What A Faking Mess

 
Oh my heavens (Can you say that anymore?), this is the worse news. The fake nation Australia just cut its fake contributions to the fake Clinton Foundation. One can only wonder what the fake Washington Post will fake about such a fake tragedy.

We're going to change that to: Holy fake! Before we go any further, however, we feel a disclaimer is necessary. As noted below we got this story from the fake zerohedge.com news that just today was named a fake news site by the long standing fake Washington Post. That reminds of an old saying: "It takes one to know one."

For months we've been told that the Clinton Foundation, and it's various subsidiaries, were simple, innocent "charitable" organizations, despite the mountain of WikiLeaks evidence suggesting rampant pay-to-play scandals surrounding a uranium deal with Russia and earthquake recovery efforts in Haiti, among others.  Well, if that is, in fact, true perhaps the Clintons could explain why wealthy foreign governments, like Australia and Norway, are suddenly slashing their contributions just as Hillary's schedule has been freed up to focus exclusively on her charity work.  Surely, these foreign governments weren't just contributing to the Clinton Foundation in hopes of currying favor with the future President of the United States, were they?  Can't be, only an useless, "alt-right," Putin-progranda-pushing, fake news source could possibly draw such a conclusion. 

Alas, no matter the cause, according to news.com.au, the fact is that after contributing $88mm to the Clinton Foundation, and its various affiliates, over the past 10 years the country of Australia has decided to cease future donations to the foundation just weeks after Hillary's stunning loss on November 4th.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-25/australia-joins-norway-it-cuts-clinton-foundation-donations

News.com.au confirmed Australia's decision to cut future donations to the Clinton Foundation earlier today.  When asked why donations were being cut off now, a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade official simply said that the Clinton Foundation has “a proven track record” in helping developing countries.  While that sounds nice, doesn't it seem counterintuitive that these countries would pull their funding just as Hillary has been freed up to spend 100% of her time helping people in  developing countries?  
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The above picture was snapped immediately after Hillary learned she lost the election. She was so surprised she had to fake here reaction: "What a faking  mess? What happened to all those fake voters George promised?"

Still Present

It's a holiday shorten market today as U.S. markets close at 1 p.m. ET in New York.

Volume should be down as the market looks to close higher for three weeks running.  The question for going forward is how much higher before some argue reality and the new regime change euphoria take hold, one setting in and the other exiting. Straddling those two is a lot like another Black Friday with shoppers trying to locate where all the real bargains might be as hungry retailers struggle to compete with the Amazons and other online sellers for a short junket into shopper purses. The so-called goodies in the stores and online have been gussied up and priced down to add to their allure. The same holds for the stock market. Prices of the so-called good stuff are up and what's now the lame, limp and unwanted priced down.

That's conjures up another dilemma. What do you want and when do you want it?

In the markets the attractive wrappings include expectations for lower corporate taxes and less regulations topped with a dab or two of infrastructure spending. So one of the things to keep your eyes peeled on is where the money is flowing. For a while now passive has been in and active out, another popular market narrative. Tax selling is just around the corner too.

From the Wall Street Journal today we get this:

Supporting the rally on Wall Street, money has also continued to pour out of government bonds, U.S. real estate and gold funds, and into the U.S. equity market in the most recent week, according to fund-tracker EPFR Global.

“A lot of people point to the U.S. election as the turning point,” said Norman Villamin, chief investment officer at Union Bancaire Privée, “but I see it more as an acceleration of an existing trend,” he said. “This is really what we look at as a consequence of a normalization of [U.S. interest rate] policy.”

