The Daily Reckoning February 9th

Of Fat Tails and Fashionable Gloom and Doom

“Worried that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. dollar are on the brink of collapse,” says a report at CNNMoney, “lawmakers from 13 states… are seeking approval from their state governments to either issue their own alternative currency or explore it as an option.”

“In the event of hyperinflation,” warns Glen Bradley, who has sponsored one such proposal in North Carolina “depression, or other economic calamity related to the breakdown of the Federal Reserve System… the state’s governmental finances and private economy will be thrown into chaos.”

And with that we find ourselves in peculiar territory this morning.

We’re on a train to D.C. to meet with fellow conspirators — gentlemen from the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ — who share in the belief gold must be reintroduced to the global monetary system. It’s become an unintentional hobby of sorts.

The meeting is classified at the moment, so we’ll reserve comments for another time.

But our current mission is only part of what’s making us uneasy.

We begin today by briefly exploring what our line of work is all about. Scientists who’ve studied probabilities and plotted them on a chart typically find a bell-curve distribution — in which the most likely events bunch up in the middle of the curve.

But a funny thing happens out at the ends of the curve, where the rare events are registered.

“Scientists have found small bumps and bulges,” explains Bill Bonner. “Things that were not expected to happen very often actually happened more than they thought.”

“’Hundred-year floods,’ for example, happened every 88 years. ‘One in a million’ shots hit their mark every 700,000 or so. Statisticians refer to these odd bulges on the extremities of bell-shaped curves as ‘fat tails.’ Instead of tailing off as they are supposed to, the rare events seem to swell up where you don’t expect them.”

We are in the business of anticipating fat-tail events — while the “mainstream media” sit in the middle of the bell curve. Click the graph to enlarge and you’ll get the idea:

The problem is that since 2008, “fat-tail events” — like the collapse of the U.S. dollar and the dismembering of the Federal Reserve system — have become harder for us to stake out.

We were once derided as “doom and gloomers.”

Now doom and gloom has become downright fashionable. Heck, we see the National Geographic Channel debuted a show last night visiting survivalists in their bunkers… and here we are carrying on with business as usual in the “belly of the beast.”

With all that in mind, we daresay that declaring the mother of all financial bubbles might be passe. Don’t get us wrong: It’s still inevitable the bubble will pop.

But today we throw in the towel and make a concession: The monetary mandarins will successfully inflate the bubble a few months longer. And the peace we expect to break out once they’re defrocked of their power and prestige will have to wait for another day.

“The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) has made it official,” writes Daily Reckoning regular Charles Kadlec at Forbes: “After its latest two-day meeting, it announced its goal to devalue the dollar by 33% over the next 20 years.”

And that’s if everything goes according to the plan… based on the Fed’s now-formal target of 2% annual inflation.

Likewise, the Federal Reserve’s latest figures on consumer credit jumped in December — to an annualized 9.3% rate, on top of November’s 9.9%.

We’ve seen nothing like it in 10 years — not since the Fed poured gasoline on the fire first ignited by the tech bust in late 2001 made it possible for automakers to offer 0% financing.

Yes, student loans are a big part of the growth, as they’ve been for many months now. But auto loans are up big, and even credit card use is growing again.

The Wall Street Journal talks to a bank president in Colorado who says loan volume is up because more people now qualify and they’re willing to take on more debt.

The paper also profiled a couple in Pennsylvania financing a new SUV. “We had looked at our budget, and it was something we knew we were comfortable affording,” said Heather Davidson. They’re buying a 2012 Nissan Armada for $57,000.

Presumably they got every bell and whistle available, since the manufacturer’s suggested retail for the base model Armada is $40,275. But hey, why not splurge and trick the thing out? It’s easy payments of $650 a month for the next 72 months, the paper says.

Six years? Oy…

Addison Wiggin
for The Daily Reckoning

Of Fat Tails and Fashionable Gloom and Doom originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

Big Opportunity From Tiny Machines

Back in 1959, Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman delivered a now-famous talk titled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” in which he envisioned the potential applications of tiny machines. Today, one of the most important innovations leading to the current generation of smartphones and tablets is known as MEMS…

Shorthand for “micro-electromechanical machines,” MEMS are the tiny machines embedded in these products, which provide information regarding position and movement. When your mobile device changes how its screen displays when you rotate it, it is an MEMS device that tells it which way it is oriented. Like most of the electronic innards of a modern computer, MEMS are usually manufactured out of silicon.

