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By Tyler Durden

Iceland has had a difficult past few months politically, as its Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunlaugsson became the first casualty of the Panama Papers.

Economically however, the story is more upbeat, as the country has rebounded since the financial crisis. The Icelandic Krona has stabilized against the Euro, the rate of change in inflation has slowed, and the country has recorded year-over-year growth in GDP each year since 2011.

However, in a shocking turn of events, a law passed on May 22 by Iceland's parliament is offering the foreign holders of about $2.3 billion worth of krona-denominated bonds a choice of either selling out in June at a below-market exchange rate, or have the money they receive upon maturity be impounded indefinitely in low interest bank accounts. In other words, Iceland is trying to kick out foreign investors.

For now, investors aren't interested in the deal and wish to stay invested in Iceland, even as officials are clearly trying to push foreign investors out.

From the WSJ

Investors, including Boston-based mutual-fund companies Eaton Vance Corp. and Loomis Sayles & Co., a unit of Natixis SA, don’t want to go. They say they will reject the government’s offer.

“We would like to stay invested,” said Patrick Campbell, a global bond analyst at Eaton Vance.

The dispute is the result of a wholesale turnaround in Iceland’s relationship with foreign investors.

The country became synonymous with financial alchemy after its banks ballooned by borrowing in bond markets and attracting foreign depositors with high interest rates. That system imploded in 2008 when depositors made a run on the banks just as their bonds fell due, causing the krona to sharply devalue against the euro.

Yet a growing number of fund managers are now buying Icelandic government bonds, including those that were marooned on the island when it applied capital controls. The country is now one of the few offering a combination of high interest rates and strong economic growth prospects.

Eaton Vance and another holder of the legacy debt, also called “offshore” debt, hedge fund Autonomy Capital LP, have been courting the government for months to allow them to keep their cash on the island, even offering to swap their holdings into long-term bonds that they would pledge to hold on to.

But the country isn’t interested. Instead, officials behind the law say they aim to keep the $16.7 billion economy of the island with a population of 327,386 from being swamped anew by the ebb and flow of offshore funds.

“We don’t need the money,” said Mar Gudmundsson, governor of Iceland’s central bank. “These are remnants from the last boom and bust, and we are not going to repeat that mistake.”

Iceland has had formal capital controls since it barred conversions of krona to foreign currencies during the 2008 crisis, boxing in foreign bondholders at that time as well. While the controls are still in place, the country has made the first step in easing some of the controls, as it recently negotiated a …read more

Source: Iceland Has Offered Foreign Bondholders A "Choice": Sell Now, Or Have Cash Impounded Indefinitely

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By Tyler Durden

Submitted by Ingrid Carlqvist via The Gatestone Institute,

In Sweden's last census in which citizens were asked about their religious beliefs, in 1930, fifteen people said that they were Muslims. Since 1975, when Sweden started its transformation from a homogenous, Swedish country into a multicultural and multi-religious one, the number of Muslims has exploded. Now, approximately one million Muslims live here — Sunni, Shia and Ahmadiyya from all the corners of the world — and Mosques are built and planned all over the country.

No one, however, seems to have asked the crucial question upon which Sweden's future depends: Is Islam compatible with democracy?

The Swedish establishment has not grasped that Islam is more than a private religion, and therefore it dismisses all questions about Islam with the argument that Sweden has freedom of religion.

Two facts point to Islam not being compatible with democracy. First, there is no country where Islam is dominant that can be considered a democracy with freedom of speech and equal justice under law. Some point to Malaysia and Indonesia — two countries where flogging and other corporal punishments are meted out, for example, to women showing too much hair or skin, as well as to anyone who makes fun of, questions or criticizes Islam. Others point to Turkey as an example of an “Islamic democracy” — a country which routinely imprisons journalists, political dissidents and random people thought to have “offended” President Erdogan, “Islam” or “the nation.”

Second, Muslims in Europe vote collectively. In France, 93% of Muslims voted for the current president, François Hollande, in 2012. In Sweden, the Social Democrats reported that 75% of Swedish Muslims voted for them in the general election of 2006; and studies show that the “red-green” bloc gets 80-90% of the Muslim vote.

It is no secret that democracy can be used to abolish democracy — yet, this crucial issue is completely taboo in Sweden. Politicians, authorities and journalists all see Islam as just another religion. They seem to have no clue that Islam is also a political ideology, a justice system (sharia) and a specific culture that has rules for virtually everything in a person's life: how to dress; who your friends should be; which foot should go first when you …read more

Source: Sweden: Is Islam Compatible With Democracy?

