Der USA Bären-Thread

www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/30/...il-idUSKBN0L305Q20150130

The late-session surge was primed by Baker Hughes data showing the number of rigs drilling for oil in the United States fell by 94 - or 7 percent - this week. Earlier gains were fueled by reports of Islamic State militants striking at Kurdish forces southwest of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

short squeeeeze

lassen wir wohl das Goldilocks-Ponnyranchzeitalter hinter uns.    

www.sovereignman.com/trends/...low-road-to-ira-nationalization-16041/

Another step down the long, slow road to IRA nationalization

Let’s take a brief walk into financial reality for a moment.

At the time of this writing, the United States government’s official debt is nearly $18.1 trillion.

Now, let’s look at who the biggest owners of that debt are:

1) Taxpayers of the United States.

If you’ve held a job in the Land of the Free, 15.3% of your salary has gone to fund Social Security and Medicare.

Each of these programs holds massive trust funds that are supposed to pay out beneficiaries, both present and future.

Conveniently, the trust funds are required by law to buy US government debt.

And given that every single US taxpayer is an ultimate beneficiary of these trust funds, that ranks the people of the United States as among the biggest holders of US debt.

How sustainable is this? Not very.

The 2014 trustee reports for both Medicare and Social Security indicate that nearly ALL of the trust funds are sliding towards insolvency.

This isn’t some wild conjecture. The people in government who manage these trust funds are flat out telling us that they’re about to go bankrupt.

Let that sink in for a bit… then ask yourself: how long can two insolvent programs continue to be among the largest owners of US government debt?

2) The Federal Reserve

Now that we know Social Security and Medicare cannot continue to buy Treasuries indefinitely, we turn our attention to the Fed, which as of today, holds over $2.4 trillion in US government debt.

The Fed is essentially the lender of first resort to the US government and has singlehandedly managed to mop up the vast majority of government debt over the last several years.

Problem is, the Fed has to print money to do this. And the Fed has created so much money over the last few years that it’s now borderline insolvent.

The Fed’s capital now stands at just 1.27% of its total assets. To be clear, this is a razor thin margin of safety.

No other central bank in the world (except Canada, curiously) would be able to post such a pitiful number and still pretend to be credible.

But make no mistake, there is a level of monetary expansion that’s too far. And the Fed is already getting close to this danger zone.

Bottom line, the Fed is not going to be in a position to write blank checks to the US government indefinitely without becoming insolvent and causing an epic currency crisis.

And when that happens, where else can Uncle Sam go? Who else will buy his debt?

Simple. You.

More specifically, your retirement account.

According to Internal Revenue Service estimates, there’s close to $5 trillion in individual retirement accounts in the Land of the Free.

This is money that taxpayers prudently set aside for retirement, hopefully cognizant that Social Security isn’t going to be there for them.

Devoid of any other easy lender, $5 trillion is far too irresistible for such a heavily indebted government to ignore.

I’ve long warned that the government could easily nationalize a portion of all IRAs.

It would be so simple for them to do– just a single executive order and a couple of phone calls.

They’ll probably wait for some market crash, and then sell it to Americans like this:

“For your own protection, we will henceforth require banks to invest your retirement savings in the safety and the security of US government bonds.”

These bonds, of course, are so safe that they fail to pay an interest rate that even keeps up with inflation, effectively guaranteeing that you’re going to lose money.

It started happening last year.

In his 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama announced his MyRA program.

MyRA is basically an IRA that invests directly in… you guessed it… government bonds.

He pitched it as an easy for Americans to save for retirement “with no risk of losing what you put in”.

Step two came when both the President and Treasury Secretary embarked on a blitzkrieg-style marketing campaign to pump the program, pledging that they would aggressively push businesses to sign up their employees.

Now comes step three.

Find out more in today’s podcast where we talk about the obvious, looming threats to your retirement security, and the structures you can build to do something about it.

www.sovereignman.com/podcast/...a-nationalization-audio-16042/

If you have an IRA, you need to know this.

I’ve also put together a free report about safeguarding your IRA; it’s a scaled down version of a premium report that I sent to our Sovereign Man: Confidential members recently, but it contains a lot of valuable information.

You can download it here:

s3.amazonaws.com/sm-cdn/blackpapers/IRA+Report-free.pdf

Our goal is simple: To help you achieve personal liberty and financial prosperity no matter what happens.

Will you be prepared when everything we take for granted changes overnight?

Just think about this for a couple of minutes. What if the U.S. Dollar wasn’t the world’s reserve currency? Ponder that… what if…

Empires Rise, they peak, they decline, they collapse, this is the cycle of history.

