making its suggestions publicly available, the U.S. insists on keeping their stances on issues secret. Washington utilizes this tactic to ensure a larger scope for negotiations. The disclosure of these 16 TTIP negotiation papers finally offers a fuller transparency for the 800 million people spread over two continents whose lives will be affected by the biggest bilateral trade agreement in history.…The Trojan horse:
Washington has also set its sights on controversial genetically modified foods that are mostly prohibited within the Europe Union. Both sides have often stressed up until now that the U.S. will respect European concerns in this matter, and that Europe’s citizens do not have to be worried about this issue. But the confidential material paints a very different picture of the situation. “It is really quite interesting to see the demands the U.S. has made,” says Klaus Müller, chairman of the Federation of German Consumer Organisations, while evaluating the documents. “Perusing the documents has shown that nearly all of our fears regarding the U.S.’ TTIP intentions for the food market have been proven to be justified.”
The U.S., for example, demands that statutory prohibitions on products to protect human health should only be allowed to be passed if it has been scientifically proven that these products really are harmful. The EU bans products such as hormone-treated meat or genetically modified food as a precautionary measure if only the slightest hint of risk emerges, whereas the U.S. only bans them if people have already been harmed as a result of consuming said products.…
Another serious point of contention is legislative cooperation. Both the U.S. and Europe gave the impression that they were mostly in agreement regarding legislative regulation.
But the negotiation papers suggest something very different. While the EU stresses its right to legislative self-determination in the documents, the U.S. wants to severely curtail the scope of European legislators in regards to economic decisions where it has demonstrated in several suggestions it has made. One example is the demand formulated by the U.S. that “each Party shall maintain procedures that promote the consideration of the following factors when conducting a regulatory impact assessment (RIA) for a regulation.” Namely, this means that the EU is supposed to introduce a process that will evaluate “the need for a proposed regulation” in conjunction with an analysis of “the anticipated costs and benefits (quantitative, qualitative, or both) of such alternatives.”
“It will severely complicate legislation in environmental and consumer matters should the Americans assert themselves in this matter,” says Markus Krajewski, Professor of Public Law in Erlangen, in regard to the currently published suggestions made by the U.S..
U.S. legislation is fundamentally different than that of the EU. In the EU, for example, the use of 1,308 various chemicals in cosmetics is prohibited in light of suspicions that they may be carcinogenic. The responsible U.S. authority on the other hand, according to consumer protection organizations, prohibits no more than exactly 11 substances.The US has a strange interpretation of "freedom" and "self-determination," revealing paradoxes of liberalism resulting from failure to integrate and balance social, political, and economic liberalism by prioritizing economic liberalism.
Economic liberalism (free market fundamentalism) is incompatible with political liberalism (democracy as government of, by and for the people).
The American version of "liberalism" is elite rule. First US Chief Justice John Jay's political preference, "Those who own the country ought to governed the country," has morphed into, "Those who own the world ought to govern the world."
TTIP Documents Revealed
Alexander Hagelüken and Alexander Mühlauer
ht Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism
See also
Naked Capitalism
Greenpeace Leak Exposes Big EU-US Rifts, US Thuggishness, in TTIP “Trade” Negotiations
Yves Smith
For all those who said that we were scaremongering and that the EU would never allow this to happen, we were right and you were wrong.Independent (UK)
Independent
After the leaks today showing just what it really stands for, this could be the end for TTIP
John Hilary
ht Lord Keyes at Social Democracy For The 21St Century: A Post Keynesian Perspective
Expect firestorm to ensue, followed by official denials.
Dimitri Konstantakopoulos — Nuland in Nicosia – towards “regime change” in Cyprus?
Many readers may think that what is happening in Cyprus, a small member-state of EU in Eastern Mediterranean, is of rather marginal importance. This is what mainstream media are implying by their (non) reporting on the real parameters of the Cyprus question. But, in reality the opposite is true. Cyprus, in spite of its magnitude, is too important to speak much of it!
What what will happen in Cyprus during the coming months may have huge consequences for the direction both the European and the Middle Eastern crises will take in the near future. It may determine EU-Turkey relations and it will also deeply affect Greek politics and Russian interests in the Mediterranean.
Why all this? First because the “solution”, now prepared, of the Cyprus conflict is tantamount to no more, no less than the … abolition of the state in Cyprus, something which will set an example for all nation-states in Europe. To make a long story short, the Annan plan – along the same lines will be the next proposal for Cyprus - was giving ultimate power in the island to three foreign judges and to dozens of other “international officials”, appointed by the General Secretary of the UN personally (without even the consent of members of the Security Council). Those judges and other “international officials” would be able even to appoint their successors!Katehon
Dimitris Konstantakopoulos: Nuland in Nicosia – towards “regime change” in Cyprus?
