Archive - Jul 2013

You Keynesian PhD Weasel Turd!

Indian philanthropist and cardiac surgeon, Devi Prasad Shetty is obsessed with making heart surgery affordable for millions of Indians. As Bloomberg notes, Shetty is not a public health official motivated by charity. He’s a heart surgeon turned businessman who has started a chain of 21 medical centers around India. By trimming costs, he has cut the price of artery-clearing coronary bypass surgery to 95,000 rupees ($1,583), half of what it was 20 years ago, and wants to get the price down to $800 within a decade. The same procedure costs $106,385 at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic. Of course, this will come as no surprise after we showed the incredible spread of the price of an appendectomy. “It shows that costs can be substantially contained,” notes the World Heart Federation, "it’s possible to deliver very high quality cardiac care at a relatively low cost." But, for Americans of course, when you have government footing the cost (and deficit spending), who cares?

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is building a $4.5 billion headquarters at St. Elizabeths Hospital, a former mental asylum. It’s the largest construction project in DC since the Pentagon was completed in 1943 and won’t be completed until 2026 - a decade behind schedule and $1 billion over budget (with no guarantee that the next stage of the project will be fully funded). St. Elizabath's was the oldest federally funded psychiatric hospital in the country and irony of ironies for the endless sprawl of agencies that has become the DHS, the hospital's most infamous resident was John Hinckley, Jr., the man who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Today, DHS has 240,000 employees and a yearly budget of $60 billion and St. Elizabeths' first new tenants - the Coast Guard - will move in this August. But, as Bloomberg Businessweek notes, the future of the rest of the project remains uncertain and "[It's] increasingly apparent that DHS’s scheme to build its headquarters on the grounds of a former mental hospital is inherently flawed," he writes. "Some would say it’s crazy."

Bernanke still hasn't picked what non-extradition country he will move to following his Federal retirement, and already the storm clouds are brewing overhead:

U.S. JUDGE SAYS EX-AIG CEO GREENBERG SHOULD BE PERMITTED TO DEPOSE FED CHAIRMAN BERNANKE OVER INSURER'S BAILOUT -- COURT RULING; U.S. COURT OF FEDERAL CLAIMS JUDGE THOMAS WHEELER SAYS THERE ARE "EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES" FOR TAKING OF BERNANKE'S DEPOSITION

Too bad Bernanke's predecessor, who is just as culpable for the AIG collapse and bailout, won't be sitting next to the Chairsatan or else we would very soon have a great reason to roll out the following image:

Once upon a time (in April) the Troika slammed large Cypriot depositors with a "bail-in" template that included not only a forced assignment of equity in broke Cypriot banks, but far more importantly a haircut that amounted to 37.5% of deposits over €100,000. Since then a few things have happened in Cyprus neither of them good, i.e., a record collapse in bank deposits despite capital controls and a record crash in the local real estate market. The confluence of both these events meant that as bank liabilities shrank (deposits), asset fair values (home mortgages) collapsed even faster. Which, as we warned in March, would entail bigger and more aggressive deposit haircuts. Today, we learn that while the inevitable next bailout of Cyprus is still on the table, the deposit "haircut" just upgraded to an aggravated Brazilian wax, as the 37.5% gentle trim initially proposed was revised to 47.5%.

Munis are the most decentralized and still the most "good old boy" part of the Capital Markets. Relationships are paramount in the municipal markets, and in non-competitive situations, who you know often trumps what you know in doing business. Municipals are a unique space. For many years people and institutions paid less attention than they should to the financial statements of municipalities. Detroit is now teaching us several lessons and you can feel the sand shifting yet again. General Obligation bonds no longer have the first call on assets. The psychology of the Municipal market is also shifting in the sand. It was once a widely held belief that the State would stand behind any large Municipal credit in its domain. Detroit is proving this to be an inaccurate observation. There was even the notion that if the Municipal credit was large and systemic enough that the Federal government might step in to help. Detroit is exemplifying that this was a second mistake in thinking. We are now learning that each Municipal credit is a stand-alone situation which is a break from the traditional thinking of days past.