Investors expect the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in December and again in 2017.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.372% on Friday, according to Tradeweb, from a one-year closing high of 2.355% on Wednesday, amid concerns about higher inflation and interest rates. Yields move inversely to prices.
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Higher interest rates and a stronger dollar are reputed to keep a lid on inflation. What else will they keep a lid on? What you need to note is just how much a week can change the globe.  All the ugly global pockmarks, just like that office building front of JP Morgan in New York, are still there fully present and unaccounted for.

 wsj.com/articles/european-stocks-hold-steady-at-one-month-highs-

Overnight

The Nikkei 225 index hit a new 10-month Friday as Asian shares joined the upswing along with the yen touching a fresh eight-month low against the dollar to put some umph in Japanese export  shares overnight. The dollar was up 0.3 percent at 113.730 yen after hitting an 8-month high of 113.800 yen on rising U.S. bond yields.

Among export shares Nissan Motor was up nearly 5% with Honda not far behind rising 4%. Sony joined in with a 0.5% climb as did video game Nintendo gaining nearly  1%. The Nikkei Stock Average rose 0.8% to fresh 10-month high. Elsewhere in the region, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.5%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index added 0.2%, while the Shanghai Composite Index was down 0.8%. The broader Topix was up 0.6 percent to 1,468.48, rising for an 11th day to post the longest winning streak since May 2015.

Global commodity prices help push the Australian market higher with copper hitting a 17-month high Thursday as stronger expectations for manufacturing continue offsetting in part the higher dollar. Not to be unnoticed, the WSJ rpeorted, the "latest consumer price data in Japan showed deflation there was slowing. The core consumer price index there fell 0.4% from a year earlier in October, adjusted for fresh food and energy prices, according to data released Friday. The reading marked the eighth consecutive monthly decline, but was smaller than the 0.5% drop in the previous month."  The Australian dollar was steady at $0.7427 against the dollar late Friday morning, compared with levels below $0.735 last week.

Oil futures were up 0.08 percent at $48.00 a barrel during Asian trade on Friday, while Brent crude was nearly flat at $49.01."Brent oil is parked just below $50 as traders wait on the outcome of the OPEC meeting. This sets oil up for a significant move next week depending on whether or not OPEC achieves an agreement on meaningful production cuts," one source noted. Gold was at $1183.90 down $4.00 as a strong U.S. dollar and Federal Reserve rate hike expectations weighed heavily on the metal.

Voices

Not that one's voice is going to get heard. But at least you expressed it.

We've already expressed some concerns about Trump appointees, not necessarily the ones globalists hate. And make no mistake, they hate.

Bringing Mitt Romney in for any position in this administration is absurd. It's a token gesture to the Wall Street Journal nerds. Peace pipes are not what's needed here. A new, really new direction is. And firmness. All the peace pipe talk is purse BS. And all the talk about experience and knowing how the globe and Washington works is also BS. That's what got us here, experience. So-called expertise. It's way over rated.

If you're going to go down--and there are many who will want you to and many others working diligently this moment to make that happen--do so with our own people and some new blood, not those same old boring, bureaucratic, lip syncing insiders. You've been bold this far and you've had some bold believers  help you. It was that boldness and thousands bold enough to believe in you and get behind you that got you elected.

You might not owe them much, but you own them that much. This is about peoples' lives and their liberty, sir, not neocons and status quo insiders. The swamp as you correctly called it not only needs to be drained; it needs to be fill-in and paved over. Lobbyists and insiders are huge fauna infecting that swamp. So are elitists like Romney.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Vigilance And Information

One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. “I have to tell you,” said the spokesman, “that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV day after day that all the opinions on all the vital issues are the same. To get that result in our country we send journalists to the gulag. We even tear out their fingernails. Here you don’t have to do any of that. What is the secret?”

Anyone who has been around journalism or with any recall of the Cold War days will be familiar with this story. It recently was posted again at blacklistednews.com/Who%E2%80%99s_the_Biggest_Peddler_of_Fake_News. 

