Huge Japanese GDP Miss: 1.3% Revised Versus 4.8% Preliminary, 2.8% Consensus

And so Goldman will be forced to start revising its forecasts ever lower. Revised GDP came out at 1.3% versus preliminary annualized numbers of 4.8%. Now that's a miss that would make even the BLS and the D.C. propaganda bureau blush. Expectations were for 2.8% GDP.

Daily Credit Summary: December 8 - Greece'd Darkening

Spreads ended the day mixed in the US today with very low intraday ranges and only marginal moves as HY just outperformed IG. Breadth was modestly negative as TMT and CONSumer names underperformed. We note that credit has outperformed equity in the last couple of days as the dollar has sprung higher and perhaps this is another of the coal-mine's canaries that risk-aversion (think steam behind the run) is hitting stocks.

A Contrarian's Dilemma: Must Read From Tocqueville's John Hathaway

Gold is a hedge against a world monetary order on its death bed. The events of 2008 gave a
preview of a world without credit. When the dollar based paper money regime has gasped its
last, what will replace it? Will gold assume an official role? It is impossible to say. Currencies
of the future could quite possibly bifurcate, with some taking the form of scrip such as food
stamps, medical vouchers, or air miles used strictly for transactional purposes. An optimist
would hope that gold could perhaps coexist with government scrip as a vehicle for saving and
wealth preservation. However, that remains to be seen. Anything less would imply a world less
Austrian and more Orwellian.

For the contrarian, life has become more difficult even as it has become more gratifying. The
commotion surrounding gold makes the contrarian strand of thought harder to detect. It is not
that we don’t welcome the “Johnny come latelys” to the hard money cause. They are, for the
most part, elite investment thinkers who have a history of sound decision making. However, we
no longer enjoy the luxury of peace and quiet or as much time to reflect. Our periodic sanity
checks, based on the makeup of the opposition, are somewhat less frequent and perhaps not as
reliable. Still, we perceive that gold continues to be under owned and misunderstood by most.
While it is no longer enough to observe that the metal is of interest based on universal apathy, it
is safe to say that it has a long way to go before it becomes mainstream.

From The Rumormill: Major Departure At Citadel - Head Of Institutional Markets Peter Santoro Is Out

Peter Santoro, Managing Director and Head of Institutional Markets at somehow still troubled hedge fund Citadel, has left for greener pastures, according to our rumor bag. One hopes it is not to join another former Citadel specialist, Misha Malyshev, former head of quant trading at the Chicago fund, who also bolted earlier this year and is currently embroiled in litigation with his former mothership. The departure of such a high profile trader right before bonus season is very suspect to say the least. In other news, Citadel is well on its way to becoming Jefferies-lite, after the "hedge fund" is close to finalizing the terms of the Targa Resources $150 million TL A and $550 million TL B.

Visualizing The Insider Selling Spree: Bob Toll Takes First Prize... As Does Bill Gates

It seems like yesterday that Bob Toll was propounding the benefits of stimulus packages for housing and the ever improving status of new home sales (solidly grounded in the same sands as Dubai is now sinking into). Yet while we at Zero Hedge have enjoyed taking repeated stabs at Mr. Toll's seemingly endless selling of his own stock, we have not learned our lesson. Which is why we present his insider transaction in a new and original way, courtesy of Bloomberg. As the image indicates, Mr. Toll's money is roughly 180 degrees from where his mouth is.

$40 Billion 3 Year Auction Closes At 1.223% High Yield, 50.40% Allotted At High

• Yields 1.223% vs. Exp. 1.229%
• Bid-To-Cover 2.98 vs. Avg. 2.92 (Prev. 2.62)
• Indirect Bid-to-Cover 1.32
• Indirects 60.9% vs. Avg. 57.70% (Prev. 54.15%)
• Alloted high 50.40%

Collapse In Tax Withholdings Refutes Improvements In Either Unemployment Or Corporate Profitability

Even as the BLS and the administration are trying to cover up the real state of unemployment affairs using assorted semantic gimmicks of just what it means to be unemployed, and as companies provide adjusted EPS numbers, while actual earnings continue to collapse, the true barometer of spending, provided by the Financial Management Service, tax withholdings (net of refunds), continues to paint the truest picture of just what is really happening with both America's consumer and the corporate world. And it ain't pretty. On a rolling 12 month basis, individual tax withheld has dropped by nearly 8% YoY, from $1.42 trillion to $1.31 trillion, while company witholdings are down a whalloping 64%, from $274 billion to just under $100 billion! This is money that will never be used to pay down the skyrocketing US deficit, because both the US consumer and average US company are simply not collecting the required cash to line the Treasury's pockets with the one traditional way to pad the deficit: taxes. Expect much, much, much more debt issuance in America's short, medium and long-term future.