And The Other Side Of The Rodgin Cohen Story

After the New York Times came out with a very ingenuous piece of "objective" fluffery, we have littel to add except to bring readers' attention to our initial thoughts on Mr. Cohen and his place in the Wall Street parthenon.

H. Rodgin Cohen's (Failed?) Quest To Backstop Every Bank... Ever (And Usurp Geithner's Throne)

Pot Meet Kettle: China Blasts Bernanke For Promoting Another Asset Bubble Via Dollar Carry Trade

"The Fed’s policy of maintaining low interest rates together with the weak dollar posed a threat to the global economic recovery. It is boosting speculative investment in stock and property markets and will pose new, real and insurmountable risks to the global recovery and particularly to the recovery in emerging markets. The situation has already encouraged a huge dollar carry trade and had a massive impact on global asset prices." Liu Mingkang, China Chief Banking Regulator

Whither De-Pegging?

The biggest topic in the upcoming week will undoubtedly be the escalating debate over whether the People's Bank of China (PBoC) will relent to Obama's persistent pleading, and in addition to de-pegging, allow the renminbi to appreciate against the dollar. The debate is simple: the US needs the dollar to hit the bottom of the currency stack post haste, and for that to happen, China's currency needs to appreciate. This is merely in keeping with the Fed's current strategy of inflating assets at all costs via monetary manipulation as both fiscal and "consumer" based attempts to increase prices have largely failed (record unemployment may be a lagging economic indicator but it is a very much coincident wage-deflation indicator). It is in this environment that the PBoC has been sending mixed signals, with a variation of the "party line" language in its Thursday release being read as a prompt that China is willing to play Russian Roulette with over 1 billion increasingly unhappy citizens in the biggest communism-capitalism experiment in history. Yet as the Telegraph pointed out today, there is absolutely no risk (so far) of any accelerating renminbi appreciation becoming the policy course for China. So for a slightly more than "soundbite" level evaluation of the pros and cons of "de-pegging", we present the following curious piece of fiction from none other than paperback experts Morgan Stanley, and specifically its Chief Asia strategist, the mellifluously named Qing Wang.

Goldman Sachs Updated Equity Holdings Analysis

The updated Goldman Sachs 13F is out. With 10,244 security holdings, amounting to $180 billion in gross exposure, split among 7 institutional investment managers (Goldman Sachs & Co; Goldman Sachs Asset Management; Goldman Sachs International; Goldman Sachs AG; Goldman Sachs Execution and Clearing; The Ayco Company; Goldman Sachs Trust Company), it presents an interesting picture of Goldman's core equity positions. The bulk of the security holdings are held at GS & Co. ($94.5 billion of market value), followed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management ($80 billion of market value). Furthermore, Goldman breaks down holdings based on value of Calls and Puts, in addition to underlying stock.

Fed's Bill Dudley Explains Bank Runs, Discusses Collateral Risks, Suggests Way To Prevent Systemic Collapse

An impressively comprehensive presentation by Bill Dudley before the Center for Economic Policy Studies Symposium earlier, discusses, and ties in, all the key concepts Zero Hedge has been discussing over the past several months, among these the tri-party repo system, bank runs (what and why), collateral, moral hazard, maturity mismatch, unsecured markets, Primary Dealer Credit Facility, Commercial Paper Funding Facility, and liquidity. In fact, at some points in the speech we get the feeling Mr. Dudley is indirectly refuting some of Zero Hedge's recent allegations vis-a-vis the Fed's actions and regulatory oversight. The presentation is largely devoid of bias except for some of the proposals on how to avoid future systemic meltdowns, which of course are moral hazard prevention lite and philosophy heavy. Not a lite piece of reading, yet recommended for all who want a grasp of the big picture from the Fed's perspective.

November 12 CDS Heatmap

As expected, yesterday was a CDS bloodbath straight out of Kandinsky Composition VIII. Today's action, which we will post later, will be a page out of Picasso's blue period. The market, even the formerly rational CDS one, is now a leveraged gyrator, which moves only based on how much daily pounding Bernanke feels like administering to the middle class by round-housing each and every green-tinted portrait of Washington, Hamilton, Jackson, Grant and Franklin (and a few more, less memorable ones) that the bald Chairman encounters.

Get Your Weekly Charts Here

If anyone still cares about the equity market, here is a pretty good summary of what the computers did this week, courtesy of the holidaypartyless folks at Manhattan's southernmost skyscraper (something tells us the elves, contrary to disclosed information, will be there, and we will be whereever the elves are).