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By Tyler Durden

Last September (when bitcoin was trading at $230) we said that “As China Scrambles To Enforce Capital Controls, This Is Great News For Bitcoin” and that it is only a matter of time before Chinese buyers figure out that in a world in which the freeflow of capital out of China is increasingly more suppressed and where physical gold is actively being stored in China but is next to impossible to get it out of the country, it is only a matter of time before bitcoin explodes as China’s bubble berserk population scrambles to buy.

One month ago, we showed a chart according to which it was almost time for the bitcoin breakout, in “Is Bitcoin About To Soar?” At the time bitcoin was trading in the low $400s.

Then, just yesterday, something snapped, and as we reported “Bitcoin Surges To 2016 Highs On Rising Chinese Demand.”

It is unclear if that something is fears about an imminent round of Chinese devaluation following Friday’s dramatic move higher in the US Dollar, something we also hinted at on Friday afternoon…

CNY will be interesting on Sunday night

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 27, 2016

… or simply because China’s $30 trillion in deposits had finally found the most efficient way to get their funds out of the country.

Whatever the reason, moments ago – as we expected – bitcoin finally broke out of its long-term range, and was trading at $520 moments ago on Coinbase…

… the highest price it has hit since the summer of 2014.

What is the reason for this dramatic move higher? It appears to be China, because moments ago Bitcoin traded in CNY on the Huobi exchange soared as high as 3820, or over $580, imply a massive local-demand driven arb to the US price of $520:

It looks like the Chinese have finally awoken to bitcoin, just as we expected them to last September, when the price of bitcoin was over 50% lower.

With bitcoin now 100% higher than when we first said China would send it soaring,and 15% higher in the past two days, why do we remain in the bullish camp? Simple: China has $30 trillion in deposits – which concerns about devaluations will make very “flighty” while the market cap of bitcoin is under $8 billion. If Chinese depositors have finally figured out to use bitcoin to get their funds out of the country, watch out BTC shorts.

…read more

Source: Bitcoin Is Soaring On Unprecedented Burst In Chinese Buying

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By Tyler Durden

Authored by Henry Hazlitt via The Mises Institute,

From time to time over the last thirty years, after I have talked or written about some new restriction on human liberty in the economic field, some new attack on private enterprise, I have been asked in person or received a letter asking, “What can I do” — to fight the inflationist or socialist trend? Other writers or lecturers, I find, are often asked the same question.

The answer is seldom an easy one. For it depends on the circumstances and ability of the questioner — who may be a businessman, a housewife, a student, informed or not, intelligent or not, articulate or not. And the answer must vary with these presumed circumstances.

The general answer is easier than the particular answer. So here I want to write about the task now confronting all libertarians considered collectively.

This task has become tremendous, and seems to grow greater every day. A few nations that have already gone completely communist, like Soviet Russia and its satellites, try, as a result of sad experience, to draw back a little from complete centralization, and experiment with one or two quasi-capitalistic techniques; but the world's prevailing drift — in more than 100 out of the 107 nations and mini-nations that are now members of the International Monetary Fund — is in the direction of increasing socialism and controls.

The task of the tiny minority that is trying to combat this socialistic drift seems nearly hopeless. The war must be fought on a thousand fronts, and the true libertarians are grossly outnumbered on practically all these fronts.

In a thousand fields the welfarists, statists, socialists, and interventionists are daily driving for more restrictions on individual liberty; and the libertarians must combat them. But few of us individually have the time, energy, and special knowledge to be able to do this in more than a handful of subjects.

One of our gravest problems is that we find ourselves confronting armies of bureaucrats already controlling us, and with a vested interest in keeping and expanding the controls they were hired to enforce.

A Growing Bureaucracy

Let me try to give you some idea of the size and extent of this bureaucracy in the United States. The Hoover Commission found in 1954 that the Federal government embraced no fewer than 2,133 different functioning agencies, bureaus, departments, and divisions. I do not know what the exact count would be today, but the known multiplicity of Great Society agencies would justify our rounding out that figure at least to 2,200.

We do know [in 1968] that the full-time permanent employees in the Federal government now number about 2,615,000.

And we know, to take a few specific examples, that of these bureaucrats 15,400 administer the programs of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, 100,000 the programs (including Social Security) of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and 154,000 the programs of the Veterans Administration.

