Archive - Sep 2012

As if Bernanke promising to print, print, print until such time as the Fed's flawed policy brings unemployment lower, which by definition will not happen when the US is now suffering not from a structural unemployment "part-time new normal" problem, was not sufficient to send gold and other hard assets higher, today we get the double whammy announcement that the situation in South Africa, already very bad, is about to get much worse. Earlier today, South Africa's striking miners, already set on belligerent courtesy with their employers and authorities, prepare to go on general strike on Sunday, in effect shutting down all precious metal production in a world that is about to demand hard asset more than ever. "On Sunday, we are starting with a general strike here in Rustenburg," demonstration leader Mametlwe Sebei told several thousand workers at a soccer stadium in the heart of the platinum belt near Rustenburg, 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Johannesburg. The action was designed to "bring the mining companies to their knees", he said, to mild applause from the crowd, which was armed with sticks and machetes."

While hardly a factor in the Fed's thinking which is due to present its announcement in 4 hours, today's Initial claims report came at 382K, the biggest miss to expectations (370K) in 2 months, and up from last week's naturally upward revised claims of 367K. The 15K jump is the biggest weekly spike in 2 months and 4th largest this year. Just as relevantly, as we warned months ago, those on extended claims continue to run out at a fast pace, with 41K people losing their extended benefits, down by nearly 1.8 million from a year ago, and are forced to seek disability benefits to keep the government dole running. More importantly, and just as Bernanke is doing his best to stoke inflation, producer prices soared by 1.7% in August, up from July's 0.3%, and well above expectations of 1.2%. This was the biggest M/M spike since the 1.9% surge in June of 2009, and was driven primarily by soaring food prices, which however as everyone knows, is not really a factor in the Fed's thinking. "On an unadjusted basis, prices for finished goods climbed 2.0 percent for the 12 months ended August 2012, the largest advance since a 2.8-percent increase for the 12 months ended March 2012." Then again, who out there needs food or energy - inflation is precisely what Bernanke wants, the FOMC will welcome this news with open arms. But at least the Fed will create jobs and get people to give up on renting which is the New Normal buying, and scramble right back into the housing re-bubble.

In the last 30 days (since August 13th), platinum has risen by 18.9%, silver by 18.7%, palladium by 18.4% and gold by 7.6%. All remain well below their nominal record highs (see charts) and more importantly well below their inflation adjusted highs. All will most likely continue to rally especially if the Fed announces QE3 today as investors turn to precious metals to hedge substantial money printing by governments and the real risk of future inflation. "The Euro bailout measures and the opening of the monetary policy floodgates by the central banks are likely to result in higher inflation in the medium to long term," says today's Commerzbank commodities note. The strikes and violence in South Africa's gold and platinum industries are supporting and may contribute to higher prices. Machete-wielding strikers forced Anglo American Platinum, the world's No.1 platinum producer, to shut down some of its operations in South Africa, sending spot platinum to a five month high of $1,654.49. 

Now that the German high court ruling is out of the way and the Dutch elections results produced no real surprises the European equity markets are essentially flat with position squaring evident ahead of the keenly awaited FOMC rate announcement and accompanying press conference. Bund futures have followed a similar trend having ticked higher through the morning with some modest re-widening of the Spanish and Italian 10yr government bond yield spreads, wider by 9bps and 5bps respectively, also in Euribor will did see a decent bid after comments from ECB member Hansson who said the ECB council must now start debating a negative deposit rate. Today’s supply from Italy and Ireland had little impact on the general sentiment, that’s in spite of the fact that demand for debt issued by the Italian Treasury was less than impressive to say the least. Also of note, Catalan President Mas said that Spain should debate staying in the euro, which unsettled the market somewhat. Overnight it was reported that the US Navy have stepped up their security presence in Libya by ordering two warships to the country's coast, according to US officials. This is after the US ambassador to Libya and three American members of his staff were killed in the attack on the US consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi by protesters earlier in the week. Today, there were more reports of demonstrations in the region, however supplies remain unaffected.

Two weeks ago when we posted "The Kangaroo In The Metals Mine: Fortescue Trying To Raise $1.5 Billion From 20 Banks As Iron Prices Implode" we observed several developments in the bond prices of Australian mega iron miner, and fourth largest in the world, Fortescue, which suddenly found itself in dire need of cash which is always a first step to insolvency, which made us comment that just "like that we are back to those days of 2008 when the Chinese demand collapse meant any day could be FMG's last. Happy days are back again." Not really. We added that "as usual, the bond market is the first to get the memo that the landing is going to be a hard one. We give the farce that is known as equities about 4-6 weeks before they too get the memo." We were actually wrong: it took just two weeks for equities to finally figure out what we were warning about. From Reuters: "The world's no.4 iron ore miner Fortescue Metals Group Ltd has asked lenders to waive debt covenants if iron ore prices remain under pressure, the firm said on Thursday, after its shares suffered their worst loss in almost four years. Like other Australian miners, Fortescue's earnings have come under pressure from a plunge in commodity prices caused by weak demand in top consumer China. This has squeezed its ability to service its long-term debt, which stands at $11.3 billion." Of course, those who read our August 31 report, and were positioned accordingly and ahead of the market, made 20% in two weeks.

