Archive - Jun 2012

Sometime in 2042 the CBO will need a bigger chart to represent US public debt because per the just updated Extended Alternative Fiscal Scenario, which the CBO itself admits " is more representative of the fiscal policies that are now (or have recently been) in effect than is the extended baseline scenario," this is when it literally falls off the chart. And it is to ridiculous debt load that Keynesian lunatics want to add MORE debt? Actually why not, it is not as if the US will ever repay any of these exponentially-rising obligations.

For the first time on record (based on Bloomberg's data) 5-year / 5-year forward inflation expectations turned negative today. This kind of deflationary impulse has occurred twice in recent years and each time has been accompanied by dramatic Federal Reserve easing. The anticipation of the move by the Fed has caused Gold each time to surge higher on yet more expectations of the fiat-fiasco unwinding. Given the 5Y5Y inflation print currently, we would expect action from the Fed and one could argue that this would cause the price of Gold to rise to $2200 per ounce as the deleveraging continues.

At this moment, the news media is constantly clamoring about the "Three Ds" that are buffeting the markets: debt, deleveraging, and deflation. We intuitively sense that they're linked -- but how, exactly? Understanding this linking is critical; as debt has fueled the global expansion, it will also dominate its contraction. To illustrate the forces of debt and deleveraging, let’s consider a home mortgage....

Cash and Futures S&P 500 managed to close back above the 200DMA after a dismally low-volume melt-up supported by a reversion to fair-value in HYG but diverging from most other asset classes. Having pulled away from Treasuries, Gold, and the USD, stocks (led by financials) roamed higher on lower and lower comparable volumes to manage their best gain in a week with a generally low average trade size overall. Credit markets were quiet and reluctant to follow stocks but were reracked up (though IG underperformed HY's exuberance). However, the pop in JNK and HYG dragged them from the quite notably cheap levels they were at up to their intrinsic value and they anchored there (so not really a confirming strong rally). HY and HYG are in line also. Oil and Copper dropped early and then leaked back higher for the rest of the day as Silver and Gold end close to unch for the week - with the USD also close to unch as EURUSD round-tripped its gains from yesterday. Treasuries lagged the move in stocks but leaked higher in yield also in the afternoon - except notably 5Y which outperformed (reminding us of the 7Y outperformance aberration yesterday) as we suspect end-of-Twist is being priced in. After the day-session close, ES limped back towards VWAP on heavier volume and average trade size but didn't make it as we note VIX fell back below 25% (down 1.25 vols today) ending the day a little rich still to equity/credit fair-value. Lots of rumor-driven knee-jerks today but once the momentum had set in for stocks, we limped along to crack that 200DMA giving hope before Draghi's reality check tomorrow - though we note that ES stopped almost perfectly at Friday's closing VWAP (as did the major financials).

As we look forward to tomorrow's scorched-earth policy-fest from Draghi-et-al., Jefferies' David Zervos, in his typically understated manner, notes "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. We are back in the kill zone - Apocalypse Europe." There will be no more strategizing, no more war games, no more speeches imploring the politicians to act. This is the real deal - a full scale European led global financial crisis that requires immediate and aggressive response from the only entities with the authority to act in the world financial "theatre". We should all keep in mind that the Europeans have not been able to generate an effective response to their debt/deflation crisis as of yet, and of course it is having global consequences. This is why we are here again looking into the deflationary abyss. The ECB was only set up with a price stability mandate, and its leaders are hence much more constrained than Federal Reserve officials. Simply put, the European armies were not set up with effective weapons.

As a guy who is living in a taxpayer-funded villa after his bank-insurance-derivatives-hedge fund-ponzi company blew up, we know Benmosche is a hypocrite. In my view, management should be held personally liable a long time before taxpayers. That’s right, I believe in personal responsibility and that means no hiding behind limited liability and bailouts, no matter how “systemically important” you claim to be. But let’s set aside disgust at government for first setting up this scenario via Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and then in 2008 throwing money at hypocritical grifters like Benmosche.

Is he wrong about social security and medical services?

