Friday, August 15, 2014 - Don't Worry

Don’t Worry

by Sinclair Noe

DOW – 50 = 16, 662
SPX – 0.12 = 1955
NAS + 11 = 4464
10 YR YLD - .06 = 2.35%
OIL + 1.49 = 97.07
GOLD – 8.40 = 1305.50
SILV - .31 = 19.65

For the week, the Dow rose 0.7%, the S&P 500 gained 1.2% and the Nasdaq climbed 2.2%.

The Federal Reserve said factory production jumped 1.0% last month after rising 0.3% in June. That was the largest gain since February and reflected increases across all major categories. Auto production surged 10.1%, the biggest rise since July 2009. There were also solid gains in the production of machinery and computers and electronic goods; yesterday we talked about the importance of capex and business spending; maybe we’re seeing signs of that.

Or not. In a separate report, the New York Fed said its "Empire State" general business conditions index fell to 14.69 this month from 25.60 in July.

A preliminary August reading on the University of Michigan/Thomson Reuters consumer-sentiment index fell to the lowest level in 9 months, 79.2 down from a final July level of 81.8.

Producer prices, or prices at the wholesale level increased 0.1% in July, with 0.5% growth for transportation and warehousing prices; goods prices were unchanged; food prices rose 0.4%; energy prices dropped 0.6%. Overall producer prices rose 1.7% over the 12 months that ended in July, down from June’s annual-growth rate of 1.9%.

But the economic news carried little weight today, as attention once again focused on geopolitics. That might not be totally accurate; Wall Street looks at geopolitical hotspots but it can’t hold their focus. A new survey of institutional money managers around the world by Bank of America Merrill Lynch has found a sudden surge in worry and fear, and a rise in the number buying “protection” against a crash; which means derivatives such as put options or credit default swaps.

Money managers are worried about the markets and the Fed raising interest rates and geopolitical events and the baggage retrieval system at Heathrow, and so, over the past month they have raised their cash positions from 4.5% to 5.1%. Which doesn’t sound very defensive; in fact, it sounds like money managers are still excessively bullish on stocks.

Yesterday Russian President Putin talked about how he wanted to avoid confrontation in Ukraine. Last night a Russian armored column crossed the border into Ukraine; they started firing artillery at Ukrainian forces, which exchanged shellfire. Ukrainian President Petro said a "significant" part of the Russian column had been destroyed. Russia's government denied its forces had crossed into Ukraine. NATO said there had been a Russian incursion into Ukraine but would not go so far as to call it an invasion.

After Ukraine reported the invasion, Russia's ruble weakened against both the dollar and the euro. Russian shares were also dragged lower. International markets moved lower. European Union governments warned they are ready to expand sanctions against Russia if the conflict in Ukraine intensifies.  US markets initially moved lower. The yield on the ten year treasury dropped 6 basis points to 2.35%; Treasuries are usually considered a safe haven. The yield on German bunds, or 10 year bonds, dropped under 1%. The escalating clash is now haunting the European economy, already on the brink of fresh recession, with a string of southern states in debt-deflation.

All of a sudden, the euro crisis is back, though in truth it never really went away. The latest economic figures from the eurozone make bleak reading. Across the eurozone, which is struggling to get banks lending to businesses, economic growth is expected to be 1.1% this year. All three of the euro area’s biggest economies — Germany, France and Italy — are failing. Germany’s output actually fell in the second quarter. Italy is suffering through a triple dip recession. The French economy has stagnated. Analysts expect it to grow by less than one per cent this year. Italy has dropped back into recession, or maybe it never got out of recession. The closest thing approximating good news was that Spain's dead-cat bounce recovery continued with 0.6% growth. But it still has 24.5% unemployment. The eurozone economy is still far smaller than six years ago, by about 1.9%; unemployment is in double figures and debt burdens in some areas are high.

In June, the ECB cut its key interest rates and introduced a new program of cheap loans to banks that are intended to be passed on to businesses. Some economists say the European Central Bank should go further and engage in large-scale purchases of public and private debt to reduce borrowing costs and add to the money supply. ECB President Mario Draghi is under fire to do more to resuscitate growth. He, in turn, argues that “monetary policy can only achieve so much, with government reform required to do the heavy lifting,” and he is probably right, but there doesn’t seem to be much appetite for reform. Monetary stimulus is simply not remotely an adequate substitute for government spending. Even the austerian IMF has been forced to acknowledge that fact.

The Ukraine crisis has drawn the EU into an economic confrontation with Russia, which is not only the principal supplier of energy to many eurozone countries but is also a significant trading partner and export market for European goods. This is hardly designed to improve the economic outlook, and the eurozone remains too weak to withstand external shocks. And Eurozone weakness was already in place before the most recent economic sanctions against Russia; the unfortunate reality is that nobody really knows how Russian sanctions will play out. There will be costs associated with sanctions; many of them unexpected.

Next week, the Federal Reserve will hold its annual Jackson Hole retreat. Janet Yellen will speak on labor markets. The labor market has improved but still looks weak. Various Fed officials have various theories on the labor markets, but not much in the way of solutions, and so, not surprisingly, they have different views on Fed policy.

Jeremy Stein left the Fed Board of Governors earlier in the year to return to a teaching gig at Harvard. Last week Stein said whatever the Fed does, we can expect less financial stability. Stein says that the process of exiting QE and raising interest rates has “no real precedent”. Yellen devoted an entire speech to the subject of financial stability last month at the IMF, where she said the Fed had devoted “substantially increased resources” to monitoring stability and acknowledged that the Fed’s low-interest rate policy had spurred “households and businesses to take on the risk of potentially productive investments.” But, she went on, “Such risk-taking can go too far, thereby contributing to fragility in the financial system.”

Yesterday, St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard said he believes financial markets are probably mistaken if they’re counting on Fed interest rate increases to occur more slowly than policy makers forecast. Bullard says the Fed will raise the interest rate target in the first quarter of 2015. Bullard said: “We’re way ahead of where we expected to be” in terms of the Fed’s employment mandate, and “If that strength continues in the second half of the year here, then the conversation on a little more hawkish direction of monetary policy will heat up.”

Today, Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota offered a contrasting view, saying: “The FOMC is still a long way from meeting its targeted goal of price stability” because of excess slack in the job market, and “progress in the decline of the unemployment rate masks continued weakness in labor markets,” which would keep the inflation rate below the Fed’s 2% target until 2018. Kocherlakota pointed to the participation rate among people between the ages of 25 to 54, the prime working years; another especially significant” measure of slack is the “historically high” percentage of workers who would like full-time jobs but can only find part-time work. The U-6 unemployment rate, a broad measure of unemployment that includes people working part time because they can’t find full-time jobs rose to 12.2% in July after declining one percentage point over the first six months of the year.

One of the biggest changes in the US labor market over the past two decades has been the increasing number of people working over the age of 55. From the end of World War II until the early 1990s, a smaller and smaller share remained in the labor force but since the 1990s that trend reversed. In 1993, only 29% of people that age were in the labor force. The vast majority were retired. But participation has been rising and by 2012 more than 41% of people in that age group were still in the labor force, the highest since the early 1960s. Clearly, something has changed about people’s attitudes toward retirement. A survey from the Federal Reserve last week provided some clues. Around 21% of people said their plan for retirement is simply “to work as long as possible” and the number of people giving this response increases by age.

In addition to the Fed’s get-together in Jackson Hole, next week’s economic calendar includes minutes from the Fed’s July 30^th FOMC meeting; on Thursday we’ll get a report on July existing home sales from the National Association of Realtors; Tuesday brings an update on July housing starts. Housing starts tumbled 9.3% in June. The Labor Department will release the consumer price index report on Tuesday; the CPI measures inflation at the retail level; it’s been running near 2%, more or less.

Tuesday, July 08, 2014 - Everything Except Productive Purpose

Everything Except Productive Purpose
by Sinclair Noe

DOW – 117 = 16,906
SPX – 13 = 1963
NAS – 60 = 4391
10 YR YLD - .05 = 2.56%
OIL - .13 = 103.40
GOLD - .40 = 1320.60
SILV - .03 = 21.12

Down 2 days and already I’m seeing the financial talking heads asking if this is the start of a correction. Just a reminder that markets go up and down and sometimes sideways. The markets don’t need a big reason to move. Right now, we’re heading into earnings reporting season, and a few things happen; first, some investors might look at a position and determine that prospects for earnings are not so great, or some investors are taking the opportunity to put some cash in their pockets, just in case they see a bargain basement opportunity.

A trend in place is more likely to continue than it is to reverse, and it reverses when we can see clear evidence of a reversal. Yes, the market looks overvalued by many metrics, yes there seems to be irrational exuberance; but the markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent; yes, we’ve seen a couple of down days but we’ve gone 33 months without a correction, but we’ve had a bunch of down days during that same time. Right now, we’re seeing a minor pullback into a trading range as we await earnings season.

Should you stay or should you go? The markets have hit recent highs, and so you have to wonder if you get out when the getting is good. After hitting record highs, the past 2 days have seen declines; let me be very clear, 2 down days do not constitute a trend; not unless you trade the minute bars. Still, it can be sickening to see profits melt away. Conversely, cutting exposure with the aim of putting cash back to work when valuations drop can be soothing at first, but maddening if stocks continue climbing. There is a fine line between adjusting exposure based on valuations and timing the market; and either way it’s a real trick heading into earnings reporting season.

With interest rates at historic lows and stocks climbing, holding cash in a portfolio has been costly, but on the flip side, cash can serve as a buffer against market pullbacks and corrections, and it provides flexibility to buy again if prices drop; in other words, you keep your powder dry. The real return on cash has to consider the idea that you can use it to make even more money down the road. Of course, for that strategy to work, you have to reinvest the cash; you have to look for bargains or look for other opportunities. If you aren’t willing or able to do that analysis then the risk is that you build up cash and don’t know when to get more invested.

This is where the idea of rebalancing comes in; it doesn’t require sophisticated analysis; you just sell high and buy low. If your risk tolerance points you toward a 60% allocation in stocks, and the stocks go up in price and now you hold 70% in stocks, cash out, to bring the equity allocation back to 60%; turn around and put that cash into a part of the portfolio that has dropped. The idea is that you are buying low; the unfortunate side effect is that you might be dumping your winnings into a losing position. A variation on the theme is sell high and buy something you don’t already hold.

But then the question is where do you go to find value? An article in the New York Times suggests that everything is in bubble territory. The chief investment strategist at BlackRock, one of the world’s biggest asset managers, spends his days searching for potential opportunities for investors to get a better return relative to the risks they are taking on, and he says there are very few cheap assets these days. At the current level of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, every dollar invested in stocks buys you about 5.5 cents of corporate earnings, down from 7.4 cents two years ago, and lower than just before the global financial crisis in 2007-2008.

Bonds offer next to nothing in the way of returns, and if you want to chase yield in the debt markets, you’ll find some of the riskiest issues can’t even breach 5%. Real estate has spiked in many locations, even farmland has rocketed. It’s not that any one area is outrageously overvalued. Most people would agree that stock valuations are lower than 2000, and real estate peaked in 2006, and we haven’t really recovered to those levels. It’s just that everything that could be considered a financial asset has gone up. And of course, as prices go up, the potential future returns drop.

Maybe that’s a reflection of a slowing global economy. Maybe it’s a result of the central bankers printing lots of money, but not directing where the money would go; and so the money was parked on the sidelines, and not put to productive use, not being invested in things like factories or infrastructure. And then the risk is that folks chasing yield take on more and more risk until something pops.

Taking a look at economic data today, the Federal Reserve report on consumer debt for May showed debt increased $19.6 billion, not including mortgage or real estate related lending; that’s down from a $26.1 billion increase in April. Revolving debt, including credit-card balances, rose $1.79 billion in May following an $8.85 billion April advance that was the biggest since November 2007. Non-revolving debt, which includes car and education loans, gained $17.8 billion in May, the biggest increase since February 2013, after climbing $17.3 billion in the previous month. Car sales continue be show strength, reaching a 16.9 million annual rate last month, the fastest pace since July 2006.

The JOLT survey, or Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey shows that as of the end of May, companies increased the number of job openings almost back to pre-recession levels. Despite greater demand for workers, pay scales have not budged much.  Wages for all private-sector employees increased 2% in the year ended in June, according to the Labor Department, exactly where wage growth has trended through all of this recovery.

News from the small-business sector, however, suggests pay growth is ready to break out of the 2% range. According to the June survey of small firm owners by the National Federation of Independent Business, a net 21% of small businesses report lifting compensation in the last few months. That is the highest reading since the end of 2007. So, it looks like we are getting closer to seeing wage growth in the near future, but we’re not quite there yet. And since we aren’t seeing actual proof of wage inflation, it could be argued that the Fed should wait a bit longer before tapping the brakes. And for that matter, even if we start to see signs of wage inflation, that might be a good thing.

Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker said in a speech today that “subdued productivity gains” along with “moderate” increases in consumer spending and “more tempered” growth in housing construction, will lead to economic growth in the range of 2% to 2.5%, well below the Fed consensus of 3% growth. Lacker says “broad-based advances in technology are far less likely than in the past, and that we should prepare for relatively stagnant productivity growth trends going forward.”

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Narayana Kocherlakota said today that inflation will likely stay quite low for about 4 or 5 years. Kocherlakota says the Fed is “undershooting its price stability goal” of 2% inflation and will likely continue to do so for some time to come; he sees the probability of inflation averaging more than 2% over the next four years as being “considerably lower” than the probability of inflation coming in less than 2% over the same time period. Kocherlakota is skeptical of improvements in the jobs market, saying “much of the decline in the unemployment rate since October 2009 has occurred because the fraction of people who are looking for work has fallen.” That means the Fed is also failing to meet its job creation goal, which is damaging for the economy.

When you look at last week’s jobs numbers something doesn’t seem to add up, at least it gives pause to consider the numbers. GDP growth equals productivity growth plus job growth, or at least growth in hours worked. We’ve been adding jobs at a good pace, but the economy contracted 2.9% in the first quarter. That leaves productivity, and it turns out that there is a long term trend in decelerating productivity growth. And the problem with productivity is not that workers aren’t working hard; the problem is that we haven’t been investing in the right tools for the job.

Earnings season kicked off with a report from Alcoa. It was better than expected. Including all charges, the company earned $138 million or 12 cents a share during the quarter. That reverses the company’s $148 million loss in the same period a year ago. Revenue also came in ahead of expectations. Alcoa reported revenue of $5.8 billion, which is 2.6% higher than expected. Revenue is flat from the year-ago period.

Earlier Samsung issued an earnings warnings, claiming profits could fall as much as 26% from a year earlier. Smartphone and tablet sales took a pretty big beating. Samsung put out a statement that says tablet sales are slow because consumers are slower to upgrade tablets compared to upgrading smart phones. They also blamed the rising Korean won, which is up 9% against the dollar in the past 3 months; they blamed excess inventory in Europe, and competition in the mid and low-end of the market, and a few other excuses as well.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - Congratulations Graduates, Yada, Yada, Yada

Congratulations Graduates, Yada, Yada, Yada

by Sinclair Noe

DOW + 158 = 16,533
SPX + 15 = 1888
NAS + 34 = 4131
10 YR + .02 = 2.53%
OIL – .33 = 103.74
GOLD – 2.40 = 1292.90
SIL  un = 19.49

Earnings season is winding down; about 96% of S&P 500 companies have reported results, with profit growth this quarter of 5.5% and revenue up 2.8%. While more companies have topped earnings expectations than usual, fewer have beat on the revenue side. This has been an ongoing theme for corporate profits; bottom line growth without corresponding sales. If this formula sounds unsustainable, it is, unless there is some other factor pumping up the markets.

Follow-up from yesterday: China has signed a 30-year deal to buy Russian natural gas worth about $400 billion. The gas deal gives Moscow an economic boost at a time when Washington and the European Union have imposed visa bans and asset freezes on dozens of Russian officials and several companies over Ukraine. It allows Russia to diversify its markets for gas, which now goes mostly to Europe; essentially opening the door to Asia’s gas market and potentially closing the door on the petro-dollar.

The Federal Reserve today released the minutes of the most recent FOMC meeting. Fed policymakers considered several approaches to tightening monetary policy, but decided to remain flexible; which is another way of saying QE is a big experiment and they are just hoping nothing explodes in their face. By making no decisions, the Fed is making it difficult for Wall Street to be spooked by tightening talk, at least for now.

In the minutes, the Fed made no decisions on which tools to use. One great advantage of extending the debate about how to tighten is that it keeps the question of when stuck in background. If the Fed laid out a detailed exit strategy the markets would start to trade the strategy and essentially kill it in its tracks.

The minutes show the Fed still thinks the first quarter slowdown was weather related, and things will pick up, any day now. Fed officials still see slack in the labor force, but there wasn’t consensus on how much slack or what to do about it. Inflation is picking up just a little, but is regarded as stable and not a problem.

After the minutes were published, we heard from several Fed officials, starting with Janet Yellen delivering a commencement address to NYU grads. Yellen delivered what you might expect, and nothing to do with monetary policy: graduates, she said, should “tend the fires of curiosity,” listen to others, show grit in the face of failure, and the courage of her hero Ben Bernanke (yada, yada, yada).

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President John Williams said he’s inclined to delay any action that would allow the central bank’s balance sheet to get smaller until after the Fed has lifted interest rates for the first time. Williams  believes the Fed needs to take into account the troubles it had last year when it first floated plans to wind down its bond-buying policy, and make sure markets understand what the central bank does with its bond holdings is entirely different than what it does with short-term rates.

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Narayana Kocherlakota said the Fed is still failing to deliver on its employment and inflation goals. Kocherlakota says the current unemployment rate of 6.3% overstates the nature of the improvement. He said the labor market is not healthy but he didn’t call for additional levels of stimulus, but he did say it was possible for the Fed to switch to a system where instead of targeting a specific level of inflation, it could shift to a regime where it allowed inflation to rise above target to make up for past shortfalls.

One area of agreement in the FOMC minutes is that officials are concerned about weakness in the housing market; citing factors like higher home prices, construction bottlenecks from a shortage of labor and harsh winter weather, as well as tight credit.

Former White House advisor Larry Summers thinks student debt is slowing the housing market, which in turn is slowing the broader economy. Since 2003, student loan balances have nearly quadrupled to $1.2 trillion, during a period when mortgage debt rose “only” 65% to $8.2 trillion and credit card debt actually declined by 4.2% to $660 billion. The burden of servicing that ever growing student loan debt is eating into other forms of borrowing and spending, such as the purchase of a home. And so the proportion of first-time buyers has been shrinking for years.

Over 70% of the students who are sitting through a commencement speech this spring have student loans. They will start their career, if any, with about $33,000 in debt. Even when adjusted for inflation, it’s about twice as much as 20 years ago. Back then, only 43% of students graduated with student loans. And as education costs have jumped, the idea of working your way through school just doesn’t work anymore.

One of the reasons why education costs have jumped is because of austerity. States cut back on funding for state universities; the schools raised tuition and they discovered they could charge whatever they want, or get away with, because the students just borrow the money. Once upon a time state governments held the reins of university budgets and they would tighten their grip occasionally; no more; and through the student loan programs, designed with whatever intentions, the government is simply aiding and abetting colleges in extracting ever more money from the future lives of their students.

And so for the Class of 2014, you now face the prospect of rising interest rates, a mountain of student loan debt, almost no chance of buying a home in the foreseeable future, and the prospects for a good job in your chosen field are not looking good. Congratulations, don’t despair, just have the grit and courage of Ben Bernanke (yada, yada, yada) and you’ll work your way out of your parents’ basement in 10 or 15 years.

Earlier this week, the Oregon Legislature approved a plan that could pave the way for college students to finance their education by selling equity stakes in their future income. It’s an interesting idea. With both unsubsidized and subsidized Federal loan rates now at 6.8%, and Grad PLUS rates even higher, the student loan burden that comes with an undergraduate degree, let alone further education can be daunting. Unfortunately, Federal loans are often the only option that a student has to pay for school nowadays.

Equity financing would allow these students to avoid debt in exchange for a portion of their future income for a set number of years. Proponents of the Oregon plan claim that 3% per year for 20 years would be enough to keep the program afloat. One concern is that students who expect to be high earners will not participate if it could mean they end up paying more in tuition when all is said and done. Equity financing would be costly for a medical student. A cap on repayment could help solve such a problem. The cap would still have to be higher than the average tuition rate charged by the school. Meanwhile, a equity financing might be a sweet deal for a student taking classes that don’t lead to a big paycheck; it might even encourage them to pursue higher education without regard to finance.

The best that can be said for the plan is that it is a tax on future earnings, the worst is that it is a newfangled name for indentured servitude.

So, back to the housing market for a moment; you have a massive number of young adults living at home with very little financial means for purchasing a home. The recent argument was that as economies grew, this wealth would eventually lift the standard of living for all. There is new economic research showing that this isn’t always the case especially when a rentier class emerges. In fact, this wealth gap is being fully visualized through real estate. Some analysts have been scratching their heads wondering how housing prices could go up while homeownership is actually falling.

How do you have soaring home prices with household incomes dropping? The fact that investors are dominating in the housing market shows how large and powerful these big pools of money have become. The financial sector rarely had an interest in being actual property owners until the housing market imploded. But in the first quarter of this year, cash sales from investors reached an all-time high; that isn’t Mom and Pop buying a crib with cash and it certainly isn’t the first time buyer a few years removed from college.

Since 2005, we have increased the number of rental households by roughly 7 million (a 21 percent increase). Interestingly enough, we have a foreclosure graveyard of 7 million over this same period. Owner occupied housing has actually fallen over this period. We are looking at close to one decade of data and we have fewer individual homeowners today than we did in 2004.

In previous recoveries, you would also see home building picking steam up but that hasn’t happened. In better days, we would see more than 2 million housing starts per year. In this recovery, we’ve been doing our best to close in on 1 million.

And when the Fed last year floated the idea of taper, the markets responded with a taper tantrum, and rates increased, modestly, but an increase; and that was enough to slam the brakes on regular home buyers last year. Mortgage apps are now near an all-time generational low. Regular buyers are becoming a minority. Many of the “pent up demand” argument assumes first, that younger buyers have the means to buy. Second, it also assumes homes are affordable based on their income (which they are not). And so we have cash investors, spurred on by strong stock returns, but what happens if or when the inevitable stock market correction comes along?

Tuesday, April 08, 2014 - When Stuff Aligns

When Stuff Aligns

by Sinclair Noe

DOW + 10 = 16,256
SPX + 6 = 1851
NAS + 33 = 4112
10 YR YLD - .01 = 2.68%
OIL - .28 = 102.28
GOLD + 11.10 = 1309.00
SILV + .20 = 20.16

Every now and then the planets align. Tonight is one of those times; Mars, the Sun, and Earth will be aligned in opposition. And Mars is closer than normal, although still about 92 million miles away. I have no idea what this means in the cosmic scheme of things, but when the sun sets in the West, Mars will rise in the East; and it will be overhead around midnight. You should be able to spot it easily as it will look light a bright star with a red or burnt orange color. If you can’t watch tonight, you can look to the skies for the next week.  On April 14, there will also be a total lunar eclipse causing the full Moon to turn as red as the Red Planet itself.

Investor sentiment remains upbeat ahead of earnings and despite the smack-down in prices Friday and Monday. On Friday, the CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, dropped down to a multi-month low of 12.6 and even after a few days of triple digit declines the VIX has only edged back into the mid-14 range. And although Alcoa is the official start of earnings season, a few companies have already reported, including Oracle, Nike, and Fed Ex; without inspiration. The floodgates on profit reports don’t open until April 15. A few retailers and banking names are due out with results this week.

Now we’ll see if the stars align for earnings season, which kicked off this afternoon with Alcoa. The aluminum producer was a long-time member of the Dow Industrial Average until last September, and with the ticker symbol AA, they held the alphabetical honor of the first blue chip company to report earnings each season. Today, after the close of trade, Alcoa reported profit of 9 cents per share on revenue of $5.45 billion. Wall Street analysts’ consensus estimates called for 5 cents per share. Alcoa was up in after-hours trading.

Now, let’s dig down. The earnings excluded restructuring costs and other one-time items, also known as the cost of doing business; including those costs, Alcoa posted a net loss of 16 cents per share compared with earnings of 14 cents per share for the same quarter last year. Sales fell to $5.45 billion from $5.83 billion a year earlier, trailing the $5.55 billion average estimate. So, revenue down and below estimates; earnings were actually losses but with a clever accounting team they show as profit and they beat estimates; stock price goes up. Now you know the Wall Street earnings game.

Wall Street doesn’t care about results in a vacuum. It cares about results vs. expectations. And Wall Street has set the bar so low for earnings that it should be easy to fly above forecasts, even when a company trips over the bar. That should set up plenty of opportunities for earnings reports to beat estimates, and trade higher even as the broader market suffers a year-over-year drop in profits. Ironically, while the S&P 500 is just shy of all-time highs, the number of S&P constituents that have lowered their quarterly EPS outlook is also at an all-time high.

As we have seen every quarter over the last several years, analysts have slashed their initially-too-optimistic forecasts ahead of earnings season. But estimates have come down more dramatically than usual for 1Q due to weather, concurrent with increasingly negative management guidance. It’s a game that Wall Street plays on investors, and so far, very early in the reporting season, it is playing out as 52% of the 21 early reporters have exceeded on both earnings and sales higher than last quarter’s 42% hit rate, and the best result from the early reporters since 1Q12.

That doesn’t mean the earnings reports are good, nor will they be good; S&P earnings are forecast to fall 1.2%. Of course earnings probably won’t fall 1.2% because enough companies will beat expectations by a wide enough margin to pull year-over-year profit growth into the black. Let the games begin.

Tomorrow the Federal Reserve will release the minutes of the March FOMC meeting. We already know the Fed is on track with tapering away from QE, and should be done with asset purchases sometime around October or December, and then they will look at the possibility of raising interest rate targets from the zero range, probably next year, give or take. And this week, several Fed policy makers are giving speeches to try and rein in Wall Street from getting ahead of the Fed.

Narayana Kocherlakota, president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve said today that the US economy is wasting “lots of resources” by letting inflation stay too low and unemployment stay too high. Kocherlakota was the lone dissenting voter at last month’s FOMC meeting; he believes the Fed should do more to stimulate the economy and they should avoid specific targets for raising rates.

Kocherlakota believes the current unemployment rate of 6.7 percent probably overstates the health of the labor market, because it does not count those who have given up looking for work or those who are working part time but who would rather work full time. He says: "There is still significant underutilization of our country's most important resource, its people."

One idea is to cut the interest rate paid on excess reserves that banks keep on deposit at the Fed. This is more of a symbolic move than a big money game changer, mainly because the Fed pays only about 25 basis points on excess reserves. Still, reserves have grown over the past few years, possibly to as much as $2.6 trillion.

How did reserves get so big? The simple answer is QE. When the Fed buys private sector assets from investors, it not only creates new deposits, it creates new reserves. This is because a new deposit in a bank creates a liability which must be balanced by an equivalent asset. When banks create deposits by lending, the equivalent asset is a loan. When the Fed creates deposits by buying assets, the equivalent asset is an increase in reserves, also newly created. So it does not matter how much lending banks do, if the Fed is creating new deposit/reserve pairs by buying assets from private sector investors then deposits will always exceed loans by the amount of those new reserves. While the Fed continues to buy assets from private sector investors, excess reserves will continue to increase and the gap between loans and deposits will continue to widen.

Cutting interest rates on excess reserves might encourage some bank lending to compensate for the loss of earnings on the reserve-deposit spread; that would be logical but it also involves the actual work of lending and bankers are loathe to work and frequently illogical. So, the bankers could almost be counted on to do the wrong things; such as cutting deposit rates to from ridiculously low levels to stupidly low levels; increasing fees; or increasing interest rates on loans, which is not exactly an inducement for households and businesses to borrow. And so, as long as the Fed continues buying Treasuries and mortgage backed securities as part of Quantitative Easing, they will continue to grow excess reserves.

But what is the point if it just parks reserves with banks and doesn’t get the money circulating through the economy? The real question is how to get money moving through the economy. And this has been the major downfall of QE in the Fed’s ability to stimulate the economy and live up to its mandate of maximum employment.

Of course, the money parked in excess reserves is just part of the problem with sluggish money velocity. We also need to consider the nearly $2 trillion corporations have parked off shore, sitting there doing nothing. Congress cowers before the multinationals. There is nothing we as individuals can do. But last Friday, the legislature in the state of Maine passed legislation to end some of the games.

Companies can dodge taxes by shifting income to low-tax jurisdictions. Not only do they send the money to tax havens off shore, but they also set up companies to hide income in low tax states, such as Nevada and Delaware. Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia countered stateside tax avoidance by “combined reporting.”

Combined reporting requires companies to report their income in all states; then the combined income is taxed in proportion to the business’s activity in their state. That way, if large amounts of income that were produced by business activity in, say Maine, but were reported for tax purposes as belonging to Delaware, it would be included in the total income pie that Maine would proportionately tax.

But if combined reporting stops at “the Water’s Edge,” it only includes income reported within the United States. To get at offshore tax havens, the states can require worldwide combined reporting, or Water’s Edge plus a list of known tax havens. So the Maine legislature has passed a bill to close the “Water’s Edge” loophole, and require multinationals to pay up, no matter where they park their cash. The Maine legislators estimate they could collect an additional $5 million a year. The governor has 10 days to sign or veto, or the bill automatically becomes law. It’s is, admittedly a small step, but if the stars and the planets can align, maybe the states could also align. 

Monday, January 27, 2014 - Sniffing Out Weakness

Sniffing Out Weakness

by Sinclair Noe

DOW – 41 = 15,837
SPX – 8 = 1781
NAS – 44 = 4083
10 YR YLD + .04 = 2.76%
OIL - .94 = 95.70
GOLD – 12.50 = 1257.50
SILV - .22 = 19.79

Last week was rough for the Dow Industrial, and today started with the blue chips in the red but not by much; it even looked like we might finish in positive territory. Nahh. The markets have been trending downward over the last week due to a mix of concerns. Emerging market strains, anxiety over tapering by the Federal Reserve, and weak manufacturing data from China likely contributed to a pullback. Also, new home sales were weak in December.

The international problems started with a report that Chinese manufacturing may contract for the first time in 6 months. Then Argentina’s central bank limited dollar sales to preserve international reserves that had fallen to a seven-year low. Then there were concerns about a default in the shadow banking system in China. Then there concerns about a corruption scandal for Prime Minister Erdogan’s cabinet in Turkey. Protesters occupied municipal buildings in the Ukraine. Then the South African rand dropped big. Then the whole thing spread. I don’t know what happened in Mexico but the peso took a hit. Bank of America analysts recommended buying the Mexican peso on Nov. 24 as one of their top two Japan-related trades for this year, predicting a rally that would have boosted the currency’s value to 8.4 yen. Instead, the peso slumped 3.5% last week. More than a third of the most-traded emerging-market currencies have already fallen below forecasts.

Neither China, Turkey, Argentina, nor any other country has anything to do with consumer stocks, or most other equities, badly underperforming following an excellent year for the US stock market which was supposed to help consumers through the wealth effect. If you haven’t received your trickle down just yet, don’t hold your breath.

Tech stocks, which by extension are a type of consumer stock, have started to look weak, after being so strong last year. After the close today, Apple whiffed on earnings because they really whiffed on iPhone sales. The company reported that it sold 51 million units, a 6.7% jump in sales, year-over-year, which is lower than sell-side expectations of 54.7 million. The good news is that Apple beat expectations on the top and bottom line, despite weak iPhone sales. Revenue was $57 billion, up 5.6% on a year-over-year basis. EPS was $14.08, up 2% year-over-year. If the market is going to catch a second wind, don’t look for tech, at least not tomorrow.

Has the correction begun? Check back in a few months and we’ll know for sure. If you don’t want to wait that long I understand; waiting for clarity is risky, and we all know you can’t go broke taking a profit. So, some folks are looking at this as a chance to get out while the getting is good. At the very least, make sure you have a prevent defense in your portfolio playbook. And then there’s the whole January Barometer, which posits that as January goes, so goes the rest of the year. We know that January has been ugly, and if you need further confirmation, the financial press has been clinging to thin straws in their never-flinching belief that any decline is a buying opportunity.

A core principle of both fundamental and technical analysis is "a rising tide lifts all boats." If the economy is strong and growing, the vast majority of companies should benefit. We should expect to see this show up in both quarterly earnings reports and higher stock prices. And when prices don’t move higher, that might be an indicator that the financial markets are sniffing out economic weakness in advance. When it comes to the possible end of a bull market though, we need to remember the real driver behind the move in the first place – the Fed. And the Fed is meeting this week to determine policy.

There’s growing evidence that things aren’t as good as the Fed anticipated, but I don’t think we’re at the point where the Fed is going to pull back and stop their tapering, and they certainly won’t reverse the taper. The Fed will probably cut its purchases in $10 billion increments over the next six gatherings before announcing an end to the program no later than December. Treasuries fell today, pushing the 10-year yield up from almost a two-month low.

The state of emerging markets has very little impact on the Fed’s decision to continue taper. Charles Plosser, president of the Philadelphia Fed, said in a January 14 speech: "When we started QE ... there were many economies and emerging markets and other places that were very critical of our policy. Now that we're trying to stop it, they've been very critical of our policy."

Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota, a voting Federal Open Market Committee told the New York Times there are other ways to offer accommodative monetary policy, other than buying bonds. He talked about the Fed providing forward guidance, which is a far cry from cranking up the printing press. And just for the record, Kocherlakota is one of the Fed guys who thinks the Fed needs to do more to expand its efforts to reduce unemployment.

Now that the tapering has begun, the idea of less Federal Reserve stimulus combined with slower Chinese growth and specific concerns in some countries led last week to a full-scale flight from emerging-market assets that could continue this week. Emerging markets have been inflated in recent years by huge amounts of cheap cash created by the Federal Reserve, much of which found its way into developing economies in the hunt for better returns. If it all seems vaguely familiar, it’s because it looks a lot like the wildfire that spread through the developing world and resulted in currency runs that hit the Asian Tiger economies, or Russia,  or Latin America.

There are a few reasons for concern about this latest conflagration. The scale of money that has moved to developing markets over the past decade and now dwarfs the sums which fled in panic 15 years ago. Lending into emerging markets has increasingly been through bond markets, rather than in the direct bank loans that dominated previously and which involved longer-term relationships between banks and the firms and countries. And the growth of index tracking exchange traded funds over the past decade has increased the liquidity and also the volatility, meaning money that flowed in can flow out very, very, fast. Emerging markets have attracted about $7 trillion since 2005 through a mix of direct investment in manufacturing and services, mergers and acquisitions, and investment in stocks and bonds. That was considered hot money, stoked by the Fed’s QE.

The State of the Union is…tomorrow. The State of the Union speech will likely be light on legislative agenda and long on optimism. We have a budget, there probably won’t be another government shutdown, at least until October; there is a chance for immigration reform, maybe. And that’s about it. Don’t look for big legislative vision because it won’t happen. There is an election later in the year and so lawmakers will be yelling at each other for most of the year and trying to highlight their differences rather than creating consensus. That means tomorrow’s speech will likely be long on optimism and framing the national conversation.

These annual updates have become more and more predictable, and less and less inspiring. There will be a new piece of technology; the President’s communications team is urging us to watch what they call the “Enhanced State of the Union” online with a live stream of the address and a split screen format with graphics and charts to highlight key points and statistics. Well, that should be fun. The site is whitehouse.gov/sotu

One chart you won’t see comes today from the Green Party in the European Parliament; it estimates the cost of the implicit guarantee that governments will back large financial institutions, known as “too big to fail”; the price tag in 2012 was 234 billion euros. That is the corporate welfare dished out to big banks in the form of free benefits. The estimates were based on eight academic and institutional studies focused on implicit subsidies. Most of the studies arrive at a figure by quantifying the lower lending costs that large financial institutions enjoy from the market because of governments’ willingness to prop up failing national financial institutions, called the funding advantage approach. Others use a more complex option-pricing theory model.

There may actually be more costs than the studies have calculated. Government backing also creates moral hazard, or the willingness of banks to take outsize risk, knowing there is a lender of last resort. At the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, said he did not know whether any banks would need to be closed as a result of the central bank’s examination but that the system was prepared to deal with the consequences if any significant problems materialized. Draghi said, “The banks that should go, should go.”

Yea, you won’t hear that in the State of the Union speech, or in the response.

Thursday, September 20, 2012 - QE3 to 5.5, Bad Banks, Bad Politicians

QE3 to 5.5, Bad Banks, Bad Politicians

by Sinclair Noe

DOW + 18 = 13,596
SPX – 0.79 = 1460
NAS -6.66 = 3175
10 YR YLD unch = 1.78%
OIL + .51 = 92.93
GOLD – 1.20 – 1769.50
SILV - +.07 = 34.74
PLAT – 16.00 = 1633.00

So, we know the Federal Reserve has committed to buy mortgage-backed securities at the rate of $40 billion a month until the employment picture gets better; that's the plan behind QE3 to infinite and beyond. So, when will they stop? Narayana Kocherlakota, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota, gave the answer in a speech today. Kocherlakota says that as long as inflation isn’t a problem the Fed should keep its foot all the way on the gas pedal until unemployment drops from its current 8.1 percent down to 5.5 percent. Koacherlakota is not the ultimate decision maker for the Fed, but now we have a target. Why did it take so long?

An interesting graph today from the Department of Labor showed the fastest growing industries for new jobs over the next 10 year; the top 4 are Services for elderly, Home health care services, offices of mental health, and masonry contractors.

Bank of America has a plan to cut back on expenses by $ 8 billion dollars in annual savings by 2015. How can they possibly find that much in savings? By firing 16,000 by the end of the year, and more than 30,000 total. See how that works? Bank of America keeps the unemployment rate high and they are guaranteed low interest rates and MBS purchases from the Fed.

The Fed released its Flow of Funds report today. Household mortgage debt has declined by almost $1 trillion following the housing bust. Most of the decline is not because people were paying down their mortgages but rather because they were defaulting. Five years ago, a few of the analysts at different banks tried to estimate how bad the losses from the subprime-mortgage meltdown might be. An analyst at Merrill Lynch estimated $500 billion. An analyst at Barclays estimated losses of $700 billion; the newspapers described that as a bloodbath that would top the GDP's of all but 15 nations. We're at $1 trillion in losses and counting.

American households accumulated debt at the fastest rate in the second quarter in more than four years, and total domestic debt grew at the quickest rate in 3 1/2 years. Household debt grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.2% in the second quarter, marking only the second increase in 17 quarters. Mortgage debt fell 2.1% in the second quarter and has shrunk in 16 out of the 17 quarters. Consumer credit by contrast grew 6.2%, driven both by student debt (lots of people going back to school to learn masonry contracting) and by auto loans to fund American car purchases.

At the same time, corporate stockpiles of cash fell slightly to $1.73 trillion from $1.75 trillion. State and local government debt rose for the first time since the fourth quarter of 2010. Federal government debt meanwhile shot up 10.9%; which nonetheless was the slowest pace of growth since the second quarter of 2011. Total domestic debt - which includes household, business and government debt - grew 5% to $39.06 trillion, or roughly 2.5 times the size of the U.S. economy.

The Justice Department recently asked several banks to sign “tolling” agreements, in which the companies promise they won’t challenge any enforcement action on the grounds that the alleged wrongdoing occurred beyond the statute of limitations. The requests were sent to all the major banks under investigation, including Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, RBS, and UBS.

According to a group of international securities regulators, the same lack of oversight that enabled traders to manipulate the London interbank offered rate plagues other benchmarks around the globe. Less than half of the benchmark interest rates surveyed in the US, Europe and Asia were based on actual transactions. Instead, the rates were calculated by methodologies that were unclear, not transparent and only rarely subject to specific regulatory standards or obligations. In other words, people make them up as it suits them.

Spain and Italy are bracing for downgrades. Debt investors are positioning for potential fallout in the countries' $250 billion corporate debt markets. Even with the prospect of aid from the European Central Bank, Spain and Italy could still face credit downgrades. The main focus is on Spain and Moody’s has said it may cut Spain to junk status, a move that would likely be followed by a cascade of cuts of its banks and several companies to junk. Such a move would likely trigger a wave of selling from investors who can only own bonds with investment-grade ratings. Some ratings-sensitive investors are selling ahead of the move. Others are getting ready to buy.

Ireland has already been down the road that Spain and Italy are now on. Ireland has tried to raise money in the markets to avoid a debt restructuring. Lots of austerity has failed to kick-start the economy. The head of European economics for Citigroup says “Ireland faces an almost impossible task to get back to fiscal balance,” and that visits to the country showed “life is tough, very tough and not getting that much better anytime soon.”

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has accused J.P. Morgan Ventures Energy Corp. of misleading regulators and said its authority to sell electricity might be suspended. The agency is investigating JPMorgan’s power trading in California and the Midwest. That investigation came to light when FERC went to court seeking internal e-mails from JPMorgan, saying the bids from the company might have resulted in at least $73 million in improper payments to generators.

The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Obama leads Romney among likely voters by a margin of 48 percent to 43 percent; that is outside the margin of error. Other polls over the past couple of days have indicated similar results. A Pew Research Center poll showed Obama ahead of Romney 51% to 43% among likely voters. That's the biggest margin in a September survey prior to a presidential election since Clinton led Dole in 1996. Obama led Romney by double-digit margins on a range of personal attributes, from likability to whether he will protect American jobs to whether he appears presidential. Romney only led on the question of whether he was a "man of faith," by 43 percent to 34 percent. Obama's lead hasn't changed much over the past week, rather Romney has slipped. Other polling shows Obama with similar leads in key states of Virginia, Florida, and Ohio. It's still a long way to the election.

Senate Republicans prevented a veterans' jobs bill from coming to a vote yesterday by forcing a budget point of order vote. Democrats came up 2 votes short of the 60 needed to defeat the GOP's budget measure.

The Veterans Jobs Corps bill - which is part of President Obama's push to secure jobs for veterans, would have provided $1 billion over five years to hire 20,000 young veterans for public lands jobs and prioritize vets for first responder jobs such as police, firefighter, or EMT. The measure would have also provided young vets access to the infrastructure with which to assist in job searches, such as access to computers, internet and career services advisers.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a vets group that supported the legislation, called the failure "a huge disappointment," adding, "Today, politics won over helping vets."

While only five Republicans voted with the Democrats to waive the GOP budget point of order measure, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) led the GOP opposition. He said, "When we find ourselves in $16 trillion of debt and we pay for a five-year bill over 10 years, we make the problem worse.” Senator Coburn is an asshole of the first order, willing to put partisan politics ahead of his sacred duty. We have a debt to the men and women of the armed forces, and that debt is far greater than any other debt this country may incur. War costs money but that is the cheapest thing it costs. And it is a national disgrace that these damned rat bastards voted against the veterans.

Friday, May 25, 2012 – It's Better Than It Looks, Striving For Happiness Amidst the Cow Pies - by Sinclair Noe

DOW – 74 = 12,454
SPX – 2= 1317
NAS – 1 = 2837
10 YR YLD - .01 = 1.75%
OIL -.06 = 90.60
GOLD + 15.90 = 1574.70
SILV +.21 = 28.63
PLAT + 14.00 = 1436.00

For the week, the S&P 500 rose 1.7 percent.  I'm of the opinion that life is better than it appears. We look around sometimes and the world can seem scary. Sometimes we have to look a little deeper to find the good, the decent, the delightful and the potentially pluperfect.

And that brings us to today's topic on the possibility of the Federal Reserve pumping money into the banking system through asset purchases, in other words, Quantitative Easing Part 3. Inflation expectations are falling, if you consider Treasury bonds as a gauge of inflation. The lower outlook for inflation gives the Fed wiggle room to stimulate the economy. Although, right now the Dow looks like a better QE indicator, and it is not indicating QE. The banks can always make a case for QE, but what about the Fed officials who make the actual decisions?

St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard says he expects the U.S. economy to perform better than many forecasters anticipate and that the Fed will therefore need to raise interest rates in late 2013, not late 2014 as its policy committee is currently indicating.

Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Narayana Kocherlakota thinks the current labor market performance is much closer to maximum employment than the data alone would suggest. A few weeks back, Kocherlakota said the Fed should start looking at tightening monetary policy in the next six to nine months. He said he saw inflation at around 2% this year and 2.3% in 2013, numbers that signal the need to start exiting the central bank’s current ultra-easy policy.

New York Federal Reserve President Wiliam Dudley says:“My view is that, if we continue to see improvement in the economy, in terms of using up the slack in available resources, then I think it’s hard to argue that we absolutely must do something more in terms of the monetary policy front.” Dudley thinks economic growth at around 2.4%, is sufficient to keep the central bank from easing monetary policy.

Overall, the chatter from the Fed-heads seems sanguine. That could change before the June FOMC meeting. The monthly jobs report always carries the potential to shake a Fed governor to the core. The next FOMC meeting is June 19. The Greeks vote on June 17. Anything that can happen in 2 days would be addressed with liquidity programs, not easing, and liquidity programs have not needed FOMC meetings to be put into effect in the past. Fed officials know the timing of the Greek vote, and typically want to see the impact of events over time before responding with monetary policy tools.

Still, the Euro-leaders seem determined to impose austerity on the peripheral countries with pure cut off your nose to spite your face sensibility. Things in Euro-land could get nasty fast. The whole Lehman Brothers collapse was nasty fast; it could happen again. The Spanish word for Lehman is Bankia; the fourth largest bank in Spain has been nationalized; trading has been halted; they will be receiving a $24 billion dollar injection of cash recapitalization. And the recent JPMorgan bungle was a vivid reminder that Too Big to Fail banks still pose a very real systemic threat. Plus, it might shut up Jamie Dimon from whining about financial reform. Maybe Dodd-Frank and Glass-Steagall wouldn't have prevented multi-billion dollar losses, and still growing but now Dimon's argument sounds like someone debating we shouldn't have seat belts because they wouldn't have prevented Hurricane Katrina.

Still, absent a big dose of nasty, the situation is fairly good for us. We head into the Memorial Day Holiday with an improving jobs picture, low inflation, plenty of softness in the economy but not enough to warrant QE3 at this precise moment. And with global turmoil, strife, and trouble, money is looking for a safe haven and that not only props up the US economy but also QE3 would spoil the illusion and send money looking for safety elsewhere; that kind of a hit would be worse than the jolt of stimulus from QE3. Of course, the Fed is still accommodative and they still have an implied put in place and they're still printing money at a prodigious clip; but we're not spending with the recklessness of the recent past.

There’s a confused and confusing debate going on over whether President Obama has presided over a “spending binge,” as Republicans claim, or whether, under Obama, “federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.”

The key is fiscal year 2009 -- and who you blame for it. By any measure, spending popped that year. If you’re looking at raw dollars, it rose by $535 billion. And “the 2009 fiscal year,” writes Market Watch’s Rex Nutting, “which Republicans count as part of Obama’s legacy, began four months before Obama moved into the White House.”

That’s true: The federal fiscal year stretches, somewhat weirdly, from October to September. So fiscal year 2009 began in October 2008.

And that’s the point of Nutting’s analysis: if you attribute most of fiscal year 2009 to George W. Bush then, after adjusting for inflation, federal spending under Obama has actually dropped by 0.1 percent. Politifact checked the numbers and agreed: “Using raw dollars, Obama did oversee the lowest annual increases in spending of any president in 60 years,” they write. “Using inflation-adjusted dollars, Obama had the second-lowest increase -- in fact, he actually presided over a decrease.”

The real issue is that 2009 is an anomaly driven by crisis. The Bush Administration screwed it up and drove the spending much higher. Obama stayed the course.

The question is where should spending be now? The Obama administration wanted it to be higher. After all, unemployment rose through 2010, and remains high today. It has proposed a raft of additional stimulus bills since 2009. Republicans in Congress, however, refused to pass most of their plans, and NOT because they had an epiphany on fiscal discipline; past action refutes any non-politicized argument. The lower spending numbers are due to Republican obstructionism but they're afraid to acknowledge the lower numbers, much less take credit for them – which would be an admission of responsibility for failed policy. Instead the Democrats are touting the lower spending numbers when in fact it is numeric proof they've had their legislative agenda and economic plans hoisted on a petard. Washington is so full of cow pies, they are unavoidable. And so the Fed is sitting back waiting to whitewash the lack of fiscal policy. It isn't exactly the checks and balances envisioned by our founding fathers but so far the tapestry is only slightly raveled.

And still, we head into the weekend with the price of oil in a nifty decline, and I don't know who to thank for that but I'll take it. The price at the pump is almost bearable except my long-term memory hasn't faltered completely, and for this I find comfort. The weather looks good for a barbeque. Speaking of long-term memory, this is the first Memorial Day in 10 years that the US hasn't been at war in Iraq. There are approximately 23.4 million US veterans, 1.7 million of whom served in Iraq or Afghanistan. And because of everything they gave, we have the freedom to do whatever we want, more or less. And now our Iraq War vets can spend the holiday at home. That's good. We have the choice to get buried under the negatives or we have the choice to strive for happiness. I'm pretty sure there is empirical evidence that the standard of living is improving. I'll look it up some day but for now I'm of the opinion that life is better than it appears. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.