KEEP IT LEGAL

All you have to do is move.

So what would you rather pay, 39%, 21% or 12.5%?

The top US tax rate on American firms that earn money overseas is around 39% if they repatriate those funds. In short, they're taxed twice, nice work if you're a government doing the taxing and can get it.

Should you locate your firm in the UK that rate drops to 21%, an 18% difference. Would that wet your pocketbook appetite?  But, if you're fortunate and you can find an opportunity to buy up a company that fits your mold in Ireland, you can pop your home office over there and cut that tax rate to 12.%.

If, as they teach in Business 101,  you're heading up a publicly traded firm and your responsibility is to return maximum profits to your shareholders, the ones who technically own the firm, what's the questions again: Should you consider a move?

Last week among all the other news, these so-called tax inversion plays got hit over fears of more regulations and name-calling. Congress, and this includes both sides of the pathetic aisle, love to slop at the taxing trough. It's in their DNA.

They also like name-calling. It's a game they love to play. Part of it may stem from the fact that they are deserving of so many names themselves.

The firms seeking to do this are hardly un-American any more than you are if you decide to set up residence in, say, Nevada, a no income tax state, versus, say, Massachusetts, a very high tax state. If you own a business and move to Nevada, do you take your jobs with you?  At least some of them.

Allowing politicians to pass punitive legislation to prohibit these moves is just one law away from denying you this same right. Think not at your own peril and the peril of any semblance of free movement in this nation.

Move to keep it legal.
t. man hatter

AROUND THE WEB

1. Is Prescription Law To Blame?
Has a law designed to speed drug approvals resulted in excessive safety issues?

A new study finds that after thePrescription Drug User Fee Act was passed in 1992 – in which drug makers agreed to pay fees to help fund the FDA and the agency agreed to accelerate approvals – the number of safety warnings and product withdrawals was higher than before the law was passed.

http://blogs.wsj.com/pharmalot/2014/08/05/have-faster-fda-drug-approvals-caused-more-safety-problems/

2. Newmont Fights Royalty Costs

The head of Newmont Mining (NYSE:NEM), Australia’s No.1 gold producer, will meet West Australian Premier Colin Barnett on Tuesday in an effort to persuade him of avoiding extra imposts on the gold industry.

CEO Gary Goldberg warned last week that a royalty hike would jeopardize the profitability of Australia's two largest gold mines: the Superpit in Kalgoorlie-Boulder and Boddington. And he believes gold miners are to blame.
http://www.mining.com/newmont-steps-up-pressure-against-w-australias-royalty-hike-70443/

3. Don't Trust Your Neighbors

One neighbor cuts off the gas, another halts petrol deliveries and Mother Nature cooks up an unusually dry season. It all means Kyrgyzstan faces a potentially catastrophic energy crisis this winter, if the impoverished and unstable Central Asian country cannot reach deals with two recalcitrant neighbors.

The predicament began with the sale of Kyrgyzstan’s gas transport monopoly, KyrgyzGaz, to Russian energy giant Gazprom in April. “We don’t need KyrgyzGas, we need gas,” President Almazbek Atambayev said at the time, promising that Russia would guarantee a cheap and constant supply. Soon after the deal was completed, however, Uzbekistan stopped gas deliveries, saying it had no contract to supply Gazprom. The two sides, with Kyrgyzstan in the middle, have not been able to reach an agreement.
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Kyrgyzstan-Faces-Catastrophic-Energy-Crisis.html

4. Key Term Here Is For Now

As the old saying goes, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. So in this week’s Oilgram News column New Frontiers, Tamsin Carlisle does just that, skipping through the Middle East to summarize the hot battles, and the cold ones, impacting oil across the region.http://blogs.platts.com/2014/08/11/oil-middle-east/

5. Minimum Wage Go Figure
Few issues are as controversial and divisive as the minimum wage. Even business legend Warren Buffett has said that despite 50 years of thought, he’s not sure whether he supports an increase or not.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/minnesota-restaurant-adds-minimum-wage-surcharge-155252174.html

6. We Like The Other Side Of This Trade
The newspaper said one of the biggest changes the fund is considering is potentially eliminating investments in indexes for commodities, including energy, food and metals.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/11/us-calpers-
 
7. Greatest Risk
We increasingly see carry being confused with expected return. Carry is the difference between the annual yield of a security and money market interest rates. For example, Wall Street acts as if a 2% dividend yield on equities, or a 5% junk bond yield is enough to make these securities appropriate even for investors with short horizons, not factoring in any compensation for risk or likely capital losses. This is the same thinking that contributed to the housing bubble and subsequent collapse. Banks, hedge funds, and other financial players borrowed massively to accumulate subprime mortgage-backed securities, attempting to “leverage the spread” between the higher yielding and increasingly risky mortgage debt and the lower yield that they paid to depositors and other funding sources.
 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-10/hussman-greatest-risk-investors-face-here 

PUSHBACK COMING?

