NC Renegades

If you don’t believe financial markets are well and truly broken Monday’s tepid response to the Greferendum should be dispositive. The house of cards known as the Eurozone is about to hit the wall, unleashing financial contagion and turmoil far and wide. So any investor or trader in their right mind should have been slamming Jim Cramer’s triple sell button early and often.

For lack of doubt, consider what Merkel’s Vice-Chancellor and leader of the German socialists had to say on Monday. Recall Herr Gabriel is purportedly the voice of the enlightened left and the politician hoping to soon relieve Angela Merkel of her job:

Sigmar Gabriel, the German vice-chancellor and economy minister, said there could be no question of writing off Greek debt because other countries that have had loans such as Ireland, Portugal and Spain would demand equal treatment.

‘I really hope that the Greek government – if it wants to enter negotiations again – will accept that the other 18 member states of the euro can’t just go along with an unconditional haircut,’ he said.

‘How could we then refuse it to other member states? And what would it mean for the eurozone if we’d do it? It would blow the eurozone apart, for sure.’

Oh, yes, he used the “conditional” word, meaning that if Greece signs up for a permanent regime of reform, austerity and depression its paymasters in Brussels and Berlin might be open to an accounting double shuffle. That is, to having Greece’s crushing loans extended to 40 years from 25 years, its grace period on interest and principle repayments stretched beyond the current 2023 time frame and its interest rates pared to something less than 1.5%. On an NPV basis, this is supposed to be some big deal concession.

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More details from the WSJ:

Greece formally requested a three-year bailout from the eurozone’s rescue fund Wednesday and pledged to start implementing some of the overhauls demanded by creditors by early next week, according to a copy of the request seen by The Wall Street Journal.

Crucially for Greece’s creditors, the letter says the government would start implementing some measures, including on taxation and pensions, by the beginning of next week, though it doesn’t go into details.

The letter is a first step toward fulfilling a demand by international creditors, who have given Athens until Sunday to come up with tougher measures they would impose in return for desperately needed financing that could keep the country from bankruptcy and even worse economic turmoil.

The full list of overhauls and budget cuts is what will determine whether the application for a new rescue program will be approved by the rest of the eurozone. The currency union’s leaders said Tuesday they would assess whether it makes sense to start formal negotiations on a bailout program at an emergency summit on Sunday.

In other words, and as expected, Greece has essentially capitulated to Troika demands which will come with far harsher terms and even more austerity, just to keep the myth that Greece is an “equal member” in the Eurozone, yet virtually all the proceeds will go back to repaying the ECB, the IMF and other official taxpayer-backed European creditors as well as the occasional private holdout creditor.

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Gov. Hassan justifies her veto of SB 116, Constitutional Carry bill, by quoting New Hampshire’s Racist and Homophobic former Governor Thomson.

Governor Maggie Hassan has vetoed SB 116, repudiating the 1974 amendment to the NH Constitution guaranteeing that “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by this state on account of race, creed, color, sex or national origin.”

Her veto message quotes former Governor Mel Thomson who after visiting South Africa in 1978, praised the white-minority government and defended its apartheid policy. Thomson also openly threatened to veto all funding for the University of New Hampshire after the Gay Students Organization held a dance and performed a play on campus.

SB 116 would have made optional NH’s license requirement to discreetly carry a firearm loaded outside of one’s home The law would have replaced the wholly subjective discretion given to local law enforcement to decide whether any NH citizen is a “suitable” person – allowing for the determination to be based on their ethnicity, race, gender, union or political affiliation – with one based on federal firearm statutes.

Governor Hassan compounds the existing statutory discrimination stating “Our permitting system gives an important oversight role to local law enforcement, while allowing for appeals through appropriate channels”, which means only those with financial means will have the ability to challenge any denial of the constitutional right.

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FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE

These words (which I picked up from Abraham Joshua Heschel) are true, even if it doesn’t seem like it. Humanity may be blind – willingly blind – for sickening lengths of time, but mankind is not always blind.

Our present government/corporate culture – the loud, flashing, vapid cloud of distraction and fear that surrounds us – not only promotes blindness toward anything outside of itself, but requires this blindness for its very continuance; this is true.

Still, man is not always blind.

Back Then

I will begin making my point with an old example:

Would you expect thousands of peasants, in deepest medieval France, to walk for scores or even hundreds of miles, through early 12th century mud and wilderness, and to sleep outdoors, just to hear a philosopher teach? A man who was rejected by Church and secular authorities, and who was mutilated beside?

Regardless of how implausible that may sound, it happened. The teacher’s name was Peter Abelard, this is how he described these events:

Forthwith I sought out a lonely spot known to me of old in the region of Troyes [in north-central France], and there, on a bit of land which had been given to me… I built with reeds and stalks my first oratory.

No sooner had students learned of my retreat than they began to flock there from all sides, leaving their towns and castles to dwell in the wilderness. In place of their spacious houses, they built themselves huts; instead of dainty fare, they lived on the herbs of the field and coarse bread; their soft beds they exchanged for heaps of straw and rushes, and their tables were piles of turf.

This happened. These people grew tired of being blind. Then they did something about it.

And Now

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For a record 12th day in a row, Chinese margin debt balances have dropped with today’s 8.5% collapse the largest in history. As of last night, there were around 570/1694 Shenzhen stocks halted/suspended and hundreds more on the Shanghai bourse leaving more than 54% of all Chinese stocks frozen ($2.6 trillion or 40% of value). China continues to try to manage leveragedown (raising margin requirements on stock futures) while encouraging speculation (easing rules for insurers to buy blue chips and financing the purchase of smaller company shares directly) and CYNK’ing the entire market – if it’s not open, you can’t sell it and the price cannot fall! It’s not working as CSI-300 futures are now down 7.9% in the preopen.

• *CHINA TRADING HALTS FREEZE $2.6 TRILLION, 40% OF TOTAL VALUE

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by Brenton Smith

Deciding when to retire should not be a complicated matter. Unfortunately the Internet is making it so by amplifying bad advice to seniors suggesting that waiting to collect benefits is not only sensible but well worth the wait.

It is, of course, all nonsense. You cannot materially increase your expected Social Security benefits by changing your claiming date. This middle school math seems to befuddle PhDs, recognized financial gurus, and media outlets like the Wall Street Journal. They in turn have confused seniors with terrible advice that has been magnified by the Internet into urban legend.

Everyone understands that seniors want to get what’s yours, but waiting until 70 is not the way to do it. You have a better chance of maximizing your benefits with Tarot cards than listening to experts on the issue of setting your claiming date.

h/t Wirecutter via Hans

What do you do when two policy rate cuts, $19 billion in committed support from a hastily contrived broker consortium, and a promise of central bank funding for the expansion of margin lending all fail to quell extreme volatility in a collapsing equity market?

Well, you can simply ban selling, which is apparently the next step for China.

According to Caijing, the country’s national social security fund is now forbidden from selling (but is welcome to buy). Here’s more, via Caijing (Google translated):

Social Security informed the public fund social security portfolio not only buy sell stock

“Financial” reporter learned that the Social Security Council on Monday (July 6) Call each raised funds, social security portfolio is not allowed to sell their holdings of stock.

Sources said that Social Security Council has just informed all social security portfolio can only buy stocks can not sell the stock; and it is not defined as the net selling, but completely unable to sell the stock.

And a bit more from FT:

Financial magazine Caijing reported on Monday that the National Social Security Fund had told its external fund managers they could buy stocks but were not permitted to sell them.

Central Huijin, a unit of China’s sovereign wealth fund, also said on Sunday it was supporting the market by buying blue-chip exchange traded funds.

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