Archive - Jul 2012

Earlier we heard Goldman's talk down of Draghi's comments, which we will not tire of saying, were absolutely nothing new. Now here is Citi's Jurgen Michel throwing cold water in the face of all those who believe that the ECB (which can't really do more LTROs unless it is willing to accept Zynga's virtual farms as collateral) will save the day with more direct intervention. To wit: "in our view, such action is only likely to be taken after governments have taken action first, i.e. by activating the bond market support facility for Spain and Italy." In other words, nobody believes Draghi, despite his stern warning to "believe" him - everyone wants action out of the ECB head, not talk.

With the heat-wave in Southern Europe, the missing Monsoon, and the earth-cracking drought in the US, it is no surprise that corn, wheat, and soymeal prices are soaring as crop yields plunge. The level of inventories were already low going in and as Bloomberg notes, consumers around the world will feel the effect of higher food prices as the worst drought in 50 years impact the world's largest exporter of corn and wheat (and 3rd largest of soymeal). Within Asia, Korea and Malaysia will be most adversely affected, considering direct effects referenced in per capita and GDP terms. Indonesia and Japan are Asia’s largest importers of wheat, both importing roughly 5.7 million metric tons on average. China is by a wide margin the region’s largest importer of soy, with average imports of 49.9 million in the last five years. The impact on headline inflation in Asia will be stronger for the economies with lower per capita incomes — Vietnam, India, the Philippines and Indonesia — where food and food products account for a larger share of the typical consumption basket. Even in places where incomes are high, such as Singapore, food accounts for 22 percent of the consumer price index.

As prescient as he was, Huxley could not have foreseen the power of electronic media hypnosis/addiction as a conditioning mechanism for passivity and self-absorption. We are only beginning to understand the immense addictive/conditioning powers of 24/7 social and "news" media. What would we say about a drug that caused people to forego sex to check their Facebook page? What would we say about a drug that caused young men to stay glued to a computer for 40+ hours straight, an obsession so acute that some actually die? We would declare that drug to be far too powerful and dangerous to be widely available, yet the Web is now ubiquitous. Servitude comes in many gradations and forms. Relying on the Federal Reserve to constantly prop up our pension and mutual funds lest reality cause them to collapse is a form of servitude; we end up worshipping the Fed's every word and act as mendicants worship their financial saviors. That the Fed is unelected and impervious to democracy or the will of the people is forgotten; all that matters is that we love our servitude to it.

UPDATE: 7 of the last 8 moves in Spanish spreads of this magnitude were followed by a more dramatic selloff within 2-3 days.

It was a good day; of that there is no doubt. Equity, FX, credit, and sovereign bond markets all retraced  recent weakness in a hurry - extending some of the gains from yesterday's Nowotny nonsense. With Merkel away on vacation and unable to fade this exuberance - though the IMF did their best reality impression. We don't mean to steal the jam out of anyone's donut here but in the case of EURUSD, 2Y Spain, 10Y Spain, Italian bonds, and Italy and Spain's equity indices - today's 'game-changer' merely reverted us back to Friday's close - filling that gap. In most cases this still leaves the levels notably weaker than pre-EU-Summit - in spite of how much certain CNBC hosts 'believe'. Bt we would be unfair if we did not note the moves: IBEX/FTSEMIB +5.5%; Euro Stoxx +3.9%; Spain 2Y -87bps, 10Y -45bps; EURUSD +136pips - pegged at 1.23; Italy 2Y -89bps, 10Y -37bps; Europe's VIX dropped 1.7vols to 25.4%. The charts say it all for context here.

I’ve spent the last six months digging as deep as I can into the financial system to find the unquantifiable risks that aren’t being discussed by the financial industry. I’ve found them. And they are worse than anything I expected to find. Indeed, what I’ve discovered is more horrifying than I’d care to admit.

When the Lieborgate scandal broke out and the Bank of England trace became publicly known, some of the more conspiratorially inclined elements saw in this epic shakedown at the English central bank nothing but an opportunity for the world's dominant investment bank, Goldman Sachs, to capitalize on the scandal and the succession panic now that Paul Tucker is obviously out of succession rotation, and to appoint its own tentacles to the head of this most important central bank that is currently squid free. In fact, on July 3 we said:"now that the natural succession path at the BOE has been terminally derailed, it brings up those two other gentlemen already brought up previously as potential future heads of the BOE, both of whom just happened to work, or still do, at... Goldman Sachs:  Canada's Mark Carney or Goldman's Jim O'Neil. Granted both have denied press speculation they will replace Mervyn King, but it's not like it would be the first time a banker lied to anyone now, would it (and makes one wonder if this whole affair was not merely orchestrated by the Squid from the get go... but no, that would be a 'conspiracy theory'.)" We wonder if this speculation can be upgraded from conspiracy theory to conspiracy fact, now that Bloomberg itself has written a major article discussing just this suddenly very likely outcome.

