Archive - Mar 3, 2011

You can go back through thousands of years of economic history and realize one fact: No country has ever printed their way to prosperity, all who have tried have wound up in hyperinflation, war or demise. How a guy can teach himself calculis, get into Harvard, become a professor at Princeton and NOT understand that - well it totally defies logic. The idiot was asked about the one time in our history that we had no debt. (Please don't think we balanced the budget during the Clinton years - for you can't debt (apply IOU's in the Social Security Trust Fund) as income.) Andrew Jackson balanced the budget and wiped away our debt by using non debt based money. Bernanke was asked about this during a recent hearing and he scoffed at it - his merit? Because it happened before the Civil War.

The chart below confirms what we have all grown to love and expect from the robotic algo stock trading bias, on days when volume does not exist. The trade here is obviously tomorrow's NFP, which is at a critical junction: should Bernanke wish to proceed with QE3 this may be his last opportunity to doctor the employment data to start a smooth transition toward further monetization expectation. Should NFP be a blow out, the next NFP report will be in April and it will have to be truly abysmal for anyone in Congress to buy that further monetary intervention is required just two months ahead of the end of QE2 in June. On the other hand, Bernanke wants stock prices to be as high as possible at the point when the transition to a QE-free environment occurs, assuming of course, anyone at the Fed believes the economy can ever exist without a daily dump of $5-7 billion.

It seems there is just one market which the Fed is either unable, or unwilling to manipulate: that of Portuguese (and generally peripheral European) debt. And for good reason. As the WSJ reports, Portugal started the year with about €4 billion in cash: "Fresh borrowing and other public transactions suggest Portugal has this
year likely increased that number to around €4 billion. The official
said in an email that the figure had risen but didn't elaborate." There is one small problem: the country has a €4 billion outflow on April 15... and has to pay down €20 billion worth of debt maturities and budget deficits through the end of this year! Where the country will get this money... nobody knows. Just BTFD. But not in Portuguese bonds. As the charts below show that is still the only asset that can't find a greater idiot.

Yesterday at Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) live press event in San Francisco, CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the much anticipated second version of the iPad (iPad 2), which will begin shipping March 11th. Despite Jobs’ recent health concerns (he is still on medical leave), the man behind the most innovative technology company in the world right now was determined to unveil the iPad 2 on his own, and looked relatively healthy while doing it according to several attendees, saying that “we’ve been working on this product for awhile, and I didn’t want to miss it.”
The iPad 2 is a very impressive gadget – much like its predecessor – and should push the company further ahead in the tablet race (Apple owns 90% of the tablet market share selling approximately 15 million devices in nine months during 2010), making it that much more difficult for competitors to catch up in the near term. Here are some highlights of the iPad 2:

That government projections are not worth the price of the paper (especially not in today's dis-disinflationary environment) they are printed on is no secret. As Zero Hedge recently demonstrated the margin of error in the most recent budgetary prediction can only be classified as insane. We wrote: "On February 28, 2001 George Bush said this about his 2002 Budget: “It
will retire nearly $1 trillion in debt over the next four years.”
Instead, US debt, which at that point was $5.7 trillion, rose to $7.7
trillion. $3 trillion rounding error? Also in the same budget, Bush
predicted a $5.6 trillion surplus over the next ten years, which would
wipe out all of America's debt by 2011. The latest debt figure was $14.1
trillion. A $14.1 trillion rounding error, or a nearly five fold
increase in "rounding errors" in a decade." So that's debt, what about budget surplus and/or deficit projections? It's not any prettier. And courtesy of the NYT we can now see this in an easy to comprehend animation. Following the jump readers can see just how endlessly upward biased projections tend to almost without fail deviate with reality (and unemployment rates as well). The best indication: the 2012 projection to the 2008 budget forecast callsed for a surplus. Now we are expecting a massive deficit. So why do we listen to these monkeys with typewriters again?

With everyone focused on municipal developments following the recent muni scare (although with muni outflows dropping to the lowest in months per the latest ICI data, it seems the panic may be over... of course this is at the expense of equity inflows as we had speculated some months ago) the latest news out of the Lucio Report are likely to be carefully scrutinized by the municipal investment community. According to Reuters: "Fewer U.S. states in February hit the mark on forecasting receipts from withholding taxes compared to January, a sign that a recent rebound in revenues may be slowing down, an economic newsletter said on Thursday." The summary from the report: "Around the country results were mixed," said the Liscio Report, which takes monthly surveys of states' tax receipts." Will this add more fuel to the Whitney fire? Look for inflection points in the MUB to find out.