Here is an update on our recent story about the European economy and Zero Waste.

It's indeed gloomy and though we would take exception to some of the listed causes in this evaluation, it still pretty much supports our conclusions. Things don't look good in Euroland.

And there's plenty of blame to go around. The pushback if things get worse could be huge especially on the political front.

For Euroland, the big picture is that the economy is in its seventh year of depression. On our estimate of a 0.7% contraction in the second quarter, GDP was still 3.2% lower than it was in the first quarter of 2008, when the depression began. Euroland’s economy actually contracted in the first quarter of this year when you exclude Germany’s unexpected surge to a 3.3% annualized rate of growth. Only people who were misled by Markit’s untested and unproven PMIs believed that such growth was real and sustainable. Our estimate of second quarter GDP for the Euro Zone includes a contraction of Germany’s economy at a 2% annualized rate, reversing the windfall in the unexplained and inexplicable first quarter spurt. If our forecast proves correct, average GDP growth for Germany in the first half of 2014 will work out to 0.7% at an annualized rate, clearly less than potential but very much in line with the experience over the last few years. Our estimate for France’s economy is a more horrible contraction of 1.1% for the quarter, or 4.3% at an annualized rate.

http://www.businessinsider.com/european-depression-2014-8

DON"T LET THE DOWNTURN

Don't let the downturn go to waste.

Now that could be some important investment advice for many.

If it sounds like buy on the dips, in part it is. But on a larger scale it's advice bureaucrats and politicians almost always fail to heed.

When recessions come along, sometimes more often than one would think--just ask Italy, smart people close locations, let others go out of business and cut costs and fat. We said smart people.
We imply, you infer.

Even the most hasty look at the European situation today, notwithstanding the yet to be felt recent Russian counter sanctions, politicians there did next to nothing to benefit from the previous downturn a couple of years ago.

All the world hates austerity. In short, they let it go to waste. And now it might be returning even bigger than ever. The German Dax recently all the rage is now hovering near a 10% decline; we already mentioned Italy; the yield on the 10-year German bund fell to a record low of 1.05%; and the French bond suffered a similar fate.

Lest anyone need be reminded that's not a big 1-2 punch to the economic midsection; it's a big 1-2-3 hit to the EU's three largest economies. Take out some event-driven deals here in the US like M&A and tax inversions and what one is left with is the gloom and doom that the stock market in all of its wisdom these days seems to feed on and apparently loves.

And just for kickers the Japanese market sold off 3% Friday, even though some are saying look to Japan, the UK and, yes, Russia for any overseas value. The Chinese market apparently owing to some upcoming market reforms and some improving economic fundamentals is up around 20% from earlier lows this year.

The other side of that coin is value investors like Buffett and many others report holding huge amounts of cash. In reality, however, it's pretty difficult to find reasonable returns without taking on great risk. Some would say such things are the nature of conundrums.

Rather than chasing anything here, we think a better approach is: Don't let the downturn go to waste.
t. man hatter

Negative 11 for 14

We recently wrote about this in "Three Times But No Charm"

Italy's suffered negative growth since 2011 in 11 of the last 14 quarters as this chart from WolfStreet.com clearly illustrates. As pointed out Italy is the EU's third largest economy. If you were a baseball player 11 of 14 ain't bad. For a country in this case it ain't good.




http://wolfstreet.com/2014/08/06/italys-economic-recovery-from-hell-in-one-chart/

LIKE IT OR NOT

Economics are hard to ignore.

Super bugs are all the rage today and not in a good way.

Regulators can take the medicines out of the market, but despite what people think, it will be extremely difficult to take the economics out of the medicines.

Despite the potential of new antibacterial products to reduce the social burden associated with resistant infections, some of the large companies have been exiting the markets for antibacterial drugs and vaccines in recent years. Arguably these pharmaceutical corporations have also failed to respond to the possible social value of opportunities in production of rapid diagnostic products.

These market exits have been driven by the most basic of reasons: insufficient return to capital invested in development of these products (that is, there are not enough profits to be made). Consequently, governments across the globe are looking to identify ways to stimulate the development of antibacterial products.

There is economics here you might want to know about. According to this report, there were 23,000 deaths in 2013 with at least some connection to antimicrobial resistance. Drugs are like oil--in fact many of them come from oil products--if production costs exceed profits, it will remain untapped.

