Posts Tagged ‘Davos’
January 20, 2019
Let me begin by reiterating that this is NOT a political blog but a place for the exchange of ideas dedicated to those who desire to improve trading and investing in order to increase profits. My STRENGTH is bringing an in-depth knowledge of political economy and 40-plus years of trading my own funds (while also managing other people’s money via hedge funds).
My personal political views OUGHT not to be relevant for when it comes to generating ideas. I adhere to the wisdom of Deng Xiaoping: “I don’t care if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.” While I might criticize certain persons in any political administration it is merely to criticize actions as a way of comprehending policy outcomes. (For example, my disdain for Steven Mnuchin is solely based on what I deem to be his incompetence, a similar contempt that I held for Tim Geithner.)
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Tags:Chinese Yuan, Davos, Mexican peso, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, U.S. Dollar, U.S.-China trade
Posted in China, Currency, trade, United States | 7 Comments »
September 3, 2018
The world is aflame with the BLOWBACK from policies of the elites who carved a world fit to desired outcomes of a self-established ruling class. The free flow of capital in pursuit of cheap labor has led to the stagnant wages that have given rise to anti-establishment forces, which have upset the Davos crowd’s playbook. As long as capital pursues a maximization of return but is answerable to the Westphalian construct of the nation-state, there will continue to be bouts of conflict that result in less desirable outcomes for global corporations.
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Tags:Davos, Draghi, Erdogan, global capital, Putin, Trump, U.S. Dollar, Xi
Posted in China, ECB, Germany, Russia, Turkey, United States | 10 Comments »
January 25, 2018
It seems that the White House emptied and traveled to Davos in an effort to gain control at ground zero for access journalism. The fawning media has been the epicenter for President Trump’s assault of the airwaves. The anti-globalist, drainer-of-the-swamp has become the story emanating from the Alps in an effort to destroy the memory of Chinese leader XI at last year’s conclave. President Donald was the perfect foil for the globalist masquerade party just after his inauguration but in 12 months he has hijacked the entire soiree. On Wednesday it was Trump’s minions, Mnuchin and Ross, threatening the world’s money lords with the commencement of a global trade/currency war as the U.S. Commerce Secretary was sending soldiers to the ramparts with threats of throwing dead green presidents to their doom.
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Tags:Davos, ECB, Euro, Mario Draghi, Mnuchin, President Trump, Ross
Posted in ECB | 16 Comments »
January 24, 2018
The U.S. dollar fiduciaries wreaked havoc on markets as Secretary Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross hit dollar bulls with a one-two punch that sent the dollar index to three-year lows. I sure hope that Mrs. Mnuchin mirrored the behavior of previous Swiss National Bank (SNB) Chairman Phillip Hildebrand, who was forced to resign in January 2012 when it was discovered his wife made a currency trade three weeks prior to an SNB policy announcement. I am sure that no White House Davos participants acted in any kleptocratic fashion (sarcasm intended). The price of a $650,000 ticket to Davos has to be of some value. Now, moving beyond sarcasm, Secretary Mnuchin broke with tradition to openly suggesting that a weaker DOLLAR is good for American trade and thus economic performance.
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Tags:Davos, ECB, Euro, Mario Draghi, Steve Mnuchin, trade war, U.S. Dollar, Wilbur Ross
Posted in Currency, Davos, United States | 16 Comments »
January 16, 2017
We at Notes From Underground have published more than 1,000 posts during the last seven years. I have voiced my displeasure about the annual gathering in Davos for the past five years (last year’s Davos post is below). My battle cry was (ans continues to be): PEPPER SPRAY DAVOS, a response to the heinous police overreaction to the pepper spraying of University of California–Davis students in November 2011. The police POURED pepper spray onto student protesters, a contemptible act of police brutality. I thought if the UC–Davis students were subjected to such a police response for blocking a sidewalk the crony capitalists of global monopolies are surely worthy of such a contemptuous action. The corporate chieftains and their political sycophants, who exchange “insider views” for large speaking fees (and of course a hope to secure a job after leaving political office), have badly damaged the world.