Dimitri Konstantakopoulos | Journalist and writer, former Secretary of the Independent Citizens Movement, former member SYRIZA’s Central Committee, current editorial board member of the international magazine Utopia Review, ex-chief of the Greek Press Agency office in Moscow, formerly served as Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou’s adviser in East-West relations and arms control.
Simon Wren-Lewis — Neoliberalism
I know what I mean when I (occasionally) use the term neoliberal. Neoliberalism is a political movement or ideology that hates ‘big’ government, dislikes any form of market interference by the state, favours business interests and opposes organised labour. The obvious response to this is why ‘neo’. In the European tradition we could perhaps define that collection as being the beliefs of a (market) liberal (although that would be misleading for reasons I give below). The main problem here is that in US discourse in particular the word ‘liberal’ has a very different meaning.…Useful historical examination of the tern "neoliberalism."
Mainly Macro
Neoliberalism
Simon Wren-Lewis | Professor of Economics, Oxford University
J. W. Mason — Only the Debt Is National
Imagine this set of transactions.
1. A bank in rich country A make loan of X to government of poor country B. Let’s say for concreteness that A is the united States, B is Nigeria, and X is $1 billion. So now we have a liability of $1 billion of the Nigerian government to the US bank, and deposit of $1 billion at the US bank owned by the government of Nigeria.
(Nigeria might just as well be Egypt or Mexico or Argentina or Greece or Turkey or Indonesia. And the United States might just as well be Germany or the UK. )
2. The deposit at the bank is transferred from ownership of the government to ownership of some private individual. It’s easy to imagine ways this can be done.
3. The residents of Nigeria, via their government, still have a liability of $1 billion to the bank, obliging them to make annual payments equal to the interest rate times the principal. In this case, let’s say the interest rate is 5%, so debt service is $50 million.
4. The payments can be met by running an annual export surplus of $50 million. As long as this $50 million annual payment is maintained, interest payments can be made and the principal rolled over; the debt will remain forever.
5. The private individual from step 2 moves from Nigeria to the United States, eventually becoming a citizen there.
The result of this: a family in the United States has a wealth of $1 billion. Meanwhile, the people of Nigeria make payments of $50 million each year to the United States forever, in the form of uncompensated exports. In their valuable book Africa’s Odious Debts and related work, Boyce and Ndikumana demonstrate that this story describes much of sub-Saharan Africa’s foreign debt. It applies elsewhere in the world as well.
I wonder how various people evaluate this scenario. Do we agree there is something wrong here? And if so, what, and what is the solution?J. W. Mason's Blog
Only the Debt Is National
JW Mason | Assistant Professor of Economics, John Jay College, City University of New York
Barkley Rosser — The Legacy of Joan Robinson
Econospeak
The Legacy of Joan Robinson
J. Barkley Rosser | Professor of Economics and Business Administration James Madison University
Peter L. Laurence — Why Jane Jacobs Matters Now
History News Network
Why Jane Jacobs Matters Now
Peter L. Laurence is the author of Becoming Jane Jacobs, director of graduate studies, and associate professor of architectural history, theory, and design at Clemson University School of Architecture
Buffet to Trump: America Already Great
Looks like Buffet is throwing in with the Hillary camp, makes sense he's a big operator within the FIRE sector.
Buffet's glass half full: The complement of 5% unemployment means 95% employment what's not to like? What is so bad about just 5% unemployment?
Buffett to Trump: America is already greater than ever #USA #elections #Trump #America #Buffet https://t.co/kMYRssesNH via @YahooFinance
— Manuel Egaña (@manuelegana) May 2, 2016
Trump eyeing Sander's support
Art of the deal.
Donald Trump on @NewDay: "I think Bernie Sanders' people are going to join my campaign" https://t.co/HGcriGfkWH https://t.co/34b2urrKoa
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 2, 2016
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Gilbert Doctorow — Russia Rises From the Mat
The U.S. government doesn’t want to admit that its heady “unipolar” days are over with Russia no longer the doormat of the 1990s, but Washington’s arrogance risks war, even nuclear annihilation, explains Gilbert Doctorow.Donald Trump gets a shoutout as a foreign policy realist.
Consortium News
Russia Rises From the Mat
Gilbert Doctorow, European Coordinator of The American Committee for East West Accord Ltd
Rostislav Ishchenko — Nine theses about the war we [Russia] are engaged in
Backgrounder on color revolution in hybrid warfare.
