Archive - Jan 2013

Despite the modest weakness in the long-bond, that so many herald as the next coming of the Great Rotation meme, it would appear that the longer-end of the Treasury bond term-structure actually flattened quite notably since the start of the year. Whether this bear-flattening reflects less extreme long-term concern of hyperinflation (small odds but high impact at long-end), mid-curve-based hedging (January was a massive IG issuance month and MBS convexity concerns are growing), or lower long-term growth/inflation expectations is unclear. But given the Fed's foot on the throat of the short-to-medium-term Treasury term-structure, the longer-end remains a marginally 'free' market and based on the chart below implies equities are well ahead of themselves as we draw a line under January 2013.

What does it mean that China is making a lot of noise about the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy?

In the aftermath of yesterday's surprising attack by Israel on Syrian soil, an act which any prior justification notwithstanding is a clear act of war sovereign aggression, it was only a matter of time before Syria responded, at least diplomatically at first. And as we also noted yesterday that "Iran has previously warned that any attack on Syria is the same as an attack on Iran" it was safe to assume that Iran would have a thing or two to say in response as well. Earlier today they did just that, with Syria warning that a "surprise" response to the Israel attack is forthcoming, while the "Iranian deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdullahian said the attack "demonstrates the shared goals of terrorists and the Zionist regime... It is necessary for the sides which take tough stances on Syria to now take serious steps and decisive stances against this aggression by Tel Aviv and uphold criteria for security in the region." Finally yesterday we wondered "how Russia and/or China which have made clear that Syria is a strategic geopolitical center for both in the past will react", and today we know: "Russia, which has blocked Western efforts to put pressure on Syria at the United Nations, said that any Israeli air strike would amount to unacceptable military interference." So far nothing from China, which has in the past let Russia be its proxy on Syrian matters.

Global finance, the continuation of war by other means...

Kangaroo Court Show Trials and Blatant Obstruction of Justice

"Absent an immediate crisis - and sometimes in the face of one - governments will often struggle to meet great challenges. The short-term palliatives we are currently pursuing go against everything a long-term oriented society should aspire to achieve. Growing entitlements are popular with voters and with those whom they elect, for obvious reasons: because the bill never seems to come due. But come due it will. Our spending is completely out of control, and, as of now, it seems as if the situation will have to become calamitous before we act. Let’s hope that it won’t then be too late."

-Seth Klarman, Baupost

Oak Ridge National Laboratory has released a recent study which has determined that if and when the US ever decides to actually pursue the technology to recycle nuclear waste, it will take 20 years to develop. Based on this knowledge they have suggested that the current stockpile of spent nuclear fuel should be buried without any thought as to its retrieval in the future.

Stocks have slipped, precious metals have round-tripped, and the FOMC did nothing to save us but nevertheless the world's analysts and economists came to the rescue of yesterday's negative GDP growth print yammering over a never-ending series of reasons why ignoring the bad parts, it was great. UBS' Art Cashin, as always, cuts through all the spin as he notes, while most of headlines concentrated on the 4th Quarter GDP, it did give us a look at the annual GDP for 2012 at about 1.5% (not the 4% growth that was the Fed's projection, he snarks); and it is that 1.5% growth rate that has a 65-year history of concerning implications...

On January 31, 2013, (thanks to the data experts at Nanex) approximately 400 milliseconds before the official release of the EIA Natural Gas Report, trading activity exploded in Natural Gas Futures and ETFs such as UGZ, UNG and BOIL. Now that the Feds have stated that they don't think there is merit in prosecuting people who get news information earlier than others by milliseconds, is it any wonder?

Ugly unemployment numbers are politically inconvenient in democracies.

As I noted in an article published Thursday morning, the government bought three quarters of a percentage point worth of growth in the third quarter leading several hapless commentators to opine on national television that the U.S. economy was not only on solid footing but was in fact experiencing "above trend" growth. Of course if you're the mainstream financial media what is good for the Q3 goose is not necessarily good for the Q4 gander and so when fourth quarter GDP printed in contraction territory Wednesday, viewers were encouraged (much to the chagrin of a predictably irate Rick Santelli) to discount "volatile" government consumption expenditures and focus only on the components that made a positive contribution.

The Keynesian belief that the government can print/ borrow and spend enough money to trigger self-sustaining prosperity is a nonsensical, magical-thinking Cargo Cult. The following charts show why it will continue to fail, with eventually catastrophic results: the returns on this unprecedented borrow-spend policy are diminishing to near-zero or negative. As long as the interest rate on debt is low, the path of least resistance is to keep borrowing to support politically untouchable fiefdoms, cartels and constituencies. Eventually, the cost of servicing the debt overwhelms the diminishing returns on the debt-based spending.

Yesterday the stock of Italian offshore oil services company Saipem SpA imploded nearly 40% after the company said it expected 2013 net profits to be, oh, just around 50% below current consensus. In other words, merely another case of irrational investor exuberance where actual corporate cash flow is orders of magnitude below where the sellside expected it to be, and so indicative of what happens every time hopium collides with reality (and, tangentially, is the real valuation case for most public stocks were they to report real, not GAAP-massaged earnings). Only in this case there was a lot of hopium, because none other than Bank of America placed some 10 million share of Saipem stock at €30/share just hours ahead of the news release that sent the stock crashing! Nothing like getting a 40% wipeout minutes after naively believing the lies from the most incompetent bank of all time. "This is a disaster for the buyer of the placed shares and it is a disaster for Bank of America Merrill Lynch," one trader said. As Dow Jones reports, "Several traders said Tuesday's buyers, who face huge losses, are likely to push to revoke the deal, and that Bank of America will ask the seller if they had insider knowledge of the imminent news." But borderline criminal incompetence on the side of BofA is nothing new. Where this story gets really surreal is the response of the Italian regulato Consob, which this morning did the only thing it could do: it banned all shorting of the stock.

It appears the Spanish, not to be outdone by the Italians - with their growing BMPS debacle, have found their own epic political SNAFU. For decades, El Pais reports, the ruling Popular Party (PP) leaders were paid regular sums of money aside from their official salaries, via donations from companies (especially construction firms). Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is at the top of the secret files list (kept by former PP Treasurer Barcenas) having started to receive these extra 'kickbacks' in 1997. Of course, the establishment is not responding to any questions on the matter - until exhaustive internal and external audits are undertaken - but this appears to be payback by the former PP Treasurer who was 'busted' earlier in the year (by Rajoy) for keeping millions of Euros in a Swiss bank account. If this wasn't so uncomfortably believable in a Europe that has proved itself capable of gross negligence and untruths, it would make for a great mafia-based movie transcript - unfortunately, it is all too real. Meanwhile, Spanish youth unemployment approaches 60%...

Gold rose $13.80 or 0.83% in New York yesterday and closed at $1,676.50/oz. Silver slipped to a low of $31.24 in the morning, but it then ran up to a high of $32.24 and finished with a gain of 2.01%.

Gold hovered nearly unchanged after surprise GDP figures showed that the U.S. economy contracted and the U.S. Federal Reserve maintained asset purchases. Platinum is on track for its most stellar month’s performance in a year.