It's relevant for many reasons. With all the recent chatter about fake news, one could make a strong case back in those Cold War days when the three major networks controlled just about any and all news, it was the zenith of fake news. More so then than even now with all the grumbling about alternative fake news sites. You had fatherly figures like the celebrated Walter Cronkite in the your living room nightly pretending to be an objective purveyor of the news. Underneath the facade Cronkite was a huge bleeding heart liberal, a NIMBY who in later years didn't want any windmills constructed off his Cape Cod digs to help clean up the polluted air. Do you think he didn't have high friends in high places?

Back then you had an unquestioning, all-too-willing-to believe audience. That's why it was the zenith of fake news. It was so, most believed, pretty straight forward, the white hats and the black hats. Westerns were popular television fair of the era. Check any of those out. Propaganda the masses were told was something the other guy perpetuated. Today, propaganda is much more subtle. Some of it finds a path to Broadway like the musical Hamilton.

What many don't want to understand or can't understand is the gulag and fingernail pulling was coming after Hillary and her expected mandate.There is a Democrat Senator, John Whitehouse, from Rhode Island who has openly pushed for indicting and even prosecuting any--scientist or lay person--who dares to question the current climate change nonsense. Man is the cause and man needs to be corrected. Corrected like the word run has numerous meanings. First comes persuasion. Short of that, indictment, prosecution and then the gulag. From the gulag we all know killing is only a tiny step away. And it can happen inside or out. And what is even more frightening for some most likely has.

Nor is Mr.Trump your savior if you love your freedom and were raised to live by the creed to live and let live irrespective of race, creed or BMI. So far so good, kind of. Trump essentially won because people were fed up with the status quo. Bringing in old time neocons and Goldman Sachs henchmen is a form of papering over. Some will try to play it as reaching out and healing. There are no olive branches in the lexicon of the globalist crowd. Learn that now or hopefully when your day comes you'll get selected to go to one of the gulags in the warmer climates.

It's about vigilance and information. You are not expected to or wanted to have any.

Overnight

Thursday might be turkey day in the U.S. but in Asia they're still trading stocks and such
Reuters reported: Most Asian stock markets fell on Thursday as upbeat economic data strengthened the prospect for higher U.S. interest rates, while the dollar's bull run continued as U.S. bond yields hovered near multi-year highs.

Japanese stocks swam against the tide and rose to a near 11-month high as the yen weakened and after Wall Street shares closed at record highs overnight.The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS pulled back from a 12-day high scaled the previous day to lose 0.5 percent, facing the prospect of higher U.S. interest rates diverting money from emerging markets. It has lost 3.5 percent this month.

It's now no secret that Trumpism--at least so far--has been good for financial stocks and Japanese banks have been no exception as banks make money on the spread in interest rates and the spreading feeling among investors that business will pick up under the new administration. The dollar index moved higher again its basket of six currencies, strengthening 0.2% to 101.84. Rising U.S. bonds yields helped the dollar along the way. The Korean won fell 0.2% against the dollar Thursday, the Indonesian rupiah was off 0.4%, the Japanese yen slipped 0.1% and the Malaysian ringgit was 0.4% lower. As investor became aware of the latest Fed minutes from November the prospect of higher interest rates added some fuel to the dollar's rise against Asian currencies. The yen weakened further against the dollar to trade at 112.67, compared with levels near 111.04 in the previous session and at levels below 110 in the previous week.

U.S. crude futures traded at $47.97 a barrel after rising 0.4 percent on Wednesday, while global benchmark Brent was at $48.93 a a barre, following an overnight gain of 0.3 percent. Gold fell near $1,180 as traders moved away from safe harbor assets and jumped into more risky ones leaving gold to languish from it previous level of $1,220 just last week.

Free Trade Kills

Here's a chart we dedicate to Martin Wolf, the Financial Times in-resident Keynesian apologist and pro-free trade grump. It's from the Washington Post, for God's sake. Who would've thunk it? If Wolf in his nonsensical rantings against a president-elect who has not even taken office yet spent more time minding his own business, he might be a happier fellow.

