Americans spent 8 billion hours in traffic last year
Los Angeles drivers who tell you their daily commute is awful now have numbers to back up that claim.
Source: Americans spent 8 billion hours in traffic last year
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Inflection Points For Gold
By Gold Money
By Stefan Wieler and Josh Crumb from GoldMoney.com
The full report can be accessed here
as PDF
Inflection
Points
Introduction
Gold prices
in USD have rallied strongly in recent weeks, up 18% year-to-date. Gold prices
in other currencies look similar; of the 20 most traded currencies in the
world, gold is up in all of them. In the media and in finance, as with most
exchange-traded commodities, gold is almost always quoted in USD. Hence, as
gold prices in USD moved lower over the past year, many remained under the
impression that gold was in a downtrend. However, when we look at gold priced
in the 20 most traded currencies in the world, in 80% of them, gold showed a
positive performance over the past two years. But does that mean gold in these
currencies has resumed its long term upward trend? In order to find that out,
we have created a set of intuitive rules to define inflection points at which
gold prices decisively change direction. We find that in 55% of the world’s
most traded currencies, gold has re-entered a clear uptrend.
Gold prices
in all currencies saw their peaks somewhere in 2011. What followed then was a
more or less sharp decline, but unlike for gold priced in USD, gold priced in
most other currencies troughed in late 2013 to early 2014 and has been trending
higher since. We find that for the world’s major currencies, uptrends tend to
last about 4.5 years on average during which gold prices increase by more than
100%. 95% of the world population does not use the USD as local currency and is
not paid in USD. Saving in gold has helped them to protect their wealth as
their currencies resumed their long-term decay. In the end, this is the path
all fiat currencies follow as their purchasing power declines. Gold is the only
money that has held its purchasing power over time. Indeed it is the only money
that has survived throughout history.
While the
USD and a few other currencies have so far been the outliers, prices have
reversed sharply as well. Applying our set of rules to the USD, we find that
gold has entered an uptrend as well as long as prices remain above $1165/ozt,
roughly USD100/ozt below current levels. Historically USD gold uptrends lasted
over three years and pushed gold prices up more than 200%.
Inflection Points
Gold prices rallied strongly in recent weeks in all major
currencies. In the 20 most traded currencies, gold is up between 13% and
23%year-to-date (see Figure 2). Unprecedented central bank action had pushed
gold priced in USD to an all-time high in 2011 but since then gold prices
trended down as longer dated energy prices …read more
Source: Inflection Points For Gold
Making Sense of Cents
Forex remains to be the largest market in the world and the least understood. Central banks have more influence on global markets than any other force. In other words, monetary policy is the ONLY economic indicator(s) investors should be watching, because let’s face it, if the Fed raised rates to 10% like they should do and called in all that QE money, stocks would collapse.
But yet Forex remains a mystery, something that someone may have mentioned or you heard about.. wait FX is a TV channel? or graphics? a movie?
One has to wonder who is more stupid, is it the clowns that worked for the big FX banks getting fined, jailed, or fired for misbehavior – or PBOC who seems intent to destroy not only any hope of becoming a ‘real’ currency (let alone a world reserve currency) but killing their trade markets as well:
In September last year, Chinese regulators stepped on the throat of a ‘fair’ market in equity futures trading and for all intent and purpose killed the Chinese equity market. Tonight – after 2 days of Yuan weakness – having warned everyon from Soros to Kyle Bass that “betting against the Yuan can’t possibly work,” The PBOC just unleashed plans for so-called “Tobin Tax” on FX transactions (which implicitly taxes each transaction, reducing liquidity, raising margins and reducing leverage).
CME Group (NASDAQ:CME), one of world’s leading derivatives marketplaces, announced that on March 10 it reached record trading volumes for forex futures and options. The record 2 517 334 contracts were traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). The number is 6% higher than the previous record of March 6, 2010. Also on March 10, were traded the record 2 350 478 forex futures contracts, exceeding by 142 061 the previous record of 2 208 417 contracts from May 6, 2010.
The record volumes were driven by the Euro FX Futures (EUR/USD) trade: $127.13 billion in notional value in futures and $18.5 billion in options.
As central banks become more and more like big hedge funds, and Forex markets become more volatile, there will be a growing need for Forex for any investment portfolio.
More and more public companies report ‘currency headwinds’ – the most notable recent report comes from Toys R Us:
Toys “R” Us Inc. said revenue slipped 2.6% in the latest quarter as the retailer faced currency headwinds over the holiday period.
The foreign exchange volatility was partially offset by the rise of same store sales of 2.3% in the fourth quarter. Currency woes, however, had a negative $169 million impact.
