Archive - Jun 2010

We have already had our say about Denmark's World Cup performance. It was not lost on Erik Nielsen. It has not had as much of a dire impact on his outlook, as his European round up is summarized: "that’s the way Europe looks from my unbelievably green garden on this gorgeous afternoon. I shall now pour myself some sort of chilled and lovely summer drink and turn to my favourite book." Something tells us this is not Hayek. More importantly Erik points out why Wednesday will be a very important "micro event" day for Europe: the ECB's 12 month LTRO, whose impact on Libor and Euribor we discussed previously, matures on the 1st, and also on Wednesday "Greece formally falls out of the indices because of their downgrade. How much selling will that cause? I have no clue, but I would fail to understand why investors would have waited till the last day to get rid of their Greek bonds when they have known about the issue since June 15." Yet Erik points out something curious: "the Greek governments intends to roll over 3, 6 and 12 month treasury bills maturing in July; a total of about €3.5bn. Auctions are expected on Tuesday 13th and on Tuesday 20th July." And he wonders:"Why are they doing it? Could it be that they are responding to demand from banks and other investors who have started to appreciate that a debt restructuring the next 12 months is very unlikely and therefore looking for high-yielding assets? If so, this would be a mis-guided move, in my opinion, and – frankly – I hope the IMF and EU would tell them to back off." Looks like yet another shoe in the European collapse may be due to drop this week.

The culmination of several man/months of short research has whittled a pool of 1,800 companies down to just 10, half of which appeared on our short scan list in 2008. You can guess how profitably that ended. Now that the "Great Melt-up of 2009" seems to have run its course, these companies are poised to fall back down to earth - and fall relatively hard at that. I have featured one particular company herein, closely tied to housing, construction and CRE, three of the worst sectors for a weak balance sheet to be in right now.

At least back in 2009 the most promising targets for damaging the Iranian nuclear program, specifically the weapons related development, were Plutonium production facilities (characterized primarily by the Plutonium Production Heavy Water Nuclear Reactor in Arak) and facilities critical to the "Nuclear Fuel Cycle" (most obviously the Uranium Enrichment Facility in Natanz and the Uranium Conversion Facility in Esfahan).  The Center for Strategic and International Studies' Abdullah Toucan released a detailed report comparing the mission requirements of strikes on these (and other) facilities with Israel's capabilities and concluded the mission was within Israel's grasp operationally.1  Normally we would call this report a "must read," but instead we've read it so you don't have to, as well as added some of our own research and secondary sources.  The report also examined the ballistic missile strike option and delved into some of the political and instability costs that an attack would extract (which we ignore for the purposes of this discussion).  Those sections are well worth reading, even if the political reality on the ground has changed since early 2009.

• 1. Abdullah Toukan, "Study on a Possible Israeli Strike on Iran's Nuclear Development Facilities," Center for Strategic and International Studies (March 16, 2009).

This is Part 3 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.

What's really going on with Iran?

Things are not as they seem ...

From Mauldin to BCA Research to Ned Davis Research: everything you want to know about the odds of a recession but are afraid to ask.

What a terrible weekend for Obama and Timmy G. Could there be a silver lining in this? I'm hoping.

As with any Nimitz class carrier, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) doesn't deploy alone.  Instead she sails with a number of other support vessels composing a "Carrier Strike Group."  Within the Eisenhower's traditional strike group (Carrier Strike Group Eight) are:

Command Destroyer Squadron Two Eight, composed of 8300 ton Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers focused on antiair, antisubmarine, antisurface, and strike operations using the AN/SPY-1D Phased Array Radar, an AEGIS upgrade, and the best-in-class AN/SQQ-89 integrated ASW Suite.  Originally designed to deal with former Soviet air threats (like Iran's Su-25, MiG-29A (Fulcrum) and MiG-29UB aircraft?):

The USS Bainbridge (DDG 96)
The USS Barry (DDG 52)
The USS Laboon (DDG 58)
The USS Mitscher (DDG 57)
The USS Ramage (DDG 61)

The G20 meeting has revealed two important things that tell us something about our combined economic future. First we learned that the US lost the battle to try to get everyone back on the Keynesian print-a-thon bandwagon. This tells us something about US leadership in these troubled times. Once-upon-a-time, the US could dictate such things, and those days are apparently over which deserves to be noted. The second thing we learned is that, despite these differences in how to fund future growth, there is nothing yet to indicate that any the world leaders are aware that the very concept of perpetual growth is an unworkable fallacy. It’s obvious, hopefully to even the most casual of thinkers, that someday, sooner or later, whatever growth one is engaged in will have to stop. Nothing grows forever; everything has a limit.

