Russ Winter

The market rallied higher once again on more rumors (some kind of unworkable bank deposit scheme: what Europe’s loan-deposit ratios look like), and denials of yesterday’s rumors (L-Pap now says Greece to say in EU, blah, blah).  The second chart shows what’s involved with PIIGS banking deposits.  Using hook theory,  trading rumors is the modus...
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In the whodathunk department, Reuters is reporting that Chinese buyers are defaulting on deliveries of  iron ore and coal shipments. As I have been reporting for months, ships have been mothballed,  triggering another round of under-reportedbanking losses.  Also reported from China is a 15% drop YoY in property sales, and more importantly it saw a 19% drop...
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American masters of the universe and their toadies give self serving lip service to covering some events in Europe. They are forced to really. But when it comes to the last Ponzi standing,  the US, we see little of the kind.  For example recent est...
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This post is an example of the actionables available on my subscription site. It this distinct from the Daily Rant pieces seen on Winter Watch. I was an active and successful mining shares investor in the early days of the precious metals bull market. I learned a lot about mining during that period.  ...
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Over the course of my thirty five year investing life I have noticed that markets often trade on hooks. A hook is when most participants develop a preconceived notion about “how things work”.  Then trading follows a pattern, drawing more in.  In the past, hooks were relatively harmless and when they came undone, they had...
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The chorus against the Fed Bubble continues apace as David Einhorn rips Fed’s jelly donuts policies.  Rick Santelli and Fed apologist Steve Leisman discuss the Einhorn’s statement. These exchanges have gone on for a few years,  except now Leisman really seems to be on the defensive in a crackpot blathering rancid stale bread kind of way.  Next...
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One of the “elite,” conomist Martin Feldstein was once considered one of the finalists for Greenspan’s spot, before a true sycophant, the Bernank, was appointed.  The rest is history but seems Feldstein is having an Atlas Shrugged, John Galt moment about what has transpired.
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In the days before the May 6th elections in France, key German States, and Greece, the cat fight between   Merkel and the likely new French President Hollande escalates. Talk about the rats abandoning ship, but hey it’s all good. The charts demonstrates in spades the nature of the conflict, as France’s ‘conomy in...
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What the “Bernanke Hall of Mirrors Put” Looks Like in the Real Economy (via http://wallstreetexaminer.com) “The world over, governments and central banks are waging war on supply and demand- on the price mechanism.”  - James Grant, interview here starts at 4:30 On the real economy and the hopium hates details front, fuel demand is down,...
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My enemy is the world of finance”- Francoise Hollande Perhaps Bloomberg is following my comments, or perhaps everybody is finally connecting the dots on this one: Explosion in Student Debt Drags Down Housing.  Also in the WTF Dept, the SEC takes a ...
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“You have to dance while the music is playing”- Chuck Prince, Citigroup mucky muck,  shortly before 2008 crisis Of late Zero Hedge has been mentioning the presence of one large JP Morgan trader nicknamed the whale (Bruno Iksil).  Tuesday ZH broa...
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Much of the government borrow, spend and transfer largess is scheduled to run off automatically without a major legislative effort to extend them.  In other words, what is now required is going to be a bipartisan effort to deliberately budget anothe...
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The realization has been shockingly slow, but the lamestream media, such as Bloomberg, is picking up on how toxic the LTRO program has been to the merda-storm countries’ banks. Today, they ran a clip on how Spanish banks borrowed LTRO funds to ...
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Power generation at the giant utility Huaneng Power in China was  up less than 1% for the Q1.   Two other Chinese electrical giants GD Power and Huadian Power showed a decline of 1.3% and an increase of 6.0% respectively.   Look like 8.1% GDP g...
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Herb Stein’s Law:  “If it isn’t sustainable, it will end“. Non fuel import prices rose 0.5% in March, once again an indication that the Asia supply chain is getting more costly. My theory is that the loss of cheap Asian supplie...