The Vineyard of the Saker
Brian Romanchuk — The Fed And Übergradualism
The Fed has done a good job of painting itself into a corner. Financial market participants have worked themselves up into a hypersensitive mood with regards to central bank actions, even though there is little evidence that the economy itself is sensitive to small changes in monetary policy. About the only palatable way out is for the Fed to give in and follow a policy of übergradualism -- hiking rates by 25 basis points at every second meeting.Bond Economics
The Fed And Übergradualism
Brian Romanchuk
Andrea Terzi — A T-shirt model of savings, debt, and private spending
As long as the Euro area enforces balanced budget constraints at ALL levels of government, the Euro area will not be sustainable.
I have summarized here the argument behind the statement above.
What follows is a simple model that shows the logic of the argument.Money And The Real Economy
A T-shirt model of savings, debt, and private spending
Andrea Terzi | Professor of Economics, Franklin College, Switzerland
Brad DeLong — I really do not like the "too many workers" framing
I really do not like the "too many workers" framing: I vastly prefer either:
- Too little public investment
- Too little government purchases
- Too little government debt
- Too little risk-bearing capacity
- Too little in the way of safe assets for savers to hold
Grasping Reality
Must-Read:I really do not like the "too many workers" framing
Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley
See also
Brad expands on this at WCEG
WCEG — The Equitablog
Whose Are the Ruling Macroeconomic Ideas?Brad DeLong
See also
It is now six years since Olivier Blanchard called for "outlining the contours of a new macroeconomic policy framework". Yet what is that framework? Where is it? Who outlines it? And what processes will give it political traction?It is now six years since Olivier Blanchard called for "outlining the contours of a new macroeconomic policy framework"
Brad expands on this at WCEG
WCEG — The Equitablog
Whose Are the Ruling Macroeconomic Ideas?Brad DeLong
Daniel Little — Predicting, forecasting, and superforecasting
Understanding Society
Predicting, forecasting, and superforecasting
Daniel Little | Chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of Philosophy at UM-Dearborn and Professor of Sociology at UM-Ann Arbor
Venezuela Now Out of Beer
Maybe this will be the last straw...
“This could mean the end,” says Sergio Silva, shopkeeper at a neighbourhood store in Petare, one of Caracas’s biggest slums. “If Venezuelans do not have beer . . . This country could blow.”
Venezuela is suffering its steepest recorded contraction in imports as the depressed price of oil, which accounts for 95 per cent of export earnings, has pushed foreign reserves to a 13-year low and raised fears the sovereign will default on $14bn of bond payments due this year.
“We haven’t been able to replenish inventory, and we only have malted barley until April 29,” Polar said in a statement published on its website. “Because of that, we are obliged to suspend the production of beer until we get access to the foreign currency necessary to procure material.”
The nation just cannot function without being able to extract 10s of $B of rents from the sale of their oil.
A new problem for Venezuela: “If Venezuelans do not have beer . . .This country could blow.” https://t.co/ds2T7prU9T pic.twitter.com/2GKccCZmd2— Financial Times (@FT) April 29, 2016
William K. Black — Obama’s Great Lie: What’s Good for Wall Street Felons is Good for America
To no one’s surprise, President Obama lobs periodic attacks on Bernie Sanders’ plans to restore the rule of law to Wall Street elites. Obama launched his latest attack, fittingly, through Wall Street’s sycophant-in-chief, Andrew Ross Sorkin. Sorkin’s column expresses his shock at how Obama repeatedly extended their interview for hours beyond its scheduled length. No one else is shocked that Obama, trying to make the case that bailing out the Wall Street felons was an act of supreme genius, would find Sorkin’s relentless sycophancy towards those felons and their political cronies so endearing. This is the first segment of my response. It focuses on the Obama administration’s great lie – the only policy “tools that work” in response to a financial crisis are getting “in bed with the banks” and making even wealthier through federal bailouts the bankers who grew wealthy by leading the fraud epidemics that caused the crisis.
The context of Sorkin’s column was Obama making the pitch for his “economic legacy.” Obama is distressed that we do not understand how great he was because he was too busy saving us to have the time to “explain” to us how great he was.New Economic Perspectives
Obama’s Great Lie: What’s Good for Wall Street Felons is Good for America
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC
I posted this comment over at NEP:
Great smackdown, Bill.
I hope you will point out that in "saving the banks,"actually the US financial system, the president was acting as global "emperor" in that the US controls the world through finance more than military. Military power is just the backup. It's through the lock on global finance that the Anglo-American empire retains global hegemony. The American empire is the historical extension of the British empire as a sea power. The East India Company has morphed into transnational corporatism, and global finance is run out of Wall Street and London. Thus, the "special relationship."
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