The same goes for science, like it or not. 

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/science/op-ed-new-usa-body-to-evaluate-antimicrobial-products/article/395973

UPCOMING WEEK

 

On the agenda for next week are two dovish members of the Fed and one hawk who has openly called for raising interest rates. July retail sales and the producer price index might draw some attention given that investors remain nervous after this past week's focus on the Ukraine and other disturbing international new. 

From what we can gather bearish sentiment seems to be spreading even though investors still blew off much of the disturbing news last week that one would ordinarily think might cause some concern. So much bearish sentiment might be a good contrarian indicator since someone is on the other side of the recent sell off.

And there are still lots of investors who believe the market will agitate its way lots higher before the fat lady appears on stage. Talk about 7%, 10% or 20% corrections are almost the norm lately. When everyone seems to be be looking for something to happen, how often does it in reality happen?

Europe remains in a funk and the Ukraine situation most likely won't help. Italy as we wrote in "Three Times No Charm," in back in recession. So Thursday with some global economic reports could prove interesting, too.

Monday, August 11

US Economics (Time Zone: EST)

No major reports scheduled
11:30 Treasury to sell $28b 3-month bills and $25b 6-month bills

Fedspeak

3:15am Fisher (hawk, voter) speaks in Stockholm

Global Economics (Time Zone: GMT)

CNY New Yuan Loans
05:00 JPY Consumer Confidence Index
06:00 JPY Machine Tool Orders (July prelim)
12:15 CAD Housing Starts

Earnings

Before:
Sysco (SYY)
Dean Foods (DF)
Priceline (PCLN)

After:
Nuance (NUAN)
Caesars Entertainment (CZR)

Tuesday, August 12

US Economics (Time Zone: EST)

10:00 JOLTS Job Openings - prior 4635
2:00 Treasury Budget Statement - expected -$96B, prior $70.5B
11:00 Treasury to sell 4-week bills
11:00 Fed to purchase $950m-$1.15b bonds in 22-30 year range
1:00 Treasury selling $27b 3-year notes

Global Economics (Time Zone: GMT)

04:30 JPY Industrial Production (June final)
09:00 EUR Eurozone ZEW Survey Current Situation, Economic Expectations

Earnings

Before:
Kate Spade (KATE)
Insys Therapeutics (INSY)

After:
Fossil Group (FOSL)
Cree (CREE)

Wednesday, August 13

US Economics (Time Zone: EST)

07:00 MBA Mortgage Apps
08:30 Advance Retail Sales (July) - expected 0.2%, prior 0.2%
08:30 Retail Sales Ex Auto - exp 0.3%, prior 0.4%
08:30 Retail Sales Ex Auto & Gas - exp 0.3%, prior 0.4%
10:00 Business Inventories (June) - exp
11:00 Fed to purchase $350m-$450m notes in 5 to 30-year range
1:00 Treasury selling $24b 10-year notes

Fedspeak

9:05am Dudley (dove, voter) speaks in New York
9:20am Rosengren (dovish, nonvoter) speaks in New York

Global Economics (Time Zone: GMT)

JPY GDP (2Q prelim)
05:30 CNY Retail Sales, Industrial Production, Fixed Investment
06:00 EUR German CPI (July final)
08:30 GBP Jobless Claims Change, Unemployment Rate
09:00 EUR Eurozone Industrial Production

Earnings

Before:
Deere (DE)
Macy's (M)
Seaworld Entertainment (SEAS)

After:
NetApp (NTAP)
Cisco (CSCO)

Thursday, August 14

US Economics (Time Zone: EST)

08:30 Initial Jobless Claims, June 28, exp. 295k, prior 298k
08:30 Continuing Claims - exp 2500K, prior 2518k
08:30 Import Price Index YoY (July) - expected 0.8%, prior 1.2%
11:00 Fed to purchase $1.6b-$1.9b notes in 5 to 6-year range
1:00 Treasury selling $16b 30-year bonds

Global Economics (Time Zone: GMT)

Japan Investors Purchases of Foreign Stocks/Bonds
05:30 EUR French GDP (2Q prelim)
06:00 EUR German GDP (2Q prelim)
08:00 EUR Eurozone CPI (July final)
08:00 EUR ECB Publishes Monthly Report
09:00 EUR Eurozone GDP (2Q advance)
12:30 CAD New Home Prices

Earnings

Before:
Advance Auto Parts (AAP)
Wal-Mart (WMT)

After:
JCPenney (JCP)
Agilent (A)
Autodesk (ADSK)
Applied Materials (AMAT)

Kohl's (KSS)
Plug Power (PLUG)

Friday, August 15

US Economics (Time Zone: EST)

