Caught On Tape: Dijsselbloem To Varoufakis: "You Just Killed The Troika"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2015 - 11:58 Amid 'turmoiling' stock markets on Friday, CNBC's Simon Hobbs summed up the status quo's thinking on the new Greek leadership when he noted, somewhat angrily and shocked, "The Greeks are not even trying to reassure the markets," seeming to have entirely forgotten (and who can blame him in this new normal the world has been force-fed for 6 years) that political leaders are elected for the good of the people (by the people) not for the markets. Yesterday saw the clearest example yet of Europe's anger that the Greeks may choose their own path as opposed to following the EU's non-sovereign leadership's demands when the most uncomfortable moment ever caught on tape - the moment when Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem (he of the "template" foot in mouth disease) stood up at the end of the EU-Greece press conference, awkwardly shook hands with Greece's new finance minister, and whispered..."you have just killed the Troika," to which Varoufakis responded... "wow!"

ECB Threatens Athens With Bank Funding Cutoff If No Deal In One Month: February 28 Is Now D-Day For Greece

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2015 - 17:40 Earlier today the ECB's Erikki Liikanen, tired of pleasantries and dealing with what to Europe is a completely incomprehensible and illogical stance, one which is essentially a massive defection by Greece in the European "prisoner's dilemma", and which while leading to a Greek financial collapse and Grexit - both prerequisites to a subsequent Greek economic recovery unburdened by the shackles of the Euro - would also unleash a European depression, came out and directly threatened Greece that it now has 1 month until the end of February to reach a deal with the Troika, or else the ECB would cut off lending to Greek banks, in the process destroying the otherwise insolvent Greek banking sector. 

Market Calls Fed's Bluff - Desperation Becomes Palpable

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2015 - 14:17 Funding Markets just called The FOMC's bluff. Policymakers are acting out rational expectations theory or at least how they see it. In other words, their job is not to analyze actual economic conditions, but to condition economic thought toward the end goal. If they convince you that they believe the economy is on track they further believe you will act accordingly (“you” being both investor and economic agent). The more the economy diverges from the “preferred” projection, the more emphatic the cries of “recovery” become. At some point, desperation becomes palpable.
 

16% Of Global Government Bonds Now Have A Negative Yield: Here Is Who's Buying It

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2015 - 20:04 What happens if one expands the Eurozone NIRP universe to include the debt of other countries including Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and so on? Conveniently, JPM has done the analysis and finds that a mindblowing $3.6 trillion of government debt traded with a negative yield as recently as last week. This represents 16% of the JPM Global Government Bond Index, or in other words nearly a fifth of all global government debt is now trading with a negative yield, meaning investors pay sovereigns, using other people's money of course, for the privilege of buying their issuance!

 

"King Dollar" Is Crushing 'Recovery'Dreams, 87% Of US Companies Have Guided Lower

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2015 - 19:30 The 'souring' of the mother's milk of stock markets continues. Management guidance and commentary implies 3-5pp impact due to 'king dollar' FX headwinds as an astounding 87% of companies guided below consensus expectations for next quarter. Bottom-up consensus 2015 EPS estimates were cut by 4% during January, and, as Goldman Sachs warns, 4Q EPS is tracking 7% below the consensus estimate at the start of reporting season. Finally, and perhaps most worrisome, granular bottom-up consensus is below top-down 'strategist' consensus for the first time since 2009... as the gap between Forward P/E valuations and long-term growth is as wide as it has ever been.

 

The AAPL Effect: Q4 Earnings Growth Without Apple: 0%; With Apple: 2.1%

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2015 - 18:29 Yesterday we commented on the outsized macro impact that one company already excerts on the world, when we reported that in the fourth quarter, a whopping 60% of retail sales growth was due to the launch of Apple's iPhone 6 in the fall of 2014, and the surge of Chinese tourists who tok advantage of Hong Kong's lower prices and earlier release. So how about the micro level? For the answer we present the chart below. Behold: the AAPL effect, which demonstrates that what until AAPL's release was shaping up to be a flat Q4 earnings season for the S&P 500, has since transformed into Q4 EPS growth of 2.1%, and made Apple the largest contributor to earnings growth for the S&P 500 at the company level for the fourth quarter. All this, thanks to just one company!
 

Just in case you missed it...

What Do They Know? Why Are So Many Of The Super Wealthy Preparing Bug Out Locations?

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2015 - 20:15 A lot of ultra-rich people are quietly preparing to “bug out” when the time comes. They are buying survival properties, they are buying farms in far away countries and they are buying deep underground bunkers. In fact, a prominent insider at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland says that “very powerful people are telling us they’re scared." So what do they know?
 
 

The Official White House Terrorist Identification Chart

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2015 - 16:30 Presented with no comment... 

We Ignore Unintended Consequences At Our Peril

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2015 - 15:45 The grand central banking experiment being conducted around the globe right now will not end well. With little more than a lever to ham-fistedly move interest rates, the central planners are trying to keep the world's debt-addiction well-fed while simultaneously kick-starting economic growth and managing the price levels of everything from stocks to housing to fine art. The complexity of the system, the questionable credentials of the decision-makers, and the universe's proclivity towards unintended consequences all combine to give great confidence that things will not play out in the way the Fed and its brethren are counting on.
 
 

Greek Social Contagion: Tens Of Thousands Rally In Support Of Spain's Anti-Austerity Podemos Party

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2015 - 15:00 Less than a week ago we warned, "today Athens, tomorrow Madrid," and sure enough, emboldened by the success of Syriza in Greece, the people of Spain have turned out in their tens of thousands in Madrid at a demonstration called by the insurgent Spanish leftist party Podemos. As The Independent reports, Podemos, which means "we can", has surged into first place in opinion polls in the few months since it was set up in the summer of 2014. It is now ahead of the centre-right Popular Party and centre-left Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party in many opinion polls. Podemos’s policies include a universal basic income, increased democracy, crackdowns on tax avoidance, and increased public control over the economy. Most worrying for the status-quo huggers in Brussels, Podemos has also wants to reform the European Union, describing the current euro arrangement as a "trap."
 

Did The Federal Reserve Make A Major Math Error When Reporting Its December Gold Withdrawals?

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2015 - 13:28 According to the NY Fed, 177 tons of gold have been withdawn from its vault in 2014; according to foreign central banks, at least 207 tons of gold were withdrawn from the NY Fed in 2014.
Did a Fed intern make a very glaring math error or is something else going on?
 

The Future of Medicine? Forget Private Doctor Appointments, Group Medical Visits are Coming

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2015 - 12:44 "According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, around 10 percent of family doctors already offer shared medical appointments, sessions that bring together a dozen or more patients with similar medical conditions to meet with a doctor for 90 minutes. With pressure from the government and insurers to bring down the cost of care while treating the increasing number of people with health insurance, patients can expect group visits to become more common. “It’s efficient. It’s economical.""
 

Paul C Roberts, Assistant to Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan “Western Democracy Is A Myth!”

from The Richie Allen Show, via The Victory Report:

Andrew Maguire – Death Knell Of The LBMA And Massive Short-Stops In The Gold Market

from KingWorldNews:
Eric King: “Andrew, I know you have some big news about a new physical market that is coming into being. Can you talk about that?”
Andrew Maguire: “Eric, in the next two weeks you are going to hear a lot of noise as a fully-functioning, 23-hour a day global physical exchange is made mainstream….
“This is going to act as a conduit for this much needed liquidity. The trading platform is directly connected to a totally independent, fully allocated exchange — completely bypassing the LBMA
Andrew Maguire Audio Interview @ KingWorldNews.com

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