Archive - Apr 18, 2011

Live blogging the S&P conference call. The Q&A session will be critical. A rather interesting one: "Did the Federal Reserve Board's program of quantitative easing contribute to your decision to revise the outlook to negative? Answer - No. We find that risks of deflation in the U.S. have lessened and that there are few indications that inflation expectations have become untethered. Although it will be challenging to sequence the unwinding of these operations while raising policy interest rates once the recovery has become firmly rooted, we believe that the credibility of monetary policy will continue to be a credit strength for the U.S."

Since most of us only deal with mortgage loan origination fees when we buy a home or refinance a mortgage, the average citizen will have a tough time sorting out the often-arcane issues at stake. But the bottom line is straightforward: the already-limited mortgage market is about to become more limited, as small mortgage brokers are being shoved out of business. Call it “unintended consequences” or a cloaked plan to channel more of the mortgage business to the “too big to fail” big banks, but regardless of the motivations, the rules end up limiting consumer choice and making it harder for home buyers to get a loan. That's bad for housing in two ways: limited competition drives costs up, and marginal buyers will find nobody wants their business because it's simply not worth the compensation allowed by the Fed's new rules.

Following up on his note from last week (posted here), Nomura's Bob Janjuah shares the following observations on today's market moving event.

On Monday, the S&P ratings agency downgraded the US debt outlook to negative. The Triple A debt rating was maintained by S&P, but the outlook downgrade by the agency, which hit the U.S. stock market hard and also prompted a sell off in U.S. Treasuries. Yet gold prices closed in on major psychological resistance of $1500 per troy ounce... so here's the deal!

Goldman's opinion on the S&P action took just a little longer than PIMCO to be distributed to clients: 108 minutes. Not surprisingly, after eagerly pushing rating agency opinions to clients buying CDOs from Goldman, the firm's economists are now eagerly trying to talk it down: "Clearly, the US fiscal situation is unsustainable unless a large,
multi-year fiscal tightening is implemented.  However, there is no
information in today’s report about the fiscal situation that was not
already known.  Academic research has generally found that rating agency
actions lag market pricing, rather than lead it.  Any relevance of
today’s announcement is a) as a potential catalyst for renewed market
focus on these issues, particularly if the other agencies follow suit,
b) a signal of a nonzero probability of an outright ratings downgrade
over the next few years." And who was the research conducted by? Moody's? A Princeton Ph.D. academic? Yes, we know the country is screwed. But we can sure do without this condescending BS.

That Mohamed El-Erian is the most prolific op-ed writer-cum-CEO and co-CIO of a $1.4 trillion fixed fund in history is well-known. There rarely passes a 12 hour period without Mohamed's deep thoughts hitting the tape somewhere. Yet that El-Erian took a whopping 90 minutes to pen, clear with legal, and publish an oped to the S&P 9:00 am Eastern rating action definitively proves there was absolutely no leakage of this "earth shattering" news to anyone, anywhere.

Following the bad idiot move by the S&P earlier, here comes the good idiot. Per Moody's: "Moody's Maintain Top US Rating, Outlook Positive." In other news, Mark Zandi is violently and uncontrollably dry heaving in a corner somewher, wondering why, oh why, is it so difficult to get Tim Geithner's job.

Following the S&P news, oddly enough, one is not seeing a flight to safety away from US paper and into Greek. In fact, observing the absolutely record 20% yield print on the 2 Year Greek bond, one may be excused to speculate that the inverse is happening. Also, with the cash price of the 2 Year now at 20% and the prices of longer duration bonds in the 60s, there is now no reason to actually restructure the country: bonds have it pretty much fully priced in. After all, the Santorini liquidation value should be worth at least 20-30 cents on the bond dollar, er, euro.

As if the implied US downgrade was not bad enough for ostritches whose heads are infatuated with sand, here comes JPM's Lawrence Eagles destroying the myth about crude demand destruction, so aggresively spun by a flaiiling Saudi Arabia which can not afford to admit that the only reason it can not hike production is because it is already at capacity. From JPM: "Our refinery activity projections show that crude throughput (demand
for crude) will rise by at least 2.7 mbd between now and August, and
will need to be much higher to avoid a steep second half 2011 product
stock draw. Minister al-Naimi’s comments imply OPEC March production
at below 28.4 mbd, and thus a steep increase in supply will be needed
over the coming months to meet our estimated 29.7 mbd call on OPEC in
3Q11. The reality is that following a supply shock, the oil market can
sometimes need wider than normal differentials to trigger the economic
adjustments. If supplies are not increased decisively for June liftings be prepared for price spikes over $130/bbl." Translation: $5 gas average prices are now virtually an inevitability.

The Rate Storm that I have been preaching about is nigh upon us. Greece and the US today, who the hell knows tomorrow.

The Treasury's prepared statement is out 25 minutes following the S&P planned downgrade, which only those who don't get inside information were surprised by.

• US Treasury's Miller says S&P negative outlook underestimates ability of US leaders to come together to deal with US fiscal challenges
• Both political parties now agree it is time to begin bringing down deficits as a share of GDP.
• US economy is strengthening as it emerges from recent recession.

But the comment of the day comes from Hugh Johnson (no seriously): "This is tape bomb. It doesn't come as a complete surprise to the markets however seeing it in black and white print it is going to shake the market up for sure. You see the dollar down a bit, gold getting bid...and a break of 1298 on the S&P could send it to 1285 in the course of the week."

Who would have thunk that the one beneficiary of an insolvent US (with both bonds and stock futures plunging) would be gold. Oh wait...

The negative outlook on our rating on the U.S. sovereign signals that we believe there is at least a one-in-three likelihood that we could lower our long-term rating on the U.S. within two years. The outlook reflects our view of the increased risk that the political negotiations over when and how to address both the medium- and long-term fiscal challenges will persist until at least after national elections in 2012. Some compromise that achieves agreement on a comprehensive budgetary consolidation program--containing deficit reduction measures in amounts near those recently proposed, and combined with meaningful steps toward implementation by 2013--is our baseline assumption and could lead us to revise the outlook back to stable. Alternatively, the lack of such an agreement or a significant further fiscal deterioration for any reason could lead us to lower the rating.

In a very unstunning development which would expose all those Greek and EU proclamations about a solvent Greece for another relentless barrage of lies, it appears that Germany is now resolved to not only restructuring Greece (and with certain Greek bonds trading around 60 the market has effectively thrown in the towel), but has provided a timeframe in which this should occur: "German government sources said on Monday Greece will likely restructure its sovereign debt before the end of summer, putting a time frame to recent speculation that sent the euro to its lowest in two weeks. "Decisive voices within the federal government expect that Greece will not make it through the summer without a restructuring," one high-ranking coalition source told Reuters. "That does not mean that the federal government is striving for (a restructuring) but such a step will probably not be avoidable," he added, echoing views from other coalition sources." Supposedly the thinking in Europe is that banks should have built up a sufficiently large capital buffer to where the permanent impairment of Greek senior debt will not lead to another bank run. The question however is how well has Europe considered any other unpredictable consequences, which by definition, are "unpredictable." Recall that the financial system nearly ended after the Lehman bankruptcy following the freeze in money markets: a side effect that nobody had expected at the time. What will happen this time around when Greece becomes the first "Lehman" in the sovereign realm, and just how many trillions will have to be invested to undo "unforeseen" consequences?