Archive - Jul 2012

"The United States is the only country with a known birthday."--James G Blaine

We know its is blasphemous to question the NAR and given the dismal state of the manufacturing sector data in the US in recent months, the entire recovery now seems predicated on good old 'residential real estate' rising phoenix-like from the ashes of negative equity. Goldman's Jan Hatzius ignores the 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' of the mainstream media's call for a glorious recovery in housing and lays out his own three monkeys. While recent data is encouraging, he is far from sounding the all-clear as the massive instability of seasonal factors; the gradual nature of the 'turn' and wide dispersion between strong and weak markets; and housing's considerably less important role in the broad economy (and macroeconomic spillover wealth effects); all leave the Goldman economist unamused as he sums up his perspective quite succinctly: "while housing may be getting better, it's no longer about housing."

“The patience of the public has been exhausted”

Libor Manipulation Is Only One of MANY Types of Fraud Committed by the Big Banks

Despite economic miss after miss, the momentum players in the market continue unfazed, dodectupling down on Bernanke Put Double Zero, pushing stocks to new highs simply on continued hopes that something in Europe may have changed with Merkel's so-called defeat last week, even as Merkel's key CSU coalition partners voiced an open threat earlier today to no longer support Eurozone aid if there is no conditionality - supposedly Mario Monti's biggest victory (ignoring that the German constitutional court is also faced with a barrage of demands to undo the ESM), and on hopes that tomorrow the ECB will announce something more drastic than the now widely expected 25 basis point cut. In other words a hope rally, even as bonds, and FX have now diverged dramatically with the hope gripping the global stock market. And hope is good, however if it becomes an investing "strategy" total loss is virtually guaranteed. That said, perhaps for the first time ever, bonds are wrong, and stocks are right, and all the bad news has been priced in (unlike all those other times when everyone said the same, and when everyone was certain they would sell first ahead of the herd). Which brings us to the question that Citi's Steven Englander has just asked himself: "So what can go wrong?" Here is his answer (in five parts).

Debate between Krugman and the CFR rages on in round 2 on whether currency devaluation created the Icelandic Miracle or Mirage.  

Starting from the level of global savings and forecasts by the IMF, Lombard Street Research's Charles Dumas explains to the FT's John Authers how this 'glut' of global savings exacerbated by 'accounting' of negative economic policies is choking economic growth. This fiscal responsibility versus growth (saving vs. investment) argument is nowhere more evident (for now) than in Europe, where the two chaps progress, in this worthwhile clip, to the extremely dispersed (and not at all united) unit labor costs of European nations as the crux of where Europe goes next. In Dumas' words: "people have got to make up their minds how much they are prepared to pay and for how long" and the longer the time where these relative costs diverge the greater the inevitable costs, leaving only two EU solutions: either the 'Irish' mass-emigration/devalue/economic-collapse in the hopes of improving competitiveness; or 'inflation in Germany' - which is abhorrent to the people of that country. The only possible route back to growth in the short-term is an 'amicable' break-up of the Euro - which as Dumas points out is attractive politically to Ms. Merkel heading into next year's election (as opposed to her keep having to back-down again and again). This is in line with our view that when push comes to a big shove, Germany will be the optimal defection from the game-theoretical game of chicken being played in Europe (and anyone who feels the technical measures from the last summit solve the problems, in Auther's words "is being very 'hopeful' indeed").

In honor of the FDIC releasing the living wills for banks, we thought we’d offer up a shorter version that the banks could use. You're welcome.

David Einhorn is kicking ass and taking names, currently in 4th at the WSOP 2012 with over $16 million in chips (having just won an all in with pocket Aces). Select US viewers can watch the live stream below direct from the ESPN2 website. To everyone else, we are confident a 3rd party livestream can be found elsewhere.

The past few years have produced an impression of the Chinese government that it is invincible, and it has miraculous control over the economic machine, that the slowdown is “intentionally” engineered by the government and everything within the economy is still very much under control.  Unfortunately, most who use this argument to justify that the slowdown is not a big problem have all invariably forgotten that most economic slowdowns in recent memories started with central banks tightening monetary policy to control inflation and slow down the economy, and most, if not all, of the cases ended with recession that they did not want to get into.  Many have also not realized how difficult it would be for China to relate its way out of a debt deflation.  So how different China is in this regard is totally beyond our comprehension, and we are forced to suggest that the believers of China cult have gone delusional. As the economic slowdown becomes a reality and a hard landing unavoidable, more of the problems we have identified will surface. The cult will surely die within the next few years at most. The only questions are when it will finally die, and whether it will suffer a violent death or slow death.

The Fed, by buying Treasuries is making insolvent banks even more insolvent. It is a short-term gain (liquidity) for a long-term disaster: banks need as much collateral as they can get their hands on right now. And with Treasuries rallying (raising the value of the banks' assets) any aggressive Fed program to take Treasuries out of the system would be a MAJOR step towards another solvency Crisis a la 2008.

As was first reported two days ago, and confirmed today, Barclays' natural response to allegations it single-handedly manipulated the interest rate complex for up to $500 trillion notional in IR-sensitive swaps and other products (it didn't - everyone else did it too), was to drag everyone into the scandal, starting off with the Bank of England (and about to drag Whitehall into it too), and specifically the man who was next in line for governorship of the English Central Bank: Paul Tucker. What does this mean? Well, as we suggested also two days ago, 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'.) Yet the fact that Goldman is hell bent on global domination by stretching its tentacles into every monetary policy administration is no secret: it is only a matter of time before GS also runs the English CTRL-P macros. More interesting is that in addition to the BOE, Barclays today also dragged America's very own Federal Reserve into the fray.

The gold exchange standard period, which followed WW2, was a period of unprecedented and unparalleled expansion, productivity growth, technological innovation, and financial stability. The Bank of England’s recent report on the gold standard periods concluded:

"Overall the gold standard appeared to perform reasonably well against its financial stability and allocative efficiency objectives."

The BBC concludes by quoting former Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lawson:

"You can’t force a government to stay on gold, so therefore gold has no credibility."

Do you see the cognitive dissonance here? If we are to believe Lord Lawson, gold has no credibility, because governments have previously proven themselves untrue to their word. Surely the thing that has no credibility is not gold, but government promises? And that is the answer to the BBC’s initial question.