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Italian banks took €265 billion in LTRO 1+2 cash, and Spanish banks a bit over €150 billion.  Portuguese bank dependence on ECB borrowing rose to a record C56 billion   So in total these countries’ insolvent banks have now placed  over €470 billion in merda collateral with the ECB.  A good portion of the capital loss for this...
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Reuters is out with a story about the pipeline of 1.25 million neglected homes that are headed for auction this year. The inference of the article is that these homes will further depress the housing market. I have no quarrel with that observation, but the larger question is the large recovery losses on these properties....
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All day, the MSM trolled out all the dynamite talking heads types, saying that a 2-3% correction is healthy, blah, blah  and now the Fed can add stimulus.  All day, you see words like rescue, followed by some lobbyist functionary talking his trade.  This mantra has gone beyond merely obscene and feels like one...
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The political economy in the US is totally breaking down. This is a real race to the bottom. People are washing their hands of it. Case in point: Key influencer and former Obama ally Oprah Winfrey stated recently that she will not be lending her support to him in the 2012 election. Where is...
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True to the pattern of late, markets are trading higher on another completely contradictory report for the algos, this time out of China.  The official PMI index surged to 53.1, an expansionary number, an eleven month high. Meanwhile HSBC reports its PMI number slid to 48.3.   Is this some kind of April Fool’s joke? Here is Chinese electricity consumption, with...
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“You can make a firewall as high as you want and it will be no help”  -Wolfgang Schäuble, new Eurogroup head, and German Finance Minister It was fun while it lasted but the bloom off the LTRO is now turning into, drum roll please, a liability.   Funny how accounting that recognizes this concept works in...
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“Inventories of manufactured durable goods in February, up twenty-six consecutive months, increased $1.6 billion or 0.4 percent to $373.7 billion. This was at the highest level since the series was first published on a NAICS basis in 1992 and followed a 0.6 percent January increase. Machinery, up twenty-three consecutive months, had the largest increase,...
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The consumer confidence index showed expectations for high inflation in the next six months has reached its highest level in six months.  The MIT survey has been updated and shows inflation tilting back up. I really wonder about prices and quality of...
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Two minute Radio Free Wall Street clip. Although the Fed’s Bullard is largely irrelevant as a voting member of the Fed, what he says is not.  He said the central bank is on pause, and more stimulus is not currently warranted. On the balance sheet, Bullard commented that the Fed has taken substantial risks and he...
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Finally after five months of investigations comes the Jon Corzine MF Global bombshell Friday .  The Bloomberg article references an e-mail written by Edith O’Brien,  the assistant Treasurer at MF Global and a memo written by congressional staffers. A few aspects are of note:  first that Corzine “gave...
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The latest container shipments into the port of Los Angeles and Long Beach confirm that China (and Asia) is no longer nearly as much in the game. Inbound is down 10% from last year and 20% from the same month in 2007.  I do think a little marginal production has shifted to the US, but it...
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I think the Germans are coming around to the view that Draghi is willing to flush them down the toilet.  From Der Spiegel: There is a rift among top-ranking officials at the ECB, and it also extends between the majority of the ECB’s Governing Council and the Bundesbank. First, two leading German ECB officials — chief...
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Here are the true debt exposures of Spain, when all the regional, bank, and “other” guaranteed  debts are included.  In a report issued on 2/29/12 and apparently ignored by everyone including the ratings agencies, Eurostat reports that Spain...
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I started writing about Chinese imports into the US over ago . Total product imports started noticeably slowing in the second half of 2011 on a year over year basis and in the five year average, hiccuped ba...
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On Radio Free Wall Street, Lee Adler and I have had lively discussions about market predictors. Lee holds to his work on monetary and technical indicators. Normally that might be the preferred method, but right now something doesn’t pass my smell test. I’ve been saying that the markets, as currently positioned, are extremely vulnerable to...
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