With the Olympics about to kick off in all its glorious celebration, the sad reality of UK's GDP shrinking 0.7% as the empire drops further into a double-dip. As Bloomberg Brief notes, this came along with a 5.2% plunge in construction output as the IMF estimates austerity has cut 2.5% off GDP. What is most concerning is that GDP has fallen for five of the last seven quarters and is now 4.5% below pre-crisis levels. The level of disbelief is palpable though since the BoE sees only a 10% chance of this recession lasting into 2013 and while it estimates that it will take until 2014 before the UK gets back to the 2008 level (magically), we note that that is already longer than it took during The Great Depression.

Wondering what Draghi really meant this morning when he spoke at an informal Investment Conference? Apparently nothing just as we said first thing this morning: IMF SAYS DRAGHI'S REMARKS ARE A WELCOME REITERATION OF ECB'S WELL-KNOWN COMMITMENT TO DO WHAT IS NECESSARY. So now the talking down of expectations, or in this case today's iteration of "baffle with bullshit" begins. Yet surely there is some additional agenda. For the best interpretation of what the ECB head said, we go to his former employer, Goldman Sachs, which is always ready to tell its clients to do the opposite of what its own prop desk is doing.

While some have talked of the 'credit-easing' possibility a la Bank of England (which Goldman notes is unlikely due to low costs of funding for banks already, significant current backing for mortgage lending, and bank aversion to holding hands with the government again), there remains a plethora of options available for the Fed. From ZIRP extensions, lower IOER, direct monetization of fiscal policy needs, all the way to explicit USD devaluation (relative to Gold); BofAML lays out the choices, impacts, and probabilities in this handy pocket-size cheat-sheet that every FOMC member will be carrying with them next week.

Readers know that Zero Hedge boycotts manipulated NAR data, which, just like Libor, is not only meaningless, and set by "insiders" who have skin in the game, but is also always totally wrong. Today we will make an exception, not so much because the just released pending home sales miss (-1.4% on expectations of +0.3%) confirmed what most people know: namely that the housing "recovery" has the same credibility as saying ZNGA has bottomed, and follows misses in New and Existing home sales, but because the below video of Larry Yun is a pure theatrical masterpiece and worth the price of admission alone.

Curious why Germany by way of Angela Merkel, has not yet responded officially to Mario's promises to break Article 123 if needed, in order to preserve the Goldman bonus pool, even if it means flooding Germany with inflation - something that historically has taken her at most a few hours? Better yet, curious why Mario Draghi picked exactly today to go ahead and defy Germany knowing full well there would be no official response for quite a while? Here's why.

The major problem with daily jawboning by central bankers, such as Draghi today, and the Fed via Hilsenrath on Tuesday, is that it "achieves" to price in QE without QE actually being implemented: in essence the various central banks try to run up assets on the rumor, knowing well that with every incremental "news" event, the news will be sold ever faster, and ever more forcefully. Which then begs the question: how much QE is currently priced in, in order to determine how much more "rumor" there is to buy. According to Bank of America: not much, as a full 65% of QE 3, or the NEW QE, to use the proper iNomenclature, is by now priced in.

As panties are being thrown at the feet of Mario Draghi all around Europe, and his comments are being heralded as 'confirmation' of Nowotny's restatement of absolutely nothing yesterday, we thought some context would be useful before we all cheer that all is well. Spanish and Italian 10Y bond spreads are still notably wider than the pre-EU-Summit 'panic' levels and dramatically wider than the post-EU-Summit best levels. Spain 2s10s, having flattened from 220bps to 60bps in a week has squeezed back up to 128bps as we can only imagine the bath-salting that caused a few people. The point is that this kneejerk reaction in an incredibly illiquid market at the front-end of the Spanish curve is nothing to rest your hat on yet. In fact, if there are more hints dropped of ECB restarting SMP then we suspect European asset managers will run to sell down their Spanish bonds to try and front-run the subordination this implies at the inevitable restructuring (as game-theoretically they know everyone else will also do the same).