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Friday, May 24, 2013

Austrian Megabank CEO bites the dust: Raiffeisen Bank International CEO Herbert Stepic quit on Friday after it emerged that the bank is investigating two trusts of which he's the "beneficial owner" with mailbox companies in Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands that he used for property deals in Singapore in 2006 and 2008. He sez that the two weren’t offshore vehicles and that this money had been properly taxed in Austria. SCMP checked out Takego, the Hong Kong mailbox company and found that it “was owned last year by a Hong Kong firm, Lintel Securities, wholly owned by David Chong Kok Kong, the chairman of Portcullis Trustnet, a financial services firm based in Singapore. Portcullis was a major source of information on secretive offshore companies that was provided to the United States-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in one of the biggest financial leaks in history.” Yup, things bubble up. He was already under investigation from the Austrian financial regulator involving a real estate deal in Serbia, but somehow that file was closed last week.

Fiat Inc.? CEO Sergio Marchionne denies that "the item" is on his "agenda for now," but rumors have been swirling that he is going to move Fiat SpA from Italy to the US, or at least its headquarters. Fiat and Chrysler would need “cultural integration based on mutual respect,” he said while in Detroit where he hangs a lot. A decision would “be governed by a variety of justifications including access to capital markets and the ability to finance the house,” he said. But... “There’s been no decision — it’s not even on my digestible list of things to do for the week.” The Obama administration, which had bailed Chrysler out of bankruptcy, handed 20% of the company to Fiat in 2009. More followed. Now Fiat’s total stake has grown to 58.5%, and he wants it to get the rest. Then there'd be a huge IPO that would make Wall Street rich. Not sure why the White House gave Chrysler away for a pittance. Meanwhile, Fiat is fighting the UAW health care trust fund in court over the value of its stake. Back home, Marchionne is under heavy pressure from the Italian government to keep Fiat in Italy.

Alarm bell: US margin debt at all-time record high in April: investors borrowed $384.4 billion in their brokerage accounts against their stocks, up 1.3% from March, and up 29% from last year. The previous record was set in June 2007 at $381.4 billion, even as the financial crisis was seeping through cracks in the veneer. High margin debt, a sign of euphoria and blindness to risk, is a leading indicator of a market selloff ... which will trigger margin calls and forced selling that drives down markets even further. Been through that many times. In 2007, the swoon started in November; and of course in 1999.... Nothing new here. History in this respect is doomed to repeat itself.

Mercury in Chinese medicine stirred up debate in China after Hong Kong's Health Department forced Beijing Tong Ren Tang Group Co., one of the largest producers and retailers of Chinese medicine, to recall a batch of its stuff due to excess levels of mercury. Now people are debating the general safety of Chinese medicine as herbs might contain heavy metals, pesticides, and other goodies found in Chinese soil, water, and air. They worry that governments with their outdated equipment cannot monitor the medicines. And there are structural problems: “because these companies are either state-owned enterprises or large taxpayers, local governments protect them," said Zeng Danhua, a senior analyst at the China Capital Investment Group, and the fines for companies using contaminated herbs were too low to be a deterrent.

Inflation to hit Japanese consumers: largest bread maker in the country, Yamazaki Baking, announced that it would raise prices by 3% to 6% for bread and by 2% to 6% for pastries. Culprit? Not rising demand or optimism or rising wages, but the devalued yen that pushed up the cost of imported flower. The costs of other ingredients have also risen recently. How increasing the cost of food will crank up the economy remains one of the mysteries of Abenomics.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Eurozone manufacturing and services mired in contraction, sez the Purchasing Managers Index, at 47.7 (below 50 = contraction). Germany, miracle economy that can do no wrong, shrank again, though upticks are visible. France continues to slide downhill rapidly. "The Eurozone's second recession in five years looks set to drag on into a seventh successive quarter," the report said. Accelerating decline of new orders in the service sector; job shedding picking up, companies trying to cut capacity, order backlogs shrinking further, now for almost two years.... Very ugly.

Hitting the China jobs wall: a record 7 million students will graduate from university this year, 190,000 more than last year, according to the Ministry of Education. Yet job openings are down 15%, based on a February survey of 500 companies. It's going to be tough for these educated young people finding an appropriate slot.

Japanese government bonds go crazy again, lose their footing, with yields on the 10-year JGB spiking, briefly kissing 1.0% Thursday morning, the highest in a year, over triple the 0.315% on April 5. The goal of Abenomics and the Bank of Japan's money-printing and bond-buying frenzy is to push down yields, while creating a wave of inflation, thus devaluing the debt, and causing losses for everyone who owns it. In response, investors have been dumping JGBs. The BOJ tried to put a stop to the rout by handing out ¥2 trillion ($19 billion) in the morning. Thankfully, for the BOJ, the Nikkei began to crash, and suddenly these despicable JGBs seemed like a pretty good deal; demand picked up, yields dropped to 0.84%. The BOJ has bought equities before to prop up the Nikkei, but Thursday it was busy propping up JGBs and had to let the Nikkei go. When push comes to shove, it will always support bonds, its number one priority, and let stocks swoon.

