The dollar is rapidly reaching parity with the Euro a troubling sign for everyone. This is from Investment Watch:
Total global collapse accelerating.
Not only does a strong dollar crush exports, it threatens to blow up trillions in carry trades. The result of QE 1 2 and 3 has been that trillions and trillions of dollars have flowed into other countries, namely the EM markets. With the interest rates so low, investors were borrowing at low US rates and investing in the emerging markets paying a higher yield. This in effect is a carry trade. Easy money, right?
But what happens when the dollar strengthens and the foreign country’s weakens? The carry trade starts to blow up as you are paid in a worthless currency.
This is now happening….and you would think that the FED ending QE would HELP the situation but it has made it WORSE!
Why?
Because the result has been a stronger dollar (thanks in part also because of a weakining EURO)…it’s a positive feedback loop because now as the carry trade sours, more and more traders will pull out of the trade and bring back their dollars, thus strenthening the dollar more and making the carry trade worse!
The Bank of Japan’s aggressive purchasing of stock funds has helped Japanese shares climb to multiyear highs in recent months. But some within the central bank are growing uncomfortable about the fast-paced rally and the bank’s own role in fueling it.
Since Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda took office in March 2013 and introduced monetary easing of what he called a “different dimension,” the central bank has sharply increased its buying of baskets of stocks known as exchange-traded funds. By directly underpinning the market, officials have tried to encourage private investors to follow suit and put more money in stocks in the hope of stimulating the economy and increasing inflation.
During the past two years, the central bank entered the stock market roughly once every three days, picking up a total of ¥2.8 trillion ($23 billion) of ETFs that track Japan’s major stock indexes, according to Bank of Japan records. That distinguishes it from the U.S. Federal Reserve and European Central Bank, both of which have bought bonds to pump up the economy but haven’t directly bought stocks.
Do you really think companies here and abroad are not doing the exact same thing? Of course not. It's why stocks are going up today, even though all the economic news was pretty shaky. Sales have dropped for the third straight month, even as the MSM said we had a "better than expected Christmas," which begs the questions WHO? Every company had down sales, including Amazon. Auto sales dropped almost three percent last month, following a trend of the last few months as subprime auto loans have caused skyrocketing repos. Heard that on Fox News lately? Probably not. Greece is unlikely to come up with a deal with the Euro which could cause that whole experiment to go belly up. It's one of the reasons the stock market dropped over 300 points the other day. Nothing has changed since then, so why is the market going up. The Plunge Protection Team is why, same as Japan. But that will only work for so long before the wall hits.
And then we have the Republican party who have been so laughably inept lately they might as well be on a sitcom called "Those Wacky Republicans." They have done less than nothing since getting into office and true to form, Congress approval has dropped to a record low 5%. Yet many yahoos out there voted for the Republicans, regardless of the fact that by doing so they all but guaranteed nothing to get accomplished for the next two years. Way to go, dudes. Why anyone voted for Scott Walker, Sam Brownback or Rick Scott defies logic as all three have driven their states into the ground and provably so. But God forbid some redneck moron votes for some "commie" Democrat, even though chances are better than even that any Democrat would be better than most of the Republicans in there, corporatist or not.
I want to focus on one newbie in particular, Tom Cotton, the freshman Senator from Arkansas who defeated Mark Pryor, and almost understandably so. I was in Arkansas this past summer and saw continuous ads run by both sides. Cotton's ads were slick and well produced. Pryor's ads, by everyone, including Super Pacs, the DNC and Pryor himself were woefully inept that said disaster all over them. One set of ads harped about how Cotton had said he would vote for a children's hospital and then, gasp, didn't. Nobody was going to give a rat's ass about that. Pryor continued to play up his religious angles, love of the Keystone Pipeline and a thousand other things that all but guaranteed that Democrats were unlikely to show up to the polls and Republicans were never going to vote for him in the first place. It was a sad spectacle that was repeated around the country.
So now we have this moron in office, who was already demonstrated beyond all hope, that he has no reason to be any position of power. This is the brainpower that wrote that ill-advised latter to Iran which demonstrated a complete lack of knowledge of how our government works, even though he is a part of it now. The letter erroneously stated that Congress has the power to stall this action through treaty ratification. The problem with that is what is being debated is not a treaty or an agreement but a non-binding international arrangement to which Congress has zero leverage on. And to set the record straight, this has been lots of times in the past, including hundreds of times by St. Reagan, including one with, wait for it, Iran.
This is from Slate.com
In other words, contrary to the letter writers, Congress has no legal or constitutional role in the drafting, approval, or modification of this deal. It does, potentially, have one practical role: If the deal calls for the lifting of all sanctions against Iran, in exchange for a cutback in Iran’s nuclear program, Congress could vote down a bill to end the sanctions that it had once voted to impose. This is a small share of the sanctions, compared with those that the president and the European Union could release on their own, but if the deal calls for an end to all sanctions, Congress could throw a wrench into the works. However, this only states the obvious. Congress can insert itself into all executive prerogatives through control of the purse strings. This is very different from the powers that the letter writers pretend to have over the future of this accord.
Tom Cotton in the past has said Obamacare would lead to theft of information by "Russian Mobster," voted to ban abortions past 20 weeks, voted against Student Loan modifications, and is now part of the "Treasonous 47," a number Republicans should really be avoiding as that was the number that killed Mitt Romney's career as well.
He is described as an uber-hawk, wanting war with just about everyone. And does no one see the non-coincidental visit by Netanyahu just days earlier a little unsettling? I support Israel more than most but even I question all of this hoopla surrounding what was essentially a campaign stop. It may not have worked as some polls have the Israeli PM trailing to his opponent.
