If you don't like the republic you are in...

...create a new one...using different demographics.

Nothing new under the sun.
Buenos Aires (CNN Argentinian lawmakers passed a new measure Wednesday lowering the nation's voting age to 16. Representatives in the South American country's lower house overwhelmingly voted in favor of the law Wednesday. A majority of senators approved it last week. The move to lower the voting age from 18 to 16 comes a year before a key mid-term election in Argentina, and some critics have said it's an attempt by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her party to garner more votes.

Whoops...

...its as if the entire world knows the problem...and capital is flowing surreptitiously to other jurisdictions and continents.

(Reuters) - Caterpillar Inc uncovered "deliberate, multi-year, coordinated accounting misconduct" at a subsidiary of a Chinese company it acquired last summer, leading it to write off most of the value of the deal and wipe out half a quarter's profits.

Unreliable...

...that certainly is a diplomatic way to describe official statistics coming from the Middle Kingdom...

China's unexpected surge in exports last month renewed concern from analysts at Goldman Sachs, UBS and ANZ that statistics from the nation can be unreliable.

The 14.1 per cent jump from a year earlier was the biggest positive surprise since March 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The increase didn't match goods movements through ports and imports by trading partners according to UBS, while Goldman Sachs and Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. cited a divergence from overseas orders in a manufacturing index.

Smaller trade gains could signal a less robust recovery from a seven-quarter slowdown just as Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan says the economic rebound is a sign of improving global demand. Accurate statistics from the world's second-biggest economy are increasingly important for domestic and foreign investors and for China's government, ANZ's Liu Li-Gang says.

“China's influence on the global economy has become bigger, so not only Chinese policy makers but also business people and the rest of the world need better data,” said Liu, Hong Kong- based chief economist for Greater China, who formerly worked for the World Bank. “Unreliable data could have a negative impact on resource allocation and business planning.”

Galbraith's Bezel

So I recently saw the film "Prometheus".  Its interesting, no doubt, (R. Scott does not make uninteresting anything) but the suspension of disbelief was unfortunately punctured by several instances that would only make sense if humans were not humans.  But I will not spoil things for the uninitiated.  Keeping an open mind with respect to multiple interpretations is a healthy thing.

And so that wonderful spacecraft known as "Galbraiths Bezel" is about the land squarely upon the AU platform.  There will be much braying about the definition of a "safe" asset from people who put a significant portion of their savings (and it appears to me that the retail investor, as always, is left holding the bag) into gold and securities and financial instruments with a claim on the returns derived from gold holdings (yes, it is laughable that anyone would simply trust gilded financial institutions to buy and hold anything when prices drop substantially).

So here come the lawsuits.  Oh, I could name some of the culprits most likely to receive indictments/wells notices/congressional summons/etc.  But who wants to provide spoilers to a rapidly unfolding plot?  Just sit back and enjoy.

FINALLY

Gold is showing weakness.  If you took my advice years ago...well...it turns out using "real life" risk metrics you would of had a rough time!  Still, this atavistic fascination with something produced by other countries (thereby guaranteeing its non-use by the U.S. in terms of a currency or "store of value") has had a great run.  But all those shops you see in everydayUSA promising Gold as a great investment should have tipped you off that the smart money has left this trade long ago.

A restless night for Shalom...

...this is not the kind of result Bernanke wants to see.   More evidence that the monetary channel of "stimulus" is broken, something I have repeated here for years.  This is a major reason why deflation is should be of primary concern to the U.S. economy, and its interesting to note the policy recommendations and "debates" concerning solvency continue to get first-page treatment from the media and the political class.

But my use of "the political class" should clue you in to why that is, dear reader.

So perhaps he is sleeping very well tonight indeed.

Deposits at U.S. banks exceed loans by an unprecedented $2 trillion as the threat of a slowing economy tempers borrower demand and lenders preserve tightened standards.

Cash deposited at firms from JPMorgan Chase & Co. to Bank of America Corp. expanded 8.7 percent this year to a record $9.17 trillion through Dec. 5, Federal Reserve data show. That outpaced a 3.7 percent gain in loan assets to $7.17 trillion. The gap between what banks take in and lend out has surged since October 2008, the month after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed, when loans exceeded deposits by $205 billion.

In an seemingly innocuous...

...yet highly pretentious article (read below...I have no idea how that sentence cleared the editors), it appears the IMF has decided to play a game that is analogous to the U.K.'s antiquated Knighting system e.g. granting a title that is meaningless but somehow bestows promotional value to the recipient.

There are no true "reserve currencies" without a powerful military.  It has always been thus.  A "new era in world money"?

No.

LONDON (MarketWatch) — The Australian and Canadian dollars, the
world’s leading commodity-rich currencies, are being formally
classified as official reserve assets by the International Monetary
Fund, marking the onset of a multi-currency reserve system and a new
era in world money.

In a seemingly innocuous yet highly portentous move, the IMF is asking
member countries from next year to include the Australian (US:AUDUSD)
and Canadian dollars (US:USDCAD) in statistics supplied by
reserve-holding nations on the make-up of their central banks’ foreign
exchange reserves. The technical-sounding measure, reflecting growing
diversification of the world’s $10.5 trillion of reserves, is likely
over time to exert wide-ranging impact on world bond and equity
markets.