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"BEST OF THE WEEK " |
Posting Date |
Labels & Tags | TIPPING POINT or 2013 THESIS THEME |
HOTTEST TIPPING POINTS |
Theme Groupings |
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We post throughout the day as we do our Investment Research for: LONGWave - UnderTheLens - Macro Analytics |
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MOST CRITICAL TIPPING POINT ARTICLES THIS WEEK - June 2nd - June 8th | |||
CHINA BUBBLE | 6 | ||
CHINA - Slowing moves to CONTRACTION CHINA'S MANUFACTURING SECTOR IS CONTRACTING 06-02-13 BI China's unofficial HSBC manufacturing PMI report is out and its disappointing. The headline number fell to 49.2 from 50.4 a month ago. This was worse than economists' expectation fo 49.6. A reading below 50 signals contraction. Here are the key points from Markit:
From HSBC's Hongbin Qu:
On Friday, we learned that China's official PMI report unexpectedly climbed to 50.8 from 50.6 in April. Economists were looking for a decline to 50.0. All of this comes on renewed fears that China is slowing down again. China's HSBC PMI report has a greater weight toward small and medium sized enterprises, which tend to be more sensitive to economic swings. |
06-03-13 | CHINA INDICATORS CYCLE GROWTH |
6 - China Hard Landing |
DEBT SATURATION - There is Simply Insufficient Wealth Creation Within Developed Nations A gordontlong.com MATA Study INTEREST RATES Have been Declining Since 1790
INTEREST RATES Have been brought down at an Even Faster Rate since the "Volcker' Save EXTREMELY WELL MANAGED Interest Rate Decline INTEREST RATE DECLINE HAS HIDDEN the exploding Growth of Credit & Its Burden (Until the 2008 Crisis)
GROWTH TO CARRY DEBT SATURATION is not Sufficient THE RATE OF WEALTH CREATION IS INSUFFICENT EQUITY (WEALTH) is not being created at sufficient enough rate to support expanding debt burden (ECONOMIC BLEED) VALUATIONS, INTRINSIC VALUE AND EV are fundamentally defined by DFCF (Discounted Free Cash Flow) THIS IS SMALLER THAN THE RATE OF INFLATION = CONTRACTION or IMPLOSION
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06-05-13 | ANALYTICS STUDY |
17 - Credit Contraction II |
"TAPER" PERSPECTIVE - A Scare Before the 'OPMF' Storm A gordontlong.com MATA Study ERA OF FINANCIAL REPRESSION "TAPER" IN PERSPECTIVE 'TAPER' is the equivalent of the 'old time' school bus driver "Tapping" on the brakes to make the'children sit down' before hitting the gas pedal AGAIN! It's Not Growth 'Hopes' That Has Backed Up Rates 06-04-13 Barclays' via ZH While the back up in interest rates over the last few weeks has been heralded by those with a bias for these things as some indication of growth expectations improving - confirming the equity exuberance they stand on as sensible; it appears, if one actually takes a look a little deeper into market movements, that in fact this is 'all' about 'Taper' concerns and nothing to do with growth. The driver of this reasoning is straightforward. If the move higher in rates were really about perceived improvement in the growth outlook, we would expect credit markets to rally - as they have during all prior periods of rate spikes. This time is different as they sold off together. Simply put, this is not a growth-driven rate reversion, it is short-term fears (and JGB VaR shock driven concerns) of a Fed worried about bubbles and taking its foot off the throttle modestly. The past three weeks have seen intraday spread moves correlate extremely closely with rates - suggesting Fed Taper concerns - not growth at all - as the flow may slow. Chart: Barclays |
06-05-13 | ANALYTICS STUDY |
17 - Credit Contraction II |
TO TOP | |||
MACRO News Items of Importance - This Week | |||
GLOBAL MACRO REPORTS & ANALYSIS |
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CANARIES - Problems Erupting Everywhere (Signs of Implosion) 18 Signs That Massive Economic Problems Are Erupting Everywhere 06-03-13 Zero Hedge This is no time to be complacent. Massive economic problems are erupting all over the globe, but most people seem to believe that everything is going to be just fine. In fact, a whole bunch of recent polls and surveys show that the American people are starting to feel much better about how the U.S. economy is performing. Unfortunately, the false prosperity that we are currently enjoying is not going to last much longer. Just look at what is happening in Europe. The eurozone is now in the midst of the longest recession that it has ever experienced. Just look at what is happening over in Asia. Economic growth in India is the lowest that it has been in a decade and the Japanese financial system is beginning to spin wildly out of control. One of the only places on the entire planet where serious economic problems have not already erupted is in the United States, and that is only because we have "kicked the can down the road" by recklessly printing money and by borrowing money at an unprecedented rate. Unfortunately, the "sugar high" produced by those foolish measures is starting to wear off. We are going to experience a massive amount of economic pain along with the rest of the world - it is just a matter of time. But for the moment, there are a lot of skeptics out there. For the moment, there are a lot of people that are declaring that the problems of the past have been fixed and that we are heading for incredibly bright economic times ahead. Unfortunately, those people appear to be purposely ignoring the economic horror that is breaking out all over the globe. The following are 18 signs that massive economic problems are erupting all over the planet... #1 The eurozone is now in the midst of its longest recession ever. Economic activity in the eurozone has declined for six quarters in a row. #2 Italy's economy has now been contracting for seven quarters in a row. #3 Industrial production in Italy has fallen for 15 months in a row. It has now fallen to its lowest level in about 25 years. #4 The number of people that are considered to be "seriously deprived" in Italy has doubled over the past two years. #5 Consumer confidence in France has just hit a new all-time low. #6 The number of unemployed workers seeking a job in France has hit a brand new all-time record high. Many unemployed workers in France are utterly frustrated at this point...
#7 Unemployment in the eurozone as a whole has just hit a brand new all-time record high of 12.2 percent. #8 Youth unemployment continues to soar to unprecedented heights in Europe. The following is from an article that was recently posted on the website of the Guardian that detailed how bad things are getting in some of the worst countries...
