Archive - Oct 2013

Perhaps no (albeit brief) conversation sums up how the debacle of the last couple of weeks started than the following exchange that took place on October 2nd, according to Politico,

Obama: "John, What Happened"

 

Boehner: "I Got Overrun, That's What Happened"

The question, prompted by the shutdown in the face of Boehner's pledge to avoid it, set the scene for what Politico notes was a fiscal drama set on a series of complicated relationships. A look back reveals how Republicans waged a fight on Obamacare that their leaders knew they would probably lose but pushed anyways because many in their ranks truly believed that Democrats, like they’ve done so often before, would fold - especially under the threat of an historic default on U.S. debt.

Five years after the "recovery" began, the Fed continues to monetize more debt as part of QE3 than at any time in history, and certainly more than during QE1, Twist, and QE2, as can be seen on the chart below (remember: all that matters is the flow, as we noted well over a year ago, and as even the Fed has finally realized).Why is this important? Because as even the Treasury has now admitted, the Fed's daily liquidity injections are all that matters. Of note: in the just completed week, the Fed's balance sheet increased by over $50 billion (again, in one week), by $100 billion in the past month, and by just shy of $1 trillion in the past year. Incidentally, this is "money" that continues to not make its way into the economy, and every single "reserve" dollar created by the Fed in exchange for monetization, is used by banks to ramp asset prices to now daily record levels.

Presented with little comment aside to note that Google (3rd largest market cap in the S&P 500) is now up 13% on the day... (at $1007.40)

The Dow has been the laggard in all the recent exuberance and opened down this morning once again (as IBM slips a little lower). It seems the 15,380 ("Summers is Out") level is key resistance for now...

The rate of false positives limits the effectiveness of any predictive system. The process of attempting to eliminate false positives is inherently one of diminishing return: even with no expense spared, the effort to eliminate false positives runs into boundaries of signal noise and generation of false positives. To the degree that financial markets are ultimately predictive systems, this suggests a systemic cause of "unexpected" market crashes: signal noise and the intrinsic generation of false positives lead to a false sense of confidence in the system's stability and its ability to predict continued stability.

In what is a staggering example of not only state meddling in the affairs of the "free press", but worse, sheer state idiocy, yesterday the WSJ posted an article on its website revealing that as many as 24 co-conspirators would be exposed shortly in the ongoing Libor manipulation scandal and divulging the names of various individuals on this list. What promptly followed was truly bizarre. As the WSJ reports shortly after posting the article, "a British judge ordered the Journal and David Enrich, the newspaper's European banking editor, to comply with a request by the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office prohibiting the newspaper from publishing names of individuals not yet made public in the government's ongoing investigation into alleged manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor." This happened at 7:18 pm London time, after the original WSJ article had already hit the Internet.  What's worse: the names had already been made public, and through this statist intervention, it only assured that everyone would now read just who was on the list.

As the excitement of another US equity day session approaches, the BTFATHers can't help themselves and have lifted the S&P 500 futures to another new all-time record high. Sure, why not, when the Fed has the path illuminated... It would seem the dips that are bought have now been reduced to 3-4 points though what is perhaps more worrisome is that EURJPY has 'decoupled' from the exuberance in the last hour.

Despite the onslaught of confidence-inspiring flim-flam from leadership in Europe and a Spanish Prime Minister (and finance minister) desperate to distract with "soft" survey based data, the hard numbers keep coming in and keep getting worse and worse. The latest, seemingly confirming the IMF's fearsome forecast that European banks face massive loan losses in the coming years, is Spain's loan delinquency rate. Bad loans across Spanish banks amounted to $247 billion in August - a new record-breaking 12.12% of all loans outstanding (now 30% higher than any previous crisis in the history of Spain). Credit creation continues to implode with a 12.3% plunge in total loans outstanding but of course, none of that matters (for now), as Spanish bond spreads (and yields) press back towards pre-crisis lows...

