Archive - Apr 2012

At least that is the bogey according to JPMorgan's Pawan Wadhwa, who in a note announced that the ECB may resume SMP purchases if the 10 year hits 6.5% (as in a few hours), much to the chagrin of Germany, which was foosed into believing LTRO 1+2 would mean no more SMP purchases. More importantly, since the 6.50% barrier will be taken down with impunity in days if not hours, and the SMP has proven time and again to be powerless to prevent mass selling, the next big bogey is 7.50% at which the ECB will likely announce another 3-year Discount Window bazooka, pardon, LTRO. What JPM does not say is that with the halflife of each successive LTRO getting cut in half, LTRO 4 will be needed in June, LTRO 5 in July, LTRO 6 in July, LTRO 7 in July and so on. Most importantly, now that banks, who are desperate for some cash infusion from either the Fed or the ECB, know what the critical threshold bogey for action is, they will be sure to facilitate the ECB's life, and send Spanish 10 Years plunging to at least 7.50% and demand Draghi play ball, again. In other words: now that the market knows what the consensus is to get more European QE, it will promptly do it. After all the LTRO was never for the benefit of the countries: it was always and only to benefit Europe's insolvent banks. If that means "Greecing" Spain in the process, so be it.

• Downgrades Loom for Banks (WSJ)
• China Loosens Grip on Yuan (WSJ)
• Sarkozy Embraces Growth Role for ECB (WSJ)
• A Top Euro Banker Calls for Boost to IMF (WSJ)
• Wolfgang Münchau - Spain has accepted mission impossible (FT)
• Hong Kong Takeovers Loom Large With Banks Lending Yuan: Real M&A (Bloomberg)
• Banks urge Fed retreat on credit exposure (FT)
• Drought in U.K. Adds to Inflation Fears (WSJ)
• France faces revival of radical left (FT)
• Euro Area Seeks Bigger IMF War Chest as Spanish Concerns Mount (Bloomberg)

As traders walk in this morning, there are only two numbers they care about: 522 bps and 6.15% - these are the Spanish 5 year CDS and 10 Year yields, respectively, the first of which is at a record, while the second is rapidly approaching all time wides from last November. Needless to say Europe is no longer fixed. And yet despite a selloff across Asia, Europe is so far hanging in, as are the futures courtesy of a persistent BIS bid in the EURUSD just above 1.30 to keep the risk bottom from falling off. It remains to be seen if they will be successful as wrong-way positioned US traders walk in this morning.

How to Adapt to Any Climate Change – Global Warming or Cooling – and Save Money In the Process

In 26 years on Wall Street, Nic Colas of ConvergEx, has worked for seven firms and reported to nine different people.  His insights make up a highlight reel of things those people have told him which have stuck in his memory over the years (for better or worse) and seemed worth sharing with a broader audience.  The most insightful: “Don’t make this game harder than it has to be.”  From the same boss, the most motivating: “Someone is getting the information before you.  Why don’t I fire you and hire them?”  On customer service: “What am I? A pimp?  Get me a black car.”  And possibly the most important for someone who makes their living serving the investment community on the sell-side: “Do you know what it means when a dog shows well?”

In a little under eight minutes, a plethora of today's more outspoken realists, economists, and journalists provide a simple yet clear path through the financial crisis to critically explain how the so-called equilibrium that so many mainstream analysts and economists trusted as fact has been proven as simple fiction. The hard-to-accept truth is that financial instability is in fact the natural state of our economic environments and that credit and banking lie at the very heart of that difference between Keynesian / Neo-classical dogma and the tough new reality that the world's major economies now face. The political and economic elite have "blind-sided themselves to the role of rising debt in funding what is really the biggest ponzi scheme in human history" and that the "blind-faith in institutions and mechanisms has cracked post-2007". From too-simple DSGE 'economic models' to 'representative agents' to the fact that financial systems are the cause of economic instability, a number of the new normal's best thinkers (including Stiglitz, Keen, Kinsella, and Bezemer), courtesy of INETeconomics, provide a very layman's guide to the (hopefully not so shocking to our readers) new reality of how critical credit and debt is in our brave new world and how entirely misrepresented it is in mainstream thinking. Must Watch, if for nothing else, the crushing conclusion for many neo-classicals that when you can't tweak your models any more, you need to move on to some next paradigm.

If you're looking strictly at a chart of the "official" unemployment rate, you should flip it upside down

What a difference a month makes. About 4 weeks ago the European crisis was "over" - French President Sarkozy exclaimed that: “Today, the problem is solved!” Christine Lagarde, former French finance minister, and current IMF head following the framing of DSK, added that “Economic spring is in the air!”... Fast forward to today when following the inevitable end of the transitory favorable effects of the LTRO (remember: flow not stock, a/k/a the shark can not stop moving forward), the collapse of the Spanish stock market, the now daily halting of Italian financial stocks, the inevitable announcement that shorting of financials in Europe is again forbidden, and finally the record spike in Spanish CDS, Europe is broken all over again. Which brings us again the Sarkozy and Lagarde. The Frenchman who is about to lose the presidential race to socialist competitor Hollande (an event which will have major ramifications for Europe as UBS' George Magnus patiently explained two months ago), no longer sees anything as solved, and instead is openly begging for the ECB to inject more, more, more money into the system to pretend that "problems are solved" for a few more months. Incidentally, so is Lagarde, for whom in an odd change of seasons, economic spring is about to be followed by a depressionary winter. The problem is both will end up empty handed, as the well may just have run dry.

Geithner April 2011: Q: “Is there a risk that the United States could lose its AAA credit rating? Yes or no?” - Tim Geithner: “No risk of that.”

....

Geithner April 2012: Q: “If we don't deal with these debt problems we are going to be Greece in two years” - Tim Geithner: “No risk of that.”

Curious what the investing world will focus on next week? Here is a recap courtesy of Goldman Sachs, though for those who want the punchline now, just fast forward to Thursday when get Spain and French bond auctions. In the meantime just ignore all the intraday trading halts of Intesa, UniCredit And Banco Popolare. The rest is just the supporting cast.

Better stock up on the Depends now. 

The "value" of insurance is not always apparent until after the house burns down.