In keeping with our long history of noting every handle change in Failbook, we just passed into the $25 range (heavy volume came throuygh as we touched $25.88). With a post-IPO VWAP at $34.85, that's a 25% drop from the average trade alone and volume remains active (over 30mm shares today). Calls are slightly ahead of Puts today but Open Interest remains biased to 6:5 in favor of Puts.

For those of you who have an opportunity to view the Transit of Venus today, don't miss it. The next transit will occur in the year 2117. This is what it looks like.

Recent housing data have been generally been encouraging. However, the large number of residential properties that are "underwater"—meaning the borrower owes more on the mortgage than the property is worth—casts a long shadow on the sustainability of the housing recovery. Goldman estimates that approximately 10 million properties are currently underwater. Although this number has not changed much during the past three years, there is much divergence across the nation: California, Michigan, and Arizona, for example, experienced significant improvement, while Georgia, Utah, and Missouri saw many more properties falling underwater during this period. Given that there are 3 million first-lien mortgages that have LTVs of 125% or above as of April 2012, whether or not a large fraction of these mortgages will default in the near future has important implications for the housing market recovery.

Just when Spain thought that by admitting it is broke, Germany would finally turn a blind eye and let it have whatever money it requested directly at the bank level, instead of boosting its sovereign leverage even more, thus putting it at risk of long, long overdue Moody's and Fitch downgrades, here comes the Germany, adding insult to humiliation. From the FT: "The parliamentary leadership of Germany’s ruling Christian Democrats – the majority party in Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition government – has flatly rejected the use of eurozone rescue funds to recapitalise Spanish banks directly. Instead they called on the Spanish government on Tuesday to decide urgently whether it will seek money from the €440bn European Financial Stability Facility according to the fund’s normal rules, requiring agreement on a proper rescue programme negotiated with its European partners." In other words Germany has laid out the choice: bail out your banks with our help, and be downgraded, pushing Spanish sovereign yields into the 7%+ range, or do nothing, and prepare to hand out an infinite amount of Spiderman beach towels.

Yesterday, the progressive "think-tankers" from the CEPR first voiced the idea that it is time for America to finally come to the aid of Europe, because you see, the liberals, ever so generous with other peoples' money, have had enough of a sinking financial system brought to its knees by the intersection of a financial system perpetually bailed out at the taxpayers' expense, and a insolvent global welfare state, and just wish it was all back to where it was a decade ago, where everyone lived in perpetual bliss and stupidity. We truly hope Messrs Baker and Weisbrot lead by example and dispose of all their net worth, by dispatching it in Europe's direction, post haste: after all, anything less would be just seem so very hypocritical. Today, to nobody's shock at all, the "think tank" is joined by everyone's favorite TV hobby economist: Steve Liesman, who in an op-ed on CNBC writes: "It’s time to change the narrative and for the United States to step up and abandon its policies of praising Europe’s incremental progress, gently prompting it to action and insisting that it be a Euro only solution... The US should lead the world in creating a large pot of money available to the Europeans to recapitalize their banks. A $2 or $3 trillion fund should get the market’s attention." It should Steve. And just like in the case of CEPR, we hope you can lead the US by creating a large pot of all your money that you would send to Spain and Greece first. Then everyone promises to follow in your so very generous footsteps.

Forget the complicated flowcharts, scenarios, and government-banking-system reacharounds, the global economic collapse has never been so easy to comprehend...

It's one of those days again. Stocks have decoupled in their inimitable way as hope springs eternal of LTRO3, EFSF, or a friendly-Fed...

What would a day be without recycling of tired and expired rumors out of Europe. Sure enough:

• EFSF PROVISIONAL CREDIT LINE COMPROMISE BETWEEN MADRID AND  BERLIN
  
• EFSF is to prepare a credit line for Spain in the case of need - Dow Jones
• EFSF provisional credit line for Spain is one option according to a German newspaper

Ah, the good old EFSF, which was last summer's magical bailout mechanism which with 3-4 turns of leverage, would bring the total to €1 trillion... until the realization that there is nothing to lever, as nobody (except for Japan occasionally) wanted to put any money in it. Oh well: the rumor is good to get stocks into the green for at least a few minutes.