Quote of the Day: The Person Who is Best Qualified to Govern You is You

From self development and libertarian author Robert Ringer at his website: (italics original)

All this by way of saying that because of the way our political system operates, it makes it a certainty that the scum will always rise to the top. And why not? Getting into politics is the easiest and quickest way known to mankind to become rich and powerful. How can a larcenous person resist such an opportunity?

As early as the mid-nineteenth century, the great individual anarchist Lysander Spooner put it simply when he explained that when someone says that a certain type of government is best, that does not mean it’s a good government. It simply means that it’s the least bad of all other forms of government.

The challenge, then, is to find a way to educate the public so it understands that government, by its very nature, is inherently evil. Generations from now, if the United States starts to rise from the ashes of its criminally controlled bread-and-circus existence, perhaps some social genius who is a firm believer in liberty can come up with a much better system of government than a “republic” or democracy.

Whenever some slick-tongued politician says something “patriotic” like, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” it takes an enlightened mind to understand the truth in Samuel Johnson’s observation, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Which means that virtually all presidential candidates, this year or any other, are scoundrels.

No system will ever be perfect (even the Founding Fathers failed at that), but the only hope for a morally based society is one that is rooted in Thomas Jefferson’s words that “That government is best which governs least.”

If ever a majority of citizens come to believe this, we may finally find a way to invent a government that governs so little that it becomes almost invisible. The fact is that criminal politicians have no qualifications to govern you. As you labor through the next seven-plus months of political theater, always keep that in mind and remember that the person who is best qualified to govern you is you.

Phisix 7,350: Team Viagra Saves the Day!

In order to prevent the domestic stock market from presenting itself as a blowoff top phase, chart formations would have to be managed.

Also, since the stock market has been presented as the politically correct way to interpret the “economy”, the stock market has to go up. And so it is being made to go up--through anomalous means.

So Team Viagra frequently goes to work in order to fulfill such mission.

For today’s action, the Phisix was down by about 80.74 points or by 1.09%, when a last minute pump virtually erased a stunning 56.9% of the day’s losses!

The Viagra effect as seen from different platforms

With the exception of mines, all mainstream sectors participated in the "marking the close" pump.

And the sectoral representation had been led by their respective heavyweights as shown above. Except for SMPH, which was unchanged at the pre-market close period to suddenly skyrocket 1.81%, the three indicated issues had their respective losses significantly pared.

Nevertheless, I will keep emphasizing that one of the principal reasons why crashes occur has been due to such manipulations. Manipulations distort or destroy the fundamental function of prices to efficiently coordinate the economic/market process.

And as stated before, my purpose for such postings has been to document irregularities for posterity. Such that this may serve as lesson to future generation practitioners: There is no such thing as a free lunch; perversion of the marketplace will have incite a blowback or will backfire.

Yes, the session end Viagra syndrome can be seen "ONLY in the Philippines"! And yet that seems to be the secret formula on how the Best Stock Exchange in ASEAN has been achieved.

Similarly this is why with Team Viagra, “it's definitely more fun in the Philippines!”

Note: figures/images from colfinancial.com, Bloomberg, PSE and technistock.net.

Quote of the Day: Why the Worst 'Politicians' Get on Top: The Comparative Advantage

Austrian economist and Senior fellow at The Independent Institute Robert Higgs discuss the modern day application of the great FA Hayek's “Why the Worst Get on Top” from his classic the Road to Serfdom.

The rise of reprehensible individuals to the top of the political heap is precisely what anyone with a realistic view of history and a bit of education in public choice theory would expect.

Consider first that politics is a competitive endeavor. In this realm, office seekers and program promoters strive to gain their objectives, each at the expense of others similarly striving to promote themselves, their programs, and their other governmental aims. What sort of person is most likely to succeed in this competition?

When prize fighters compete, they first learn how to avoid, ward off, or soften the opponent’s blows while landing the most and the strongest punches themselves. This form of competition is not for the weak or the timid. Besides having a natural fearlessness and training for personal combat in the ring, the prize fighter must possess a capacity for aggressive assault and battery on another human being. Beating a man senseless is all in a successful day’s work. Those incapable of or averse to such conduct cannot succeed in this line of work.

Likewise, given the institutional, psychological, ideological, and economic realities of the current electoral system in the United States (and many other countries), no one can succeed if he or she is too fastidious about violating a host of moral and legal strictures. Imagine a presidential aspirant who insisted on always telling the truth, speaking clearly without evasion or distortion of the issues; on proposing only feasible and rational policies to promote the public’s general interest, rather than the self-serving plans of powerful special interests; and on steering clear of unnecessary involvement in the affairs of other countries or engagement in quarrels abroad that do not jeopardize the security of Americans in their own territory. To imagine such a candidate is to imagine practically the exact opposite of the present candidates. These malodorous persons are so far from being morally upright, honest, and forthright—not to mention being simply decent by ordinary standards—that claiming they are basically good people seems only to evince how out of touch with reality one is.

Why is it, then, that the virtues and decencies that we generally expect people to have in their private life are so manifestly absent in the people who succeed best in politics and government? The answer lies in the nature of government itself—at least, government as we currently know it all over the world, a system of imposed, involuntary, monopoly rule whereby the system’s kingpins use military and police power along with ideological enchantment to plunder and bully innocent people—and to get away with doing so year after year. Just as only physically tough, fearless, aggressive persons succeed as prize fighters, so only dishonest, slick, evasive, power-hungry, unscrupulous, and vicious persons have what it takes to succeed in a system whose very foundations—violence, aggression, extortion, and misrepresentation—are completely at odds with private standards of just and virtuous conduct.

If someone like me—elderly, small, weak, timid, and untrained—were put in the ring to fight for the heavyweight boxing championship, you would not expect me to survive more than a few seconds. Likewise, if someone like me—someone who respects other persons’ natural rights to life, liberty, and property and who abhors dishonesty, extortion, aggression, and unnecessary violence—were thrown into the political or governmental arena, I would scarcely last much longer. There’s a reason why today’s leading campaigners are such morally ugly individuals: they have a comparative advantage in taking the kinds of actions one must take in order to reach the pinnacle of government power.

Two Reasons for Mainstream Analysts' "Stubborn Persistence of Optimism": Saving Face and ACCESS!

Incentives drive action. And the key reason why mainstream/establishment analysts have almost always been “bullish” have been due to their personal interests. And such interests usually runs in conflict with, or at the expense of their clients/audiences.

Such is called the principal agent dilemma/agency problem. This Washington Post-Bloomberg article reinforces what I have been saying all along: (bold mine)

What can explain the stubborn persistence of optimism? Two things: saving face and access.

Analysts who’ve told their clients to buy seldom want to reverse themselves, especially when a public downgrade could affect the value of their holdings, said George Serafeim, a Harvard Business School professor.

That’s why price targets remain high even as the seven-year bull market shows signs of fatigue.

Upbeat guidance can mean golf and soirees with company executives, hosting them at investor conferences and being picked first to ask a question on quarterly conference calls.

“To have good relationship with management, the least offensive thing you can say is ‘hold,’ but really ‘hold’ means ‘sell,’” Serafeim said.

Then there’s the flip side. A neutral or negative recommendation can get an angry phone call from the C-suite, said Kennen MacKay, a biotech analyst at Credit Suisse Securities in New York.

“If you have a positive rating and wrong assumption, you might not hear about it from management,” MacKay said. “If you have an underperform, the management will attack every assumption you have....”

More...

Analysts are compromised from both sides, Gheit said. They get too close to company management and also feel pressure from their investment-bank employers who want business with the companies.

“The analysts share the blame with oil companies because they basically have this incestuous relationship,” he said. “Some of the questions on the conference calls from analysts, they are not questions, they are basically to glorify the company because everybody wants the next investment-banking deal.”...

Gearing ratings not for the benefit of investors but to attract investment-banking clients and other business violates securities law.

During the dot-com bubble of the turn of the century, equity researchers such as Merrill Lynch’s Henry Blodget were publishing “buy” calls on companies they were disparaging in private discussions. In 2003, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission banned Blodget from the securities industry.

In February, the SEC fined former Deutsche Bank AG analyst Charles Grom $100,000 after the agency said he publicly recommended buying shares in Big Lots Inc. while telling colleagues on the sales team otherwise. Grom neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.

See why these analysts or "experts" will always remain blind to risks?

Phisix 7,300: A Return to the Bull Market or Bull Trap? Bangladesh Cyber Heist: A Preview of Global Cyber Financial Warfare?

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.—Edward Bernays

In this issue

Phisix 7,300: A Return to the Bull Market or Bull Trap? Bangladesh Cyber Heist: A Preview of Global Cyber Financial Warfare?

-Bangladesh Cyber Heist-RCBC Scandal: The Popular Misconceptions

-Bangladesh Cyber Heist: A Preview of Global Cyber Financial Warfare?

-RCBC Scandal Exposes on BSP’s Fragility: The Emperor Has NO Clothes!

-Robust Domestic Demand? January OFW Remittances Sputter Again!

-PSA’s Self Contradiction on Employment Data

-Phisix 7,300: A Return to the Bull market? Or Just Another Violent Bull Trap?

-Has Central Banks Forged a Shanghai Accord to Push Down the USD and to Stoke a Pump on Risk Assets?

-VLL’s Fantastic Self Acquisition of Starmalls!

Phisix 7,300: A Return to the Bull Market or Bull Trap? Bangladesh Cyber Heist: A Preview of Global Cyber Financial Warfare?

Bangladesh Cyber Heist-RCBC Scandal: The Popular Misconceptions

A splendid example of how populist media deliberately misdiagnose cause and effect through the misreading forest from trees has been the controversial “cyber heist” which involved a domestic bank as facilitator of the encashment of money looted from abroad.

Labeled as “money laundering” by the establishment, the general idea has been that the paucity of regulations ‘caused’ and or paved way for the immoral transfer of stolen funds abroad to several entities.

And as expected, the knee jerk response has been to seek more “reforms” (more interventions) and to amplify shrill politically correct (PC) clamor to ease on bank secrecy laws. The predicated assumptions from these (PC) prescriptions should translate to the mechanical banishment of unscrupulous bank activities.

For instance, domestic casinos came under fire for being recipients of the stolen funds. Because they have been exempt from AMLA, populist demand has been for the industry to be subjected to increased regulations. Yet curiously it has not been established whether the casinos acted as an auxiliary to the crime or had been mere unfortunate victims of circumstances. By virtue of logical fallacies, casinos were publicly condemned!

Surprisingly, a quote from an anonymous international observer by a media outlet seems to capture the essence: “imposing anti-money laundering restrictions on casinos, beyond the relatively strict operating guidelines they already have to follow, essentially criminalizes the industry,” he added. “That sounds harsh, but that’s exactly what it boils down to: Transactions above a certain amount are presumed to be illicit and must be reported, and possibly investigated. As I said, that may still be the way to go. But if that’s the case, it’s going to put a limit on investment in that sector…you’re as much as telling investors, ‘There’s a limit on how much money we’ll let you make.’ At least that’s how it will come across. And given the Philippines’ enthusiasm for trying to build up its casino sector, I’m not sure that’s the message they want to convey.”¹

Yet casinos serve as a convenient scapegoat for populist politics.

Take Macau’s casinos as conduit for Chinese capital flight as example.

To be clear, I show below how casinos have served instruments or tools to a given purposive action: capital flight. Pls don’t confuse means as the end.

In 2014, Chinese residents increasingly used state backed payment card, China Union Pay, to illegally ship money out of China. Chinese regulators eventually recognized this, and along with Macau authorities, both swiftly clamped down on the card to stem capital movements.

Let me add that some of the huge sums of money exiting China have allegedly been from illicit sources or “corruption” or have been part of the crackdown on the assets of the political opposition—which makes “capital flight” partly “money laundering” as per the definition of incumbent Chinese government. As I pointed out earlier, the crackdown on the state card had only aggravated on the financial conditions of Macau’s casino bubble.

Yet has the Chinese government been able to stop the capital flight (part of which was money laundering) through suppression means of transfer through the Union Pay card? Technically, yes. But generally, NO. Why? Because China’s capital flight only crescendoed! As much as $1 Trillion has been estimated to have fled China’s financial system in 2015.

Many Chinese denizens devised alternative creative ways to siphon money out of the country, e.g. by use relatives to hand carry cash, through the use checks from underground banks, through Hong Kong’s money changer, through buying of overseas assets financed by mortgages, or buying goods of abroad through credit or debit card.

As part of the capital flight/laundering dynamics, Chinese buyers have been instrumental in pushing up demand for foreign real estate.

Commercial entities likewise resort to the inflation of import receipts. The bigger firms have channeled capital flow through a huge surge in outbound foreign direct investments which now includes Anbang Insurance’s overpriced $13 billion bid for Starwood Hotels.

So from Union Pay card to many alternative routes. At the end day, Chinese capital flight continues.

The point is: it would be a big misperception to believe that prohibition and regulation on the means would justify the end.

Knee jerk or short term oriented reactions will come with unintended long term consequences.

Bangladesh Cyber Heist: A Preview of Global Cyber Financial Warfare?

Yet the mainstream forgot the real cause.

And the real cause has been a large scale international financial theft from, most possibly, a computer hacking syndicate combined with insider operations.

Said differently, the NYFED-Bangladesh heist seems to represent an elaborate plan to infiltrate and steal from the global financial system through the SWIFT system.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is a global member-owned cooperative and the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services. The SWIFT has more than 9,000 (as of 2010) from 209 nations.

Could this have been a part of a grand plan to undermine and discredit the SWIFT system????

Note that the cyber heist operation originally consisted of $1 billion which apparently was bungled from a misspelling or typo error.

And here is the most important overlooked factor: That the involved parties were CENTRAL BANKS!

The New York Fed operates as a custodian of US dollar accounts for many central banks. Meanwhile, the fraud’s victim, the Bangladesh central bank has dollar accounts in the custody of the NY FED. Apparently the latter’s SWIFT codes had been compromised by hackers possibly located overseas.

Add to this list the indirect participant, which media has been uncannily silent about, the Philippine central bank, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).

Not only has been the BSP functioned as the main supervising authority for the bank, RCBC, where some of the personnel may have participated as accessories to the robbery, but the dollar remittances, usd to peso conversion, payments and settlement all operate under the BSP’s system.

In short, the scope of operations had been complex and global

The Bangladesh Central Bank believed that this was an insider job. Part of that conviction emanated from the possible sabotage or the disabling of printer that was supposed to print the SWIFT transactions for the day that suddenly malfunctioned. The absence of the report blinded the Bangladesh authority to the heist in action. Possibly as part of the investigation, an IT expert in Bangladesh has reportedly “gone missing”.

The Bangladesh central bank has commissioned the FBI to assist in the investigation. Though the NY FED denies the earlier charges made by the Bangladesh Central Bank that the former had been also at fault, last week a NY FED employee pleaded guilty for leaking confidential documents to his former employer, Goldman Sachs. While the latter has barely had any direct relationship with the former, what the latter shows has been the bureaucracy’s vulnerability to external influences and to corruption. So it would be too premature to dismiss the likelihood of the involvement of an insider at the NY FED in the Bangladesh incident.

By the way, NY FED’s president William Dudley is also an alumnus of Goldman Sachs. Talk about political revolving doors.

The cyber crime appears to have been a well-planned operation. The timing of execution was almost impeccable. It was done when the aforementioned central banks were most vulnerable. From the Financial Times: Sunday February 7, the start of the week in Bangladesh, was not a working day for banks in the US, and the Bangladeshis failed to reach their New York counterparts despite trying to communicate by email, fax and telephone on Saturday and Sunday. Monday February 8, furthermore, was a holiday for the Chinese new year in the Philippines, where many business people are of Chinese origin².

In short, the security networks of central banks, as national central planners of the financial system, whose institutions have large command over their respective nation’s resources, have been seriously challenged. The question is by who?

Moreover, reports from two cyber security firms, FireEye Inc. and World Informatix, appointed by Bangladesh Central Bank noted that their monetary system had been “stalked” or had been under cyber attack for two weeks through the commission of the crime.

And worst, the cyber intrusion into the SWIFT system has been reported to be a possible dry run for more or even larger scale operation. From Bloomberg³: (bold mine)

"Malware was specifically designed for a targeted attack on Bangladesh Bank to operate on SWIFT Alliance Access servers," the interim report said. Those servers are operated by the bank but run the SWIFT interface, and the report makes it clear the breach stretches into other parts of the bank’s network as well. "The security breach of the SWIFT environment is part of a much larger breach that is currently under investigation."

SWIFT is a member-owned cooperative that provides international codes to facilitate payments between banks globally. It can’t comment on the investigation, according to Charlie Booth from Brunswick Group, a corporate advisory firm that represents SWIFT.

More from the same Bloomberg report:

The assessment found the first suspicious log-in came on Jan. 24 and lasted less than a minute. On Jan. 29, attackers installed “SysMon in SWIFTLIVE" in what was interpreted as reconnaissance activity, and appeared to operate exclusively with “local administrator accounts.”

Operator logs showed the hackers logged in for short periods of time until Feb. 6, according to the report. The four transfers that went to the Philippines occurred on Feb. 4. The report said the hackers have already hit other FireEye clients, though it’s unclear if those include other central banks.

As of March 16, the FireEye team was about half-way through the examination of the central bank’s computer network.

"Complex malwares have been identified with advanced features of command & control communication, harvesting of credentials and to securely erase all traces of activity after accomplishing its task," the report said. It identified 32 "compromised assets" that “were used for reconnaissance and to gain control of the SWIFT servers and related assets."

If the accounts are true, then will we see more attack on the SWIFT member-users?

This brings to the point where the Bangladesh Cyber Heist could be part of a grand plan to discredit the SWIFT system.

Could it be that theft was only of subsidiary importance? And that real issue was to strain and undermine the SWIFT system?

Yet who are competitors of the SWIFT? There could be two I know of. The Chinese government has an alternative to SWIFT, it is called Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payments System (CIPS). Russia has reportedly been developing its own SWIFT version.

Has the Bangladesh Cyber Heist incident represented the opening salvo of global cyber warfare?

Moreover, the Bangladesh Cyber Heist exposes on a paradox; governments wants to impose war on cash allegedly to forestall money laundering, yet the bigger laundering comes from the cyberspace!

RCBC Scandal Exposes on BSP’s Fragility: The Emperor Has NO Clothes!

Going back to the Philippines.

The magnitude of the amount involved has been so enormous for a piddling branch (RCBC Jupiter) to actually handle the portions of “cash” withdrawals. Such cash requirements (most especially the USD tranches) must have been collated from several branches of the same bank or has originated from the bank’s head office and or from the bank head office deposits at the BSP.

And such likely means that the illicit transactions had permission or had a ‘go signal’ from the upper echelons or that the approval process had been perverted.

In short, this seems no work of a lone wolf or a bunch of small time crooks. There is more than meets the eye.

Curiously, lost in the Philippine political bedlam and grandstanding has been WHY the recipient bank (Pan Asian Bank) in Sri Lanka has been able to return the $20 million pelf.

Has it been because of Sri Lanka has a “surfeit” of AMLA regulations and or a lax bank secrecy laws? Or has it been because Sri Lankan bank officials had THE COMMON SENSE to discern and distinguish irregular transactions to put a stop on them? Officials from Pan Asian Bank noted “that the transaction as too big for a country like Sri Lanka”, so they reported the anomaly to the nation’s routing bank, Deutsche Bank, which subsequently put a freeze to the withdrawal request!

Additionally, all these transactions were channeled through the BSP’s financial system. Here is the BSP’s FAQ on foreign exchange operations and transactions: “The PvP links two real-time gross settlements systems– the BSP’s Philippine Payments and Settlements System (PhilPaSS) for the peso transactions and the Philippine Domestic Dollar Transfer System (PDDTS) for dollar transactions–with the Philippine Depository and Trust Corporation (PDTC) as designated clearing entity for peso-dollar transactions of commercial banks under the BAP. The PDDTS is a local clearing and electronic communications system operated by the BAP, the Philippine Clearing House Corporation (PCHC), Philippine Securities and Settlements Corp. (PSSC) and Citibank, Manila. The PDDTS provides the banking industry with a facility to move US dollar funds from one Philippine bank to another on the same day without having to go through correspondent banks in the US. The system allows online, real-time gross settlement of domestic interbank US dollar transfer and third party account-to-account US dollar transfers. In addition, it provides a facility for online inquiry and settlement of foreign exchange transactions, where the PDDTS participants enter interbank US dollar and Philippine peso transfer instruction in a single screen.”

While it is true that PDDTS represents a consortium of private corporations, they operate under the supervision of the BSP. So the BSP remains responsible for all USD dollar transactions.

Moreover, given the colossal amount of peso transfers, this means that the BSP’s Philpass has most likely been a conduit for the peso leg of such transactions.

So before the BSP calls for the easing of bank secrecy laws or other bank reforms, they should first impose discipline on their own bureaucracy and fix their operating system, as well as, on their private sector subsidiary agents—or operators of the PDDTS.

It would be of little merit to substitute incompetence with even more incompetence by adding more regulations that would likely spawn even more bureaucracy, heightened complexities, and consequently result to more loopholes from which the likelihood of corruption will only expand, and where scalawags will gladly use to such conditions to their advantage that will only increase the system’s fragility.

Maybe the BSP should learn from Sri Lanka and pass a regulation that mandates the use of common sense for bank officials!

It is important to note of the ironies and lessons from current events.

The BSP has been portrayed as having been IN TOTAL CONTROL of the banking system from which the latter’s operating condition has been sold to the public as “SOUND”, yet such grand scale of misconduct surfaces. The Bangladesh CYBER HEIST-RCBC Scandal essentially flies on their face.

Worst, it reveals that the emperor, the BSP, has no clothes!

And to add to the current paradox, there are only 41 universal and commercial banks based on the BSP’s latest directory, yet the BSP goes on to defend its position by saying that the RCBC scandal has been “isolated case” therefore not reflective of the banking system.

With the proliferation of no down-payment and ultra-low interest loans, here is a guess, the BSP has SPARSE idea of the real conditions of banking system, and importantly, how individual banks have been running in circles around their regulations.

Remember last year state owned DBP was accused of market manipulation?

Yet like cockroaches, one scandal may be a symptom of more scandals ahead.

Robust Domestic Demand? January OFW Remittances Sputter Again!

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas reported on January remittances which had an uninspiring tone. Reason? 

 

On a monthly basis, personal remittances increased by only 3.2% year on year while cash remittances rose by only 3.4%.

After splendidly hiding the October-November collapse through a revamp on the two year dataset, December’s rebound seems to have sputtered anew as January data has fallen less than its predecessor.

From a monthly basis, the former lows have now become the resistance levels for both personal and cash remittance growth rates.

On a cumulative basis, it’s been an awful start for a usually robust January for both factors.

And even when Januarys has usually been seasonally robust, the monthly growth rate trend has been in a decline for the last two years (lowest window).

So with a foundering income supporting final consumption just where will domestic demand come from?

PSA’s Self Contradiction on Employment Data

More self contradictory data from the Philippine government.

The Philippine government reported that unemployment climbed from 6.6% last January 2015 to a 2016’s 5.8%. 

 

Online job placements disagree. Monster’s January job placements have fallen by another 33% on a year to year basis. (left) Remember, January’s 2015’s data was already down relative to 2014. So 2016’s decline compounds on 2015 data. Monster’s Job openings have been on a decline for the entire 2015.

The other online job website has shown similar dynamic. While it has bounced last January, numbers has been significantly down from May 2015, that’s when I started tabulating them every Thursday (which tends to be the strongest day of the week). My impression has that May’s numbers have been less than January 2015.

Diminished investments extrapolate to reduced job openings. So this is why online job openings have slowed. This is unless corporations have channeled job recruitment through other means (newspaper or viral).

Yet the government’s own job data contradicts their own employment report.

Let me reiterate the government Q3 employment index⁴: Total Employment Index increased at 2.8 percent growth slower from its 4.0 percent growth in the same quarter last year. Trade pulled down the index with a 1.4 percent drop from the previous year. The rest of the industries slowed down: Real Estate at 5.7 percent (from 11.2 percent); Private Services at 4.4 percent (from 6.3 percent); Manufacturing at 3.6 percent (from 4.0 percent); Mining and Quarrying with 2.7 percent (from 3.2 percent); Finance with 2.1 percent (from 10.0 percent); and Transportation and Communications with 0.1 percent (from 3.9 percent). Only Electricity and Water rebounded from a drop of 2.2 percent to positive 0.4 percent this year. (bold mine)

So the government’s own survey shows of significant broad based decline in jobs growth in 3Q yet their annual employment index points to a big recovery!

And if jobs in the trade industry had been a NEGATIVE in 3Q, where trade represents the largest share of the service employment at (34.8% DOLE 2014), just which sector has managed to buoy employment figures for the whole year???? The service sector accounted for 53.7% of jobs in 2014. This was followed by agriculture at 30.08% and industry at 15.6%.

Agriculture and manufacturing has been stagnating. Exports have been in a recession. Performance of PSE listed companies has been dismal through Q3 which should translate to less aggressiveness in capex. Remittances have also been materially slowing.

So just which industry will do most hiring to more than offset the drag from the noted sectors? Or has growth numbers been derived from models which just pop out of the computer screens?

Phisix 7,300: A Return to the Bull market? Or Just Another Violent Bull Trap?

Such statistical smoke and mirrors only reveals how desperate the government has been in trying to maintain the façade of the boom.

With an upsurge of 2.93%, the PSEi posted another scintillating week in favor of the bulls. Substantial gains from three consecutive weeks have accrued to a whopping 7.7%!

Add this to the gains from the January 21 lows, cumulative returns have now reached a stunning 20.09% in 39 trading sessions! So technically, PSEi at 7,300 extrapolates to a return of a bullmarket! That’s in the condition that such gains can at least be maintained.

And because of the ferocity of the recoil from the January troughs, current market actions have portrayed a precipitous or drastic V-shape recovery (green V-lines).

Yet the current rally (evidenced by the steepening slope) has shown to be more violent than the crash! The implication: greed (fear of missing out) has become mightier than fear!

Nonetheless, extreme accounts of volatility hardly have been suggestive of continuity of the current trend but of the risk of another vicious reversal. In short, volatility usually begets volatility.

Also moves from the past three weeks have brought the PSEi to severe overbought conditions.

And because the odds of a full recovery from a V-shape rebound seem small, based on the PSEi’s 50 year history, the bullish premise will depend on the fruition of ‘this time is different’.

Yet this week’s big move have accounted for as an extension of eight biggest market cap issues which continues to drive the headline index.

Some of the biggest market caps have virtually gone B-A-L-L-I-S-T-I-C!

Today, every decline have been seen as a taboo. So buying rampages occurs on the next sessions.

At 7,300, 3 issues stormed to fresh records from a vertical ramp. The three issues: SM, AEV and JGS.

For SM which soared by an astonishing 6.85% this week, be reminded that the same largest firm of the PSEi had posted ZERO net income growth in 2015, has a PER of about 28+ (as of Friday), has seen considerable decline on topline growth rate for two straight years, has ballooning debt, and has been emitting symptoms of excess capacity (e.g. ballooning vacancy rates at malls and increasing real estate inventories as sales slowdown).

Nonetheless, my hunch is that SM will soon announce the IPO of SM Retail at the coming stockholders meeting. The hope is that financial engineering will drive SM’s G-R-O-W-T-H! Can’t deliver growth from ordinary course of business? Then use financial magic to mesmerize the public!

Yet SM’s previous aerial acrobatics in 2013, which were a lot less in degree than today, has only led to crashes.

And now it’s more than the FANTASTIC EIGHT.

In a complete reversal of sentiment, equity prices of the telecom duopoly skyrocketed: TEL by 16.08% and GLO by 23.73%! The belated surge in telecom issues can be construed as a spillover effect or the rising tide phenomenon from the eight issue index pump

And with mania spreading to the telecom duopoly, the service sector led the sectoral gainers.

The 10.12% expansion by the service sector eclipsed the considerable gains by the financials, the holding and the property sector which posted 2.44%, 2.56% and 2.45% advances respectively.

Essentially, the bidding rampage on the four of the top 5 biggest market caps had been reflected on the stupendous near vertical ascent of the PSEi. The combined market share weighting of the four of the biggest issues was 32.577% as of Friday.

With this week’s runup, PLDT regained its top 5 ranking.

Of course, the idea of pumping the index is to spread the sentiment, so three other index issues have virtually gone berserk: RLC, MBT and GLO

Yes some people have come to believe in the impossible: that the markets will provide free money!

So will current momentum present itself as This Time is Different?

We shall see.

Has Central Banks Forged a Shanghai Accord to Push Down the USD and to Stoke a Pump on Risk Assets?

I have previously pointed out that the PSEi’s chart has eerily resonated with Brazil’s Bovespa. Current actions have only reinforced such relationship as shown in the above chart.

Since April 2015, the undulations of the Bovespa’s price trend appear to resonate with the PSEi. While the consonance of the chart trends may manifest sheer coincidence, both the PSEi and Bovespa have virtually characterized actions of bourses of the Emerging Market sphere.

Aside from the abrupt reaction from the brutal selloffs last January, the key fundamental influence to the current rally has been central bank actions.

Central banks have launched what seems as coordinated strike on the bears or an orchestrated move to shore up the markets.

In the heat of the market’s panic, the Bank of Japan surprised the market with its introduction of NEGATIVE interest rates.

The other week the ECB deployed its latest bazooka (new TLTRO, expanded QE, 0% for marginal lending facility and negative rates for deposit facility).

This week, the US Federal Reserve cited “global economic and financial developments continue to pose risks”, as well as, a downgrade on growth forecast.

Such outlook has rationalized the deferment on the move to raise rates.

Construed as “one of its most dovish decisions of the new millennium”, the effect of the FED’s non-action and the material decline in expectations for the Fed to further conduct tightening measures this year, have been to crash the USD (left).

The USD dropped 1.2% this week!

With the exception of Indonesia’s rupiah, Asian currencies rallied furiously (right) led by the South Korean won, Taiwan dollar and Singapore dollar. The USD won crashed by 2.57%, USD Taiwan dollar slumped by 1.34% and USD Singapore dollar tumbled by 1.1%.

Based on official rates, the USD Philippine peso stumbled by .56% to 46.36.

Interestingly, the Indonesian government ironically chopped interest rates for the THIRD consecutive month this year.

In essence, the US FED has been perceived to have implicitly EASED conditions!

It was not just the US FED, China’s central bank, the PBOC, aggressively fixed her currency the yuan to a 3 month high. However, the USD rose against the yuan on Friday to partially erase early gains by the yuan.

Aside from the yuan, the PBOC announced of the paring down of interest rates on medium term loan facility, the trimming of transaction fees for bank card transactions, and injections to the financial system subdue restive interbank lending rates.

Norway likewise cut interest rates during the week.

BoJ’s Governor Haruhiko Kuroda also said last week that “there is room to cut interest rates further” even when the BoJ kept present policies intact. Despite Mr Kuroda’s assurance for more easing, the yen soared against the USD by a remarkable 2.0%!

The seeming orchestrated central bank activities have been suspected by some as an outcome of an implicit adoption of a modern day version the Plaza Accord or the contemporaneous Shanghai Accord in the wake of the G-20 meeting last February at Shanghai.

So the concerted measures adapted by major central bankers over the past few weeks has reinforced on the risk ON conditions that sent stocks, bonds, commodities and emerging market assets flying!

But understand too that for the US stock markets, there has been only ONE BUYER which has kept the bullmarket alive. That ONE BUYER: Corporate BUYBACKS!!! (see left)

From Bloomberg⁵: Standard & Poor’s 500 Index constituents are poised to repurchase as much as $165 billion of stock this quarter, approaching a record reached in 2007. The buying contrasts with rampant selling by clients of mutual and exchange-traded funds, who after pulling $40 billion since January are on pace for one of the biggest quarterly withdrawals ever. (bold mine)

And paradoxically, rising US markets have occurred as earnings growth continues to plunge. From the Factset⁶: For Q1 2016, the estimated earnings decline is -8.4%. If the index reports a decline in earnings for Q1, it will mark the first time the index has seen four consecutive quarters of year-over-year declines in earnings since Q4 2008 through Q3 2009. (bold added)

So like the Philippines, US stock market prices have been departing from fundamentals.

Central banks continue to destroy stock markets so it can persist on its subsidies to the political elites and their cronies.

VLL’s Fantastic Self Acquisition of Starmalls!

Horizontal property developer Vista Land released its annual report last week.

And again I find the same dynamics that plagues the sector.

One, despite the “record” income, topline growth has been dramatically falling over the past two years. Sales growth for real estate dropped below 10% to only 9.77% in 2015. That’s lower than 11.36% in 2014 and more than half below the 22.7% rate in 2013.

But because political entrepreneur Manny Villar owned VLL “acquired” another Manny Villar owned Starmalls for Php 33 billion last December which was largely financed by debt, topline sales of Starmalls padded up on VLL’s overall sales picture. Gross revenues increased by 12.47% in 2015, from 11.15% in 2014 and from 31.95% in 2013.

So STR added only 1.32% to VLL’s topline.

Second, like her other peers, record income has been cash deficient. That’s because the topline (as well as income) has been financed by vendor financing through receivables expansion. In 2015, receivables growth ballooned by 18.67% which has been more than double than the 7.27% in 2014 but lower than 34.24% in 2013.

Third, the company continues to massively grow her real estate inventories. Inventories bulged by 27.5% in 2015 which has been double the 13.32% rate in 2014 and more than triple the 7.23% growth in 2013.

So inventories continue to grow MORE than sales. This means massive excess capacity in the making, if not already existing through unsold supplies.

There is nothing more that generates my interests than to see how such adventurism had been financed.

This leads to the fourth factor: DEBT

Total non current liabilities has skyrocketed by 63.12% to Php 60.73 billion in 2015 compared to Php 37.225 billion in 2014. Yet much of that loan had been used to finance the Starmall acquisition.

Yet hasn’t it been ironic for VLL to borrow tons of money (billions) just to generate an additional 1.32% G-R-O-W-T-H in the firm’s NGDP/Gross revenues?

Well why not? Since Starmall and VLL have been owned by the same entity, would lavishing on a self-acquisition with borrowed money not make sense?

Anyway, borrowed money comes from poor depositors who not only will get miniscule returns but also take on the risks by the owners. So if the company losses money, it would be the poor depositors who will likely take the brunt of the losses.

After all, that’s what zero bound rates have been made for: Through the funneling of the resources of the masses, the hope that by enriching the elites via wealth inflation such would “trickle down” back to the masses.

And that’s what “record” income has been about!

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1 Manila Times Uncomfortable truths about the RCBC scandal March 18, 2016

2 Financial Times How cyber criminals targeted almost $1bn in Bangladesh Bank heist March 18, 2016

3 Bloomberg.com Hackers Stalked Bangladesh Bank for Two Weeks Before Big Heist March 19, 2016

4 Philippine Statistics Authority Total Gross Revenue Index of Industries grew by 4.3% in Q3 2015 February 24, 2016

5 Bloomberg.com There's Only One Buyer Keeping S&P 500's Bull Market Alive March 14, 2016

6 Factset EARNINGS INSIGHT March 18, 2016