Ford Fights Back: Defends its Decision to Ship Manufacturing to Mexico, says “We Will Be Here Forever”

In effort to fight back against Trump and media criticism over Ford’s decision to move their small car manufacturing to Mexico, Ford issued a press release–reminding people that they’ve been in America for more than 100 years and still employ a great number of people here.

“Ford has been in the United States for more than 100 years. Our home is here. We will be here forever,” said spokeswoman Christine Baker.The company has 85,000 U.S. employees, up 28,000, or nearly 50%, in just the last five years. It has 8,800 employees at Mexican plants, and will add 2,800 jobs there when the new $1.6 billion plant opens there in 2018.

The numbers Ford is citing is a little disingenuous, considering the auto industry was in fucking shambles five years ago. While it’s true, Ford employs a great number of Americans and aren’t firing a bunch of people and replacing them with low waged Mexicans, it’s the trend that’s important to keep note of. Through attrition and lack of investment, Ford will be shifting jobs to Mexico at a much greater pace than inside the US, thanks to NAFTA.

The new factory in Mexico will add 500k units of capacity, more than double the current production.

Although the chart above is 4 years old, clearly you can see the statement out of Ford Motor are wantonly misleading with regard to the overall health of the auto industry in the United States. If we’re slave to trends, I think it’s fair to say Mexico is heading up and America lower.

Trump is in NYC today giving a speech on economic policy, vehemently opposed to the globalism that has been choking out America since the 90s. His plan is based around one simple concept: does the policy improve wages or create jobs for Americans? If not, he’s not interested.

This gets boring and monotonous. Some of you might think ‘how could making money get boring?’ I’ve done this my entire life, for as long as I could remember. When my stupid friends were outside hanging off trees, I was playing ‘stock market games’ with paper and pencil, sort of like Dungeon and Dragons, but for stocks. I’m not a guru or the best trader/investor you’ll ever meet. I like to consider myself a highly functional, competent, person, who is able to cut through the bullshit and see things clearly.

Look, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the recent struggles in the market were a fiction. Okay?  They were concocted by crazy people with small account balances. Now that we’ve received yet another flurry of worse than expected economic data and a subsequent decline in Fed rate hike chances, shorts are scrambling to cover.

September chances are now 12%

Remember, the Fed has NEVER hiked without the market already giving a 100% chance of it happening. Okay?

Even the December rate hike scare mongers are backing off that bet.

So what is the best way to play this?

Stocks? Absolutely not.

Look, if you’re a great trader and can navigate the ups and downs, go for it. But most advisors I know are bumbling fools and do not have the flexibility with their books to trade too often. Most advisors take positions and rebalance once per quarter or once per month. For those of you running money, just reflect upon what has worked best in 2016.

Stocks are up 5-6%. Bonds are up 15%. Gold is up triple digits, at least the miners. Utilities and REITs are up anywhere from 15-35%, for the year.

An easy Fed and crazy BOJ and ECB means yields will continue to drop, especially with the backdrop of a weak economy. Growth is non-existent in most areas of the economy. From my vantage point, the highest growth opportunities lie in the uncertain nature of the economy and political landscape. If QE is the best central banks can do to give GDP a jolt, then you have no choice than to own the one asset that is the alternative and hedge against volatile FX markets.

Gold.

It’s like she’s surrounded by fucking morons who have this warped sense of the world, unable to properly communicate amongst normal living human beings.

Check this out, Hillary Clinton just tweeted that ‘amongst other things’, Trump should release detailed medical records.

Wait a second. She just fucking collapsed at the 9/11 memorial after months of coughing and dodging rumors that she’s heading towards her fucking deathbed and she thought it was a good idea to call Trump out to release detailed medical records? Really?

Also, and let’s be clear about this, a person who deleted 33,000 emails to avoid prosecution for crimes against the state should not even be broaching the subject of transparency, period.

It’s as if these life time politicians think we’re living through the 80s, before the internet could archive and check shit out.

Frankly, I find the whole thing disheartening, as it shows an acute ignorance and naivety that resembles stupidity to me.

Lo and behold, Trump is +6 in the latest LA Time poll.

Far be it from me to ignore the disastrous action in fixed income. There are three schools of thought at play here, the first and most ridiculous stems from Fed rate hikes. Chalk that up as improbable. The other theory has more to do with systemic problems, more to do with sovereign balance sheets, the end of European QE, and a resumption of the Chinese capital flight that scared the shit out of everyone earlier this year. The last and most favored amongst bulls has to do with the economy doing so good, so fucking good, that fixed income investors are selling bonds to buy stocks. The only problem with that theory is that stocks have been trading down too.

This feels like a squall, a temporary scare that is deepening as the trade unwinds. In other words, there wasn’t a lot of people buying treasuries when I was buying them, right? Most people chased it and got in late and are now unwinding, or selling, their positions. It’s like a giant fucking margin call amongst idiot hedge funds who thought it was a good idea to leverage up into negative yielding bunds because the price was ripping higher. Or, domestically, they were buying zero coupons and hoping for bad news. Well, here is the other side of that trade.

Every bond in europe is getting sold down, none more than the German 10yr.

Here in the states, bonds are getting hit, but nothing like in QE rigged Europe.