For the year, the toy store’s same store sales increased a modest 0.9%.
“Throughout the year, and especially …read more
Source: Making Sense of Cents
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Peter Pan(demonium) Erupts As BoJ "Disappoints" With No Change
By Tyler Durden
USDJPY was in full chaos mode ahead of tonight's BOJ statement. With only 5 of 40 economists expecting further actions by Kuroda (and close Abe advisor Hamada suggesting “I think the BOJ wouldn't take further action right now… probably it will be a wise decision,” The BoJ decide to stay put – holding rates flat at -10bps, holding QQE buying flat, and maintaining its ETF buying program at expected levels.. After 'mixed' results following its NIRP bomb in January, perhaps it is wise to give the 'economy' time to absorb the craziness as
And then the chaos erupted:
- *BOJ MAINTAINS MONETARY BASE TARGET AT 80T YEN
- *BOJ MAINTAINS POLICY BALANCE RATE AT MINUS 0.100%
- *BOJ:FROM APRIL, ETFS TO INCREASE AT 3.3T YEN ANUALLY AS PLANNED
- *BOJ SAYS IT NEEDS TO BE MINDFUL OF RISK TO PRICE TREND
- *BOJ'S BOARD VOTES 7-2 TO KEEP NEGATIVE RATE UNCHANGED
- *BOJ CITES RISKS TO DELAY IN CHANGING DEFLATIONARY MINDSET
So nothing for now – more is always possible – and the board is split. Of course while expectations were for no change (from economists) the market seems disappointed…
Since Kuroda unleashed NIRP, things have been mixed…
Stocks are 'just' unchanged, JPY is stronger…
But the good news is yields have collapsed…
I trust that many of you are familiar with the story of Peter Pan, in which it says, “the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.” Yes, what we need is a positive attitude and conviction.
In other words – you have to believe to receive – or the entire ponzi collapses.
Perhaps alternative forms of stimulation are required:
Charts: Bloomberg
Source: Peter Pan(demonium) Erupts As BoJ "Disappoints" With No Change
Prescription Painkiller Crisis: Why Do Americans Consume 80 Percent Of All Prescription Painkillers?
If Americans are so happy, then why do we consume 80 percent of the entire global supply of prescription painkillers? Less than 5 percent of the world’s population lives in this country, and yet we buy four-fifths of these highly addictive drugs. In the United States today, approximately 4.7 million Americans are addicted to prescription pain relievers, and that represents about a 300 percent increase since 1999. If you personally know someone that is suffering from this addiction, then you probably already know how immensely destructive these drugs can be. Someone that was formally living a very healthy and normal life can be reduced to a total basket case within a matter of weeks.
And of course many don’t make it back at all. According to the CDC, more than 28,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2014. Incredibly, those deaths represented 60 percent of all drug overdose deaths in the United States for that year…
A report released by the US Centers for Disesase Control and Prevention (CDC) in January revealed that drug-overdose deaths reached a new high in 2014, totaling 47,055 people. Opioids, a type of powerful painkiller that requires a prescription, were involved in 60% of those deaths.
Many Americans that start out on legal opioids quickly find themselves moving over to heroin because it is often cheaper and easier to obtain, and the U.S. is now facing a tremendous epidemic of heroin abuse as well. In fact, the number of Americans that die of a heroin overdose nearly quadrupled between 2000 to 2013.
Finally, the federal government has started to take notice of this crisis. A bill was recently passed to spend more than a billion dollars over the next two year fighting this problem.
But as long as doctors are writing thousands upon thousands of new prescriptions for these painkillers each year, this crisis is not going to go away any time soon.
In the Appalachians, these prescription painkillers are commonly known as “hillbilly heroin“, and all of the attention that the New Hampshire primaries received focused a lot of attention on how this crisis is destroying countless numbers of lives up in the Northeast. But one survey found that the states with the biggest problems with painkiller addiction are actually in the West…
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health, a survey of approximately 67,500 people across the United States, found that the states with the highest rates of narcotic painkiller abuse were in the West – Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington.
Unless you are about to die, I would very strongly recommend that you resist any attempt by your doctor to put you on these “medications”. Just consider what happened to one stay-at-home mother named Norah Mangan…
I am an educated, suburban wife and stay-at-home mother of four. Life had been good to me until a fateful visit with an orthopedic physician, my chief complaint being mild arthritic pain in my toes. My physician handed me the first of many monthly prescriptions for Oxycodone …read more
Source: Prescription Painkiller Crisis: Why Do Americans Consume 80 Percent Of All Prescription Painkillers?
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Central Banks – The New Nukes?
