iBankCoin
Joined Nov 11, 2007
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The Kiwi Continues on it’s Longest Bull Run in Two Years

New Zealand’s dollar climbed versus most of its major peers before data forecast to show building permits rose to a five-year high, after the central bank said a housing boom could force it to raise interest rates.

The nation’s currency, nicknamed the kiwi, held its longest stretch of weekly gains in two years against the so-called Aussie dollar on bets the spread to the Reserve Bank of Australia’s benchmark rate will narrow. New Zealand’s currency extended a weekly advance against the greenback after data showed the U.S. economy grew less than expected. Australian bond yields fell to the lowest since November….”

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South Africa’s Middle Class Doubles Since 2004

“The black middle class in South Africa, which held its first all-race elections in 1994, has more than doubled in size over the past eight years, exceeding the number of white people in the same bracket and the amount of money they spend.

The number of black South Africans classified as middle class rose to 4.2 million people last year from 1.7 million in 2004, the University of Cape Town’s Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing said in a statement. South Africa has a population of 51.8 million people.

“South Africa’s black middle class continues to rapidly expand and is more influential and powerful than ever before,” John Simpson, a director at the Unilever Institute, said in the statement, which was e-mailed yesterday. “The black middle class is helping create a vibrant and stable society by increasing South Africa’s skills base, deepening employment, and widening the tax net.”

South Africans in this group now spend 400 billion rand ($44 billion) annually, more than the 323 billion rand spent by 3 million white people classified as middle class, according to the study. The number of white South African in the group rose from 2.8 million in 2004.

High Unemployment

South Africa’s unemployment rate of 24.9 percent is the highest of more than 30 emerging-market nations tracked by Bloomberg. Retail sales advanced 3.8 percent in February from a year earlier, with South Africa’s Reserve Bank keeping its benchmark interest rate at the lowest level in more than 30 years to spur spending….”

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The Philippines Joins Thailand and S.K. in Tempering Currency Appreciation

“The Philippine central bank is considering adjustments to its so-called special deposit accounts, signaling it may limit access to the facility to cut costs and enhance its scope to cool currency gains.

“We would like to consider ways to make the SDA function more as a monetary instrument rather than an investment vehicle,” Governor Amando Tetangco said on April 27 in an e- mail response to questions. “The exact form of these refinements will be made known in time, but as in our practice, any adjustments we will make will be gradual and phased in.”

The possible change in the SDA, which hold about $46 billion, comes after Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas on April 25 cut the rate it pays on the deposit facility for a third time this year. The monetary authority has lowered borrowing costs, banned foreign funds from the special accounts and revised rules to spur outflows, joining South Korea and Thailand in stepping up efforts to temper currency appreciation.

“The central bank is trying to manage its costs so it will have greater flexibility to intervene in the currency market,” said Ricky Cebrero, executive vice president and head of treasury at Manila-based Philippine National Bank. (PNB) “If the BSP limits SDA access through trust accounts in the near future, some funds may shift to bank deposits subject to an 18 percent reserve requirement. That will further reduce BSP’s costs.”…”

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Pensando en Ti

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UcHZ4Swu64 450 300]

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Revenue Rollover is a Worrisome Sign

The company’s stock had climbed 22 percent since the start of the year as the maker of Tide detergent and Crest toothpaste turned in better profits for two quarters in a row. Last Thursday, P&G reported even higher earnings. And its stock immediately dropped 6 percent.

What happened? Like so many other big companies reporting results recently, P&G hit its target for earnings but missed on revenue. Nearly halfway through the first-quarter earnings season, Corporate America is still reporting solid profits, with seven of every ten big companies hurdling over Wall Street’s expectations. Sales, however, are another story.

Nearly the same proportion of big companies — six out of ten — have fallen short of revenue targets, according to S&P Capital IQ. The tally so far looks grim: Revenue has shrunk 2.4 percent compared with last year.

“The norm is becoming, beat your earnings, but miss on revenue,” says Scott Freeze, president of Street One Financial.