Bottom line: the optics of a bond correction are good for stocks, as long as it’s contained. If the route becomes pervasive and yields ‘blow out’, then that’ll be another negative headline that will scare idiots into selling. Like I said the other day, the acute and sudden sell off in markets is typically a trap for bears. The only thing that could derail a bounce is a continuation of the decline in crude.

Yesterday Ford announced they were moving all small car production to Mexico, in order to take advantage of their slaver wages down there. Plus, unions are a hassle to deal with here.

Naturally, with Mexico being directly in the cross hairs of Trump, he took this opportunity to menace Ford and tell people that this sort of shit wouldn’t be happening under a Trump administration.

“We shouldn’t allow it to happen,” Trump said during a speech in Michigan, the center of U.S. car production.

“They’ll make their cars, they’ll employ thousands and thousands of people not from this country and they’ll sell the cars right through our border. No tax, no nothing, and we’ll have nothing but more unemployment in Flint and in Michigan,” he said in the speech in Flint.

“It used to be cars were made in Flint and you couldn’t drink the water in Mexico,” he said. “Now the cars are made in Mexico, and you can’t drink the water in Flint. That’s not good.”

For the uninitiated, the Bohemian Grove is a gathering of the most powerful men (women are NOT permitted) in the world, who convene to decide the fate of the world. It is widely believed that this, and the Bilderberg meetings, are what make up the shadow governments that control global governance.

Here is a first hand encounter with the fuckers who attended the grove.

At any rate, in yet another scornful email released from Colin Powell’s gmail account, the good general informs his good buddy pal, Peter Gordon MacKay, a former Canadian Member of Parliament, who also served as Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Minister of National Defense, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, that the olde guard at the Grove will not be voting for Mr. Trump.

————————————————-

Peter, I am back from the Bohemian Grove. Surprise, surprise, I sat next
to Stephen Harper a couple of times and had a nice discussion. Grove
attendees know that Trump is a disaster. Most will vote against, but quite
a few will not vote for Hillary and will vote for a third party candidate.
Strange doings down here. Otherwise all is well with the Powells. We’ll
sneak away for a few days in August. Of course I’d love to see you. Let me
know your dates. I told Stephen that you seemed quite content in your new
place in life.

All the best, Colin

Good God.

Good evening, I am your host for the evening, Count Fly, and I’m here to inform you that a great doom, an pox, is coming for you now.

The NIKKEI 225 is plunging tonight, lower by 1.4%. There isn’t any notable news, other than the fact that there seem to be more sellers than buyers.

Following suit are both European and American futures, encumbered by losses. The DAX is indicating lower by 0.7% and NASDAQ futures, which were gliding into the evening a short while ago, are being menaced by sellers, off by 25.

Crude is flat and the yen is rising v the dollar by 0.35%. Oh, bonds are rising as well, effectively topping off a very scary and a deleterious evening of trade.

It’s a slow news night. Apparently, there isn’t anything notable coming out of the DNC or Colin Powell gmail accounts, so I figured I’d check in on my fucking blogroll to see what they’ve been up to.

I’ve taken liberties to rewrite their titles, in order to better communicate what they’re really trying to say.

Zerohedge: The Liberal Media are a Pack of Corrupt, Lying, Thieving Wolves

Ritholtz: The Obama Recovery is Finally Starting to Pick Up Steam (not really, median incomes are still below 1999 levels and I suffer from confirmation bias)

A Wealth of Common Sense: I’VE FOUND THE HOLY GRAIL FORMULA FOR INVESTING

Calculated Risk: Degeneracy in Vegas is at Record Highs and That’s a Good Sign for the Economy

Irrelevant Investor: I’m on a Diet and Computers Have Replaced Humans

Mish: Mexico’s Southern Border Wall, Paid for by Obama

Naked Capitalism: Commercial RE is Collapsing and You Should Fucking Sell Before it’s Too Late

Prag Cap: Warren Buffett Sucks

Contra-Corner: Retirees Are Being Liquidated from Their Pods and Placed Back into the Matrix

Financial Sense: GIBBERISH

Wolf Street: Self-Driving Cars Will Clown Rape 4 Million People

Backchannel: Meet Mr. Rothenberg, the Fucking Moron

Howard Lindzon: Rothenberg Should Get the Electric Chair

Business Insider: Trump the Victor!

ReCode: Twitter is Still a Huge Overvalued Piece of Shit

Gateway Pundit: The Clinton’s Caught in Yet Another Lie

As seen in this video, the CEO of Apple is an excellent dancer and should be commended for his bravery to unleash this cringe-worthy display of gayness upon the world.

Cool.

All in all, it was a volatile session, with stocks ranging 150 points–ultimately closing down a bit–mostly saved by Apple’s surge. On the downside, however, crude was fucking crushed into 1 billion pieces, off by almost 3%.

All of you know that I hate rigged markets and would like nothing more than to preside over the complete destruction and annihilation of stocks, taking with it all of the morons spinning themselves into knots–trying to figure out this yarn. But, I do believe a trap is being laid bare, ahead of the Fed meeting. They will not hike and all of this worry about a hike is nonsensical rubbish. Upon learning the Fed will not hike, I expect the market to rejoice and subsequently decapitate all of the head of those short.

I am positioned correctly: long TLT, short FCX, long gold and miners, cash.