#9 Youth unemployment is being partially blamed for the worst rioting that Sweden has seen in many years. The following is how the Daily Mail described the riots...
#10 An astounding 10 percent of all banking deposits were pulled out of banks in Cyprus during the month of April alone. #11 Economic growth in India is the slowest that it has been in an entire decade. #12 Suddenly Australia is experiencing some tremendous economic challenges. The following quotes are from a recent Zero Hedge article...
#13 The financial system in Japan is beginning to spin wildly out of control. The Japanese stock market has now declined about 15 percent from the peak, and many believe that the yen will continue to get weaker and that interest rates in Japan will start to rise significantly. #14 Global cash flow is declining at a rate not seen since the last recession. This indicates that we could be headed for a global credit crunch. #15 Real wages continue to decline in the United States. Even though we are being told that the U.S. is experiencing an "economy recovery", real weekly earnings have declined from $297.79 in 2010 to $295.49 in 2011 to $294.83 in 2012. (The preceding calculation is based on 1982-1984 dollars) #16 Wall Street is buzzing about the fact that "the Hindenburg Omen" appeared at the end of last week. So exactly what is "the Hindenburg Omen"? The following are the criteria that are used to determine whether it has appeared or not...
When the Hindenburg Omen makes an appearance, it supposedly means that the U.S. stock market is likely to experience a serious decline within the next 40 days. #17 As I wrote about the other day, the SentimenTrader Smart/Dumb Money Index is now the lowest that it has been in more than two years. That means that lots of "smart money" has been getting out of the market and lots of "dumb money" has been pouring in. #18 Margin debt on the New York Stock Exchange has set a new all-time high. The following is from a recent Market Oracle article...
Whenever margin debt spikes like this, a stock market crash almost always follows. If you doubt this, just check out the chart in this article. Wall Street has had a good couple of years, but it has been a "false prosperity" that has been pumped up by reckless money printing by the Federal Reserve. Just like all of the other stock market bubbles that we have seen in recent years, this one is going to burst too. And as Marc Faber recently pointed out, this bubble has been particularly beneficial to the wealthy...
The fact that the U.S. stock market has set new all-time record high after new all-time record high in recent months means very little. At this point, the stock market has become completely divorced from economic reality. When this current bubble bursts, the adjustment is going to be very painful. Wall Street will likely whine and complain and ask for more bailouts, but they may find that authorities are not nearly as sympathetic this time. Much of the rest of the world is already experiencing the next major wave of the economic collapse. Reckless money printing by the Fed and reckless borrowing and spending by the federal government may have delayed the inevitable in the United States for a little while, but those measures have also made our long-term problems even worse. There was one piece of advice that Ben Bernanke included in his commencement speech to students at Princeton recently that I thought was particularly ironic...
Will he take his own advice when the next great financial crisis strikes the United States? That seems very unlikely. Unfortunately, things are not going to be so easy to fix this next time. What happened back in 2008 was just a preview. What is coming next is going to absolutely shock the world. |
06-05-13 | OUTLOOK | MACRO ECONOMICS |
GLOBAL PMI - Barely Above Stagnation Global Manufacturing Is Barely Above Stagnation 06-03-13 BI The world's biggest economies have published their May manufacturing PMI reports. This is our scorecard.
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06-04-13 | INDICATORS CYCLE GROWTH |
MACRO ECONOMICS |
US ECONOMIC REPORTS & ANALYSIS |
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CENTRAL BANKING MONETARY POLICIES, ACTIONS & ACTIVITIES | |||
CENTRAL BANKERS - Simply Are Not Going to Tell You (Assuming they Know?) "Markets Under The Spell Of Monetary Easing" Bank Of International Settlements Finds... Same As "Then" 06-02-13 Zero Hedge Then....Ben Bernanke 7/1/2022, CNBC interview:
Ben Bernanke 10/20/05 – Testimony before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress
Ben Bernanke 3/28/07 – Testimony before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress
Ben Bernanke 5/17/07 – Remarks before the Federal Reserve Board of Chicago
Ben Bernanke 1/10/08 – Response to a Question after Speech in Washington, D.C.
