Archive - Feb 2010

• Tom Hoenig for Treasury (Simon Johnson)
• Moral hazard prompts TCW and AllianceBernstein to buy bank sub debt (Bloomberg)
• The dollar-alternative trade continues: commodities rise as AUD drops on no OZ hike (Bloomberg)
• A scoop of double dip (Barrons)
• iTraxx Fin widest to iTraxx Europe since Lehman (Bloomberg)
• Philippine bond sale fails for second time this year (Bloomberg)

Interest rates have to soar to unimaginable levels to attract recalcitrant investors, or the plunge in spending sends us into a postponed Great Depression II.
There will be no Prince Charming riding in on a white horse this time. Back out the Fed as the buyer of last resort, and where are we? The $3.8 trillion budget Obama budget isn’t encouraging me to back off from this ledge. Be a peach and bring me some MRE’s, a five gallon bottle of water, and a case of 9 mm ammo, will you?

RANsquawk 2nd February US Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

Volcker is correct in that banks conflicts of interests need to be
stemmed. One would not have to worry about over regulation if one does
not attempt to regulate every single act or attempt to guess what might
go wrong. What needs to be done is to use regulation to dis-incentivize
banks from engaging in activities that engender systemic risks and/or
harm clients. By putting everybody on the same side of the table, you
don't have to worry about outsmarting the private sector.

A knowledgeable reader, who is currently a sell side analyst, questioned
me about using book value to value Goldman and investment banks in
general. He proposed using a formula that entails revenues as well due
to the fact that the main concern during the crisis was breakup value
while revenue visibility is clearer now that the crisis is over. While the crisis may be over, the root causes of the crisis have went nowhere, and the counter party risk concentration is actually much worse than before. In addition, not only is it political suicide to attempt to bailout another bank, I think it is poor economic policy as well. Combining these two assertions, it is not clear that we will not see anymore bank failures. The probability of such has dropped considerably though.

RANsquawk 2nd February US Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

The Investment Team at Broyhill huddles up at 6.30AM every Monday Morning, to review market action, various measures of sentiment, and portfolio positioning, to name a few. For the two hours leading up to our Morning Macro Call, we scan dozens of charts, pour over piles of data and review all of the models critical to our investment strategy. Notes from our meetings are distributed internally and reviewed in aggregate at our Monthly Macro Meeting. We’ve noted a significant shift in the investment landscape over the course of the past few weeks, so we thought we’d share this morning’s Views from the Blue Ridge.

Today, to much fanfare, the administration released its ridiculous $3+ trillion budget (we say + because at that size the one thing certain is that the budget will certainly never hit the target and while we wish it would be lower, we are certain it will end up materially higher), which consists of a "short" 192-page summary section and a 1420 page appendix. We are confident that not one politician will read the whole thing from cover to cover. We won't either. Not because we don't care about what's in it, but because we are much more concerned with what is not included, namely $2.8 Trillion and $1.9 Trillion of MBS guaranteed portfolios at Fannie and Freddie, and an additional $782 billion and $809 billion in company debt outstanding for the two GSEs, respectively. This amounts to a total of $6.3 trillion in liabilities which should be counted toward the budget. And yet, oddly, the error-checker somehow made this rather justifiable omission: after all if we were to look at a number which written out looks as follows $6,264,000,000,000.00, we would also probably just avoid it - it is somewhat difficult to hide a number that big even in the 1,420 pages of the budget's appendix. That's ok, we are here to remind them about the omission, and also to remind Mr. Orszag, who himself, in that long ago 2008, espoused that these companies should be put on the Federal Budget. Isn't it strange what one and a half years worth of realizations just how broken beyond repair the system is, will do to one's convictions?

Everything that the government has done so far, with a few minor detours, has been almost exclusively focused on maintaining home prices high, by tweaking either the supply or the demand side of the housing equation. As the bulk of consumer net wealth is concentrated in the housing sector, and a wealthy and confident consumer, much more so than the banking system, is critical to the recovery of America's economy, the Administration will do everything in its power to achieve its goal of artificially manipulating the housing market, thereby not causing an incremental loss of wealth to those still stuck with overpriced houses, while the real intersection of actual supply and demand curves would indicate a materially lower equilibrium price. This is ironic, as proper price discovery is critical for a true recovery, since Americans realize all too well that buying a house at prevailing levels in advance of the second down-leg in housing is senseless, the continued pursuit of such flawed policies by the Fed and President Obama merely pulls the market ever further away from its equilibrium, thereby making the anticipated second dip so much more likely and not that far off in the distant future. Below are 5 simple charts the highlight just how precarious the housing situation in the U.S. is, and how likely the second, and probably much more fierce, leg down in the markets is going to be.

Spreads were tighter in the US as all the indices improved (albeit marginally). IG trades 3.9bps wide (cheap) to its 50d moving average, which is a Z-Score of 0.4s.d. (and HY has now traded wide of its 50-day for 2 days). At 95bps, IG has closed tighter on 36 days in the last 280 trading days (JAN09). The last five days have seen IG flat to its 50d moving average.

Pulling Volcker out of the closet following the Massachusetts debacle was a useful diversion: the whole prop trading ban seemed almost credible. And now that there are no immediate public votes in the future, it is safe to put Volcker back where he belongs, but quietly, lest the morts and general peasantry think that Obama is all bluster and no actions. Alas, if the latest development in the ongoing Wall Street "regulatory" saga, as reported by the FT is any indication, the prop trading plan, as proposed by Volcker, is now dead. This time, the last chance to put the financial system on some stable footing comes courtesy of Dick Shelby, Chris Dodd and Paul Kanjorski.

A terrific chart out of the New York Times, demonstrating succinctly the endless abyss that the actual US budget is becoming (ignore the rosy expectations for a surplus - the likelihood that the US can claw its way back out of the hole at this point are slime to none). The attached article by David Leonhardt, America's Sea of Red Ink Was Years In The Making, is also a good read, and shows just how deep the sovereign debt rabbit hole goes.

Even as ever more Congressmen express concern about the implications of the ongoing CRE "bubble" (yes, this is a quote), S&P comes out with a report noting that should the banking system be forced to take all appropriate CRE-associated writedowns, it likely would not survive. And all this is occurring as REITs probe new 52 week highs. Welcome to the new economy.

Update: And there it goes

The technical barrier of 1,085 was a major support on the way down, and today is proving to be a major resistance as the maket tries to climb back up. So far three tests at the 1,085 level have been unsuccessful. As Greece has been dropped to the back-burner, all robotic systems are go, further demonstrated by the complete collapse in volume during the afternoon session. Should ES break above 1,085 limit cover order may kick in, taking the market higher, although it appears that the selling pressure just below that threshold will be too much for the market to digest today.

As usual, once the market is oversold, some Chop House is enlisted to get out the air horns and start blaring an upgrade on a sector that has been crushed. Today it was the semiconductors that were shoved out of rehab with some spectacular squeezes.