I remember it like it was yesterday. The world felt like it was ending. The old and stuttering Treasury secretary Paulson did little to assuage investor sentiment for months. Then one morning, this guy, Neel Kashkari, with his crazy fucking eyes, came onto the teevee, straight out of Goldman Sachs to run the TARP program. It was almost a joke, Goldman sending a guy to run the TARP for the government.
Nevertheless, it was a wild success and Neel was instrumental in saving western finance. I heard he later on went into seclusion and lived in the woods with the animals and grew a beard. After that, he tried to get elected governor of California. That took balls. Now he’s a non voting member of the FOMC, who wants to break up the banks–because they’re too big and they pose systemic risk to the US economy.
Aside from that, he sounds dovish.
“If we keep making sure we have accommodative monetary policy, we can keep bringing people off the sidelines, bring them back into the labor force, bring inflation up to our two percent target,” Kashkari said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
Talk about group think. If VRX ends up being a fraud, it will catch some of the brightest minds in the investment community naked, without pants, holding their testes in the wind.
A plethora of hedge funds have reported new stakes in VRX. For the quarter that just passed, Coatue, Jana, Laurion Capital, Okumus Capital, Paulson & Co, Viking Global, Brave Warrior (the fuck?) and Hound Capital have either initiated a new position or added to an existing one.
Other large holders include Pershing Square and Valueact, with the latter holding two seats on the board.
Despite the fact that the deleterious side effects of the Zika virus are likely caused by Monsanto chemicals in the tap water, the biotech industry is working ’round the clock for a cure.
$INO just released some positive data…in mice.
Inovio said in a statement that mice given its vaccine showed the development of antibodies and generated a response from T-cells, which play an important role in immunizing the body.
“We will next test the vaccine in non-human primates and initiate clinical product manufacturing. We plan to initiate Phase I human testing of our Zika vaccine before the end of 2016,” Inovio Chief Executive Joseph Kim said.
By the time these fuckers get a drug out for usuage, we’ll all be dead and/or zombies.
Nevertheless, shares of INO are soaring, as human primates gobble up the stock.
The backdoor is closed for the Federal government, said Tim Cook (no homo).
The FBI wants to access the iPhone of one of the San Berndino terrorists, but cannot, since it’s encrypted. Apple’s phones are not to be fucked with and the gov’t hates not being able to pry into citizen privacy. In this case, the terrorist phones should be accessed, for security purposes.
But Tim Cook doesn’t want to establish a precedent here and is resisting.
Judge Sheri Pym of U.S. District Court in Los Angeles said on Tuesday that Apple must provide “reasonable technical assistance” to investigators seeking to unlock data on an iPhone 5C that had been owned by Syed Rizwan Farook.
In a letter to Apple’s customers, Cook said the FBI had asked the company to build “a backdoor to the iPhone.”
“The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers — including tens of millions of American citizens — from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals,” he said.
“We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack.”
The French bank is surging like a bat out of hell, higher by 15%, on plans to “put an end to this unbearable paradox.”
Banks are widely higher in Europe.
Credit Agricole (CAGR.PA) outlined plans to simplify its much-criticized ownership structure on Wednesday, with a promise of stable investor returns and a solid capital base lifting shares in the French bank.
Credit Agricole Chief Executive Philippe Brassac said the plan would end criticism from analysts, shareholders and regulators that the cross-shareholding between its listed entity and its cooperative parent banks was a drain on capital.
“We want to put an end to this unbearable paradox that we are a big, well-capitalized bank while doubts linger over the fragility of the listed structure’s capital,” Brassac said.
The reform, aimed at reducing its complexity, would focus Credit Agricole mainly on asset management, insurance and investment banking activities, while reducing the share of retail banking operations in its underlying net income to 20 percent from 36 percent, based on 2015 results.
Just last week banks were the bane of society. Now they’re coveted vehicles of profit. That’s the market, insane and without decorum.
Crude oil is appreciably higher this morning, providing markets with the jolt it needs to get going, like a strong cup of coffee served in a hot mug.
European markets have trebled their gains since the open.
S&P futures are indicating a resumption of the party shall continue today.
To fade the rally before it had the chance to become absurd is to be a coward. “The Fly” is not that. I shall see it through, patiently waiting for higher prices, entrusting Exodus with the burden of timing my adventures, wholly and fully, until adequate gains have been made and my future secured.
Free trials have ended, with it your miserly ways.
A glorious morning of stocked market gains awaits you. Get to work.
The Iranian OPEC envoy must’ve been watching reruns of Star Trek all week. When asked to fall in line with the Saudi led production freeze, Mehdi Asali gave zero fucks, saying the Iranian government would keep jacking up production until it hit pre-sanction levels. This statement, and the mere presence of Iran, most likely infuriated the Saudis to no end. I bet they went to sleep tonight without even visiting the harem.
But Iran’s Mr Asali said to Shargh: “Asking Iran to freeze its oil production level is illogical… when Iran was under sanctions, some countries raised their output and they caused the drop in oil prices.
“How can they expect Iran to co-operate now and pay the price?”
It aims to raise its crude production and exports to one million barrels a day over the next six months.
