Japan and Korea are down less than 0.3% and Hong Kong is off by .5%.
Australia and Taiwan are slightly higher.
S&P Futures are higher by 5 points
Comments »Monthly Archives: June 2011
Flash: Anthony Weiner’s Wife is Pregnant
Oh boy.
Comments »Flash: Texas Instruments Blames Short Fall on Nokia
During their conference call, the company blamed weak guidance on their business with Nokia, across a number of product lines.
UPDATE: Notes from the call.
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Texas Instruments conf. call summary- co lowered Q2 guidance because of one customer (32.67 -0.60)
Co said it lowered Q2 guidance due to lower demand from a single wireless customer where most of its sales are baseband products.
In its non-baseband products, no single end customer will make up more than 5% of its revs in the first half of this year. Orders are solid… they’re not exceptionally strong, but co expects they will be up from last quarter where we did have strong growth. Japan will be down at a double digit level… so there clearly is weaker demand in that particular region. Outside of Japan, co would describe the U.S. Co would expect to be up solidly, and then both Asia and Europe probably more flattish to the last quarter. So U.S. up solidly. Asia, Europe flattish, and then Japan down double digit levels. Co expects to build inventory this quarter with most of it associated with the significant demand that they are seeing from its largest customer here. So similar to last quarter where co thinks it said at that point about a third of the inventory build was baseband product associated with a forecast revision from this customer. Co said it will see similar… this is more a customer performance and a market issue. This is not a competitor coming on board to displace TI in these handsets. So the co’s expectation is it has another probably six quarters basically through the end of 2012 as it has described before of support to provide for this customer on these products. Communications infrastructure revenue is doing well this quarter with demand continuing to be driven as it has seen in the past by data capacity expansion, in this case specifically in North America. In the computing markets, I would say most of our PC related revenue is tracking flattish compared with Q1. Co thinks that’s pretty much similar to what you’re hearing from others in its industry and probably also similar to what the market overall is tracking. Tablets continued to experience a strong growth, and TXN is participating in that. From a consumer end market, co would describe it as mixed. + Products like E readers are strong. Product areas like televisions and game consoles where TXN has exposure it would describe as relatively slow. Overall, in industrial, co would describe that market as continuing mostly strong. Areas such as solar, motor drive, E metering are solid. |
Senate Fails to Pass Corker Tester Provision on Credit Card Fees
Banking fees could suffer greatly with this amendment miss, but don’t worry they still get free money of the tax payers backside….
Comments »Hovnanian Losses Double in the Last Q
Orders fell 17% and deliveries fell 19%.
New contracts for new homes surged 28% in May vs last year….
Comments »Beige Book Shows Slowing in May
Growth was had since the last report, but deceleration has occurred in some districts due to higher food and energy prices.
Comments »Societe Generale’s Dylan Grice: Chinese Suppression will fail
This article is an absolutely must read.
Comments »When the Chinese authorities are bailing out local governments for $463 billion, or the equivalent of one and a half TARPs when adjusted for gross domestic product, there could be big problems ahead, according to Societe Generale’s Dylan Grice.
“This is the starkest evidence yet of China’s ‘industrialization by suppression’. Yet numerous past experiences have clearly demonstrated suppression buys only short-run stability at the cost of long-run fragility,” said the global strategist in a research note.
“The world should be worried. Booms fed by excess demand, fueled by capital markets distorted by policymakers beguiled by their own hubris. Well, they’re nothing new, are they?,” he said.
Grice questioned the ability of groups of economists at, for example, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to set interest rates instead of the market, and said he is worried about the implications of distorting the market for capital.
“Today it is widely believed that committees of academics, the foremost of which is the FOMC, make better decisions,” said Grice.
“The markets themselves are not to be trusted with such an important price as that for capital. Consequently, we are as blessed with such committees as we are with the inflationary fruits of their toil and wisdom,” he said.
Having watched central bankers across the world keep rates low, Grice believes that they are now struggling to come to terms with the implications of a natural rate of capital.