With funding from the National Science Foundation, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have advanced MEMS technology by integrating new piezoelectric materials on silicon. Piezoelectric materials store an electrical charge when under mechanical force, or expand and contract under the influence of electrical fields. If you’ve used a lighter or propane barbecue that has an electrical igniter, you have seen piezoelectricity at work. Children’s shoes that light up when they step also use piezoelectricity to generate a small electrical current.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers studied a piezoelectric material called lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate, or PMN-PT for short. PMN-PT is a very high-performance piezoelectric crystal that is used, among other things, to deliver waves of ultrasound into the human body to produce 3-D images.

Due to its high level of piezoelectric performance, which includes the ability to work using lower amounts of electrical consumption, PMN-PT would be very useful in MEMS devices. It could be used as part of a machine to act as a tiny switch in optical communications devices, or it could enable a new generation of electronic filters for radio-frequency communications in mobile devices. As a sensor, it could increase sensitivity over currently available MEMS technology.

The problem with PMN-PT is that current commercial manufacturing methods that require the material to be cut, ground and polished from bulk materials. These imprecise “top down” manufacturing techniques mean that it cannot be used for many potential applications. It cannot be handled with enough small-scale precision to make it suitable for use in MEMS devices.

Here is where the new research comes in. The University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers figured out a way to apply fabrication techniques common in the semiconductor industry to PMN-PT. By carefully adding thin layers of a special electrode material on top of a layer of silicon, they were able to add a layer of PMN-PT that performs every bit as well as bulk crystals. The end result of applying atomic-level control to PMN-PT could be more-efficient MEMS circuits, including devices that can convert vibration into electricity for small devices.

Needless to say, we’re on the lookout for the best new technologies that represent investment opportunities. We expect to find exciting candidates in the MEMS field and elsewhere.

Regards,

Ray Blanco,
for The Daily Reckoning

Big Opportunity From Tiny Machines originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

Coming Soon: Smart Television!

My colleague Ray Blanco and I recently attended the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The big story this year was the convergence in consumer electronics. Specifically, it was the arrival of extraordinary high-definition 3-D as well as “smart” TVs. In fact, Ray and I had backstage passes for the biggest 3-D events.

We were also able to talk to executives, scientists and engineers at many cutting-edge technology company. Without a doubt, the hottest topics and most-dazzling presentations at CES this year involved televisions. When I say television, though, I’m talking about an entirely new iteration of the old technology.

“Smart televisions” are finally becoming truly user-friendly. Moreover, the various online sources of content are being knit together by Google and hardware manufacturers. This convergence of all content on the wirelessly connected family screen presents an enormous challenge to traditional broadcast and cable networks. Games, educational materials, entertainment, telephony and home electronics management are coming together. When you can interact with Khan Academy lectures on virtually any subject, the term “boob tube” hardly applies. Here’s one article about this important trend.

In the past, I’ve never gotten particularly excited by HD television. Yes, new HD large-screen televisions have been improvements, but I’ve never found them particularly compelling. I think that’s about to change.

New screen technologies, OLED and active matrix, have crossed some tipping point. I was astonished by the clarity of next-generation screens. The Korean manufacturers, in particular, can make screens with clarity that is getting very close to actual vision. This is particularly true in regard to 3-D screen technology.

I told my subscribers several years ago that entertainment as we knew it would change when 3-D screens reached an acceptable level. That point will not come at once, because individuals have different preferences, but for many, it has already arrived, even though the highest-quality screens still require glasses. That will change within a few years. 3-D televisions are in the works now that will allow a room full of people to each receive, without glasses, both left and right eye signals — even if they move around.

