Saturday, September 5, 2015

Ponzi markets and asset bubbles blown by central bank money printing in collusion with their oligarch accomplices are imploding under the weight of their own fraud and fictitious valuations. It is beautiful to behold... In the eurozone, shadow ratings already signaled red flags in the late 2000s in Greece and the other countries on the periphery. More recently, Ireland and Spain may deserve to be upgraded, following fiscal consolidation and reforms. Greece, however, remains a mess. Even with substantial reform to improve its growth potential, it will never be able to repay its sovereign debt and needs substantial relief.  An assessment of sovereign risk that is systematic and data-driven could help to spot the risks that changing global headwinds imply. To that extent, it provides exactly what the world needs now: an approach that removes the need to rely on the ad hoc and slow-moving approach of ratings agencies and the noisy and volatile signals coming from markets....The market is slowly eating itself. If you look at dividend cover trends companies are eating their own future to maintain dividend payments and keep share prices up...probably because that's usually what their management get rewarded on.  And the average dividend yields are heavily influenced by commodity companies, miners etc, who are taking a real hammering... Chinese stock market investors, many of whom are a newly formed middle class, are borrowing to invest. Same with UK house buyers. Most are hopelessly naïve and all are over-leveraged and indebted. Yet should the bubble pop we're all collectively screwed. So governments have little choice but to keep the bubbles inflated for as long as possible. The fact such bubbles should never have been allowed to form in the first place seems neither here nor there.... Its truly ridiculous.

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