Obama Enlists Goldman, Google and Others to Help Finance Refugees, Who Are Mostly Military Aged Men, Settle in America

Such kind hearts.

Goldman is gonna teach them English. Google will teach them tech. Airbnb will give them places to stay. Chobani will give them sustenance.

In return, one of these men might blow up one of their buildings.

The companies have pledged to fund programs that assist refugees and aid workers directly. Airbnb Inc., for example, will donate credits for relief workers to book housing through its site. Yogurt maker Chobani, based in upstate New York, has pledged to hire additional resettled refugees.

Goldman Sachs, which has already contributed $4.5 million in response to the crisis, says it will underwrite programs to help refugees learn English and gain employment skills. Alphabet’s Google will provide consulting and technology to nonprofits the company says will help more than 1 million refugees worldwide access information and education this year.

“We are thrilled to be part of this partnership, and to see the White House’s continued leadership in this area,” Roya Soleimani, a spokeswoman for Google, said in an e-mail.

The corporate commitments may give the president some leverage as he pushes other countries to increase their refugee commitments by this fall. Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, said on a conference call Thursday that the UN received just $11 billion of $20 billion it requested for refugee assistance in 2015, forcing the organization to cut rations of food and medicine. Out of 1.2 million refugees that need to be resettled, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has only found homes for 110,000, Power said.

“That’s just not enough,” she said.

Obama is expected to begin lobbying for increased refugee aid in person next week at a NATO summit in Warsaw. According to the White House, Obama wants to increase global financing for refugees by 30 percent, double the amount spent to resettle refugees, and increase the number of refugees in school and in work by 1 million.

Insanity.

Be sure to review it. I hope that you find this helpful.

On April the 1st, 2016, the SPX closed at 2,072. Heading into today, we were down 2 points. No worries, the stocks Gods responded, in kind, catapulting stocks higher–closing the S&P 500 at 2,098 for a gain of roughly 1%.

Bonds went up like gangbusters, up more than 8%. And commodities did exceptionally well, spearheaded by gains in sugar (+28%), natural gas (+28%) and silver (+21%). Fun fact, old man coal is up 47% for 2016.

The worst performing sector, by far, were the airlines, down 26% for Q2–followed by a sundry of retail-mall based stocks. It was a very poor quarter for the U.S. consumer, as the malls are dead and no one shops any longer.

Moving on.

Silver and gold stocks were up 75 and 44%, respectively. All of the cool money managers, like yours truly, is long gold. Oil stocks were up roughly 15-20% and utilities were outsized winners–up nearly 10%.

Whereas Q1 was about recovery and stemming the flow of blood, Q2 was mainly about a return to an inflationary landscape, one rife with debilitating food prices. However, towards the ass end of the quarter, the data got stodgy and BREXIT really messed up our psyche. Banks got demolished, crushed to pieces, off by 5% for Q2. Most of those losses were applied post BREXIT, after many of them outperformed into BREXIT. It was a real death blow.

REITs were big winners, higher by double digits. The main, underlying theme, aside from ramps into the close, was the search for yield. Negative rates, both in Japan and Europe, have caused investors to flood US markets–allocating into stocks and bonds that pay out good, safe, reliable dividends. I don’t see this changing much, unless the dollar comes under considerable weakness and/or european rates soar.

The NASDAQ finished out June, down by 5%. The last time we had a down June of more than 5% was in 2010. In July of 2010, the NASDAQ surged by 7%. Last year the NASDAQ pressed higher by 4.5%, albeit, in a very choppy month.

Things have properly reflated since the March lows. Markets are, once again, at a cross roads. Will we build upon these gains and position stocks into the fall, technically strong? Or will the European uncertainty, coupled with the psychotic negative rate environment, give us more of the same sideways choppy, hair raising, volatility?

Stay tuned. It should be fun.

NOTE: Exodus members, I will give my q2 review in the blog section shortly.