The big events of the CES were all about 3-D, especially the live broadcasts by the ESPN 3-D channel. Fortunately, I know some of the key people at Cameron Pace Group, the company that owns the state-of-the-art technology used to shoot and broadcast most top-level 3-D. Cameron Pace is run by James Cameron of Avatar fame as well as Vince Pace, the inventor of the technology and a well-known cinematographer. As a result, Ray and I were able to go behind the scenes inside the semitrailers outside the convention hall that powered the 3-D broadcast.

I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about this company right now, but I will in the future. A lot of 3-D photography is happening right now, even though the forum doesn’t yet exist for the programming. When 3-D screens are more widely deployed, you’re going to be surprised to find that many of the most-successful shows on television today will then be released, for a second revenue stream, in 3-D.

Regards,

Patrick Cox
for The Daily Reckoning

Coming Soon: Smart Television! originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

Watching the Greek Debt Episode of the Global Soap Opera

A serious question, Fellow Reckoner: Would you, if given the choice, be alive at any other time?

We’ll get back to that in a second. First, our regular beat…

Markets went precisely nowhere yesterday. It was as if everyone agreed to stay home…or go fishing…or to become reacquainted with that strange person living in their house and sleeping in their bed. Among other things, investors are waiting to see what happens with Greece. We’ll save them some time. Nothing will happen. Nothing different, anyway. Here’s Bloomberg, with more news on the same old story:

Greek political leaders struck a deal on a package of austerity measures, clearing the way for a swap to cut the nation’s debt and win its second rescue in two years.

Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos called European Central Bank President Mario Draghi to tell him “an agreement has been reached,” Draghi said at a press conference today in Frankfurt. An announcement from Papademos’s office is expected shortly, a Greek government official who declined to be identified said today by telephone.

The accord came less than four hours before euro-region finance ministers hold an emergency meeting in Brussels to discuss the 130 billion-euro ($172 billion) lifeline and the swap that will impose a loss of about 70 percent for investors.

Oh, Papademos and Draghi said all’s well. An agreement has been reached. A deal was struck. Phew! We thought that…

…Wait, we’re trusting politicians now? Ex-Goldman Sachs politicians (in Draghi’s case), no less? When did that happen? These are people who couldn’t lie straight in bed. Everybody knows it. Notice, for instance, how these and various other furry-knuckled folk are no longer referred to as “politicians”? That word has been sullied. People have trouble even using it without nailing a “damned” or “thievin’” to the front of it. Now the papers, with embarrassing deference, refer to them as “political leaders.”

Let’s recap what we know about Greece and the euro-situation in general. For brevity’s sake, we’ll stick to its most recent — i.e. current — collapse only.

Back in May of 2010, five short months after receiving its first official credit downgrade, Greece was awarded a €110 billion 3-year “loan.” (We put that word in inverted commas just in case it mistakenly implies repayment.) And what happened? Did the government clean its act up? Did it cut expenses, as promised? Did the economy roar back to life? Of course not. Protesters had barely left their post in Syntagma square when it was time to return for more banner waving and foot stomping. By December that year, the yield on 10-year bonds had spiked to near then record highs over 11%.

Not to worry, said the Feds, who swept in with another €110 billion bailout plan…again negotiated under the strict condition that they rein in spending. But the horse had already bolted. Greece’s outstanding debt is now equal to roughly 160% of GDP. The gears have stalled. Official unemployment has reached over 20%. It’s worse for the youth. Much worse. Half of the nation’s under-24 population is without work. Growth has collapsed. Industrial output in December fell 11.3% from the year-earlier month.

Would you lend these people money? Would you lend these people your money? Only a fool would answer yes to the second question. Only a politician would answer yes to the first.

The Spartans are broke. They have been for a long time. And, as such, they will default. One way or another. All the handshaking, backslapping, hallway dealing, last minute brokering, politicking and brinkmanshipping won’t stop that. It’s just noise, playing like the soundtrack to a movie that’s already been written.

Not that the Greeks area lone sinners. The whole developed world is caught up in a debt funk. The collapse, when it arrives, is going to be truly epic. Which brings us back to our original thought: If you had the choice, would you live your life at any other time?

Take a look back through history. Most of it was a complete bore, save for the workaday melodramas played out in small, social soap operas. In fact, most of history existed before actual soap operas…and before soap…and before operas.