This historical pattern has formed and is already underway in many parts of the world, including the United States.

Don’t be one of the millions of people who gets their savings, retirement, and investments wiped out....

In das BIP gehen auch Lagerbestände ein. Daher mal ein Blick auf die Lagerbestände Ende 2014:

Produzenten (ohne Öl und Ölprodukte): 655 Mrd $
Großhandel: 550 Mrd $
Einzelhandel: 560 Mrd $  (Quelle: St. Louis Fed)

Besonders drastisch fiel der Anstieg der Lagerbestände an Durable Goods bei den Produzenten aus:

research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=Z1x

wohl inflationsbereinigt ist? Ich glaube eher nicht. Trotzdem ist der Steilanstieg gerade in den letzten Jahren, als die US-Inflation ja niedrig war, sehr bedenklich. Offenbar wurden Lagerbestände auf Halde produziert - unterstützt von der Nullzinspolitik und QE der Fed. Letzteres ermöglichte US-Firmen die eine historisch noch nie gesehende Junkbond-Sause zur Refinanzierung. Dem stand jedoch keine entsprechend hohe reale Nachfrage gegenüber. Konsumsteigerungen waren für die meisten Amis nur kreditfinanziert möglich, und seit 2008 sind sie bei "auf Pump" vorsichtiger geworden (Deleveraging).

Fazit: Die US-Planwirtschaftler hatten in ihrem letzten 5-Jahresplan eine zu große Produkt-Nachfrage unterstellt, weil sie außer Acht ließen, dass die gedruckten Fed-Dollars nur sehr spärlich bei den Konsumenten ankommen.

Das Resultat ist eine "Potemkin'sche Wirtschaftserholung": Das BIP steigt zwar "wie geplant" (Haldeproduktion wird dem BIP zugeschlagen), und aus der Distanz betrachtet sieht das scheinbar überzeugend aus. In deutschen Wirtschaftsgazetten liest man unisoni, dass sich die Amerikaner "besser von der Krise befreit" hätten. Tritt man näher heran, bemerkt man jedoch, dass es sich bei der US-Erholung um eine klassische "Petomkin'sche Pappfassade" handelt.

In diesen Teufelskreis von Unterdeckungen passen auch gut die in den beiden folgenden Artikeln aufgezeigten Malaisen:

www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-26/...on-shortfall-moodys-warns

www.breitbart.com/california/2014/04/18/...-billion-shortfall/

Nein, der Chart der Lagerbestände der Produzenten an langlebigen Gütern ist nicht inflationsbereinigt. Ein Vergleich dieses Charts mit dem angehängten Chart der Auslieferungen (shipments) langlebiger Güter spricht jedoch Bände.

ganz interessant zur US-Verschuldung
www.nzz.ch/wirtschaft/...te-so-weit-das-auge-reicht-1.18472681

Blacksmith Pte. Ltd. publisher of Sovereign Man No.4 Kiarong Complex Gadong 2nd Floor Block D BSB, Brunei-Muara BE1318 Brunei Darussalam
www.internationalman.com/im-forum/viewthread/114/#3313

und wenn man dann das Vorwort liest z.B.  ehemaliger Intelligence Officer und wie er erfuhr ,dass die Regierung immer lügt und merkt,dass er wohl ganz grosszügig helfen will,Vermögen im Ausland zu verstecken,dann bekommt seine excessive Schwarzmalerei ein etwas anderes Gesicht:
As destructive as these politicians are, though, they’re easy to defeat. Individuals who take action early have plenty of options to buy precious metals, move a portion of their savings abroad to a stable banking jurisdiction, and scout out locations overseas in case they ever need to get out of dodge.

These steps make sense no matter what. It’s hard to imagine that you’ll be worse off for shipping a few physical ounces of gold abroad, having some savings stashed away in a healthy foreign bank, taking control of your retirement account, or something as simple as planting a garden in your backyard.
www.sovereignman.com/about/

One advantage of Brunei I guess is that it’s simply lower-profile than the other possible financial centres in the region. Singapore keeps coming up in the media as the destination of all the private banking funds which are being pulled out of Switzerland, and Labuan (though less well-known to the general public) has had lots of complaints by Malaysia’s tax-treaty partners about its use for “treaty shopping”. But no one’s ever really heard of Brunei...  Quelle s.1.Link oben

und dann wundert es auch nicht mehr wenn man das hier findet:
www.gatheringspot.net/topic/...-monitoring-you-these-377-words
See list of words below that are searched for in all emails and telephone conversations by the US Government without any judge signed 4th amendment warrant for search, seizure, or wiretap. ....