“Two problems persist: Europe’s ongoing recession and slower economic growth in China. Because nearly half of revenue for Standard & Poor’s 500 companies comes from abroad, it would seem logical to think the problem is just overseas. But many companies with a U.S. focus have also reported disappointing revenue.

Freeze says that revenue presents a more accurate picture of Corporate America’s health. “You can play with the earnings numbers and have them skewed,” he says. “But you can’t mess with the revenue numbers — they are what they are. If people are not coming in droves to buy your products, your revenue’s going to miss even if your earnings beat.”

Aside from Apple’s falling profit and some other high-profile flops, the headline numbers for first-quarter earnings appear solid. So far, 271 companies in the S&P 500 have said earnings are up 5 percent over the year before. And 189 of them have cleared Wall Street’s estimates.

Investors say that’s no surprise. They believe companies set the bar so low that it’s easy to jump over it. The 3.6 percent earnings growth analysts expect to see after all the results are tallied works out to $26.36. That’s just $1 more than the same period last year.

As one company after another turned in weak revenue results last week, analysts, investors and economists started raising concerns about the prospect for future profits….”

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Former White House Budget Director David Stockman: The Fed is Wrecking the Free Enterprise Sytsem

“Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his allies at the central bank haven’t merely
embarked on a misguided policy — they’re a threat to U.S.-style capitalism, says former White House Budget Director David Stockman.

The Fed now determines the level of short-, medium- and long-term interest rates, he told
Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview. “It’s all rigged. This is administered price-setting by 12 people who are not even elected.”

Financial markets now determine prices and “drive the entire capitalist system,” says Stockman, author of the new book, “The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America.”

And it’s the Fed that sets prices in financial markets. “All of the trading today is not based on price discovery as we talk about in free markets or discounting cash flows and earnings in the future,” Stockman says, who headed the Office of Management and Budget from 1981 to 1985 under President Ronald Reagan.

“They’re all trading against what they think the overlords at the Fed are doing.”

Bernanke is “a Keynesian money printer who believes that debt, debt and more debt is the elixir that helps economies grow and people become wealthier,” Stockman says.

“That is utterly wrong doctrine, and it’s nevertheless in the mind of the guy who’s running a system. And he has four or five colleagues who believe the same, and they are dangerous, and they are wrecking our free enterprise system.”

The notion that we don’t have inflation now is off base, Stockman says. “The issue isn’t inflation of goods and services,” he says. “There is another inflation called asset inflation.” And that’s running rampant, Stockman says….”

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Old Man Buffett’s Favorite Indicator Has Ground to a Near Halt

“After a big first quarter rail traffic has come out of the gate extremely soft in Q2.  The average pace of year over year expansion in intermodal traffic was a very healthy 5.3% in Q1, but has averaged just 0.08% so far in the first 4 weeks of the second quarter.  This is a trend that has been developing since early March as the pace of expansion has averaged just 2.11% since the first week of March.  Overall, that brings the 12 week moving average to 4.01%.  That’s still a healthy pace, but the recent slowing is a trend worth keeping a close eye on.  If rail traffic is any indicator it’s possible that economic growth peaked in Q1.

Here’s more from AAR…”

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Lotz of Data to Chew On This Week

Data for the week

“….The first week of any month is always big, and so this Wednesday (May 1) through Friday will be jam packed with fresh ISM reports (for Korea, China, Europe, and the US), initial jobless claims, and of course the big Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

Monday and Tuesday will also be big, as we get Personal Income and Spending, Chicago PMICase-Shiller, and Consumer Confidence.

Other big events this week include auto sales, the ADP jobs report, and FOMC decision, productivity, the trade balance, and construction spending.

By the end of Friday we should know a lot more about the economy.”

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Albert Edwards: $10k + Au, Stocks Will Melt Down, and Hyperinflation Will Come

“This is always reassuring. SocGen strategist Albert Edwards remains an ultra-bear, and predicts everything will go to hell.

In his new note he writes:

We still forecast 450 S&P, sub-1% US 10y yields, and gold above $10,000

My working experience of the last 30 years has convinced me that policymakers’ efforts to manage the economic cycle have actually made things far more volatile….”

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Documentary: Blood in the Mobile

Just got back from a little time off.

