Archive - Mar 2012

A snoozer of an overnight trading session for now, with Asia rising modestly, Europe green and the now priced in futures levitation as US traders walk in. Nothing material to report, except the usual - the European leverage reality continues to deteriorate: as has been long discussed the taxpayer cost to rescue Greece keeps rising, and the latest and revised figure of the bailout is €172.6 billion, €43 billion than previously thought by some (as we have pointed out from the beginning the true cost of the bailout will hit €210 billion). We will shortly point out the total disaster that the Greek balance sheet is with 7 classes of debt outstanding post the OSI. More disturbing is the "austerity" report out of Spain, where we just learned that total public debt has hit €735 billion at the end of 2011, with regions debt at €140.1 billion, which means that public debt rose to 68.5% of GDP, from 61.2% a year prior.  As Peter Tchir says: "We are still in no one cares mode, but the exposure the core has to the periphery is growing by the day.  Germany's exposure is growing because of Target 2, and Spain and Italy are busy guaranteeing the debt of their banks. On the surface, all is calm. Below the surface it is messier than ever.  They are doing everything possible to keep that mess covered because if it rises to the surface, it will be harder to control than ever before." As a reminder, this is precisely what happened in early 2011... and early 2010. You can only keep trillions of underwater debt under the rug for so long.

• Tapping oil from the SPR may be trickier than ever (Reuters)
• Why Quantitative Easing Is The Only Game in Town: Martin Wolf (FT)
• Lacker Says Fed May Need to Raise Target Interest Rate in 2013 (Bloomberg)
• Japan Debt-Financing Concern Clouds BOJ’s Bond Buying (Bloomberg) No worries - US will just buy Japan's bonds
• IMF Approves €28bn Loan to Greece (FT)
• Banks Want Fed to Iron Out 'Maiden' (WSJ)
• China 'Wealth Exodus' Underestimated (China Daily)
• Geithner Calls For Reforms to Boost Growth (FT)
• China Adds Treasuries For First Time Since July on Europe Woes (Bloomberg)
• Osborne Weighs 50p Tax Rate Cut To 45p (FT)

I applaud Smith's decision to bring the nature of Goldman's profit-making strategies to the forefront of the global population's discourse, as so many others have been doing through books, investigative journalism, and the Occupy movements over the past decade since my book, Other People's Money, was written after I resigned from Goldman. It would be great if Smith's illuminations would serve as the turning point around which serious examination and re-regulation of the banking system framework would transpire.

Yet another whistleblower has stepped up, this time one already known to the general public, and one that Zero Hedge covered just over a month ago: we refer to the case of former CBO worker, Lan T. Pham, who, as the WSJ described in early February, "alleges she was terminated [by the CBO] after 2½ months for sharing pessimistic outlooks for the banking and housing sectors in 2010" and who "alleges supervisors stifled opinions that contradicted economic fixes endorsed by some on Wall Street, including research from a Morgan Stanley economist who served as a CBO adviser." As we observed in February, "what is most troubling is if indeed the CBO is nothing but merely another front for Wall Street to work its propaganda magic on the administration. Because at the core of every policy are numbers, usually with dollar signs in front of them, numbers which have to make sense and have to be projected into the future, no matter how grossly laughable the resultant hockeystick." As it turns out, somewhat expectedly, the WSJ version of events was incomplete. There is much more to this very important story, one which has major implications over "impartial" policy decisionmaking, and as a result, Ms. Pham has approached Zero Hedge to share her full story with the public.

It was 42 months ago today...

While it is difficult to properly attribute blame for the collapse of the US economy, which commenced in the early 1980s, on either the Fed's policy of easy money starting with Alan Greenspan (and terminating with today's statement by Goldman that merely a suggestion of "not easing" may be equivalent to "tightening" - a symptom of a terminal junkie), or the resultant self-indulgent lifestyle of the maturing baby boomers, one thing is certain: the paradigm downturn of the United States began in the early 1980s. And here we are willing to break the cardinal rule of statistics and assume that correlation does imply causation. Because the 4 simple charts below don't lie: the US economy, as represented by its Balance of Payments, the profligacy of the US consumer, the massive expansion of consumer leverage, and the collapse in US manufacturing jobs, and specifically its current near-terminal state, is as much as legacy of the baby boom generation's actions (and lack thereof), as of everything else that has already been mulled over and scapegoated an infinite number of times in both the mainstream and fringe media.

In one of the strangest headlines from Bloomberg today, MuppetGate takes on a new life...

*MAYOR BLOOMBERG MEETS WITH GOLDMAN EMPLOYEES AFTER SMITH OP-ED

Caption Contest seems appropriate...

The first session of this 112^th Congress was spent with Democrats and Republicans at loggerheads over the debt ceiling, taxes, spending cuts, the deficit super committee, appropriations bills and finally the extension of unemployment compensation and a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut. Standard and Poor's downgrade of the United States' federal debt was due in part to all the haggling over how, and actually whether, to reduce the debt. No One Is Willing to Pay the Political Price to Cut Spending This year Obama asked Congress for, and was given, an additional $1.2 trillion of borrowing authority, which will increase the debt limit to $16.4 trillion, just enough to get him past the 2012 election. It could be close, however. If budget projections prove to be overly optimistic, Obama could face another cliffhanger over a further increase in the debt ceiling in the midst of the presidential election in November. How embarrassing to have to say "re-elect me – and by the way, I need to borrow some more money to pay this month's bills."

