iBankCoin
I've been doing this a long time.
Joined Oct 7, 2015
102 Blog Posts

Why are the Summer Olympics held in countries deeply in debt?

imageA few years ago there was a great article by Mark Byrnes in The Atlantic who wrote about the aftermath of the $15 Billion (USD) spent by the bankrupt country of Greece on the Summer Games in Athens that took place on 2004. It featured some photographs of the abandoned structures used at the Games that cost the Greek citizens $15 billion dollars they did not even have.

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And now we have Brazil, currently in the midst of full-blown economic and political crises of Epic Proportions, stepping up to the plate, complete with the requisite “mascots”, in this case a cat named Vinicius with arms that expand to great lengths (not sure of the significance)  and something named “Tom” that looks like it is wearing a banana tree on his head:

 

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Rio 2016 organizers say they hope Vinicius will help them raise 1 billion reals ($398 million) in merchandising.

Which is all well and good until you realize that so far Brazil has spent well in excess of $7 Billion (USD) that they also do not have. Much more will be spent.

86,000 soldiers and policemen will be deployed to cut down on the frequency of terrorist attacks on the huge crowds. And by now you should have seen the horrid, festering, refuse-filled waterways to be used as venues for the acquatic events. As bad as the preparations were for the Athens games, the President of the IOC has called these the “worst ever”.

This did not stop Moody’s giving the Games their blessing.

The cub reporters at Moody’s ignored not only the übervirus making the rounds in Brazil, but also the fact that the country of Brazil has no money, and is currently in danger of either defaulting on debt payments or if lucky, convincing some hapless bankers to postpone delivery of said funds. Yet helpfully, they give us a couple of stock tips, possibly the only companies (besides the building contractors) at the Games that could actually make some money. Bloomberg’s Jonathan Levin writes:

Without making a call about Zika, Moody’s analysts led by Barbara Mattos wrote that more retail activity and tourists spending with foreign currencies should benefit Cielo SA, Brazil’s largest card-payment processor. Localiza Rent a Car SA, the official car rental company of the Games, and Latam Airlines Group SA, official airline of International Olympic Committee members, also stand to gain.

More lasting benefits will accrue to the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area, where the events will take place, Moody’s said. Not including sports facilities, the city has gotten about about 25 billion reais ($7.1 billion) in infrastructure investment — toll roads, ports, other projects — as a result of the Olympic preparations. <Editor’s Note: “has gotten”, I assume, means “spent by the State”> The Olympic legacy will also include a key subway expansion and a tramway project from domestic airport Santos Dumont, all of which could make the city a more efficient place to do business, Moody’s said.
Brazil is in the midst of a crushing recession and political upheaval that led to the removal of Dilma Rousseff from the presidency three months before the start of the Games. Moody’s said the Olympics are neutral for Brazil’s sovereign credit quality, and Brazil’s economy is still set to contract 3.7 percent this year.

What a bunch of horseshit. Brazil will be lucky if there is not full-blown social unrest after the Games end. This will not occur during the Festivities due to massive flag-waving and propaganda. The President is going on trial for lying about the size of the fiscal problems (it is estimated the trial will take 180 days). Backlash against possible social reforms proposed by interim government officials has already been seen. Reuters’ Brad Haynes reports:

One of Brazil’s biggest newspapers, O Estado de S. Paulo, reported on Friday, citing an interview with the minister, that the government had suspended housing program Minha Casa Minha Vida during a 40-day review.
“Under no conditions would we talk at this point of suspending the Minha Casa Minha Vida program,” Araujo said in a statement published by the ministry. “What we are doing is being cautious, evaluating what we can promise to avoid false hopes.”
Shares of MRV Engenharia SA (SA:MRVE3), the biggest homebuilder in the low-income housing program, dropped nearly 8 percent in early trading before paring losses to 1 percent as the minister waved away concerns.