Here's the truth: the world is changing quickly. The door is open TODAY for a number of opportunities-- reducing the risk of capital controls through foreign bank accounts and offshore gold storage, obtaining multiple passports, etc.

These opportunities will not last. As Simon expalins, many doors are closing rapidly, and taking action TODAY is the surest way to make sure you don't get left out in the cold.Start taking advantage of this boots on the ground intelligence today, and sign up for a RISK FREE trial to Sovereign Man: Confidential.
Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com  

und lag laut JPM letzte Woche bei 16% weltweit,davon alleine 1,5 Billionen in Europa (1,8 Billionen m.Schweden,Dänemark u.Schweiz)

JPM stellt auch dar ,wer sie trotzdem kauft: Anleger die die Sicherheit suchen oder Currency-Gewinne machen wollen.....
Die EZB The ECB funds its bond purchases at a depo rate of -20bp so buying bonds with slightly negative yields is still a positive carry trade. The BoJ bought government debt securities at negative yields in recent months.
Banks buy bonds with negative yields to escape negative depo rates such as those by the ECB, SNB and the Danish central bank. There is currently a large amount of €220bn of reserves subjected to negative interest rates and this amount looks set to grow exponentially due to ECB's QE

und man kann sich ausmalen ,was passiert, wenn die Anleger diese Geschäfte für zu risikoreich halten wie in der Schweiz und umschichten

As of the end of December, foreign banks had CHF17bn of sight deposits with the SNB while non-bank domestic institutions had CHF33bn of deposits. At a depo rate of -75bp these CHF50bn of sight deposits could cost CHF375m per annum to their owners. This is enough for these institutions to rush to get rid of these deposits by purchasing bonds with yields as low as -75bp in order to reduce this loss. Most likely they purchase these bonds from banks not subjected to negative depo rate. As a result, 7-year Swiss government bond yields declined to as low as -67bp last week. .......www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-31/...yield-here-whos-buying-it

und suchen sich abgelegene Verstecke
Interview mit Rob Johnson www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/02/...future.html#comment-2397805   VIDEO
This is a short but important conversation with Rob Johnson, the president of INET, on what was and more important, not said at Davos. The super wealthy know that the governance structures around them are breaking down, but rather than take measures to shoer them up, they are be retreating into concrete bunkers.

auch zerohedge zum Thema
A lot of ultra-rich people are quietly preparing to “bug out” when the time comes.  They are buying survival properties, they are buying farms in far away countries and they are buying deep underground bunkers.  In fact, a prominent insider at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland says that “very powerful people are telling us they’re scared” and he shocked his audience when he revealed that he knows “hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand”.
www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-31/...eparing-bug-out-locations

www.wsj.com/articles/...-can-survive-nuclear-attack-1415575922
The so-called Survival Condo complex boasts full and half-floor units that cost $1.5 million to $3 million each. The building can accommodate up to 75 people, and buyers include doctors, scientists and entrepreneurs, says developer Larry Hall.
Mr. Hall, who lives in a Denver suburb, bought his first missile-silo site in Kansas in 2008 and completed construction in December 2012. A year later, he says, the development had sold out. Work on the second security compound—the one where Mr. Allen bought a unit—is under way, and Mr. Hall says he is considering additional sites in Texas and elsewhere....

Es stimmt, man muss von solchen Katastrophen-Artikeln (# 953) das Eigeninteresse des Souvereign Wealth Funds abziehen (stutzig machen schon die Verweise auf seine eigenen Offshore-Alternativen am Ende des Artikels).

Dennoch ist das, was in dem Artikel steht, nicht völlig an den Haaren herbeigezogen. Der Artikel  enthält Wahrheit - und mehr als nur "ein Körnchen".

So ist z. B. der erwähnte MyRA eine Realität. MyRA will Gelder aus IRA (Rentenfonds von US-Arbeitnehmern, die hiesigen Rentenansprüchen entsprechen) umleiten und ausschließlich in US-Staatsanleihen anlegen.

Warum wohl? Leider muss man hier - da gebe ich Simon Black Recht - von betrügerischer Absicht ausgehen. Das fängt schon mit der Verzinsungen von US-Staatsanleihen unter der Inflationsrate an. Dies alllein ist "Raub auf Raten". Und wenn dann wegen der Fed-Flutungs-Politik auch noch der Dollar in die Knie geht, werden die Staatsanleihen real (im Sinne von globaler Kaufkraft) noch mehr an Wert verlieren.