When it comes to the New Normal, there are just two precedents: complacent and doomed debt slaves, such as Greece, which continues to voluntarily hand over any and all of its real assets to the vampiric banking oligarchy in exchange for simply being the member of a doomed club, while trembling at constant threats of fire and brimstone if it dares to split away from its monetary parasites (and where unemployment rises by 3% in one quarter), or the rare success story such as Iceland, which showed the bankers a middle finger, took the red pill and disconnected from the globalization matrix. And while even Bloomberg recently extolled the virtues of the Iceland "case", which will likely be solitary until the entire ponzi scheme comes crashing down, we are heartened when we observe all incremental milestones of further economic and financial success by the one country that dared to call the banker bluff, and won. Such as this press release from the IMF.

Between our overnight discussion of the size of the Fed's QE and Goldman's call for QE as soon as April, risk assets all synced and surged today as the USD gave back most of the week's gains. The S&P 500 managed to close above 1400 for the first time since June of 2008 on decent volume - even as AAPL closed down 0.7% (and -2.5% from the $600 threshold it peered over) as financials once again took the lead. BofA is now up 13.6% from pre-JPM-dividend news (more than double its peers) while GS and C languish up only around 2% from that point. High-yield credit markets were nothing like as QE-ebulient as stocks today as investment grade outperformed (more up-in-quality rotation) and the last 45mins actually saw active selling in HY and HYG while IG and the S&P leaked higher. Treasuries steepened very modestly with the long-end maybe 1bp higher in yield close-to-close but the 7-8bps compression off overnight high yields is noteworthy and brought the broad risk asset complex back in CONTEXT with stocks (after yesterday's dislocation). The USD lost around 0.4% from late last night on the day (though still stronger on the week) as EUR and JPY tracked it broadly but higher yield AUD outperformed handsomely (more QE-funding currency needed). Commodities bounced nicely with Copper the day's winner followed closely by Gold and Silver (up around 0.9%) and Oil practically unchanged after dipping over 1% on the SPR chatter and recovering on the denial. VIX ended the day (spiking) higher and the term structure very slightly flatter. After spiking Friday and Tuesday (as we broke the uptrendline) average trade size has drifted notably lower and was its lowest in over a week today suggesting less institutional buying here.

Confused why every asset class is up again today (yes, even gold), despite the pundit interpretation by the media of the FOMC statement that the Fed has halted more easing? Simple - as we said yesterday, there is $3.6 trillion more in QE coming. But while we are too humble to take credit for moving something as idiotic as the market, the fact that just today, none other than Goldman Sachs' Jan Hatzius came out, roughly at the same time as its call to buy Russell 2000, and said that the Fed would announce THE NEW QE^TM, as soon as next month, and as late as June. Furthermore, as Goldman has previously explained, sterilization of QE makes absolutely no difference on risk asset behavior, and it is a certainty that the $500-$750 billion in new money (well on its way to fulfilling our expectation of a total $3.6 trillion in more easing to come), in the form of UST and MBS purchases, will blow out all assets across all classes, while impaling the dollar. Which in turn explains all of today's action - dollar down, everything else (including bonds, which Goldman said yesterday to sell which we correctly, at least for now, said was the bottom in rates) up. Finally, as we said, yesterday, "In conclusion we wish to say - thank you Chairman for the firesale in physical precious metals." Because when the market finally understands what is happening, despite all the relentless smoke and mirrors whose only goal is to avoid a surge in crude like a few weeks ago ahead of the presidential election, gold will be far, far higher. Yet for some truly high humor, here is the justification for why the Fed will need to do more QE, even though Goldman itself has been expounding on the improving economy: "The improvement might not last." In other words, unless the "economic improvement" is guaranteed in perpetuity, the Fed will always ease. Thank you central planning - because of you we no longer have to worry about either mean reversion or a business cycle.

Just as the CEO of Total had predicted last December—talking his book.

We are not picking on Greece today but in the shadow of Lagarde's (and Thomsen's) comments on how shiny everything is in Greece but risks remain, we thought this anecdote-and-analysis discussion between RGE's Megan Greene and CMC's Michael Hewson was so timely as a follow-up to our previous discussion in December. From her experience in a coffee-less and book-less cafe/bookstore in Athens to a succinct perspective on debt sustainability, competitive issues, elections, and implementing structural reforms, the discussion is a quick-and-dirty way to grasp that it's all about the politics and less about the economics. Critically Green points out the much more important 'change that the Greeks can believe in' is the structural reforms - and unfortunately there really has been very little progress. Simply put, until Greece sees a whole new political class capable of implementing the kind of structural reforms necessary to improve Greek competitiveness, Greece will never reach sustainability. This leads to her conclusion (spoiler alert) that what it will take is for Greece to exit the Euro. Quite unapologetically, Megan notes the political 'spring' in the youth that is building in sound and fury and feels that this new political class will not succeed until Greece has hit rock-bottom - though this could take a while as mindsets shift from Euro-friendly to Austerity-unfriendly with perhaps post German elections in 2013 as a catalyst with an amicable divorce. As a bonus, Greene also discusses LTRO, the Spanish elephant in the room, and the new fiscal compact's procyclical and toothless structure. Everything you wanted to know about Europe but were afraid to read...