Ben Bernanke 2/27/08 – Testimony before the Senate Banking Committee
Ben Bernanke 4/2/08 – New York Times article after the collapse of Bear Stearns
Ben Bernanke 6/10/08 – Remarks before a bankers’ conference in Chatham, Massachusetts
Ben Bernanke 7/16/08 – Testimony before House Financial Services Committee
Two months later: 9/24/08 – Response to a question after JEC testimony… during the TARP debate, two weeks before the Fed initiates its liquidity facility for commercial paper markets
* * * ... And NowEDITORS NOTE: The tone of the problems is now worse than above, more concern is being expressed, yet we are told everything is all right by those who didn't see the Financial Crisis coming (or would tell us then either) Jeremy Stein, February 7, 2021 speech "Overheating in Credit Markets: Origins, Measurement, and Policy Responses"
Minutes of May 1, 2021 FOMC Meeting
May 17, Record of Meeting of the Federal Advisory Council and the Board of Governors, unleased after FOIA requests were submitted
BIS Quarterly Review June 2013
Larry Fink, May 2013 CNBC interview: "It just doesn't matter"
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06-03-13 | MONETARY | CENTRAL BANKS |
Market Analytics | |||
TECHNICALS & MARKET ANALYTICS |
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RISK - IG and HY Markets Sending Warning Signals of Limits to a QE Policy Is This The Biggest Threat To The Market? 06-07-13 Jason Shoup of Citi Credit, via ZH Looking for the ‘just right’ level for rates Indeed, we’d argue that the Fed’s zero lower bound policies have dislodged credit risk as the primary concern for investors, only to replace it with a major technical headache: interest rate risk. Granted, rates could rise in an orderly fashion and drive spreads tighter from here - the ‘just right’ scenario that remains our base case. But there is the probability that Treasury yields do otherwise pose serious risks to the market, as we have started to observe in recent weeks. What’s more, the risks are in both directions. Too low for too long … If rates remain too low for too long, financial stability suffers as investors reach for yield, companies lever up, and lending standards decline. In early February, Federal Reserve Governor Jeremy Stein pointed out that many of these concerns are already visible in high yield where covenant-lite issuance has exploded, yields on triple-Cs are at all time lows, and CLOs have returned in force. Similarly, investment grade companies have been relevering at an alarming pace, banks are reportedly making ever dodgier C&I loans, and the mega-LBO is back. What’s more, a look to Japan illustrates the dangers of allowing these imbalances to build. As JGB yields have started to rise after being depressed for so long, concerns have emerged about the health of the Japanese banks, which generally hold longer duration bonds in their security portfolios than their US peers—presumably a function of having to cope with low rates for so long. And a handful of major Japanese corporates have pulled new deals as rates have gapped higher as well, suggesting they too have become dependent on low rates. Still, the greatest of financial stability risks is probably the least discussed among those that matter at the Fed: the deterioration in trading volumes.To the credit of the Street, trading in corporate bonds hasn’t declined much in outright terms. But the corporate bond markets have grown so rapidly as a result of the Fed’s zero lower bound policy that the sell-side’s ability to transfer risk just hasn’t been able to keep pace, which could potentially spell disaster if investors all choose to sell at once. One can clearly see this in the steady decline in market turnover over the last few years (Figure 9). Finally, a less diverse investor base, or conversely one in which everyone is in the same trade, can also be seen as a financial stability concern and a direct byproduct of rates staying low for an extended period of time. To our minds, little diversity among investors raises the risk of overshooting in both directions: first as yields compress to abnormally low levels, and then as all investors race for the exit all at once. As such, we suspect that the longer low rates persist, the worse the unwind of QE may be. And it may, in fact, already be too late. … or too high too quickly As events in the past two weeks have shown, credit markets appear vulnerable to a rise in rates that occurs too quickly or in a chaotic fashion. What’s more, there’s an air of inevitability to it all, suggesting that even though market participants can see what’s coming, there’s little that can be done. Part of the problem is that investment grade credit has increasingly become more sensitive to total returns during the past five years as the AUM of mutual funds dedicated to bonds have rapidly grown. Using Fed data, we reckon that the percentage of the corporate bond market that mutual funds now own is roughly 17%, up from about 12% in 2007. Likewise, cumulative inflows into high yield mutual funds have been similarly impressive in the period after the great financial recession. Yet the reliability and stickiness of mutual fund flows going forward is definitely a wildcard, to our minds. At the very least, it’s hard to envision that bond funds will continue to attract the same level of inflows that they’ve enjoyed since 2008 when faced with expected future total returns that are likely to be exceptionally low, if not negative. Indeed, in such an environment, there’s a very real possibility that fixed income funds experience outflows when retail investors fully appreciate the upside limitations in bonds as the economy recovers. In fact, some major funds are already seeing redemptions on the back of May’s performance. To get an idea of how significant the retail flow situation might become, we find it instructive to look at credit ETFs as a guide. Assets under management at LQD - an unhedged IG ETF - have dropped by nearly 15% since mid-December, forcing the fund to sell roughly $3.9bn of corporate bonds through the redemption process. By comparison, if mutual funds were to experience an outflow of the same magnitude, they’d need to sell upwards of $100bn of corporate bonds. To our minds, that amount of selling could be exceptionally disruptive to valuations if (1) it occurred over a relatively short time period, (2) institutional investors were unwilling to take the other side, and (3) the Street was unwilling to increase their inventory of bonds. ... Moreover, to the extent that issuers sense demand may be waning for bonds, there’s a distinct possibility the pace of supply increases precisely at the same time that demand decreases. In the high yield markets, for instance, companies have become far more proactive at taking callable bonds out with make wholes in order to issue low coupon longer-dated debt. Similarly, we expect that a number of high grade issuers debating doing a liability management exercise, an acquisition, or simply prefinancing 2014 maturities, may be persuaded to come to market sooner rather than later as rates show signs of permanently moving higher. Invariably, it’s the sort of dynamic that ends in tears.
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06-08-13 | US ANALYTICS BONDS YIELD CREDIT
RISK |
ANALYTICS |
RISK - In 1999 It was called the 'New Paradyn' - Today it is the 'New Normal' Where Are We Now? 06-07-13- Zero Hedge It used to be called the "New Paradigm", it is now the "New Normal" - aside from that everything else is still the same, Ben Bernanke's aspirations to overturn math, economics and the business cycle notwithstanding. The only question is where on the red valuation line is the global market currently located, and how much longer can the central bankers reject the inevitable arrival of the first denial, then fear , then all other increasingly more unpleasant phases. |
06-08-13 | US ANALYTICS
RISK |
ANALYTICS |
PATTERNS - The Bond "Scare" We Warned of BUT Only a Corrective / Consolidation Time To Buy The Effing Dip? 06-05-13 Zero Hedge MORE TO GO! |
06-06-13 | PATTERNS | ANALYTICS |
SENTIMENT - Up but Sending Concern Signals Feeling Confident? Just Two Charts 06-05-13 Zero Hedge History may not repeat but it certainly rhymes and when it comes to the animal spirits of human fear and greed, nowhere is that more evident than the 'surveys' of confidence that US citizens have undertaken for thelast 30 years. As the following two charts show, while many are exuberant at the rise in confidence of late, it is a pattern we have seen play out twice before - and both previous times - it did not end well... via Citi FX Technicals (charts recreated via Bloomberg),
Charts: Bloomberg |
06-06-13 | SENTIMENT | ANALYTICS |
EARNINGS ESTIMATES - PE Expansion Hides Risk and is itself Unjustified Counterintuitive Stock Market Trend 06-03-13 BI When stock prices rise faster than earnings, you are witnessing something called earnings multiple expansion. In other words, stocks are getting more expensive. Earnings multiples have expanded and contracted since the beginning of the stock market. Unfortunately, if you have been a stock market bear lately banking on falling earnings growth expectations, then your prediction has only been half right. In a new report, FactSet's John Butters takes a brief look at evolving Q2 earnings expectations, which have only been coming down for months.