China manufacturing contracts in May, after months of fitful near-stagnation, sez the HSBC Purchasing Managers' Index which dropped to 49.6 from 50.4 in April (under 50 = contraction), a seven-month low. A harbinger: New Orders in April had dropped to a five-month low. Ominously, in May, New Orders as well as New Export Orders fell again, as did Employment, Backlog of Work, Quantity of Purchases, among others. “The cooling manufacturing activities in May reflected slower domestic demand and ongoing external headwinds,” said Hongbin Qu, Chief Economist of Asian Economic Research at HSBC. “A sequential slowdown is likely in the middle of 2Q, casting downside risk to China’s fragile growth recovery.” Not very pretty. Though we’ve seen the manufacturing slowdown coming, the reaction on the Asian stock markets is brutal....

Nikkei crashed over 1,460 points, a 9.2% dive peak-to-bottom from its morning high of 15,943, after having been up 300 points early on, to 14,484. For the day, it’s down 1,143 points, or 7.3%. That’s what happens when the air hisses out of a central-bank money-printing induced bubble. The hot money wants to get out.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

H-P revenues plunged 10.1%, worse than expected, with PC revenues down 20%. Only uptick: lowly printing supplies, such as cartridges, paper, ink, up a measly 2%. Earning didn't "completely crater" like Dell's earnings, CEO Meg Whitman consoled her investors. But H-P had a huge write-off not long ago, and who knows what they plowed into it to make subsequent quarters look better. They always do that. Write-off accounting puts some lipstick on expenses, though it can’t do much about revenues. Props up operating income. “You can feel the turnaround taking hold at H-P,” Whitman said. Indeed, feel. Because there's no visible turnaround in the numbers. Nevertheless, stock jumped 13% after hours.

Justice Department admits: drones killed 4 Americans, in a letter sent to Congressional leaders. One of them was Anwar al-Awlaki, in September 2011 in Yemen. While widely reported, the government had never fessed up to it. The other three were Samir Khan (in the same strike); Awlaki’s son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, also in Yemen; and Jude Mohammed, in Pakistan. Last year, Attorney General Eric Holder had outlined the government’s legal rationalizations behind knocking off Americans overseas – for example when they pose an “imminent threat of violent attack” and when capturing them is inconvenient. While the whole concept is iffy, the rubbery term "imminent" came under particular fire. But certainly, it won’t be abused; after all, there’s a Nobel Peace Prize winner in the White House.

Delta Air Lines rebels against taxpayer subsidies for Boeing because they benefit state-owned foreign airlines that compete with Delta. The US Export-Import bank is helping Boeing sell wide-body jets by helping foreign airlines buy them. CEO Richard Anderson said Delta would be “perfectly willing” to accept a “total moratorium” on financing of jets, which it also benefits from. "We are trying to do whatever we can to get a level playing field in a world where my government decides that they would rather have my competitors in the marketplace than Delta," he said. In April, Delta sued the Ex-Im Bank to put a stop to these shenanigans. It noted that 46% of the $106.6 billion in the Ex-Im Bank's activities are for aircraft loans or loan guarantees. Emirates and Korean Air were among the biggest beneficiaries, and as Anderson told Reuters, they could get funding without "the balance sheet of the US government." Ah the complex web of government handouts.

BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda accepts jumpy yields on Japanese Government Bonds that nearly tripled from the April 5 low of 0.315% to today’s 0.90%, exact opposite of what money-printing and bond-buying is supposed to accomplish. Japanese investors have been fleeing JGBs; inflation, if it rises to 2% or more as per plan, will eat them up without compensation from yield. Add yen devaluation to make a nasty investment. He lost a bit of his brashness: "I am not expecting long-term interest rates to increase sharply considering the strong downward pressure being exerted on them by our quantitative and qualitative easing," he said at the press conference after the BOJ’s two-day huddle that left monetary policy unchanged, with the spigot wide open, committed to buying ¥50 trillion in JGBs a year, or 70% of all new bonds the government is issuing. "I believe it is quite possible to prevent any spikes in long-term interest rates," he said with even less certainty, then submitted to fate and accepted rising yields: "If expectations for economic recovery and inflation strengthen sharply, that could outweigh the risk-premium reducing effect and result in increases in interest rates," he said.

Japan trade deficit soars 69.7% in April to ¥879.9 billion, from April a year ago, the tenth months in a row of trade deficits, the worst series since 1980, and the worst April ever. For each of the last three Aprils, the deficit was worse than in the prior one; same for March, February, and January. The trend is relentlessly awful. Abenomics is deepening the hole, but it’s digging at a faster rate. The weaker yen nudged up exports 3.8%, but imports jumped 9.4%. Don’t blame oil: imported crude oil volume dropped 2.2%. Exports to China stagnated, but imports jumped 13.3%; the deficit skyrocketed 60.2%. However, exports to the US rose 14.8% while imports stagnated; the trade surplus leaped 32.5%. Japan exports twice as much to the US as it imports. Perhaps someone in the White House will someday get Japan to open up its auto market. The trade balance with Western Europe flipped from a surplus a year ago to a deficit; exports fell 3.5% and imports rose 11.4%. Abenomics and the money-printing binge have heated up consumption of imported luxury goods and other items that can’t be produced in Japan. For the rest, Abenomics appears to be a giant miscalculation. The graph for the years 2011, 2012, and 2013 shows the worsening trend:

Despite the awful trade data that was much worse than economists had hoped for, the Nikkei jumped 246 points or 1.6%, to 15,627 – oblivious to reality for months now, drunken with money the Bank of Japan is printing.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

“Apple does not use tax gimmicks,” Apple wrote without twitching an eyebrow apparently, in response to a Senate investigation that showed that it sheltered at least $74 billion in profits from US taxes between 2009 and 2012 by using a "complex web" of offshore mailbox companies. One such Irish subsidiary with no employees and no physical existence made $30 billion in profits and didn't pay a dime to a single government anywhere, not even Ireland. Legal, and proof that the US corporate tax dodge code is a scam that bestows a tax-free environment and other welfare handouts to certain companies, while raking less fortunate and often smaller companies over the coals.

Impact of cheap natural gas in the US: the construction of 97 chemical and plastics plants that use natural gas as feedstock has been announced, with investments over $71 billion, sez the American Chemistry Council (ACC). Among them, in Texas alone: Dow Chemical’s plan to plow $4 billion into ethylene crackers and Exxon Mobil’s plan for an ethylene cracker and two polyethylene plants. Others lining up: Chevron Phillips Chemical, LyondellBasell, and Mitsui & Co. Via OilPrice.com. These companies vigorously oppose the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG) as they fear it would raise prices in the US to the levels natural gas trades for on the world markets. Their pleas fell on deaf ears, a dilemma and opportunity I wrote about.... The Quiet Triumph Of Oil And Gas In Obama’s Policies

Japanese Government Bonds: "Absolutely no guarantee" that Japanese investors will continue to buy them, warned an advisory panel to Finance Minister Taro Aso. Investors who lose confidence in the JGB can easily invest their funds overseas, the report nervously pointed out. Some have already made that shift. Hence the recent spike in yields, despite the Bank of Japan, which is mopping up around 70% of the flood of new bonds that the deficit spending of Abenomics generates. Investors only have to pick up the remaining 30%, but they appear to be reluctant to do so. Why is anyone outside of a government controlled institution still buying this crap?

Finding excuses: Japan supermarket sales dropped 1.9% in April, on a comparable-store basis, from April 2012, with food sales down 0.4% and clothing down 8.8%. Blamed was the "unseasonably cold weather." When sales edged up in February and March, the credit went to Abenomics, not the weather or some other silly thing. A broader media trend: when economic data points are positive, Abenomics gets the credit; when they’re negative, the weather and other reasons are dragged into the scenery, sometimes by their hair.

Mystery pollution in China: unknown foul-smelling goo emerges from cracks in the street, becomes huge, finally gets cleaned up ... and remains unknown.

Monday, May 20, 2013

“Every 10 years or so, banks make some horrible mistake and it usually starts with easy money,” said Mike Pinto, vice-chairman of M&T Bank, a regional US bank. “We are worried about the competitive atmosphere. It creates the temptation to do silly things.” He was talking about the credit bubble. US banks made $1.55 trillion in business loans through April, up 10% from last year; banks are falling all over each other trying to goose their profits by making risky loans. US corporations have also sold a record amount of bonds at record low yields and with historically low protections for investors. So now banks are loading up their balance sheets with business loans that will come to haunt them. But no problem. It will just be part of the next financial crisis that will give the eager Fed another opportunity to hand trillions to TBTF bankers to bail them out.

UK wages propaganda war against Scotland, which will hold an inconvenient independence referendum in September 2014. A new report by the UK Treasury, the third in the series, claims that the Scottish banking sector – composed of two large banks, Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank of Scotland, plus smaller ones – would put an independent Scotland at risk. Its assets would be 1250% of Scottish GDP, while the Cypriot banking sector, which brought down Cyprus, was 700% of GDP, the report said ominously. For the UK overall, banking assets are 492% of GDP, also very high. But the UK has “credibility” in the markets to manage that risk, something Scotland would lack. A "feeble attempt to undermine confidence in Scotland's ability to be a successful independent country," retorted Scotland's Finance Secretary John Swinney. "The Treasury, true to form, will outline what is in its own best interests, not what is in the best economic interests of the people of Scotland." He called these assertions misleading; "In terms of share of GDP, in fact, financial services are actually smaller for Scotland at 8.3% than the UK at 9.6%. So if the argument is about risk, then the risk is with the UK," he said.

Now Germany has a real reason to exit the euro: Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein wants it to stay! A bad sign. In an interview with the Welt, he said Germany had profited from the euro the most – from his point of view, “Germany” is “Germany Inc.” But real wages for working Germans have declined since the introduction of the euro, and workers have had a hard time, while wages in Greece, Spain, and other countries have shot up. Though German workers now have jobs, unlike people in Spain and Greece, they earn less than they used to in real terms. For that privilege, German taxpayers (not Germany Inc.) must pay a price, he said, namely bailing out banks and speculators who hold the crappy debt of periphery countries. He predicted utter economic mayhem for Germany if it left the euro. No, German taxpayers will have to bail out weaker countries, he said. And he raved about the "political project" behind the euro, the ultimately total integration of Europe (and of course, he defended TBTF banks, which were more secure, he said, than smaller ones). My question: is Goldman now seriously long the euro?

