Archive - Nov 19, 2012

Spoiled little investors feeling good today. 

They do it every time – i.e., they buy more junk debt than ever at precisely the riskiest points in the cycle. Naturally this can go swimmingly for a good while, but as a general rule of thumb it is far better to buy such risky paper when the compensation one gets for taking the risk is actually adequate. In spite of investors' bitter experiences with such exuberance, the cycle repeats over and over again. The driving force behind it is the central bank's easy money policy - which brings the sugar highs of today, but also the hangovers and steep losses of tomorrow. The markets have seen this movie before – long ago.

Corporate profits have been boosted unusually in recent years by fiscal support to the economy, the very heart of the risk posed by 'the cliff.' Despite all the political rhetoric, jawboning and pre-election bluster, corporations may or may not be people, but what they have turned out to be is the government's best friend as without corporations firing millions, the government would be unable to enslave everyone via a habituation to the government's "transfer payment" generosity. Since government has no 'choice' but to do its rightful duty and bail out those poor citizens crushed by the "evil" corporations, it allows the US Treasury to spend, spend, spend under the guise of another false conflict. The corporations (knowingly or unknowingly) are doing the government's bidding (and receiving the quid pro quo) even as the tentacles of uber-government reach everywhere and more than half the US population would exist in a state of learned helplessness if its weren't for Uncle Sam's weekly check, modest as it may be. To summarize: crony Capitalism for richest, socialism for the poorest; and the middle class goes the way of the Twinkie Dodo.

Is There a Better Way to Allocate Stocks?

It has been a while since broke Greece, which has been begging Europe for the 5 month delayed €31.5 billion tranche, which will be used to pay the ECB and other German banks, and not to enter the Greek economy, was a chooser. Today, the little country that could not, has once again stretched its feeble repo'ed muscles:

• GREEK OFFICIAL SAYS GOVERNMENT WON'T ACCEPT NEW TROIKA REQUEST
• GREEK OFFICIAL SAYS TROIKA WANTS 20,000 STATE EMPLOYEE SACKINGS 
• GREEK OFFICIAL SAYS COALITION PARTIES TO SET UP C'TEE FOR GOVT

Perhaps Greece forgot to clarify "by email" but certainly by fax, telex, or even carrier pigeon, because once the Troika calls it bluff, the "lost in translation" explanations will commence. Until then, the farce continues.

As many prepare for the imminent demise of the JPY (courtesy of Abe's aggression), Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg reminds us of possibly the greatest (and most unbelievably hilarious) financial advertisement ever. From our friends across the ocean, "Men that own government bonds are popular with the ladies!" Don't believe its real? Bloomberg story here.

Austerity is coming our way, it's just a matter in what manner and by how much, and whether it becomes an orderly or disorderly process. The fiscal cliff is really a bit of a ruse in that respect, but the key here is that years of fiscal profligacy is coming to an end and the Fed at this point, having used its bazookas, is now down to firecrackers. The economic outlook as such is completely muddled and along with that the prospect for any turnaround in corporate earnings... Once we get past the Fiscal Cliff we will confront the inherent inability of the Democrats and the GOP to embark on any grand bargain to blaze the trail for true fiscal reforms. The U.S. has not had a rewrite of its tax code since 1986, which was the year Microsoft went public and a decade prior to Al Gore's invention of the Internet. The tax system is massively inefficient and leads to a gross misallocation of resources that impedes economic progress — rewarding conspicuous consumption at the expense of savings and investment. It is the lingering uncertainty over the road to meaningful fiscal reform that is really the mot cause of the angst — the fiscal cliff is really a side show because who doesn't know that we are going to have a Khrushchev moment?

While some of the smartest chaps on the street suggest that being long of Gold in cowbell terms is the trade of the decade, it appears the winner off the March 2009 lows remains long of Gold in plain-old USD terms. Gold in USD terms has risen 84.5% from the 2009 equity lows and leads the race-to-debase while JPY (until very recently) was the big loser among the majors - debasing itself a mere 52%. It seems Mr. Abe had better get to work...

During a week in which Americans are supposed to give thanks, we thought this inside look at the reality on the streets of Greece was worthwhile comprehending. From the May 2011 Syntagma Square uprising to "the 'firesale' of their country, their labor rights, and their livelihoods to corrupt domestic elites and foreign financial interests" the brief documentary follows the dramatic portrait of a country veering to the brink of collapse - and the people who choose to struggle to build a new world from the ruins of the old. "For [the elites] Greece is a guinea pig, to find out up to what point they can 'milk' [us]" is how one narrator describes the situation, adding that "they are refusing to see the reality [saying] it's not happening, it's not happening, it's not happening, everything is gonna be alright; Nothing is gonna be alright" as "loans enslave people." Utopia remains on the horizon...

Plus, news from the Choomba Triangle...

Quite a shocker of a day in FX and European corporate bond and stock markets as shorts are squeezed back up to last Wednesday's levels. Sovereign bonds - which one would think the beneficiary of all the exuberance are flat as a Gaza-strip apartment building: +/-2bps in the last 4 days (aside from Portugal which rallied over 30bps today). The following four charts gives a sense of the anxiety both ways in this market with the low volume this week likely to help all those hoping for a final solution. Credit markets gapped tighter and kept going (one of the biggest moves of the year with XOver -35bps) with financials outperforming (more life-lines for the over-levered?); equity markets all retraced last week's losses in large part (aside from Greece); EURUSD broke back above 1.28 and its 200DMA; and Europe's VIX has collapsed from over 22% to 19.6% at the close today.

On the basis of a joint press conference following a one-hour chat, the S&P 500 is up over 2.5%; it seems there is little doubt that the fiscal cliff is front-and-center in people's minds. And yet, positioning is far from biased towards negativity and sentiment remains positive - the 'they will fix it; they have to, right?' meme is everywhere. As Morgan Stanley notes, however, a smooth resolution requires some of the same public officials who created the cliff to cooperate to avoid it. As far as hope of a short-term solution, Obama's Burma trip aside, Speaker Boehner has already indicated that it would be inappropriate to pass comprehensive legislation in the Lame Duck session, given that more than 100 current members of the House will not be returning next year; and as for any actual substantive change: the sequence most talked about is patch (stop-gap legislation) and promise (ten-year budget reduction), followed by a plan. In that regard, politicians’ solution to the 2012 fiscal cliff will be to create another one in 2013. Thus, only a portion of the uncertainty about policy will be resolved by the patch and promise, as much could go wrong with the plan.

If you want further evidence that the financial elites are already preparing for a default from Spain and a collateral crunch, you should consider that the large clearing houses (ICE, CEM and LCH which oversee the trading of the $700+ trillion derivatives market) have ALL begun accepting Gold as collateral.

On the block of Hazelwood Road in Memphis, Tennessee, where Rebecca Black used to live, 17 out of 30 parcels have either been completely reclaimed by nature or have houses that sit empty. Five of the 15 parcels on her side of the street were abandoned after the recession ended, public records show. Many of the deserted properties are still legally owned by the mortgage borrowers. Nine of the properties are behind on taxes owed to the city or county governments, or both, public records show.