Albert Edwards On Why "The Farce That Is US Reporting Season" May Be Different This Time 

As everyone who follows earnings seasons knows all too well, one of the traditional games companies play with sellside research analysts is to push earnings estimates lower just ahead of earnings announcement only to beat by the thinnest of margins, setting off a buying rally in the stock that more than offsets the gradual decline it may have experienced in the preceding run down. This observation is one half of Albert Edwards' note to client from this morning. He says: "It’s that surreal time of the quarter, just ahead of the reporting season, when US companies cajole compliant analysts into reducing their profit forecasts so that on the day the company can record a positive earnings surprise. Companies place so much store on beating analysts’ estimates that they play this ridiculous game of guiding down analysts numbers in the weeks or even days ahead of the announcement, only to beat depressed forecasts by a penny on the day (see chart below). The angle in the press and in analysts’ reports is then that this constitutes ‘good news’ despite, more often than not the outturn undershooting the market estimates of only a few weeks previous. Nuts!" The other half focuses on how this particular earnings season may be different, and why unlike previously, earnings downgrades may be for real this time: "We show that in contrast to expectations of a second half recovery, economic leading indicators are actually signalling the reverse, as is our favoured measure of analyst optimism. Hence the recent spate of profit warnings – which have resulted in a deeper than normal round of downgrades – may be the beginning of something far more undermining to equity prices over the next six months." So is this time, especially in the absence of the artificial boost to everything that is QE, any different? With earning season imminent, we will finally find out just how well the corporate sector (not having represented the actual economy for a long time) can stand on its own in the absence of monetary fiscal and stimulus for the first time in years. 

Matthew Lynn: What will replace dollar as global currency?

 

 

Embry concurs with Maguire: China will bury gold and silver shorts

Guest Post: The Great Reset 

Yesterday I laid out why the Status Quo is financially unsustainable in The Promises That Cannot Be Kept. The unavoidable consequence of that is the the nation will experience a Great Reset in which the promises of the Savior State are relinquished, either voluntarily or involuntarily. As I discussed in July 4, 2011: The Cycle of Dependency and the Atrophy of Self-Reliance, our reliance on the Savior State has sapped our will and confidence, and hollowed out communities that have become dependent on the Savior State and its quasi-private partners, the corporate cartels of banking, defense, healthcare and so on. The Great Reset will thus be a great shock to everyone who has grown dependent on Big Government and global Corporate America. An unprecedented array of interconnected trends are converging that will force a Reset not just in the economy but in the American society and culture.

JPM Pays $35 Million To Settle Bid Rigging Case 

America's toothless regulators strike again. JPM, which recently got away virtually scott free with an identical settlement on CDO security fraud that dragged Goldman stock for months back in 2010, has once again exposed its "most favored fraud" status with America's regulators after Reuters announced that the firm will settle a charges of a 6 year long bid-rigging fraud in municipal securities with the SEC... for the princely sum of $35 million. 

Fractal Algo Strikes Again, Infects Crude Oil 

A month ago we presented the strange case of the fractal algo gone amok while trading natural gas in a low volume after hours session. We expected that we would see this surreal trading pattern in other commodities shortly, although little did we know that it would impact the most important of them all, as soon as month later, and during peak trading hours. As the chart of CL EQ1 below shows, not even crude is safe any more from this aberrant trading algorithm which has now infected, it is safe to say, virtually every product. If NYSE Boerse's Duncan Niederauer is really confused about what is causing retail investors to depart in droves out of pure disgust with what are terminally manipulated markets (and not just stocks), we hope this chart provide at least a few clues.

Why The Taxpaying Populace Of Greece Better Stock Up On Their Grease!

Posted by: Reggie Middleton

Post date: 07/07/2011 - 12:03

No matter what financial engineering scheme you attempt to wrap around it, no matter what socio-political financial nomenclature you attempt to drape it in, and no matter how far you attempt to kick said can down the road in a "delay and pray" tactic of pushing the inevitable collapse past your particular tenure at the helm, the only way out of this is the recognition of capital destruction, AKA Default!

Guest Post: Imagine Grand Central Station After A Flesh-Eating Virus Outbreak And You Get Guangzhou South Station 

Now, you’d think that if they spent so much money building a station this large, they would be expecting hundreds of trains steaming in and out at all hours of the day. Not by long shot. There was only one train at the platforms. Mine. It was the same zombie movie theme– areas the size of multiple football fields with hardly any passengers standing around. And yet, throughout the entire station over all three levels was expensive, high quality marble tiles and artistic finishings, all polished to a mirrored shine. Guangzhou South Station is truly a monument to excess, exemplifying China’s ruinous “build it and they will come” attitude. Frankly, the whole episode reminded me of Bangkok and Hong Kong airports during the SARS epidemic back in 2003. I observed this firsthand– passenger traffic cratered because most people were scared silly of catching the deadly virus, and major airports were practically empty. Similarly, it’s what you would expect Grand Central Station to look like after a flesh-eating virus outbreak. 

