Monday, April 13, 2015

Financial Sarcasm Roundup for 04/13/15

It is time once again to refresh the pile of sarcasm that I have built up since my last missive.  I just can't quit.  No one else in the financial sector is capable of picking up the sarcasm slack if I'm not around.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks are back in play.  It was never really dead because Anglo-Western elites and their friends in places like Japan never give up on something they truly want.  Congress needs to get its act together and put the TPP on the fast track.  Capitol Hill staffers who were around when NAFTA was ready in 1993 should remember how to get a deal done.  Versailles on the Potomac must tap its best operatives.  Institutional memory lies within the Deep State.

Companies are salivating over more hot M+A action.  Corporate development officers must be getting dumber by the day if they think they can acquire their way to success in this environment.  Global macro indicators are heading down and consumer demand is imploding in the largest regional economies.  Executives addicted to cheap borrowing see M+A as a substitute for real growth.  Paying premiums for high-earning targets in low-growth markets will hurt in the coming downturn.

Ukraine is headed onto S+P's default list.  A basket case economy run by kleptocratic cronies for decades should surprise no one when it turns into a black hole for capital.  Whoever was dumb enough to buy Ukrainian government bonds last year expecting a bailout should not run a hedge fund, yet these idiots always start another "emerging market debt" fund after they fail.  Oh yeah, the US government dumped billions into Ukraine in the 1990s and will never see a return on that foreign aid.  The amnesiac, inbred trust fund babies running large investment funds and US government bureaucracies need some kind of public flogging and a lifetime ban from any and all occupations that involve handling money.

Stupidity never ends when stupid people hand down leadership positions to their offspring.  The failures noted above rest on the stooped shoulders of enfeebled aristocrats who are finally in water over their heads.  They know where to reach me if they need real solutions, provided they step out of the way.