Europe Tells Geithner To Take His Advice And Shove It

Just because it is not enough for Tim Geithner to be mocked, ridiculed and generally despised on one continent, the former New York Fed "Hudsucker Proxy-style" plant has just managed to become the most despised individual on at least one more continent. Bloomberg reports that European Central Bank Executive Board member Juergen Stark said countries offering advice on how Europe should solve its debt crisis should put their own fiscal situation in order first. "Finger-pointing in the direction of Europe shouldn’t prevent others from putting their budgets in order and doing their homework before handing out advice to Europeans," Stark said at an event in Vienna. This probably means it is safe to assume that the ECB, after listening to the human caricature of Beavis twice in a row on implementing totally failed stress tests, will not take up Timmy on his latest proposal of how Europe should fix itself. It is also safe to say that Europe just have a perfect example of how one should shut up a corrupt, incompetent, cheating, printer of virtually infinite one-ply US debt.

Goldman Shutting Global Alpha

As predicted last night when ZH said: "Goldman Global Alpha just blew up, for the second and probably last time", and as was glaringly obvious, sure enough the WSJ confirms:

• Goldman Sachs Closing Global Alpha Fund By End Of Oct
  
• Goldman Hedge Fund To Shut Dn Due To Redemptions
  
• Goldman's Global Alpha Fund Had Approximately $1B In

And so the quant unwind begins. The question now is: who is next.

The Goldman Quant Investment Strategies Pitchbook Is In Need Of Major Reworking

Now that Goldman Global Alpha and Katina are both dunzo, the firm's Quantitative Investment Strategies pitchbook, praising the "intelligent offense" and "dynamic defense" not to mention "wealth creation" of the "Dynamic Allocation Fund" may need to be gored and substantially reworked...

Guest Post: Iranian Bushehr Nuclear Plant Comes Online - World Survives

On 12 September Iran brought its first nuclear power plant in Bushehr online, connecting it to the country's electrical grid. Iranian officials at the opening ceremony said that the 1,000 megawatt plant has begun generating electricity at 40 percent of its capacity and will reach full capacity by the year’s end following further testing. Quite aside from demonstrating Iran’s touching post-Fukushima faith in nuclear energy despite being a seismically active country, Bushehr represents a Rorschach test of sorts for all the fears and anxieties in the Middle East, in which everyone looking at the facility has his preconceptions reaffirmed. “Axis of Evil” charter member Iran insists that Bushehr represents the government’s determination to husband is vast oil reserves by promoting other energy sources, as its economy has hammered by more than three decades of U.S.-led sanctions. Iran has been subjected to increasingly militant rhetoric from both Tel Aviv and Washington over its civilian nuclear energy program, with thinly veiled threats of possible military action if Tehran does not abandon its efforts, even though they are completely complaint under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran has signed and which Tehran pointedly underlines, it’s nemesis and harshest critic Israel has not

Gold's Luster a Bright Spot in Tough Economy

Eric De Groot at Eric De Groot - 18 minutes ago

Tycoons understood the value of gold during panics. Today's global financial panic exceeds that of 1893 by many orders of magnitude. Headline: Gold's Luster a Bright Spot in Tough Economy "Times are hard," said Virginia Rodriguez, a hospital technician and mother of two, explaining why she has used earrings, rings and a gold cross and chain bequeathed by her grandfather in exchange for loans... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Credit Supply Meets Unknown Demand

We have long discussed the colossal maturities pending among the state-sponsored FDIC-backed TLGP bonds due over the next few months but adding the financials exposure to other investment grade corporate bonds shows some incredible supply is pending. Bloomberg noted the fourth quarter alone has over $200bn coming due - based on a search of their database.

On Walking The Maginot Line

Over the weekend I wrote about what I thought the EU and the ECB needed to do to in order to prepare for a Greek default. Nothing that has been said or done this week goes against the view that Europe is preparing for Greece to default. In the past week someone went into all the EU officials' speeches and did a replace all and "default" became "controlled default". Notice how they have backed off how bad a Greek default would be and try and narrow it down to the fact that a default without adult supervision would be bad. After yesterdays conference call they said that Greece would remain in the Euro. They never said Greece wouldn't default. That conference call was as likely to be scripting out the roles for the next few weeks to control the default and arrange post default financing for Greece. The language was not that strong and I don't believe their words were chosen by accident. If Greece defaults the first obvious panic will be how do the European banks get funding, especially in dollars. Well, that question has been answered. The mechanism to avert short term liquidity problems after Greece defaults is now in place.

Guest Post: The "Perception Management" Economy

Why expend treasure and resources on a propaganda campaign that is doomed to run aground on the sharp reefs of reality? Two reasons: it's cheaper and less risky than real change. The Status Quo has a tremendous stake in maintaining the present structure and hierarchy of control, power and wealth. Enabling real change introduces uncertainty and thus risk, and so the lowest-risk response to devolution is to convince people that the erosion is not actually happening. This is also much less costly than actually introducing potentially destabilizing real change. But reality, unlike perception, cannot be changed by propaganda. The Chinese buying Italian debt, for example, does not make the debt or Italy's insolvency go away. Thus the Status Quo's campaign of "solving" fundamental problems with perception management will necessarily fail. A noteworthy example is the Eurozone's Status Quo attempt to convince everyone that Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy will not default, when their default is already unavoidable.





Want to Buy a Mansion?

Posted by: madhedgefundtrader

Post date: 09/15/2011 - 07:49 

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