Thursday, November 27, 2014
Putin: “Americans are printing dollars and have turned their national currency into a global currency… the printing machine is held by them and they’re obviously capitalizing on this.”
Vladimir Putin: We are strong because we are right
The Russian president in the TASS special project Top Officials…
- From Luhansk.
– OK, from Luhansk. You definitely know that if you ask a person, whose ethnicity is identified in his passport as Ukrainian, you’ll see he doesn’t give much thought to it. People there perceive themselves as parts of the greater Russian world. No doubt, the Ukrainian nation has its original culture, language, and self-identity – unique, with marvelous sounding, and very beautiful. But fairly recently a colleague of mine showed me documents dating back to 1924. The word ‘Velikoross’ (‘Great Russian’) was entered in a passport. And today Ukrainians would have written ‘Maloross’ (’Little Russian’). There was no difference in practical terms. We are told, why are you pressing forward with the idea of the Russian world all the time, what if people don’t want to live in it? No one is pressing forward with it, which doesn’t mean however that it does not exist.
When I speak to people from Crimea, for example, or from the east of Ukraine, I ask them “What is your nationality?” Some of them tell me, “We don’t draw any difference.” But when Russia begins to speak about it and to defend people and its own interests, it turns into a bad guy at once. And do you think it’s the east of Ukraine that really matters? Does the problem lurk in our position on eastern Ukraine or Crimea? Not at all. Were it not this particular pretext, any other would be found. And this has always been so.
Take a look at our millennium-long history. As soon as we rise, some other nations immediately feel the urge to push Russia aside, to put it “where it belongs,” to slow it down. How old is the theory of containment? We tend to think it dates back to the Soviet era but, however, it is centuries-old. But we shouldn’t fan any passions over it on our side because that’s how the world is functioning. It implies the struggle for geopolitical interests and, consequently, the nation’s significance, as well as the ability to generate a new economy, to resolve social problems, and to improve living standards. This position is not aggressive a bit. But if you take the United States, our American friends…
- Friends?
- Surely, they’re all our friends. Americans are printing dollars and have turned their national currency into a global currency, although they gave up the gold equivalent several decades ago. But all the same, the printing machine is held by them and they’re obviously capitalizing on this.
- Good guys!
– Good guys. But why did this happen? The US achieved a certain position after World War Two. Why do I say this? The struggle for geopolitical interests leads to the situation when a country either becomes stronger, resolving its financial, defense, economic and subsequently social issues more effectively, or slides into the category of third-, fifth-rate countries, losing a possibility to safeguard the interests of its people.
http://en.tass.ru/russia/761152?page=3
The Fed now owns more than 50% of all outstanding 10-15 year Treasuries:
the #Fed now owns more than 50% of all outstanding 10-15 year Treasuries:
source: Peter Tchir
via ZH
U.S. student loan debt reaches $1.1 trillion, $4 billion more than all credit-card debt.
U.S. student loan debt reaches $1.1 trillion, $4 billion more than all credit-card debt. http://online.wsj.com/articles/americans-borrowing-more-briskly-for-cars-homes-1416931220 …
Americans increased their borrowing
this summer, taking out more new mortgages for the first time in over a
year while adding to their car, credit-card and education loans.
For the most part, consumers are taking on new loans carefully, yet late payments on one fast-growing category of debt—student loans—are worsening, new figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York show.
Household debt—including mortgages, credit cards, auto loans and student loans—rose $78 billion between July and September to $11.7 trillion. Debt levels had fallen the previous quarter and remain $1 trillion below their peak in 2008.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/americans-borrowing-more-briskly-for-cars-homes-1416931220
For the most part, consumers are taking on new loans carefully, yet late payments on one fast-growing category of debt—student loans—are worsening, new figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York show.
Household debt—including mortgages, credit cards, auto loans and student loans—rose $78 billion between July and September to $11.7 trillion. Debt levels had fallen the previous quarter and remain $1 trillion below their peak in 2008.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/americans-borrowing-more-briskly-for-cars-homes-1416931220
19 US Shale Areas That Are Suddenly Endangered, "The Shale Revolution Doesn't Work At $80"
Despite the constant blather that lower oil prices are "unequivocally
good" for America, we suspect companies working and people living these
19 Shale regions will have a different perspective...
Drilling for oil in 19 shale regions loses money at $75 a barrel, according to calculations by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Those areas pumped about 413,000 barrels a day, according to the latest data available from Drillinginfo Inc. and company presentations.