Weekend, May 18 - 19, 2013

Sales skid at S&P 500 companies: 458 companies of the 500 in the index have reported their Q1 results so far: earnings were up a measly 3.4% year-over-year, but sales fell 0.2%. Not exactly the foundation for the gigantic undying stock market rally that has plowed through whatever economic and corporate bad news with nary a twitch. When will this separation of reality from stock prices end? Someday, one way or the other! He who can pinpoint that day will make a lot of money.

Central bank success story: The global market for luxury goods grew 38.6% in three years. From $200 billion in 2009, luxury goods sales jumped 13% in 2010, 11% in 2011, and 10% in 2012, to end up at $275 billion. Despite the Eurozone debt crisis and austerity, despite the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011... no matter what happened in those three years, luxury goods boomed, sez the the just released "Worldwide Luxury Markets Monitor," by Bain & Company for Fondazione Altagamma (PDF). “Absolute luxury items (high-end products with no logo, highest quality materials, and exquisite craftsmanship) lead the way,” the report reassured us, but there were some losers, including “watch consumption” which crashed in China. The report confirmed what we’ve seen everywhere: when central banks hand out trillions to their cronies, it doesn’t do much for the real economy as a whole, nor for employment, but it does one heck of a job at the very top of the pyramid.

"Threat of Default": US hits debt limit on Saturday, but by using a slew of shuffle maneuvers, shell games, tricks, and devices, the US won't actually run out of money until "after Labor Day," Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew told Congress in a letter. In his previous statement, the US would be "okay until Labor Day." Today, he was more frantic. He begged Congress to get its act together and do something "sooner rather than later" to “remove the threat of default.” In its infinite wisdom, Congress had suspended the debt limit till May 18, rather than dealing with it. The debt, though still over the limit, declined in April and early May; tax extractions were fattened by asset bubbles. But since May 10, the debt has once again been rising.

Friday, May 17, 2013

US Consumers haven’t felt this good since July 2007, just before all heck broke loose. An "encouraging sign," Reuters sez. For short sellers? The preliminary results of the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index jumped to 83.7 in May from 76.4 in April. Big part of the reason: households in the upper third of the income bracket felt flush from the ballooning stock market – the wealth effect. The Fed giveth.... They were able to brush off the payroll tax increase, which Wal-Mart shoppers, as we’ve seen, had a harder time brushing off. The Consumer Expectations index rose to 74.8 from 67.8. And the Current Economic Conditions index leaped to 97.5 from 89.9, the highest since October 2007, a month before the stock markets began to swoon. Impeccable timing, the hallmark of consumers.

Car sales in the EU crept up 1.7% in April, from a horrible April last year. The fact that the parade of ever worsening numbers has finally stopped, at least for a moment, was greeted with a huge sigh of relief. The details of the report aren’t that rosy: sales in the UK, now the second largest market after Germany, jumped 14.8%. Without the UK, sales for the rest of the EU actually dropped 0.46%. It wasn't exactly a smooth trend across the member states: Greece finally seems to have hit bottom, and sales increased 20.9%; in Denmark, they jumped 30.7% and in Finland 142.6%; but they crashed 26% in the Netherlands and 51.9% in Cyprus; they rose 3.8% in Germany but dropped 5.3% in France.

Deafening US media hype: Japan Core Machinery Orders jumped 14.2% in March, seasonally adjusted, from February. The eternal money-printing and fiscal-stimulus apologists dragged it out as proof that Abenomics is working massively. Alas, these are highly volatile big-ticket items, though “core” orders exclude container ships, nuclear reactors, etc., which are even more volatile. To iron out the volatility, the Cabinet Office also offers quarterly numbers. Soooo, core orders in the first quarter of 2013 were actually 4.8% lower than in the first quarter of 2012, when Noda was prime minister. Kampai!

The Japanese take care of their college grads: 93.9% of all those who graduated on March 31, the end of the academic year, had jobs by April 1, the beginning of the business year. This was the second year in a row that the percentage increased, so it’s NOT related to Abenomics, please! College recruitment, like so many things in Japan, is a highly structured process with the idea to get pretty much everyone squared away before the end of the academic year. But those who miss this entry into Japan Inc. have the greatest difficulty getting through the door later. The system is unforgiving punitive to those who don’t toe the line.

About that secret inflation in Argentina: famously, no one is allowed to accurately track or discuss inflation, but all the whisper numbers floating around peg it at over 20% annually. Now confirmation has come from official sources: wage negotiations between unions and the government of President Cristina Fernández Kirchner. Unions are her base. In fact, she personally met with the leaders of six unions that represent about 2 million workers, or 40% of all workers covered by wage negotiations, and made a deal, similar to the deals she’d made with Railway and Bus Drivers’ unions. The agreed-upon wage increases this year to keep the purchasing power of her voters intact? The closest estimate to official CPI that Argentina has? 24%!