If we want to look at the rate at which parts of this bureaucracy have been growing, let …read more

Source: The Task Confronting Libertarians

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By Tyler Durden

Courtesy of BofA, Michael Hartnett, this is where we are now, or as the author puts it, “The Nut”:

• 2016 total returns YTD are gold 15.0%, commodities 14.0%, bonds 5.9%, stocks 1.7%, and for the US dollar -3.3%.
• Note how a “barbell” of inflation assets (e.g. commodities, energy, Petrobras) and deflation assets (e.g. bonds, utilities, Facebook) simultaneously outperforming.
• We believe “positioning” & “policy” are driving “grind higher”: in a world full of bearish investors & desperate central bankers “pain trade” for risk assets is up.
• But cyclical upside modest in a world where deflation from tech disruption, aging demographics, excess debt thwarting stimulus of astonishingly low interest rates.
• And excess asset valuations (driven by ZIRP & NIRP) mean GDP/EPS upgrades required for big upside; we don’t see it, but cautious positioning limits downside.
• Our AA thus continues to anticipate volatile, single-digit asset returns, and remains skewed toward long volatility, long gold, long stocks>bonds, long DM>EM, long IG>HY, long Main Street, short Wall Street.
• And barbell strategies recommended (e.g. long Best of Breed stocks & long EM debt) in anticipation of inflationary policy shifts to fight a War on Inequality.

All that is in the past however, with the last trading days of May coming up in the coming week for all those who wish to “sell in May and go away”, because as we look at the future, Hartnett points out that June is the “event risk month” with FOMC on 15th, BoJ on 16th & UK BREXIT referendum on 23rd.

More importantly, the BofA strategist also lays out the key breakout and breakdown catalysts, as well as the bullish and bearish “trades of the unexpected”:

In the run-up to June, financial markets continue to be trapped within multi-month trading ranges: GT5 1.2-1.8%, DXY 92-100, ACWI 380-440, SPX 1850-2100, VIX 12-20. So what are the catalysts & “trades of the unexpected” should risk assets finally breakout or breakdown?

Breakout bull catalysts:

• Bear capitulation: consensus is bearish, FMS cash levels high, our Global Flow Trading Rule once again super-close to a “buy-signal” (and unlike in January, this time we are closer to “ceiling” rather than “floor” of the trading range in risk).
• Strong macro: if recovery in credit & commodity markets (oil>$50b, US & European high-yield bonds close to all-time highs) & stonking April US new home sales followed by rising PMI’s (e.g. US ISM>53) & retail sales, then investors can return to bullish narrative of “higher rates & rising EPS” (Chart 2).
• Helicopters: BoJ in Japan, Riksbank in Sweden, SNB in Switzerland hint at future use of “helicopter money”.

Bull Trades of the Unexpected:

New highs in S&P500 and, more important, US high yield (H0A0) best played via selling calls on gold or shorting VIX futures; best contrarian risk-on trades (based on FMS) are long UK, Japan, banks (see Chart 3), tech & industrial

Should Japan go “all-in” by announcing a permanent increase in the money stock to finance fiscal stimulus traders should play the weaker Japanese yen via long TPX, short KOSPI, long inflation assets e.g. TIPS but not EM given likely resumption of China …read more

Source: Here Are BofA’s "Trades Of The Unexpected" For June, The "Event Risk Month"

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By Tyler Durden

Authored by Andy Xie, the former Morgan Stanley chief Asia-Pacific economist, originally posted Op-Ed at The South China Morning Post,

Andy Xie says the world's elite that are attending the G7, G20, Davos and other wasteful meetings are wrong to try to pin the blame for the turmoil on people’s psychology; all signs point to a prolonged period of global stagnation and instability.

Before the current G7 meetings waste of time, The G20 working group meeting in Shanghai didn’t come up with any constructive proposals for reviving the global economy and, instead, complained that the recent market turmoil didn’t reflect the “underlying fundamentals of the global economy”. The oil price has declined by 70 per cent since June 2014, while the Brazilian real has halved, and the Russian rouble is down by 60 per cent. The global economy is on the cusp of another recession, and these important people blamed it all on some sort of psychological problem of the people.

Over the past two decades, the global economy has been blessed with the entry and participation of 800 million hard-working Chinese, plus the information revolution. The pie should have increased enough in size to make most people happier. Yet, the opposite has happened. The world has gone from one crisis to another. People are complaining everywhere. This is due to mismanagement by the very people who attend the G20 meetings, the Davos boondoggle, and so many other global meetings that waste taxpayers’ money and put inept leaders in the limelight.