It's worth noting that the authors note their PC position on free trade (That is, if they wanted get the WP to print their story!) but call for more sharing of the economic spoils. If free trade with China is causing white people to commit suicide or die early, it's not much different from black lives matter.

We have heard about Chinese imports of dog foods that have killed numerous American pets, but this brings up what the hell else is going into all that Wal Mart junk younger people clutter up their garages with--that is, if they can afford one--only to have to get rid of when the get old and maybe get to retire, if they can ever afford to.

Most likely one reason all those heart attacks occur when they realize how much money they wasted over the years following Keynesian precepts and see how much junk they have to got to get rid of. But don't tell Paul Krugman. He's still running around saying: "What happened?"

The nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research published the findings in a working paper on Monday, during an uncertain moment for global commerce. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to renegotiate trade deals and has threatened punitive tariffs on Chinese goods.
Like most experts on trade, Schott argues against new tariffs or other restrictions. Instead, he calls on policymakers to do more to ensure that everyone shares in the gains from globalization.

washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/23/trade-with-china-literally-kills-americans-economists-say

Keep Your Eye On Spreads

Like it or otherwise it's mostly a north-south world.

In California, the most populated state in the United States, the north has most of the water. The same holds for those sub-Saharan regions; they have little water compared to those in the northern hemisphere. It's the same in the European Union, the poorer countries are in the south.

So a decent question is why would it be any difference in the bond market? It isn't. Other factors accounted for, take a look at bond yields and their spread, say, between 10-year Italian and 10-year German bonds. Market gurus like to break it down a bit differently calling things risk on and risk off investing.We witnessed  a lot of that, particularly in Asia, leading up to the U.S. election and also post-Brexit.

Your seeing the same thing in the exchange markets now with the euro and the UK pound. It was  even worse when all those EU joiners had their own currencies competing against the Deutschmark and such.One of the European Union promises was to put an end to all that. Well, it hasn't happened and the bond market it saying so right now.

Both 10-year Italian and 10-year German bonds supposedly represent sovereign debt. But your sovereign debt as your dirty laundry is not necessarily mine. That's just one of the reasons the EU will ultimately fail. The big boys up north have gerrymanders things when they need to but are unwilling to grant those underlings in the south any slack for the most part. Some would call it crumb tossing slack. Now the south is not especially rank innocents either.

Most of us dislike spring cleaning. Politicians hate it the most. In the currencies' market when you're talking safe harbors of late, it's the Swiss franc, the yen and the dollar. Of late in the bond markets it's been Germany and the U.S. Bonds are sensitive to interest rate changes or so-called perceived changes. Rates in the U.S.were perceived to be going up even before the Donald pulled off the upset  of the 21st Century so far. Not so in the EU. Magic Mario is still tossing soft pitches for the most part.

Part of the problem is political uncertainty. wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/11/21/italys-looming-referendum-risk-splits-southern-europes-bond-markets

In the latest bond market selloff, a new trend is becoming ever more clear — a divergence between southern Europe’s two biggest economies, Italy and Spain.

Italian 10-year government bond yields are currently at their highest since early 2012, around half a percentage point above their Spanish counterparts with two weeks to go until the country’s constitutional referendum. In the selloff since the U.S. election, Spanish yields also ticked up, but at a slower pace than Italy’s.

The country goes to the polls Dec. 4 to approve or reject reforms to the country’s upper house of parliament. A “yes” vote would weaken the country’s senate, reducing its control over some policy areas and meaning it can no longer oust governments. In times of economic stress, yields on the European periphery — the more economically troubled countries that suffered most during the euro sovereign debt crisis — tend to rise relative to countries in Europe’s core, particularly Germany.

“The significant underperformance of [Italian government bonds] in the last two months is by and large a reflection of the higher political premium in the run up to the Italian referendum,” said a note from Morgan Stanley’s interest rate strategists late last week.
A loss — currently projected by most polls — would weaken Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s economic reform efforts. Earlier in the year, Mr. Renzi suggested he would resign in the event of a “no” vote.

