Archive - Jul 31, 2011

While there are some undertones of caution in the latest letter from the head of Goldman's worst performing group ("I suspect the reason why the bond market has rallied and the Dollar and equities have fallen, is because there is going to be a budget deal, which the markets worry will weaken the cyclical GDP growth outlook further"), his bottom line (literally) is precisely what everyone on Wall Street, and everyone else who writes rants against responsible fiscal management (wait, wasn't Congress responsible 1 year ago? or two years ago? No of course not. It became an emergency a week ago) thinks. And it is as follows: "Go on President Obama and Congress; give us a nice pleasant Summer surprise!" Indeed, when you cut out all the hollow rhetoric of all those whose livelihood depends on the status quo^TM and on "borrowing" from the future (cold fusion will certainly help with our energy problems one day... so will the tooth fairy), this is what it is all about.

Goldman's Themistoklis Fiotakis summarizes the main events in the upcoming week, which will likely see a very short term bout of buying frenzy on the debt ceiling deal, following by the realization that America can kiss fiscal stimulus goodbye and that real GDP is set to contract over the next quarter to a negative print as the last benefits from QE2 vanish and are replaced by nothing. Also, with the upcoming weekly earning focusing on financial companies as announced yesterday, there will be little help from the only bright spot in the so-called economy, especially with the flashing red sign of the July Nonfarm Payroll Print (consensus +95K, Goldman +50K, even LaSagna +50K) due on Friday. The half life of Europe's second bailout was under 5 days. We give America about the same.

I want everyone to take a deep breath and stop inhaling all that bad debt dope...

With a debt ceiling deal now a given and purely a matter of dotting i's and crossing t's, potentially pending a several day debt "breathing room" extension to be approved by Obama, whose TV appearance we expect shortly to provide a conclusion to this "grand compromise" farce, here are some of the key soundbites from the three primary constituents as of their media appearances this morning.

Below are the key clips from this morning's Meet The Press which is devoted exclusively to proponents of the status quo^TM, whose entire argument boils down to the syllogistic: "cut spending yes... but not today...never today" In fact, it is best to make any cuts the next administration's problem. So assuming Obama gets reelected, and there is another debt ceiling hike, which there will have to be, it means about $7 trillion on top of the currently debated $3 trillion, whoever inherits this mess from Obama (who in turn inherited his mess from Bush, who in turn inherited his mess from Clinton, and so on), will have $24 trillion debt to deal with on day 1, with about $16-17 trillion of GDP. And that person will have to cut spending? What idiot would want that job? Anyway, we fully expect the paid government workers from the rating agencies to shortly upgrade the US to AAA+ on renewed growth prospects courtesy of 140% debt to GDP in 5 years...and that excludes the $7 trillion in off balance sheet GSE debt.

Resolved for a moment or not it's time to give this chasm in American political and economic life a closer look from a decidedly off South Main Street USA perspective.

And there you have it. Mark Zandi, better known for predicting at least 18 occurrences of a US recovery in the past 4 quarters, and being as wrong on the shape of the US growth curve as everyone else on Wall Street (although being Moody's head economist that is a perfectly normal track record), just told CNN's State of the Union that the deal is substantive enough to where Moody's will not move to downgrade the US' AAA rating. Naturally, the fact that this is merely another massive can kicking exercise which will see the US debt ceiling raised by $3 trillion with actual cumulative cuts of about $100 billion tops by November 2012 at which point yet another debt ceiling hike will have to be planned is irrelevant. All that matters is to get the S&P back to the year's highs, 120% debt/GDP (same as Greece) be damned.