Archive - Jun 2011

Nearly three weeks ago, on May 17, Zero Hedge, when analyzing the complete collapse in car and thus Industrial production made the following observations: "The immediate impact: the drop in the industrial production already
seen, but the bulk of it due to delayed aftereffects will likely impact
the May number, as the follow through from the Japanese supply chain
halt starts ringing a loud alarm bell across Wall Street. Of course,
this is another thing that all those calling for a 4% H2 GDP could have
absolutely not foreseen (and in fact it was originally supposed to be
positive for the economy, eh Deutsche Bank?). Expect to see drastic
downward cuts to May Industrial Production and next, to Q2 GDP." Fast forward to today, when, in an example of poetic irony, none other than Deutsche Bank's grossly overpaid economists also known as Shaman witchdoctors in less than polite circles, have just come out with a note titled: "Quantifying the impact of autos on Q2 real GDP" in which they, gasp, discover that "a near 30% decline in motor vehicle production is consistent with roughly a two full percentage point drag on Q2 real GDP. In our forecast, we are assuming a decline of around 1.5% because we think that we might see a small bounce in June production that will push the quarterly decline in motor vehicle production to something closer to -20%." Well, better late and always cluelessly wrong, than never... and still cluelessly wrong.

Amid the usual meandering propaganda, Tim Geithner finally catches up to Zero Hedge from February 2010: "The three largest U.S. banks account for 32 percent of total banking assets in the United States, in comparison to 46 percent for the three largest in Japan, 58 percent in Canada, 63 percent in the UK, 65 percent in France, 70 percent in Germany, 71 percent in Italy, and 76 percent in Switzerland. And total banking assets are 461 percent of GDP in the UK, 178 percent in Germany, and 820 percent in Switzerland." Supposedly this is intended to indicate just how much less concentrated the US banking system is compared to other nations: "Some argue that the U.S. financial system is too concentrated, which could promote systemic risks.  But the U.S. banking system today is less concentrated than that of any other major economy.  And
total banking assets in the United States today are only about the size
of U.S. GDP – much lower than in other developed economies." So just because the entire system is broken beyond repair, it makes sense to tout that the US is broken just a little bit less than everyone else? Also, where is the mention of the fact that the bulk of these balance sheets are chock full of toxic US securitized detritus and that without the US selling its worthless crap around the world, we would not be in the predicament we are in now. In the meantime, here is what Zero Hedge presented in February of last year...

Duh ...

Last week, more than 70 days after President Obama sent our military to attack Libya without a congressional declaration of war, the House of Representatives finally voted on two resolutions attempting to rein in the president. This debate was long overdue, as polls show Americans increasingly are frustrated by congressional inaction. According to a CNN poll last week, 55 percent of the American people believe that Congress, not the president, should have the final authority to decide whether the U.S. should continue its military mission in Libya. Yet for more than 70 days Congress has ignored its constitutional obligations and allowed the president to usurp its authority....I believe these resolutions and amendments indicate that the tide is turning in the right direction. I am confident we will see Congress move toward ending our unconstitutional wars. The American people are demanding no less. The president's attack on Libya was unconstitutional and thus unlawful. This policy must be reversed.

John Taylor is again making the media rounds, following last week's CNBC appearance in which his punchline is that next year was going to be "truly miserable", today he was on Bloomberg continuing his thesis of how doom and gloom will be with the US for a long, long time, and that courtesy of no QE3, risk is about to go bidless (he differs with the Zero Hedge outlook only on whether there will be QE 3 or not). His response to what an environment of no fiscal or monetary stimulus (in case it was not clear): it is bullish for the JPY, bullish for the USD, bearish for commodities and bearish for stocks. More importantly, in terms of timing, Taylor says that after being short the dollar, he went long a "week and a half ago" and expects a big upside USD catalyst in the next "3 or 4 days." which he follows up with the cryptic: "Our analysis of the markets has shown that they are very, very dangerous." Another trade that JT has on is a long JPY, short EUR - the reason for the EUR bearishness is that Taylor is very "confused" by the second European bailout. As for his long USd conviction, it is based on his belief that the market appears to believe that QE 3 is coming, and that once it is made clear that there will be no further monetary easing (good luck with that), the dollar will surge, following a slowdown in the economy, and a shortage of dollars.

Another piece of crap to watch out for.

The good news: this week's insider sales to buys were half of last week's 147x. The bad news: this week's insider selling to buying came at 69.3x. As a reminder, a baseline bearish indication occurs whenever the insider selling surpasses 30x. That it has surpassed that threshold for virtually every week in the past two years seems to continue to be lost on investors. There were 8 insider purchases of S&P 500 stocks for $3.4 million, the bulk of which was in Marshall & Ilsley stock for $1.7 million, while the sales were focused on Heinz, Iron Mountain, Agilent, Broadcom and NetApp, where insiders dumped a total of $86 million.

A snapshot of the US Afternoon Briefing covering Stocks, Bonds, FX, etc.

Market Recaps to help improve your Trading and Global knowledge
Weakness in CAD evident after mixed Canadian economic data

There is so much ideological, quasi-religious fanaticism around "free trade" (there is no such thing as "free trade," there are only various permutations of managed trade) and "industrial policy" (every nation has one, explicit or implicit) that it is difficult to make any sense of the many intertwined issues. Ideological purity is not a substitute for knowledge, any more than a superficial admiration of machines equals actually knowing how to assemble, maintain and repair them. As a background context, we might start by noting that Marx outlined how finance capital comes to dominate industrial capital, as industry comes to depend on the credit extended by the banks/finance capital. The key takeaway: if you don't control the banks, then they will end up dominating industrial capital. In the U.S., we have the worst of both worlds: a dominant financial Elite and various cartels (military-industrial, sickcare, agribusiness, etc.) that have captured what little of the Central State that isn't already beholden to financial capital.

