It was nice to be away, playing some golf and visiting with friends. And now it’s back to work. (Confession: I was engrossed in reading for part of my days.) There two key issues before us: BREXIT and this weekend’s G-20. (Side note: I did a radio interview yesterday with Anthony Crudele on #FuturesRadio. Anthony did a great job and we covered a lot of ground. Listen to the piece and it will rehash much of what my blog readers have been reading during the past six years.) Here is my take on the G-20 meeting and it is interesting how the British elites are trying to co-opt part of the G-20 meeting to get support for the British Prime Minister David Cameron and his bumbling sidekick George Osborne.
Posts Tagged ‘George Osborne’
Notes From Underground: Four Central Bank Meetings, and, Oh Yeah, the Fiscal Cliff
December 2, 2012The weekend news was rather sparse as the Greeks got their trust fund check from the overlords in Brussels. The Greeks need to be leery of Eurocrats bearing gifts. The Sunday news shows in the U.S. highlighted the vast chasm between Speaker Boehner and Secretary Geithner. There was finger-pointing all around about as to which group was holding up the negotiations as to affect genuine compromise and a resolution to the fiscal cliff. As the rhetoric heats up, the S&Ps and global stock indices all closed higher on the week, showing that the price action speaks louder than words. The market has fears that failure to resolve the fiscal crisis will result in a new U.S. recession and will also undermine the global economic recovery, but yet the COPPER closed above the 200-day moving average for the first time in many weeks. Other industrial metals also performed well last week making me wonder if all the fiscal cliff rhetoric is missing some larger picture. We will watch to see if the COPPER can sustain its recent strength or whether we are in the midst of a short covering rally.
Notes From Underground: Hey, George Osborne! Are You Daft?
August 14, 2011The weekend news has been unusually quiet, so with no news about any spreading of the financial crisis the EUROCRATS were opining about the need for Germany to back a massive issuance of EUROBONDS. Joining in the chorus for the creation of a massive dose of EUROBONDS were a group of global finance ministers, including Mr. Tremonti from Italy. The world’s PHILOSOPHER KING, George Soros, also threw his weight behind the need for a EUROBOND. It is now widely known that Merkel and Sarkozy are to meet in Paris on Tuesday in an effort to come to some agreement on [INSERT THOUGHT HERE], so as to help calm European markets and provide some plan for relieving the pressure on French and other European Banks.
Notes From Underground: Franco/German spat ahead of this week’s SUMMIT of LOVE
March 23, 2011This Thursday and Friday the European Union had hoped to put the finishing touches on the European Stability Mechanism that will go into effect in 2013. The Sarkozy/Merkel-crafted plan would give succor to Chancellor Merkel ahead of this Sunday’s elections in Baden-Wurttemberg and hopefully halt the German voters’ antipathy toward all things EU. However, there appears to be friction between the giants of the European Union. Sarkozy is reportedly furious at the Germans for abstaining on the UN vote to impose a no-fly zone in Libya. Also, the French believe that Frau Merkel played politics and an anti-French card by moving to halt electricity production at seven NUCLEAR POWER plants, thus making the French look bad as well as having the impact of driving up electricity prices.
Notes From Underground: Risk on is not the trade it used to be–and the algorithms will be not so self-assured
July 13, 2010Bob Pisani’s cheerleading outfit is back from the cleaners and all is well in the world. The talking heads are building pyramids of potential as the early earnings reports are giving reason for the recent rally to sustain itself. Has the earnings season changed the picture so dramatically since ALCOA came in with better earnings? We sincerely doubt it but as our readers know all too well, we don’t argue with the market but rather try to find profit potential in all its actions. Notes from Underground is always trying to make sense of 2+2=5.
Some are making a big deal out of Alcoa as a precursor of growth, but we notice that ALCOA is more than 60 percent off its early January highs and that is with the recent rally included. Our goal is not to be negative but rather to give some perspective to counter the screaming of the buy-side purveyors of illogical positivism. When the S&Ps were on their highs, we remained unconvinced until the private equity firms broke out of the sideways pattern. But the price action of Blackstone and Ochs-Ziff failed to establish any upside momentum. The private equity model has been broken since the global financial system has been in stress. Converting equity to debt could not have been a worse place to be and we still watch to see if the PE firms confirm a true turnaround in the credit markets.
On June 23, we put out a piece in which we noted that the British pound was rallying with the announcement of Chancellor’s Osborne’s AUSTERITY BUDGET. We noted that if the POUND was strengthening on austerity, then the DOLLAR was vulnerable as GEITHNER and company were furthering greater stimulus to stabilize the fragile U.S. and global recovery. Since then, the DOLLAR has weakened as the previous DOLLAR bulls were chased from their haven.
Today, we read an opinion piece from BLOOMBERG that caught our attention and alerts us to the British pound. David Blanchflower, aka the Dartmouth Dove, who was previously a member of the Bank Of England’s monetary board, admonished the Chancellor of the Exchequer for playing politics with the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR). In pushing the recent austerity budget, Blanchflower claims that the chancellor played with the OBR’s analysis to soften the negative impact on jobs. The exchequer claimed that the increase in the VAT to 20 percent from 17.5 percent, plus cuts in public spending would not hurt employment as the private sector would create enough jobs to offset the governments cuts–fiscal austerity begets economic growth.
A leaked document showed that the OBR actually projected that job losses would be more than 1.0 million.The fudging of the data–our words–supposedly led to the resignation of the present head of the OBR, Sir Alan Budd. Regardless, this story needs to be watched to see if it halts the recent rally in the POUND STERLING. We have been bullish on the POUND, but our recent enthusiasm is tempered until the market brings some clarity. The DOLLAR may be weak enough to make this a tempest in a teapot.
Notes From Underground: The G-20 is in disarray no matter how much spin is applied (but it’s making us dizzy)
June 22, 2010The British released their budget today and it was pretty much as advertised. George Osborne, the U.K.’s chancellor of the exchequer, announced VAT tax raises and other revenue enhancers in an attempt to trim the British budget. The discussion now turns to whether the budget will be too AUSTERE for the times. The fact that economic growth in the developed nations is anemic, at best, is raising concerns that the Brits and Europeans are removing fiscal stimulus at a time when the economic recovery is still too fragile.