Business

The basic laws of physics have seemingly ceased to exist in Australia...water is no longer wet, the sky is no longer blue and home prices are not in a "speculative bubble," at least according to some conflicted commercial banking executives who are massively long Australian housing. 

Testifying before a parliamentary committee, the chief executives of National Australia Bank, Westpac Banking and Commonwealth Bank of Australia all said that while they are worried about elements of the housing market, prices aren’t over-inflated.  Per Bloomberg:

Following Wednesday's blowout ADP report, which printed some 40K jobs higher than the highest estimate, the only possibility for tomorrow's nonfarm payroll report, the last major economic data point before the Fed's March 15th rate hike announcement, is to disappoint, especially in terms of wages (which in light of the recent downward revision of Q1 GDP by the Atlanta Fed to 1.2% is not out of the question). That possibility, however, is slim to none if one looks at Wall Street's forecasts, where virtually every sellside analyst boosted their NFP estimate in the hours after the ADP number.

If 'everything is awesome' then someone will have to explain to us why corporate executives are buying their own firms’ shares at the slowest pace in at least 29 years.  According to the Washington Service, there were a total of 279 insider buyers in January, the lowest since 1988.  Moreover, the number of sellers has also grown in recent months, pushing the ratio of buyers to sellers in February to its lowest since 1988 as well.

Via Daniel Mitchell of The Foundation for Economic Education,

When I warn about the fiscal and economic consequences of America’s poorly designed entitlement programs (as well as the impact of demographic changes), I regularly suggest that the United States is on a path to become Greece.

Because of Greece’s horrible economy, this link has obvious rhetorical appeal.

All it took for OPEC to panic, was the sharpest drop in oil prices since last summer, sending WTI not only back under $50, but also wiping out all gains since the November Vienna "supply cut" deal.