Archive - Feb 2010

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is outstanding in his expose on Europe's increasingly more evident deflationist cul-de-sac, and the ever more obvious L-shaped "recovery" facing Europe. While it has taken fans of the euro currency a mere two short months to not just diametrically change their exposure vis-a-vis the "long" currency of choice, but to allow speculators to build record euro short positions, the question of how America (and China by virtue of its dollar peg) will deal with euro currency that has no choice but to go lower, becomes an increasingly thorny issue. And to further confound deficit worries, recent overtures by the Fed in the form a discount rate hike make it all too obvious that the bond market will likely soon demand a much more substantial "pound of flesh" to fund America's burgeoning deficit. In this context, the threat of increasing rates, coupled with a euro that could reach $1.25 according to Morgan Stanley, and hit a low of $1.10 according to Albert Edwards, makes the policy prospects before the Federal Reserve so much more daunting.

As we head into a new week, one of the bigger development expected out of Europe will be "imminent" launch of a €5 billion Greek bond issue, to prefund some of the nearly €20 billion in maturities expected over the next 3 months. However, bulls who expect this "good news" to force short covering may have to put the champagne on ice. Dow Jones previously quoted the former Public Debt Management Agency head Spiros Papanikolaou (who was replaced by former Goldman operative Petros Christodoulou), "There will be another syndication, most likely 10 years. We will go for EUR3 billion to EUR5 billion and depending on the market reaction it could be more, although a 10-year bond is a bit more difficult" to make their case that the new auction is imminent. Yet it is this very same Papanikolaou, who when quoted by Debtwire, pours cold water all over the bulls plans: "Reports about us imminent issuing a ten-year bond auction are totally inaccurate - there is no truth in it at all." And so the great Greek disinformation sopa opera continues.

A must read paper by Redburn Partners, "Gold War - Gold is money and nothing else", written in November 2007, which due to its extreme prescience on not only the shift of the economy following the bursting of the credit bubble, but being virtually spot on in its prediction on the price of gold, can serve as an sufficiently comprehensive introduction to anyone wishing to get up to speed with the primary forces determining the price of gold and its implications in a fiat-money world (and especially the prevailing current variant in which competitive devaluations galore).

According to Pew, there's a $1 trillion gap between the $3.35 trillion in pension, health care and other retirement benefits states promised their current and retired workers as of fiscal year 2008 and the $2.35 trillion they have on hand to pay them. How dire is the pension problem in the US and what will ultimately shape the future of the pension crisis?

There are several strong arguments within the European Union for NOT bailing out Greece, as well as to do so. One alternative is probably just as likely as the other. But the case for letting Greece default on their debt is gaining traction among European politicians.

We are told we are in recovery. We are told we are not having deflation. We are told a lot of things but the facts seem to keep working against Messrs. Bernanke, Summers, and Geithner. The latest core CPI belie their Keynesian beliefs.

A silly story in a Japanese paper. Based on this you would have to conclude that our biggest creditor doesn't think too much of us.

Much has been said about the 25 basis point Discount Rate rate hike announced on Thursday. Some suggest that this was fully expected, priced in, and that to the Fed this is merely a technicality which will not impact the Fed Funds rate in the least. Others, such as Macro-Man, take a decidedly more pragmatic approach, and ask the simple question: if it really means nothing, why do it? "He" also goes on to suggest some possible trade ideas as a result of this action: we suggest checking out his post for further information. Instead of speculating what the Fed may or may not do (we doubt even the Fed knows - as Krugman points out, the Fed's action could be a function simply of what political party is currently in charge), we have decided to show a simple comparison of the Discount Rate and the Fed Fund rate over the past 10 years (chart below).

Much has been said lately about the record cash balance on the books of S&P 500 companies (ex. financials- those are a different story altogether). Bullish pundits claim that this money will be used for all sorts of M&A, stock buybacks, expansions, etc., to make the point that companies can't wait to go out spending, so we should all front run them and buy whatever public companies may one day be on the auction block. We decided to take the inverse approach - by looking at the balance sheet and the cash flow statement of the S&P 500 companies (again, ex fins), we have attempted to understand just what the source of all this excess cash is. Listening to any of the permabulls on CNBC, one could easily get the impression that all this newly record cash comes simply from excess revenue which, courtesy of massive layoffs and a collapsing SG&A line, feeds an ever increasing retained earnings line, which in turn goes straight to cash. While this is certainly possible, our analysis indicates that the primary source of cash over the past year has really been a very generous cash "rotating" adjustment in some critical CapEx and Net Working Capital items. Our findings demonstrate that of the nearly $130 billion in additional cash on the books of S&P 500 companies from June 2008, through September 2009, two key sources, net working capital and a reduced capex spend, have generated over $150 billion, meaning organic operations have accounted for a whopping -$20 billion (yes, negative) of incremental cash.

The interest rate swap market is freaking huge and somewhat new (the first interest rate swap was in 1981 between the World Bank and IBM). It is also a weird animal in that its value derives from an offer rate and a bond yield, not an underlying asset. In this sense, they are more like an asset (bondish) than a derivative. The most elemental parts of the economy—government debt and inter-bank markets—converge in interest rate swaps.

A. Joseph Cohen's replacement as Goldman's bullish headpiece, David Kostin, shares the highlights from the Q&A at the GS Global Macro Conference. And also a lot of charts, updated to the prior week.

I was interviewed by BusinessInsider about China, click here to watch.  If you did not see it, this presentation covers a lot of points I discussed in this interview.

Presenting a heatmapped performance update of the key issues in the North American CDS universe. While on a week to date basis the vast majority of names turned tighter (blue), for the month of February the majority of names are still wider (red), with the notable exceptions of AIG, TWC, FO, KFT, JWN, WHR, MOT and NWL. The sectors most impacted by derisking are Materials, Utilities and Energy.

A quick glance at Greece's progress in implementing its austerity measures to placate the EU enough to justify a publicized bailout.

This issue is actually important to the economy, civil rights, and the political causes which are most important to you . . .