Archive - Jul 8, 2012

You can already see the collateral damage stemming from anemia in LIeBORgate banks... Capital Account's Lauren Lyster stimulates the conversation.

By now we can only hope (pun intended) that everyone has seen the David Einhorn chart showing the circularity of the European "summit-based" decisionmaking process - somewhat relevant since we have had 21 summits since 2008 and Europe has never been in a condition quite as bad as last week when a historic move by the ECB to lower the deposit rate to zero and the refi rate below the critical threshold of 1.00%... and nothing happened. (that's not quite true: JPM, Goldman and Blackrock all made it quite clear European money markets are now officially dead). However, as the following empirical analysis from Credit Suisse shows, the "Einhorn" chart is not just a conversation piece at cocktail parties: there is an actual trade pattern which has made traders lots of money, and which makes Eurocrats the best friends of not only Belgian caterers, but short-sellers everywhere: go long into a summit when the clueless algos read headlines and send risk soaring, only to short the inevitable fizzles days if not hours later.

More of the same is not working, and it just may require lower equity prices for investors to get what they really wish for.

One of the few things that we do know - for certain - about the future is that actions have consequences. In the world studied by the physical sciences of inanimate matter, it is possible to predict the future with certainty. That is because the entities being studied ARE inanimate. They have no power to initiate an action so they have no power to vary their reaction to a force which is applied to them. In the field of the study of HUMAN action, the situation is fundamentally different. No “stimulus” will ever produce the same response on entities which have the power of thought and the power of choice.

In summary, this is how Germans feel about continued ongoing bailouts of Germany's liquid(ity) crack-addicted neighbors:

In simple terms, we’re getting many signals that the US economy may in fact be slipping into a second recession in the context of a greater DE-pression.

What's in the "Print" today? Not these issues.

Big Banks Are Rotten to the Core