This has occurred as stocks have only been going up. And according to Butters, this dynamic is not that unusual:
Some warn that this trend of stock prices rallying with no earnings growth is getting dangerous for investors. But for now, it'll continue to make the bears look like fools. Here's the chart from FactSet's John Butters:
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06-04-13 | FUND-MENTALS EARNINGS |
ANALYTICS |
FUNDAMENTALS - Cash Flow and CAPEX Show Me The Money Flow: Global Free Cash Flow And Capital Spending Contract To 2010 Levels 06-02-13 Zero Hedge In a world in which glaringly misreporting factual news no longer generates much more than a shrug, the latest lie reported so often by the mainstream media and various 'expert' pundits it has almost become "the truth", is that that the key missing link to a global recovery - free cash flow, and its derivative, capital expenditures - are now once more rising. After all, corporations can not grow revenue (as confirmed by the most recent reported quarterly earnings) without investing in themselves, and they can't spend for maintenance or growth unless they generate Free Cash Flow: this is simple finance 101. So in order to put this pervasive lie to rest, we present the following chart showing free cash flow and Capex in the developed "G-4" region as a % of world GDP, which have now round-tripped back to 2010 levels, and ask a simple question: what growth? PS. Yes, it is the Fed's fault.
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06-03-13 | MACRO FUND-MENTALS CASHFLOW CAPEX
STUDY BRIEF
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ANALYTICS |
COMMODITY CORNER - HARD ASSETS | PORTFOLIO | ||
GOLD - China On Track to Import 150% of its Entire Gold Holdings In A Single Year. Point Out The "Slump" In Chinese Gold Imports On This Chart 06-06-13 Zero Hedge The 126.1 tons of Chinese gold imports in April, was only the second highest ever, and just shy of the all time record high of 223.5 tons imported in March. And the "slump" when observed year over year. Hmmm: Bloomberg was right about one thing however:
In other words, look for the unslump in May when a surge in even more buying sends gross imports from Hong Kong to what may be new all time highs. In the meantime, YTD imports of 500 tons are more than double the 240 tons imported over the same period last year: the same amount as held by the ECB. China has now imported 1,333 tons of gold since January 2012, or 30% more than its official gold holdings, and is on a run rate to import 1500 tons in 2013 alone. At least someone is taking advantage of all that levered ETF paper gold selling... |
06-07-13 | CHINA ANALYTICS GOLD |
PRECIOUS METALS |
GOLD - Demand Has Outstripped Gold Supply Gold And The "Zero Hour" Scenario 06-06-13 Addison Wiggin via The Daily Reckoning blog via ZH Zero hour — in the form of a precious metals default on the Comex, or maybe the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) — is coming sooner or later. “The odds of it happening are about 100%,” says Eric Sprott. Mr. Sprott oversees $10 billion within the Canadian asset-management giant that bears his name. Among those assets is the Sprott Physical Gold Trust (NYSE:PHYS) — our recommended vehicle if you choose to keep a portion of your gold holdings in a brokerage account. To understand why it’s a certainty is to go deep down the rabbit hole… into the vaults of the world’s central banks. Sit tight… 12 Years and Counting: Demand Runs Away From Supply We don’t want to make it sound more complicated than it is. At root, zero hour will come when everyone knows gold supply can no longer meet gold demand. “When I look at the physical data that I can see in gold,” Sprott told us in a recent interview, “the gold market has not changed its supply fundamentals in 12 years. It’s flat.” Add up supply from new mines and recycled scrap gold — mostly old jewelry — and the World Gold Council reckons it’s rock-steady at about 3,700 tonnes (metric tons) per year. And what about demand? Since gold began its bull run in 2000, scads of new demand sources have come into the picture.
![]() “The mere combination of only five separate sources of demand,” Sprott writes in a recent white paper, “results in a 2,268-tonne net change in physical demand for gold over the past 12 years — meaning that there is roughly 2,268 tonnes of new annual demand today that didn’t exist 12 years ago,” when supply and demand were more or less in balance. And those are only the official figures. “There are lots of other purchasers of gold that I don’t have records of,” he elaborated in our interview. “So for example, when somebody physically buys a gold bar, whether it’s [hedge fund manager] David Einhorn or the University of Texas endowment or someone like that, there’s no place that I can go and see how many bars were purchased. There’s no public documentation if Russian billionaires are buying gold.” For every story that makes the news, like Einhorn or UT, there might be 10 purchases that occur sub rosa. Summing up, nearly 2,300 tonnes (officially) of new demand each year are coming into a market where supply is still stuck at roughly 3,700 tonnes. “So where’s the gold coming from?” Mr. Sprott asks rhetorically. “Who’s supplying this gold?” After a research project that’s gone on as long as the bull market in gold, he’s left with only one plausible explanation — the one that makes default on a major commodity exchange inevitable. “The Western central banks,” he tells us, “are surreptitiously supplying gold by leasing theirs out.” The Central Banks’ Shell Game in Gold: “It’s Here… No, It’s Here” “Wait a minute,” you’re asking. “You just said central banks became net buyers of gold in the last decade.” True… but all the buying has come from developing countries like Russia, China, India and Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, the numbers from the big developed countries — the U.S. included — have been static. Remember the main reason central banks are in business — to benefit their biggest