Business

Earlier today, Goldman's global macro strategist team led by Noah Weisberger released a report titled "Markets do not "Take it Easy" to start the year", which had one very disturbing slide, i.e., "Exhibit 8." - disturbing, because it showed that according to Goldman's Current Activity Indicator, the US was effectively in recession; certainly disturbing enough for us to immediately tweet it with just one comment: "Oops":

Oops from GS pic.twitter.com/jz0LCculCQ

Led by a broad-based collapse in financial stocks, European markets extended and accelerated their plunge today. Thanks to the increased systemic linkages enforced by The ECB, peripheral sovereign risk is spiking as their national banking systems crash. Every European nation is now in at least correction since the end of QE3.

Europe crashed today...

Led by utter carnage in financials...

On Tuesday in “Canada Set To Unleash Negative Rates As Oil Patch Dies, Depression Deepens,” we outlined the dilemma facing Stephen Poloz and the BOC.

If the central bank cuts rates and drives the loonie lower, Poloz may be able to keep the CAD price of WCS above the marginal cost of production and thus avoid shut-ins that would cost the Canadian economy still more oil patch jobs.

Last year we predicted that the world had reached peak centralization and that going forward things would begin to fracture.

What is centralization?

Centralization is the process by which the world grows increasingly centralized, relying on Centralized organizations (Central Banks, sovereign governments, etc.) to determine the direction of capital and focus.

Great news for American Consumers - the price of the stuff you buy with stagnant incomes dropped in December by 0.1% (missing expectations of a 0.0% move). But what's good for Americans is bad news for The Fed as this is a resumption of deflation from mid-2015, and the biggest miss since January 2015. And then there is the ugly news that behind ths headline is a 3.7% surge in shelter costs YoY.

The breakdown is weak - with energy- and food-related deflation offset by shelter