Archive - Apr 2012

Senator Frank Church's Prophetic Warning in 1975

Today I'd like to talk a bit about the virtual radio silence in the Netherlands on its growing Target2 balances. While a healthy but acrimonious debate has raged on this topic in Germany, there is almost nothing to be heard about it in the Dutch media. I did three google news searches using:

Target2

Target2 + Dutch

and

Target2 + Nederland

In an admittedly quick look, I came up with a grand total of one article of three sentences:

Update: according to Belgian Le Soir, first exit polls show that Hollande is not surprisingly ahead, with 27% of the vote, 25.5% for Sarkozy, 16% for Marine Le Pen, and 13% for Jean-Luc Melenchon. More or less just as expected, and setting the stage for the runoff round which will be Hollande's to lose. French speakers demanding a minute by minute liveblog, can find a great one over at Le Figaro, and an English-one can be found at France24.com

As of 8 am CET, polls are open in the first round of the French presidential elections where voters are expected to trim the playing field of ten to just two candidates, incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy and his socialist challenger Francois Hollande, who will then face off in a May 6 runoff, where as of now Hollande is expected to have a comfortable lead and take over the presidency as the disgruntled French take their revenge for an economy that is contracting, an unemployment rate that keeps rising (see enclosed) despite promises to the contrary, and as their to "express a distaste for a president who has come to be seen as flashy following his highly publicized marriage to supermodel Carla Bruni early in his term, occasional rude outbursts in public and his chumminess with rich executives.....France is struggling with feeble economic growth, a gaping trade deficit, 10 percent unemployment and strained public finances that prompted ratings agency Standard & Poor's to cut the country's triple-A credit rating in January." In a major shift for the country, Hollande would become France's first left-wing president since Francois Mitterand, who beat incumbent Valery Giscard-d'Estaing in 1981. As Reuters reports, "Hollande, 57, promises less drastic spending cuts than Sarkozy and wants higher taxes on the wealthy to fund state-aided job creation, in particular a 75 percent upper tax rate on income above 1 million euros ($1.32 million)." The Buffett Rule may have failed in the US but La Loi de Buffett is alive and well in soon to be uber-socialist France. Yet it is not so much Hollande's domestic policies, as his international ones, especially vis-a-vis the European Fiscal Treaty, Germany, and most importantly the ECB, that roiled markets last week, causing French CDS to spike to the widest since January. In other news, goodbye Merkozy, hello Horkel as the power center shifts yet again to a new source of uncertainty and potential contagion.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

When Operation Twist began in late September 2011, Primary Dealers reported that their net position in bonds with a maturity between 1 and 3 years was ($23) billion or the biggest short since January 2010, while reporting holdings of bonds between 11 and 30 years of $12.4 billion, for a net carry position (Short minus Long) of $(35) billion. What a difference just over 6 months makes: courtesy of Treasury Primary Dealer data, we now know that in the preceding weeks, with the Fed selling paper maturing in under 3 years, the Primary Dealers have loaded up to the gills on short-dated maturities, and in the week ended April 11, they reported $54 billion in 1-3 Year Holdings. At the same time 11-30 Year Maturities declined from othe $12.4 billion at the start of Twist to just $7 billion: don't forget - this is the only type of bonds sold by the Fed (if also including short maturities than the explicit long-end that the Fed is buying). What is interesting is that with nearly 80% of Twist over, the 10 Year was at just under 2.00% the day Twist started, and was....just shy of 2.00% on Friday. In other words in order to "sterilize" the Fed's duration extension, keep rates, and the price of gold, low and promote a "housing recovery" Dealers have been "forced" to part ways with about $100 billion in Net Interest Margin generating units, as the Short minus Long position has risen from -$35 billion to +$54 billion, hitting over $60 billion a few weeks ago.

The top can best be described as a period of discussion. Is the economy sputtering? Will the European contagion effect the US economy? Will the fiscal cliff be realized? And of course, the #1 topic of discussion and the only one that matters: will there be QE3?

For those who have not been following the Bo Xilai drama unfolding with furious pace over the past month, we have some advice: you should be, as the fate of China will be defined by who is left standing at the end, which in turn will have momentous consequences for the entire Developed World. But where does one start? Luckily, Grant Williams' latest TTMYGH has one simple plot line: presenting the past, present and future of the epic power struggle between Wen Jiabao and Bo Xilai which has already claimed at least on death, and within China's top power echelon, the Politburo Standing Committee.  "This week’s edition of Things That Make You Go Hmmm..... is a little different to those that have come before it in that it is more of a murder mystery/whodunnit and focuses on the machinations behind a very significant power struggle currently raging in the shadowy world of China’s ruling party. For those amongst you who like tales of drunken British businessmen, unexplained deaths, cyanide poisoning, swift autopsies, mysterious political figures, Lady Macbeth-type wives and police chiefs fleeing for their lives - read on. For those of you who prefer less sensationalist tales..... well read on anyway - this one’s a doozy!"

The focus has shifted. The all seeing orb is now focused on Spain but it may well turn back to Greece soon. The loan money is exhausted again and the Greeks have elections lined up on Sunday, May 6 which is coincidentally the same day of the French run-off elections. To answer the question of at what point Greece might leave the Eurozone and return to the Drachma is relatively simple; it will be the day when the European loan spigot is shut off. Greece will pander, promise and proclaim until that point and then they will say, “have a nice day and thanks for all the fish.”

The music is playing. 

“Solidarity of the union has its limits,” said even soft-spoken Jens Weidmann, President of the Bundesbank

One of the biggest games in the Wall Street farce is the game of Beat the Number.

As retirement is evidently on again in 2012, let's not forget to keep an eye on HYG

Throughout the postwar period, banks have almost always lent out all the way up to the reserve requirement. So, does the accumulation of excess reserves lead to inflation? Only so much as the frequentation of brothels leads to chlamydia and syphilis. Excess reserves are only non-inflationary so long as the banks — the people holding the reserves — play along with the Fed-Treasury game of monetising debt and trying to hide the inflation . The banks don’t have to lend these reserves out, just as having sex with hookers doesn’t have to lead to an infection. But eventually — so long as you do it enough — the condom will break. As soon as banks start to lend beyond the economy’s inherent productivity (which lest we forget is around the same level as ten years ago) there will be inflation.

With Spain today, we have a virtually unregulated banking system sitting atop HALF of ALL Spanish mortgages after a housing bubble that makes the one that happened in the US look like a small bump.

At first we were going to comment on this "response" by the high priest of Keynesian shamanic tautology to Mark Spitznagel's latest WSJ opinion piece, but then we just started laughing, and kept on laughing, and kept on laughing...