Financial topics

[Higgenbotham]

The process of destruction is underway in Detroit and this should spread across the G-7 as other urban areas go dark. The disadvantaged majority, when it becomes that, and it is getting close to being a majority, will work off its resentment by smashing and burning with impunity. I predict government control will be nowhere to be found and a Katrina-like state of affairs will exist in most places as they go dark. The muni bond market in the US has on average peaked out in late 2012 and should be the first major US market to go toward zero as city after city collapses. Likewise, not only will the infrastructure of roads, bridges and electrical systems not be maintained or replaced, vandals will rip up whatever they can salvage and cart it away - guard rails, manhole covers, or what have you, and smash up the rest with pick axes and sledgehammers, or destroy what they can't smash up with homemade bombs. When only 10% or less of the population can afford to drive, the other 90% will make sure they can't. I expect some of the destruction to be quite mindless and vengeful. Before the grid goes down due to nuclear accidents or plant shutdowns, it will probably be destroyed by clever folks who wish to get even with their tormentors, as folks are already doing in Detroit. Again, when only 10% of the population can afford full electric, the other 90% will make sure they can't access it either. The G-7 isn't really set up to give everyone free utilities as the Warsaw Pact was, so the collapse in the West from that aspect should be comparatively worse. Likewise, the Russians didn't build their country with African slave labor; the kind of resentments that are harbored here and are causing the demolition of Detroit didn't exist when the Warsaw Pact collapsed.

Detroit’s Water and Sewerage Department has begun turning off the taps of 150,000 residents who are at least two months behind on payments. People are being left without a drop to drink and no ability to bathe or use the toilet. Now a coalition of water and human rights activists has banded together to ask the United Nations to step in and end the disconnections.

Last week, advocates from the Detroit People’s Water Board, Food and Water Watch, Blue Planet Project, and Michigan Welfare Rights Organization submitted a comprehensive report to the U.N.’s special rapporteur that details the dire situation facing folks whose water has been cut off.

“Sick people have been left without running water and working toilets. People recovering from surgery cannot wash and change bandages. Children cannot bathe, and parents cannot cook,” write the report’s authors. And “families concerned about children being taken away by authorities due to lack of water and sanitation services in the home have been sending their children to live with relatives and friends, which has an impact on school attendance and related activities.”

“We really don’t want to shut off anyone’s water, but it’s really our duty to go after those who don’t pay, because if they don’t pay, then our other customers pay for them,” department spokesperson Curtrise Garner told Al Jazeera America.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-2 ... no-detroit

[Higgenbotham]

Doug Noland post:
http://www.safehaven.com/article/34342/no-bubble

As part of my Bubble analysis framework, I have posited that the more conspicuous a Bubble the less likely it is to be systemic. The "tech" Bubble was conspicuous, though gross excesses impacted only a relatively narrow segment of asset prices and a subsection of the real economy.

As an analyst of Bubbles, I've definitely got my work cut out for me. I have seen overwhelming evidence in support of my "Granddaddy of all Bubbles" - global government finance Bubble - thesis. Yet the Bubble is so comprehensive - so systemic - that the greatest financial Bubble in human history somehow goes largely unappreciated - hence unchecked.

I agree with Doug. This might not look like the biggest bubble ever, but it is.

[aedens]

Revenue growth will struggle precisely because the economic landscape will be slow. Profit growth will be grinding because—at 50-year highs in profit margins—it will take every ounce of extra revenue to bring extra growth to the bottom line. We think CEOs and boards sense this problem lies ahead.

Enter M&A. Acquisitions conveniently add top-line growth and a few years of merger-related cost-cutting which can boost profit margins.
An economy that is out of the financial-crisis woods of 2009 certainly boosts CEO confidence. But, we think, the main motivation of M&A is as an antidote
to corporations’ perception that their organic growth will be slow and hard to come by. http://www.uniocapital.com

[aedens]

http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2 ... eg-mankiw/

Intelligence is substantially influenced by both inherited and environmental factors and is a better predictor of many personal dynamics, including financial income, job performance.

http://www.yourdictionary.com/favela

[vincecate]

When the S&P was at 1600 I was convinced by the graph below that the market was ready to crash. Now it is at 1959. Amazing. It has gone up another 22% instead of down. On the bright side, puts at a 1600 strike price are much more affordable now than they were a year ago.

tmp.jpg (50.89 KiB) Viewed 3127 times

[John]

I guess that's what "going parabolic" means.

[aedens]

Nothing compared to these imbeciles. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-3 ... an-imagine

Detroit is another area of the locusts who financially striped our area as 40 percent of the local kids under 20 are 3 meals from disaster some note.
The corruption and theft was rampant for decades as voting was pointless as they decimated our area for the neocons wars.
The State Department geniuses dumped countless tens and tens of thousands and know they bitch about the cost of water and their state of constitutional rights of pensions. Sheep and deafening bleating would be a understatement about now to taxpayers.
Like we noted last year the amount of homeless going to school spiked and they scrubbed the article. Americans are essentially brain dead
as we politely conveyed percentages of change as they embrace hope and change as they strip mine the last standing productive clusters.
One thing only Kerry got correct was stupid is an American right to be just that. As the Dimmcrats extol we can feed more of the divine sparks
dumped as refuse from other governments on our border from there own as these lunatics state late terms can be snuffed out.
The hypocrisy knows no bounds in this age. Land of the Fabian death cult imports since the banker wars mistaken as the civil war.
The wasting process is no mistake.

The global mergers are the last step just as before. The only think left is what can be stabilized before the music indeed will stop.
Given the actual conditions 90 percent will never see it just as others have warned us before.

"the intelligent will witness her quandary, the general public will not understand, and Congress will not care once November passes.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-0 ... -half-2013

I agree with Doug. This might not look like the biggest bubble ever, but it is.

I agree also on some facets. We are ready since capex and opex has concluded for now.

water wheat weather

[aedens]

pick one http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/30/noaa- ... on-record/

“You can’t get any clearer proof ....

http://kliguy38depression2news.blogspot ... crash.html

that you never knew in the first place...

[aedens]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-0 ... ead-robots

[John]

I guess that's what "going parabolic" means.

Dow up 150 points.