Archive - Aug 11, 2010

Until I began to examine the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul bill I had no idea that it would so significantly change the direction of the United States. It's scope is so vast and pervasive that it is difficult to grasp its totality. I wrote this article to try to explain this and why I believe it is so important for us to understand it. Because of its complexity it was not possible to do this briefly, so I wrote this major "white paper" and divided it into four parts to make it easier to digest. Please stick with me for the next four days; your eyes will be opened.

A decade from now, it will not be stock investors complaining about a lost decade, but owners of bonds. Is the final blow off top in the great 30 bull market in bonds at hand? PIMCO’s Mohamed E-Erian says that there is a 25% chance of real deflation hitting the US. The higher bonds go, the more imaginative the explanations become as to why it should continue. (TBT), (TMV)

Did the Fed blow it or are Wall Street crooks gearing up for another big payday?

Goldman dedicates 9 pages to a regime change in which it goes openly bullish on gold. The report is attached, which we present without commentary but as always, if there is one flashing red light saying the peak price for any asset has been hit, it is a Strong Buy signal by Goldman. The report will likely result in a brief pop in spot over the next 24 hours as the idiot money rushes into the latest Goldman trap. Alas, it also means that GS is now offloading. Be very wary of market dynamics over the next month.

There is no rule that has not been broken.

Cash is once again king.

TrimTabs does a simple yet elegant analysis that seeks to explain why US final demand is not only sluggish but declining, and is ultimately the reason why the US government needs to consistently pump more and more capital in the economy to keep GDP at best flat. TrimTabs focuses on the "consumer spendables" indicator - It consists of the sum of three components: 1. After-tax income from wages and salaries; 2. After-tax income from non-wage sources, such as capital gains, dividends, and interest; 3. Cash harvested from home equity when mortgages are refinanced. As TrimTabs shows, and this should come as a surprise to nobody, "much of the economic growth in the middle of the previous decade was fueled by an explosion of consumer debt. Consumers treated their homes like automatic teller machines—cash-out refinancings topped out at $804 billion in the four quarters ended in Q2 2006—and they borrowed freely on low-rate auto loans and credit cards given to almost anyone who could fog a mirror. Now that the era of easy consumer credit is over, the economy is resetting to a lower level of activity. We believe the interventions of the Fed and the government to try to head off this adjustment will do more harm in the long run than the adjustment itself." In other words the ongoing debate on whether the US is undergoing inflation or deflation is moot - the primary driver continues to be deleveraging, as Rick Santelli likes to shout on occasion. And all the other monetary phenomena are merely a side-effect. Alas, as long as deleveraging is the primary driver in the economy, nothing else matters: it has long been our contention that deleveraging must run its course. However, the Fed will not let that happen, and in doing so, it will attempt the last thing in its arsenal - in essence, suicide the economy, by destroying all faith in the actual medium of monetary exchange. At that point inflation, deflation and/or stagflation will be the last thing on anyone's mind.

Our expected economic groupthink revision by the sellside "strategists" is accelerating, as now even permabullish CNBC permaguest Joe LaVorgna "takes the knife" to his Q2 GDP estiamte. Yet despite presumably seeing the light, he only cuts Q3 and Q4 estiamtes to 3.0% and 3.3%, still hundreds of bps higher than Goldman, and even worse when compared to reality. David Bianco and his stratospheric GDP will stick out like a speedoless nudist in the middle of the liquidity ocean when the economic tide finally goes out. Luckily, Bianco has no credibility to begin with so the concept of discrediting surely does not apply.

As we pointed out earlier today, today's latest deterioration in yet another overoptimistic assumption by the BEA, in the form of the balance of trade, means that the next GDP revision will likely be sub 1%, and may ostensibly drop to negative, confirming that the double dip, at least for NBER purposes, started sometime between April and June. Confirming our skepticism is JPM's Michael Feroli who now believes that real Q2 GDP is trending at a 1.1% rate, less than half the official 2.4%, which, as readers will recall was expected by a battery of Ph.D.-clad optimists to come out to 2.7%. Less than two weeks after the announcement, it becomes clear that the world's "smartest" economists were off by 60%. And we are confident this is not the end of the downward revisions.

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 11/08/10

Cisco misses and stock drops 5%. In the meantime, futures are now plumbing the day's lows after hours. And the most troubling development from CSCO, worse than the top line miss, is the catch courtesy of Bloomberg's Adam Johnson that Days Sales Outstanding surge from 27 to 41 days. Customers incrasingly refuse to pay on time. We wonder how that will be spun favorably.

Another day, another desperate attempt by GE's propaganda branch to keep its viewers disconnected with reality. Case in point: Bob Pisani, who has now said about 100 times that "volume was very low, no bids were hit, etc, etc." The truth: yes to the latter, and a blatant lie on the former. Exhibit A is below, where you can see that today's ES volume was the highest in 40 days! Maybe CNBC can hire an expert and analyze the chart below and advise us what it uses as the source for its lies, pardon, information.

Boom

I'd be Surprised if any of my readers were Surprised by the Surprises announced in the sovereign economies these days...

Just in case the consensus was that nobody could have possibly predicted today's market action, here is Jim Cramer... proving the consensus was spot on. From CNBC yesterday: "The “Fed said good things,” Cramer said. “Buy.”"