Italy’s brand new 50-year bond is another illustration of the challenge for investors. The debt security has dropped in price by more than 12% in the last month.

 

But it isn’t just a relative absence of political crisis that’s helping Spain — the country’s economy has also shown more strength than Italy’s. HSBC’s analysts believe that in time Spanish bond yields could converge towards French levels.

Spain was considered one of the most damaged European economies during the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, but has rapidly repaired its reputation among investors.
Though the economy took an enormous hit during the euro crisis, the country’s GDP per capita is still 14.2% higher than when the euro was launched in 1999, whereas Italy’s is 3.8% below those levels.
“With the political situation in Spain having turned less uncertain lately, the looming December vote has driven Italy’s policy uncertainty higher,” said Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts in a recent note.

“We are no longer in the peace and quiet’ of 2015,” the note added. “From now to the referendum, we think Italy will be walking on thin ice.”
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So keep you eye on the spreads. 

Confidence Levels

Here's a chart many on the left will disdain, but it's important to note it's from Bloomberg. With all the talk about fake news of late, we doubt if Bloomberg, a clearly leftist news organization, has turned over a new leaves. What we do know is the question is not who are all these snowflake protesters. The question is who's backing and paying for them?


zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-23/trump-victory-sends-black-american-consumer-confidence-surging-22-month-highs

Well that's unexpected...
Bloomberg's consumer comfort survey shows Black Americans are at their most confident since Jan 2015 following the Trump election win, now more confident than white Americans.

We also note that Hispanic Americans are more confident now than before the election also. So it makes us wonder just who all these snowflake protesters are?

Overnight

Hitting 18,162.94, the Nikkei 225 registered its highest close sine early January after edging up 0.35 overnight. It didn't hurt the Asian marmosets with the Dow Jones Industrial Average posting its highest close ever, continuing a streak of milestones for U.S. stock indexes.

The Wall Street Jurnal reported: Asian shares traded in positive territory Wednesday, taking a lead from record gains in the U.S. overnight that were driven by postelection exuberance. The S&P/ASX 200 was recently up 1.2% while South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.6%. Japanese markets were closed for a public holiday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Tuesday closed above 19,000 for the first time. It ended the day 0.4% higher at 19,023.87 points. The S&P 500 was up 0.2%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rose 0.3% Wednesday, the Shanghai Composite was 0.2% higher and Taiwan’s Taiex was up 0.5%.

Asian currencies, however, continue to slide, indicating that offshore funds are pulling money from the region. The Philippine peso Wednesday brushed against an eight-year low against the U.S. dollar as rising bond yields in the U.S. prompt traders to take money out of emerging markets.
“The stance of the monetary policy towards higher interest rates in the U.S. is aiding the dollar,” said Jose Vistan, head of research at AB Capital Securities in Manila. Politics is also a factor, he added.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has amped up his rhetoric against the West, raising apprehensions among investors about the inevitability of the once-solid Western ally.The dollar also gained 0.5% against the Malaysian ringgit and the Korean won in early Asian trade Wednesday.

The Trump message of increasing fiscal stimulus for many investors is contradicting those same,investors who apparently at least initially viewed the new president-elect with much more skepticism. the new apparent mood pushed commodity prices higher Wednesday. Copper and zinc were last up 0.1% each. U.S. homebuying activity rose in October for the second straight month to a new high, according to data released overnight by the National Association of Realtors. October sales of previously owned homes rose at the strongest pace since February 2007. The data have increased interest in materials and commodities stocks in Asia.

Not everyone, however, is convinced and some are expecting a pullback in this trend soon. Gold was last trading at 1217.80 up +1.70. Crude oil stayed range bound trading unchanged at $48.46 a barrel as OPEC is meeting in Vienna and questions about any future cutbacks in production linger.