Archive - Sep 14, 2012

"It's never different this time." Ray Dalio's recent discussion at the Council for Foreign Relations is probably the most in-depth access to his 'model' explanation of the way the world works we have encountered. From bubbles to deleveragings and how the inter-relationships of various cycles bring about consistent trends and corrections; the full-length discussion, succinct interview with Foreign Affairs, and full readings are perhaps more useful than ever as we tread Wile E. Coyote-like off the edge of traditional monetary policy and encounter apparently different environments that in fact have occurred in perhaps alternate ways again and again over time. Great weekend viewing/reading on the three ways out of the panic-crisis that the Fed clearly believes we are in and the inevitability of his findings that "in all deleveragings, in the end they print money."

Today's Zero Hedge articles in audio summary! "They're obviously destroying the U.S. Embassies in order to rebuild them and boost GDP. They actually love America and our Keynesian economics." Everyday @ 8pm New York Time!

Yesterday, when we first presented our calculation of what the Fed's balance sheet would look like through the end of 2013, some were confused why we assumed that the Fed would continue monetizing the long-end beyond the end of 2012. Simple: in its statement, the FOMC said that "If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the Committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability." Therefore, the only question is by what point the labor market would have improved sufficiently to satisfy the Fed with its "improvement" (all else equal, which however - and here's looking at you inflation - will not be). Conservatively, we assumed that it would take at the lest until December 2014 for unemployment to cross the Fed's "all clear threshold." As it turns out we were optimistic. Bank of America's Priya Misra has just released an analysis which is identical to ours in all other respects, except for when the latest QE version would end. BofA's take: "We do not believe there will be “substantial” improvement in the labor market for the next 1.5-2 years and foresee the Fed buying Treasuries after the end of Operation Twist." What does this mean for total Fed purchases? Again, simple. Add $1 trillion to the Zero Hedge total of $4TRN. In other words, Bank of America just predicted at least 2 years and change of constant monetization, which would send the Fed's balance sheet to grand total of just over $5,000,000,000,000 as the Fed adds another $2.2 trillion MBS and Treasury notional to the current total of $2.8 trillion.

What the Fed did was actually much more than QE3. Call it QE3-plus... a gift that will now keep on giving. The new normal of bad news being good news is now going to be more fully entrenched for the market and 'housing data' (the most trustworthy of data) - clearly the Fed's preferred transmission mechanism - is now front-and-center in driving volatility. I don't think this latest Fed action does anything more for the economy than the previous rounds did. It's just an added reminder of how screwed up the economy really is and that the U.S. is much closer to resembling Japan of the past two decades than is generally recognized. It would seem as though the Fed's macro models have a massive coefficient for the 'wealth effect' factor. The wealth effect may well stimulate economic activity at the bottom of an inventory or a normal business cycle. But this factor is really irrelevant at the trough of a balance sheet/delivering recession. The economy is suffering from a shortage of aggregate demand. Full stop. It just perpetuates the inequality that is building up in the country, and while this is not a headline maker, it is a real long term risk for the health of the country, from a social stability perspective as well.

Ben Bernanke is crying tears of happiness tonight. I'm crying tears of sadness.

Idiotic Foreign Policy Comes Back to Bite Us

To the vast majority of the US citizenry, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is an odd number that flashes on the new 42" plasma-screen during dinner; wedged between a news story about a panda sneezing and some well-endowed weather-girl saying "hot, damn hot". This is why the behavior of Ben Bernanke this week might go unnoticed by most of the great unwashed. That is, of course, if they do not drive or eat food. For those that do eat or use vehicles; for the first time in history, national average gas prices for the 2nd week of September were over $4.00. Of course, this is mere transitory market speculators - and is not real money leaving their EBT card.

Thank you Bernanke. You're a joke in real life AND in parody. From yours truly. 