The health minister also said the size of the public health system had to be reassessed, before retracting his comments.
His peer in the education ministry said he supported monthly fees for post-graduate courses at federal universities, but then guaranteed that all public universities would remain free.
Geddel Vieira Lima, the secretary of the government, acknowledged on Tuesday that some policy considerations “were being transmitted to society in the wrong way,” asking journalists for “patience” amid the transition.

I suppose they could get Sen. Bernie Sanders down there to straighten things out and keep everything free.

State-owned oil company Petrobras is reeling under it’s own scandals, amid the current woeful state of the petroleum industry. Ethanol production, once hailed as Brazil’s miracle, has helped decimate the sugar industry.

Not all athletes are happy about the Games either, as anti-doping rules were strengthened after the revelations of doping on a massive scale at previous Games has been alleged. Banned participants let loose with this stunning press release:

For Immediate Release–

We, the 31 Olympians who tested positive for doping, completely agree that we should be banned from the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.

Prohibiting us from going to the country where the Zika virus is thriving will definitely teach us a lesson. We will absolutely consider this a punishment and not see it as a stroke of good fortune that could save our health and the health of our future children.

We also do not see doping as a godsend that will save us from rowing, sailing and swimming in the raw sewage that floats in the waters of Rio de Janeiro. Getting retroactively caught doping is certainly not what some of us are referring to as “the single luckiest thing that has ever happened to us, including inheriting athletic genes.”

Doping is a serious violation, and taking the Olympics away from us is a serious punishment. We have dedicated our lives to competing in the Olympics. We train hard all day, everyday. It is all we know.

But if banned from Rio, we’d have to stop training. All of a sudden, we would have to sleep late, not lift weights for 7 hours a day, and eat as much ice cream as we want without consulting a nutritionist. What a drastic change!

We wish we could turn back time and make better choices. We definitely do not see doping as the ticket to the only rest we have had since we were small children and a coach noticed our potential. Nope, it’s a punishment, for sure, for sure.

Our fate is in your hands, International Olympic Committee. Teach us a lesson by sparing us from the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.

Happy Saturday. Smoke ’em if you got’em.

 

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THROWING IN THE TOWEL ON GE

I’ve held GE for the better part of a decade. It has been, by far, the worst investing decision I have made in the last thirty years. I could place the blame on Jeff Immelt, but that is like blaming Barack Hussein Obama for the Iraq War.

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Please do not tell me that I have made a mistake. GE’s 52-week chart looks pretty darned good, in fact. But it is still far below what I paid for it and I do not believe it will fare well in a market correction – which is imminent in my opinion.

I blame Jack Welch, that crazy loon you often see on CNBC, usually spouting complete nonsense to the delight of the idiot talking heads on television’s worst financial news channel.

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Jack Welch, the Genius behind Six Sigma, the man who was once lauded as the most brilliant CEO of the 20th Century. This cover should have read “How Jack Welch Will Ruin GE”. Win at any cost, number one at any cost (especially employee job security), ill-advised diversification, you name it, Jack did it. Poorly. The effects of his reign really only became clear once he was gone to write books about his own brilliance.

In the eyes of many shareholders Immelt has not done much better, moving far too slowly for investors to take him seriously in divesting from the disaster that was GE Capital. Despite the S&P and DJIA regaining all that was lost in the crash of 2008, GE has not performed well at all, rat-slapped in comparison to the rest of the S&P.

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Immelt has been able to keep his job due to GE being TBTP (“Too Big To Proxy”). Unless your last name is Icahn, the chances of unseating any of today’s Rock Star CEO’s is highly unlikely. To his credit, GE Capital is now a fraction of what it was only two years ago, as GE attempts to “transform itself into a Technology Company” – going so far as to move it’s HQ to Silicon Valley East, aka Boston – leaving the poisonous corporate tax disaster that is my home state of Connecticut reeling in it’s wake.

I Sold my GE yesterday morning and I will take what is left of my original “investment” and use it to add to my growing stake in TLT, which will now reach the 25% level of my portfolio, as prescribed by my Primary Care Physician, Dr. Fly.

