on the beach

Going out to play on the peninsula is the best thing. The weather is normal and the rain gods are kind and on the right weekends there are stupid amounts of fireworks over the water. It’s fundamentally just so restorative. Here, have some explosions.

Also, here’s a photo of the Saturday show from Anna in the audience. Thanks again, Clallam Bay! <3

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i don't know what this means

Remember the Temporary Open Market Operations committee? Big deal during the bailout, during the Great Shovelling of worthless bonds into government hands to bail out investment banks during the crash. It became meaningless after a while due to definitions changes, and then went pretty idle, so I stopped paying attention to it a few years ago.

I was going through bookmarks lately just to see what needed updating/replacing/throwing out. (Minyanville, by the way? Terrible now. So sad. They sold out to an investment house simply because they couldn't make money. But, well, as all things Internet, it was temporary.) And check out this shit:



I have to be honest: I have no clue what this specifically means. But it's actual data, and it means TOMO transactions have been busy again, and has been for for months now. Looking at the table data, it looks like they've been pulling out liquidity for months - tho' the last week has been a substantial net increase, around US$160B.

Again, I have no clue what this means. But this Fed committee as resumed larger-scale operation, and that's interesting.

Related: Everybody loses in the latest disastrous Greek "bailout" deal. A relevant quote from the Financial Times:

A few things that many of us took for granted, and that some of us believed in, ended in a single weekend. By forcing Alexis Tsipras into a humiliating defeat, Greece’s creditors have done a lot more than bring about regime change in Greece or endanger its relations with the eurozone. They have destroyed the eurozone as we know it and demolished the idea of a monetary union as a step towards a democratic political union.

In doing so they reverted to the nationalist European power struggles of the 19th and early 20th century. They demoted the eurozone into a toxic fixed exchange-rate system, with a shared single currency, run in the interests of Germany, held together by the threat of absolute destitution for those who challenge the prevailing order.

...

"We will soon be asking ourselves whether this new eurozone, in which the strong push around the weak, can be sustainable."

Zero Hedge talks about what Greece is expected to sell and how badly that's worked so far, and also talks about the details of how Brussels is fundamentally taking over the Greek banking system on Wednesday. Since Zero Hedge is about 50/50 interesting data/crazytalk, here's an interesting discussion with exited finance minister Yanis Varoufakis of Greece, talking openly about how things actually went down (up until he left) and why he quit the cabinet before all this happened.

Also, if you haven't been following it, China's markets have been bring just brutalised lately. Here are some of the ways they're playing prop-up. Over 1000 stocks are disallowed from trading just to try to stop the freefall. Here's the Shanghai market over the last year:


ouch

In other news, the US Import-Export Bank has lost authorisation, and is no longer taking new applications. Existing loans, of course, will be serviced. Political commentary from the White House here.

Anyway, I might be posting these things more often again, I dunno. But things are getting interesting, and I'm paying attention.