Bärenthread-Lesern traue ich zu, dass sie in der Lage sind, aus dem Sensationalismus solcher Artikel das Essenzielle heraus zu destillieren. Und wenn nicht, dann eben nicht...

Meanwhile, rising production in the US, combined with slack demand growth, is ballooning crude oil inventories. In the latest reporting week, these inventories (excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) rose by another 8.9 million barrels to 406.7 million barrels, the highest level for this time of year in “at least the last 80 years,” the EIA reported.

Every rally in oil over the last six months has gotten hammered down brutally. Eventually, the oil glut will end. Everyone knows this. But we haven’t seen demand pick up or production decline to make a dent in the glut. And the wave of defaults and bankruptcies that needs to happen to shake out over-indebted, less efficient players has only just started. So it appears that folks who are trying to catch this falling knife may get some of their fingers sliced off.

www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/...letting-just-beginning.html

weil sich sich dem Spar-Diktat widersetzt und endlich mehr Geld auf Pump ausgeben will. Bestätigt meine These, dass die Amis felsenfest hinter Draghis Flutungspolitik stehen - weil diese vor allem ihnen nützt.

-------------

www.wsj.com/articles/...-sympathy-for-new-greek-government-1422830309

Obama Expresses Sympathy for New Greek Government

President Barack Obama expressed sympathy for the new Greek government as it seeks to rollback its strict bailout regime, saying there are limits to how far its European creditors can press Athens to repay its debts while restructuring the economy.

“You cannot keep on squeezing countries that are in the midst of depression. At some point there has to be a growth strategy [das ist aus Ami-Sicht: Mehr Schuldenaufnahme, A.L.] in order for them to pay off their debts to eliminate some of their deficits,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria aired Sunday.

He said Athens needs to restructure its economy to boost its competitiveness, “but it’s very hard to initiate those changes if people’s standards of livings are dropping by 25%. Over time, eventually the political system, the society can’t sustain it.”

Mr. Obama expressed hope that an agreement would be reached so Greece can stay in the eurozone, saying, “I think that will require compromise on all sides.”

The comments come as Athens’s new antiausterity government begins a push this month to convince eurozone countries to ease the terms under which it received large international financial rescues in recent years. Options include reducing Greece’s budget constraints and debt-service burdens. Relations between Greece and the rest of the eurozone have been rocky since the left-wing Syriza party won Greek elections on Jan. 25.

“More broadly, I’m concerned about growth in Europe, ” he added. He said fiscal prudence and structural changes are important in many eurozone countries, but “what we’ve learned in the U.S. experience...is that the best way to reduce deficits and to restore fiscal soundness is to grow. And when you have an economy that is in a free-fall there has to be a growth strategy and not simply the effort to squeeze more and more from a population that is hurting worse and worse.”

www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-01/...ation-across-us-oil-patch

die Eindämmung Russlands keine Menschenrechte und nicht die Art seiner Verbündeten. Ein Griechenland, das z.B. viel näher an die Seite Russland rücken würde, wäre ein schlimmer Rückschlag in der Einkreisung Russlands. Da spielt es keine Rolle wie hoch die Korruption ist und ob das Land sich in der Hand von Oligarchen befindet und zwischenzeitlich Faschisten an der Regierung beteiligt sind. Hat die USA weder in Südamerika, Asien oder der Ukraine interessiert. Und zahlen müssen eh andere!

www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-01/...-devastation-across-us-oil-patch

Hier der Chart der Arbeitslosen-Erstanträge (rot) relativ zum US-Ölpreis (blau):

Viele Claqueure mögen sich heiser brüllen in ihrem Bemühen, die real existierende Expansionspolitik der USA zu leugnen, doch letztendlich gibt es nur einen zutreffenden Begriff, der exakt beschreibt, was geschieht, wenn der "Winner takes all" die Oberhoheit über Menschen, Rohstoffe und Regierung eines eroberten Landes übernimmt: Kolonialisierung.

Als selbst ernannte Fackelträger für Freiheit, Demokratie und den sogenannten "freien Markt" glauben die wirklich, dass die Menschen überall auf der Welt das amerikanische Imperium mit lautem Jubel begrüßen werden, weil sie ihm dann endlich den entsprechenden Dank für den Schutz und den  Wohlstand bezeigen können.

Genügend Geld für Propagandagetrommel ist da natürlich auch vorhanden:  "And it authorized $20 million in each of the next three years to promote democracy, independent news media, uncensored Internet access and anticorruption efforts in Russia".

