Archive - Mar 2010

RANsquawk 15th March Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

• Asia stocks, commodities fall on China tightening speculation.
• China’s stocks decline to five-week low on tightening concern.
• Debate brewing in OPEC over what its post-recession production might look like.
• EU finance chiefs to weigh Greek rescue as ministers seek to avoid bailout.
• Euro near 5-week high versus Yen on Greece bailout, BOJ policy.
• Consumer tax hikes hit Greece as EU to discuss debt crisis.
• The Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines to perform an emergency inspection of some 600 Boeing 737 airplanes.

RANsquawk 15th March Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

The rating agency, whose "objectivity" was recently fully exposed after it has been persistently the one rater who refuses to downgrade Greece, even after its peers S&P and Fitch have made Greek bond eligibility for ECB collateral contingent purely on Moody's lack of conscience, is pretending that it has some credibility after all, by doing a little extra posturing, and grumbling that if things get much worse, it may, just may, consider dropping the US AAA rating. This, of course, despite Tim Geithner's promise that the US would only be downgraded over his dead body, or something like that. Furthermore, as we have recently learned, the FRBNY has a "proactive" influence in rating agency decisions. To assume that Mr. Brian Peters of the New York Fed would return a Moody's call and say "yes, we agree with your assumption that the US is not really AAA-worthy, please go ahead and downgrade us" requires copious amount of prior consumption of LSD and other hallucinogenics. Yet for those who still care about what output Moody's produces, here is the full relevant text discussing the outlook for the United States.

This week in The IRA, we remind one and all about the impending FDIC rule-making process on bank securitizations. Then we ponder whether zombie love won't bring together Barclays Bank and Citigroup in an unholy but politically fortuitous union. And we feature an interview with derivatives market veteran Bill King about OTC derivatives and earnings fraud. The rant on the President's Working Group follows below. -- Chris

In contrast to the cheery mood of the markets, the latest readings from consumers and small business owners indicate economic sentiment isn’t improving. This divergence has got the Wall Street scratching its collective head. In short, the disparity may be deciphered in one word – liquidity - which Wall Street has plenty of, while main street remains strapped.

With 3 out of 4 of our measures registering extreme readings, few words are needed to describe investor sentiment this week.

GATA's Adrian Douglas has done a tremendous job of combing through dozens of hundred-plus page FOMC transcripts, and has compiled numerous quotes by assorted FOMC-related personnel, including former Chairman Greenspan, which provides yet another piece of evidence, demonstrating the persistence of the Fed's gold price suppression scheme. As Douglas puts it: "My thinking was that if an organization is so inept at covering up that detailed transcripts were retained, then perhaps it is also inept at completely redacting sensitive and incriminating information. What I found is quite astounding and serves as documented evidence by the Federal Reserve itself that it manipulates the gold market." We present the relevant quotes dug up by Douglas, whom we applaud for his effort, together with his very relevant commentary, which once again exposes the Fed's covert gold price suppression intentions.

Do you know where credit really comes from?

This weekend the New York Times has published an interesting observation of gender differences when quanitfying the intangible concept of "overconfidence" as it relates to stock trading. While the article throws a relatively minor wrench at the spoke of "efficient markets", we are following it up with a scientific paper by Wei Xiong and Jialin Yu, discussing the Chinese Warrant Bubble, in which speculative mania gripped the trading of warrants so deep out of the money that they were certifiably worthless, yet trading at an increasing turnover rate, and substantially inflated prices. With numerous unequivocal examples of bubbles in the history of capital markets, starting with Dutch tulip mania (1634-37), progressing through the Mississippi bubble (1719-20) the South Sea bubble (1720), the Internet bubble in the late 1990s, and the housing bubbles of the mid 2000s, it appears that human traders never learn from history as the speculative element overpowers rationality each and every time. The underlying premise: the hope that another greater fool will emerge. And emerge they do, until they don't, and markets collapse bidless. It is certainly easy to draw a parallel between the Chinese Warrant Bubble, and the trading of AIG, C, FNM, FRE and a whole slew of otherwise worthless companies, which on occasion make up over 30% of of the volume of the US stock market, which in turn drives the momentum that pushes the balance of all stocks. Another parallel: the entire US stock market is now one big "greater fool" trap waiting to spring once the greater fools have their fill of gambling fever.

Those that want to ban CDS don't understand how the world works. They certainly don't get the fact that the US mortgage market is one gigantic CDS mess.

Presenting an update of North American Investment Grade CDS. While Month To Date the credit market has ripped in line with equities, with just CTL and AA marginally wider for the period, Year to Date the vast number of names is still wider than at January 1, or at beast unchanged, demonstrating that credit is certainly not as enthused about the equity market activity over the past two and a half months.

Ultimately the biggest loser from the whole Repo 105 scandal may not be the perpetrators, i.e., Fuld, the firm's numerous CFOs, Tim Geithner and Mary Schapiro, but the alleged "fact-checkers" - auditors Ernst & Young. Just like Enron's Star Wars-based off balance sheet accounting gimmicks brought down Arthur Anderson, so "Repo 105" may likely be responsible for the downfall of E&Y. Although while in Enron's case, it was just the accounting that brought the firm down, in Lehman's case the confluence of numerous factors will render each individual one relatively less critical, potentially to the point of irrelevance. And while book cooking was just as big of an issue for Lehman as it was for Enron, the fact that the bank did pretty much every other borderline illegal thing possible, will take away focus from just the Repo 105 fiasco, or just the liquidity misrepresentations, or just the commercial real estate book mismarking, and so forth. So to facilitate a decision on E&Y culpability, we present a candid look at Ernst & Young's Financial Services Office, the company's presentation on Paragraph 10 of IAS 39 overseeing Repo agreements, E&Ys analysis of FAS 140 "Accounting for Financial Transfers and Repurchase Financial Transactions", the Examiner's conclusions on the firm's breach of conduct, the firm's soon to be dwindling banking client base, and last, and most certainly least, a snapshot of E&Y's Lehman co-lead partner, Hillary Hansen, against whose negligent actions, as part of the Lehman E&Y practice, the Examiner concludes "that sufficient evidence exists to support a colorable claim for malpractice."

Bill Hemling, a widely respected agricultural economist, told the Kansas City Star that “we’re heading for a recession we haven’t seen the likes of since the 1930s.” Let's pray he is is wrong — again.

Now that we have last Wednesday's the rollovers over with, now it is time to start thinking like a criminal and figure out how Goldman is going to make its $500 million this week by vaporizing 90% of all the potential put/call profit in the current period's open interest.