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Last time French-made cars were sold is the US? 1980? Long time ago. But... French-made models of the Toyota Yaris are coming to the US, Canada, and Mexico, apparently to keep the plant in Onnaing, near Valenciennes, busy. Car sales in Europe have been catastrophic, and plant shutdowns and layoffs are hard to do, especially in France where even thinking about it causes a huge political ruckus. In 2012, 182,841 Yaris were sold in Europe, accounting for 22% of Toyota's total European sales - a highly successful model at the low end of the lineup. North America will get US versions, not EU versions. So no diesels.

Plunging price of gasoline shaves 0.4% from Consumer Price Index in April. Total energy prices dropped 4.3%, with gasoline down 8.1%. We’ll remember those days fondly because that cheap gasoline is now history; prices have been climbing in May! Food prices rose 0.2%. Core CPI, which excludes food and energy, rose 0.1%. For the 12-month period, CPI is up 1.1% and core CPI 1.7%. The Fed might complain that this is below target; but it’s still inflation, and it still whittles down the value of your and my dollars, and everything denominated in them, and it’s still higher than the interest that banks pay on most deposits and CDs, though it’s better than 4.3%, as we had some months in 2011.

Another blow to US manufacturing: Philadelphia Fed's Business Outlook Survey – for manufacturing in eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware – dropped into the negative, to -5.2 in May, from 1.3 in April (below zero = decline). The New York Fed's Empire State Manufacturing survey, reported yesterday (below), had also pointed at a contraction. Ominous: new orders dropped to -7.9, the worst since June last year, from -1 in April; the Workweek Index dropped to -12.4, and the Employment Index dropped to -8.7. Manufacturing is only a small part of the US economy, and this region is a small part of the US, so we’re not going to panic just yet...

US Housing Bubble confirmed: Heard an ad on the radio on how to get rich quick by flipping houses – and we’ll show you how. It conveniently offered an 800-number. Something or other was free.... but keep your credit card handy. These kinds of things usually appear late in a bubble.

Death penalty for financial fraud in China. A court in Wenzhou slapped a local, 39-year-old gal, former general manager of Wenzhou Xinfu Investment Consulting Co., with the maximum penalty available, death, for having illegally raised funds for investments starting in 2007. Everything worked fine until October 2011, when her scheme collapsed and she ended up defaulting on a 428 million yuan loan ($69.6 million). Leaves open the question if they’d slap the same penalty on TBTF bank CEOs every time their banks need a bailout. A bit draconian maybe, but something the US might want to consider as well, after not having prosecuted anyone responsible for the financial crisis and for the Fed’s bailouts that followed, though they did hound, as in China, small-scale crooks like Bernie Madoff.

Bad loans at Chinese commercial banks swelled by 6.8% in the first quarter, to 526.5 billion yuan ($85.6 billion), the sixth consecutive quarter of increases, raising the non-performing loan ratio to 0.96%. And NPLs are expected to rise further. One of the many elements in a boundless debt-fueled scheme that will eventually, like the micro-case above, unravel.

The Japanese Diet rubber-stamped the ¥92.6 trillion ($926 billion) budget for fiscal 2013, which started April 1. A breath-taking ¥43 trillion ($425 billion) will have to be borrowed to make ends meet - that's 46.4% of the total outlays! But no problem. Abenomics will get Japan out of its fiscal quagmire, one way or the other, by printing money. Government spending on public works – welfare spending for Japan Inc. – will rise to ¥5.3 trillion. In a show of rare fiscal discipline, welfare spending for the poor will be cut by ¥67 billion. Priorities of Abenomics are becoming clear.

Japanese GDP growth less than a year ago! The economy grew 0.9% in the first quarter 2013 from Q4 last year, or a 3.5% annual rate. Private demand was up some, with investment in housing being fairly strong, but corporate investment lackluster. Public demand – government spending and investment, including boondoggles – jumped, as promised by Abenomics. Exports rose, and so did imports, but not as much. All seasonally adjusted. Great? Give credit to Abenomics for that 0.9% growth in GDP? Because it was the fastest growth since... oops, well, since the first quarter of 2012, when the economy grew 1.3%. Abenomics can't even keep up with Noda's maligned era.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Megabanks "are NOT too big to jail," claimed Attorney General Eric Holder today in a heroic about-face at a House Judiciary hearing, after he'd explained to the Senate Judiciary Committee in early March why exactly they were indeed too big to jail. The Justice Department has not prosecuted any megabanks despite their shenanigans leading up to the Financial Crisis and continuing to this day. A debacle I wrote about.... 'Regulatory Capture' Emasculated The Regulators Of Megabanks.

French purchasing power plunges 1.5% per capita, and 0.9% for all households together in 2012 (difference due to population growth), the worst performance since 1984. Combination of: disposable income creeping up only 0.9%, and prices rising 1.9%. Ah yes, the many benefits of "moderate" or even "below-target" inflation.

