Archive - Feb 23, 2011

Eric Sprott made an appearance at Casey Research Gold and Resource Summit where in addition to providing a succinct summary of all his monthly letters from the past year, whose forecasts are all gradually panning out, he spoke about the prospects for gold, and particularly silver. We will leave it to readers to parse through the brief must watch clip, but here is the punchling for those wondering why increasingly more distributors are reporting indefinite lack of physical silver inventory: "There's $22 billion of silver available in the world, of which the ETFs already own half, and between you guys and us we probably own the other half... Which means there's nothing left."

And so the Illinois pension bomb has been kicked down the street for another few months. The state just priced its delayed $3.7 billion bond courtesy of a plethora of International Wealth Funds. As the WSJ reported earlier "Initial indications on the deal Tuesday showed $6.1 billion in orders, with around a fifth of those coming from international investors, such as sovereign-wealth funds and insurance companies, one market participant said." The use of proceeds, as reported previously, is to fund payments to state employee pension funds. In other words, Illinois pensioners are now on the hook to the periodic generosity of bondholders to make sure there is enough money in the pot to fund their retirement.

Six seconds BiTCHeZ!

A look at a AAA muni.

And so we go from one lunatic to another. In an "exclusive interview" with the FT, Muammar Gadaffi's son, al-Saadi, told the newspaper, whose parent Pearson PLC is 3% owner by the Libyan Sovereign Wealth Fund, "made it clear that he believed any such new regime would still include his father. “My father would stay as the big father who advises,” he told the Financial Times, adding that direct administrative powers should be handed over to a new generation." And further confirming the soon to be deposed ruler's break with reality, were accusations that the reason why the Libyan airforce has been shooting at protestors over the past week, was to protect the country from "thousands of al-Qaeda" infiltrators who had taken over the eastern part of the country. Touching on a topic discussed yesterday, namely that the Gaddafi regime may engage in sabotage against its oil industry, al-Saadi “said that the army would be sent to guard facilities if necessary. The army is still very strong,” he said. “If we hear anything, we will send some battalions. When people see the army, they will be afraid.” In other words, expect to hear news of major disruptions in the country's oil infrastructure which will promptly be blamed on al-Qaeda by the Gaddafis. And going back to reality, we read that the death toll in Libya has surpassed 10,000 people.

The US Treasury completed the latest ponzi shuffling of Treasuries to Primary Dealers (who will shortly send it all back to the Fed, pocketing a few hundred million in bid/ask spreads and commissions in the process), selling $35 billion in 5 Year bonds at a 2.19% high yield, the highest since April 2010. The internals, as has lately been the case, were not pretty. The bid to cover was 2.69 compared to 2.97 previously and 2.76 LTM average. Directs took down just 7.7%, as it now becomes obvious that the "UK" is no longer gobbling up bonds, and we expect the UK-bond build up as per TIC will stop in a month or two tops. Indirects also took down less than average, as foreign banks purchased just 34.2% of the auction, compared to 41.5% on average. Which of course means that PDs had to step into save the day: at 58.2%, PDs took down the highest amount since July 2009. Lastly, the auction prices about 2 bps wide of the when issued. That we could have such a weak auction in a day when risk is surging, is a stunner. Have gold and silver (and the CHF) finally become the widely accepted new risk avoidance products, instead of the USD and the UST? If so, that is a far bigger revolution than anything happening in the Maghreb now.

Remember when all "experts", pundits, and all other idiot verietals couldn't shut up how gold was going to triple digits imminently? Yes, neither do we.

RANsquawk US Afternoon Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 23/02/11

You really can't make this shit up: "The economy is in a much stronger position to handle” rising oil prices, Tim Geithner said today during a Bloomberg Breakfast in Washington. “Central banks have a lot of experience in managing these things." We are, all of us, now doomed.

A Friendly bankster consoles a homeowner who thought was getting a loan modification...

NC-17/WR: Forbidden for those under the age of 17 or for current employees of Waddell and Reed

Our advice to Italy, which imports 425,000 barrels of oil each day from Tripoli: "Panic." Following yesterday's Force Majeure announcement from Libya which meant that oil production and exports will continue only for a few more days, the FT now reports that over half of Libya's production, or about 750,000 barrels is now offline. As Libya accounts for ~2% of global oil exports, this means that 1% of world oil output has just been removed. And to all those who claim that excess OPEC capacity can be easily substituted, sorry it can't - Libyan crude is far higher in quality than the general muck, meaning it is not a simple apples for apples replacement. From the FT: "Industry executives told the Financial Times that at least half of Libya’s 1.6m barrels a day oil output had been closed down. They cautioned, however, that they could only estimate the total outage since they did not have direct knowledge of production at their competitors’ oilfields." And if Nomura's earlier call is correct that a combined Libya-Algeria oil stoppage will result in the doubling of crude prices (and one can only imagine what happens if Saudi is thrown into the fray), then our January call for "higher" oil may lead to some very tidy profits. In the meantime, we expect the partial Libyan oil closure to reach 100% shortly.

While it is not surprising that the Swiss Franc is surging almost as much as silver in today's flight to safety episode, and even "value investor" Whitney Tilson is rumored to be shorting Netflix again after topticking his cover with immaculate perfection, what is a little disturbing is that the dollar has plunged to the lowest levels since February 3. The reason, of course, is that with global unrest spreading like Molotov cocktail fire, and implied US GDP plunging by 5% in the past week on the hike in oil prices, it is becoming very evident that the recovery myth is now over, despite claims by the NAR charlatans, and another round of quantitative easing is almost inevitable. What that means for the dollar is precisely what one can see on the chart below. As for the use of funds in the upcoming QE episode, perhaps the Fed can instruct the Primary Dealers to go out and buy some WTI this time instead of just crowding into Apple and REITs...

A $10 move in a week is just what the doctor ordered to destroy the last trace of surreality in the whole "economic recovery" story. At this rate we will take out all time high crude prices by mid March. As we have been saying since December, a rapid move in oil will undo years of carefully planned propaganda and money printing. Yet the weakness that "nobody could have possibly predicted" is just as we had forecast: global and US weakness in late February/March, market swoons in March/April (as per DeMark's repeat appearance), Fed releases early indications of QE3 in May. In the meantime, we also get a war as a bonus to boost the US military-defense industrial complex. Pretty much a rerun of the first great depression to the dot.