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Tags:British pound, Davos, EU, Europe, Theresa May
Posted in Currency, Davos, UK | 15 Comments »
January 18, 2016
Please, PEPPER SPRAY ALL THE ATTENDEES OF DAVOS in order to halt the rape of taxpayers and consumers across the globe. This annual conclave is responsible for more wealth destruction and the widening disparity in GINI coefficients than any public policy. I believe that the cost of attending Davos is priced at such an extravagant rate because it is a giant insider scam. Hobnob with politicians and policy makers in an effort to be part of the “smart money” crowd. It was the great moral philosopher and economist Adam Smith who so presciently noted: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for the merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” The conspiracy against the public has been the financial repression of the global middle class in an effort to bail out those who are attached themselves to the public treasury to maintain the “animal spirits” of crony capitalism.
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Tags:Bernanke, Davos, ECB, Fed, Mario Draghi, Merkel, Trichet
Posted in Davos, ECB, Fed | 22 Comments »
November 3, 2015
Let’s clear the air. The lead story in today’s Financial Times was “ECB Officials Met Bankers Before Big Policy Moves.” This is why the battle cry of Notes From Underground for the next two months is PEPPER SPRAY DAVOS. The financial markets have been rendered meaningless. Not by the mere massive QE programs of global central banks but by the sheer possibility policy makers were providing fore-warnings to large private institutions before public releases. This is the epitome of what Adam Smith warned about 250 years ago. It is difficult enough to trade and invest in a zero interest rate world but when the investment is “rigged” by the ability of the large institutions to be privy to information prior to public release, well, the math must be 2+2=5 for nothing is balanced.
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Tags:Davos, ECB, Fed, QE
Posted in ECB | 4 Comments »
October 20, 2015
In yesterday’s Financial Times, one of the giants of the economics profession, Luigi Zingales, wrote an op-ed, “A Strong Free Press Is Our Best Defence Against Crony Capitalism.” Zingales takes the financial media to task for failing to be a watchdog against the corruption that exists in global capital markets.He poignantly states:”While nowadays almost all the world professes itself to be capitalist,not everybody experiences the same type of capitalism.In fact,the form of capitalism prevailing in most of the world is very distant from the ideal competitive and meritocratic system we economists theorise in our analyses and most of us aspire to. It is a corrupt form, in which incumbents and special-interest groups shape the rules of the game to their advantage, at the expense of everybody else: it is crony capitalism.”
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Tags:Canada, crony capitalism, Davos, ECB, Justin Trudeau, Larry Summers
Posted in Central Banks | 15 Comments »
January 18, 2015
I am reissuing a piece from December 21, 2014 as a reminder of just where the SNB has invested the assets bought by the massive printing of Swiss francs. The Swiss authorities have created a perpetual money machine that “coined” unlimited amounts of francs and exchanged them for other paper assets. The question remains: Who was willing to buy all those francs that the SNB kept selling into the market (and yet the EUR/CHF remained at the 1.20 floor/ceiling)?
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Tags:Davos, EUR/CHF, SNB, Swiss Franc
Posted in Currency, SNB, Switzerland | 9 Comments »
January 28, 2014
While I have been on hiatus the financial markets have awaken to old problems and the damage to markets is real but the damage has been contained … for now. The concerns du jour are more of a political nature then economic but as this blog’s readers well know POLITICAL ECONOMY is the entire basis of NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND. What is political today will manifest itself economically and the opposite being true. Nothing illustrates this better than the current rage over income inequality, thus wealth creation is less significant than its distribution.
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Tags:Aussie/Kiwi cross, Ben Bernanke, capitalism, Davos, Draghi, ECB, Fed, FOMC, QE, RBNZ
Posted in Central Banks, Currency | 7 Comments »