We have fools running our corporations, our MSM and our government. But as most people are too nose deep into their I-phone, no one sees what is really going on anymore. The government is lying to you and you keep voting these same, or even new, idiots into office. Stop voting for schmucks and we really need to demand a None of the Above for the next election because otherwise, it is going to be a revolving door of dumbness.
Not only does a strong dollar crush exports, it threatens to blow up trillions in carry trades. The result of QE 1 2 and 3 has been that trillions and trillions of dollars have flowed into other countries, namely the EM markets. With the interest rates so low, investors were borrowing at low US rates and investing in the emerging markets paying a higher yield. This in effect is a carry trade. Easy money, right?
But what happens when the dollar strengthens and the foreign country’s weakens? The carry trade starts to blow up as you are paid in a worthless currency.
This is now happening….and you would think that the FED ending QE would HELP the situation but it has made it WORSE!
Why?
Because the result has been a stronger dollar (thanks in part also because of a weakining EURO)…it’s a positive feedback loop because now as the carry trade sours, more and more traders will pull out of the trade and bring back their dollars, thus strenthening the dollar more and making the carry trade worse!
So keep your eye on the dollar because as JW and others have said, the “king dollar” soaring is a sign it’s about to blow.
This, combined with the inevitable raising of interests rates, could rapidly destroy the economy and leave the Big Five Banks insolvent, regardless of what we have been told. We are being liked to on a regular basis and is this why recent polls suggest record lows for Congress and government in general.
Previous posts have gone into great lengths saying the Dow is rigged by corporations using stock buybacks to cover up what should have been losses, or the very definition of a Ponzi Scheme, where stocks are artificially inflated upward until it becomes too expensive to do so and then the whole thing collapses. Turns out, all those people who scoff at all conspiracy theories (some of which like the Boston Bomber was set up are just stupid) were wrong about that as this appeared in the WSJ this week:
Since Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda took office in March 2013 and introduced monetary easing of what he called a “different dimension,” the central bank has sharply increased its buying of baskets of stocks known as exchange-traded funds. By directly underpinning the market, officials have tried to encourage private investors to follow suit and put more money in stocks in the hope of stimulating the economy and increasing inflation.
During the past two years, the central bank entered the stock market roughly once every three days, picking up a total of ¥2.8 trillion ($23 billion) of ETFs that track Japan’s major stock indexes, according to Bank of Japan records. That distinguishes it from the U.S. Federal Reserve and European Central Bank, both of which have bought bonds to pump up the economy but haven’t directly bought stocks.
Do you really think companies here and abroad are not doing the exact same thing? Of course not. It's why stocks are going up today, even though all the economic news was pretty shaky. Sales have dropped for the third straight month, even as the MSM said we had a "better than expected Christmas," which begs the questions WHO? Every company had down sales, including Amazon. Auto sales dropped almost three percent last month, following a trend of the last few months as subprime auto loans have caused skyrocketing repos. Heard that on Fox News lately? Probably not. Greece is unlikely to come up with a deal with the Euro which could cause that whole experiment to go belly up. It's one of the reasons the stock market dropped over 300 points the other day. Nothing has changed since then, so why is the market going up. The Plunge Protection Team is why, same as Japan. But that will only work for so long before the wall hits.
I want to focus on one newbie in particular, Tom Cotton, the freshman Senator from Arkansas who defeated Mark Pryor, and almost understandably so. I was in Arkansas this past summer and saw continuous ads run by both sides. Cotton's ads were slick and well produced. Pryor's ads, by everyone, including Super Pacs, the DNC and Pryor himself were woefully inept that said disaster all over them. One set of ads harped about how Cotton had said he would vote for a children's hospital and then, gasp, didn't. Nobody was going to give a rat's ass about that. Pryor continued to play up his religious angles, love of the Keystone Pipeline and a thousand other things that all but guaranteed that Democrats were unlikely to show up to the polls and Republicans were never going to vote for him in the first place. It was a sad spectacle that was repeated around the country.
So now we have this moron in office, who was already demonstrated beyond all hope, that he has no reason to be any position of power. This is the brainpower that wrote that ill-advised latter to Iran which demonstrated a complete lack of knowledge of how our government works, even though he is a part of it now. The letter erroneously stated that Congress has the power to stall this action through treaty ratification. The problem with that is what is being debated is not a treaty or an agreement but a non-binding international arrangement to which Congress has zero leverage on. And to set the record straight, this has been lots of times in the past, including hundreds of times by St. Reagan, including one with, wait for it, Iran.
In other words, contrary to the letter writers, Congress has no legal or constitutional role in the drafting, approval, or modification of this deal. It does, potentially, have one practical role: If the deal calls for the lifting of all sanctions against Iran, in exchange for a cutback in Iran’s nuclear program, Congress could vote down a bill to end the sanctions that it had once voted to impose. This is a small share of the sanctions, compared with those that the president and the European Union could release on their own, but if the deal calls for an end to all sanctions, Congress could throw a wrench into the works. However, this only states the obvious. Congress can insert itself into all executive prerogatives through control of the purse strings. This is very different from the powers that the letter writers pretend to have over the future of this accord.
Tom Cotton in the past has said Obamacare would lead to theft of information by "Russian Mobster," voted to ban abortions past 20 weeks, voted against Student Loan modifications, and is now part of the "Treasonous 47," a number Republicans should really be avoiding as that was the number that killed Mitt Romney's career as well.
He is described as an uber-hawk, wanting war with just about everyone. And does no one see the non-coincidental visit by Netanyahu just days earlier a little unsettling? I support Israel more than most but even I question all of this hoopla surrounding what was essentially a campaign stop. It may not have worked as some polls have the Israeli PM trailing to his opponent.
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