Archive - Aug 28, 2012

A Round Up of today's articles. In audio summary!

It's a party in your mouth. Just don't choke.

Jacques Wajsfelner of Weston, Massachusetts is a criminal mastermind. Big time. Like Lex Luthor. But rest easy, ladies and gentlemen, for this nefarious villain is about to face some serious jail time thanks to the courageous work of US government agents. 83-year-old Wajsfelner was finally caught and convicted of a most heinous crime: failing to disclose his foreign bank account to the US government and is now looking at FIVE YEARS behind bars in a Day-Glo orange jumpsuit. Sentencing guidelines suggest that he will get some combination of jail time and supervised release to the tune of several years. Then there's Eric Higgins of Port Huron, Michigan, who was recently busted for major possession of child pornography and engaging in sexually explicit conversations with juveniles online. He was given 20 months. Oh... and Mr. Higgins was a US Customs & Border Patrol agent. This is what justice means in the Land of the Free today. Have you hit your breaking point yet?

Europe and the world are eagerly awaiting the decision of Germany’s Constitutional Court on September 12 regarding the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the proposed permanent successor to the eurozone’s current emergency lender, the European Financial Stability Mechanism. The Court must rule on German plaintiffs’ claim that legislation to establish the ESM would violate Germany’s Grundgesetz (Basic Law). Nobody knows how the Constitutional Court will rule on these objections. It is good that the Court’s decisions cannot be forecast, and even better that the Court cannot be lobbied or petitioned. The European Union can be based only on the rule of law. If those in power can break its rules on a case-by-case basis, the EU will never develop into the stable construct that is a prerequisite for peace and prosperity.

“If you receive the memo” about radioactive contamination, “don’t send it to us.”

"Everybody's going to war but we don't know what we are fighting for."

 

– Nerina Pallot, from "Everybody's Gone to War"

All sides in the coming conflict – except for the civilian populations and the soldiers maimed and killed – believe they will benefit from a limited war in the Middle East if everything goes according to plan. However, nothing ever goes according to plan in wars and this is the problem the world will face. Prolonged recession or depression, wealth and benefit confiscation throughout the EU, US and other Western democracies and the risk of a Middle East conflict spreading around the world is our fear. Who is guaranteed to win regardless of the outcome of the war and whether it can be contained? The Anglo-American financial elites and the bankers always win every conflict regardless of the military outcome. This is the history of the 20th century and we see no reason that will change now.

We are often asked for glossaries or background posts to help in the comprehension of how-we-got-here?, where-here-is?, and where-we-are-going? We hope that our posts, while diverse in nature, build upon one another and provide an educational platform for all levels of market/economy participant (active traders, passive investors, and working / non-working citizens alike) but as far as a succinct primer on how broken the status quo is and the 'euphoric' economy that very few could see through their Keynesian "debt doesn't matter" blinders, Steve Keen's introductory lecture at UWS is perhaps the most complete soup-to-nuts discussion we have seen recently. From the OECD's total ignorance to Bernanke's 'Great Moderation' miss; from economic 'religion' to science; and from Keynes to Minksy, Keen explains, in language even Chuck Schumer could understand, how more debt doesn't solve too much debt, how stability breeds instability, and why the US won't be finished deleveraging until 2025 (at this rate).

Miseseans choose to reach their conclusions not from data, but instead from praxeology; pure deduction and logic. This is quite unlike the early Austrians like Menger who mainly used a mixture of deductionism and data. Like all sciences, economics should be driven by data. For if we are not driven by data than we are just daydreaming. As Menger — the Father of Austrianism, who favoured a mixture of deductive and empirical methods — noted:

The merits of a theory always depends on the extent to which it succeeds in determining the true factors (those that correspond to real life) constituting the economic phenomena and the laws according to which the complex phenomena of political economy result from the simple elements.

Praxeology is leading Austrian economics down a dead end. Austrianism would do well to return to its root — Menger, not Mises.

November 16, 2011 was a historic date: that's when the US officially surpassed $15 trillion in debt for the first time since World War 2. We celebrated it by cheering $15,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOOBAMA. Today, August 28, 2012, is when we can unofficially celebrate again, because 286 days after the last major milestone was surpassed with disturbing ease, total US debt following today's $35 billion auction of 2 Year bonds is, well, in a word: $16,OOO,OOO,OOO,OOOBAMA! 