and most powerful member banks. And what’s beneficial to U.S. and European banks is gold leasing. Commercial and investment banks lease gold from a central bank at bargain rates — usually less than 1% a year. Then they sell that gold into the private market and plow the proceeds into… well, anything that yields more than 1%. It’s a sweet deal if you’re a banker. “But then the gold is gone, right?” Yes. If the central bank wants its gold back from the commercial and investment banks, those banks would have to buy gold on the open market — driving up the price. That’s a bad deal if you’re a banker. So usually, there’s a tacit understanding: Central banks don’t ask for their gold back, and the commercial and investment banks roll over their gold leases. As long as they’re earning more than 1%, the debt service is easy peasy. But if a central bank asks for its gold back, it’s game over. “They can get away with [the leasing],” Sprott explains, “because on their financial statements, the one line they have for gold says ‘gold and gold receivables.’ A receivable is not real gold, physical gold… and we don’t get a breakdown between the receivables and the physical. They’ve not provided that.” Look below and you can see the guile central bankers use to concede their gold “holdings” is not limited to bars in a vault. “It would not lend much credence to central bank credibility,” Sprott writes, “if they admitted they were leasing their gold reserves to ‘bullion bank’ intermediaries who were then turning around and selling their gold to China, for example. “But the numbers strongly suggest that that is exactly what has happened. The central banks’ gold is likely gone, and the bullion banks that sold it have no realistic chance of getting it back.” Add it all up and we’re getting much closer to zero hour. HERE IS A SUPPORTING ADDENDUM CHART
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06-07-13 | MACRO ANALYTICS GOLD |
PRECIOUS METALS |
GOLD - Government Intervention Begins In India India Central Bank Prohibits Sales Of Gold Coins 06-06-13 Two weeks ago, with its current account getting crushed by relentless gold imports, India's finance minister Chidambaram literally begged the people to stop buying gold. Judging by the popular response, the ongoing physical shortage, and last night's increase in Indian gold import duties from 6% to 8%, appealing to people's feeling when it comes to the choice of fiat vs physical, has failed miserably. So the FinMin Chidambaram has decided to escalate. Per Reuters: "The Reserve Bank of India has advised banks against selling gold coins to retail customers, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said on Thursday, a day after he raised gold import duty to try to ease pressure on India's bloated current account deficit." Well, if there ever was one sure way to send demand for any product through the roof (guns, ammo, etc), it is for the government to prohibit its outright sale. What follows next, almost without fail, is a panicked, chaotic buying scramble.
Why? If it is not clear by now, here is the explanation: there is simply not enough gold to satisfy demand at the current artificially downward-manipulated price, no matter what propaganda script is being spun on Verizon TV at any given moment. And with India's idiotic decree, even more gold will be purchased at these prices. Dear India - here is a simple way to limit demand: price. Petition the central banks to allow gold to price based on price discovery, or as it is also known supply and demand. Because if gold were to cost $2000,$5000, $10,000/oz then all problems resulting from excess demand would immediately disappear and India's current account would be back to normal. Of course this will not happen, as the crumbling facade of the imploding fiath based regime would immediately peel away. So back to gold capital controls and other ad hoc made-up measures guaranteed to not only fail but push the price of physical gold much higher. Good luck. |
06-07-13 | INDIA ANALYTICS GOLD |
PRECIOUS METALS |
GOLD - Something SERIOUSLY Wrong at JP Morgan JPMorgan Parts With Another 21,000 Ounces Of Gold, Holdings Drop To New Record Low 06-05-13 Zero Hedge Those tens of thousands of outstanding delivery requests against JPM are finally starting to make their way through the pipeline: following the withdrawal of 28,380 ounces of gold after nearly one month of radiosilence out of the vault located below 1 CMP, today the CME reported that another 21k troy ounces of eligible gold were withdrawn from the bank (coupled with the reallocation of another 8.8K registered into eligible), taking the total to a fresh record low of 767,752 ounces. In the meantime the delivery notices keep climbing, and in the month of June, JPM accounts for over 80% of all delivery activity: Of course, with disclaimers such as this from the Comex...
... all bets are off
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06-06-13 | GOLD | PRECIOUS METALS |
PRIVATE EQUITY - REAL ASSETS | PORTFOLIO | ||
PATTERNS - Emerging Market Interest Rebounding Hedge Funds Are Cranking Up Their Bets On Emerging Markets 06-02-13 BofA Merrill Lynch -Stephen Suttmeier via BI Emerging market (EM) assets – currencies, debt, and stocks – all had a pretty terrible month in May. Poor performance in emerging markets was so pronounced during the month of May alone that several Wall Street shops are now out with big calls declaring the "end of the bull market." However, despite the wave of negative sentiment that has hit emerging markets, macro hedge funds were in there buying up EM last month. "Based on our exposure analysis, Macros bought EM exposure to the highest since October 2011, while maintaining their net long positions in [Europe, Australasia, and the Far East]," writes BofA Merrill Lynch analyst Stephen Suttmeier in the investment bank's latest Hedge Fund Monitor report. It looks like either the macro funds are taking a bath on their increased exposure to EM, or they see the latest movements in the market as a good buying opportunity.