Not having a mobile phone is not enough for me to be disconnected every now and then.

Given the proliferation of the mobile; here is a topic not spoken about as with many hidden realities tied to our consumer culture.

Remember as a consumer we collectively have the power to force change. If we are not informed and make no demands upon corporations then they will always seek the cheapest means to produce products we consume; ultimately that means we are guilty of child slavery, murder, and disregard for the planet.

Cheers on your weekend!

Click here for documentary 

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5TwT69i1lU 450 300]

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Behold the Power of the Search Engine

“Google, as many researchers know well, is more than a search engine—it’s a remarkably comprehensive barometer of public opinion and the state of the world at any given time. By using Google Trends, which tracks the frequency particular search terms are entered into Google over time, scientists have found seasonal patterns, for example, in searches for information about mental illnesses and detected a link between searching behavior and a country’s GDP.

A number of people have also had the idea to use these trends to try achieving a more basic desire: making money. Several studies in recent years have looked at the number of times investors searched for particular stock names and symbols and created relatively successful investing strategies based on this data.

new study published today in Scientific Reports by a team of British researchers, though, harnesses Google Trends data to produce investing strategies in a more nuanced way. Instead of looking at the frequency that the names of stocks or companies were searched, they analyzed a broad range of 98 commonly used words—everything from “unemployment” to “marriage” to “car” to “water”—and simulated investing strategies based on week-by-week changes in the frequencies of each of these words as search terms by American internet users.

A listing of the 98 words used in the study, from most effective at predicting market declines (debt) to least effective (ring). Image via Scientific Reports/Preis et. al.

The changes in the frequency of some of these words, it turns out, are very useful predictors of whether the market as a whole—in this case, the Dow Jones Industrial Average—will go down or up (the Dow is a broad index commonly considered a benchmark of the overall performance of the U.S. stock market).

The strategy was relatively straightforward: The system tracked whether a word such as “debt” increased in search frequency or decreased in search frequency from one week to the next. If the term was suddenly searched much less frequently, the investment simulation bought all the stocks of the Dow on the first Monday afterward, then sold all the stocks one week later, essentially betting that the overall market would rise in value.

If a term such as “debt” was suddenly searched much more frequently, the simulation did the opposite: It bought a “short” position in the Dow, selling all its stocks on the first Monday and then buying them all a week later. The concept of a “short” position like this might seem a bit confusing to some, but the basic thing to remember is that it’s the exact opposite of conventionally buying a stock—if you have a “short” position, you make money when the stock goes down in price, and lose money when it goes up. So for any given term, the system predicted that more frequent searches meant the market as a whole would decline, and less frequent searched meant it would rise.

During the period of time studied (2004-2011), making investment choices based on a few of these words in particular would have yielded overall profits several times higher than a conservative investment strategy of simply buying and holding the stocks of the Dow for the entire time. For example, basing a strategy solely on the search frequency of the word “debt,” which turned out to be the single most profitable term in the study, would have generated a profit of 326% over the seven years studied—compared to a profit of just 16% if you owned all the stocks of the Dow for the whole period….”

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U.S. economy grows 2.5% in first quarter

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The U.S. economy expanded at a 2.5% pace in the first three months of 2013, up from 0.4% in the fourth quarter, as consumer spending rose at the fastest rate in two years and businesses restocked warehouse shelves. Yet government spending fell sharply again ands imports surged to act as drags on economic growth, according to data released Friday by the Commerce Department. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had forecast growth to rise to 3.2%, so the less-than-expected number could weigh on U.S. markets. Consumer spending – the motor of the U.S. economy – rose 3.2% to mark the sharpest gain since the end of 2010, though some of the increase was the result of higher oil prices. Inventories also soared to an estimated $50.3 billion after a scant $13.3 billion increase in the prior quarter, but that buildup is probably unsustainable. Final sales of U.S.-made goods and services, a more precise gauge of demand, rose a much smaller 1.5%. That matched the lowest increase in eight quarters. Investment in residential housing, a source of recent economic strength, jumped 12.6% to mark the third straight strong advance. Business spending on equipment and software rose 3%. In a bit of a surprise, military spending sank 11.5% after an unusually steep drop of 22.1% in the fourth quarter. And overall government spending fell 4.1% in the first three months of the year, perhaps partly reflecting federal spending cuts that began to take effect in early March. Meanwhile, imports surged 5.4% after falling 4.2% in the fourth quarter, spurred by higher oil prices. Americans had to pay more to fill up at the gas station. Exports climbed 2.9% after a 2.8% drop in the fourth quarter. Inflation as measured by the PCE price index rose at an annual rate of 0.9%, down from 1.6% in the prior two quarters. Core PCE rose slightly faster at 1.2% The GDP report will be refined through two further updates over the next few months.

