Archive - 2010

When you have your back against the wall, and the only thing at your disposal is the Fed's money printer on loan, what do you do? Well, if you are the Treasury, you let money rain. Literally. In December, according to the Financial Management Service, the US Treasury dispensed a stunning 69.5% more in Social Security Outlays and Unemployment Insurance on a year over year basis: the administration knew all too well it could not afford to let this holiday season go to waste. So, after averaging at $43.6 billion in monthly outlays, Social Security withdrawals from the UST surged by a unprecedented 48.6% in December to a whopping $69.5 billion. This is not a volatile or seasonal series.

• ECB Board member Juergen Stark says buck stops here, EU will not bail out Greece "The markets are deluding themselves when they think at a
  certain point the other member states will put their hands on
  their wallets to save Greece", comments whack euro (Bloomberg, FT)
• In the meantime, Greece, its head stuck deep up its...sand, says bailout not needed contrary to every indication to the opposite (Bloomberg)
• Iceland, and Iceman Mishkin, also thought so once, now country promises it won't default either, Dubai deja vu (Bloomberg)
• If Fed missed this bubble, will it see a new one (NYT)
• The rats are fleeing the global excess liquidity titanic en masse: first Dodd, now Japan Finance Minister - Naoto Kan named new fin minister (Bloomberg)
• Report from the "move your money" front (HuffPo and IRR)

Ontario Teachers' buys AIG's Canadian mortgage business and CPPIB makes some internal shifts in management.

RANsquawk 6th January Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

2009 was an incredibly interesting year both politically and financially, as both arenas are inextricably intertwined, though on the surface, the leaders from these respective industries often bicker and admonish one another for public show, while smiling and shaking hands behind closed doors. Uncovering this complex and hidden connection almost always requires much deeper digging than is ever executed by mass media financial journalists, who often seem more intent on fawning to banking interests rather than revealing the smallest speck of truth to the public.

Not pretty ...

This article addresses a recent study done by a couple of hedge fund managers regarding the performance of various asset classes during the inflationary 1970s. What performed best on an inflation adjusted basis during the 1970s? Stocks? Gold? Oil? Bonds?

Developing....

Chatting about the greatest security breach in US history. Food and oil are now national security issues. And for that matter, so is our foreign borrowing.

Volatility is a good hedge against all kinds of disasters: socialism, Obama, other geopolitical and macroeconomic events, government tax revenue shortfalls—pretty much anything that influences price uncertainty. But it is only good for this when acquired at a good price. Buy it cheap, and it is beautiful insurance. Buy it dear, and the negative carry is a leaky artery. So the issue really reduces to finding a good price for volatility. A good place to answer that is history.

Even as China proves to the world it has perfected Greenspan's repertoire for blowing asset bubbles in any and every asset class, the fact that China is still a communist country and thus has to carefully respond to public pressure (ironically, more carefully than "capitalist" America) could put a damper in its plans to overtake the US in flooding the market with masses of excess liquidity. The reason: increasing social anger at the affordability of houses. Because unlike the US, where Mozillo's hellspawn and other subprime henchmen were all too willing to subsidize every deadbeat with a 150% LTV on a FICO of 101, China's credit mechanism is not that "advanced" meaning billions of people have become cut off from the home market for the simple reason of lack of affordability (yes, the concepts of equity and savings are still appreciated in certain non-US dominated parts of the world).

In this 1.5.10 edition of the Fibozachi Technical Update (FTU), we present 12 technical profiles of the S&P 500 Futures (ES), the VIX, the US Dollar Index (DXY), Crude Oil Futures (CL), Gold Futures (GC) and Silver Futures (SI)...

On December 24, the Senate passed a vote by a razor thin margin (with not a vote to spare) to raise the Federal debt ceiling from $12,104 billion to $12,394 billion. The actual debt ceiling increase took effect on December 28. And as the chart below shows, the Treasury's cash flow projections were spot on: 3 days later, and the debt subject to limit surged to $12,254, a jump of over $200 billion in 2 days, and a whopping $150 billion over the old debt ceiling. Three days is all the buffer the administration's reckless spending spree has afforded this country to avoid bankruptcy. Had one more Democratic vote dissented from the stopgap measure, the US would now be in technical default. There is just $140 billion left before the revised debt ceiling is breached. We hope for the country's sake that Bill refunding in January is massive, because as we already pointed out, on January 7th we expect another ~$130 of new Treasuries to be announced for auction by January 15th. And then there are two more weeks in January... Which is why the Treasury better be using that TARP money to pay down all it can, because if the general population understands how close this nation was to the fiscal brink, many more answers may be demanded out of the ruling party as to how it could allow things to get so out of hand.

A week ago we presented the observations of TrimTabs' Charles Biderman, who laid out a logical case for why there is significant circumstantial evidence that the Fed is manipulating markets by purchasing index futures in the aftermarket: "One way to manipulate the stock market would be for the Fed or the Treasury to buy $20 billion, plus or minus, of S&P 500 stock futures each month for a year. Depending on margin levels, $20 billion per month would translate into at least $100 billion in notional buying power...This type of intervention could explain some of the unusual market action in recent months, with stock prices grinding higher on low volume even as companies sold huge amounts of new shares and retail investors stayed on the sidelines. For example, Tyler Durden of ZeroHedge has pointed out that virtually all of the market’s upside since mid-September has come from after-hours S&P 500 futures activity." Today MarketWatch has an open appeal to the Fed to put Biderman's allegation to rest by publicly disproving that it is involved in any direct market manipulation. "Biderman's accusation of PPT market manipulation is another argument in favor of a complete public audit of the Fed's books...there is a widespread belief that the PPT does manipulate stock prices on a daily basis to enrich its pals and screw individual investors. It would be useful to prove them. " We couldn't agree more.

On December 28, 2009, amid the eggnog-sloshed holidays, the Fed solicited comments on a proposed amendment to Regulation D that would create a new Term Deposit Facility (TDF). As we will soon demonstrate, the innocuously sounding facility is nothing more than a de facto debt issuance mechanism that once again pushes the envelope of the Fed’s statutory (not to mention Constitutional) authority.