Archive - May 2013

The Arctic is expected to become more important in the coming decades as climate change makes natural resources and transport routes more accessible. Satellite data collected since 1979 shows that both the thickness of the ice in the Arctic and range of sea ice have decreased substantially, especially during the summer months. The melting of the ice facilitates natural resource exploration in the high north. U.S. Geological Survey estimates from 2008 suggest that 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and 30 percent of undiscovered natural gas reserves are located in the Arctic Circle. Reflecting the growing interest in the region, the Arctic Council granted six new countries (China, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Singapore) observer status during a May 15 ministerial meeting in Kiruna, Sweden.

In August of 2011, Argentina’s government slowly began to implement a series of actions destined to curtail the right of citizens to access US dollars (foreign exchange in general). The goal was and is to force savings into pesos, as pesos are after the taxable asset in a country that cannot access capital markets and fully monetizes its deficits. From that moment onward  physical US dollars started to trade at a premium. First-hand experience on the ground in Patagonia confirm the irreversible damage caused by interventionist policies: Widespread poverty, abandoned infrastructure, scarcity of consumer goods, unseen unemployment and criminality, and the madness of hedging against inflation with the purchase of new cars. The streets of any forgotten small town in Patagonia are filled with brand new 4×4 vehicles that would be the envy of many in North America. We can now see that the sustainability of the manipulation in a segmented/broken foreign exchange market causes a negative carry, which would create a quasi-fiscal deficit in Argentina (i.e. the deficit of the Banco Central), fully opening the gates to hyperinflation.

Courtesy of NBC, here is 10-x sped up footage of the massive 2-mile wide tornado ripping through Oklahoma one short hour ago.

We continue to hear that the US is the cleanest dirty shirt or that the US economy is doing 'relatively' well as a reason for buying stocks now. Not only is this plainly incorrect (as we have pointed out rather vociferously in the recent past) it flies the face of the disconnect between macro and markets. The fact of the matter is that year-to-date, the US economic data performance is the equal worst (with Japan) of all major economic nations and regions. That is a bucket-load of hope for the second-half of the year - or, as we noted recently, is it just plain silly.

The devastation from what is being described as a mile-wide tornado is horrifying according to local news. The live feed and raw footage of the aftermath suggests casualty rates will be significantly higher as the evening progresses... "The tornado on the ground right now is huge and has hit through populated areas,"

Here is The Hill with the White House's official explanation for what happened: "White House officials were notified of a Treasury Department inspector general report on the IRS but elected not to tell President Obama about it." In other words, neither the IRS was not aware of what is going on (recall the countless "I don't knows" and "I don't recalls") and apparently, neither was the president. And in fact, it was someone else's executive duty to make the decision what the chief executive of the nation is and isn't allowed to know.

You know something isn’t right in your country when you have a “religious police force.”  You know something is really, really not right in your country when the head of that religious police force starts condemning twitter and saying its users will go to hell as a consequence - echoing comments from the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in April who used his sermon – seen by millions on TV – to warn that Twitter was a threat to national unity.

You know it's getting frothy when... "We're seeing many people cash out 401(k)s or IRAs because they want to take advantage of the [real estate] market." As CNNMoney reports, in order to get in on hot housing markets, amateur investors are buying up homes and taking risky measures - like tapping their retirement accounts - to fund the deals. As one adviser noted, "our average client has retirement accounts of about $150,000 and is looking to buy one or two properties," he said. "After 2008, they didn't trust Wall Street. They wanted hard assets." but as with every bubble there is always the greater fool to rely on - "They bought a lot of stuff cheap last year, but now they're paying market value," said Jack McCabe, a Florida-based real estate consultant. "Sometimes they're overpaying... There's no way they can get an 8% return buying at today's market prices." The problem, of course, is amateur investors sometimes spend all their free cash on their purchases, as "a whole lot of the people in the markets are not experts."  If the real estate market turns south again, that could leave a lot of investors in dire financial condition for their golden years.

It appears that the noose is tightening and the wobbly-chair that Steve Cohen is standing on is getting wobblier... As Bloomberg reports, after five years under investigation for insider trading Steve Cohen is considering a 'deal' with prosecutors that would shut his $15 billion fund to outside investors and (as we noted this morning) shift a family (friends and employees) office.