Will Steve Keen be proven 'early' and correct? We suspect so; and the following infographic from DebtConsolidation.com.au provides some more compelling evidence of the growth of the Aussie housing bubble and its geographical diversity (and should you consider a trade on the back of this - Australian bank CDS are trading near 12-month tights).

Over the weekend, we pointed out that the old mechanism for the People’s Bank of China to expand its balance sheet and create base money has been broken by new funds flow pattern, and it will sooner or later require some sort of large scale asset purchases programme a.k.a. quantitative easing to offset the impact of the broken mechanism (after other tools such as cutting RRR reach their limits). However, we also mentioned that as the private sector is currently quite overstretched and will start the deleveraging process (if they have not already started), and that would render traditional monetary tools useless, and quantitative easing ineffective. And that would necessitate deficit spending at both local and central government levels. If we have read the social mood correctly that China might be more pro-austerity than pro-Keynesian, and if policymakers indeed share that view, then the consequence in the near term could be rather grim. The delay in stimulus as well as the small size of it so far has already done damage, if you like. The economy is already on course to a hard landing.

Going nowhere fast was the theme today as equities managed to end practically unchanged (SPX/Dow down, NDX up) but intraday saw some very gappy behavior (though admittedly in a very small range). VIX is the story of the day in our view - realized volatility has dropped to near-record lows (which had, until a week ago, been a big driver of front-end implied vol compression) and yet VIX pushed higher (with implied vol now at almost a three-month high premium to realized). The point being - protection is bid, and a VIX of 16.5% is much more concerning given its premium than some would believe. Volume was above its very recent and dismal average but still around 15-20 percentage points below normal summer doldrums levels. Risk assets in general trod water today with modest outperformance by Treasuries (yields lower 1-2bps) and negligible moves in FX carry trades - even as the USD is down 0.35% since Friday (mirroring Silver's 0.35% gain). With Consumer confidence dismal, somewhat strangely both Consumer Staples and Discretionary outperformed on the day. Very low average trade size, a low high-low range, and a general inability to pull away from VWAP (+/-3pts only) suggested everyone is on hold (or buying protection as we noted above); but the small flush into the close was not very encouraging.

The causal relationship between scarcity, demand, and price is intuitive.  Whatever is scarce and in demand will rise in price; whatever is abundant and in low demand will decline in price to its cost basis. The corollary is somewhat less intuitive, but still solidly sensible: the cure for high prices is high prices, meaning that as the price of a commodity or service reaches a threshold of affordability/pain, suppliers and consumers will seek out alternatives or modify their behaviors to lower consumption. Much of the supposedly inelastic demand for goods is based on the presumptive value of ownership. For many workers, there simply won’t be enough income to indulge in the ownership model.  The cost in cash and opportunity are too high. This leads to a profound conclusion:  What will be scarce is income, not commodities.

China’s credit risk is rising, probably much more rapidly than the official non-performing loan (NPL) statistics indicate. SocGen is concerned as they think we are only seeing the beginning of the end of this NPL cycle. While they do not anticipate an outright banking crisis, as the government will certainly keep intervening at each turn on the way to avoid such an outcome, this is no reason to feel relieved. The reason being a major structural element in China's NPL cycle as many industries have massive excess capacity - after years of aggressive expansion that ran way ahead of demand growth - which eventually has to be eliminated. This process will take some time, during which faster depreciation in the form of deleveraging and consolidation will be unavoidable; and while expectations of an imminent hard landing may be overdone, the landing will nevertheless be multi-year and bumpy in their view.

When Ben Bernanke launched QE 2 in 2010 he outlined a third mandate for the Federal Reserve - the boosting of consumer confidence. He stated that the goal of QE 2 was to boost asset prices in order to spur consumer confidence through the "wealth effect" which should translate into economic growth. In 2010 he was right, and QE 2 not only boosted asset prices sharply, but kept the economy from slipping into a recessionary spat. As Friday's speech from the economic summit in "Jackson Hole" draws near - Bernanke should be taking a clue from today's release of consumer confidence in considering his next move.