Tough day for US manufacturing: industrial production dropped 0.5% in April, after increasing in February and March; year-over-year, it's up only 1.9%. Within it, manufacturing fell 0.4%; fingers point at motor vehicles and parts, down 1.3%. Capacity utilization fell 0.5% to 77.8%, and is 2.4 percentage points below long-term average. Add to that: the New York Fed's Empire State Manufacturing Survey for May dipped into the red (-1.43, from 3.05 in April). Employment sub-indices were mixed, with number of employees up slightly, but hours worked down sharply. Darkest cloud: new orders were negative. Executive optimism for the next six months declined, second month in a row. Not an exemplary picture of a growing economy.

"My question is, who is going to jail?" wondered House Speaker John Boehner about the IRS scandal. So why didn't he and other Republicans ask that question after the financial crisis, the largest scandal in the US ever?

Swooning energy prices, particularly gasoline, pushed down wholesale prices by 0.7% in April, seasonally adjusted. Food prices also dropped, a godsend for those of us who like to eat, with veggies and meat down the most. Without food and energy, which are highly volatile, the core Producer Price Index rose 0.1%. For the 12-month period, the unadjusted PPI is up a scant 0.6%. If they could just keep it that way!

Warning shot: Russian car sales plunged 8% in April. For the year, they are now 2% below the same period last year, a record year during which sales had jumped 11% from 2011. The good times appear to be over. Is the EU malaise heading east?

Europe stuck in recession: the Eurozone economy shrank 0.2% in the first quarter, from Q4, the sixth quarter of recession in a row, another glorious record. The 27-nation EU contracted 0.1%. Year over year, they’re down 1.0% and 0.7% respectively. Germany's economy inched up 0.1% in Q1, after having plunged 0.7% in Q4, thus barely avoiding the red stamp of recession. Both quarters combined, Germany is in the hole. The lousy performance in both quarters surprisingly surprised pundits. France is formally in a recession; its economy contracted 0.2% in Q1, third contraction in four quarters. Italy and Spain both shriveled 0.5%. Unperturbed, German stocks, while down a smidgen for the day so far, are still above their prior all-time intra-day high of July 2007. This will be seen as the greatest accomplishment of the central bank money-printing binge: separating (at least temporarily) stock markets from reality and allowing them to float in a dream world.

China's pile of foreign exchange grew by 294 billion yuan to 27.363 trillion yuan ($4.41 trillion) in April, according to the People's Bank of China, the fifth month in a row of increases. For the first four months of 2013, the monthly influx averaged 400 billion yuan, nine times the average in 2012. Earlier this month, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the top forex regulator, had threatened to crack down on foreign money flooding the country. China is where the hot money goes – on the bet that the yuan will continue to rise against the dollar which, through the arduous and heroic efforts of the Fed, will continue to lose value.

Nikkei jumps 2.29%, to 15,096, highest since December 28, 2007. If it keeps going like this, it will be above 40,000 soon. This thing has become a joke – even more so than the US stock markets. Japanese government bonds continue their descent, pushing yields up, with the 10-year JGB hitting 0.90% but then settled down at 0.85%. The yen skidded.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Ex-leaders of consumer electronics: Sharp's huge loss is a sign of how Japanese powerhouses have lost the edge to Korean, US, and Chinese rivals. A doozy: ¥545 billion ($5.3 billion) in red ink, a record in its storied century-long history. A top exec reshuffle has been announced, but it won't fix the real issue that is bedeviling Sharp and other Japanese consumer electronics companies, once world leaders, now not even also-rans. Abenomics won't be able to cure that either. This isn't an issue of costs and exchange rates, but of innovation, products, and now increasingly brand (they squandered it).

China's white paper on human rights, helpfully issued in English so that foreigners like me can get their brains washed, starts out promisingly: "Since the arrival of the 21st century, the Chinese people have been making constant efforts in advancing human rights protection along the path of building socialism with Chinese characteristics under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese government." Further into it, the paper clarifies priorities: "China has a population of over 1.3 billion. For such a populous country, it would be impossible to protect the people's rights and interests without first developing the economy to feed and clothe the people." Money before rights. But it also points out how the government has become much more transparent in many ways, which few people will dispute (text in full).

Inflation hits Japan: wholesale prices rose for 5th month in a row in April, by 0.3% from March, with the index at 101.4 (2010 prices = 100). Electricity, gas, water, lumber, and wood products jumped over 3%. Some of it was due to the weakening yen that made imported fuels and raw materials more expensive. How exactly higher prices would cure Japan’s economic ills remains a mystery, though it will give a stylish haircut to all those owning Japanese Government Bonds....

Japanese Government Bonds skid once again: yields rose, for the 10-year JGB to 0.85%, from 0.79% yesterday, from 0.69% on Friday, and from 0.315% on April 5, the day they went bonkers. While yields are still ultra-low, the rise has been relentless, not at all what the BOJ wants – and now there's also volatility, rare sight in the JGB market. Japanese institutions and individuals are buying foreign bonds with higher yields to diversify out of the yen that has been doomed by Abenomics to decline. If this turns into a massive dumping of yen, if the BOJ cannot keep it under control, the selloff might turn into a rout, and the BOJ and government-controlled institutions will be the only ones left buying. In sympathy, mortgage rates are creeping up, as are bank loans. The opposite of what Abenomics wants to accomplish. Free money is suddenly becoming more expensive.