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06-04-13 | EM ANALYTICS PATTERNS |
PRIVATE EQUITY |
AGRI-COMPLEX | PORTFOLIO | ||
SECURITY-SURVEILANCE COMPLEX | PORTFOLIO | ||
THESIS Themes | |||
2013 - STATISM |
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NSA HEADQUARTERS - Fort Meade MD
NSA DATA MINING CENTER - Fort Meade MD SOURCES YOU MUST READ:
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06-08-13 | THEME | |
The 4th Amendment Violations Will Continue Until Morale Improves 06-07-13 Simon Black of Sovereign Man blog via ZH For some, it’s hard to even fathom... as if the headlines were ripped from the Onion instead of Atlas Shrugged or 1984:
Even more, just within the last few weeks we’ve seen the Justice Department confiscating news reporter phone records... the IRS caught bullying political opposition groups... and now this. It should be as plain as day at this point. Yet some people still have a hard time understanding that they’re living under an oppressive, destructive, unaccountable government. Most other cultures get it. If you go to Argentina, Vietnam, Italy, or China, people there have absolutely no trust or confidence in their governments. It’s something that’s 'almost' uniquely American - a lifetime of steady, bombastic propaganda that inculcates a deep belief that our system is the ‘best’. And, even in the face of such overwhelming evidence, it’s still hard for people to break from this programming and acknowledge that their government is just as corrupt as Mexico’s... albeit slightly more sophisticated. The politicians running the nation are sociopathic criminals, plain and simple. If you or I were to tap people’s phones or hack their Facebook accounts, or use our authority to bully opposition groups, we would be tossed in the slammer in no time… and branded by the media as moral delinquents. Yet politicians get away with it. They even have prominent members of the press championing their criminality, like this quote from Forbes today:
The simple reason is because the system is a total failure. In the ‘free world’, society is based on a principle that a tiny elite should have the power to kill. To steal. To wage war. To debase the currency. To deprive certain people of freedom. All in their sole discretion. And for the good of everyone else. We’re just supposed to trust them to be good guys and be proficient at their jobs. And in case they happen to completely screw it up and wreck the nation, they get a pass. It’s a completely absurd. We’re ruled by criminals, plain and simple. This is a hard lesson for an entire society to learn, but perhaps the most important. Unfortunately, the second lesson is even harder: that there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it. We’ve also been led to believe that direct democracy and grassroots movements can be a force for change. Yet it rarely, if ever, happens. Short of outright revolution, the system isn’t going to change. It has to completely crash... and hit rock bottom... before it can be rebuilt. And we’re still a loooong way off from that. Like ancient Rome before, the Land of the Free can look forward to being governed by a long series of criminals in the foreseeable future, notwithstanding the occasional sage. Nations rise and fall. This cycle is inevitable. And history shows that the world’s most dominant nation typically has a long, grinding decline. It’s going to take a while. That’s why, instead of trying to change the system, it’s so important to invest time, energy, and capital in the things that set up you and your family for maximum freedom and prosperity. You can’t stop a speeding train by standing in front of it. You just want to make sure you’re not on it as it heads towards the cliff. |
06-08-13 | THEME | |
STATISM - PRISM-II
The disclosures involving this (and the prior) administration's Big Brother surveillance state, which would make Nixon blush with envy are now coming fast and furious (one wonders - why now: even that bastion of liberalism the NY Times, has turned against Obama). Although while the Guardian's overnight news that Verizon (and most certainly AT&T as well among others) was cooperating with the NSA on spying on US citizens, so far at least the internet seemed, if only to the great unwashed masses, immune. That is no longer the case following news from the WaPo exposing PRISM, a highly classified program, which has not been disclosed publicly before. "Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy." What PRISM does is to allow the NSA and the FBI to tap directly "into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time." The secrecy is so deep we expect even the president himself may not know about it (but he does):
Of course, PRISM is from the government, and it is here to help you. But the question is why are some of the biggest private companies explicitly collaborating with what is now the biggest exposed spying operation in history, companies which include such household names as Microsoft Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. Yes, everyone's beloved Apple was added in October 2012: the NSA knows all about your music playlist, not to mention has a database of all your iMessages. In other words, all those newly minted people known as corporations are in on it, but not: dear debt serf. It's a small club, and there is a multimillion liquid net-worth cutoff... and you are not in it. From WaPo:
Spying on US citizens is "incidental"... kinda like killing thousands of women and children in drone raids is "collateral damage":
This is how the big corporations sleep at night:
Some "do lots of evil" by their customers. They just don't disclose it:
Time to kill that Facebook profile... or be accidentally killed for being "of a terroristy persuasion" based on some NSA algo:
And some more charts: Introducing the program A slide briefing analysts at the National Security Agency about the program touts its effectiveness and features the logos of the companies involved. Monitoring a target's communication This diagram shows how the bulk of the world’s electronic communications move through companies based in the United States. Providers and data The PRISM program collects a wide range of data from the nine companies, although the details vary by provider. In retrospect, it is sad what a farce this country has become: artificial market, centrally-planned economy, pervasive spying on the people, a tax collector that target political enemies, an administration that openly lies under oath... If we didn't know better we would say this was 1955 Stalingrad, although Stalingrad at the height of totalitarianism was for amateurs. This is next level shit: "Firsthand experience with these systems, and horror at their capabilities, is what drove a career intelligence officer to provide PowerPoint slides about PRISM and supporting materials to The Washington Post in order to expose what he believes to be a gross intrusion on privacy. “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” the officer said."
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06-08-13 | THEME | |
STATISM - PRISM-III Shoot The PRISM-Gate Messenger: Obama To Launch Criminal Probe Into NSA Leaks 06-08-13 Zero Hedge Suddenly embroiled in too many scandals to even list, and humiliated by a publicly-exposed (because everyone knew about the NSA superspy ambitions before, but with one major difference: it was a conspiracy theory.... now it is a conspiracy fact) surveillance scandal that makes Tricky Dick look like an amateur, earlier today, as expected, Obama came out and publicly declared "I am not a hacker" and mumbled something about "security", "privacy" and "inconvenience." He went on to explain how the government "welcomes the debate" of all three in the aftermath of the public disclosure that every form of electronic communication is intercepted and stored by the US government (now that said interception is no longer secret, of course) but more importantly how it is only the government, which is naturally here to help, that should be the ultimate arbiter in deciding what is best for all. Yet the PRISM-gate scandal which is sure to only get worse with time as Americans slowly realize they are living in a Orwellian police state, meant Obama would have to do more to appease a public so furious even the NYT issued a scathing editorial lamenting the obliteration of Obama's credibility. Sure enough, the president did. Reuters reports that the first course of action by the US government will be to... shoot the messenger. Reuters reports that "President Barack Obama's administration is likely to open a criminal investigation into the leaking of highly classified documents that revealed the secret surveillance of Americans' telephone and email traffic, U.S. officials said on Friday." And how did Reuters learn this: from "law enforcement and security officials who were not authorized to speak publicly." The mimetic absurdity of the narrative is just too surreal to even contemplate for more than a minute before bursting out in laughter: the administration's plans to launch criminal charges against those who "leaked" its Nixonian espionage masterplan involving every US (and world) citizen using the Internet, revealed by another group of sources leaking in secret. Pure poetry. Of course, this was inevitable - once you start down the path of a totalitarian surveillance superstate, you don't stop until all dissent is crushed: either peacefully through submission to debt serfdom, or, well, not so peacefully.