• *COHEN SAID TO HAVE DISCUSSED DEFERRED PROSECUTION AGREEMENT
• *COHEN SAID TO CONSIDER RETURNING OUTSIDE INVESTORS' MONEY
• *COHEN SAID TO CONSIDER CONTINUING AS A FAMILY OFFICE

The deferred prosecution is intriguing as "when a company enters into a DPA with the government, or an NPA for that matter, it almost always must acknowledge wrongdoing..." and the clock is ticking with the statute of limitations up at the end of July.

All major US cash equity indices closed an odd shade of 'green' today which some have called 'red' - though only marginally and Treasuries ended the day practically unchanged (with 10Y +1bps). But the real action took place away from these two asset-classes. Precious metals were monkey-hammered at their open overnight but staged a miraculous recovery leaving gold with its best gain since June 2012 (didn't hear too much about that on TV?). Credit markets notably under-performed - never managing to get into the green on the day. VIX rose over 0.5 vols to close back above 13%. On the bright side, only a few more hours until Tuesday...

Need a quick GDP boost in a world in which the uber levered consumer is tapped out and has no more savings or purchasing power, in which the government is facing an existential socialism or bust crisis even as global sovereign debt levels are at unseens before levels, and in which global trade has collapsed (so there go the C, G and (X-M) components of GDP)? No problem, just add some I for Inventory. Better yet, add a whole lot of I, especially if you are that global growth dynamo, China, which over the years many have accused of having taken the term "overcapacity" and put it through the Barry Bonds juicer yet where courtesy of a central-planning regime that has made sure nothing appears to be unused, except for the occasional ghost city or empty mall, proof of such overcapacity has been scarce in official, government data.

Evans Quote #1: "Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Evans on Monday reiterated his belief that the US economy will begin to turn around in the second half of this year. "We think conditions will improve in the second half of this year,"

Evans Quote #2: "The sovereign debt crisis that has enveloped three European nations and threatens to spread to others will slow U.S. economic growth, but the impact will be “minimal to modest," the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago said Friday.

Evans Quote #3: Chicago Fed’s Evans comments in speech in Chicago: "economy improving quite a lot; companies seem to be in pretty good shape. Optimistic [XXXX] Will Be Year of Turnaround; US growth will be self-sustaining in [XXXX+1]"

There has been a growing shift in favour of assets relative to bank deposits. This was initially encouraged by zero interest rates, but more recently there is little doubt that Cyprus’s bail-in has accelerated the trend. This helps explain why, for example, Italian 10-year bonds are on a 4% yield. The reason, doubtless reaffirmed by the Cyprus bail-in, is that investors with cash balances think over-priced sovereign debt is less risky than adding to their euro deposits. However, some of depositors’ cash balances post-Cyprus will have gone into physical gold and silver, which explains why the bullion banks operating in the futures markets and the central banks behind them are so keen to dissuade us that gold and silver is a safe haven.

It will come as no surprise to ZH readers that the topic of youth unemployment is critical in Europe but as Der Speigel reports, while the German government's efforts remain largely symbolic, Southern European leaders pander to older voters by defending the status quo and are failing in their fight against the potential for social unrest. One graduate noted, "None of my friends believes that we have a future or will be able to live a normal life," as a lost generation is taking shape in Europe. And European governments seem clueless; instead of launching effective education and training programs to prepare Southern European youth for a professional life after the crisis, the Continent's political elites preferred to wage old ideological battles. In this way, Europe wasted valuable time, at least until governments were shaken early this month by news of a very worrisome record: Unemployment among 15- to 24-year-olds has climbed above 60 percent in Greece. Suddenly Europe is scrambling to address the problem making it an 'obseesion'. There are strong words coming out of Europe's capitals today, but they have not been followed by any action to date.

Moments ago, GETCO's rampathon algos did not like what they heard coming out of the mouth of the Fed's biggest permadove, Charles Evans. That thing was math, and it was as follows:

IF FED CONTINUES TO BUY ASSETS AT CURRENT PACE THROUGH YEAR END,BALANCE SHEET WOULD BE 'VERY LARGE' $4 TRILLION - FED'S EVANS

Supposedly this was news to someone although it wasn't news to our readers who knew since September that not only will the Fed's balance sheet hit "a very large" $4 trillion by 2014, it would hit a "very larger" $5 trillion by 2015, when the Fed may realistically start abandoning QE.