In his latest analysis, Goldman credit strategist Charles Himmelberg resumes the firm's party line of claiming the market is overestimating the risk impact of "fat tail" events, because presumably, as Goldman's Javier Pérez de Azpillaga showed previously, even though Spain is insolvent, is facing a massive budget deficit, has a huge debt-rolling problem, and has a banking system that is locked out of capital markets, all is good (full report here) and all those who are betting on Europe's demise are about to lose money (how this Eurozone optimism jives with Goldman's recent downgrade of the EURUSD to 1.15 is beyond non-lobotomized comprehension, so we'll just leave it be as yet another fully expected Goldman inconsistency). Yet, as ever so often, inbetween the conflicts of interest, Goldman does tend to provide that occasional piece of useful, actionable information. In this case, Himmelberg has done a very relevant analysis comparing Jump to Default costs for CDS and for out-of-the-money equity puts on distressed public names, and concludes that purchasing CDS provides a far better, lower-costing entry point to hedge against default. As he notes: "Our results show that pricing in the two markets follows the same trend, but that credit protection may be cheaper in many cases." Specifically, anyone wishing to arb the mispricing of credit and equity downside protection would be wise to put on a pair trade basket where one buys CDS/sells OTM Puts in SFI, LIZ, BC, MIR, NYT, and DDS and the inverse (sells CDS/buys OTM Puts) in F, AMR, MGM, TSO, SFD and LEN on a DV01 neutral basis, and wait for risk normalization between equity and credit to lead to a recoupling in the spreads.

As we first reported last week, in an article that was met with much original skepticism, the Pentagon has now confirmed that a fleet of 12 warships has passed the Suez Canal, and is now likely awaiting orders to support the escalation in the Persian Gulf. The attached image from Stratfor shows the latest positioning of US aircraft carrier groups as of June 23: the USS Harry Truman (CVN-75) is now right next to USS Eisenhower (CVN 69), both of which are waiting patiently just off Iran. As for the catalyst the two carriers may be anticipating, we provide the following update from the Gulf Daily News where we read that Israel may be on the verge of an attack of Iran, with an incursion originating from military bases in Azerbaijan and Georgia.

The NYT's Frank Rich and PressThink's Jay Rosen have both done tremendous post-mortems on Michael Hastings' McChrystal-shattering report in Rolling Stone Magazine. While Rich focuses more on the implications of the whole affair, and the containment of the fallout, possibly including its repercussions on the war in Afghanistan, concluding boldly that McChrystalgate "gives us reason to hope that the president’s first bold move to extricate America from the graveyard of empires won’t be his last", a much more relevant observation that both authors target in on is the future of reporting, and journalism in general, in the US and elsewhere. Both frame their arguments based on statement by Politico, subsequently deleted, which was spot on, in describing the media-establishment relationship. To wit: "as a freelance reporter, Hastings would be considered a bigger risk to be given unfettered access, compared with a beat reporter, who would not risk burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal’s remarks." In other words, never again expect a (beat, but one can generalize) reporter who is invited to political press shows to break anything of importance, and most certainly never expect a columnist (or certainly an analyst) invited on CNBC, or someone who writes books describing his high-level access to financial professionals, to ever again have anything insightful or relevant to say about the very system that is supposed to be supervised, yet ends up paying his or her bills. Which is why we will forever be happy to operate in the shadows of the establishment, where bridge burning is the norm not the exception. If that means a Penguin book deal lost now and then, so be it.

United States Oil Fund (USO) was a big mover on Friday jumping 3.69% outperforming other ETFs. Some of the sharp move could be attributed to crude oil and the Dollar. However, this move on crude, the dollar and USO on a typical light trading day caught some traders off guard.

As we reported on Friday, a critical bill that was unable to pass this past week was the extension of unemployment benefits to millions of Americans currently collecting a $1,200 average monthly stipend from the US government for sitting on their couch and not paying their mortgage. As a result of this huge hit to endless governmental spending of future unearned money, the WSJ reports that "a total of 1.3 million unemployed Americans will have lost their assistance by the end of this week." Furthermore, the cumulative number of people whose extended benefits are set to run out absent this extension, will reach 2 million in two weeks, and continue rising: as a reminder the DOL reported over 5.2 million Americans currently on Extended Benefits and EUC (Tier 1-4). The net result is yet another hit to the US ledger, as soon 2 million Americans will no longer recycle $1,200 per month into the economy. In other words, beginning in July, there will be $2.4 billion less spent each month by America's jobless on such necessities as LCD TVs (that critical 4th one for the shoe closet), iPads and cool looking iPhones that have cool gizmos but refuse to hold a conversation the second the phone is touched the "wrong" way. As the number of jobless whose benefits expire grows, the full impact of lost money will progressively increase, and absent some last minute compromise, the monthly loss will promptly hit $5 billion per month. Annualized this is a hit of $60 billion to "consumption", and represents roughly 120 million iPads not purchased, and about half a percentage point of GDP (ignoring various downstream multiplier effects). Worst of all, as these people surge back into the labor force, the unemployment rate is about to spike by nearly 1%, up to 10.5%.