Business

Iceland was certainly up for jailing their bankers, will they now get away with creating their own money? The government of Iceland is considering removing the power of commercial banks to create money and handing it to the central bank. Can’t see commercial banks in the western world being too happy with this somehow. Blacklisted News reports: Back in 1914, the Bradbury Pound was introduced by the UK government as an ’emergency measure’ to bolster a failing economy. It was a huge success.

Two days after we posted a note by a commodity trader according to whom "What Is Happening Has Absolutely No Reasonable Explanation" late last night we received another warning from a futures trader, one which is applicable to everyone who also trades futures and may be unfamiliar with the recent changes in Nymex and Globex "price banding."  This is what he said yesterday.

It's not just Halliburton ("What we are experiencing today is far beyond headwinds; it is unsustainable") and Intel (12,000 layoffs amid re-evaluation of programs) that are facing up to a new normal very different from expectations. As Avondale Asset Management notes, having poured over 100s of earnings transcripts, while most CEOs don’t see signs of an imminent downturn, the environment still feels a little fragile. It seems that almost everyone is on high alert for a macro curve-ball...

Less than two weeks ago we documented that Toronto based Urbancorp, one of Canada's largest residential developers, was having significant issues. Its attorney's had taken the highly unusual step of terminating their contract, it hadn't released 2015 financials due to the audit committee having "open issues and questions", and most intriguing, a board member quit just two weeks after being appointed specifically to provide expertise in accounting.

The credit-fueled speculative bubble in China's commodity market, as we detailed previously, exploded this week as the mainstream slowly comes to realize that the gains in industrial metals are not a "sign of strength in China's and the world's economic recovery" but merely the next rotation of fast-money slooshing from Chinese equities to Chinese corporate bonds to Chinese real estate and now to Chinese commodity futures...