Two non-Iranian sources close to the Opec discussions told Reuters that Iran could be offered special terms as part of the output freeze deal.
This is fuckery on the largest scale possible. First Turkey shoots down a Russian jet, who wasn’t doing anything but killing scores of their friends in ISIS and removing their oil money from the scene of battle. Since then, they’ve been upping the rhetoric with Moscow, firing their stupid artillery into Kurdish controlled areas of Syria, permitting safe passage of supplies and manpower to ISIS in Syria, allegedly buying oil from ISIS, and now they’re asking us to assist in a full scale invasion.
Why?
Not to harass or kill their head cutting friends in ISIS, but to annihilate the Kurds, who, as far as I can tell, have done nothing to deserve our ire.
The advances have increased the risk of a military confrontation between Russia and Turkey. Turkish artillery returned fire into Syria for a fourth straight day on Tuesday, targeting the Kurdish YPG militia which Ankara says is being backed by Moscow.
“Some countries like us, Saudi Arabia and some other Western European countries have said that a ground operation is necessary,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Reuters in an interview.
However, this kind of action could not be left to regional powers alone. “To expect this only from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar is neither right nor realistic. If such an operation is to take place, it has to be carried out jointly, like the (coalition) air strikes,” he said.
So what are those evil Kurds up to?
Kurdish forces continued their push eastwards toward Islamic State-held territory northeast of Aleppo.
This all seems very wrong to me. As for Putin, his patience seems to be waning with the Turks.
“Our relations (with Turkey) are in a deep crisis. Russia regrets this. We are not the initiators of this.”
Who’s ready to send their son’s to Syria to fight for the Turks?
This will get very little airplay, until it blows up in spectacular fashion–sinking the entirety of Asia. But, for now, no one will discuss it because it’s boring, somewhat unbelievable, and deemed ‘far fetched’ by people who cannot fathom such malevolent actions by so many people.
“Chinese banks haven’t provisioned for receivables and those are essentially riskier loans,” said Xuanlai He, credit analyst at Commerzbank in Singapore. “The eventual losses will have significant impact on China’s economy because you could have contagion risk in banking sector.”
“The receivables portfolio in Chinese banks is opaque so we can’t make an assumption on the asset quality,” said Christine Kuo, analyst at Moody’s in Hong Kong. “Provisions for receivables are indeed very low compared to that for loans. We tend to think that the Chinese government is likely to provide support if there is any sign of a crisis.”
China CITIC Bank Corp.’s assets under receivables tripled to 900 billion yuan by June 30, from 300 billion yuan at the end of 2013, according to the bank’s financial statements.
Concerns about Chinese banks’ creditworthiness are mounting with the cost of insuring Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd.’s debt against default reaching an all-time high of 199.5 basis points on Jan. 21. The bank’s 6 percent perpetual notes that count as Additional Tier 1 capital fell to a record low of 99.5 cents last Thursday. The yield spread on China CITIC’s $300 million 6 percent 2024 notes surged to a one-year high of 337 basis points over U.S. Treasuries Monday.
Outstanding repurchase agreements in China’s interbank market, used by debt investors to amplify their buying power, soared to 9.73 trillion yuan in December, the highest level since at least 2012, before edging down to 8.1 trillion yuan in January, according to data from ChinaMoney.
Risks are large in the receivables items, said Matthew Phan, credit analyst at CreditSights Inc. in Singapore. “The provision requirement is less strict for such assets, which are typically loans to the property and overcapacity sectors.”
In the latest official data released Monday, the industry’s bad-loan ratio climbed to 1.67 percent from 1.25 percent. New yuan loans in January jumped to a record high of 2.51 trillion yuan as banks front loaded their 2016 lending targets.
“Corporate leverage is rising and around 70 percent of bank loans in China go to corporations,” Moody’s Kuo said. “Until we see corporate leverage and profitability stabilize, we will likely see bank assets continue to deteriorate.”
Official data show nonperforming loans at Chinese commercial banks jumped 51 percent last year to a decade-high of 1.27 trillion yuan amid a stock market rout and the worst economic growth in a quarter century. While Moody’s Investors Service doesn’t expect a banking crisis in China in the next 12 to 18 months, it said in a Jan. 26 note that it does see higher loan delinquencies, more defaults on corporate debt and some losses in wealth-management products.
The NIKKEI 225 is off by 2.3% and the Shanghai is down just 0.16% for the session, thus far.
It appears recent tumult has forced the retarded Federal Reserve to see the light. The pervasive operators on Wall Street have implemented a very keen and effective propaganda campaign, in order to coerce the Fed to shut the fuck up about rate hikes.
Apparently, it’s working.
Fed’s Rosengren said:
“Recent global events may make it less likely that the 2 percent inflation target will be achieved as quickly as had been projected in recent forecasts by private economists or by Federal Reserve policy makers,” Rosengren said in the text of a speech he is scheduled to deliver Tuesday in Waterville, Maine. “If inflation is slower to return to target, monetary policy normalization should be unhurried.”
“We cannot take for granted that regular, persistent, but seemingly temporary shocks to inflation will not have a larger and more lasting impact,” Rosengren said in a speech made today at Colby college.