Herewith, a YTD comparison of TLT and GE prices, with GE being the crappy blue line, not the lovely yellow one:

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Industrials segment has been kicking it, but all other segments of GE have been performing miserably.

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This has all been written about before by far wiser folk than I. Jack Welch became the Model of what a modern American CEO should aspire to be. He almost single-handedly transformed what was a culture of Employer Paternalism into a culture of win-at-all-cost regardless of the effect on the workforce.

Carly Fiorina’s tenure at Hewlett-Packard is a perfect example of Jack Welch’s heartless brand of  Corporate Ethics. I highly recommend Thomas O’Boyle’s brilliant book to anyone interested in the subject:

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IMF Proposes Eurozone Debt Relief for Greece Until 2040

imageThe WSJ reports that Angela Merkel is not happy, but she may agree as she needs the IMF to continue as a funding partner. Some are even saying that the debt relief could extend to the year 2080.

Are you fucking kidding me? All this will do is embolden the leftists and unions that drove Greece into the shitter in the first place. Nothing will change.

The IMF wants the loans to Greece to fall due gradually in the following decades, and as late as 2080, according to the IMF’s proposal—a demand that goes far beyond what Greece’s European creditors, particularly Germany, have said they are willing to do to help Greece regain its financial health.

Greece’s interest rate on eurozone loans would be fixed for 30 to 40 years at its current average level of 1.5%, with all interest payments postponed until loans start falling due, under the IMF proposal.

The IMF’s proposal, presented to eurozone governments late last week—and described by one European official as “hardcore, really”—would keep Greece’s annual debt-service needs below 15% of its gross domestic product, under the IMF’s relatively pessimistic forecast for Greece’s long-term economic trajectory.

Eurozone governments, led by Germany, are reluctant to make such major concessions on their loans to Greece, which currently total just over €200 billion ($226 billion) with around another €60 billion to come under the latest Greek bailout plan. Merkel is now between a rock and a hard place.

I wrote about this last week here.

The German Chancellery is pushing hard for a deal with the IMF, say people familiar with the talks. But the IMF has said it cannot rejoin the bailout unless the eurozone deeply restructures its Greek loans. Greece’s debt burden is “highly unsustainable,” IMF head Christine Lagarde said recently.

Between this and the unchecked immigration of undocumented 23-year old Syrian, Afghan and Pakistani men flooding Germany via Greece, do not be surprised, Dear Reader, if the extreme right-wing takes control of the Bundestag for the first time since 1945.

A banner reading 'Mum multiculti' and depicting a manipulated image German Chancellor Angela Merkel is carried by a protester behind the German flag as some thousands of people take part in a demonstration initiated by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party against what they call the uncontrolled immigration and asylum abuse in Erfurt, central Germany, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2015. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer)
A banner reading ‘Mum multiculti’ and depicting a manipulated image German Chancellor Angela Merkel is carried by a protester behind the German flag as some thousands of people take part in a demonstration initiated by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party against what they call the uncontrolled immigration and asylum abuse in Erfurt, central Germany, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2015. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer)

A major Greek-loan restructuring would require a contentious debate and vote in the Bundestag, with the potential for a rebellion among conservative lawmakers and a boost to the rising right-wing populist party AfD.

German officials thus want to make only limited adjustments to Greece’s loan terms now, and postpone major changes that would need a Bundestag vote until 2018—after Germany’s national elections in 2017.

GERMANY-ASSAULTS/There are larger reasons even than Greek bailouts behind the need for the Christian Demicrats to postpone debate until 2018. The AfD made enormous gains in the regional elections in March, surging in two of three states and making substantial inroads in Merkel’s own state of Baden-Wurttemberg. The largest base of support, unsurprisingly, is in the eastern half of the country, the former Soviet-satellite East Germany, where unemployment is highest and anti-Islamization sentiment is strongest.

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China Has Issues. But You Knew That.

China’s economic growth has cooled to 25-year lows, weighed down by a combination of weak demand at home and abroad, factory overcapacity and increasing amounts of debt.