Click for Older Rumblings....

VIDEOS

Wolf Richter on Max Keiser's "On The Edge"
"The Pauperization of America"

Wolf Richter on the Keiser Report
"Where the Money Goes to Die"

Clarke and Dawe: European Debt Crisis
Two favorite Australian Comedians

Clarke and Dawe: Quantitative Easing
Big industrial-strength printers, all facing the window

The Fastest Drive Ever Through San Francisco
Don't try to do this yourself

humanERROR - by "Frying Dutchman"
Powerful, lyrical appeal to the Japanese. Slams nuke industry, MSM, bureaucrats, and politicians.

Tuesday

Jan012013

China in Africa: Partners in the Year of the Snake

Tuesday, January 1, 2013 at 7:11PM

Contributed by Jen Alic of Oilprice.com.

African exports to China have increased six-fold since 2000, the bulk of it in oil; and in 2012, China surpassed the US and Europe as Africa’s largest trading partner.

Starting from $11 billion in bilateral trade in 2000, Beijing racked up $160 billion dollars in trade with Africa by 2011, and for 2012

Chinese businesses have also invested some $15 billion in Africa in 2012 alone—that’s up from $500 million in 2002.

China is hot for Africa’s natural resources, which include 40% of the world’s total chromite deposits, 60% of the world’s cobalt and 20% of its gold. But most importantly—oil and gas. For starters, we’re looking at a possible 72 billion barrels of crude in the East Africa Rift, more than 250 trillion cubic feet of natural gas offshore Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique, and 5 billion barrels of proven reserves in the Sudans. And this is only scratching the continent’s surface.

China is also hungry for minerals in the West, North and Central nations, oil from West Africa and agricultural products from Chad, Mali, Benin and Burkina Faso, which do much to supply China’s massive textile industry. But West Africa is also a key importer of Chinese products, with Nigeria the lead consumer (42%).

Related Article: ExxonMobil Eyes South Africa's Untapped Frontier

East Africa and Southern Africa are ripe with massive Chinese investment in infrastructure, mining and trade. Most Chinese firms operating in these regions are state-owned and they enjoy major government support. This support allows them a leg up in the competition: They bid low on contracts, and usually get them.

It is in East Africa that the Chinese presence is most keenly felt—and seen. Here, China enjoys joint ventures with African state-owned companies. China’s Sinopec oil has joined forces with state-owned Sonangal in Angola ($3.5 billion). In Gabon, China’s CMEC/SINOSTEEL consortium has invested about $3 billion in the exploitation of iron ore deposits.

In terms of foreign policy and economics, African policymakers pay the most attention to China. To put it simply, Africa’s wealth is tied to China’s economy.

The New Year—China’s Year of the Snake—will see Beijing expand its footprint in Africa, while the US tags along, behind the game.

Related Article: Russia – The New Player in African Politics

Why? China has consistently offered Africa a broader relationship, and while the US and Europe remain very significant economic drivers in Africa, China offers something bigger—a clear path to the creation of regional economic blocs. China’s willingness to invest in major infrastructure projects across the continent has been one of the primary attractions. And we’re not talking just about pipelines—China has been busy building thousands of kilometers of new roads and railways across Africa.

Nigeria has recently benefitted from this Chinese ambition. In late December, China completed the rebuilding of the railway connecting the south commercial hub of Lagos to Kano, the largest city in the north. It was a $166 million project that involved rebuilding 1,160 kilometers of railway.

In the end, Africa’s China choice comes down to Beijing’s business model, which in terms of long-term development is preferable to that of the West. Beijing offers a package deal that Africa has embraced for its pragmatism.

And there is a philosophical element to Africa’s love affair with China: In Beijing’s efforts to push through real infrastructure development on a regional level, it tends to view Africa through a completely different lens than the West. For China, Africa is a partner, not a parasite that happens to be rich with natural resources.

True to form, though, Washington lags behind in Africa, unable to figure out how to structure a broader relationship. As such, 2013 will be another year of Chinese progress in Africa—and Africa is very much looking forward to the development this promises. Cross-posted from Oilprice.com.

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Reader Comments (11)

Why doesn't China use all of its economic might to find a replacement for oil, coal, and natural gas? If China steals so much technology from the USA, then it should already have access to the top secret inventions that have been suppressed by the US government for many decades. Free energy would end the 21st century version of the "Great Game" in Africa and in Eurasia.

January 1, 2013 |

Anon E. Maus

Trading with China even after all that money we dumped on them to help curtail their epidemic AIDS problem. That's gratitude for ya!

January 1, 2013 |

johnnygeneric

Anon, what suppressed inventions? Are you in the weed again? Don't you think China has access to anything they want to know by now? The 'suppressed' inventions are just that, inventions of the techie dreamers who deny thattheir wolrd is collapsing around them and tech is NOT going to save it.

Johnny, have you ever considered that we might have started that 'epidemic'? Not we as in you and I, but as in those who would not mind killing a few billion of us unnecessary consumers while making a few more billions doing it? We (the US) never 'gives' anyone anything. There are always ropes attached around the 'gifts' that pay back much more than is 'given'.