Sure, there were wars and plagues and the miserable collapse of empires. Currencies were debased and their masters beheaded. New lands were found and old cities forgotten. There were events that reshaped the course of history itself, delivering us the present day in which we live.

But mostly these things took many years, centuries even, to fully express themselves. Trends were slow…probably because there was nobody around to drive them. Mankind couldn’t even manage to gather a group of 1 billion people until 1811. How can you expect to get anything done when you’re still counting the global population in “millions?”

These days, contrary to the relative snoozefest of yesteryear, things happen. And when they do, they are fast…and loud…and on a scale that dwarfs any other in history.

Take economic output, for example. According to data compiled by The Economist, more than half (55%) of all the economic output generated over the past 2,000 years was generated in the 20th century. In other words, the last 100 years of the millennium produced more than the preceding 1,900. And this trend — along with the mushrooming population supporting it — is quickening. The first 10 years of this millennium account for roughly one-fifth of the total economic output achieved since BC ticked over to AD.

All this is just a fancy way of saying that big things are happening. Big booms. Big busts. Greece-, Europe-, US- and entire developed-word sized busts. And, lest we fail to mention it, a spectacle like no other in history.

Who would want to miss that?

Joel Bowman
for The Daily Reckoning

Watching the Greek Debt Episode of the Global Soap Opera originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

Debt Beats the Economy in a Growth Race

Get out your chopsticks! Brush up on your sushi! Learn to read backwards and upside down!

Yes…we’re going to Japan!

The gist of the Japanese situation is this:

The bubble burst in 1990. But rather than let their big businesses go belly up, the Japanese used every trick in the book. Counter-cyclical deficits up the Shinanho. ZIRP (zero interest rate policy). And QE too.

The economy didn’t grow. It didn’t collapse. It just got stuck…like a moth in amber. No new jobs. No new output. And get this, Japan is expected to lose 40% of its working age population by 2050.

But Japan is a leader, not a follower. Over the next 40 years, Germany will lose more than 30% of its working age population too. Russia and Poland will lose even more.

Growth is expected to be negligible over the next 40 years in Japan. But it will be almost nothing in many other countries too, according to an HSBC report. It estimates that the US will grow at around 1.5% annually. France 1.1%. Denmark, Norway, Sweden — barely anything at all.

What does this sound like to you, dear reader? It sounds like the whole developed world going Japan’s way — with low growth and high debts from here to eternity.

As in Japan, so in Europe and America. The European Central Bank is lending the banks as much as they want — at low rates. The Fed has its own ZIRP…which it says it will keep in place until 2014.

Growth is stalled…debts are mounting up. Hello Tokyo!

But wait…here’s the Congressional Budget Office telling us that Congress will have those deficits under control in no time.

“Deficits to fall sharply, US forecast says,” reports the International Herald Tribune.

What a relief that is! The CBO has crunched the numbers. It has beaten up the 2s. It has punched out the 5s. It has pounded the 6s. And now, finally, like prisoners at Guantanamo, the numbers tell us what we want to hear.

US debt is going down!

Wait a minute…are these the same number crunchers who, at the beginning of the 21st century, forecast federal surpluses as far as the eye could see?

Yes, it is!

But, okay, that didn’t work out exactly as planned. They crunched the numbers but then the numbers got un-crunched on their own. Damned numbers! You just can’t trust them.

So, how can we trust these numbers?

That’s just it, dear reader, we can’t. In order to work out as planned, they require:

1. Congress has to let the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule. Hmmm… Will that happen? Beats us. It probably depends on who wins the elections in November…which probably depends on what the economy does between now and then…which probably depends on more things than we can begin to estimate and compute.

But the central idea of it — that Congress will act responsibly — seems like something you can’t say with a straight face. Will pandas stop eating bamboo? Will teenagers stop slouching? Will liquor stores make free home deliveries? Nope. Everything has a nature of its own. And the nature of Congress is to spend money it doesn’t have on things it doesn’t need. And then to push the bill onto the next Congress…the next administration and the next generation.

2. Not only do taxes have to go up, so does economic growth. There’s a problem right there. According to prevailing theories, if you increase taxes during a de-leveraging spell, you don’t get faster rates of GDP growth. You get slower growth.