Jason Furman, who chairs the president's Council of Economic Advisers:

"If I was chairman of President (Vladimir) Putin's Council of Economic Advisers, I would be extremely concerned. Saying that Russia's Putin and aides "are between a rock and a hard place in economic policy," Furman said that "the combination of our sanctions, the uncertainty they've created for themselves with their international actions and the falling price of oil has put their economy on the brink of crisis."
www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/12/...g-ruble/20480721/

....also providing $350 million in arms and military equipment to Ukraine as it battles a pro-Russian insurgency in its eastern regions.

....R. Nicholas Burns, a former diplomat and undersecretary of state under President George W. Bush:

"Combined with the collapse of the ruble, sanctions will hit Putin’s government where it is most vulnerable — its very shaky economy."

Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee

"President Putin bears responsibility for any outcomes that flow from his actions and breach of the international order. The United States Congress stands with Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression", Mr. Menendez said.

www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/world/europe/...sanctions-bill.html

Ein konträrer Standpunkt:

"Russian Sanctions Might Be Obama’s Greatest Blunder"

One of the greatest foreign policy blunders of the Obama Administration was the push by the U.S. for economic sanctions against Russia. That led to Russia fleeing into the arms of China for refuge. In response, Russia, Europe’s largest and most populated country, is now intent on moving its vast storehouse of resources eastward, strengthening America’s largest emerging rival.

Over the last two years, the two countries have completed a $700 billion agreement for Russia to deliver energy to China, amounting to about 17% of Chinese annual supply, for a period covering twenty years, with China financing much of the initial costs of pipeline construction.

What Russia has done, in that one move, is to help repair a major hole in China’s military armor, making it invulnerable to a U.S. cut-off of sea bourn energy supplies, which until now was one of the greatest fears of Chinese military strategists.

From the Chinese perspective, this is a gift that fulfills its wildest dreams. It’s also a gift that could severely undermine the West's plans to deliver expensive Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) to China and Asia, while already facing competition from Qatar and Australia LNG, will now also run up against Russian pipeline gas through China.

That can’t be wise policy for the U.S.

Weiter hier

oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/...-Obamas-Greatest-Blunder.html

www.marketwatch.com/story/...sp-about-anemic-growth-2015-02-02?page=2

...Simply put, we live in a world in which there is too much supply and too little demand. The result is persistent disinflationary, if not deflationary, pressure, despite aggressive monetary easing.

The inability of unconventional monetary policies to prevent outright deflation partly reflects the fact that such policies seek to weaken the currency, thereby improving net exports and increasing inflation. This, however, is a zero-sum game that merely exports deflation and recession to other economies.

Perhaps more important has been a profound mismatch with fiscal policy. To be effective, monetary stimulus needs to be accompanied by temporary fiscal stimulus, which is now lacking in all major economies. Indeed, the eurozone, the U.K., the U.S., and Japan are all pursuing varying degrees of fiscal austerity and consolidation.

Even the International Monetary Fund has correctly pointed out that part of the solution for a world with too much supply and too little demand needs to be public investment in infrastructure, which is lacking — or crumbling — in most advanced economies and emerging markets (with the exception of China).

With long-term interest rates close to zero in most advanced economies (and in some cases even negative), the case for infrastructure spending is indeed compelling. But a variety of political constraints — particularly the fact that fiscally strapped economies slash capital spending before cutting public-sector wages, subsidies, and other current spending — are holding back the needed infrastructure boom.

All of this adds up to a recipe for continued slow growth, secular stagnation, disinflation, and even deflation. That is why, in the absence of appropriate fiscal policies to address insufficient aggregate demand, unconventional monetary policies will remain a central feature of the macroeconomic landscape.

A.L. Die Crux bleibt, dass Geldddrucken nicht zu organischem Wachstum führt, wohl aber zu neuen Schuldenblasen - nunmehr bei den Zentralbanken. Wenn deren Erholungs-Versprechungen platzen (was bereits absehbar ist), dürfen die jeweiligen Steuerzahler die Schulden der Zentralbanker abtragen. Dann wäre die "unkonventionelle Geldpolitik" in die Hose gegangen. Dass es so kommt, ist mMn so gut wie sicher. Das mag natürlich kein Zentralbanker zugeben.

IPO highs of $52.50, SHAK is now trading $42.50 for a drop of 19% and nearing the dreaded "bear market" 20% drop... Unless you owned it at the IPO, you are a loser for now...
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/.../02/20150202_SHAK.jpg