The economic downturn in China, that Engine of Growth that has propelled the rest of the world’s pathetic economy for the better part of a decade, has shit the bed. Make no mistake about it.

Industrial production climbed 6 percent in April from a year earlier, down from 6.8 percent in March and missing economists’ estimates for 6.5 percent. Retail sales also missed analyst forecasts, rising 10.1 percent, while fixed-asset investment increased 10.5 percent in the January-April period versus economists’ expectation for 11 percent.

One year ago, a potential slowdown was all the media could write about. it was *everything*. Now that it is actually happening, there is not a whole lot of media hysteria. I can throw charts and data at you right now, but it is Saturday. Relax and have fun. You have seen it all before. Ad nauseam. Perhaps you have become complacent. Chicken Little has squawked too many times. The sky is falling, the sky is falling.

But it is debt, both individual and corporate, that is most concerning. Not just from the magnitude of it, but the fact that a huge percentage of it will never be repaid.

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Right now, Politburo members are scurrying about, pretending to fix the problem all while watching their backs so as not to wind up in a labor camp, or worse. And they are scared to death of doing anything that could cause increasing unemployment.

We saw how the price of copper was soaring in China in Q1. We saw that it was vapor, hoarding on a massive scale, support by government spending to stimulate construction. Now we see the same thing playing out in steel. Mere weeks ago, headlines were trumpeting the rise in steel output. US Steel and British companies were crying foul. Again, the output was propped up by spending – and now the tap has been shut off and margins are plummeting.

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More here:

Source: China’s production, investment, retail sales all disappoint in April B

Enjoy your Saturday.

 

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This is fuckery of the highest order

Yeah, oil again. You can’t escape it. It’s behavior since March has often been baffling, to say the least. To say it has been trading purely on rumor and speculation is The Grand Understatement of 2016 (so far, plenty more to come before we ring in the new year).

Bit-players in this cesspool often claim it is a manipulated market. I have treated these people with scorn…until today. I am jumping on the bandwagon. The Fly said the other day, only half-joking, that he could imagine a shadowy individual in a ten-gallon hat, running from the scene of the fire up in the Alberta. After the Doha meeting (an attempt by OPEC members to “freeze” production at current absurd levels) fell apart, a “convenient” strike in the Kuwaiti oil fields tempered any blowback in futures. So with what should have been a hammer-blow to the futures price, with the Iranian and Saudi ministers throwing poop at one another on Al-Jazeera TV, the media focus quickly shifted to the effects that the Kuwaiti strike would have on the price. The strike was over in a very short time, with Kuwaiti officials mumbling dire warnings to the participants whilst brandishing those curved swords they like to carry around everywhere. No matter. The disaster that was Doha was quickly forgotten.

The crap being thrown about the room by the Asians re their currency has not exactly helped things, but so much more is in play here. And Grandma Yellin appears to be fading into the background as a relevant item in this discussion.

So here we are Dear Reader, left to stomp on this flaming bag of shit that someone left on the front porch after ringing the bell. The bell ringer, of course, being Tuesday’s API Reports which showed an unexpected rise in crude stocks, to the tune of 3.450M above forecast of .3M. Coupled with an unexpected rise in gasoline inventories of .271M at the start of traditional summer driving season. Distillates came in pretty close to consensus. In Normal Times, this would have been greeted with a big, fat meltdown in the front-month contract, but this time was different. This time the price went up, before settling back a bit, into range.

Today gave us yet another triple-digit bitch slap on Wall Street…but wait, wait…oil is what? Up by 3%?  What is this? Why, it is a -3.41M draw in crude stocks, courtesy of the Wednesday EIA reports. And look there, gasoline inventories have also depleted handsomely, down a robust -1.231M.

Throw in the Genscape flyovers which attempt to gauge tank levels via infrared scan earlier in the week (the Genscaoe numbers were also bearish) and you usually have plenty of data to help you decide which side of the trade will make you some money. But not this week. This week we have the smell of rotting fish, which seems to be confusing people.

