Archive - Nov 2013

Sadly, only in our new normal world is this funny...

While chart analogs provide optically pleasing (and often far too shockingly correct) indications of the human herd tendencies towards fear and greed, a glance through the headlines and reporting of prior periods can provide just as much of a concerning 'analog' as any chart. In this case, while these 3 pictures can paint a thousand words; a thousand words may also paint the biggest picture of all. It seems, socially and empirically, it is never different this time as these 1936 Wall Street Journal archives read only too well... from devaluations lifting stocks to inflationary side-effects of money flow and from short-covering, money-on-the-sidelines, Jobs, Europe, low-volume ramps, BTFD, and profit-taking, to brokers advising stocks for the long-run before a 40% decline.

Being somewhat conscious human beings in a world in which our “leaders” have completely lost their minds can be challenging at times. One side effect of this condition is a certain emotional numbness when it comes to reacting to new events occurring in the world around you. It’s simply hard to shock us these days, but every now and then it does happen. The following article had us literally shaking our heads the entire time. If this isn’t peak insanity, we do not want to know what is.

Five years have passed since the onset of what is sometimes called the Great Recession. While the economy has slowly improved, there are still millions of Americans  leading lives of quiet desperation: without jobs, without resources, without hope. Who was to blame?

"The government, writ large, had a hand in creating the conditions that encouraged the approval of dubious mortgages. It was the government, in the form of Congress, that repealed Glass-Steagall, thus allowing certain banks that had previously viewed mortgages as a source of interest income to become instead deeply involved in securitizing pools of mortgages in order to obtain the much greater profits available from trading. It was the government, in the form of both the executive and the legislature, that encouraged deregulation..."

- Judge Jed Rakoff

"It's not just the Fed, it's central banking," Jim Rogers exclaims to Reuters in this brief clip, "this is absolute insanity." As the world's central banks, for the first time in history "try to debase their currencies," simultaneously, Rogers cautions, "the world's floating around on a huge artificial sea of liquidity." Rogers goes on to explain that he doesn't expect Bernanke to taper and fears that Yellen won't either but hopes that she "knows that this is going to cause problems when they stop producing so much money." His ominous warning, eventually "it's going to dry up.. and when it dries up, we're all going to pay the price for this madness."

Much has been made recently of the 'implicit' tax cut that a sliding gas price is providing for the beaten-down, confidence-sapped, credit-using consumer. Sure enough, gas prices are at their lows of the year. But, unfortunately, recency bias is our enemy once again since the price of regular gas is still 8.5% above its average since the crisis began - and that with miles-driven still slumping. Not quite as 'tax-cut'-inspiring when viewed that way...

In the Chinese bastion of capitalism, where there is demand, there will be supply. And in this case, the supply of gold storage is to be found in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, where the physical gold ends up in custodial limbo as it is not considered "imported" by China. In fact, the gold is theoretically in no man's land and as such can be reexported out of China, or sent deeper into the mainland, to China's banks or private buyers, on a whim. Of course, all that is on paper. If and when the Communist Party says "enough" all the gold in the FTZ would be "reappropriated."  Bloomberg reports, that a gold vault that can store 2,000 metric tons, double China’s projected consumption this year, opened in Shanghai this month as owner Malca-Amit Global Ltd. seeks to benefit from rising demand in Asia’s largest economy.

For many in the US, as WSJ reports based on the bifurcated 'recovery' in the US, the recession never ended, "we're still in it... it feels like like we're still in it and it's getting worse." Simply out, America's jobs recovery is proceeding on two separate tracks - a pattern that is persisting far longer than after past economic rebounds and lately has been growing worse. For those with decent jobs, wages are rising, albeit slowly, and job security is the strongest it has been since before the recession. But many others - the young, the less educated and particularly the unemployed - are experiencing hardly any recovery at all. As we have vociferously explained, hiring remains weak, and the jobs that are available are disproportionately low-paying and often part-time.

Have you ever cried yourself to sleep because you had no idea how you were going to pay the bills even though you were working as hard as you possibly could?  You are about to hear from a single mother that has been there.  Her name is Yolanda Vestal and she is another victim of Obama's "economic recovery".  Yes, things have never been better for the top 0.01 percent of ultra-wealthy Americans that have got millions of dollars invested in the stock market.  But for most of the rest of the country, things are very hard right now. 

Even Threatens the International Space Station

This morning has seen a plague of talking-head-based soundbites propagated through the mainstream media as 'fact' and actionable. One that caught our eye, from none other than "largest asset manager in the world" Larry Fink of Blackrock, simply beggared belief:

• *FINK SAYS JAPANESE INVESTORS QUESTIONING INVESTING IN U.S. DEBT

As we recently noted, the Japanese bond market is now dead (for all intent and purpose) but a glance at the following chart of credit reality suggests those Japanese investors might stop to reflect a little on their own reality...

As we have pointed out previously, in the context of corporations that have given up on growing the top line (as virtually all free cash goes into stock buybacks and dividends and none into growth capex), and in pursuit of a rising bottom line, employee wages are the one variable cost that corporations will touch last of all. But what's worse, these same unionized employees have zero negotiating leverage. Perhaps nowhere is this more visible than in the recent strategy of smoothie retailer Jamba Juice, which in order to battle a 4% drop in Q3 same store sales has decided to radically transform its entire retailing strategy by getting rid of labor, cheap, part-time or otherwise, altogether. Presenting the biggest threat to minimum-wage restaurant workers everywhere: the JambaGo self-serve machine that just made the vast majority of Jamba's employees obsolete. Coming soon to a fast-food retailer near you.

The Nasdaq and Trannies closed green, Dow and S&P red (the latter pinned to VWAP thanks to some late-day JPY ignition dragging it off the lows). Volume was 'average and into the close VIX was bid as stocks clung to VWAP. Treasury yields limped higher from yesterday's small rise (30Y +1bps on the week, 5Y +4bps). The USD index would suggest a quiet day (practically unch of the week) but dispersion with EUR strength and AUD and JPY weakness was notable. Credit markets continued to slide notably. The biggest moves of the day were in commodity land with silver -3.5% on the week and gold and oil pinned to each other (petrogold?) -1.5% on the week, and copper -1% on the week. Today was all about POMO (as usual) and dueling Fed speak (Lockhart talked us down and Kocherlakota saved the day).

I am a Central Banker

With Ben Bernanke's tenure closing, many financial TV pundits delight in touting the stellar performance of Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve Chairman with just a couple months left in his term. Before the re-writers of history begin spinning performance, we thought why not compare Mr. Bernanke against all the other Federal Reserve Chairman to determine which Chairman deserves recognition. Bernanke's overall score across all factors was the lowest (let the spin begin counterfactualists). The data suggests that Mr. Bernanke ranks last in performance between the two mandates since 1948. Quite an accomplishment considering what events transpired during the last 60+ years; Korea & Vietnam, Oil Shock, high interest rates, etc...