Archive - Oct 3, 2013

... in which we see that the infamous police car crash was seemingly entirely self-inflicted.

The embattled Spanish premier Mariano Rajoy decided to take his unique brand of leadership onto the international stage last week, with what can only be described as interesting results. After somehow managing not to fluff his lines at the UN podium, Rajoy made the short trip to the Bloomberg studios for a 25-minute interview with Sarah Eisen. The Spanish premier and his team of advisors had expected nothing but soft questions about Spain’s recent “economic miracle.” Bloomberg is a business broadcaster, their thinking went, so what else could it possibly be interested in? But as often tends to happen with Rajoy’s government, things did not go according to plan... ending with Rajoy's political team begging the broadcaster not to publish the footage... they did.

The Federal Reserve is the largest player in the world's largest economy... and it's on a runaway train... funding government largesse and ensuring gridlock...

Even Mario Draghi noted this week that the markets should be ignored by policy makers (as they should focus on reforms) and explained that the European economy has downside risks and is "weak and fragile" So why is it that so many still claim Europe is the place to be? Aside from it being an excuse for nothing less than momentum-chasing muppets to pile in and get a soundbite on TV, the truth is that European macro data is not only now worse than the US but has fallen to 7 week lows. So your new clean shirt is the US again... just ignore the debt-ceiling issues, earnings warnings, and looming Fed taper...

There really is very little reason why this "government shutdown" cannot continue indefinitely because almost everything is still running.  63 percent of all federal workers are still working, and 85 percent of all government activities are still being funded during this "shutdown". It turns out that the definition of "essential personnel" has expanded so much over the years that almost everyone is considered "essential" at this point.  In fact, this shutdown is such a non-event that even referring to it as a "partial government shutdown" would really be overstating what is actually happening. In the end, this shutdown could turn out to be very good for America.  We have a government that is wildly out of control and that desperately needs to be reigned in.

One thing is now abundantly clear: 2013 is now one big scratch for bankers who were expecting that this year bonuses would finally pick up from the prior several years mediocre performance and catch up to the record days of 2009 (just after the biggest wholesale bank bailout in history). The WSJ summarizes the situation best: "I haven't seen morale this bad since the Titanic," said Richard Stein, a senior recruiter at Caldwell Partners CWL.T -3.41% who specializes in financial services. And if bankers are not happy, nobody else will be (here's looking at you dear perpetual banker bailout ATM known as US taxpayers).

The US Federal Reserve’s recent surprise announcement that it would maintain the current pace of its monetary stimulus reflects the ongoing debate about the desirability of cooperation among central banks. Discussion of central-bank cooperation has often centered on a single historical case, in which cooperation initially seemed promising, but turned out to be catastrophic. We are thus left with a paradox: While crises increase demand for central-bank cooperation to deliver the global public good of financial stability, they also dramatically increase the costs of cooperation, especially the fiscal costs associated with stability-enhancing interventions. As a result, in the wake of a crisis, the world often becomes disenchanted with the role of central banks – and central-bank cooperation is, yet again, associated with disaster.

With short-term Treasury Bills starting to price in a missed payment possibility and USA CDS surging (though still low), the debt ceiling (and implicit chance of a technical default) is nigh. As we approach yet another debt ceiling showdown (especially in light of the seeming congruence of a CR and debt ceiling debate in an entirely divided Washington), market attention will turn towards a possible US sovereign rating downgrade. In this article, we provide an outline of the likely actions by the three rating agencies (S&P, Moody’s and Fitch).

Hidden deep in the pages of JPMorgan's Living Will report just realesed by the FDIC, the WSJ has found that CEO Jamie Dimon (still Chairman of the overall JPM entity) has relinquished his position as Chairman of the banking conglomerate's major deposit-taking subsidiary. While the bank claims this is "solely to create a more uniform structure among our subsidiary boards," one can't help but feel this is driven by unrelenting pressure from the administration (and its regulators) as the deposit-taking subsidiary had its confidential management rating downgraded from a 2 to a 3 on a scale of 5, a rare score for such a large institution; and faces public enforcement actions demanding changes to alleged risk-management, anti-money-laundering and debt-collection weaknesses.

Even as the fearmongering over the debt ceiling hits proportions not seen since 2011 (when however it was the 20% drop in the market that catalyzed a resolution in the final minutes - a scenario likely to be repeated again), some banks are taking things more seriously, and being well-aware that when it comes to banks, any initial panic merely perpetuates more panic, have taken some radical steps. The FT reports that "two of the country’s 10 biggest banks said they were putting into place a “playbook” used in August 2011 when the government last came close to breaching the debt ceiling. One senior executive said his bank was delivering 20-30 per cent more cash than usual in case panicked customers tried to withdraw funds en masse. Banks are also holding daily emergency meetings to discuss other steps, including possible free overdrafts for customers reliant on social security payments from the government.

Youth unemployment around the world is dreadfully high and rising. An entire generation is now coming of age without being able to leave the nest or have any prospect of earning a decent wage in their home country. Young people in particular get the sharp end of the stick - they’re the last to be hired, the first to be fired, the first to be sent off to fight and die in foreign lands, and the first to have their benefits cut; and if they’re ever lucky enough to find meaningful employment, they can count on working their entire lives to pay down the debts of previous generations through higher and higher taxes. But when it comes time to collect... finally... those benefits won’t be there for them. Case in point: the British government has just announced a new push to eliminate benefits for young people. And this is just step 1.

Dramatic footage in this Fox News video.

"We may well have had a big, big rally in the U.S. stock market, but it's not based on reality.

I would encourage investors to know you're in a fool's paradise, be careful, and when people start singing praises, say, 'I've been to this party before, and I know know it's time to leave.'"

-Jim Rogers

Warmongering Continuing Full Speed Ahead