High Frequency Trading removes liquidity from markets

Hedge fund giant John Taylor says the “strange thing” is high frequency trading takes liquidity out of the market. Taylor and Paul Richards, UBS head of global FX, explain why they expect further weakness in the Euro ahead.

Here is a direct link.

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David Stockman on Ryan’s “fairy tale budget plan”

David Stockman, was director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1981 to 1985, and is author of the forthcoming book “The Great Deformation: How Crony Capitalism Corrupts Free Markets and Democracy.”

In a NY Times Op-Ed yesterday he highlights the weak-kneed nonsense behind the allegedly “bold” Ryan budget plan which preserves insane levels of defense spending and some entitlement programs while splicing splinters off the cost bone in cuts to subsistence programs such as food stamps and health insurance benefits for the poor and disabled.

Adults must insist on an adult conversation about the numbers needed to cut the deficit. Governments cannot afford to preserve and hold harmless, crony popular areas. Every program needs to be up for significant cuts across the board. Time to get serious and turn the election attention into a productive, math based campaign.

We do need real fiscal conservatives in policy positions everywhere today, but shared pain, means shared by everyone.  See Stockman’s whole article here: Paul Ryan’s Fairy Tale Budget Plan.

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Five years on in the Great Recession

Great article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Financial Times today surveying the seemingly never-ending nightmare which is our present global debt crisis.  Read it here:  Five years on, the Great Recession is turning into a life sentence.

But this too shall pass. It is not going to be a permanent recession, history assures us that the world will work its way through present problems: deficits will be curtailed one way and another, bankers will be disarmed of their financial powers of mass destruction and the real economy will finally find its way back to organic growth.  And yes large spending cuts are required.  But so are large debt write-offs–more money has been loaned than can ever be paid back.  It is necessary to admit this truth–admission is the first step to recovery. Here’s Ambrose:

“Much of the debt will have to be written off. Whether this done by inflation (1945-1952) or default (1930-1934) will be the great political battle of this decade. Pick your side. Pick your history.”

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