Archive - Nov 2009

Due to numerous external inquiries and complaints, we would like to solicit reader input from those traders who were impacted by the ICE's cancellation of 12,000 DXY contracts voided on November 3rd (8,000) and also today on November 20th (4,000). As a reader submits: "We are interested in forcing them to disclose who (i.e. firms, maker makers, etc.). participated in these cancelled trades, at what price and volume, and request WHY these trades were cancelled."

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” said Blanche DuBois, in the final words of the play A Streetcar Named Desire. Well, don’t we all. Many citizens probably still cling to the old saw that public debt doesn’t matter because “we owe it to ourselves.” Wrong. Debt always matters. And as for whom we owe it to, it is a lot of kind (or, at least, not yet unkind) strangers. As recently as 1970, foreign holders of U.S. debt were essentially non-existent. But their slice of our obligation pie has steadily increased, especially over the past two decades, until now foreign governments and international investors hold about 35% of Treasuries, as the following chart reveals.

It has been a while since we revisited Goldman's domination of NYSE program trading courtesy of the SLP. For the past two months we have been waiting for additional information from the NYSE on what other firms are currently SLP vendors to the exchange. By the lack of any data from the NYSE we can only assume that Goldman is still the defacto monopolist in SLP, and in essence the primary privileged DMM on the NYSE. One wonders with liquidity "back to normal" when the NYSE, SEC and Goldman will agree to disassemble the SLP program so that the market can go back to its efficient old-school ways (this is rhetorical). As the data suggests, Goldman Sachs & Co. now has a staggering 22-to-1 ratio of principal to agency transactions: in the last week Goldman traded 662million shares in principal capacity (instead of blaming all of this on Goldman's prop trading cash machine, we would love to be able to break down how much of this is attributable to SLP, but a reborn NYSE which believes in nothing but transparency will simply not provide that data). Taking into account GSEC adds another measly 10 million agency shares doesn't change the big picture that out of the top 10 NYSE firms, Goldman trades the third lowest amount on an agency basis. Goldman's casino is now not even pretending to trade on behalf of clients, as all of its money is made on FICC spreads and volumes (aka trading monopoly).

With today's news out of Ukraine, which may or may not be a dud (although with the economy hardly functioning courtesy of massive quarantines and business shut downs) sparking off what may or may not have been a a huge dollar squeeze (we are still waiting to hear back from the ICE), one observation is that sovereign CDS spreads are back front and center. As we discussed recently, Japan CDS has been ploughing ever higher, yet recent data indicates that the deflating island nation is not alone.

Reading through the Qs for this quarter, a picture starts to emerge of utter chaos when it comes to how banks are implementing -- or not -- the changes by the FASB to how organizations account for off balance sheet ("OBS") exposures. Let us take two examples:  Wells Fargo and PNC Financial.

After yesterday's debacle for the Fed, could even more grey clouds be gathering for the Chairman? As readers will recall Alan Grayson recently presented several questions, the response to which would serve as a gating factor to Bernanke's reconfirmation. Alas, that initiative never appeared to get much traction. In fact upon questioning Chris Dodd said that Bernanke's confirmation was a done deal. Yet a recent interview by Mike Stark indicates that Mr. Dodd may have had a change of heart about the certainty of Mr. Bernanke's tenure, and is now voicing much less certainty about the continued tenure of the fiat money printer.

It appears lately Goldman can't get enough of bashing the economy. First the Oracle of Delphi's bank debt short-selling enabling trading desk (i.e., Hatzius of Goldman Sachs for the slower readers) had some harsh words about GDP and why at some point soon he will be once again within 0.0001 bps of the actual result, even if the short squeeze inducing ploy worked out just perfectly last time, thanks, signed Goldman prop. This time around Hatzius take the entire housing space to the woodshed. Who knows, maybe it is time for readers to do what the prop desk says this time (quadruple reverse psychology: beware).

After the historic defeat of Fed anti-transparency amendments, and the most recent disclosure that despite all his posturing Barney Frank is, as expected, deep in the pockets of the Wall Street and Fed kleptocracy, here are some post-mortem observations from Grayson, Spitzer and Ratigan.

BLS data confirms that the unemployment pictures is getting worse with 29 states reporting an increase in state joblessness levels. The states with the highest levels on unemployment levels were the usual suspects: Michigan (15.1%), Nevada (13%), Rhode Island (12.9%), California (12.5%), South Carolina (12.1%) and D.C. (11.9%). The numbers continued to deteriorate in California (2.5% increase in unemployment), D.C. (4.4%), New York (1.1%), with some of the worst monthly performance noted in the traditionally better states: Wyoming (8.8%), Arkansas (7%), Mississippi (6.5%) and Alaska (6%).

Goodbye John Horseman: too bad you were right all along.

Some crazy action today on the CME around 7 am Eastern when dollar index futures surged an unbelievable 9% from 75.38 to 82.18. As apparently the CME has never seen what happened to VOW stock when the short squeeze was recreating Armageddon over at permabull Larry Robbins' office (i.e. stock moved up 100% in about an hour), we can see why they would be confused by what could have been the start of the dollar short unwind when the second leg of the Ukrainian plunge occurred earlier. So instead of validating these trades, the CME has decided to simply cancel them: because fat fingers in billions worth of futures are just so prevalent. The dollar "plunge enforcement team" has been promptly woken up from its Larry Summerseqsue narcolpetic slumber and will rectify any and all attempts at a returns to fair market value.

• Bloomberg censorship alert? (see inside)
• Goldman stock holders miffed at bonuses (WSJ)
• White House rebuke: angry Democrats shut down vote (HuffPo)
• Fed makes monitoring bank capital foremost concern (Bloomberg)
• Risk fatigue sparks correction speculation (FT)
• Treasury yield plunge sends warning (Barrons)
• Trichet says not all measures to be needed in the future (Bloomberg)

Far from having good governance, most of these large funds are governed in an ad hoc fashion which provides the illusion of good governance. The claim that "Canada leads the world" on pension governance is an outright lie which ignores serious governance gaps that still remain in our pension system.

Are the dominoes about to start falling? From Morgan Stanley's London desk:

Ukrainian Railway defaulted on a Barclays bond. They have another, government guaranteed obligation with DB. If DB accelerates the payment & IF it is then not paid, it will count as a government default.

We are closely following the releases out of S&P and Moody's analysts to see if they have gotten into the office after their leisurely orgy at the nearest Turkish bath insider info leak session. Potentially nothing actionable just yet, but that a government-backed bond can't make its payments, should prompt the IMF apparatchiks to promptly take the next Textron Cessna straight into Kiev (after they get 20 Goldman flu shots each) and spend a few more billions in US taxpayer money and/or sell more gold to quickly stuff even more corpses under the carpet.

• Asian stock markets fell Friday on concerns over the U.S. economy.
• Asia considers capital controls to stem bubble danger.
• Bank of Japan leaves key rate at 0.1% as government urges deflation fight.
• China raises nonresidential electricity rates; more hikes to promote savings.
• China rebuffs Yuan criticism as Zhou says government is passive on dollar.
• China stocks fell after govt hikes electricity rates - first in 16 months - fuelling concern that recent gains outpaced prospects for earnings growth.