The Chinese know that there are no tech rescues coming. They know that they will need these resources to keep their country growing, so they are acquiring them without military adventures that only make more enemies. The Chinese build railroads, highways, hospitals and schools, not bomb craters and death. The West is dying...

January 1, 2013 |

Makati1

1. Look at the prices. 1160 km railroad rebuild for 166 Mn (not Bn). Same with bridges, highways etc. Some projest are 10 to 20 TIMES (not %) cheaper than by Western cies.
2. Africa consumes mostly relatively cheap and simple stuff the Chines are a) great at that and b) if the West 'produces' it is often Made in China anyway. They have the right products for a worldmaket that will grow mainly in the poor countries and EMs.
3. This is a long term strategy 20 year ago you already were falling over African government officials when you were in Beijing. Never been there when there were not several African government delegations.

January 1, 2013 |

Rik

Makati1: Is this misinformation, disinformation or entertainment?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NADfqbyn8bI

Maybe the Chinese elite will benefit, but not the Chinese workers:

http://www.thechinamoneyreport.com/2012/12/27/chinese-show-makers-now-exporting-from-ethiopia/

January 2, 2013 |

Anon E. Maus

can't beat em, send in the guns. the american way

http://truththeory.com/2012/12/28/us-deploying-troops-to-35-african-countries/

January 2, 2013 |

Frank

Anon,
Do you think that there are not sweatshops in the US?
Do you not see that that is the direction the US is headed?
Are the people who work in sweatshops there because they have a gun to their head?
Do you think that they prefer working to dying in a bomb attack marked, 'Made in the US"?

I am very aware of the situations in the world. They are not new. Sweatshops have existed as long as man has had towns and extra money to spend. It is NOT a perfect world, but you will soon see that everyone will be leveled to the same lifestyle soon. Survival will over-ride pleasure and wealth.

With the ratio of maybe 4 million military and police and 1,300 million Chinese, I think the existing situation is because most the Chinese want it. At 300 to 1, they could certainly have a revolution and change it if they wanted to.

January 2, 2013 |

Makati1

Guys, wake UP. Nigeria “benefited”?? Sorry, the Chinese don't even make a pretence at benefiting the people of the countries they plunder, like European companies do. They grease the palms of those they have to grease, then, in many cases, fly in their won workers to do the job! There is mostly ZERO benefit, even in the form of near slave-labour and starvation wages for the locals.

January 3, 2013 |

boughies

Makati1,

My mom worked in one of those "sweatshops". She was a seamstress in South Carolina back in the 1960s and early 1970s. And as far as I recall, I don't even think the place was air conditioned, so most likely it was a real sweatshop. It was hard work and I never heard the end of it from her. But she was proud of her work. They were not paid by the hour but by what she called "production". They had quotas to meet in order to get paid. She was proud that everyday she met "production". And according to her, her supervisors loved her.

I got ongoing lectures from her about hard work and that it would pay off. She talked endlessly about how her income supplemented my dad's miserable military pay to buy a house and a '69 Cutlass Convertible (SWEET!!!) Of all the crap I had to sit and listen to, this was about the only thing I took away from her and it's stayed with me ever since.

And today...those jobs are GONE. Today my mom wouldn't have been able to find a job anywhere except flipping hamburgers. But you know what? She would have been happy to have that job as well.

January 3, 2013 |

johnnygeneric

Makati1,

You wrote: "Do you not see that that is the direction the US is headed?"

I respond: I do see it. De-industrailization has been the policy of the USA since 1973. The article below chronicles the job losses in the USA since 1992:

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-02-11/markets/30028586_1_nafta-goods-trade-cumulative-job-loss

My point was that the Chinese are now engaging in "Free Trade" in Africa to the detriment of their own citizens. Who would have ever thought that Chinese jobs would have to be offshored to Africa????

January 4, 2013 |

Anon E. Maus

I have been reading about China's excursions into Africa (along with other nations, which are growing food for export for their homelands) for a few years now. All the minerals and goodies to be dug out the ground and tunneled out of mountains are very tempting to those in need of such.

To twist your analogy "For China, Africa is a partner, not a parasite that happens to be rich with natural resources", I would proffer that Africa needs to see itself as a host with China possibly turning into a parasite. Why? Because although Africa is benefiting, China is benefiting much more. The corruption model of greasing palms to enable those in power while the average workers (better of with work than USAID bowls of rice, of course) is only going to result in no changes across the board.

I do not have the inclination or power to tell someone (Africa) how much to sell their goods/services/resources for to a buyer(China) but as they have resources, then they need to think ahead. A fair bit of Jiminy Cricket short-term policies need to be transformed into habits of squirrels. Africa's quick-n-fast development seems not the best for any long-term growth.

But I am a Westerner with a captilstic mindset. I am wary of thinking that the good times last forever, that growth doubles by leaps and bounds to infinity and resources replenish themselves in a magic land of plenty and just appear.

Maybe my flaw is that I expect 'developing' economies to adjust themselves into a sustainable model of growth, not just a quick event that will be forgotten. What is left after the locusts eat their fill?

January 5, 2013 |

Ananeosis

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