“In recent decades many such committees have found themselves in difficult situations. After lowering rates for one reason or another, they grew fearful of the instability that might ensue if rates were allowed to rise to their natural rate too quickly. What to do?” he said.
“They pressed their index fingers hard into the temples of their heads, closed their eyes and meditated. They summoned their years of collective experience wrestling with problems as profound as ‘the computational complexity of rationalizing boundedly rational choice behavior’ and ‘equilibrium theory with satiable and non-ordered preferences’ before finally, with furrowed brows and straight faces issuing their pronouncement to lesser members of the financial community: it would be much better, for the economy, to keep the rate of interest below its natural rate,” Grice said.
The result of all this was credit-fueled growth which proved, in Grice’s opinion, to be illusory.
“It was fun while it lasted, at least while no one realized it was just credit inflation. Few knew how much was real and how much was illusory, and fewer cared, until they did,” he added.
Economic Suppression
Describing this push for lower rates as economic suppression by committee, Grice pointed to Japan in the 1980s, Thailand in the 90s and Spain and Ireland in the mid-2000s as prime examples of failure to give a market price to the cost of capital.
“It will end in the same way. Suppression by committee always does,” said Grice. “Of course, China is different. It has unparalleled administrative control over its economy. Therefore, its suppression is greater than anything any industrializing economy has yet managed.”
“But why will suppression work this time? Is having tighter control of the levers the same as having tighter control of the machine?” Grice asked. He added that he might be able to get a tight grip on a plane but still not know what he is doing with the lever.
“The economic machine is no different. No one really knows how it works, at least not with the precision required to smooth out its natural fluctuations. I don’t, you don’t, our central bankers don’t, and the men in grey suits, who control China’s economy, don’t either,” Grice said.
“Their use of the levers might suppress volatility for a time and give the impression of stability, as it did during the great moderation, but like everything else in China, where the private sectors isn’t private, the bond market doesn’t price risk, and the Communist Party isn’t communist, appearances can be deceptive,” he said.
Pointing to that $463 billion bailout of bad loans made to the Local Government Financing Vehicles, Grice points out his fears over the impact of throwing such huge amounts of money around.
“China’s government throws money at a problem, problem goes away. Boring story, move on. But the problem hasn’t gone away. Think carefully about what’s just happened. A bail-out of $463 billion is half the size of the TARP, introduced by Paulson at the nadir of the 2008 crisis, for an economy which is only one-third the size of the US,” he said.
“If we calibrate the magnitude of the economic crisis with the size of the bail-out, one and a half TARPs implies a financial crisis one and half times the order of magnitude of 2008,” he said.
“Maybe China has dodged the crisis. In doing so, maybe it’s even just demonstrated the superiority of its model. But I doubt it. For what is its model? More suppression than has ever been seen before?” said Grice.
Fun With Japan
[youtube:http://ww.youtube.com/watch?v=bXhNDgRkrd0 450 300]
Comments »MONSANTO IS EVIL ! SHORT THIS POS
So regulators knew all along that Roundup Herbicide caused birth defects, but let sheeple use it any way.
A report alleges the knowledge was discovered in the early 1980’s and that the EU knew of “malformation” since 2002.
Even worse regulators kept the information from the public.
Comments »Exxon Mobil announces a Major Oil find in the Gulf
Exxon estimates 700 million barrels of oil and gas. A third discovery has also been made and is being sized up. This is one of the largest discoveries in a decade according to Steve Greenlee president of Exxon.
Full article
Martin Feldstein: Economy Worse Than You Think
Fiscal policies of this administration have led to an economic condition that is far worse than what people are estimating.
A Falling GDP does not state the picture accurately according to Feldstein….
Comments »Simply Ridiculous
Plug the holes already….
“Prisoners, dead people and children qualified for a 2009 tax break to spur car buying, according to a U.S. report Wednesday that criticized the Internal Revenue Service for misapplying the refund in some cases.
The IRS should have done more to verify that people who claimed the qualified motor vehicle (QMV) deduction were entitled to it, said the report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, a government-run IRS watchdog.
