Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Facebook CEO Calls Obama Regarding Out of Control NSA; Change You Can't Believe In
Crude Headed to $80s? Massive Speculative Positions vs. It's the Economy Stupid
Democrat Sponsored "Income Inequality"; Law of Bad Ideas, Yet Again

Facebook CEO Calls Obama Regarding Out of Control NSA; Change You Can't Believe In

Posted: 13 Mar 2014 10:49 PM PDT

President Obama promised changes on NSA. Changes, except to the worse, are nowhere to be found. This prompted a call from Facebook CEO straight to president Obama.

Please consider Facebook's Zuckerberg Called Obama on NSA Frustration

"The U.S. government should be the champion for the Internet, not a threat," he wrote in a post on his Facebook page yesterday. "They need to be much more transparent about what they're doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst."

Zuckerberg's comments follow reports that the National Security Agency has been disguising itself as Facebook to gain access to users' computers for spying, according to documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden to the online news site The Intercept. It was the latest in a string of revelations about government surveillance that led Facebook, along with Google Inc., Apple Inc. and others, to call on the U.S. to disclose more about government requests for user data.

"We encrypt communications, we use secure protocols for traffic, we encourage people to use multiple factors for authentication and we go out of our way to help fix issues we find in other people's services," Zuckerberg said. "When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government."

Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for Obama's National Security Council, confirmed the conversation between Zuckerberg and the president. She declined to give any details.

So Mr. President, where is the change you promised?

I think Obama needs a new slogan "change you can't believe in".

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Crude Headed to $80s? Massive Speculative Positions vs. It's the Economy Stupid

Posted: 13 Mar 2014 02:09 PM PDT

With the slowdown in China, and global slowdown in general, inquiring minds may be wondering "where is the price of oil headed?"

No one can answer that question with certainty, but Saxo Bank has an opinion worth considering.

Via email Steen Jakobsen, chief economist of Saxo Bank explains ...

It's not my role to run Saxo's official view on Crude. That job I leave to my expert Ole S. Hansen, who by the way is doing an excellent job.

This is how we see the rest of 2014 using our data:

Oil in US Dollars

This is "brave" call but when you consider the speculative size of the market – you get the "potential" on the downside.

Massive Speculative Positions

It's the Economy Stupid

Asia is driving global growth down led by China – due to the desperate need for rebalancing away from topline growth
Q1 and Q2 will be disappointing on growth. No, it's not the weather – it's the economy stupid! – this will drive demand down.

The one risk remains escalation of geopolitical risk but supply from Latin America, Africa and US/Canada/Mexico will flow more richly, Ole S Hansen even tells me that the supply/demand function should dictate lower oil prices.

We are long APR-16, 95.00 strike puts (0.55 cents vs. price of 1.25 now)

Safe travels,
Steen

Long Liquidation

I pinged my friend Pater Tenebrarum at Acting Man for his thoughts and he replied ...

The idea that the positioning introduces a lot of downside risk? Absolutely. Last time a new record in net spec length was hit, crude had a pretty steep correction. Of course, the geopolitical risk is precisely the problem - there is lots of it right now. So it is unknowable when the positioning will matter, but eventually it will.

Wine Country Conference II

Want to hear Steen Jakobsen's thoughts on the Global economy in person? You have a chance.

Steen is one of many excellent speakers at Wine Country Conference II. Please register today if you haven't already.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Democrat Sponsored "Income Inequality"; Law of Bad Ideas, Yet Again

Posted: 13 Mar 2014 10:21 AM PDT

Debate rages over "income inequality".

CEOs makes hundreds or thousands of times more than workers. That is one aspect of income inequality. And it's easily explained: The Fed's inflation policies, bank bailouts, Fractional Reserve Lending, and crony capitalism are to blame.

That blame is nonpartisan.

Rather than attack the problem, "progressive" partisans howl over minimum wages.

Democrat-Sponsored Income Inequality

There is one major aspect of "income inequality" that you never hear president Obama or the Democrats mention, precisely because they are to blame.

