Archive - 2011

When it comes to providing analytical perspectives and empirical insights into the realm of sovereign deterioration, few come close to the work of Reinhart and Rogoff. Citi’s Willem Buiter is one such man. In his latest summary piece describing in excruciating detail just how bad things are at the sovereign level (and judging by tonight's opening print in the EURUSD more are starting to realize this), Buiter provides a terrific country by country guide of what is now an insolvent world, starting with the merely extremely risky, going through the backstop-baiters, and finishing with the time bombs that have already gone off and everybody pretends not to care. For those who do care, this is a definitive guide to what each individual European (and not only) country can look forward to in an age of global moral hazard. The only open question: with China's interest now to preserve the Euro's viability, how will Beijing act in the next few months as the eurozone finally starts unraveling.

Since the start of the New Year, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil have been moving with significant bearish sentiment. However two new events that could disrupt supply worse than Hurricane Ivan will likely turn the momentum aournd very quickly....

Cramer mustered up that old-time revival feeling on his Mad Money show Wednesday on CNBC when he excitedly proclaimed “We got the correction this morning, Dow fell 35 points."

The new Fed Vice-Chair is using smoke and mirrors to make her point.

Since more than 8 million jobs were wiped out by the Great Recession, but the nation added only 1.1 million jobs in total last year, so the 0.4% drop in unemployment rate in December simply does not make much sense.

This is a fairly detailed review of Dine Equity (DIN), pre-refinancing.

Following tragic days such as yesterday, some form of levity is always welcome. Which is why we present A. Joseph Cohen's latest. Let the joyous merriment commence.

Salon provides some unpleasant additional information on yesterday's headline news, which many had already suspected: namely that Loughner likely did not act alone. "Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said at a news conference in Tucson on Saturday that authorities may have a photo of another suspect." Unfortunately, with a nation increasingly on edge, this possibility will likely turn out to be true. We can only hope that other like-minded individuals do not take this event as an escalation signal, and proceed to take vigilante "justice" into their own hands.

Four years ago to the day from Saturday, a team of "experts" from ACA Management took the elevators to the 29th floor of 590 Madison, the then address of Paulson & Co., and sat down to discuss the structuring of a CDO. For both firms, this was supposed to be a by the numbers transaction: ACA, which had the financial acumen of any borderline retarded rating agency, was going to provide the wraparound insurance and be the portfolio selection agent in a synthetic CDO, while Paulson & Co. would be the transaction sponsor, and which, through Goldman Sachs, would indicate on various occasions, that it was a beneficially interested party, and represent direct and indirectly that it was long the equity tranche: an indication that it was beneficially inclined for the success of the portfolio. Little did ACA know that Goldman would assist Paulson in lying to investors about the fund's orientation, and the numbers in question would be one billion for Paulson and a comparable loss for everyone else. The CDO in question is of course Abacus, and has since resulted in the biggest ever SEC settlement with an investment bank, pardon, governmentally subsidized hedge fund. And while Goldman may have thought that the settlement put the embarrassing Abacus situation to rest, ACA certainly harbored no such intentions, and on January 6 filed a lawsuit against Goldman seeking monetary and punitive damages. The reason: ACA claims, and has evidence, that despite Lloyd Blankfein's representation to Congress that it was merely making markets, and did in fact nothing illegal, the reality was far different. In fact, as ACA demonstrates in the attached filing, Goldman repeatedly represented that Paulson was long the equity tranche, and neither Goldman nor Paulson did anything to debunk such an assumption. In fact, in solicitation materials Goldman misrepresented outright the economic interest of the transaction sponsor. We are confident that as many other firms that loathed doing their own due diligence (of which ACA is most certainly guilty) realize that Abacus is still a mini goldmine, we will see other such copycat lawsuits, as banks, primarily those out of Europe (and preferably still in business), attempt to collect a few hundred million here and there.

I ran 1200 comments from the Representative Gifford post through the word cloud generator...

The implications of the crash of 2008 have made one thing very clear. China has emerged as the engine of growth in the world. The US became the land of sub-prime loans, and Europe is the land of finely dressed paupers. The Europe of today is not the Europe of old.

Hooray…Happy days are here again! That is exactly what the elite would have us believe with the 9.4% unemployment number in this huge CONfidence game otherwise known as the USEconomy. We were having dinner at my in-law’s house and I had overheard the TV playing in the back ground. At one point, I thought I had heard the squealing of teenagers who were fawning over Justin Beiber. Instead, it turned out that it was someone on the news reporting the new, much lower 9.4% unemployment rate. I could hear the panting of excitement spoken by the breathless reporters who were interviewing very serious economists about this new 9.4% rate. The news aired their personal interest piece about a girl who was just hired at an internet company. She commented with the utmost confidence that the economy was getting better!! You have all heard that saying, “it is a recession when your neighbor loses a job, but when you lose a job it is a depression.” Well, according to her, we are out of her depression. But alas, this is all a dream and the media is using their very best, tried and true propaganda to keep the people from getting too upset with reality.

Simon Hunt, founder of Brook Hunt, puts a dent in the dreams of all those who expect to see a continuing surge in copper prices throughout 2011 and further.  The copper specialist, who has since left the firm he founded and is now head of Simon Hunt Strategic Services which specialises in copper, global economics and China, is arguably one of the premier experts on the topic of copper. It therefore behooves the copper bulls to pay attention to his latest interim note which contains "our principal reasons why copper
prices this year won?t live up to the hopes of so many bulls." And his long-term vision is about as scary as they get: "Peak prices
for 2011  will be experienced in the first quarter of the year, if they
have not already been seen. Prices will then fall until around the start
of the fourth quarter, hitting a low of some $5500. Recovery will
follow rising parabolically in 2012 to some $14,000 by the end of next
year.  This will signal the end of the gaming of copper prices. A return to
global recession, deflation and the destruction of large end uses of
copper will see prices crashing to levels long since forgotten - to
under $1500 by 2016. It will be at that point that the real
restructuring of the industry will take place.  Future trend growth
rates for world refined copper consumption will be below 2% a year
implying that marginal producers will be closed down. It  is not a
shortage of supply that will shape the future of copper but a shortage
of required material for furnaces." Full note attached.

And now back to finance. From John Noyce of GS FX sales, one of the better chartists out there, here are the charts that matter in the next week. Of particular note: dollar strength, silver weakness, range bound rates, rate-USD correlations, some interesting observations in a secondary pair of EURKRW, the bullish key day reversal in the USDJPY, the derivative nature of the AUDCAD as a China/US proxy, and more.

"You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers." Paul Krugman