President Obama appeared on TV to give his update statement over Libya: there was little new in it - he repeated his calls for Gaddafi to leave or something to that nature (which Gaddafi already responded to preemptively by saying that "he is not a president so he can not step down"), but most importantly said that he has now approved the use of military jets (thank you Enterprise) for evacuation purposes. Of course, the question of how provocation would be responded to considering there is still no "no fly zone" instituted is merely tempting the hand of fate to immediately retaliate to any provocation. In the meantime, Reuters reports that the Pentagon is now actively monitoring Libyan airspace. Which is to be expected: with the CVN65 Enterprise a day or so away from Tripoli, they would certainly have an active monitoring interest. But the FTW line today belongs to Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam who justified recent bombing raids as follows: "First of all the bombs (were) just to frighten them to go away." It only makes sense that the whole world is now one big tragicomedy.

Banzai7 salutes the master!

That the bankrupt US is living on borrowed time between various can kicking episodes is by now not news to anyone. Neither is it news that as long as the broader population finds brief distractions, such as the latest iPad app or the occasional Charlie Sheen scandal, which keep them busy in peak advertising hours, few if any will care about the sordid details of the unsustainable big picture. This ongoing apathy is starting to get to some market commentators most notably Paul Farrell of MarketWatch who summarizes events in the past 2 years as follows: " Admit it, we lost the opportunity. Jail a bank CEO and Wall Street will miraculously reform? You’re joking, right? Wall Street got away with a “legal” bank heist. Today the should-be/would-be inmates are running the prison. Wall Street’s corrupt banks have lost their moral compass … their insatiable greed has become a deadly virus destroying its host nation … their campaign billions buy senate votes, stop regulators’ actions, manipulate presidential decisions. Wall Street money controls voters, runs America, both parties. Yes, Wall Street is bankrupting America." But nobody cares. So what would make America care? Here are the four time-bombs which Farrell believes will be sufficient to blow up Wall Street.

Everyone wants to know how the Central State can "help" small businesses so they will start hiring again. The answer is simple: fix the structural imbalances in the U.S. economy and start favoring real production over financial speculation. Please note the question at hand is "what should be done," not "what can be done politically." Politically, everything I propose here is impossible. The Status Quo's stupendous power and share of the national wealth is based on preserving those structural imbalances. The last thing the toadies and parasites in Washington want is to upend the structural imbalances which feed their Masters, the Financial Power Elites and crony-Capitalist cartels.

John Taylor, a long-time outspoken critic of flawed monetary policy appeared on Bloomberg TV in the aftermath of Trichet's press conference which had an extremely hawkish tone to it, implying that the ECB may hike rates as soon as April (indicatively, those who play the lottery have a better chance of winning than an ECB hiking any time soon). When asked about his opinion where the Euro is going, the manager of the world's biggest FX hedge fund said "Higher." Although not for long: he believes that the slowing of the global growth is "slowing more in Europe than anywhere else" and logically any attempt to cut off inflation will result in an even further slow down in the European economy. Specifically, Taylor believes the Euro will peak at 1.45 by June, at which point it will start drifting lower as the market realizes the European (read German) export miracle is over. As for the US, Taylor has nothing good to say there either: "We are going into a recession, damn it" - this will be due to the Fed hiking rates at the end of Q3 should the current phase of artificial expansion continue. Taylor predicts a 4,3,2,1% rate of annualized GDP growth by quarter: "by the time the fourth comes, everyone will be screaming - 'Jeez we are going into a recession'." As for the US stock market, Taylor predicts stocks will continue rising for another few months, at which point the "coming recession" will take over. Of course, Taylor's premise is based on the assumption QE does not continue into the end of 2011 and further. Which is a very aggressive assumption. After all, we have trillions in debt to be monetized by some central bank. Alas, it will have to be our own, as everyone will be busy doing the same to their own debt.

RANsquawk US Afternoon Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 03/03/11

Bernanke's plan to recreate Libya in our own back yard is continuing to work magnificently. It is no surprise that on Charles Ponzi day, the update to food stamp usage indicates that in December those receiving an average of $134 per month has just hit 44.1 million people. These lucky people will soon be able to buy an inflation adjusted 2.3 crumbs of notional bread with this generous handout from the Chairsatan. In other words, America is now the land of the free, home of the brave, of whom 14.3% can't afford to eat, even with all the new jobs created by both the old QE1, Lite and 2, and soon to be 3. Don't forget that according to the Bernank, QE2 has already created 250,000 new jobs... all at the a modest cost of $1.3 million per job.

“For me, the question is clear. Do we want land records in America to be governed by major banking conglomerates on Wall Street or the people and laws of the United States of America?”

Update: Libyan Rebel group rejects Venezuela peace proposal according to a report, as the Pentagon announces it remains cautious but not against Libya no-fly zone

Just headlines from AFP for now. Hpefully this should end the most embarrassing 12 hour period ever in which the dumbest news possible actually impacted the commodities market.