Archive - Oct 2013

• Top China Banks Triple Debt Write-Offs as Defaults Loom (BBG)
• PBOC suspends open market operations again (Global Times)
• Eurozone bank shares fall after ECB outlines health check plan (FT)
• O-Care falling behind (The Hill)
• Key House Republican presses tech companies on Obamacare glitches (Reuters)
• J.P. Morgan Faces Another Potential Huge Payouta (WSJ)
• Yankees Among 10 MLB Teams Valued at More Than $1 Billion (BBG)
• Free our reporter, begs newspaper as China cracks down on journalists (Reuters)
• Peugeot Reviews Cost-Saving Alliance With GM (WSJ)

There was some hilarious news overnight: such that supposedly Spain's GDP rose 0.1% in Q3 thus ending a 2+ year recession. There is no point to even comment on this "recovery" - we will merely remind that starving your economy of imports for the sake of generating a GDP-boosting trade surplus, while consumption declines, solves nothing and point readers to charts of Spanish non-performing loans, housing prices, and unemployment, oh and the massive Bad Bank of course, and leave it at that. In terms of real news, futures are lower following a drubbing in Asia over the previously discussed concerns over tighter Chinese monetary policy. Amusingly, as Reuters notes, this has hit global shares still high on hopes of extended U.S. stimulus on Wednesday, when the dollar tentatively steadied at an eight-month low after its latest slide. The immediate casualty is the USDJPY, which continues to slide and is approaching the 200SMA. In short: fears that China may have resumed tapering have offset yesterday's hope that "horrible" job numbers mean no Fed tapering until mid-2014.... New Normal fundamentals.

Following the past two days of reports in which we noted that both the broader Chinese housing market was overheating and reflating at an unprecedented pace as 69 of 70 cities posted Y/Y home price gains, while a separate report showed a blistering 12% price increase in Shanghai new homes in one week, it was only a matter of time before the PBOC resumed its tighter policy posturing, which infamously sent short-term repo rates to 25% briefly in June and nearly led to a collapse of the already fragile local banking system, in an attempt to pretend it is still in control of what is now the world's fastest growing credit bubble and of course, Chinese inflation which is now impacted not only by record domestic credit production but by hot money flows from both the Fed and the BOJ.  Predictably enough, as reported overnight by the Global Times, the PBOC suspended its open market operations Tuesday without injecting money as usual, a move that analysts said was in response to a surge in foreign capital inflows in September. And just like the last time the PBOC proceeded to "surprise" the market with its own tapering intentions, overnight funding rates soared, with the one-day repo rate surged 67 bps, most since June 20, to 3.7561%; while the seven-day repo rate rose 42 bps, most since July 29, to 4.0000%. This, however, brings us to the far more important story, one reported by Bloomberg overnight, and one which we predicted is inevitable over a year ago: namely that the Chinese banks, filled tothe gills with bad and non-performing debt, are finally preparing for the inevitable default onslaught and as a result have suddenly tripled their debt write offs in what can be best described as preparing for an avalanche of defaults.

Faber, whose advice has protected millions of investors in recent years, warned of a global systemic crisis possibly due to the massive size of the global derivatives market which is now worth over an incredible $700 trillion.

He warned “when the system goes down,” and only plastic credit cards are left, “maybe then people will realize and go back to some gold-based system.” He wisely said that, “I advise everyone to have some gold.”

Dear World Gold Council Executives;

As you very well know, the business environment for gold producers has been extremely challenging over the past few years. While demand for physical gold remains extremely strong, prices on the COMEX have fallen precipitously. This contradictory situation is the single most important obstacle to a healthy gold mining industry.

In my opinion, the massive imbalance between supply and demand is not reflected in prices because available statistics are misleading...

The dismal news keeps coming for the Fukushima nuclear power facility. According to NHK World, TEPCO is admitting to detecting radioactive cesium about one kilometer off shore. While the level is low, it is the secoond time radioactive substances have been found that far offshore and it is believed to be from wastewater leaking out with the groundwater. The company, reassuringly, says the leak poses no environmental risk... As if that was not enough, Bloomberg reports TEPCO also found high levels of radiation in the drainage ditches and wells at the site. Of course, this will likely be met with cries of delight by Abe who will "need to build a bigger wall" to contain the leaks and thus create a Keynesian utopia from the 'broken nuclear plant fallacy' that is ongoing.

"Don't Stop Believing..."

This is probably the most painful bug report I’ve ever read, describing in glorious technicolor the steps leading to Knight Capital’s $460m trading loss due to a software bug that struck late last year, effectively bankrupting the company. The tale has all the hallmarks of technical debt in a huge, unmaintained, bit-rotten codebase (the bug itself due to code that hadn’t been used for almost 9 years), and a really poor, undisciplined dev-ops story.

Just one day after the deal in Congress was reached, the U.S. national debt rose by an astounding 328 billion dollars.  In the blink of an eye we shattered the 17 trillion dollar mark with no end in sight.  We are stealing about $100,000,000 from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day.  This goes on 24 hours a day, month after month, year after year without any interruption. The U.S. national debt is now 37 times larger than it was 40 years ago, and we are on pace to accumulate more new debt under the 8 years of the Obama administration than we did under all of the other presidents in U.S. history combined. So what will happen when the rest of the world decides that they don't need to use our dollars or buy our debt any longer? At that point the consequences of decades of incredibly foolish decisions will result in an avalanche of economic pain that the American people are not prepared for.

A mere 24 hours before the US was going to run out of money and default on its obligations (in what Jack Lew described as a "catastrophe"), Grant Williams notes the S&P 500 was trading exactly 2.30% from its all-time high. Does that sound like anybody was worried about financial Armageddon? Nope, but as Williams detail sin his latest letter, the danger was very real, as a default by the US on its debt obligations would have gone to the very heart of the "plumbing" that underlies financial markets and caused havoc in the repo market and all kinds of problems with collateral... The key clue passed most people by a week ago; but it came from, of all places, Hong Kong...

Last week Mike Maloney exposed the "biggest scam in the history of mankind" in 7 easy steps in his latest presentation. As Mike explains, most people can feel deep down that something isn't quite right with the world economy, but few know what it is. Gone are the days where a family can survive on just one paycheck...every day it seems that things are more and more out of control, yet only one in a million understand why. Here is the simple infographic to explain the grift...

Tired of reading 640 pages of "The Intelligent Investor"? Exhausted from imbibing 700 pages of "Security Analysis"? Fed up with the 400 pages of "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money"? Have no fear, we have summarized the new normal's investing mantra into 14 words...

We have long discussed the 'hidden' and not-so-hidden inflations that are impacting the standard of living for all but the wealthiest in America... and it is hardly new to anyone that the USA faces a demographic dilemma as aging boomers draw down on an ever-shrinking base of entitlement provisions... However, when we saw this slide from Kimberly-Clark's latest earnings call, we were surprised at just how clearly these two trends showed up...

The fact is that the markets are significantly overpriced. And based on over 100 years worth of data, this kind of overvaluation usually precedes a market peak.

A weak economic report lifted an overbought equity market to even-loftier historic highs.   Investors and traders have become programmed to believe that QE (rather than economic growth) is enough to launch asset prices ever-higher. At the moment, there is little to refute this view.  “Melt-up” mentality is back.  However, shouldn’t a sluggish economy with slow job creation make investors question whether enough economic activity will be generated to justify prices?  Unless the economy improves materially, then today’s move is just another example of speculative excesses caused by QE.