Archive - Feb 2010

Tuesday’s selloff took the S&P down through the initial support of 1098/1102. The intra-day low of 1092 rested on the top of the next support 1088/1092. Several top technicians note that the bounce from the February low has had trouble with the 50 day moving averages. The S&P needs to stay above 1082 to keep the rebound alive. For today, we’ll start with support at 1088/1092 with a backup at 1080/1083. Resistance looks like 1102/1106 and then 1113/1118. - Art Cashin

Freddie Mac had positive net worth of $4.4 billion at December 31, 2009, compared to positive net worth of $9.4 billion at September 30, 2009. As a result of the positive net worth, no additional funding was required from Treasury under the terms of the Purchase Agreement for the fourth quarter. The decline in positive net worth for the fourth quarter of 2009 resulted from the fourth quarter 2009 net loss of $6.5 billion and the dividend payment of $1.3 billion to Treasury on the senior preferred stock, partially offset by a $2.7 billion decrease in unrealized losses recorded in accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) (AOCI) primarily driven by improved values on the company's available-for-sale (AFS) securities. Freddie Mac had a net worth deficit of $30.6 billion at December 31, 2008.

RANsquawk 24th February US Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

• Nationwide strike paralyzes Greece, clashes between rioters and Police begin (WSJ, Bloomberg)
• Protests have spread to Spain (El Pais, h/t Paul)
• Dutch snap elections scheduled for June 9 (FT)
• Geithner may give regulator leeway in applying volcker rule (Bloomberg) - Note: Vince Reinhart is co-author of the seminal "Conducting Monetary Policy at Very Low Short-Term Interest Rates" in which the Fed considered buying equities and foreign sovereing bonds
• Reinhart: Bernanke's confidence game (The American)
• Home purchase loan demand at lowest since 1997 (Reuters)

• Asian shares fall for first time in three days on US consumer confidence.
• Dollar weakens versus Euro on speculation Fed to hold rates.
• German business confidence unexpectedly drops as snow hampers retail sales.
• Hong Kong raises tax on luxury homes to cool market after 29% price gain.
• Japan January export growth accelerates to 40.9% as overseas demand drives recovery.
• Oil hovers below $79 in Asia after US crude supplies drop, suggesting demand up.
• Treasury said it will borrow $200B and leave money on deposit with the Fed.

RANsquawk 24th February Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

RANsquawk 24th February Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

The Case Shiller housing report, the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index, and the FDIC Q4 bank report came out Tuesday with mostly negative results. Things like the biggest loan contraction since 1942 ought to grab your attention. These are significant numbers.

Some of the top secret AIG bailout info is out. One Goldman Sachs Guess who's at
the heart of it, making money by creating straight trash, selling it to
its clients then buying insurance to benefit from its inevitable
crash? I quote "divulging the names of the [trash] CDOs could erode their value: “We will be hurt because traders in the market will know what we’re holding.”.

Chen Zhao of BCA Research says the intense debt-deflation pressure being felt in Europe has many similarities to the post-crash environment in Japan in the early 1990s. Deflation pressures are building all around the world but U.S. bond traders are still not convinced. Given the choice between the lesser of two evils, it's clear the Fed and other central bankers would rather err on the side of mild inflation. What will ultimately prevail?

Ben Bernanke has got to be laughing it up after being reappointed to another term as Federal Reserve chairman. What else could we expect from the ex-lawyers and lifetime Beltway bandits voting on global monetary policy? As he starts his second term, I’m once again reminded about how supremely unqualified this man is for the job. Prior to becoming Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke basically had zero experience outside academia. His resume only includes three full-time years working for the Federal Reserve and eight months on George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors. The other 23 years of his career were spent teaching college.

Jose Pinera provides an Entitlement State 101 lecture, in which Chile's former Labor and Social Security Minister demystifies the U.S.'s $100 trillion unfunded benefits problem. Since Pinera is the man who many years ago privatized Chile's entitlement system, America, and the entire Western system, which for the past century has been relying on unfunded liabilities to provide benefits to the population in the hopes that funding day will never come, may do well to listen to what he has to say. His message: the American way of life, more so than anything else, in which reckless spending, living on credit and not saving for the future, is precisely why the US will be bankrupt very soon. Chile swallowed the bitter pill 30 years ago and after a lot of pain, managed to get out of the hole. Will enabler state #1, America, fail where this allegedly "backward" South American country succeeded?

Tomorrow's Bernanke testimony will be eagerly watched by all, not so much for anything that may be revealed in the prepared remarks (those will not disclose anything not already known), nor for the Q&A (because unfortunately the people in Congress who understanding the first thing about monetary policy can be counted on two fingers), but because it is not every day that the undisputed and underrepresented ruler of the not so free world gets to sit down in a kabuki theater in which he pretends to be accountable to some 300+ million peasants and a couple million compulsive gamblers and kleptomaniacs. All in all good, wholesome, TiVoable, and, luckily, just biannual fun. Yet for those who hope to get something out of this meeting than merely a popcorn overdose, we recommend the following Testimony Preview from Goldman's Hatzius & McKelvey, which goes through not only the background of the spectacle but focuses on some oddly relevant questions which our Congressmen may be wise enough to ask. We point out the latter, because we know full well that nobody will ever ask the really relevant questions (until it is too late), unless of course Alan "Taz" Grayson is wearing his dollar tie, In which case all bets are off.

Not a good day for consumer confidence. First, the vastly irrelevant Conference Board crashed and burned earlier, dropping nearly 10 points below consensus expectations after its only driver, the market, turned down in January, showing just how unreliable this index is, and now the ABC Consumer Comfort came in at the "dreaded" -50 level (and don't get us started on UMich, whose entire rolodex consists of the home phone numbers of Blankfein, Dimon and Pandit). The is the lowest reading for the index since -51 recorded in October 2009, and just 4 points above its 24 year record low. Of the three main readings in the index, the Personal Finance component declined even as Buying Conditions and the National Economy both stayed at depressed levels. Notably, the racial gap among the respondents who view the economy as being in total shambles has all but disappeared, even as increasingly more Democrats perceive the economy as worse off than Republicans. Funny, isn't the president a Democrat?