But what's worst, is that it may all turn very personal against the same journalists who dared to divulge the NSA's spy-op:
Needless to say, once political retribution for publicizing the nuances of the police state becomes a personal affair targeting the very journalists whose task is to provide much needed information, the first amendment is basically finished. Alas, on the path to tyranny the loss of rights and privileges, let alone the occasional amendment written on a very old parchment and which nobody follows or cares about, is inevitable. And it is up to the citizens of such a tyrannical government to reclaim their nation. Which they will... Just as soon as The Bachelorette/Big Brother (no pun intended)/X Factor is over and the next disability check clears.
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06-08-13 | THEME | |
STATISM - PRISM-IV Is Obama Lying About Big Brother? 06-07-13 Zero Hedge As of this moment, Obama is making the case that the US government is not eavesdropping on phone calls. Specifically, he said "nobody is listening to your phone calls - they are just looking at phone numbers and duration of calls" and concluded that the NSA was only engaged in "modest encroachments." It was unclear if that clarification was meant to put to rest fears that Big Brother has made personal privacy a thing of the past. He further went on to add that the telephone surveillance program is fully vetted by Congress and supervised by the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA). In other words: Obama is making the case that the NSA's Big Brother supervision is perfectly legal and not only that, there are checks and balances and neither the telephonic snooping nor the internet supervision is anything to be concerned about. There is one problem: Obama is lying. Back in April 2009, three months into the Obama regime, none other than the NSA admitted it has overstepped its legal boundaries. As the NYT reported: "The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews. "
The same Eric Holder who is currently being investigated for perjury before congress. As for "compliance" 4 years later it seems nothing has changed. As for Obama's clear conscience:
Well thank god the most transparent administration held classified briefings to discuss the biggest government espionage program ever conceived. One may have gotten ideas otherwise... Finally, on Obama's pinky swear that it is only foreigners' emails and iMessages that are being intercepted, turns out he is lying here too:
And so on. In short: what difference does it make - it is only the stripping of the most fundamental privacy rights of US citizens! And how else can you build a totalitarian government if you don't give up some freedoms - good heavens, one can't ask the poor president to provide 100% security without experiencing some "inconvenience" and handing over a little privacy. Or a lot. In the end, let's not forget what really matters: the NSA spying program is from the government, and it is here to help you. * * * Finally, here is Matt Damon explaining why he wouldn't work for the NSA:
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06-08-13 | THEME | |
STATISM - Democracies Have A Bad History -> Imperialism The Paradox of Imperialism Hans-Hermann Hoppe via the Ludwig von Mises Institute The United States is estimated to have anything from 700 military bases around the world to more than 1000. Hans-Hermann Hoppe asks "how can democracy be a stable equilibrium if it is possible that it be transformed democratically into a dictatorship, i.e., a system which is considered not stable?" Concluding it may be better to heed the advice of Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn and, instead of aiming to make the world safe for democracy, we try making it safe from democracy - everywhere, but most importantly in the United States. Excerpted from Hans-Hermann Hoppe via the Ludwig von Mises Institute, "Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else." ... On theoretical grounds: How can democracy be a stable equilibrium if it is possible that it be transformed democratically into a dictatorship, i.e., a system which is considered not stable? Answer: that makes no sense! Moreover, empirically democracies are anything but stable. As indicated, in multi-cultural societies democracy regularly leads to the discrimination, oppression, or even expulsion and extermination of minorities — hardly a peaceful equilibrium. And in ethnically homogeneous societies, democracy regularly leads to class warfare, which leads to economic crisis, which leads to dictatorship. Think, for example, of post-Czarist Russia, post-World War I Italy, Weimar Germany, Spain, Portugal, and in more recent times Greece, Turkey, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, and Pakistan. Not only is this close correlation between democracy and dictatorship troublesome for democratic-peace theorists; worse, they must come to grips with the fact that the dictatorships emerging from crises of democracy are by no means always worse, from a classical liberal or libertarian view, than what would have resulted otherwise. Cases can be easily cited where dictatorships were preferable and an improvement. Think of Italy and Mussolini or Spain and Franco. In addition, how is one to square the starry-eyed advocacy of democracy with the fact that dictators, quite unlike kings who owe their rank to an accident of birth, are often favorites of the masses and in this sense highly democratic? Just think of Lenin or Stalin, who were certainly more democratic than Czar Nicholas II; or think of Hitler, who was definitely more democratic and a "man of the people" than Kaiser Wilhelm II or Kaiser Franz Joseph. According to democratic-peace theorists, then, it would seem that we are supposed to war against foreign dictators, whether kings or demagogues, in order to install democracies, which then turn into (modern) dictatorships, until finally, one supposes, the United States itself has turned into a dictatorship, owing to the growth of internal state power which results from the endless "emergencies" engendered by foreign wars. Better, I dare say, to heed the advice of Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn and, instead of aiming to make the world safe for democracy, we try making it safe from democracy — everywhere, but most importantly in the United States. |
06-07-13 | THESIS | |
2012 - FINANCIAL REPRESSION |
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FINANCIAL REPRESSION - The $2.6T Money Market Fund Industry Now Under Attack FACTOID:
Slamming The Money Market “Gates” – Capital Controls Coming To $2.6 Trillion Industry 06-05-13 Zero Hedge The first time we wrote about the Volcker-led Group of 30 recommendation to crush Money Markets in January 2010 by effectively imposing capital controls and fund "gates", whose purpose was simply to scare investors out of the $2.6 trillion liquidity pool and force said capital to reallocate into a much more "reflation friendly" asset classes such as stocks, many were concerned but few took it seriously. After all, such a coercive push into a "free" market at the time seemed incomprehensible (if, in reality, turned out to be just a few years ahead of its time). Fast forward two years to July 2012 when the same proposal of "risk-mitigation" by allocating a portion of the balance to a "loss-absorption fund", which would "create a disincentive to redeem if the fund is likely to have losses" was not only re-espoused by Tim Geithner, and the NY Fed but the SEC put it to a vote and the proposal would have almost passed had it no been for a nay vote by Commissioner Luis Aguilar opposing Mary Schapiro in the last minute. Still, once more many largely unconcerned about the implications behind this urgent push to intervene and establish pseudo-capital controls in this major source of potential stock buying "dry powder." A few months later, following the coercive bail-in of Cypriot deposits, and the new "blueprint" for Europe bank rescues, whereby the authorities have strongly hinted that no more than the insured limit should be kept as as a deposit at a bank and it is preferred that the balance is invested in stocks or some other ponzi-enabling instrument, many have finally started to wonder if indeed there isn't some overarching strategy to "tax" financial assets in a world slowly but surely going insolvent and where the much desired debt inflation is so slow to materialize (just as we predicted would happen in September of 2011 in The "Muddle Through" Has Failed: BCG Says "There May Be Only Painful Ways Out Of The Crisis"). Today, with a brand new leader, Mary Jo White, now that the clueless and co-opted Mary Schapiro is long gone, the $2.6 trillion Money Market Fund industry is one step closer to finally being gated. But don't it call it that - the SEC prefers the term "protecting investors" From Reuters:
Naturally, those who see the writing on the wall - the MMF industry - is not happy:
Well, of course. After all this is the whole point. Recall what we said in July of 2012:
Funny: we said this 9 months before a capital control "disgorgement" struck in Cyprus. Fear not: it is coming to every other "taxable" financial asset. But whereas we thought the money market forced capital expropriation would be first, some places like Europe were so desperate they couldn't afford to wait that long. So what proposals is the SEC planning on applying in order to enforce the capital reallocation pardon avoid investor losses? There are two, both perfect strawmen, and have been well-known since the first time we approached this topic three and a half years ago.
We are not sure what is more amusing: that the SEC is so naive it thinks someone will actually believe it can prevent a capital run in a financial panic, or that its transparent attempt to spook money market investors away from their holdings now that the threat of imminent lock ups and gates looms over their heads is not what this is all about. We anticipate that the SEC will drop numerous analogies to Cyprus as a reminder that if something can be gated, it will be gated. What is more important, is that unlike Schapiro's plan the current SEC proposal should have no difficulty in passing.
And if the industry is onboard, all the token SEC votes needed to enforce the plan will be in place. At that point money markets will merely be the latest experiment in behavioral control: how to spook those with money in the multi-trillion industry enough to where they pull their cash and either spend it on trinkets, boosting inflation - a very welcome outcome for the Chairman - or merely investing it in the "stock market." Perhaps instead of a lock up, at times of crisis MMF investors will be given the opion of allocating funds to the Solyndra du jour (a la the Cyprus bank bailout) or lose all the money. We are confident the central planners will find a way, |
06-06-13 | THESIS | |
2011 - BEGGAR-THY-NEIGHBOR -- CURRENCY WARS |
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2010 - EXTEN D & PRETEND |
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THEMES | |||
CORPORATOCRACY - CRONY CAPITALSIM | |||
BILDERBERG MEETING - The Upper Crust
The Full List Of 2013's Bilderberg Attendees 06-03-13 Zero Hedge The only thing more ominous for the world than a Hindenburg Omen sighting is a Bilderberg Group meeting. The concentration of politicians and business leaders has meant the organisation, founded at the Bilderberg Hotel near Arnhem in 1954, has faced accusations of secrecy. Meetings take place behind closed doors, with a ban on journalists. We suspect the agenda (how the US and Europe can promote growth, the way 'big data' is changing 'almost everything', the challenges facing the continent of Africa, and the threat of cyber warfare) has been somewhat re-arranged as market volatility picks up and the status quo begins to quake once again. The annual gathering of the royalty, statesmen, and business leaders, conspiratorially believed to run the world (snubbing their Illuminati peers and Freemason fellows), will take place this week at the Grove Hotel in London, England. The Telegraph provides the full list of attendees below - for those autogrpah seekers - including Britain's George Osborne, US' Henry Kissinger, Peter Sutherland (the chairman of Goldman Sachs), the Fed's Kevin Warsh, Jeff Bezos?, Peter Thiel, Italy's Mario Monti, and Spain's de Guindos. Bilderberg delegates in full
via the Telegraph |
CRONY CAPITALISM
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CRONY CAPITALISM - It Pays to have Friends in High Places
THE pressure on tax-avoiders is mounting. In the latest episode Tim Cook, Apple’s boss, was called before a Senate subcommittee to explain why the tech giant had paid no tax on $74 billion of its profits over the past four years—though it has done nothing illegal. This comes at a time when America's corporate profits are at a record high, thanks to
Meanwhile corporation tax, which makes up 10% of the taxman’s total haul (down from about a third in the 1950s) has plummeted. An increase in businesses structuring themselves as partnerships and "S" corporations, which subject profits to individual rather than corporate income tax, is in part to blame. But tax havens are also culprits, as they lower their tax levels to lure in bigger firms. |
CRONY CAPITALISM
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GLOBAL FINANCIAL IMBALANCE | |||
SOCIAL UNREST |
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CENTRAL PLANNING |
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STANDARD OF LIVING |
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CORRUPTION & MALFEASANCE | |||
NATURE OF WORK | |||
CATALYSTS - FEAR & GREED | |||
GENERAL INTEREST |
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Tipping Points Life Cycle - Explained
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