Friday, October 30, 2015

ALL HALLOWS EVE

Scary, really scary.  The big news of the day involving anything was Il Duce's decision to insert U.S. special forces directly into Syria.  This is the guy who said "no boots on the ground, no combat in Syria."'  This is being described as a support, not combat, operation.  Support who, or, for a speaker of English, "Who is it that we are supporting?"  It would appear that this small contigent will be operating along side the "good Syrians," the guys that want Assad out of there.  But, "Hold on," you may ask, "aren't the Russians bombing the hell out of those guys and might that not mean that our guys might be under a Russian bomb at the termination of the gravitational effect?"  Wellll...gee...I guess that's what could happen which gives you some idea of what I meant by "event risk" which just became very real in light of the latest piece of diplomatic stupidity and ass-coverning emitting from this mob in D.C.  It gets better, by the by.  Half an hour ago, at the big pow-wow in Vienna regarding Syria among eight nations all of whom hate each other, came the agreement that," all Syrian institutions will remain unchanged."  Let me see what I can do with that.

Is Assad a Syrian Institution?  Betcha the Russians and the Iranians will say that he is.  I'll double -down and bet that we say he isn't.  So if the Russians continue to bomb the "good Syrians" they can do so with impunity as they are simply trying to preserve Syrian institutions.  And oh, sorry about your son Mrs. Jones...wrong place, wrong time, wrong interptetation of the agreement.

Meanwhile, everyone is just feeling wonderful about October because the equity indexs were up 8.5%.  Why don't I think this is a "risk on" envirornment?

It's also Friday and that's the day that unpleasant and stupid announcements are made because the working press will have usually left early for the weekend.  Today was no exception at the Fed who let it be known that it will shortly vote on the new capital requirements for the nations's largest banks that will, in some cases, bring the ratio of capital and long term debt up to 25%, thereby reducing he need for those nasty deposits which tend to disappear when the going gets tough.

You see the theory is that if the banks screw up again like in 2007-08, they will first burn through their capital, and then the debt holders become the new owners through conversion and if that doesn't work, they will be liquidated through their "living will" and VOILA! no taxpayer bail-out!!!!

To say that this is beyond stupid would not be critisizing the idea and particularly its authors enough.
Let me just suggest that this highlights that the regulators have still not come to grips with the true causes of the financial crisis on one hand and have avoided taking any responsibility of their roll in the same which was considerable.  It is as gutless and cynical as any bunch of two bit quasi politicians could possibly be, and provides the American public with a false a sense of  security almost criminal in it's application.  Mre on this as the details emerge.


It is the Eve of all Hollows........"From ghosties and gobblies and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, Dear Lord deliver us."


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