This is not good. From the RT clip: "A nuclear rabbit has sparked online panic in Japan. Amateur footage shows an earless mutant rabbit, and the person who made the video claims it was shot just outside the exclusion zone near Japan's crippled Fukushima plant. The clip has given rise to fears the radiation threat in the area is far worse than previously thought. The funny bunny has caused an online frenzy, with predictions that babies in Japan may soon be born with mutations."

Last month, the 3 Year bond auction conducted on May 10 was memorable for 3 reasons: it was the auction that breached the US debt ceiling, it priced at 1.000%, and came at the third highest Bid To Cover in history, despite a decline in Indirect participation. Basically the auction was a massive success primarily due to the Primary Dealer participation, which took down 51.9% of the entire issue, or $16.6 billion of $32 billion. We predicted, accurately, that "Naturally, none of this due to actual demand, but merely due to Primary
Dealer expectations of a prompt and profitable flip back to Brian Sack... Look for Cusip QM5 to be briskly monetized as soon as the next 3 Year
POMO is announced, when the next POMO schedule is revealed tomorrow at 2
pm." Well the schedule came and went, and following today's just completed $6.4 billion POMO, we see just why all recent bond auctions continue to price at such phenomenal internals: at today's POMO the On The Run QM5 accounted for 3.189 billion of the entire $6.397 billion, or exactly 50%. This follows the May 24 POMO at which QM5 represented $5.14 billion of the total $6.4 billion. In other words, less than a month later, PDs have flipped out of $8.3 billion, or exactly 50% of the entire Dealer allocation at the auction. Basically, had the Dealers not had the backstopped certainty that the Fed would gladly gobble up whatever 3 Years they had for sale, and if heaven forbid, they would be forced to keep $8.3 billion in capital yielding just 1.000% on their books, the auction internals would have been vastly different. But such is life when monetization continues... for another 3 weeks until the POMO barrage ends on June 30. For all those praising the strength of each and every auction, perhaps it would be prudent to wait until July 1 and see just how much interest Dealers have when they don't have the Fed in their back pocket buying up half of the entire auction takedown...

More color from Muddy Waters' Carson Block on why he believes the now infamous Sino-Forest is a ponzi scheme: "It's a Ponzi scheme in that the company perpetually issues securities in order to fund itself. Even by its own fraudulent numbers, the company does not generate any free cash and has not done so in sixteen years. Were the company be unable to issue additional securities to fund itself, it would collapse. That to me is the definition or epitomizes the definition of a Ponzi. "In this situation, the company appears to be investing for the 23rd century. It's sixteen straight years burning cash, no guidance as to what the rationale is to acquire so many trees so far ahead of customer orders. This is taking a capex fraud--we have found several of these in China--it's taking it to the next level where you're not constrained by the walls of a factory and no one is able to really see the movement of physical goods. It could grow to be infinite provided that the capital markets continue to fund it."

As we speculated yesterday...

• If in Fitch's opinion, an announced exchange offer constitutes a DDE,
  the sovereign issuer rating will be lowered to 'C', indicating that
  default is highly likely in the near term
• Fitch will place the issuer rating of the sovereign into default, specifically 'Restricted Default' (RD) upon closing of a distrssed debt exchange.
• Fitch says a potential Greek debt exchange if voluntary, could still be considered a default event
• Fitch says Greek debt exchange would be a default if bondholders terms were worse than original terms
• Fitch says stressed sovereign debt exchange with worse terms is a technical default even if deemed voluntary

The gist is clear: the great unknown of how the rating agencies will treat even a "voluntary" restructuring is still in the closet.

Time for English 101. Spending cuts mean job losses. Reducing the deficit means job losses. Balancing the budget means job losses. Austerity means job losses. And lots of job losses means slower economic growth. The financial markets don’t believe or understand this yet. Stay cautious and stay nimble, and for the time being, stay short.

As Goldman stock probes new lows every day, and in passing news has just announced it would sell its largely irrelevant Litton Loan mortgage servicing unit to Ocwen financial (which was named so after the founders could not come up with a name so they inverted Newco, but that is a story for another day) for $264 million but retain any potential fraud liability, the firm is now expected to release its own trove of documents expected to "defend" the firm from the various allegations presented in the Carl Levin 639 page report. The report  has already served as the basis for a subpoena lobbed at Goldman, and which some predict will have a much lower threshold of proving guilt courtesy of New York's "Martin Act" has pushed the stock to a one year low. It was only inevitable that Goldman would come up with some jiggering of its numbers to prove that it was in fact innocent. We wonder if the report will also provide an explanation for the following words by one Deeb Salem, a Goldman trader in the structure products group: "We began to encourage this squeeze, with plans of getting very short again." Swenson, Salem’s supervisor, sent e-mails in May 2007 urging traders to offer prices that will “cause maximum pain” and “have people totally demoralized.” In interviews with the committee, Salem and Swenson denied attempting a short squeeze, the report said." Regardless, we can't wait to see the latest attempt to obfuscate the public opinion with the mixing of apples and oranges. Alas, Goldman may be surprised to find that the general population is not quite as dumb as it expects this time around, and there will be those who will gladly cut through the fluff of any posted rebuke within minutes.