“Everybody is trying to put a very happy spin on their ability to weather $80 oil, but a lot of that is just smoke,” said Daniel Dicker, president of MercBloc Wealth Management Solutions with 25 years’ experience trading crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange. “The shale revolution doesn’t work at $80, period.”
Source: Bloomberg
Drilling for oil in 19 shale regions loses money at $75 a barrel, according to calculations by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Those areas pumped about 413,000 barrels a day, according to the latest data available from Drillinginfo Inc. and company presentations.
“Everybody is trying to put a very happy spin on their ability to weather $80 oil, but a lot of that is just smoke,” said Daniel Dicker, president of MercBloc Wealth Management Solutions with 25 years’ experience trading crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange. “The shale revolution doesn’t work at $80, period.”
Source: Bloomberg
The Mystery Of Surging Q3 GDP Explained And Why Americans Are Suddenly $80 Billion "Poorer"
The final major datapoint of the day was the Consumer Income and
Spending data from the US Dept of Commerce's Bureau of Economic
Analysis, the same outfit that yesterday shocked everyone with just how
much better US GDP was. Well, today, we learned just where the offset
came from. Because while on the surface, both income (+0.2%) and
spending (+0.2%) missed expectations of a 0.4% and 0.3%, respectively...
... it was the revised data that the US department of data fudging once again showed why it has long since surpassed China.
Behold what is perhaps the most important data series in all of US eco: Disposable Personal Income. We say behold, because there are some rather massive variations between what the BEA reported a month ago, and what it reported today, as relates to all the data issued since March. To wit:
Essentially, the just reported Disposable Persona; Income print of $13.109 trillion as of the end of October, is where according to the old, unrevised data US houshold income was some time in August. Whatever happened to two months of income?
Which brings us to the other all important number: the personal savings rate. At just reported at 5.0%...
... something strucks us: this number was reported at 5.6% last month.
And sure enough, since Disposable Personal Income flows into personal savings, net of outlays, it was clear that American savings would be dramatically impacted as a result of the massive data revision.
Sure enough, this is how the US personal savings rate looked like based on the old and just revised data.
And, the punchline: US savings in absolute terms, an $80 billion decline in savings from the old September print and the latest, post-revision, number of just over $650 billion.
So there you have it: in order to "suggest" that the US economy had grown by a far greater than expected run-rate, the BEA was forced to revise away personal income, and "assume" these had instead been invested in the US economy, in the form of a surge of durable goods purchases. Sure enough, while both incomes and savings tumbled, spending magically surged:
So if that "statistical" amount of money you thought you had saved in the BEA's savings.xls spreadsheet just dropped by 10%, fear not dear Americans: it was all used for a good cause: to fabricate a much stronger than expected Q3 GDP number.
Source: BEA
... it was the revised data that the US department of data fudging once again showed why it has long since surpassed China.
Behold what is perhaps the most important data series in all of US eco: Disposable Personal Income. We say behold, because there are some rather massive variations between what the BEA reported a month ago, and what it reported today, as relates to all the data issued since March. To wit:
Essentially, the just reported Disposable Persona; Income print of $13.109 trillion as of the end of October, is where according to the old, unrevised data US houshold income was some time in August. Whatever happened to two months of income?
Which brings us to the other all important number: the personal savings rate. At just reported at 5.0%...
... something strucks us: this number was reported at 5.6% last month.
And sure enough, since Disposable Personal Income flows into personal savings, net of outlays, it was clear that American savings would be dramatically impacted as a result of the massive data revision.
Sure enough, this is how the US personal savings rate looked like based on the old and just revised data.
And, the punchline: US savings in absolute terms, an $80 billion decline in savings from the old September print and the latest, post-revision, number of just over $650 billion.
So there you have it: in order to "suggest" that the US economy had grown by a far greater than expected run-rate, the BEA was forced to revise away personal income, and "assume" these had instead been invested in the US economy, in the form of a surge of durable goods purchases. Sure enough, while both incomes and savings tumbled, spending magically surged:
So if that "statistical" amount of money you thought you had saved in the BEA's savings.xls spreadsheet just dropped by 10%, fear not dear Americans: it was all used for a good cause: to fabricate a much stronger than expected Q3 GDP number.
Source: BEA
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