Archive - Jul 2010

The Empire Manufacturing Index plunged to 5.08 on expectations of 18, and previously at 19.57! The stunning drop was driven by a contraction in virtually all diffusion categories: New Orders (10.13 from 17.53), Shipments (6.31 from 19.67), Unfilled Orders (-15.87 from -1.23), Delivery Time (-7.94 from 9.88), Prices Paid (25.40 from 27.16), Prices Received (-1.59 from 4.94), and Average Employee Workweek (-9.52 from 8.64). Only inventories increased marginally (we may have seen this before), from -1.23 to 6.35. All in all a disaster. Elsewhere the PPI also plunged much more than expected, coming in at -0.5 on expectations of -0.1 as deflation is now pervasive. In all fairness, core PPI came in as expected at 0.1%. Lastly, the Initial Jobless Claims came in at 429,000 from 458,000 the week before, a number made irrelevant after various automakers announced they would continue summer production in autoplants that otherwise get shutdown for the period, thus skewing the seasonal adjustment. Indeed the Non Seasonally Adjusted number for the week surged from 468,492 to 513,347. Perhaps most relevantly for the economy, the collapse in those collecting EUC and extended benefits continues, with both categories coming in lower, at -236,162 and -18,580.

JP Morgan kicks the bank earnings season off with a disquieting thud, as we suspected.

Not even the Japanese want to buy their own stocks, with foreign institutions accounting for up to 60% of trading volume on a good day. Local investors would much rather buy emerging market funds, currency funds, bond funds, anything but their own equities. This explains the miserable 1.15% yield investors get on ten year JGB’s. A new kid has shown up in the neighborhood called China which has usurped its traditional role. A massive accumulation of debt and a thousand “bridges to nowhere.” Obama take note.

After a 0.5% decline overnight, the BDIY is now at exactly 1,700, marking the longest sequential decline since the launch of Windows 95. Little to add here. We anticipate that Tim Geithner will soon suggest stress tests to be conducted on dry bulk shipping vessels to the 5 or so Greek CEOs running the industry, with bailouts to come for those leaked to be in need for financing.

The just completed auction of Spanish 2025 Obligacions for just under €3 billion, came at a 5.116% yield, a substantially worse level than the last auction as of April 22, which was placed at 4.434%. The only redeeming feature was that the bid to cover increased from the prior 1.79 to 2.575, after €7.722 billion worth of bids noted an interest. Somehow we get the feeling the ECB has been busy this time around, as have been the Chinese, which were instrumental in last week's 10 Year auction. According to Market News, "Spain is "very confident" it will meet its forthcoming July redemption payments, given its cash position at the Bank of Spain." Furthermore, tax receipts are running in line with expectations, adding to the positive feeling. This is all wonderful, and occurs on the back of a just released Barclays report which (to be posted shortly), which notes that Spanish Cajas alone will likely require €36.2 billion euros to plug a capital shortfall. Luckily the ECB and China are more than happy to keep providing the funds necessary to plug this hole, which upon third, fourth and fifth reestimations will likely end up being one zero short of the true capital deficiency.

• Asia stocks, commodities decline as China growth slows, Fed cuts outlook.
• Back-to-school spending may rise as much as 16% in US - Natl Retail Federation.
• BOJ says Japan's growth will slow next year, keeps benchmark rate at 0.1%.
• China’s stocks dropped, after GDP growth eases to 11.1% in first half from year earlier.
• China’s June crude-oil processing rose at the most gradual pace in eight months.
• FDIC accuses 4 former executives of failed IndyMac of negligence in making loans.
• IMF sees Irish deflation through 2011; predicts a 1.8% fall in prices in 2010, a 0.5% fall next.

RANsquawk European Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX -- 15/07/10

It's official. Illinois, the fifth most populous state in the U.S., has overtaken Iceland in the default risk category. Will other U.S. states follow?

RANsquawk European Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 15/07/10

[1] The S&P 500 meets key trendline resistance on day 55 of a Fibonacci time cycle as exponential moving averages cluster ... [2] daily, weekly and monthly support / resistance levels for the US Dollar ... [3] Crude Oil futures trace out a tricky wedge formation

Tsy/equity diverging... bank earnings on deck... and a suspect rally meeting formidable 50 & 200DMA resistance. Time to turn the old risk off.