If all one's assets are real-world possessions and immaterial assets such as skills, personal integrity and networks of trusted associates, one is indeed poor in financial assets. But if control of one's assets is the only real measure of wealth, then the individual with complete control of all his assets is the only truly wealthy person in a kleptocracy. So the skill we need today is not traditional investing skill; it is thief-dodging skill.

Let's run some quick numbers to determine if Google's management flummoxed in thier largest foray into hardware yet....

The following chart from Credit Suisse fully explains why the US housing "recovery" has just ground to a halt: in a few short weeks, US housing affordability (a topic we first covered a month ago) has collapsed as a result of the monthly payment on the median home sold soaring by nearly 40% from under $800 to just shy of $1100, a level not seen since 2008. Now if only US personal incomes would keep pace, instead of doing this...

Don't like how high debt-to-GDP figures are? Revise 'em. Unhappy at the post-'recovery' growth rates? Revise 'em. Disappointed at the pace of economic improvement in the last decade or two compared to the rest of the world? Revise 'em. This week "we are essentially rewriting economic history" as the BEA is set to revise GDP data from as far back as 1929. The 'adjustments' to account for intangibles (that best known of micro- accounting fudge factors) and as we noted previously in great detail, will increase GDP by around $500 billion. Of course, these changes are defended aggressively (just as the hedonic adjustments to inflation calculations 'make perfect sense') as GDP will now reflect spending on research, development, and copyrights as investment - and reflect pension deficits for the first time (think of all that potential future GDP from massive pension deficits now). With Q2 GDP growth estimates set for a dismal 1.1%, expectations are for the short-term economic data to be revised upwards (and with any luck the great recession never happened at all).

The July edition of Insight aptly titled ‘As The Crisis Deepens, Gold Flows East’ builds on our recent commentary and offers another viewpoint on why there is a marked flow of gold from west to east.

The next three editions of Market Update will quote extensively from ‘As The Crisis Deepens, Gold Flows East’ as we delve deeper into the story and its implications for our financial well being.

We have extensively covered the evolution of Q2 earnings in the US where so far nearly half or 240 of firms have reported (and 136 on deck this week): from the revenue recession (2nd consecutive decline), to the overreliance on financial firms as the sole driver of EPS upside, to the fact that the only reason banks are beating is to FAS115, the unaccounting of AFS swings and the suspension of MTM. In other words, no top-line growth and bottom-line upside solely due to financial balance sheet gimmicks. But what about, Europe where accounting magic is not nearly as advanced a science as it is in the US?

After a slow start in the week, there is a substantial pick up with announcements from the FOMC, ECB and BOE (as well as monetary policy updates from the RBI, RBA, Israel, and Czech Republic) with the possibility, if not probability, of a Fed update on tapering expectations. On Wednesday we get the much expected wholesale GDP revision which will boost "growth data" all the way back to 1929 and is expected to push current GDP as much as 3% higher, and on Friday is the "most important NFP payroll number" (at least since the last one, and before the next one), where the consensus expects a +183K print, and 7.5% unemployment. All this while earnings season comes to a close.

The Institute of International Finance (IIF) has released data that shows that the credit crunch in China is hitting harder than was thought at first and is secondly at the worst level since the global financial crisis landed on everyone’s plate. 

• More Doctors Steer Clear of Medicare (WSJ)
• Syrian Looters in Bulldozers Seek Treasure Amid Chaos (BBG)
• Siemens CEO Peter Löscher Is Set to Leave His Post After Series of Earnings Misses (WSJ)
• Silver Vault for 200 Tons Starts in Singapore as Wealthy Buy (BBG)
• Omincom and Publicis merger shows that advertising is now firmly in the business of Big Data: collecting and selling the personal information of millions of consumers (NYT)
• Apple supplier accused of labour violations (FT)
• 'BarCap was the Wild Wild West – that’s what we called it’ (Telegraph)
• P&G chief seizes opportunity in era of three-day stubble (FT)
• Federal Reserve 'Doves' Beat 'Hawks' in Economic Prognosticating (WSJ) - LOL: Fed "hawks"