One major complaint that people have is that the system is rigged – that is, the rising income concentration is not due to free market competition, but a rigged system that favours the politically powerful. This is largely true. The new billionaires over the past two decades have come mostly from finance and property. Few made it the way Steve Jobs or Bill Gates did, creating something that makes people more productive.

The most important factor in the rigged system is monetary policy being used to pump up financial markets in the name of stimulating growth for people’s benefit. This is essentially the trickle-down wealth effect, that is, making some people in the financial food chain rich while the spillover gives people a few crumbs. Yet, instead of crumbs, the wealth effect has pumped up property prices in Manhattan, London and Hong Kong, as well as the price of modern art. Essentially, the wealth effect has stayed within the small circle of the wealthy. And these people show up at Davos to congratulate policymakers on their “successes”.

Wasting resources is an equally important factor in making the global economy weak and prone to crisis. After the 2008 financial crisis, the US government and Federal Reserve spent trillions of dollars to bail out the people who created the crisis. Instead of facing bankruptcy and jail, these people have become richer than ever. Predictably, they have used their resources to rig the system further.

After 2008, when Beijing launched a massive investment push, the global ruling elite …read more

Source: Former Morgan Stanley Chief Asia Economist: "Don’t Listen To The Ruling Elite, The World Economy Is In Real Trouble"

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By Tyler Durden

If there was any doubt, or suspense on which side of the Hillary email scandal the “impartial” Department of Justice stands, the suspense was lifted and all was revealed yesterday when as The Hill reported, the Obama administration stepped into the ongoing Judicial Watch lawsuit and is fighting to prevent former SecState Hillary Clinton from being deposed.

Late Thursday evening the Justice Department, under US attorney general Loretta Lynch, first appointed in 1999 by none other than Bill Clinton, filed a court motion opposing the Clinton deposition request from conservative legal watchdog Judicial Watch, claiming that the organization was trying to dramatically expand the scope of the lawsuit.

As a reminder, as revealed last night, in the first deposition from the ongoing Judicial Watch lawsuit – which has obtained or seeks depositions from all SecState staffers close to Hillary – we learned thanks to State Department veteran Lewis Lukens, that not only did Hillary not know how to use a computer but that her email actually had no password protection.

It is these kinds of revelations that the Department of Justice, in its quest for “justice”, is seeking to prevent from seeing the light of day, only in the official filing the DOJ was a little more circumspect. Judicial Watch is “seeking instead to transform these proceedings into a wide-ranging inquiry into matters beyond the scope of the court’s order and unrelated to the FOIA request at issue in this case,” government lawyers wrote in their filing, referring to the Freedom of Information Act. The lawyers wrote that the request to interview Clinton “is wholly inappropriate” before depositions are finished in a separate case also concerning the email server.

In light of the recent report by the State Department Inspector General, with which Hillary also refused to cooperate, one could say it is entirely approprirate for her to be deposed.

As a reminder, the Judicial Watch FOIA case began as a way to seek documents about talking points related to the 2012 terror attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, but has since grown to encompass wider questions about Clinton’s use of a personal server while working as secretary of State.

Last week, Judicial Watch asked the court to interview Clinton and five other current and former State Department officials about the server, after it received a judge’s permission to move ahead with the process. The case is the second in which Judicial Watch has been granted approval to depose witnesses to gather evidence about Clinton’s email setup. In the other case, interviews of current and former Clinton aides have already begun.

For now, Hillary is not scheduled to answer questions as part of that case, through a federal judge has warned that she could be called upon in the future. It is this potentially destructive deposition, that the DOJ is seeking to hide.

In the government’s filing late Thursday, the Justice Department said that Judicial Watch’s request is “overbroad and duplicative.” It claimed the …read more

Source: Obama Rushes To Defend Hillary In Email Lawsuit: DOJ Fights To Block Clinton Deposition

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By Tyler Durden

By now we all know that Goldman Sachs is the gift that keeps on giving to the Clintons. Whether it's paying millions out for speeches, investing in family member's failing hedge fund ventures, or donating hundreds of thousands to the Clinton Foundation, Goldman seems to be keeping a close relationship with the family.

What's a more fun development to watch (other than to see Lloyd Blankfein lose money invested with a Clinton son-in-law) is how persistent The Intercept is being with Hillary about Goldman. Every chance it gets, The Intercept has a reporter asking Clinton about Goldman related items, and of course they never get an answer.

