Archive - Sep 19, 2011

Those kids are alright...

In a shocking representation of just how bad things are in Europe, the FT reports that major European industrial concern Siemens, pulled €500 million form a large French bank, which is not BNP and leaves just [SocGen|Credit Agricole] and deposited the money straight to the ECB. The implications of this are quite stunning, as it means that even European companies now refuse to work directly with their own banks, and somehow the ECB has become a direct lender/cash holder of only resort to private non-financial institutions! As Bloomberg reports further on the FT story, in total, Siemens has deposited between 4 billion euros and 6 billion euros, mostly through one-week deposits, with the ECB, FT says, cites the person. It isn’t clear from which bank Siemens withdrew its deposits, per the FT... but it is hardly difficult to figure out. BNP Paribas isn’t the bank involved, FT reports, cites unidentified person familiar with the bank. This story should be having far more impact on the EURUSD than any rumors about Greece lying it will fire all of its public workers only to make sure Eurobanks can survive one more day.

There are those who watch quietly from the sidelines as month after month, year after year, decade after decade, the Keynesians among us (especially those who only focus on the upswing in the business cycle and always ignore the downswing) announce that the only thing the economy needs to grow is a just a little more debt... more debt.... much more debt....  And for the most part it worked: for years every dollar in additional debt generated a little less than a dollar of economic growth, or GDP. Alas, slowly but surely, we have been pushed to the point where incremental debt generates no incremental growth: an event that if it were to be recognized for the debt-stimulus dead end it is, would put an end to years of flawed economic thought taught in the world's most prestigious universities. Yet there is more to it, and as always it goes to the age-old question of capital allocation efficiency, and specifically how with time, any centrally-planned attempt to allocate capital effectively always fails, usually accompanied by incurring insurmountable leverage. Probably one of the best and most succinct summary of this core quandary facing the entire developed world and the voodoo economics profession in general, was done by UBS's Andy Lees today, who in one note, deconstructed the primary flaws, and outright lies, at the base of the last ditch economic rescue effort planned by Obama, by the world's army of "fiscal stimulants" and by the western world in general.

Update 2: here comes the rhetoric:

• Greek finance minister official says Greece is close to a deal with the Troika

...and back down:

• Greek finance minister says some work is still needed to quantify measures

And for today's fake press du jour release we go to Marketwatch which amusingly carries the following headline/story, which has since been rebroadcast by Bloomberg and other wire services:

• 700,000,000 Million Cars and Light Trucks Need Recalling

That's.... 700 trillion!?

Demonstrating that when it comes to "lecturing" Europe is no better than America's own Tim Geithner (who was loudly jeered at last week's FinMin meeting in Poland after he came, he saw, and told Europe to do everything that the US had done before with such 'stunning success'), is an exclusive report from Reuters which references an EU document according to which "the European Union will call on China this week to boost domestic demand and on the United States and Japan to tackle their public deficits." Furthermore "the consolidation plans to be undertaken in most EU countries, in the U.S. and in Japan need to be accompanied by appropriate policies in other regions of the world so as to avoid an undesired compression of global demand." In other words, if the rest of the world could promptly go ahead and fix itself and fall bak in line so the status quo can resume its dutiful creep to previously unseen Ponzi heights asap, that would be wonderful and much appreciated by Brussels, and Europe can pretend its monetary union is still a viable long-term option.

In an emailed statement from the Greek finance ministry, we are told not to expect to hear anything from anyone about anything. Sounds like they have it all under control then...*GREECE SAYS NO OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT EXPECTED AFTER TROIKA CALL. The market's initial reaction is to sell-off on this no news as ES moves towards the day's lows and EUR inches lower.

UPDATE:

• GREEK CALL WITH TROIKA MAY CONTINUE TOMORROW OR LATER: MINISTRY :-Are they all on hold for Bernanke?
• GREEK FINANCE MINISTRY SAYS NO CABINET MEETING PLANNED SEPT. 20 :-  Deny, Deny, Deny, or simply Lie, because this contrasts with earlier reports that G-Pap would convene a cabinet meeting after the call.

The Fed/Treasury is an evil axis defunding you and me: the debt is $14.5 trillion; this is our debt, not the government’s debt. The government does not generally earn money; we do. Therefore every criminal debt certificate (Treasury bond) the Treasury exchanges for cash is a debt on you and me--a promise to pay for which citizens are responsible to pay, IOUs in simple terms. If the government printed the money instead of the criminal Fed, there would be no debt. Uncle Sam borrows bucks and you become automatically indentured to pay back the bond and pay the vig! How is this not a criminal enterprise? If you go to a loan shark, at least you get to have the money in your hand and can spend it before you have to repay the loan and pay the vig!

Looks like the Silvercorp story is not going away any time soon. Just released by Rui Feng, SVM's CEO and Chairman, is the latest hastily written (with some glaring typos) refutation of today's allegations by Alfred Little (and the "short industry" in general apparently) that the Chinese company is merely another fraud. This is hardly the last word in this ongoing fiasco, and we fully expect Muddy Waters to get involved as well.

A detailed conversation with a Solyndra insider.

“Pitting one group of Americans against another is not leadership. The Joint Select Committee is engaged in serious work to tackle a serious problem: the debt crisis that is making it harder to get our economy growing and create more American jobs.  Unfortunately, the President has not made a serious contribution to its work today.  This administration’s insistence on raising taxes on job creators and its reluctance to take the steps necessary to strengthen our entitlement programs are the reasons the president and I were not able to reach an agreement previously, and it is evident today that these barriers remain.”

Even though Europe is closed, and the requisite ES ramp appeared on cue just as expected, Reuters has released some news which will put the Risk Off trade solidly back on the books, after it announced that "Italy will shortly cut its growth forecasts for this year and 2012 to bring them more into line with those of independent bodies, but the prospects for public finances have improved due to an increase in value added tax, government sources told Reuters on Monday." It continues: "A government forecasting document to be published in the next few days following the austerity plan approved by parliament last week will cut the 2011 growth forecast to 0.7 percent from 1.1 percent and lower the 2012 forecast to "1 percent or below" from 1.3 percent, the sources said." Someone who will certainly be very unhappy with this news is Moody's which is already delaying cutting Italy (and said last week it will have to do something within the month), but this will make any additional delays impossible, as well as push the rating agency to trim the country's credit rating by more than just one notch.

S&P futures drifted gently back up to VWAP as we approached the European close for the now ubiquitous post-Europe-close rally. European sovereign spreads to Bunds are all wider in both 2Y and 10Y with the biggest movers on a risk-adjusted basis shifting from the periphery to the core. Financials are not lifting with the other sectors as ES ramps here and while EUR strengthens very modestly relative to the USD, it seems hand-cuffed to US equities as opposed to leading for now. Volume and average trade size is picking up as we rally here - looking suspiciously like professionals selling into strength given deltas - but it is certainly a decent ramp in the context of the last few days. European financial stocks and spreads sold off into the close - closing near the lows.

I fully believe that we may in fact be on the verge of a Crash in the markets. All the Red Flags are there. Europe’s entire banking system is on the verge of systemic collapse. Take a look at European banks and you’ll see what I mean.