The CBO acknowledges this problem, to a degree. It allows as how unemployment may go up, thanks to the tax increases. In fact, they say it will go to 9% in 2013.

How will the President, Congress and the Fed react to rising unemployment? Mightn’t it tempt them to engage in a little more counter-cyclical stimulus…at the expense of the tax cuts?

And what happens to growth rates? The CBO figures that growth can outstrip deficits. Maybe. Maybe not. Now, it’s not even close. There’s a $1.1 trillion deficit this year. Growth? Maybe a fifth of that. In other words, debt is growing 5 times faster than the economy.

During Mr. Obama’s first (and maybe last) term, US debt will grow by more than $5 trillion. Another term like that and we’ll be over $20 trillion.

And already the weight of debt is pressing down growth rates…and it’s getting worse.

And if HSBC is right, US growth will be very slow. Will deficits also be very low? Below 1.5% of GDP? Down from over $1 for the last 4 years to under $225 billion for the next 40?

Heck, we’re as soft-headed as anyone. We’d like to see the whole problem go away too. And maybe it will…

But we wouldn’t bet on it…

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning

Debt Beats the Economy in a Growth Race originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.

The Greeks are Given Another 15 Days to Find More Cuts

As Chuck wrote yesterday, the markets were feeling confident that an agreement on a second financing accord for Greece was going to be finalized yesterday. The euro (EUR) continued to rally on the news through most of the day, but the talks stumbled over the issue of pension cuts, and EU/IMF officials had to give Greece 15 more days to come up with additional cuts. The delay in an agreement caused the euro to retreat from the two-month highs against the dollar, moving back into the $1.32 handle after trading as high as $1.3313. But there is still confidence an agreement will be met, as the parties have agreed on all the issues except a 300 million euro reduction in pension benefits.

The ECB meets today to set monetary policy, and ECB President Mario Draghi will hold a press conference following the meeting, so we could see some additional euro volatility throughout the trading day. Draghi will definitely be questioned on the ECB’s possible role in securing a second round of funding for Greece. The ECB reluctantly entered the debt markets, purchasing bonds in order to keep rates from rising too dramatically. They have accumulated a substantial position in Greek debt, and the IMF wants them to agree to take a write-down on this debt in order to reduce Greek debt levels. The bonds purchased by the ECB were already at a discount, but Greece wants them to take an even larger discount on these holdings. The bonds bought by the ECB in its Securities Market Program are exempt from the current debt-swap deal, but Greece needs additional debt reductions, and the IMF is pressuring the ECB to write down this debt.

It will be interesting to see what Draghi decides to do, as many of his cohorts in the ECB aren’t interested in booking big losses on this debt. And if the ECB is forced to participate in the Greek debt write-downs, what will that mean for the other distressed debt that the ECB has purchased? It would certainly seem to set a precedent that the ECB would have to follow in dealing with other debt purchased through their QE efforts of the past year.

The data released this morning in Europe will give the ECB a bit of good news to start their meeting. Economic confidence in the euro area rose in the first quarter after posting losses in the previous two. The positive move was led by an improvement of expectations for the euro region over the next six months, according to the Ifo research institute, with the indicator measuring future expectations rising from 57.4 to 70.5. This is still under its long-term average, but a good move in the right direction. ECB President Draghi has said 2012 will be a “much better” year and, these data indicate many of the business leaders seem to agree.

The Bank of England will be meeting also, and many expect BOE Gov. Mervyn King to announce additional stimulus measures. Economists predict King will announce an increase of 50 billion pounds to their target for bond purchases, and some expect an even larger 75 billion pound increase. Growth in the U.K. has resumed (albeit very slowly) following a contraction in the last quarter of 2011. But King has indicated he would like to see stronger numbers, and doesn’t seem to be worried about any inflationary impact of pumping additional funds into the U.K. economy. The risk of slipping back into a second recession seems to far outweigh any future negative impacts of additional stimulus measures in the mind of the current BOE leader. With rates near zero, additional bond purchases is the preferred policy tool of the BOE, and an increase is being priced in by the markets.