The measure, which expired on Dec. 31, 2009, was part of the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package.
Taxpayers who claimed the deduction were not required to provide independent proof that they bought a vehicle, or if they did, how much they paid in deductible sales and excise taxes, said the inspector general…”
Comments »WSJ.com – Interactive Brokers Tightens Rules on buying Chinese burrito stocks on margin
By MICHAEL RAPOPORT
Interactive Brokers Group Inc. is barring its clients from using borrowed money to buy the shares of more than 130 Chinese companies in the wake of recent worries about accounting irregularities at China-based firms.
The Greenwich, Conn., electronic brokerage says on its website that it is making the move because of “elevated risk concerns.”
In recent months, dozens of Chinese companies have acknowledged problems with their accounting. The Securities and Exchange Commission has said it is investigating accounting and disclosure issues at Chinese companies that list on U.S. exchanges through “reverse mergers,” arrangements that can avoid the regulatory scrutiny that comes with an initial public offering. Stocks of some of these firms have tumbled this year.
The brokerage firm’s move, phasing in this week, bars investors from buying stocks on the list on “margin,” or with money borrowed from the brokerage. If a stock bought on margin declines sharply—as some China stocks have lately—a brokerage could have trouble getting its loans repaid and might seize an investor’s holdings as collateral.
The Interactive Brokers list numbers 159 securities from 132 companies. About 90 stocks are U.S.-traded; the rest trade on exchanges in Germany, Canada or other countries.
This isn’t the first time Interactive Brokers has made such a move. In April, the firm put dozens of other reverse-merger Chinese stocks on its no-margin list.
A spokesman for Interactive Brokers declined to comment.
Interactive Brokers tends to attract active traders. Last week, the firm reported daily average revenue trades, or DARTs, of 420,000 for May, a figure roughly on par with those posted for April by TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab, even though Interactive has a customer base of only 173,000, compared with accounts in the millions at its rivals.
Comments »Fitch: U.S. AAA Rating in Jeopardy
Fun With Transglutaminase….Watch What You Have for Lunch
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXXrB3rz-xU 450 300]
Comments »Fun With Debt
Obama Pledges Help for Greece
Fuck Greece ! Take care of Americans ! Let the house of cards tumble…in other words wash out the excess !
Comments »Austerity Coming to Wall St.
“The days of pre-crisis excess on Wall Street are definitely over at Morgan Stanley.
Cost-cutting measures are going down to the line at the investment bank — even basics like phone usage are being watched in a way never seen before.
The bank aims to cut $500 million in costs this year alone, and want to ramp up the savings to $1 billion over the next three years.
We already reported yesterday that there are more job cuts coming to Morgan Stanley’s Smith Barney unit.
But cost-cutting isn’t stopping there.
According to the WSJ, “routine expenses” — like travel to mobile phone usage — are going to be tracked much more closely….”
Comments »BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2011
Corn Supplies Expected to Hit 37 Year Lows
that means fun with gasoline prices……
“Wet weather that delayed corn planting in the U.S., the world’s largest exporter, may send global inventories to their lowest in 37 years, signaling higher costs for consumers and livestock producers.
More than one-third of Midwest fields were planted after the mid-May target for optimal growth because of excessive rain, and Ohio farmers as of June 5 were the furthest behind since 1989, with 58 percent sown, government data show. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said June 6 that the disruptions increase the “potential for a shortfall.”
Corn futures more than doubled in the past year to $7.365 a bushel inChicago and may top $9 if conditions worsen, according to Morgan Stanley. The rally is boosting costs for meat producers including Tyson Foods Inc. and ethanol makers such as Poet LLC, as global food inflation tracked by the United Nations accelerated in nine of the past 11 months.
“There’s potential to take out record highs this summer for corn,” saidRichard Feltes, a vice president of research at R.J. O’Brien & Associates, a broker in Chicago. “There’s a lot riding on the need for our weather to normalize and not be characterized by this regime of extremes that’s really been the pattern since last fall.”
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