UST-Bund Spread At Three Year Wides As ECB Warns IMF Involvement Would Be Beginning Of End For Eurozone

The spread between the 10 Year and the Bund has surged today to a 3 year wide. After hitting an intraday slide of 14 bps (a massive move in a world in which each basis point is leveraged thousands of times), the UST-BUND is now at 73 bps. The risk aversion trade in Europe has made 10 year Geman bonds yield just over 3%, even as the near-failed 5 Year auction in the US has spooked the bond market, and an unexpected drill has forced the Primary Dealers out of hiding and into purchasing everything past 5 years to prevent a full out rout in bonds. And all this is occurring as the ECB just warned that IMF involvement in the overhyped and two-month delayed Greek bailout will be the beginning of the end for the euro and will throw the Eurozone's economy, "which has shown fresh signs of recovery, into renewed turmoil."

Why Does John Mack Hate The Volcker Rule When MS Prop Was Responsible For The Single Biggest Prop Loss In Wall Street History?

A few days ago a smug John Mack, enjoying his premature retirement from Morgan Stanley, was shooting the ...breeze with Charlie Gasparino, in an interview in which he explicitly denounced prop trading as being any concern whatsoever to Wall Street. Gasparino asked: "It is known as the "Volcker Rule" and he claims that proprietary trading was one of the reasons or the major reason for the financial crisis.  I don't believe that is the case.  Do you believe that was the case?" To which Mack responded: "Charlie, I don't believe it and I think you laid it out really clearly in your book."... "so, you obviously don't agree with the Volcker Rule." - "I don't agree." And in continuing the air of camaraderie in which nobody dared to ask anything too damning, Mack proceeded to discuss Charlie's work out routine. All fine and swell... too bad John Mack lied. Enter Howie Hubler, who singlehandedly lost Morgan Stanley $9 billion on a prop trade gone horribly bad, and this was still at a time when $9 billion was a fair amount of money. In fact, according to Michael Lewis, the former Morgan Stanley prop trader lost "more than any single trader has ever lost in the history of Wall Street." Maybe it is time for a repeat appearance of Mr. Mack on Fox Business, this time with some more probing questions by his fans.

John Taylor Of The World's Largest Currency Hedge Fund Sees Euro Dropping To $1.20 By August

John Taylor, chairman and chief executive officer of FX Concepts LLC, the world's largest currency hedge fund, sees the euro dropping to $1.20 by August, and believes parity is possible. Be very careful, because as of today Goldman is now accumulating euros (as per its just released Sell recommendation). More from Taylor: "It's going to be quick because things are really falling apart.... Some of these [countries] have to be thrown out [of the EMU]. If you look at a country like Latvia, which has been effectively in the Euro, has been saved by the European Commission and the IMF much like they are suggesting Greece will be, their retail sales were down 30% last year, the GDP was down 18%, it is expected to drop another 8% this year. Latvians are starving, the place is a disaster area: that's what you have to go through to be a part of the Euro." On whether his firm has felt any political pressure on putting on bearish euro bets: "None at all. We are SEC regulated and the information is there, but nobody seems to be caring." Lastly, Taylor ridicules the WSJ story about the restaurant-based collusion: "Yes, they had a meeting and talked about how bad the euro was. But that they in fact had some impact: their assets are 1% of the daily volume. Somebody like us, we have a bigger position against the euro than those people put on." Taylor says in the next three to six months, the dollar will be strongest against the euro, and Eastern European currencies. In a longer horizon, he says to be long Asia and short the euro. Bottom line: sell Europe, buy everyone else. And join the bandwagon... Just as Bernanke prepares the dollar's next suicide move with inflation obviously not working.

Guest Post: Towards A 21st Century Peasant Rising

A French poet once wrote that the devil’s greatest trick was convincing the world he doesn’t exist. Funny that we can say the same thing about today’s American elite. Somehow, it is not polite, not PC to even acknowledge them as a class—much less to speak of them. We have a democracy, after all. We are all equal. Everyone has a vote. And if mere voting is not enough for you, you can shell out ten grand for a closed-door meeting with your fifteen-term career Congressman, like any other respectable person would do. Surely, there are no grounds for complaint.

Well, sorry but democracy means choice. In America, today, there is no real choice. The financial and corporate elites are funding both sides equally, and so they always come out ahead, no matter who is in charge. Otherwise, how is it that former Goldman Sachs Co-Chairman Robert Rubin was Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, and then former Goldman Sachs Chairman Henry Paulson was Bush’s Treasury Secretary? (And let’s not forget Goldman alumn Larry Gensler at Obama’s CFTC). Is this what you call a two party system?

Hoenig Says Big Banks Must Either Add $210 Billion In New Capital Or Reduce Total Assets By $3 Trillion; Bank Capital Raises Imminent

In a speech before the US Chamber of Commerce, Kansas Fed's outspoken President Thomas Hoenig said that not only does he endorse the Volcker Rule and urges the U.S. to ban proprietary trading at banks, but, more critically, said that if larger bank holding companies were held under the same capital supervision requirements as smaller regional banks, the big banks would either have to raise a whopping $210 billion in new capital, or reduce their assets by a whopping $3 trillion! Read the last statement and tell us how this is even remotely inflationary. Note, this is not to increase capital prudence, but merely to ensure equal footing with everyone else in the industry. And one wonders why everyone knows that the entire US financial system, now essentially comprised of 5 infinitely big banks, is completely insolvent. The take home - the manipulated market action over the past month is purely to afford the big banks to raise more equity in the form of follow on offerings.

New Home Sales Plunge To New All Time Record Low, 308K SAAR Is 2.2% Frop From Revised 315K In January

New home sales drop to a record low adjusted annual rate of 308K. All of the government's housing stabilizing measures are now a disaster, as existing home sales inventory surges to nearly 9 months, not counting the shadow inventory, which is more than double.The plunge is in all regions except the West, where the pick up was from 77K to 93k. When is the last time anyone mentioned green shoots again? And the computers ignore it all as nobody remember how to sell anymore. In fact, we expect a green market within 10 minutes as king SPARC shows all who is master.