By Tyler Durden
You know something is strange when “the riskiest” country in the world is the nation whose central bank everyone is relying on to 'save the world' and “the safest” stock market in the world is from a nation whose neighbor is actively test-firing nuclear missiles? It appears activist central banks – following Draghi's “kitchen sink” – have become the new normal's 'nukes'.
As Goldman notes, Brazil & Japan vol is highest and Korea lowest on %-ile basis
The obsession with deflation among central banks is leading them to try the same thing over and over again with nothing to show for it, but continued economic stagnation.
On the other hand, an interesting thing is happening. As the ECB and the Bank of Japan have loosened the easy-money spigot even more, their respective currencies have actually gained on other currencies. The reasoning is apparently that the latest moves represent the bottom to how low the central banks are willing to go. That is, investors are betting that after this, the central banks will start to tighten.
Maybe. But we’ll see. Right now, we’re only talking about “bazookas” and “kitchen sinks.” We haven’t even started talking about “heavy artillery” or “going nuclear.”
It ain’t over ’til it’s over, and as George Magnus wrote today, “helicopter money” may be next: “If today’s kitchen sink episode ends with a whimper, as seems likely, and governments continue to stand aside from the economic fray, Europeans may demand still more of their central bank.”
How does this end well?
Source: Central Banks – The New Nukes?
Love returns as Tinder fixes a glitch
The popular dating app said the temporary glitch was not permanent.
Source: Love returns as Tinder fixes a glitch
Fight For Freedom Or Humbly Accept Submission
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,
Submission to the state is a time-honoured tradition, a concept supported by governing bodies since time immemorial.
In days of yore, men submitted to whichever member of the tribe was the mightiest in battle. By doing so, they stood a better chance of succeeding in battle, thereby diminishing the likelihood of their own death or enslavement.
Later on, as tribes became more tied to the land and communities sprang up, the idea of a strong leader still made sense. Not only might he do the best job of leading the protection of the town or village, he might also travel outside the community to attack other communities, bringing back spoils for all to benefit from. (Not too civilised, maybe, but still, the reasoning behind submission to the leader made sense.)
Later, settlements grew larger and, increasingly, many villages and towns would find themselves joined together collectively, under a national banner, with a single army to protect them. And, again, the leader would most likely be a fierce and formidable warrior. But a significant change was taking place. Whilst the warrior leader was away (sometimes for years), invading other communities, it was necessary to have leadership at home – administrative leadership. Predictably, this leadership also sought the loyalty and submission of the people.
There was a new wrinkle at this juncture as the administrative leadership did not have to prove itself repeatedly in battle to gain submission. It was expected merely due to the fact that the leaders held power over the people.
The expectation of loyalty and submission to a government simply because it is the government is an unnatural and invalid one.
Today, most leaders are primarily political rather than military, and even those who wear a military uniform almost never take part in actual battle, let alone lead the charge. For this reason, the original reason for loyalty and submission should be outmoded.
Why, then, does it persist? Well, in fact, it generally persists as long as there is prosperity and a people are prepared to tolerate dominance. However, should prosperity diminish dramatically, obeisance tends to diminish accordingly. At some point, the leaders conclude that they may be losing the submission of the people and need to reinforce it. This is done by one of two methods and, on occasion, both at the same time.
The first is force. An increased police state can create a greater assurance of submission through fear of those in uniform.
The second is inspiration. A condition of warfare often succeeds as a method of inspiring people to give up some of their rights and fall in behind a leader. Although, in the modern world, we never see a national leader actually suiting up for battle, the mere fact that he’s in charge of the fight from a safe distance often works to inspire people to be more submissive to an administrative government.
Following the English Revolution of 1688, we Britons found …read more
Source: Fight For Freedom Or Humbly Accept Submission
The "Surprising" Answer What Energy Companies Have Spent Their Newly Issued Equity Proceeds On
By Tyler Durden
One week ago, as confirmation that the recent oil rally is merely being used by banks to force debtor companies to sell equity and to repay as much secured loans as possible,
Which goes back to what MatlinPatterson’s Michael Lipsky said some time ago: “we always assume that secured lenders would roll into the bankruptcy become the DIP lenders, emerge from bankruptcy as the new secured debt of the company. But they don’t want to be there, so you are buying the debt behind them and you could find yourself in a situation where you could lose 100% of your money.“
For the answer why banks are scrambling to get out, ask the Dallas Fed.
And since the Dallas Fed won’t answer, the question remains: if the secured banks “don’t want to be there”, why are new unsecured equity investors so desperately eager to take their place, and just what do the banks know that these new equity buyers clearly don’t?
Source: The "Surprising" Answer What Energy Companies Have Spent Their Newly Issued Equity Proceeds On