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Boston Carjack Victim Speaks

The 26-year-old Chinese entrepreneur had just pulled his new Mercedes to the curb on Brighton Avenue to answer a text when an old sedan swerved behind him, slamming on the brakes. A man in dark clothes got out and approached the passenger window. It was nearly 11 p.m. last Thursday.

The man rapped on the glass, speaking quickly. Danny, unable to hear him, lowered the window — and the man reached an arm through, unlocked the door, and climbed in, brandishing a silver handgun.

“Don’t be stupid,” he told Danny. He asked if he had followed the news about Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings. Danny had, down to the release of the grainy suspect photos less than six hours earlier.

“I did that,” said the man, who would later be identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev. “And I just killed a policeman in Cambridge.”

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Can the Fed Reverse What They Have Done?

 

 

“The political class set in motion the eventual obliteration of our economic system with the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Placing the fate of the American people in the hands of a powerful cabal of unaccountable greedy wealthy elitist bankers was destined to lead to poverty for the many, riches for the connected crony capitalists, debasement of the currency, endless war, and ultimately the decline and fall of an empire. Ernest Hemingway’s quote from The Sun Also Rises captures the path of our country perfectly:

“How did you go bankrupt?”
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

The 100 year downward spiral began gradually but has picked up steam in the last sixteen years, as the exponential growth model, built upon ever increasing levels of debt and an ever increasing supply of cheap oil, has proven to be unsustainable and unstable. Those in power are frantically using every tool at their disposal to convince Boobus Americanus they have everything under control and the system is operating normally. The psychotic central bankers, “bought and sold” political class, mega-corporation soulless chief executives and corporate controlled media use propaganda techniques, paid “experts”, talking head “personalities”, captured think tanks, and the willful ignorance of the majority to spin an increasingly dire economic descent as if we are recovering and getting back to normal. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There is nothing normal about what Ben Bernanke and the Federal government have done over the last five years and continue to do today. Truthfully, nothing has been normal since the mid-1990s when Alan Greenspan spoke the last truthful words of his lifetime:

“Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets. We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past. But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?”

The Greenspan led Federal Reserve created two epic bubbles in the space of six years which burst and have done irreparable harm to the net worth of the middle class. Rather than learn the lesson of how much damage to the lives of average Americans has been caused by creating cheap easy money out of thin air, our Ivy League self-proclaimed expert on the Great Depression, Ben Bernanke, has ramped up the cheap easy money machine to hyper-speed. There is nothing normal about the path this man has chosen. His strategy has revealed the true nature of the Federal Reserve and their purpose – to protect and enrich the financial elites that manipulate this country for their own purposes.

Despite the mistruths spoken by Bernanke and his cadre of banker coconspirators, he can never reverse what he has done. The country will not return to normalcy in our lifetimes. Bernanke is conducting a mad experiment and we are the rats in his maze. His only hope is to retire before it blows up in his face. Just as Greenspan inflated the housing bubble and exited stage left, Bernanke is inflating a debt bubble, stock bubble, bond bubble and attempting to re-inflate the housing bubble just in time for another Ivy League Keynesian academic, Janet Yellen, to step into the banker’s box. This genius thinks Bernanke has been too tight with monetary policy. It seems inflated egos are common among Ivy League economist central bankers who think they can pull levers and push buttons to control the economy. Results may vary.