This is a fascinating interview. By the sound of Jes Staley, CEO of Barclays, this is a company in panic mode. He’s selling all non-core assets, assets that were supposed to be the driving force of growth. Instead, it’s a fire sale and desperation is in the air.

Staley insists the company will not need to raise new capital. How many times have we heard this? Moreover, he says the company is moving very rapidly to execute assets sales, for the explicit purposes of increasing its share price, in order to ensure access to capital markets.

Sounds grim.

BCS is off by 40% in 2016.

Good news for Italian and Spanish bond players. Yields in highly indebted, bad balance sheet, European nations are plunging on chatter that the ECB is thinking about changing the QE rules, shifting purchases away from the size of the economy to the size of the debt.

This, of course, is laughable fuckery of the first magnitude.

In other words, since Germany is the largest economy in Europe with the best balance sheet, the ECB will begin buying less of the high quality paper in exchange for horrid paper, shoveled out by nations like Italy and Spain.

“It’s the type of thing the market wants to hear,” said Owen Callan, a Dublin-based fixed-income strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald LP in Dublin. “Out with the bunds, in with the bonos,” he said, referring to German and Italian securities.

The Italian 10 yr is down 23 bps to 1.11%, a 17% drop.

The Spanish 10 yr is down 22 bps to 1.00%, a 18% drop.

German bunds are up 2 bps to -0.10, a 16% jump.

Italian debt is 132% to GDP.

Markets love this shit and is eating it up like a bowl of freshly served feces. Yummy!

File this one under ‘what could go wrong?’

Having dealt with high net worth clients my entire adult life, I can tell you right now that anyone that is a client of this moron cringed while watching this. His clients aren’t to be worried about ‘illiquid’ investments, because ‘they have a lot of cash.’ Really?

In other words, his clients, this CIO of ‘ultra high net worth’ people, not to be confused with ordinary high net worth people (think Sir Larry v Gordon Gekko), has no problem, whatsoever, tossing his clients money into flaming barrels of trash because they’ve got plenty of it.

Way to manage risk, Simon Smiles.

It was a nice gesture, really. The BREXIT ploy gave bargain seekers the discounts in equities they craved, all the while the British people were played as fools–arguing with one another over a referendum that might never see the light of day.

Markets are certainly behaving as if the fix is in. Nigel Farage, the man at the vanguard of the Brexit campaign, says that he’s nervous the wishes of the people will not be honored and is detecting backsliding amongst many of the ‘leave’ campaigners in parliament.

Somewhere, some sneaky German is smirking.

Two clowns have a candid discussion about juggling for a living and wearing a red nose for a living.

Markets shot higher like a German racing towards Paris, circa 1940, on news that the Bank of England might offer stimulus via rate cuts, in light of BREXIT. The desired effect, naturally, was accomplished. The FTSE is punching the DAX in the face now, higher by 2.3% v 0.7%. We’ve seen a significant underperformance in the DAX v the FTSE since BREXIT was announced, probably because they have more to lose.

The British pound has been crushed on this news, off by 1.4%.

The real story here, in my opinion, is the effect it’s having on rates–debilitating really (for banks).

Here’s the interesting part. Yields are plunging everywhere but Germany.

I guess you can chalk this up to smart arbing, as traders sell over priced bunds for everything but bunds.

Markets are at the highs for the session and TLT is higher by $1.25. The ark floats; but the fucking giraffes aren’t allowed back on.

So much for BREXIT being a bad thing.

The FTSE has been crushing higher over the past 3 days, now up more than 1.3% on the session, after Bank of England’s Mark Carney said, due to BREXIT, they might need to give everything a jolt with a rate cut this summer.

The immediate result is joy. Global markets have lifted another leg and urinated on the heads of shorts.

The pound is off more than 1%; but no one really cares about that anymore.

MOAR QE. MOAR stimulus. That’s all the markets ever wanted.