News Corp To Shutter News Of The World On Sunday As Phonehacking Scandal Claims First Victim 

More crime and punishment. The recent phonehacking scandal in the UK has just claimed its first victim: Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation will close its tabloid News of the World after this Sunday's edition, as a result of an escalating phone hacking scandal, James Murdoch said on Thursday. "The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account," the deputy chief operating officer of News Corporation told staff. "But it failed when it came to itself." Revenues from final edition of News of the World this weekend will go to good causes, James Murdoch says in statement

Rand Paul on US Debt Ceiling Talks (video interview)

Author: goldnews | Filed under: Forex News, Political News, Precious Metals News Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is deeply involved in the budget talks around the soon approaching US debt ceiling limit, expected to occur on August 2nd as Timothy Geithner puts it. Paul has put forward a compromise bill that plans to raise the debt ceiling, but only contingent on significant cuts, statutory caps, and, most importantly, a balanced budget amendment to the constitution. Senator Paul says he is unwilling to trust future congress’ to cut the debt and delaying any action will worsen the problem as US interest payments become more and more significant parts of the budget. Paul says he is willing to compromise more with President and Senate Democrats but two issues that will stand firm are the balanced budget amendment and the refusal to allow more tax cuts. Read the rest of this entry »

Silver: It’s All About Inventories

While I have long since given up the “hunt” for intelligent analysis from the mainstream media on the silver sector, I have also become somewhat frustrated with much of the commentary I’ve seen from the more reliable/better informed commentators within the silver sector. Two “camps” seem to have emerged, separated by what I can only describe as a logical disconnect.

On the one hand, we have a group of very vigilant and bullish commentators who are squarely focused on the melodrama of ‘evaporating’ inventories now taking place in the Comex exchange (and any/every other warehouse where significant amounts of silver can still be found). Their reporting, while insightful, is almost surreal.

They are essentially engaged in a “countdown” until some “default” event occurs in the silver market, something these commentators look forward to with extreme anticipation, as to them this would signify “the end” of the silver-manipulation game the bullion-banks have been playing for the last 30 years (and actually much longer). Conversely, since such a default event directly implies the financial disintegration of the ‘monster’ silver-short, JP Morgan, I have much more “mixed feelings” about what such an event portends.

Living in the age of “too big to fail” banking Oligarchs, it is obviously naïve in the extreme to expect either JP Morgan or its servants who run the U.S. government to simply allow this bankster to be vaporized by the implosion of the silver market. Such an event would require settlement of its $100’s of billions ($trillions?) in losses on its gigantic, silver “short” position and its much larger losses on its silver derivatives – which it used to ratchet-up its suicidal leverage still further.

A much more realistic scenario is that when there is a default at the corrupt Comex exchange that the crooked operators of that market will simply suspend all trading in the silver market until the “disruptions” in the silver market have been resolved. Translation: the Comex will simply cease to honour/enforce any of its legally-binding contracts until after JP Morgan has found some way to weasel-out of its own annihilation.

Having spent countless hours studying this “equation”, I have concluded that there is no plausible way for JP Morgan to extricate itself from its self-created financial suicide other than through the U.S. government once again confiscating the silver held by its own citizens (as it did in the 1930’s). Given the magnitude of the silver-losses being hidden by the criminal-shorts, it is very unlikely that U.S. silver-confiscation alone would be sufficient to rescue all of the banking Oligarchs who have taken part in this manipulative shorting. Thus, we could easily see concurrent “confiscation” schemes in many/most/all Western nations.

Let me qualify that comment by noting that at this point “confiscation” would start (and likely end?) with all of the “bullion” held in bullion-ETF’s or bullion “accounts” – which were based in jurisdictions taking part in confiscation. The vast majority of personal bullion holdings are contained in this form and can be seized (literally) through nothing more than the click of a mouse.

It is highly unlikely that our governments have any appetite for smashing down doors and directly seizing bullion by force. First of all this would require a massive expenditure of resources (and extremely bad “optics” for our fascist governments), for a limited yield of bullion. Secondly, especially in the U.S., many of the same people stashing significant quantities of physical silver are also stashing significant amounts of guns and ammunition. They would not get much of this silver without (literally) a fight. Most likely, our governments would not go beyond the mouse-click – which also explains why the propaganda-machine has done its best to “herd” bullion investors into the large bullion-ETF’s.

Meanwhile, at the same time as all of this is occurring, we see an equally surreal discussion taking place in the silver sector regarding price. We have earnest, and in many cases very astute writers talking about “rising demand” and somewhat stagnant mine-supply, and then rather timidly assert that it was their opinion that silver prices “should” move higher. Even the highly esteemed Eric Sprott fell into this mental trap of understating the dynamics of the silver market. Read more: Silver: It’s All About Inventories

Economic Armageddon and You...Prepare for the Worst...

Jim Sinclair’s Commentary

Here is the entire story. I would suggest spreading the truth to offset the lies. 

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