Savvy futures traders can usually take both reports in the aggregate when playing the futures market. The Baker-Hughes weekly rig counts, while relevant, have diminished in importance as oil companies have made amazing efficiency gains during oil’s downturn since 2014. And the rate of idled rigs has slowed from it’s torrid pace in January.

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The smell of fish permeates this week’s supply data

I  mentioned back in April about my trepidation when the Dow hovers around 18000. Yet here we are in mid-May, bouncing around that number every damned day for the last month. Investors are showing some fear. But not the oil speculators.

How can the two numbers be off by almost 7M? How is this even possible?

From the API website:

Myth: API only collects data from its members.
Fact: API collects data from members and non-members.

Myth: API’s WSB is an estimate while EIA’s report is a census.
Fact: Both API and EIA do not collect 100% of the data. Both publish estimates.

Myth: “sometimes they [respondents] give the API incomplete data”.
Fact: API collects an exact copy of the data submitted to EIA.

Myth: API’s WSB estimates are not accurate.
Fact: Both API and EIA publish extremely accurate estimates every week. In fact – when looking at the 2012 data for Crude, Gasoline, and Distillate stocks – the monthly estimates are within 1% of each other 78% of the time. To verify API’s WSB data accuracy, we urge analysts and reporters to compare our WSB to the definitive numbers published in the EIA’s Petroleum Supply Monthly.

I smell fish. Rotting, stinky fish left on the pier, suitable for no one except the seagulls, who will consume anything.

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Greece brought to standstill by 48-hour strike as Christine Lagarde demands immediate talks on debt relief

 

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This story is a couple of days old. Remember when the Greece Debt Crisis was front-page news? Labor unions in Greece want to bring back those good old days. The Greek economy has not magically healed itself. The shit is about to hit the fan. Just in time for Brexit.

Tensions also increased between two of Greece’s bailout monitors, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund, as IMF chief Christine Lagarde demanded urgent talks on Greek debt relief.

In a letter to eurozone finance ministers, Ms Lagarde said that talks on “contingency” tax measures that could raise cash if Greece’s finances disappointed were breaking down.

“For us to support Greece with a new IMF arrangement, it is essential that the financing and debt relief from Greece’s European partners are based on fiscal targets that are realistic because they are supported by credible measures to reach them,” she wrote in the letter seen by the FT.

Meanwhile, Adedy, the country’s biggest public sector union, labelled the proposed new pension cuts “despicable”.

The strike, which is also being joined by major private sector union GSEE, will be followed by a rally outside the Greek parliament on Sunday evening.

The EU wants this kept quiet with Brexit looming. Good luck with that. Until then, we dance!

Source: Greece brought to standstill by 48-hour strike as Christine Lagarde demands immediate talks on debt relief

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FCC confirms approval of Charter, Time Warner Cable merger

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission confirmed on Friday that it had voted to approve Charter Communications Inc’s acquisitions of Time Warner Cable Inc and Bright House Networks.

Source: FCC confirms approval of Charter, Time Warner Cable merger

This is profoundly disturbing.

How many media companies are left? Between this behemoth, Rupert Murdoch and a handful of others, we are tumbling headlong into a scenario where the flow of information is being squeezed tighter and tighter into a controllable, easily filtered data stream.

It is all for the best, Citizens.  We know what is best for you. the shareholders have approved the deal, and the Authorities have granted the Special Waivers we spoke about.

 

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Forget the Oil Glut. Prepare for the gasoline glut.

imageAs crude seemingly hits new YTD highs daily while we are literally swimming in the black stuff, there is something hanging over the head of the number chasers and speculators that have been driving the futures price for the past month. As crude storage reaches critical levels all over the world and crude tankers line up in ports hoping to be able to offload their cargo, refiners in Asia are flooding the market with gasoline. This from Reuters:

“Asia contributed more than 50 percent of global gasoline growth last year,” said Energy Aspects analyst Nevyn Nah. “Yet gasoline cracks (crack spreads) are way lower this year compared to the same time last year because supply has overwhelmed.”

