Archive - Jun 25, 2010

This is Part 2 of a major four part series dealing with what I feel is the primary question investors must now answer: is our future to be inflation or deflation? The answer has vast implications to our investment planning and decisions for the near term, and possibly for our long term. It is a very complex question with a lot of moving parts involving economics and politics.

I lived in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship—I can spot a fascist police-state when I see one. The United States is a fascist police-state. Harsh words—incendiary, even. And none too clever of me, to use such language: Time was, the crazies and reactionaries wearing tin-foil hats who flung around such a characterization of the United States were disqualified by sensible people as being hysterical nutters—rightfully so. A police-state uses the law as a mechanism to control any challenges to its power by the citizenry, rather than as a mechanism to insure a civil society among the individuals. The state decides the laws, is the sole arbiter of the law, and can selectively (and capriciously) decide to enforce the law to the benefit or detriment of one individual or group or another. In a police-state, the citizens are “free” only so long as their actions remain within the confines of the law as dictated by the state. If the individual’s claims of rights or freedoms conflict with the state, or if the individual acts in ways deemed detrimental to the state, then the state will repress the citizenry, by force if necessary. (And in the end, it’s always necessary.)

I think Obama and Geithner will get roasted up in Toronto this weekend. Does it mean anything to the dollar? We will see Sunday night.

Parliamentary pensions, a lavish Bastille Day garden party and ministers’ Cuban cigars are to be sacrificed in the name of economic recovery as the French government seeks to show that ministers are sharing the pain of their austerity drive.

In case you just can't get enough of of Barney Frank simply oozing truth, integrity and unbribable honesty (in other words, everything that defines the American Congressional way) in every interview he does, this Bloomberg TV clip is for you. It is also for everyone else who would rather not read the 2,000 pages of FinReg reform yet wants to get some sense if they will be sued next Monday for lifting a 5MM offer of UK CDS. Overall, Barney mumbles about this and that, discusses whether the bill will make banks less profitable (it won't), clarifies the 3% loophole for JPMorgan's investment in Highbridge,  notes the surprising $19 billion bank levy, yet runs like a scolded schoolgirl the second Fannie and Freddie (also known as the one biggest disaster of his career, and the only thing he will be remembered for) are mentioned. "My Republican colleagues like to forget the fact that during the 12 years they controlled Congress, they did nothing about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. When the Democrats took power in 2007, we passed a bill that gave them the power to put them into conservatorship. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac today are not what they were, thanks to a bill passed by a Democratic congress…They are in conservatorship. The notion that we haven't done anything is a lie, and they know that." The more important thing Barney, is that the American are fully aware that any pretense of reform coming from you is a lie, and they most certainly know that.

Summary of the weekly's events and macro observations courtesy of RCS Investments

Several days after the Romanian parliament passed a law to cut pensions by 15% in order to qualify for a critical $20 billion IMF loan, the Romanian Supreme Court found this law was not only unconstitutional, but unappealable (along the lines of what our own SCOTUS will do once the Fed's transparency appeal gets to the very top, resulting in confirmation once and for all that American laws are only made for the benefit of the Federal Reserve). The decision was reached hours after dozens of Romanian citizens stormed the presidential palace "to get an audience with President Traian Basescu." As a result of the Constitutional Court's decision, the IMF loan "may now be delayed, and this will be a big blow to the government of Prime Minister Emil Boc, the BBC's Nick Thorpe reports." Also as a result, Romanian (and by association, neighboring Bulgaria) CDS blew up today and closed +30 to 410 for Dracula's host country, and +20 to 360 bps for the country that served as the reverse engineering center of the former Communist Bloc.

A week after the EUR posted the biggest short covering rally in history, expunging every single weak hand after a move wiped out 44% of all net shorts, the bearish speculative bets on the EUR are once again rising, according to just released CFTC Commitment of Traders data. After dropping from net -111,945 to just -62,360 contracts in the past week, net non-commercial EUR shorts are once again rising, and have increased by 8,614 in the week ended June 22, to -70,974. The easy short covering is over: at this point shakeouts, as claimed last week, will require something much more effective than aGoldman downgrade of the EURUSD. In other COT news, gold fans will be happy to know that the number of commercial gross and net short positions in the precious metal has hit a new all time record of 475,678 gross and 288.916 net shorts. It is getting increasingly more expensive to the commercial players to preserve the price of gold at current levels, even with unlimited paper shorting capacity. As ETF's such as GLD accumulate increasingly more (hopefully real) gold inventory (yesterday's record number of 1,316 tonnes in GLD has not be updated for today yet), it will, in turn, become increasingly more difficult to push down gold price even as all the big players try to gold paper gold down.

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 25/06/10

... to Johns who have insatiable lusts.

As we speculated previously, the sudden and unprecedented departure of Peter Orszag, the day prior to the US Budget's formalization (which incidentally never happened as now the US will likely not have a 2010 budget at all, for fear of disclosing to most Americans just how broke the country is ahead of mid-terms) was due to Orszag's disagreement with the administration's, and particularly Larry Summer's, inability to fathom that reckless spending is a recipe for bankruptcy. As the FT reports: "Peter Orszag, Barack Obama’s budget director, resigned this week partly in frustration over his lack of success in persuading the Obama administration to tackle the fiscal deficit more aggressively, according to sources inside and outside the White House." And so, as any remaining voices of reason realize they are dealing with a group of deranged Keynesians, soon there will be nobody left in the administration who dares to oppose the destructive course upon which this country has so resolutely embarked, which ends in one of two ways: debt repudiation, or war. And with the only remaining economic "advisers" being the trio of Summers, Romer and Geithner, you know America will somehow hit both of these mutually exclusive targets.

Not like anyone cares what Moody's thinks but if even the rating agency can not spin some data in a benign way, there likely are some major sandtraps in there.

But BP would try to deny it ...

After surviving the start of the Second Great Depression, and living in its first great bear market bounce/short squeeze, where now all the attention is focused on a collapsing Europe, many could be wondering how, if at all, it would have been different to have lived through the first Great Depression. Luckily, courtesy of the recent release of the BIS's full annual reports, history buffs can now replay, year by year, the events in world capital markets from 1931 onward. We have put particular emphasis on the dark days of the 1930s. Below we present the first several such years as seen from the perspective of the BIS. Note the endless similarities - in fact one could say the only difference between then and now is the lack of "liquidity providing" algos (soon, there will be an iPad app for that) to front run slow and stupid retail/pension/mutual fund money. Pay particular attention to the role of gold in the crisis period, the amusing reference to FDR's confiscation of gold in 1933, and how the mood of insecured optimism shifts to one of endless gloom, and ends, as everyone knows, with World War 2.

Kóyo Edo ...