• Italy Says It Won't Seek Aid (WSJ)... and neither will Spain, so no OMT activation, ever. So why buy bonds again?
• European Lenders Keep Ties to Iran (WSJ)
• Fink Belies Being Boring Telling Customers to Buy Stocks (Bloomberg)
• Dutch Voters Buck Euro Debt Crisis to Re-Elect Rutte as Premier (Bloomberg)
• China's Xi cited in state media as health rumors fly (Reuters)
• China vs Japan: Tokyo must come back 'from the brink' (China Daily)
• Manhattan Apartment Vacancy Rate Climbs After Rents Reach Record (Bloomberg)
• Well-to-do get mortgage help from Uncle Sam (Reuters)
• Princeton Endowment Expected to Rise Less Than 5% in Year (Bloomberg)
• Protesters Encircle U.S. Embassy in Yemen (WSJ)
• US groups step up sales of non-core units (FT)

While this and that may have happened overnight, the only thing that matters today is what the FOMC presents to a market which has now priced in well over 100% of a new easing round. Except little movement until Bernanke speaks, and with that removes any doubt that i) the Fed, like the ECB, are both political creations comprised of unelected academics, and ii) the entire modern capitalist world is nothing but a Pavlovian creation that responds only to promises of liquidity injections. Luckily, if nothing else, this will once and for all shut up anyone who claims that the market reflects the economy, it doesn't; that a "virtuous economic cycle" is possible under the new centrally planned normal, it isn't, and that the US economy is recovering 4 years after Lehman collapsed. It never did, and without $14 trillion in central bank liquidity injections over the same period, the world, as represented by the S&P, would be in a mindblowing depression, which it will still get back to once the surge in hard asset inflation offsets any incremental liquidity provided by the central planning academics as Citi warned yesterday.

Anti-American violence and hatred is spreading: first Egypt, then Libya, with very tragic consequences, now Yemen. From Reuters: "Hundreds of Yemeni demonstrators stormed the U.S. embassy in Sanaa on Thursday in protest at a film they consider blasphemous to Islam, and security guards tried to hold them off by firing into the air. The attack followed Tuesday night's storming of the United States Consulate in Benghazi, where the ambassador and three other staff were killed. President Barack Obama said the perpetrators would be tracked down and ordered two destroyers to the Libyan coast, but there were fears protests would spread to other countries in the Muslim world." And since the US will not retaliate against any of these attacks on what is technically US territory except with "strong condemnation", expect many more retaliations against America in the middle east in the days ahead as blowback finally blows up. Also, will the US warships headed to Libya now be redirected to Yemen or the next country that decided to burn down its US mission?

Rolling up community banks with mid-single digit ROEs and flat to up small revenue growth does not strike this analyst as a very compelling opportunity 

Back in January, Pulitzer winning journalist Chris Hedges sued President Obama and the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, specifically challenging the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force or, the provision that authorizes military detention for people deemed to have "substantially supported" al Qaeda, the Taliban or "associated forces." Hedges called the president's action allowing indefinite detention, which was signed into law with little opposition from either party "unforgivable, unconstitutional and exceedingly dangerous." He attacked point blank the civil rights farce that is the neverending "war on terror" conducted by both parties, targetting whom exactly is unclear, but certainly attaining ever more intense retaliation from foreigners such as the furious attacks against the US consulates in Egypt and Libya. He asked  "why do U.S. citizens now need to be specifically singled out for military detention and denial of due process when under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force the president can apparently find the legal cover to serve as judge, jury and executioner to assassinate U.S. citizens." A few months later, in May, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest ruled in favor of a temporary injunction blocking the enforcement of the authorization for military detention. Today, the war againt the true totalitarian terror won a decisive battle, when in a 112-opinion, Judge Forrest turned the temporary injunction, following an appeal by the totalitarian government from August 6, into a permanent one.

Unelected bureaucrats, politicians, and bankers

Today's ZeroHedge articles in audio summary! Video link now working! I apologise for the trouble!

Instead of waffling on for an hour about all the wonderful things that Europe will become as a stronger world power if only everyone can just get along, give up sovereignty, and bow to Barroso, Daniel Hannan sums up perfectly what 'should' happen in order for some closure and resurrection to occur in the dis-union.

Perhaps no better example of the two camps of perspectives on the market's performance and the Fed's expectations was on display this afternoon on CNBC. In the 'we need some destructive asset clearing in order to get back to any sort of growth trajectory and the Fed is feeding an inflationary monster with its band-aid upon band-aid money-printing' camp is Peter Schiff; while the other side of the investing octagon is Ron Insana who sees a '100% rise in stocks as evidence of something and that the Fed must do something, anything in order that we avoid the reality under the surface of a deleveraging deflationary world economy'. We are not sure of the winner as the shouting became too much to bear - but nevertheless the vociferous nature of the two combatants (each proclaiming their #winning-ness) shows the bifurcated world in which we live.