Oil market analysts at Barclays said on Monday that “non-OECD product exports… have the potential to move prices lower over the next several months”.

The article goes on to say that Japanese refiners can’t sell enough product at home, so they have turned to the international markets. China is exporting 316% more diesel YoY and gasoline exports have increased by 9%. China is refining more gasoline and diesel than it can consume. Think about that for a minute.

In Singapore, traders have started storing excess gasoline aboard tankers as they run out of onshore storage.

Goldman Sachs already warned late last year that an emerging glut in refined products would eventually spill back into the crude market.

“If all the major consumers sell off their gasoline, it begs the question who will buy it?” said one Singapore fuel trader. “The answer is that much will remain unsold and in storage, and once that happens prices will crash.”

Way back in the dark days of Fall 2015 (remember when?) there was a rather large surprise build of gasoline in one week’s EIA data and crude futures turned to shit in the blink of an eye.

It’s tough to pick a top in any bullish trend, but I think great rewards are coming for patient bears trading /CL. Just watch out for the number chasers and the speculators.

This is a great time to show the world your Patriotism, so go support our AmeroCanadiMexican Automobile Manufacturers and purchase a new pickup or full-size SUV. With $1 gasoline on the horizon you will thank The Maven for his foresight. Who wants a Tesla when electricity is so expensive.

Love your machine.

 

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Oil, Saudi Arabia, and The Case for Iran – Part 1

 

imageI understand that soon I may be able to buy some small percentage of Saudi Aramco via a 5% offering from our Dear Friends at the House of Saud. Even The Maven has his limits. The Maven is a Mercenary and has profited handsomely from investing in Philip Morris over the years. But this is bullshit. This is UN-American. Why don’t I just PayPal some funds to Abu in Anbar Province so he can replenish his stockpile of IED’s?

Saudi Arabia is the most extreme fundamentalist state in the world. It’s also a missionary state. It’s expending hmuge efforts — has been for many years — to disseminate its extremist Wahhabi-Salafi version of Islam, all with U.S. backing.” — Noam Chomsky

imageWhen the subject of the Middle East comes up, common sense flies right out the window. Right now, as we speak, Wahhabist versions of the Qur’an are being cranked out of Saudi Arabia to be disseminated all over the world. There is a concerted effort to replace the holy book with it’s Wahhabi-Salafi interpretation. This is a drive to challenge the very idea of Islam. And it is being fueled by US Petrodollars and an alarming alliance with the very people who attacked us on 9/11.

Hijackers by Nationality:
Egypt
Mohamed Atta

United Arab Emirates
Fayez Banihammad
Marwan al Shehhi

Lebanon
Ziad Jarrah

Saudi Arabia
Ahmed al Ghamdi
Hamza al Ghamdi
Saeed al Ghamdi
Hani Hanjour
Nawaf al Hazmi
Salem al Hazmi
Ahmad al Haznawi
Ahmed al Nami
Khalid al Mihdhar
Majed Moqed
Abdul Aziz al Omari
Mohand al Shehri
Wail al Shehri
Waleed al Shehri
Satam al Suqami

So – what is the common thread in this list? Every single hijacker was a Sunni. And most, if not all of them, were influenced by Wahhabist ideology. Up next, The Case for Iran. Stay Tuned.

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The Sword of Damocles

Negative yields now account for a quarter of JPMorgan’s index for government bonds. No wait, I’m sorry, that was in January. Surely things are better, yes? Perhaps this handy chart will help:

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“Bank of Japan’s Kuroda says rates could go to -.4%”

There is a policy meeting in Japan scheduled for the 27th of April. The fate of Abenomics should be the Topic of Discussion, but we know better. Last week The Wall Street Journal reported that BOJ Governor Kuroda called the yen’s recent rise “excessive”. Steps will be taken.

 

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