Business

Submitted by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investment Partners,

From June 2014 until late January 2015, oil prices (WTI) fell about 60%. From June 2015 until late January 2016, oil prices (WTI) fell about 60%.

The exact track each annual trading history took to achieve those results is different (2014-15 much more straight ahead and persistent; 2015-16 jagged and irregular), but you can’t deny the repetition in both the amount of time and the ultimate scale of the collapse.

Eight years of unconventional monetary policy, NIRP, ZIRP, QE, and asset bubbles as far as the eye can see, but where is that all important product of successful monetary policy - at least in a conventional Keynesian sense, where a steady increase in the cost of living and the loss of purchasing power is defined as success - namely inflation?

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

If you haven’t seen the 2015 Best Picture nominee, The Big Short, I strongly recommend it.

The Big Short is based on Michael Lewis’ book which examines how such an extraordinary financial crisis gripped the world in 2008, and the handful of people who saw it coming.

The movie opens asking a very simple question about the global financial meltdown:

Whenever Marc Faber appears in the financial media, in this case Bloomberg TV, one can expect the usual fire and brimstone sermon of how micromanagement of the global economy by central bankers will lead to disastrous results, something which we agree with wholeheartedly and as of two months ago, so did virtually every billionaire at Davos. Recall that just at the end of January, the WSJ when reporting from Davos said that "The world’s central banks can’t save us anymore.

On Thursday night, we brought you a first-hand account of what’s really going on in subprime auto.

According to a reader who works in the industry, the securitization machine may be grinding to a halt for deals that are stuffed with loans to borrowers with low (or no) FICOs. Here’s an excerpt: