If JP Morgan analysts are correct, April will be a month of rolling oil delivery stops from the Persian Gulf starting in E/SE Asia and East Africa April 1, Europe April 10, North America April 15, and Australia April 20

 

ROFLMAO: Paxos, blockchain partner of PayPal, mistakenly mints $300 TRILLION PYUSD, world's sixth largest so-called stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the U.S. Dollar with market capitalization of only $2.6 BILLION

 J. P. Morgan explains gold's rise as having something to do, in part, with "waning confidence in fiat currencies."  😏 

Why should anything pegged to fiat be more confidence inspiring, especially involving PayPal?

People who've been permanently banned by PayPal this morning are probably saying, "Couldn't have happened to a finer company".

This event should be good for fiat, and really good for gold, which won't suddenly be minted by anyone to the tune of $300 trillion, at least not until Elon Musk lassoes one of them thar asteroids. 

 

PayPal’s crypto partner mints a whopping $300 trillion worth of stablecoins in ‘technical error’

Paxos, the blockchain partner of PayPal, mistakenly minted $300 trillion worth of the online payment giant’s stablecoin on Wednesday in what the company called a “technical error.” ... 

Transactions on Etherscan showed that the mistake had been fixed after about 20 minutes. 

PYUSD is advertised as a dollar-pegged stablecoin that is fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, U.S. treasuries and similar cash equivalents. Therefore, PayPal says the tokens are always redeemable for U.S. dollars on a 1:1 basis. 

However, the technical error highlights that the dollar peg is guaranteed by PayPal and its independent third-party attestation reports, rather than intrinsically tied to the minting of a stablecoin. ...

 

 

Bank of America overall profits up 11%, stock trading revenue up 17%

Bank of America on Tuesday posted first-quarter results that topped analysts’ expectations for profit and revenue on stronger-than-expected net interest income and trading revenue. ...

JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs each exceeded analysts’ estimates on a boom in equities trading revenue as banks took advantage of volatility in the quarter.

More.

Trump tariff chaos is literally equity traders' gold

 

 On again, off again, on again tariffs from The Puppet Master have enriched stock traders Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley. They don't care if stocks go up, or down, as long as they keep going up, going down, going up. Trump chaos is literally traders' gold.

Goldman profit is up 15% from the year earlier period.

Goldman Sachs tops estimates on boom in equities trading revenue

 ... equity trading revenue rose 27%. ... On Friday, rivals JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley each topped expectations for first-quarter results on booming equities trading.

Equities trading revenue surged 48% and 45% at the banks, respectively, thanks to volatility in the opening months of Trump’s tenure amid his efforts to reshape global trade agreements.

 

Laugh of the Day: Limbaugh and Hannity in flames as advertiser Ruth's Chris Steak House gets $20 million bailout from Trump in four days while Main Street waits and waits and waits

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The company, which operates or franchises 159 restaurants, had a profit of $42 million on revenue of $468 million last year.

The owner of the high-end Ruth’s Chris Steak House chain is among the first public companies to disclose it has received a government-backed loan to keep people on its payroll.

Ruth’s Hospitality Group Inc., a company with more than 5,000 workers, received $20 million in forgivable loans on April 7, according to a securities filing. That is four days after the Small Business Administration opened the application window on its $350 billion Payroll Protection Program.

Many small-business owners are still waiting for their banks to process an application or hear back about whether they qualify or will receive financial assistance from the PPP fund. The SBA says 1.1 million applications have been approved for loans worth $263 billion as of Tuesday afternoon. The average loan size is about $239,000 so far, the SBA says. Banks say only small portions of approved loans have been disbursed to businesses. ...

The loans were intended for businesses with fewer than 500 employees, but language in the $2 trillion stimulus bill allows restaurants and hotel chains to participate regardless of how many people they employ.

The maximum PPP loan is $10 million. Ruth’s said two of its subsidiaries each received $10 million SBA loans from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and would use the proceeds primarily for payroll costs. ... As of Dec. 29, Ruth’s employed 5,740 people, of whom 5,216 were hourly staff.

JP Morgan: US tariffs on China to have only modest impact on US economy

From the story here:

Investment bank JPMorgan estimated in a report on Tuesday that Trump’s tariffs on China would have only modest effects on the broader U.S. economy. It based its analysis on a 12 percent average U.S. tariff on $450 billion of imports from China, estimating that this would add just 0.4 percentage points to U.S. consumer price inflation if the additional costs of the duties were passed on to consumers in their entirety.

J. P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon complains "stupid shit" is distracting America from implementing better tax and spending policies

Blame the Democrats and NeverTrumpers, Jamie.

Here:

It's almost an embarrassment being an American citizen traveling around the world and listening to the stupid s--- we have to deal with in this country, and at one point we all have to get our act together or we won't do what we're supposed to [do] for the average Americans and unfortunately people write about this saying like it's for corporations. It's not for corporations. Competitive taxes are important for business and business growth, which is important for jobs and wage growth. And honestly we should be ringing that alarm bell, every single one of you, every time we talk to a client.

Rush Limbaugh thinks the 46 million on food stamps are the U-3 "counted" unemployed, many of whom actually can and do work

Yesterday, here:

"Today, there are 46 million Americans unemployed, and 94 million not working. Now, these 46 million people, these are the counted unemployed. This is the U-3 number. The counted unemployed represent 14% of the population."

Limbaugh somehow gets this convoluted mess from here, which he cites but which clearly states the 46 million are those on food stamps, not the U-3 "counted" unemployed:

"The reason you don’t see huge lines of people waiting in soup lines during this Greater Depression is because the government has figured out how to disguise suffering through modern technology. During the height of the Great Depression in 1933, there were 12.8 million Americans unemployed. These were the men pictured in the soup lines. Today, there are 46 million Americans in an electronic soup kitchen line, as their food is distributed through EBT cards (with that angel of mercy JP Morgan reaping billions in profits by processing the transactions). These 46 million people represent 14% of the U.S. population." 

In the latest Employment Situation Summary from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for September, those actually counted as unemployed are listed at 7.915 million (2.5% of the population) and the not counted as unemployed at 1.9 million:

"In September, the unemployment rate held at 5.1 percent, and the number of unemployed persons (7.9 million) changed little. Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons were down by 0.8 percentage point and 1.3 million, respectively. (See table A-1.) . . . In September, 1.9 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, down by 305,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)"

U-3 is not a number in millions as Limbaugh says but a rate, the percentage of the labor force which is unemployed (7.915 million / 156.715 million), namely 5.1%.

Limbaugh doesn't understand that lots of employed people get food stamps. Individuals grossing up to $15,312 annually can still qualify for assistance.

Almost 49 million individuals made up to but not more than $15,000 annually in 2014.

The unemployed in Sept. 2015 numbered 7.9 million

U-3 is a percentage

All But One Big Bank Would Fail Real Stress Tests, Which Means In An Actual Crisis It's 2008 All Over Again

So says Bloomberg View here, naming Wells Fargo as the only one which would pass:

The results aren’t pretty. Using a start date of Sept. 30, 2013, the same as that of the Fed's latest round of stress tests, the NYU model gives only one of the six largest U.S. banks -- Wells Fargo & Co., Inc. -- a passing grade. The other five -- JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley -- would have a combined capital shortfall of more than $300 billion. That's not much less than they needed to get themselves out of the last crisis.

FDIC Sues 16 Big Banks Saying LIBOR Rigging Hurt 38 US Banks Which Eventually Failed

CNBC reports here:

The FDIC said the defendants' conduct caused substantial losses to 38 banks that the U.S. regulator had taken into receivership since 2008, including Washington Mutual Bank and IndyMac Bank.

Among the banks named as defendants include Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings, JPMorgan Chase, the Royal Bank of Scotland Group and UBS.

Real Clear Markets Has JP Morgan Predicting Either 4% Up Or 31% Down By Year's End

So, it's either going to be a modest 4% rise in the S&P500 by the end of the year to 1775, or a 31% collapse to 1175. My dartboard could predict as much. If I were JP Morgan, I wouldn't be too happy.

Attention to detail . . . what separates the wheat from the chaff.

Oops! JP Morgan Chief Strategist Predicts S&P500 To 1775, Real Clear Markets Says 1175!

Video here.

And you have to listen incredulously to nearly the whole thing with all its happy talk to confirm the headline's typo.

Update: Added the headline from the front page just so you understand my surprise.

Once Again, It's The Banks Doing The Money Printing, And The Bubble Blowing, Not The Feds

Jeffrey Snider, here:

That is not to say that paper dollars are issued by banks; they are not. Paper currency still takes the form of Federal Reserve Notes, but in the marginal monetary and banking system they are largely irrelevant. Dollars in the banking system, what is called liquidity, are created and dispersed by bank balance sheet accounting. These marginal liquidity units are digital representations of currency, ledger balances that shift daily, even by the minute. Bankruptcy and insolvency are not when you run out of Federal Reserve Notes in your bank vault, they come when you have to settle your accounts with the liquidity provider and there are no positive numbers on the right side of the computerized ledger (or when your ledger does not match your counterparty's, and that counterparty happens to be JP Morgan).

Given that global banks are the primary "money printers" in the dollar trade system (and the dollar swap standard), the Fed's role under interest rate targeting is to backstop the wholesale money markets where banks obtain short-term funding from each other. The implicit promise of interest rate targeting had been enough for the global dollar fraction to expand through accounting, regulatory and derivative leverage, providing the financing for the myriad bubbles of recent decades. The Fed did not create the bubbles directly, just provided the conditions for banks to do it for them.

I Know! Let's Get The Sequestration Cuts From The Banks!

In an editorial on February 20th, here (which has caused quite the hubbub), Bloomberg.com maintained that most big banks are not profitable because their preferred rate to borrow from the government amounts to a gift roughly equal to their stated profits:

The top five banks -- JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. - - account for $64 billion of the total subsidy, an amount roughly equal to their typical annual profits . . .. In other words, the banks occupying the commanding heights of the U.S. financial industry -- with almost $9 trillion in assets, more than half the size of the U.S. economy -- would just about break even in the absence of corporate welfare. In large part, the profits they report are essentially transfers from taxpayers to their shareholders.

No one seems to be inquiring too deeply, however, why the banks are not profitable without continuing massive taxpayer support ($83 billion annually -- remind you of anything beginning with the letter "s" and starting today?).

Gee, could it be because of all those bad mortgages on and off the books which are not performing and cutting into their capital? Ya think?

And maybe, just maybe, the Fed's policies are trying to repair this one thing only, while telling us it's to help with employment, housing, the stock market even, blah, blah, blah, pissing down our backs and tellin' us it's rainin'?

If this were really a free market economy with a private banking industry, we'd have had the equivalent of $85 billion in sequestration spending cuts for years already by not subsidizing these losers.

And another thing we wouldn't have is these big banks. They would have failed already.

Corporate Cash For S&P500 Swells To $1.5 Trillion

Story here:

Amid a lackluster earning season that has featured many companies missing sales expectations, cash balances have swelled 14 percent and are on track toward $1.5 trillion for the Standard & Poor's 500, according to JPMorgan. Both levels would be historic highs.

Fascist CEOs Agree With Jamie Dimon: We Need MORE Fascism!

And William Cohan buys it, here for Bloomberg, after Jack Welch, Lou Gerstner and Bob Wright all agree with this statement from Dimon:

"[T]he rest of us should hold hands, get together -- collaborate -- business and government together to fix the problems. It’s going to be very hard for government to do it on its own and business can’t do it without collaborating with the government.”

Gee, what a shock. GE, IBM, NBC and JP Morgan Chase and Co. all agree that we should just forget the sins of the past and . . . move forward!

Now where have I heard that before?

Against Obama methinks they doth protest too much. Just the semblance of disapproval is too much for these guys. And with Romney in charge, that farcical posturing will at last be over, and it will be back to business as usual.

I'll bet none of the mothers of these guys ever spanked them once.

Romney Doesn't Oppose Obama's Financier Fascism, He's Part Of It

"[D]espite taking office in the midst of a massive financial meltdown, Obama’s administration has not prosecuted a single heavy-hitter among those responsible for the financial crisis. To the contrary, he’s staffed his team with big bankers and their allies. Under the Bush-Obama bailouts the big financial institutions have feasted like pigs at the trough, with the six largest banks borrowing almost a half trillion dollars from uncle Ben Bernanke’s printing press. In 2013 the top four banks controlled more than 40 percent of the credit markets in the top 10 states—up by 10 percentage points from 2009 and roughly twice their share in 2000. Meantime, small banks, usually the ones serving Main Street businesses, have taken the hit along with the rest of us with more than 300 folding since the passage of Dodd-Frank, the industry-approved bill to “reform” the industry. ...

"In a sane world, one would expect Republicans to run against this consolidation of power, that has taxpayers propping up banks that invest vast amounts in backing the campaigns of the lawmakers who levy those taxes. The party would appeal to grassroots capitalists, investors, small banks and their customers who feel excluded from the Washington-sanctioned insiders' game. The popular appeal is there. The Tea Party, of course, began as a response against TARP. ...

"Romney himself is so clueless as to be touting his strong fund-raising with big finance. His top contributors list reads something like a rogue’s gallery from the 2008 crash: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Citicorp, and Barclays."

Read the whole thing from Joel Kotkin, here.

America's LIBOR Banks' Silence Is Deafening

John Carney for NetNet, here:

I asked Bank of America, Citi, and JP Morgan Chase to provide answer[s] to four sets of questions about their Libor practices.

1. Who makes the Libor submission for your bank? How many people involved? Who does the submitter report to? How high up in management does decision go? Is it reviewed before or after submitted to BBA? Who signs off on changes?

2. How is the submission calculated?

3. Has this procedure changed over time?

4. Is it under review following Barclays scandal?

Not one of the banks would provide the information requested. Bank of America and JPMorgan declined to comment. Citigroup did not return phone calls.

The Cost of Food Stamps? $75 Billion. 'Disability' Dwarfs That: $200 Billion Annually.

So says this story from The New York Post:

As of January, the federal government was mailing out disability checks to more than 10.5 million individuals, including 2 million to spouses and children of disabled workers, at a cost of record $200 billion a year, recent research from JPMorgan Chase shows.

The sputtering economy has fueled those ranks. Around 5.3 percent of the population between the ages of 25 and 64 is currently collecting federal disability payments, a jump from 4.5 percent since the economy slid into a recession.

Mental-illness claims, in particular, are surging.

During the recent economic boom, only 33 percent of applicants were claiming mental illness, but that figure has jumped to 43 percent, says Rutledge, citing preliminary results from his latest research.


The annual cost of the food stamp program is detailed here annually going back to 1969.

Here's Why Your Government Stalled on the FOIA for Two Years

Because the American taxpayer has bailed out the whole world, that's why. We're now the biggest suckers in history.

And the following information wouldn't have been released either, except for the Dodd-Frank legislation:

Citigroup ($2.2 trillion)

Merrill Lynch ($2.1 trillion)

Morgan Stanley ($2 trillion)

Bear Stearns ($960 billion)

Bank of America ($887 billion)

Goldman Sachs ($615 billion)

JPMorgan Chase ($178 billion)

Wells Fargo ($154 billion)

Swiss bank UBS ($165 billion)

Deutsche Bank ($97 billion)

Royal Bank of Scotland ($92 billion)

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack ($1.25 trillion)

General Electric ($16 billion)

Harley-Davidson Inc. ($2.3 billion)

Caterpillar Inc. dealers ($733 million)

The story from yahoo.com is totally irresponsible for saying the Fed didn't take part in an appeal to the Supreme Court with a group of commercial banks seeking to prevent the disclosure of the names of institutions receiving emergency loans in 2008. Hell, the Fed appealed all the way up the line until it came time to appeal to the Supreme Court or comply with two (2! II! Zwei!) orders from lower courts to disclose the information. And we still don't have that.

Has anyone painted a clearer picture of the bankruptcy of our largest institutions and industries?

Only a fool would keep his money in a bank now.

Hell, only a fool would keep money.