Archive - Nov 2010

When a Banksta sells a Treasury Note to Ben's Keynesian Magical Mystical Tour...He has no idea what to expect...

Retail traders are notoriously wrong at picking market direction/tops and bottoms. Most retail traders very naturally seem to adopt a counter-trend stance and this offers very accurate signals for individuals looking to trade against this group. This daily report is designed to help traders focus their efforts on higher probability pairs.

What do we get for $900B? Every-ting you want. Everything? Every-ting. So sock it to Bernanke because...

As is all too well known by now, starting over the next few days, the Fed will commence purchasing $75 billion in Treasury securities monthly until the end of June, and will buy an additional $35 billion in Treasurys to make up for declining holdings of MBS (due to repurchases). We still believe that as a result of the imminent drop in rates (especially those around the curve belly), as we have claimed for over a month, the feedback loop that will be created will result in a far greater repurchase frequency of MBS securities over the next 8 months, and we would not be surprised if at some point in Q2 2011, the Fed is buying $150 billion in Treasurys monthly. Since nobody will believe this until it is actually confirmed by the H.4.1., we will leave this topic alone for the time being. And after all its will "only" mean a rotation of Fed holdings, a switch in duration, and an impact on the shape of curve. What is certain is that on June 30, the Fed's balance sheet will have $2.68 trillion (or more) in holdings, of which $1.77 trillion will be in Treasurys, compared to the $840 billion today. What is also certain is that the Fed will not be able to stop there. Which is why we have extended the projection period through January 2012. At that point the Fed will hold $2.6 trillion in US Treasuries, or roughly 25% of total US marketable debt at that point.  And for those who collect now completely irrelevant statistics, the Fed will surpass China's $868 billion in UST holdings before the end of November. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, shit just got real.

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So much for the Fed's two mythical mandates of promoting "maximum employment" and maintaining "price stability." First, we had Bernanke's predecessor Greenspan confirming in late July on Meet the Press what everyone knows: namely that the primary goal of the Fed is merely to encourage higher stock prices: "if the stock market continues higher it will do more to stimulate the economy than any other measure we have discussed here." And now, courtesy of an Op-Ed by the current chairman, we get confirmation, again, just three months later, from the current chairman, that the Fed cares mostly about stimulating high stock prices, solely to create the completely artificial illusion of "wealth" for the few, the proud, the shareholders, and the banking oligarchy.

Norway's Auditor General recently issued a report to the parliament that was highly critical of Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), the arm of the central bank which runs the $512 billion Government Pension Fund.

Contrary to convention wisdom, while Irish bond yields were surging to all time highs, the local population was not merrily drinking itself into oblivion, but was taking matters into its own hands. So far every bankrupt European government has at least managed to get its population on the streets, to protest something, and in the case of Greece, caused Waddell and Reed to sell a few SPOOS leading to the biggest crash in capital markets history. Only the most bankrupt nation of all, the United States, continues to see its 300+ million cowering at home, watching sitcom reruns.

Does most of America still really have no clue what Quantitative Easing is... Nor that Bernanke committed perjury over the whole "Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt" thing... Nor that Tim Geithner also lied on CNBC when he told Treasury puppet Steve Liesman that the Fed is not monetizing debt? So what is the point of all of this?

My take on the "Big Plan".

Due to the fact that silver’s industrial applications result in destroying the stuff, there is currently a total of only 1,234,590,000 “investable” ounces of silver in aboveground supplies. At $21 per ounce, the total value of aboveground silver comes to only about $26 billion. By contrast, because pretty much every ounce of gold ever mined still exists, there are a total of 4,585,620,000 “investable” ounces of gold in aboveground stocks. At $1,330 per ounce, that comes to $6 trillion worth. Thus, the silver/gold ratio is currently about 63:1, yet the total value of all the investable gold on the planet is about 235 times that of silver. For the record, the ratio of silver to gold in the earth’s crust is 17:1. That’s in the ballpark of the 15:1 average silver/gold price ratio that has held sway over the centuries. Kicking off his presentation at our recent Gold & Resource Summit, Bob Quartermain, the powerhouse behind Silver Standard (SSO), stated that if the audience took nothing else away from his talk, it should be that the demand for silver well exceeds new mine supply, and has for some time.

Thanks a LOT ...

Earlier in the year I had the pleasure of having lunch with hedge fund manager John Paulson. When asked what he anticipated to be the main driver of investment returns over the next few years, he responded without hesitation: “Currencies”. I thought long and hard about that answer and haven’t been able to get the discussion out of my head since. John Paulson’s logic is simple. The world is in the unprecedented situation of all four major trading currencies (EUR, GBP, JPY and USD) facing their unique set of challenges. But not all four can fall at the same time. Currencies are unique in the sense that they are relative as opposed to absolute trading objects. You don’t just buy dollars. You buy dollars against some other currency which is why they can’t all fall at the same time. - Niels Jensen, Absolute Return Partners

If JPM and HSBC hoped that the lawsuits filed a week ago by Brian Beatty and Peter Laskari, which we discussed previously, were going to be the end of their public exposure with regard to possible silver market manipulation, they are about to be disappointed. Today, in a separate lawsuit filed by Carl Loeb in the Southern District of New York, a new light on precious manipulation by the duo was shone, this time involving allegations of breach of the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. And with the CFTC itself admitting of ongoing manipulation in the silver market, it appears this issue is not going to go away quietly any time soon. Per Steve Berman, co-counsel of plaintiff law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro: "The practice of naked short selling has long been a serious issue on Wall Street. What we know about the scope and intent of JP Morgan and HSBC's actions
in this short-selling scheme dwarfs any other similar attempt to
manipulate a commodities market." As this case is also seeking class action status for the class, readers who wish to join this particular case may apply to do so at the following link. Plaintiffs are seeking that the court enjoin JP Morgan and HSBC from continuing their alleged
conspiracy and manipulation of the silver futures and options contracts
market.

Gridlock can be a good thing. Don't expect much from the Republicans.