Archive - Jul 2010

Should we be tightening our seat belts?

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 05/07/10

Internecine civil wars are underway almost everywhere within the West, and most virulently in the United States of America. They are not yet kinetic wars, but wars of grinding prepositioning, the kind which lead to foregone conclusions without a shot being fired. They are wars of survival, nonetheless, because the basic architecture for national strength is being altered incrementally or dramatically. And, in many cases, consciously.

Almost all of the strategic restructuring of states is occurring in large part as a result of an accumulation of wealth; an accumulation and value of which is seen as permanent. This has resulted in the hubris — expressed by those who did not earn it — of triumph in the Cold War. This is a Western phenomenon because the widespread growth of wealth, the creation of freedoms classically associated with democracy, resulted — as it must inevitably result — in complacencies which in turn led to a “vote too far”: the extension of the democratic franchise to those who do not help in the creation of wealth.

Once the voting franchise of the West reached the point where those who sought benefits outweighed those who created benefits, the tipping point was reached. The situation of de facto “class warfare” thus emerges automatically under such circumstances, and the envy of those who take against those who provide erupts into “rights” and “entitlement”. By deifying “democracy” above justice, the enfranchised non-producers could always outvote the producers. We are at this point. The result can only be collapse, or restructuring around a Cæsar or a Bonaparte until, eventually, a productive hierarchy reappears, usually after considerable pain.

Last week, the ECB had a failed QE "sterilization" operation, when it was unable to cover the full €55 billion in previously purchased government debt via a Fixed Term Deposit operation, better known as a liquidity reacharound. That particular auction, which occurs every Tuesday, generated only €31.9 billion in bid side interest, or 0.6x BTC. The failure was largely attributed to the massive LTRO maturity the next day. Which is why everyone will be closely following tomorrow's most recent FTD operation. Even more so, since as the ECB just announced, in the prior weak the central bank bought an additional €4 billion in sovereign bonds as part of the Securities Markets Programme which is now at €59 billion. As the chart below shows, this indicates a steady buying interest of €4 billion per week for each of the past 4 weeks. On the other hand, as we have been expecting for a long time, with total bidding interest declining, while the total FTD amount rising each weak, the likelihood of ongoing failed auctions, and continued loss in European liquidity conference keeps going higher.

One of the world's last few remaining permaskeptics, Bob Janjuah, has severed ties with the UK's most bailed out and nationalized bank, RBS, reports Bloomberg. And just as the departure of David Rosenberg from Merrill in early 2009 marked the start of a period of complete market schizophrenia, we hope that the purging of negativists from the Royal Bank of Scotland is not indicative of just such another period, at least on the other side of the Atlantic. However, unlike last March when the several trillion in global stimulus funds was only just entering the economy, this time around not even the ritualistic sacrifice of bears will do much to stop the slide. And just to confirm that this is likely a localized issue to RBS, the Chief Markets Econoist Kevin Gaynor has also left the firm.

RANsquawk European Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 05/07/10

Sentiment in the crude oil market has been quite pessimistic lately with NYMEX front month dropping 8% in one week to $72/b. However, over the coming months, oil price should push higher reflecting the changing global demand/supply pattern resulted from some new development in the sector.

Courtesy of BP, and everyone cutting corners wherever possible, it is becoming increasingly clear that the economic impact to the gulf economy will be devastating, particularly in the tourism industry, with “some condos and hotels reporting 100 percent cancellations.” And we have still to find someone who will willingly eat shrimp without a gun at their heads... and it is not just the surging price for the crustacean as the supply plummets. Imagine just how ugly it would get if Americans were allowed to have an idea of just how bad it truly is: it appears that the recently instituted "Beyond" First Amendment, where freedom of the press now carries a $40,000 fine and/or incarceration, has seen its first casualty: "A photographer taking pictures of a BP refinery in Texas was detained by a BP security official, local police and a man who said he was from the Department of Homeland Security." Who would have thought change you can believe in referred to the amendments to the constitution, starting with the first.

As overindebted Americans and bankrupt cities and municipalities spend millions to celebrate America's 234th birthday (and delighted by the fact that while the rest of the world is writing in austerity, we actually can still pretend we can afford such demonstrations of affluence) with brilliant if transitory firework displays, it behooves everyone to step away from the symbolic, and consider for a minute the circumstances surrounding this country's declaration of independence. Since at the basis of every action there is always a monetary incentive, for a critical perspective of the economic conditions that led not only to the violent separation of the US from England, but to the subsequent creation of the Federal Reserve, the abolition of the gold standard, and all culminating with the imminent "end of the road” for the financial system as we know it, we present the following essay from reader Matthew Hinde.

A recap and look at things to come from the ever optimistic Dane, Goldman's Erik Nielsen.

There are few things as entertaining as watching US propaganda movies from the 1930s. Case in point, this documentary from the depths of the great recession (1933), when America was struggling with a deflationary wave nearly as bad as the one today, and when the only salvation was the spinning of Keynesian politics to the point where even Keynes himself had to send a letter to FDR to warn him that how the US was was interpreting his fledgling economic religion (it hadn't quite made cult status yet), was wrong. Of course, nobody cared then, and nobody will care now: after all there are cans to be kicked, mid-term elections to prepare for, and votes to be bought with ridiculous unemployment benefit extensions upon extensions. And while even back then Keynes disagreed with FDR's wholesale economic approach which compounded failure upon failure, only to be saved by the "fluke" that was WWII, one wonders just how quickly he is spinning in his grave today, when, as Rick Santelli pointed out, we no longer have deflation, but deleveraging to the tunes of tens of trillions of dollars, and no longer a cyclical recession, but a structural shift in the way credit is apportioned, and disappearing, in the economy. We expect to soon see a comparable shift in the Fed's and the ECB's subliminal cartoon messages, which just like the recent 180 from Barton Biggs, will soon begin highlighting all those "previously undiscovered silver linings" in the great satan of inflation.

Let's go over a few myths on austerity, shall we?

Yesterday, NY's pension fund sued BP for having the temerity to see its shares drop. Today, the Democratic candidate for Texas  AG has filed a Legal Complaint and Legal Brief against Goldman Sachs et literally al for "causing financial crisis and physical harms; recession; unemployment;
home and wealth loss; forced cutbacks in a wide variety of critical
areas, including medical care, social services, and environmental
protection" and pretty much everything that is bad in the world. Tomorrow, one million Americans file a class action lawsuit against E-Trade for experiencing a downday.

Ho hum. What's another $34 billion. Chump change.....

I have a frequent nightmare: In the year 2011, with the full support and complicity of their shadow ally, Russia, the Islamofascist regime in Tehran announces that that they have developed a deliverable nuclear weapon(s).