Despite a last minute surge (as stock indices lurched from their day-session open to closing VWAP levels), US equity markets extended gains but basically slid lower once Europe had closed. The day session opened gap higher as Europe extended (though Spanish debt slumped) and rushed out of the gate to new multi-year highs only to stumble on high volume and large block size into the European close. Also notable that VIX - which had tracked stocks from the QE3 announcement, began to push higher as stocks 'capitulated' up in the high 1460s and then stocks rolled back downhill for the rest of the day. VIX ended the day up 0.5vol at 14.5% while ES closed up 8pts. Equity sectors have split into 3 groups from the FOMC statement - Materials/Energy/Financials +~3.5%, Industrials/Discretionary/Tech +~2%, and Healthcare/Staples/Utilities +~0.5%. The USD lost 1.65% on the week (EUR +2.3% and JPY -0.18%) as Treasuries saw some vol but were basically one-way street with the long-bond +26bps, 10Y +20bps, and 5Y +6bps. Commodities outperformed USD-implied moves with Oil/Silver/Gold all up around 2-3% on the week - while Copper surged overnight to gain just under 5% on the week. Credit markets were less exuberant than their tracking stocks yesterday with HYG ended the day red.

Over two weeks ago we first described what at that point was merely the hint of trouble at Australian mega-miner Fortescue which is slowly but surely losing the fight with insolvency courtesy of plunging iron ore prices, whereby it was once again proven that bonds always have a better grasp of the situation than equities. Sure enough the cash crunch which we predicted was imminent at Fortescue, has since hit the company over the past several days, as the firm is currently in dire liquidity straits, desperate to renegotiate covenants and get waivers that allow it to continue operations even as creditors get the short stick (in exchange for some serious money upfront). It is unknown whether it will succeed, although judging by its halt from trading until next week by which point it hopes to restructure its debt, things are certainly not rosy for the megalevered iron-ore company. In retrospect, FMG AU is lucky to be alive as is, having had a comparable near-death experience back in 2007/2008: should its bondholders end up owning the equity, so be it. However, another far more troubling and certainly underpriced covenant renegotiation has struck, this time impacting Chinese conglomerate Sany Heavy Industry, a company which is the Chinese equivalent of US Caterpillar and Japanese Komatsu, which is owned by Liang Wengen who is mainland China's richest man with a $10 billion net worth, and which is so big and diversified that under no circumstances should it be forced to request covenant waivers, especially not under a soft-landing scenario for China. And yet this is precisely what it did.

From Egan-Jones, which downgraded the US for the first time ever last July, two weeks ahead of S&P: "Up, up, and away - the FED's QE3 will stoke the stock market and commodity prices, but in our opinion will hurt the US economy and, by extension, credit quality. Issuing additional currency and depressing interest rates via the purchasing of MBS does little to raise the real GDP of the US, but does reduce the value of the dollar (because of the increase in money supply), and in turn increase the cost of commodities (see the recent rise in the prices of energy, gold, and other commodities). The increased cost of commodities will pressure profitability of businesses, and increase the costs of consumers thereby reducing consumer purchasing power. Hence, in our opinion QE3 will be detrimental to credit quality for the US."

Against what seemed logical (given the assumption that Bernanke would save his limited ammo for a weaker market/economic environment), Bernanke launched an open ended mortgage backed securities bond buying program for $40 billion a month "until employment begins to show recovery."   That key statement is what this entire program hinges on.  The focus of the Fed has now shifted away from a concern on inflation to an all out war on employment and ultimately the economy.  However, will buying mortgage backed bonds promote real employment, and ultimately economic, growth.  Furthermore, will this program continue to support the nascent housing recovery? Clearly, the Fed's actions, and statement, signify that the economy is substantially weaker than previously thought. While Bernanke's latest program of bond buying was done under the guise of providing an additional support to the "recovery," the question now is becoming whether he has any ammo left to offset the next recession when it comes.

Color us stunned. While the world and their pet cat Roger are not worrying about inflation because Bernanke says CPI/PPI are still well-anchored and everything else is "transitory"; it turns out the market has a 'different' opinion. We have discussed inflation expectations before (whether 5Y5Y forward views or 10Y inflation swap breakevens) as a trigger for Fed action (or inaction) but this time, the market front-ran Bernanke's Bazooka and in the last two days of QEternity has exploded higher with 5Y forward expectations now near 6 year highs. CPI remains below 2% but there is a clear lag between the rise in market-implied inflation and it showing up in the unicorn-laden CPI prints - what this means is that given the hubris of the Fed yesterday, market expectations of inflation are inferring CPI could rise to over 5% within the next 3 to 6 months. It will surely be difficult for Ben to keep-on-buying ('Finding Nemo'-like) in the face of that kind of 'transitory' rise in real data - though for now, real money remains bid as risk comes off a little (even as the long-bond yield blows 26bps higher this week) - oh and CPI and PPI jump their most in 3 years.