08:30 Empire Manufacturing (Aug) - expected 20, prior 25.60
08:30 Producer Price Index Final Demand YoY (July) - exp 1.7%, prior 1.9%
08:30 PPI Ex Food & Energy YoY - exp 1.7%, prior 1.9%
09:00 Net Long-term TIC Flows (June) - prior $19.4B
09:00 Total Net TIC Flows - prior $35.5B
09:15 Industrial Production (July) - exp 0.3%, prior 0.2%
09:15 Capacity Utilization - exp 79.2%, prior 79.1%
09:55 University of Michigan Consumer Confidence (August prelim) - exp 82.5, prior 81.9

Global Economics (Time Zone: GMT)

08:30 GBP GDP (2Q prelim)
13:00 CAD Existing Home Sales

Earnings

Estee Lauder (EL)

Twitter: @MichaelSedacc

Read more: http://www.minyanville.com/business-news/markets/articles/earnings-reports-economic-data-economics-earnings/8/8/2014/id/55643#ixzz39qOG90zf

YOUR RIGHTS GETTING GORED

The much maligned coal companies and coal investors most likely just receive the biggest boost in confidence since David found the stone to put in his slingshot.

We don't know if little David's stone had any coal in it, but history says it apparently made its mark.

Former Vice President Al Gore, the same one who invented the Internet and magically turned millionaire investment guru, and one of his senior partners at their firm, Generation Investment Management, are not content with just bad mouthing coal on its environmental faults.

The message of Gore and Blood in their recent Financial Times editorial, "Economic case for stronger divestment of coal assets," write the following:

"The momentum behind divestment campaigns and other forms of protests against coal highlight that burning fossil fuels without regard for the consequences will not be tolerated much longer."

Fossil fuels is a broad term. It includes more than just coal. Here's a definition from Merriam Webster:

Any of a class of materials of biologic origin occurring within the Earth's crust that can be used as a source of energy. Fossil fuels include coal, petroleum, and natural gas. They all contain carbon and were formed as a result of geologic processes acting on the remains of (mostly) plants and animals that lived and died hundreds of millions of years ago. All fossil fuels can be burned to provide heat, which may be used directly, as in home heating, or to produce steam to drive a generator for the production of electricity. Fossil fuels supply nearly 90% of all the energy used by industrially developed nations.

There's another ringer in here, the kind that Gore and his species are noted for, "burning fossil fuels without regard for the consequences." This is well-chosen designed language. No one in the U.S. is using coal without regard for the consequences. First off that octopus in Washington, the Environmental Protection Agency, loves to levy fines. 

Secondly scrubbers and other federal regulated controls, however effective they might be, have been required for years.

Scrubber systems are a diverse group of air pollution control devices that can be used to remove some particulates and/or gases from industrial exhaust streams. The first air scrubber was designed to remove carbon dioxide from the air of an early submarine, the Ictineo I, a role which they continue to be used for to this day.^[1] Traditionally, the term "scrubber" has referred to pollution control devices that use liquid to wash unwanted pollutants from a gas stream. Recently, the term is also used to describe systems that inject a dry reagent or slurry into a dirty exhaust stream to "wash out" acid gases. Scrubbers are one of the primary devices that control gaseous emissions, especially acid gases. Scrubbers can also be used for heat recovery from hot gases by flue-gas condensation.^[2]

If Gore's and his comrade's view sounds vaguely like a threat, it's because that's what it is.  But then too it could just be some money runners who have short positions on the coal industry. This dynamic duo then cite a list of reasons from EPA regulations to Stanford, the mighty university that several years back in its obedience to PC changed its mascot name from Indians to Cardinal.

It seems the Stanford endowment fund has sworn off publicly listed coal firms. Now we don't doubt the missionary zeal of  Mr. Gore and Mr. Blood. But we do question what are obviously underhanded, cheap scare tactics in what still some believe is--and are trying to preserve--a semi-free society.

Investors last time we looked, notwithstanding the economic moaning of prophets like Gore and Blood, had a right to lose their money anyway they want. That right might not last long if people like Gore and Blood get their elitist way.

Instead of learning about the demise of coal by reading these two prophet's article, you want to read it to learn how to write in a stilted, convoluted, sophomoric style that reflects typical elitism one expects from people like this.
t. man hatter


  



  

OFFICIAL NEWS LEFT STREET NEWS RIGHT

Official news is different from news on the street.

Official news aided by their MSM friends paints a pretty portrait. 

The battle is going well. We suffered only 20,000 casualties today, but the good news is more supplies reached the front uninterrupted. There was, however, one slightly disturbing development: Nobody was there to receive them. Other than that officials feel....under control.