While the downward Q4 GDP revisions were inevitable courtesy of the government shutdown scapegoat (making a joke out of the sellside exuberance in late 2012 which had seen 3% growth some time around now,) starting first at Goldman, and shortly after at JPM both of which cut their Q4 GDP forecasts by 0.5% to 2.0%, we had yet to see the persistent bullish bias spill over into 2014. That just changed following an overnight cut by Bank of America of Q1 2014 growth estimates from 3.3% to 2.8%. Certainly, this is the first of many as once again optimism proves unjustified. But who can blame it: after all there will have been "only" 5 years of QE, and the Fed's balance sheet will be only $4 trillion at December 31, 2013, implying a S&P of 1800.

• Republican Civil War Erupts: Business Groups v. Tea Party (BBG)
• Budget fight leaves Boehner 'damaged' but still standing (Reuters)
• Madoff Was Like a God, Wizard of Oz, Lawyers Tell Jury (BBG) - just like Bernanke
• Republicans press U.S. officials over Obamacare snags (Reuters)
• Brilliant: Fed Unlikely to Trim Bond Buying in October (Hilsenrath)
• More brilliant: Fed could taper as early as December (FT)
• Russia Roofing Billionaires Seen Among Country’s Youngest (BBG)
• Ford's Mulally won't dismiss Boeing, Microsoft speculation (Reuters)
• China reverses first-half slowdown (FT)
• NY Fed’s Fired Goldman Examiner Makes Weird Case (BBG)

While the US economic data reporting machinery slowly starts churning again following the "reactivation" of government, last night it was China 's turn to report a slew of goalseeked economic items. Q3 GDP (+7.8% yoy), Industrial Production (+10.2% yoy), Fixed Asset Investments (+20.2% YTD yoy) and Retail sales (+13.3% yoy) for September all came in broadly in line with market consensus. The economy grew at a faster pace on a sequential basis with Q3 growth being 0.3ppts higher than Q2. Nonetheless, many observers forecast yoy Q4 GDP growth to decline due to the end of inventory restocking and the fade out of a major credit stimulus in the prior quarter, even as total Chinese debt continues to push ever higher into bubble territory.Speaking of China, however, it is worth noting that overnight the Chinese Yuan rose to the highest level against the dollar in 20 years. This happens as the USD tumbles to nearly a year low, which incidentally is the theme of the overnight session: the ongoing dollar poundage is reverberating across the globe, and the resulting unleashing of global funding carry trades looks set to take the S&P (and everything else) to fresh record highs on the back of even more generous Fed Kool Aid expectations.

The U.S. is engaged in fiscal and monetary policies that are akin to a Banana Republic.

In addition to electronically creating out of nothing $85 billion every month to buy its own debt in the form of bonds, the U.S. is also borrowing more money than it is authorized to borrow, from itself again.

When President Obama nominated Janet Yellen to be the next Chair of the Federal Reserve Board the praise he offered was similar to what had already poured in from around the country. In their assessments of Ms. Yellen's long career, Congressman, editors, and academics have underscored how her prescience and caution distinguish her from the reckless overconfidence that have plagued her male colleagues at the Federal Reserve. As proof of her wisdom supporters have pointed to speeches she delivered in 2005 and 2006 in which she supposedly issued clear warnings about the dangers then building in the frothy real estate markets.  Without any attempt at reasonable fact checking, these claims have been parroted by the media.  However, a brief review of the speeches in question reveals that she issued no such warnings at that time.

While Ben Bernanke would prefer not to discuss the barbarous relic, having noted in the past that "nobody really understands gold prices," it would seem his European brother-in-arms has a different opinion. When asked this week, by the ironically named Tekoa Da Silva, his thoughts on precious metals as reserve assets (and central banks around the world increasing their allocations), none other than the ECB head himself Mario Draghi explained "I never thought it wise to sell [gold], because for Central Banks this is a reserve of safety." But Draghi did not stop there, and perhaps enlightened by the farce in Washington this week, the unusually truthful central banker explained, "in the case of non-USD countries, it gives you good protection against fluctuations of the USD." Perhaps that is why China continues to import gold at a record pace? Oh, and don't fight the ECB...