The gradual slide towards our national bankruptcy of wealth, spirit, freedom, self-respect, morality, personal responsibility, and common sense began in 1913 with the secretive creation of the Federal Reserve and the imposition of a personal income tax. Pandora’s Box was opened in this fateful year and the horrors of currency debasement and ever increasing taxation were thrust upon the American people by a small but powerful cadre of unscrupulous financial elite and the corrupt politicians that do their bidding in Washington D.C. The powerful men who thrust these evils upon our country set in motion a chain of events and actions that will undoubtedly result in the fall of the great American Empire, just as previous empires have fallen due to the corruption of its leaders and depravity of its people. Creating a private central bank, controlled by the Wall Street cabal, and allowing the government to syphon the earnings of workers through increased taxation has allowed politicians the ability to spend, borrow, and print money at an ever increasing rate in order to get themselves re-elected and benefit the cronies, hucksters and bankers that pay the biggest bribes. None of this benefit the average American, who sees their purchasing power systematically inflated and taxed away. This is not capitalism and it is not a coincidence that war and inflation have been the hallmarks of the last century.

“A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.” – Ron Paul

As you can see, the bankruptcy of our country and our culture began gradually, accelerated after Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, really picked up steam in 1980 when the debt happy Baby Boom generation came of age, and has “suddenly” reached maximum velocity as we approach the true fiscal cliff. There were many checkpoints along the way where fatefully bad choices were made. They include the New Deal, Cold War, Great Society, Morning in America, Dotcom New Paradigm, Housing Wealth Retirement Plan, Obamacare, and present belief that creating more debt will solve a problem created by too much debt. The Federal Reserve allowed interventionist politicians to fight two declared wars (World War I, World War II), fight five undeclared wars (Korea, Vietnam, Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq), conduct hundreds of military engagements around the globe, occupy foreign countries, begin a war on poverty that increased poverty, begin a war on drugs that increased the amount of available drugs, and finally start a war on terror that has increased the number of terrorists and pushed us closer to national bankruptcy. The terrorists have already won, as the explosion of stupidity and irrational fear has allowed those in power to acquire more power and dominion over our lives.

Abnormality Reigns…”

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Fitch Warns About Bank Earnings for the Rest of 2013

“Is it possible that the great big bank stock rally is already done? Shortly before the closing bell on Tuesday came words of warning from Fitch Ratings that the U.S. banking sector’s improved results in the first quarter were going to difficult to sustain for the rest of 2013. We just recently highlighted some of the risks of this in our “Sell in May and Go Away” primer and blueprint for 2013 and this goes well beyond the bank sector risks. Fitch’s warnings go many steps further and the result is that unless bank stocks correct further then the share prices will be very hard to maintain…”

Some of the issues are very focused for investors. Fitch showed that overall revenues broadly fell for the large U.S. banks even though net income improved on a linked-quarter basis. Lower provision expenses and cost controls managed to mitigate poor revenue figures. While expected, Fitch also said that a decline in mortgage refinancing activities managed to helped bank earnings. Fitch did signal that it now expects mortgage revenues to decline throughout the banking sector in 2013 due to lower refinancing activities. Here were some additional points made….”

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Real vs Implied Reality

“For the last few years, the US equity market has soared through Q4 and into Q1 and macro-economic indications have trended with them in a virtuous circle ‘confirming’ that this time it’s different and recovery is ‘on’. Then just as investors get all bulled up, convinced by the market’s all-knowing-efficiency that the old normal is back and growth is returning, macro-economic data starts to disappoint expectations. This is initiallyshrugged off – “it’s a transitory dip”, “the market sees through this temporary weakness”, “where else are you going to put your money?” – and the stock buying continues through the Winter. But there comes a time, when the divergence from economic reality grows too wide and the ‘faith’ that the market knows best starts to fade; and sure enough, each time, the market drops back rapidly to reality. What is the common denominator for this winter surge?

Simple – massive global central bank bailouts/injections in the months just before winter that levitate the market (and psychologically create ‘hope’ that is then extrapolated into future economic expectations which then after a one- to two-quarter lag, leads to disappointment as real economic data can’t match the market’s implied reality).

 

2010-11…

 

2011-12…”

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