Archive - Jan 2010

Let's talk dollars and cents ...

The latest AIG fiasco may well be the straw that breaks Geithner's "public service" back. The question of Tim's involvement in the purposeful cover up has now attained epic proportions as even the White House claims the Treasury Secretary and former NY Fed governor had recused himself and was not involved in the discussions of the biggest bailout in US history. By doing so, the White House has transferred an ever greater amount of political risk to itself by continuing to back Geithner at increasing costs to its popularity. Whether or not Geithner was intimately involved procedurally seems irrelevant: he certainly was aware of the broad strokes and was thus complicit by implication. Nonetheless, one of the allegations that is circulating the blogosphere is that the handwriting on the "smoking gun" cover up memo belongs to Timmy. While we do not have a certified graphologist in our ranks, this assumption appears to be patently false.

An interesting observation emerges when one analyzes the various holders of non-revolving consumer credit. While the traditionally largest players in non-revolving consumer credit provisioning, commercial banks and finance companies, have been materially curtailing their lending of auto loans (the primary form of non-revolving credit and which also includes student loans, as well as boat and trailer loans) with their combined holdings declining by 5% year over year (from $989 billion to $940 billion), another actor has jumped in to take their place. It should not surprise anyone, that with a 68% increase in non-revolving credit holdings over the past 12 months, this entity is none other than the Federal Government.

Thoughts on Japan from John Maynard Keynes. This economist is more powerful today than he was when he was alive. I wonder what he would really say about the Nikkei. Also some interesting information from the CIA. I am always looking for 'clues'.

By now everyone knows about the Rip Van Winkle effect in stocks: the "noughties" were a snoozer, with the stock market lower on December 31, 2009 than on January 1, 2000. Yet what may have escaped most people is that the decade was also a scratch in terms of employment: the country now has essentially the same number of employed people as it did 10 years ago.

The insightful authors of "This Time It's Different" Carmen Reinhardt and Ken Rogoff are at it again, doing a simple yet crucial empirical analysis correlating sovereign debt (both government and external), and inflation (in some case) with GDP growth. It will come as no surprise to anyone that the more indebted a country is, with a government debt/GDP ratio of 0.9, and external debt/GDP of 0.6 being critical thresholds, the more GDP growth drops materially. Alas for the US, which is on the wrong side of this threshold, at the rate Geithner is issuing debt, the US economy will be able to grow organically, and not through stimulus after Keynesian stimulus, only after the administration manages to find a way to reduce its massive and growing debt load. In other words never.

A story of how the "vampire squid" caved and offered to help North America's most powerful union...

The eclectic set of topics discussed in this week's link's: Hank Paulson's bazooka, the debt to GDP point of no return, Wall Street bonus deferral, the toxic twins Fannie and Freddie, and of course prisoners.

Those of you who have all but given up hope a the recovery for the U.S. labor market should read this brief comment very carefully...

A vigilant reader, who combed through the backup of today's Consumer Credit G.19 statement points out a flagrant and obvious error in the Fed's data. While luckily the data impact is not major (at most $4 billion, which in our day and age is a pithy 50% of Goldman's FICC trading desk bonus), the implication that the Fed does not check its work in something as critical as one of the core data series (or at least it used to be until a few machines took over the market, to whom, as today indicated, a record credit contraction somehow ended up being a positive event) is very, very troubling.

D'Oh ...

The December nonfarm payroll losses make another stimulus package a sure thing. More deficits and taxes to follow. A new interstate, anyone?

Goldman now anticipates an S&P peak of 1,300 intrayear which is somehow equivalent to a 15x EPS. Of course, that makes sense if one believes Goldman's 2010 S&P EPS of $86 ex provisions and writedowns. Somewhere David Rosenberg is vomiting loudly.

The only chart that matters for the past 3 decades, courtesy of Morgan Stanley.

Spreads are undoubtedly tighter since the New Year as HY has dramatically outperformed IG this week with tighteners in single-names magestically outpacing wideners by 9-to-1. Curves were more mixed with an almost perfect balance between steepeners and flatteners even as index curves steepened significantly (as did the TSY curve). This was the first year since 2003 that the on-the-run IG index rallied in the first week of the year.