Financial topics

[gerald]

Do you think governments are beginning to understand how bad they have made a mess of things?

The Weirdest Thing You'll See Today --- http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-0 ... -see-today

watch the video

I don't think a comment is needed --- Is there a problem?

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After the second world war the US government decided that women should not be in factories , but at "home" making babies.

As the worm turns..

[gerald]

We are going through the looking glass -- to the other side -- where all is backwards

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-0 ... 3-jpmorgan

ECB Will Cut Rates To Minus 3%: JP Morgan

Via Bloomberg, citing Handelsblatt:

"ECB will reduce interest for cash deposits to minus 3%"

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This could cause a surge in deposits to "The National Bank of Mattress"

Every Government In The EMU Will Soon Be Paid To Borrow
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-0 ... aid-borrow

from the comment section --

nmewn

“We could see the two-year Spanish, Portuguese and Italian bonds yields falling below zero in coming months,” said Azad Zangana, a European economist at Schroders , which has about £300 billion ($455 billion) of assets under management.

“It is only a matter of time,” said Nick Gartside, chief investment officer for fixed income at J.P. Morgan Asset management, with $1.7 trillion under management. “We’re still big buyers of debt in those countries.”

Yes ladies and gentlemen, these are the best & brightest minds of money-debt management.
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Is this from the Onion?

[Higgenbotham]

None of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use

Trucost’s third big finding is the coup de grace. Of the top 20 region-sectors ranked by environmental impacts, none would be profitable if environmental costs were fully integrated. Ponder that for a moment: None of the world’s top industrial sectors would be profitable if they were paying their full freight. Zero.

That amounts to an global industrial system built on sleight of hand. As Paul Hawken likes to put it, we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP.

http://grist.org/business-technology/no ... -they-use/


I've taken it a step further. I've said even if they externalize the costs of the environmental damage they do, without the Fed externalizing their direct economic costs, they would not be profitable anyway.

[Higgenbotham]

As far as the stock market goes, we know the Dow was down 279 Friday after the release of the robust 295,000 jobs report. I doubt the divergent highs of February 25/March 2 will mark the end of the bull market. Question is what to do now.

My feeling is that I will cover stock index shorts and go long silver next week. I'm with you guys on silver now so long as they can keep this thing moving. Or maybe I'll go long oil since the drop in oil prices didn't cause any immediate deflation in stocks.

Supposedly the stock market was fearing an earlier than expected interest rate increase on the stronger than expected employment numbers. Meanwhile, they are talking about negative interest rates in Europe being inevitable. Those various fears will probably cancel each other out and get no immediate traction. That doesn't seem like a recipe for a stock market top to me unless we can see a pandemic brewing or something like that. Whatever drops the market from the top initially will be hard to put your finger on but this doesn't look like it to me.

[aedens]

I will carry some puts into mid 2015 to foster energy cluster investments. Not that it matters.

Not that all is seen going forward. Obadiah makes clear Edomites are inside the gates of Jerusalem.
Not going to be a good day as Amos tells for them.

Hegelian Dialectic requires setting up and controlling both sides of conflict for the purpose of Synthesis.
The Synthesis is always the revealing.

Phoenix means House of Enoch

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/egipt ... tm#Chapter 1 - A Map of Hidden Places

[Higgenbotham]

I decided to stay short. A couple weeks ago I told my friend in New York that I was going short with a stop around 2140 based on longer term patterns. Given that, there's no reason to try to finesse or interpret the news flow. That hasn't worked well the past 3 years. With the Fed so heavily involved there is a lot of emotion and misinterpretation by the herd. My ideal SPX top had been 20-40 over the previous top and that's what we got. Comparable to the 2007 and 2011 charts in other words. July and October 2007 (1555.90 and 1576.09). February and May 2011 (1344.07 and 1370.58).

[aedens]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 22193.html

Germans should know and can explain a few topical points to synthesis. As in the day of Noah, as we are today.

[John]

I dodged a bullet. This is from ZeroHedge on Friday:

> Greece Proposes To Become A Tax-Collecting Police State: Will
> "Wire" Tourists And Unleash Them As "Tax Inspectors" Submitted by
> Tyler Durden on 03/06/2015 14:14 -0500

> ...

> And here comes the Greek tax collecting police state, in which
> "large numbers of non-professional inspectors are hired to pose on
> behalf of the tax authorities, while 'wired' for sound and
> video... We envisage that the recruits will come from all walks of
> life (e.g. students, housekeepers, even tourist in popular areas
> ripse with tax evasion) who will be paid hourly and who will be
> hard to detect by offending tax dodgers."

> http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-0 ... bailout-do

I almost included the above in my Saturday World View. Fortunately
for me, I was too sleepy on Friday night, so I went to bed instead.
Lucky.

> VAROUFAKED?

> I’ve been saying for three years now that one of the weaknesses of
> Zero Hedge is that, being a US site, its knowledge of Europe on
> the ground is superficial. Over the weekend, in fact, ZH may well
> have been duped (at one level or another) by ‘attachments’
> purporting to come from the office of Yanis Varoufakis. The fact
> that the letter is ‘officially’ listed on EU sites won’t cut any
> ice with Brussels-watchers: the EC, Draghi and Schäuble have done
> (and are doing) far worse things than doctoring a letter.

> ...

> The first paragraph sounds real enough, although Varoufakis is
> talking about tax evasion here, not avoidance. The rest of it is a
> fantasy, and so toxic that nobody in their right mind would write
> it down for the ECB et al to leak instantly. The funniest passage
> for me is ‘students, housekeepers and even tourists in areas ripe
> for tax evasion….wired for sound and video….the data that they
> will produce will have legal weight and be actable upon….to issue
> penalties and sanctions’.

> Somehow, an army of spies is to be recruited from a hotch-potch of
> people just gagging to have their own cash-paid lifestyle put in
> jeopardy.

> https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2015/03/08 ... endations/

Somehow I have the feeling that this isn't over.

[gerald]

John -- regarding your above post ---
The Nazi and the and the Soviets, etc. used snitches to control others --- nothing new --- especially when money and power are at stake.

same as it it ever was

[aedens]

“In God we trust; all others must bring data.” W. Edwards Deming

His 14 Points for Management, from Out of the Crisis:
1.Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2.Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
3.Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
4.End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5.Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease cost.
6.Institute training on the job.
7.Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8.Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
9.Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
10.Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
11.a.) Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership. b.) Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute workmanship.
12.a.) Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality. b.) Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective.
13.Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14.Put everyone in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everyone’s work. “Massive training is required to instill the courage to break with tradition. Every activity and every job is a part of the process.”

Jidoka is a quality concept that means "stop everything" whenever an error occurs. It is controlling quality at the source. Instead of using inspectors to find problems someone else created, the worker is his own inspector, responsible for his/her own quality. When an error or defect is discovered, the worker has the authority and the responsibility to halt the production process.
Sogo shosha groups are sufficiently diversified to withstand periodic downturns.

We are losing core focus.