News on the street today is saying what many of us have believed for a while, inflation is back and rising.

Sentiment on the ground isn't meshing with the official data when it comes to inflation.
Despite government numbers showing that inflation remains tame, companies increasingly are expressing worry that it is in the pipeline and posing a threat to profits. 

"Inflation remains a key concern for management," Goldman Sachs strategist David J. Kostin and others wrote in a research note. "Companies noted the potential long-term impact of rising costs on margins despite hedges that reduce the near-term impact on profits." 

Data show that overall, inflation pressures are largely absent from the current economic picture.
The consumer price index rose just 0.3 percent in June, the latest month, while the personal consumption expenditures index has been gaining at just a 1.6 percent pace, both considerably below the targets before the Federal Reserve would begin raising interest rates. There also are few wage pressures, with labor costs up just 0.6 percent in the second quarter and wages tracking at a 2 percent annualized increase.

Luke Sharrett | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A Walgreens store is shown in Louisville, Ky.

But companies are saying that overhead costs like labor and supplies are increasing and putting pressure on margin expectations. That in turn could be concerning for stock market investors, who have relied on margin expansion as the key to the 190 growth in equities since the March 2009 lows. 

 

"Firms in the consumer sectors have already experienced inflationary pressures due to rising input costs," Kostin said. "Conflicting opinions exist as to whether boosting prices on the consumer will help mitigate the effect of rising costs."
In the analysis, the Goldman team cite a variety of companies within the firm's coverage space and their view on inflation. 

There was McDonald's, which has seen food increasing at a 3 percent clip and expects that could rise to 3.5 percent. Big-box retailer Costco reported hikes in seafood, produce and beef. 

Pharmacy chain Walgreen reported "a shift from historical patterns of deflation in generic drug cost to inflation." It noted "cost increases on a subset of of generic drugs, and in some cases, these increases have been significant. Both reimbursement pressure and generic inflation are having an adverse effect on margin." 

Dow Chemical noted that "cost inflation on the U.S. Golf Coast is real" but said it was sufficiently hedged. 
http://www.cnbc.com/id

ANIMAL SPIRITS TAKE ONE

So much silly stuff and so little time to laugh at it all.

We're talking MSM here.

Starting with a story in today's Financial Times, "Without prudence as a value we are all at risk," the author, William R. Rhodes, CEO of  Rhodes Global Advisers and former Citibank executive, opens with:

Financial groups are dialing up risk in their search for yield because of the extraordinary amounts liquidity created by central banks and the prolonged rate environment. This is often not being done prudently. The key cause of past financial crises are being forgotten at many financial institutions.

It should be noted one of the main financial institutions Rhodes apparently leave out is central banks. Rhodes goes on to name such things as something we've mentioned before, subprime auto loans, non-investment grade syndicated loans and corporate emerging market debt.

All soaring and all true. All also occurring in the absence of  very little real growth. He then cites the EU, Japan and the U.S. where "growth over the past 12 months has been less than 2 percent, yet in the same period the S&P 500 stock market index gained about 17 percent."

There is China on the other hand, perhaps the only bright spot if one can digest those statist-controlled economic figures without getting dyspeptic, hitting the government's 7.5% objective, much of it, however, owing to increased credit growth.

End result surfacing bubbles in real estate and an unregulated, increasingly shadowy shadow banking system while mainstream banks continue their lending to government entities.

Rhodes next takes on global money runners in perhaps the funniest sentence in his whole article: "To some degree, they feel the competitive pressures to produce better quarterly results consistently."

We don't know if the well-meaning chap smokes or imbibes much but pressure to produce consistent better quarterly results is hardly new. And boards that don't mind occasionally looking the other direction aren't either. Desperate times don't always lead to quiet desperation. In fact, it can get quite noisy, Janet Yellen pun intended.

Part of Rhodes' solution is he wants central banks to pay more attention to risk behavior. Sounds like more of the usually intrusive, Big Brother approach. Calling for the Fed to use its influence--as if it has any left--to promote "prudence in risk taking as a core cultural value" would get a big laugh in most Comedy Clubs.

This sounds like excellent material for one of those proposed MBA ethics classes once the guffaws quiet down.

Next Rhodes proposes putting the old bureaucratic fox in charge of the financial hen house.

Jointly, leaders of  financial institutions and their regulators in the US, UK, Japan, the eurozone and in China, should emphasise the importance of risk management and risk culture. They should come together to exchange views candidly and explore ways to channel risk activities onto a surer course.

With all due respect, someone needs to ask Rhodes this question: When animals get hungry, what do they want to do? 
t.man hatter