Archive - Aug 2011

When we said yesterday, while presenting live video of the "alleged" Libyan revolution, that "Since everyone is blatantly lying, on both sides of the conflict, we leave it to readers to decide what is actually happening." Which is why we can understand why some may have gotten the impression that Gadaffi's son Saif al Isam was arrested, after the Libyan rebel movement first reported this, and the ICC subsequently confirmed. Because it turns out he is anything but. According to Reuters, "Saif al Islam, the son of Libya leader Muammar Gaddafi who rebels and the International Criminal Court had been arrested, arrived in the early hours of Tuesday at the Tripoli hotel where foreign reporters have been staying." The following live blog from SkyNews merely confirms what we said yesterday: namely that Libyans on both sides of the divided have taken to doing what the developed (and for now, far less revolutionary) world does so well on a daily basis - lie to everyone about everything.

We may have been pessimistic with our assumption that gold would reach $2000 in under a week. At the rate it is going, it may get there tonight: upon reopening, gold immediately soared from just south of $1900, to a new all time higher of $1912 as pent up buying interest took out every offer in the market. This time around silver is not far behind and after many were staunchly pushing shorts around the $44 price, the metal also snapped above the $44 barrier. The only question we have is whether the CME will hike margins before or after gold touches $2000. Since the stop loss orders there are likely quite aggressive, we hope our Comex friends would push gold a little lower before it takes off for its next target 5-digit target. Incidentally, those who are long spam and short gold may want to consider unwinding that trade at this point.

It’s ironic that the government often relies on an insipidly weak logic when it erodes the privacy of its citizens. If you don’t like how USA PATRIOT Act provisions allow then to tap your telephone or check out your rental history, they say, “Hey, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear! Obviously the same reasoning doesn’t apply to them… and it’s another example of the tragic farce that is modern government.

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 22/08/1

For a perfect ending to a schizophrenic day we go to Reuters which has just reported that Goldman's CEO has hired high profile defense attorney Reid Weingarten. The market is not waiting to find out the details, and GS stock is tumbling. What has alos happened is that gold futures punched through $1900 for the first time ever. $2000 is the next target, and will likely be taken out within the week.

Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.  --Friedrich August von Hayek

Perhaps the most defining features of an asset bubble is a marked and persistent deviation from the underlying metrics that once determined fundamental value.  We know how real estate in Canada stacks up when compared to GDP, personal disposable income (cities and provinces), rents (cities and provinces), and inflation.  It's not pretty.  As with any real estate bubble, the overvaluation is most extreme in a handful of cities.  The regional data can be seen in the highlighted links.  Certainly not all areas of the country have experienced a massive divergence from underlying fundamentals, but it is extensive enough to concern us.

Last week we had Citigroup warning that the market bottom is about to fall out, as the Fed is more than likely to disappoint already very lofty expectations (according to various estimates from both Goldman and the second Tier banks, i.e., all of them, the market has priced in roughly $500 billion in QE3 already). Today, Bank of America, which may or may not be with us much longer, has taken this desperate alarmism several notches further, and is warning that due to the gridlock in both the fiscal ("fiscal authorities have bombarded the markets with a quadraphonic message of hopelessness") and monetary ("the Fed is out of bullets anyway") stimulative pathways, the likely outcome of anything from DC will be nothig short of a disaster. To wit: "rather than a repeat of 2010, when the Fed saved the day with QE2, we think we are moving closer to a repeat of 2008, when major policy errors devastated the economy." For once we actually agree with Bank of America: "In our view, the pressure to “do something” is now far more likely to result in more desperate or radical measures, even if it is bad policy." Does this mean that we are looking at a TARP "vote down" market reaction this Friday if indeed the chairman disappoints? We will know for sure in about 100 hours, which just may be the longest 100 hours for bulls since the start of the artificial and solely QE inspired bear market levitation in March of 2009.

What is a "Bad address? The answer:

This reveals QE for what it really was: just another “hit” for drug addict that is the global debt system. We’ve already passed the point at which the negative effect of monetary easing (inflation) outweigh its positive effect (markets rallying). This is similar to the state of drug addiction in which the drug barely creates a “high” but is ravaging the user’s system with health problems.

We take this moment from your busy schedules to update you that the CDS of Bank of America has reached escape velocity and has now entered suborbital traffic. At 370 bps, which is where the CDS is trading as of this moment, it is only 30 away from the 400 it hit in March of 2009 when the world had to be bailed out by the Fed: a ploy which this time will not work since every central bank has already doubled down to the hilt. In other news, expect bashing of evil bloggers who indicate BofA default risk spikes to commence momentarily as obviously it is only they who are to blame for BAC's upcoming bailout.

It may not be quite Obama telling us to buy stocks as he did on March 6 due to attractive "profits and earnings ratios", but it is about as close as him advising it is time for everyone to do their patriotic duty and buy shares of floundering Wells Fargo:

• OBAMA CALLED BUFFETT TO DISCUSS MEASURES FOR SPURRING ECONOMY

We can't wait to hear what 'altruistic', taxpayer bailout-funded ideas the Octogenarian of Omaha had. In the meantime we wonder: just why does Obama have an economic advisory team. Oh wait, after everyone bailed on him, Obama has no economic advisors left at all. Carry on then.

BAC CDS is 30 wider, and back to 360.  Its stock is getting hurt.  How long before some renewed focus is applied to the other banks here.  Every day it seems that it is news about real estate that drags down BAC.  The residential problems are at the forefront, but there are problems with the commercial market as well.  Rating agencies, burned so badly before, may be reluctant to provide such generous ratings when deals need to be re-financed.  And in a country where commercial building continued for the past 3 years, but jobs haven't reappeared, how much pricing power is really there?  The CMBX are hitting one year lows (in price terms).  Since commercial real estate problems haven't been grabbing the headlines, I suspect there is more room to go on banks. In Europe, the banks are all under renewed pressure.  This is morphing into both a sovereign debt problem and now a senior bank debt problem.  Stories of some difficulties getting overnight funding abound.  Most stories are probably just rumours, but in this environment, they are believable.

Our congratulations and belated birthday wishes to Ron Paul, who yesterday raised a sizable $1.8 million in a "money bomb" fund raiser in under 24 hours. As a reminder this is merely an appetizer of what Paul's loyalists can do, considering back in 2007 Paul raised over $6 million in the same time frame. Nonetheless, we find it ironic that the very same fiat confetti that Bernanke prints with reckless abandon is the same that will be used to hopefully one day end the tyranny of central banking.