Archive - Nov 15, 2013

The Republicans' "Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2013" bill has passed the House (as somewhat expected). However, what is more critical - as we noted previously - is that a large number of Democrats broke ranks and voted for the bill.

• *HOUSE VOTES 261-157 FOR REPUBLICAN BILL ON KEEPING HEALTH PLANS
• *THIRTY-NINE DEMOCRATS JOIN REPUBLICANS ON HEALTH-POLICY BILL

39 House Democrats voted in favor, shunning Obama's proclamation that he would veto the bill (which he described as "threatening the health care security of hard working, middle class families,") anyway if it came to his desk. It is unlikely to pass the Senate.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange admits that in July it was hacked:

• *CME HAD CYBER INTRUSION IN JULY, SOME CUSTOMER INFO COMPROMISED
• *CME: SOME CUSTOMER INFO ON CME CLEARPORT PLATFORM COMPROMISED
• *CME GROUP NO EVIDENCE TRADES ON CME GLOBEX ADVERSELY IMPACTED

Algos # 0001 through #9999 now have their Vacuum Tube Security Number leaked

Starting from a simple loan (remember them), credit markets have evolved many innovations to cater to an increasing need for leverage (intrinsic firm leverage - levered loans to high-yield bond market; and extrinsic instrument leverage - securitizations and derivatives) for issuers, traders, and investors. However, as the following maze of the history of debt, NY Times shows these have led to many costly crises (and will do in the future...)

A rhetorical question that was apocryphal a mere year ago, has emerged as a very realistic option: is Barack Obama the second coming of Dubya? Policy initiatives aside, in this case we simply look at the plunging popularity ranking of both presidents in their second term as shown on the chart below.

According to the popular way of thinking, bubbles are an important cause of economic recessions. The main question posed by experts is how one knows when a bubble is forming. It is held that if the central bankers knew the answer to this question they might be able to prevent bubble formations and thus prevent recessions. Contrary to Shiller, in order to establish that a bubble is forming we don’t need to apply the same methodology employed by psychologists. What we require is the establishment of a correct definition of what bubbles are all about. Once it is done, one discovers that bubbles have nothing to do with some kind psychological malfunction of individuals – they are the result of loose monetary policies of the central bank.

It seems, as Jim Quinn notes, the 99% are not cooperating with the 1% plan for economic recovery. As Gallup reports, average Americans plan on spending 10% less for Christmas gifts this year than last year. Not only that, but they are spending 19% less than they spent in 2007 and 18% less than they spent in 1999. The average American is spending less because they have less as the talking heads on CNBC and the rest of the MSM tell me that things are great. Opening stores on Thanksgiving will not save anyone and perhaps more critically, the last 2 times the November forecast for holiday spending slumped - the US entered recession!

UPDATE: 23 minutes later - Self-Help is revoked...

Well that didn't take long...

• *BATS OPTIONS DECLARES SELF-HELP AGAINST CBOE
• *CBOE: CT BC85 HAS BEEN SWITCHED TO ITS BACK-UP

But, as CNBC previously noted, we are getting used to these "broken markets" by now so it doesn't matter...

Yesterday, the World Gold Council released its Gold Demand Trends 2013 Report which demonstrates quite clearly that the Chinese continue to accumulate gold; gold continues to flow east to both government and consumer channels.

Spain’s public debt climbed sharply in September to a new record high of 954.863 billion euros, casting doubt about the government’s ability to meet its target for the end of the year. Even finance minister Cristobal Montoro acknowledged that "there are concerns about the pace of the increase," adding that this meant bringing down the public deficit even more of a priority. As El Pais reports, according to figures released Friday by the Bank of Spain, the state’s outstanding obligations climbed 10.181 billion euros in the month from August to a level equivalent to 93.4 percent of GDP. The government’s target for the full year is 94.2 percent, a figure that has already been revised upward. The central bank estimated GDP in the 12 months to September at 1.022 trillion euros. But, apart from that, Spanish bond spreads near pre-crisis lows...

Despite Janet Yellen's commitment to continue supporting the economic recovery the transmission system of government interventions is clearly broken. As STA Wealth Management's Lance Roberts shows in the simple chart below, it has taken $35.17 of government intervention to generate $1 of economic growth over the past 5 years. More importantly, the rate of diminishing returns is increasing. In other words, it is taking consistently more dollars of intervention to create an incremental increase in economic growth.

One heckuva job...

Responding to his administration’s ongoing struggles with the launch of Obamacare, President Barack Obama announced a proposal today that would enable insurance companies to grant one-year extensions to the health plans of Americans who would otherwise face cancellation. Here are some of Obama’s other plans to fix the troubled rollout of his signature health care law...

While hardly as dramatic as ongoing revelations of Big NSA Brother probing every aspect of Americans' lives, overnight the WSJ reported that in addition to the complete loss of privacy - which should now be taken for granted - the CIA has been added to the list of entities that scrutinize every online interaction, and is "building a vast database of international money transfers, including Western Union, that includes millions of Americans' financial and personal data, officials familiar with the program say." The program will be (and is) carried out under the same provision of the Patriot Act that enables the National Security Agency to collect nearly all American phone records. In other words, instead of being upfront that all the CIA, and administration, care about is tracking large flows of money that may have "evaded" taxation, and is traditionally used by expats to send modest amounts of money back to their host countries, what the CIA is instead focusing on is whether mom and pop are using Western Union to deposit $500 in Al-Qaeda's account in Afghanistan.

Twitter's stock price is not happy. The unleashing of Twitter options this morning appears to have created a need to sell the underlying (after yesterday's exuberant pre-options jump). Over 1 million lots (100 million shares) have changed hands already in Twitter across all maturites but perhaps most notable is the demand. At-the-money implied volatility (an apples-to-apples way of comparing options 'costs') is around 50% for a December maturity which compares to 40% for Facebook options of the same maturity. It seems more than a few of the IPO owners are looking to hedge (as puts are notably more "expensive" than calls).