Why isn't our economy recovering? I ask that question often and have written about it many times. Perhaps a better question is: what needs to happen in order to make our economy grow? I offer some solutions.

China just announced that its Q2 GDP came in at 10.3%, just below a consensus estimate of 10.5%. Surprisingly, for some odd reason the market seems to believe this "data." Although in retrospect, based on China's bottom up GDP goalseeking, the number, which we will show in a second is completely irrelevant, could very easily be true, based on two just announced stunners about the Chinese economy. The first comes from Fitch, which in a report released today titled Informal Securitisation Increasingly Distorting Credit Data, uncovers that China has in fact been massively underrepresenting the actual amount of new loans in the first half of 2010, courtesy of precisely the kinds of securitization deals that blew up half of our own banking system: "Adjusted for informal securitisation activity, Fitch estimates that the net amount of new CNY loans extended in H110 was closer to CNY5.9trn, or 28% above the official figure of CNY4.6trn...on a flow basis the volume of credit being shifted off balance sheets in recent times has been large and rising. Activity also is largely concentrated among just a few dozen banks, and institution-specific exposure is often much higher." And some are wondering why China's AgBank was scrambling to raise $20 billion via a hurried IPO... Yet this data pales in comparison with disclosure from a recent article in South China Morning Post, in which an economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences noted estimates from electricity meter readings that there are about 64.5 million empty apartments and houses in urban areas of the country! This number is five times larger than the roughly 12 million in total US public (3.89 million) and shadow (8 million as estimated by Morgan Stanley) home inventory available currently. Forget Stephen Roach - China is covertly funding and creating a housing bubble that is at least 5 times as big as that of the United States. We leave it up to you to imagine the consequences of that particular bubble's bursting...

In his latest must read letter, John Taylor picks up where Goldman left off a few days ago, and follows up on the implications of Keynes' savings paradox, which as explained by Goldman, and now by Taylor, has to do with the fact that with the entire world entering an austerity phase and thus cutting off public sources of capital to offset private sector contraction and deleveraging (as per the Current Account equality), the slowdown in economic growth is virtually assured. It also explains why companies are hording cash. The result is a massive schism in perceptions between micro and macro analysts: "the result is that
the vast majority of the analysts that examine individual companies are
bullish and almost all of the macro analysts are bearish, many like us,
and dramatically so." Further adding to the dire macro picture, "because nominal GDP is growing more slowly than the outstanding national
debt is compounding, it is becoming a more oppressive weight on the
“non-S&P” economy, tightening the financial position of small
businesses and the consumer." Which leads Taylor to this simplistic and spot on conclusion: "if consumers build up their savings, we know what happens to retail
sales and the GDP. On top of this the money multiplier comes into play.
With the global banking system suffering under an extremely high load of
worthless assets – whether recognized or not – and being forced to
improve their capital allocation for risk by the Basel II and Basel III
rules, banks must cut back the amount of credit that they make available
to the economy. The multiplier will force global economies to shrink in
the years ahead. Cash is now king, worthless or not, so buy dollars." Brief, succinct and 100% spot on analysis.

In an interview on Tom Keene's Bloomberg radioshow today, Nouriel Roubini said Obama has to stop treating Americans as spoiled children and to finally be truthful about the state of the American economy. “We have to recognize that Americans are adults. Then we have
to speak to them straightforward about the risks and challenges that we
have, rather than kicking the can down the road.” While we wholeheartedly agree that Obama needs to stop not only with his daily teleprompter appearances, but for once to be frank and to strip away the perpetual layer of green shoot propaganda (Americans realize how bad it is - they merely grow to loathe the president even more when they hear and see him lie day after day about the "improvements" in the economy), we are puzzled by what Roubini says next, which is that Obama has to continue with precisely the same type of stimulus spending policies, be they fiscal or monetary, that got the US to the current unsustainable level. Roubini says Obama should stop kicking the can down the road, when he advocates doing just that - in essence he is saying don't talk to Americans like children, but certainly treat them as such. As for the weening them off the massive Keynesian teat - well, that can wait... indefinitely.