At least one Federal Reserve president here in the U.S. would also like to see additional bond purchases. John Williams, the Fed president of San Francisco, said he thinks there is room for additional purchases of mortgage-backed securities by the Fed. “There’s only so much headroom to do further Treasury securities of a medium- or long-term duration. But there is more room out there in the mortgage-backed securities space,” Williams told reporters in California. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said yesterday that he sees a “long way to go” before the job market returns to normal, and additional bond buying is one option that is still on the table. It makes me a bit nervous to be following in the footsteps of the BOE and BOJ in what seems like another round of QE.

No data releases in the U.S. yesterday, but today is Thursday, which means we will get the weekly jobs numbers. Initial jobless claims are expected to have increased to 370,000 from 367,000 last week, and continuing claims are expected to have risen to 3.5 million. This data may seem counter to last week’s unexpected drop in the jobless rate to a three-year low, but the reason for this drop in the big number is that workers are simply giving up looking for work. So while last week’s announcement of a drop in the unemployment rate to 8.3% sent stocks soaring, the rate doesn’t give the true picture of the U.S. labor market. Chairman Bernanke pointed this out in his speech to the Senate Budget Committee yesterday, saying the job market remains a “long way” from returning to normal.

China’s inflation unexpectedly moved higher in January, according to reports released yesterday. Consumer prices rose 4.5% from a year earlier, a number that was higher than every economist’s predictions. The rise in prices was partially due to a weeklong holiday in January, which increased the number of shopping days available for consumers to make purchases. The higher inflation rate reduces the possibility of further policy easing in the near term, but most economists are expecting inflation to cool in the coming months.

The hike in consumer prices in China is yet another indication that the Chinese economy is not headed for a meltdown. This is good news for the commodity-based currencies of the New Zealand (NZD) and Australian dollars (AUD), and both hit near-term highs yesterday. The Kiwi traded back above 84 cents for the first time since September of last year. A report released in New Zealand showed employment grew last month, albeit at a slower rate than expected. New Zealand employment rose 0.1% in January versus a median forecast growth of 0.4%.

The Aussie dollar’s recent moonshot stalled a bit yesterday, as the Greek negotiations stumbled. The AUD$ has been on a two-month move higher, vaulting from below 97 cents at the end of November to a high of 1.0845 yesterday. The Reserve Bank’s move to keep interest rates unchanged, and their positive outlook on global growth prospects, has given investors confidence in the Australian dollar.

The guys who read the technical charts say the Aussie dollar looks overvalued at the current levels and suggest waiting to see a pull back to $1.05 before making any additional purchases. Another story I read on Bloomberg suggests the Aussie’s recent rally will force the Reserve Bank to resume cutting interest rates as higher Aussie dollar prices will negatively impact Australian exports. I guess it is just additional proof that you can spin things any way you want. I still feel the commodity currencies are the place to invest.

Then there was this… On my drive to work this morning, I heard a newscaster saying how it was nice to see Congress finally coming together to pass an important piece of legislation. I wondered could it be real deficit reduction? Tax reform? Tort reform? No, it was the bill that would ban members of Congress from profiting from using inside information in trading stocks. Shouldn’t this be illegal already? In fact, it is, as members of Congress are not exempt from existing insider trading laws, but the Constitution’s protection of their “speech or debate” makes it extremely hard to investigate violations. A 60 Minutes report back in November showed some members of Congress, including House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, had bought stock in companies while legislation that might affect those businesses was being debated. I guess it is good news that they are finally doing something about the loophole, but wouldn’t their ethics already prevent this? Oh, I forgot, I am talking about Congress.

To recap. The Greek leaders have been given 15 days to find additional cuts to offset pension costs. The ECB and BOE meet and both may be adding to their bond buying. The ECB has to decide if they want to take a haircut on their Greek debt. Chinese inflation pushed higher, causing a rally to the commodity currencies. And our Congress is set to pass a law which really shouldn’t be necessary.

Mike just pointed out a headline that the Greek parliament has come to an agreement on additional cuts which should seal the deal on a second round of funding. This should send the euro and the risk currencies higher today!

Chris Gaffney
for The Daily Reckoning

The Greeks are Given Another 15 Days to Find More Cuts originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.