Archive - Apr 24, 2013

This may be a trick question.

The implications of the latest political developments in Italy.

While immediately after earnings, we were treated to a plethora of self-justifying talking heads exclaiming how wonderful the worst news was, how positive the future looked, how leveraged dividends were great, and how awesome iPhones 5S sales will be inevitably; it seems the market (which one bright chap noted 'must know something' when the stock was soaring) is now testing its recent lows... The selling appears to have started once Tim Cook began pitching the future like a European politician and bitching about the competition as opposed to discussing the current state of affairs. AAPL has dropped almost 9% from its overnight highs and is near 17 month lows.

So much for the great American CapEx recovery. Moments ago the Census department released the March Durable Goods report, thanks to which one can lay to rest any hope of a recovery in the US economy, with the headline number printing an absolutely abysmal -5.7%, an epic swing from the +5.7% (revised lower of course to 4.3%) in February, and confirming the recovery is dead and buried. Although we are confident the propaganda spin is just waiting to be unleashed: after all it is possible that March weather was both too hot and too cold, thereby making the number completely irrelevant - after all it is always the inclement weather's fault when the economy does not act as predicted by some economist's DSGE model of reality and stuff.

While precious little space has been dedicated in the US media to what remains an uncontained epidemic of the H7N9 bird flu in China, cases continue to spread even as the number of deaths mount, taking at least 22 reported lives at last check. Things just got from bad to worse, as the bird flu is now following in the footsteps of the 2003 SARS breakout, with the first reported case outside of China hitting newswires overnight.

• The Inland Empire bubble is back: BMW to Amazon Space Demand Spurs Rush to Inland Empire (BBG)
• Tamerlan Tsarnaev was on classified government watch lists (Reuters)
• Brothers in Boston Bombing Case Said Drawn to Radicalism (BBG)
• Germany Spurns Calls to Loosen Austerity Stance (WSJ)
• Spain poised to ease austerity push (FT)
• What ever happened to France's voice in Europe? (Reuters)
• U.S., South Korea Reach Nuclear Deal (WSJ)
• U.S. Sees No Hard Evidence of Syrian Chemical Weapons Use (BBG)
• RBA Set to Invest Foreign Currency Reserves in China, Lowe Says (BBG)
• FedEx Wins $10.5 Billion Postal Contract as UPS Shut Out (BBG)

When it comes to Italy, the market may have priced in every possible favorable outcome (the ECB and Kuroda will take care of the rest), but the country still has no Prime Minister and its economy continues to be in freefall with record unemployment and ever higher bank non-performing loans month after month. And while it may have elected a new figurehead president after 6 attempts last week, the choice of Prime Minister will hardly be as simple, especially since as the WSJ reports, this will likely be Enrico Letta, deputy of the Democratic Party (which as a reminder is in complete chaos following last week's internal coup and the resignation of its head Bersani over the weekend), at a time when Berlusconi's PDL lead in the polls continues to increase. Why the Bunga veteran would agree to a premiership by his opponents remains unclear, and with a parliamentary vote coming, it is doubtful just how smooth the approval process will be in a country best known for its dysfunctioning political process.

It is one thing for the market to no longer pay attention to economic fundamentals or newsflow (with the exception of newsflow generated by fake tweets of course), but when the mainstream media turns full retard and comes up with headlines such as this: "German Ifo Confidence Declines After Winter Chilled Recovery" to spin the key overnight event, the German IFO Business climate (which dropped from 106.2 to 104.4, missing expectations of 106.2 of course) one just has to laugh. In the artcile we read that "German business confidence fell for a second month in April after winter weather hindered the recovery in Europe’s largest economy... “We still expect there to have been a good rebound in the first quarter, although there is a big question mark about the weather,” said Anatoli Annenkov, senior economist at Societe Generale SA in London." We wonder how long Bloomberg looked for some junior idiot who agreed to be memorialized for posterity with the preceding moronic soundbite because this really is beyond ridiculous (and no, it's not snow in the winter that is causing yet another "swoon" in indicators like the IFO, the ZEW and all other metrics as we patiently explained yesterday so even a 5 year old caveman financial reported would get it).

The resilience of the euro and Australian dollar today, given the heightened rate cut speculation, may be indicative of a reversal of the US dollar's recent fortunes.

How does it really work under irredeemable paper? It's more complicated than under gold.