Earlier this year The Intercept caught up with Hillary and asked if the transcripts of the speeches given to Goldman would be released. Clinton's response was just to laugh of course, because as we all know, those will never be released… on purpose anyway.

The Intercept: “Hi Secretary Clinton, will you release the transcript of your paid speeches to Goldman Sachs?”

Clinton: “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha”

At a Clinton campaign rally in San Francisco last Thursday, The Intercept's Lee Fang caught up with Clinton again and this time wanted to ask about Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's investment in her son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky's hedge fund Eaglevale Partners.

The Intercept: “Hi Secretary Clinton, do you know how much money Lloyd Blankfein invested in your son-in-law's hedge fund?“

After being ignored multiple times, Clinton's traveling press secretary Nick Merrill stepped to ask just what Fang was trying to find out more about.

Merrill: “Hey buddy how are you. What's your name?”

The Intercept: “Lee Fang”

Merrill: “Hi I'm Nick, I'm her spokesperson. What are you trying to find out more about?”

The Intercept: “I want to know how much money Lloyd Blankfein invested in Marc Mezvinsky's hedge fund. Do you know how much money Nick?”

Merrill: “I don't know has it been reported?”

The Intercept: “No it hasn't. Could you find out the amount for me?”

Merrill: “I don't know what the amount is. You wanna give me your contact information?”

The Intercept: “So you're gonna get back to me?”

Merrill: “I'll email you right now”

* * *

Of course Merrill never got back, but that's to be expected as the entire campaign continues to dodge any questions around the matter. The enjoyment that can be gained from watching The Intercept dog Clinton for answers is priceless however, and it's nice to see that Goldman is the gift that keeps on giving to Clinton, especially as an inconvenience on the campaign trail.

…read more

Source: Goldman Sachs Is The Gift That Keeps On Giving… To The Clintons

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By Tyler Durden

When it comes to Wall Street superstitions, few things – even fading the most recent Dennis Gartman call – beats the Barron’s front page article jinx: just when you think something will never happen, Barron’s confirms it on the cover, virtually assuring that it does.

In which case, be afraid bulls, be very afraid, because if past is prologue Barron’s just green-lit the next crash.

The Barron’s argument:

The current period of gain has lasted more than seven years and propelled the stock market averages to new highs. But since the peak of last May, the market has faltered, briefly touching double-digit lows early this year. Bears have begun to wonder whether the crash to which the market is always headed is just ahead.

Probably not.

Well, not anymore. In the article, author Gene Epstein unveils such quantitative pearls as:

[T]here has been just one market crash over the past 35 years that wasn’t accompanied by a recession: the 12-month decline of more than 20% from August 1987 through August 1988. Arithmetically, this crash would not have happened were it not for the largest one-day plunge in U.S. history: Black Monday, Oct. 19, 1987, when the market tumbled more than 20% in a single day, the only one-day bear market on record. The previous crash on a single day that was at all comparable ran in the low-double digits and occurred 58 years earlier, in October 1929.

if a one-day crash does strike every 58 years, the next one is due 58 years from 1987, or in 2045. So if we treat the Black Monday–induced crash as an outlier, we are left with just three market crashes over the past 36 years plus one near crash, all four coinciding with the past four recessions.

So smooth sailing for the next 30 or so years then? He then presents what he believes are various reasons why there will be no crash this time. Among these are: stocks valuations are “not too exuberant”; that the inflation-adjusted house price is not above previous peak; that the yield curve is not flat or inverted; and that the price of oil is not surging.

One can, of course, debunk each one of these reasons simplistically with the following rebuttals:

• According to Goldman the median stock has never been more overvalued;
• The average house price is not above the previous peak simple because the vast majority of Americans can no longer afford to purchase a house in the US (just ask the Millennials) whether due to lack of demand or due to tight credit conditions; instead potential young buyers are forced to rent, leading to an explosion in asking rents; or live with their parents (see “More Young Americans Live With Their Parents Than At Any Time Since The Great Depression“). Finally, when it comes to wealthy investors (mostly from abroad) lapping up $1+ million houses, the housing bubble has never been bigger;
• If one strips away the impact of the …read more

  Source: "The Stock Market Won’t Crash, Yet" – The Barron’s Cover Strikes Again

      

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By EconMatters

By EconMatters

On Friday Janet Yellen gave the go ahead to rate hikes, and this change in Monetary Policy (Tightening) in not currently priced into financial markets.

© EconMatters All Rights Reserved | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Email Digest | Kindle

…read more

Source: Buy the VIX and Sell Equities into June Rate Hikes (Video)

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