Democrat-sponsored "income inequality" is even more insidious because it directly affects middle-class Americans who pay high taxes so public employees can retire in comfort with gold-plated guaranteed-for-life pensions.

Gold-Plated Retirements

In support of my above thesis, please consider In San Jose, Generous Pensions for City Workers Come at Expense of Nearly All Else.

Here in the wealthy heart of Silicon Valley, the roads are pocked with potholes, the libraries are closed three days a week and a slew of city recreation centers have been handed over to nonprofit groups. Taxes have gone up even as city services are in decline, and Mayor Chuck Reed is worried.

The source of Reed's troubles: gold-plated pensions that guarantee retired city workers as much as 90 percent of their former salaries. Retirement costs are eating up nearly a quarter of the city's budget, forcing Reed (D) to skimp on everything else.

Employee costs are growing nearly five times faster than revenues leading to fewer workers and budget deficits.

"This is one of the dichotomies of California: I am cutting services to my low- and moderate-income people . . . to pay really generous benefits for public employees who make a good living and have an even better retirement," he said in an interview in his office overlooking downtown.

In San Jose and across the nation, state and local officials are increasingly confronting a vision of startling injustice: Poor and middle-class taxpayers — who often have no retirement savings — are paying higher taxes so public employees can retire in relative comfort.

"I got sick and tired of cutting services to my people — 10 years of services cuts — in order to balance the budget," Reed said. "We got to the point where we were facing service delivery insolvency."

In California, cities large and small are struggling to pay the growing public-sector retirement tab. Meanwhile, 55 percent of the state's private-sector workforce — 6.3 million — have no retirement plan on the job.

Other governments are also struggling. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) has been pushing to scale back pensions for city workers, warning that without reform, city services will wither. Rhode Island enacted pension reforms in 2011 that trimmed retirement benefits for new workers and for those already on the payroll.

Enter the Law of Bad Ideas

Instead of admitting the system is hopelessly broken, Sacramento lawmakers want to create the nation's first retirement savings plan for private-sector workers in which the state manages the money and guarantees a minimum rate of return.

Both cities and the State of California are struggling to pay pensions, yet the proposed solution by California lawmakers is to have the state guarantee even more pensions.

Worst yet, this guarantee would come when treasury yields are in the gutter and stocks 50% overvalued and poised for losses in any time period shorter than seven years according to John Hussman (and I happen to agree). For details, please see It Is Informed Optimism To Wait For The Rain

Note: John Hussman is one of many great speakers at Wine Country Conference II. If you haven't yet signed up, please do.

For such ideas to be proposed at the worst time is mind-boggling, yet strictly in accordance with "The Law of Bad Ideas".

A number of corollaries clearly apply.

Corollary Three: Those in positions of political power not only have the worst ideas, they also have the means to see those ideas are implemented.

Corollary Four: The worse the idea, the more likely it is to be embraced by academia and political opportunists.

Corollary Five: No politically acceptable idea is so bad it cannot be made worse.

The reason CEOs make out like bandits is explained in Monetarism, Abenomics, QE, and Minimum Wage Proposals: One Bad Idea Leads to Another, and Another

Brief History

Monetarists act on the theory falling prices are a bad idea
The Fed prints money and holds rates too low
Housing bubble builds
Medical and education prices soar
Student loans soar to "help" the students
Because housing is not affordable numerous affordable housing programs appear causing still more unwarranted housing demand. Few see the bubble because housing is not in the CPI
Housing crashes
The affordable housing advocates are abhorred by falling prices
Fed bails out banks and steps in to support housing prices
Income inequality soars
Students remain stuck with debt

Because of one idiotic notion, that "falling prices are a bad thing", the Fed has generally managed to keep the CPI rising, with some prices rising much faster than others.

That leads to corollary number six, mentioned in the above link:

Law of Bad Ideas Corollary Six: Bad ideas lead to more bad ideas to fix problems caused by previous bad ideas.

And so here we are. To bail out the absurd idea that public pension promises are supportable, complete with 7.5 to 8.0 percent annual returns, when 10-year treasuries yield 2.67%, California proposes insuring private pensions as well.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

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Thursday, March 13, 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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