Archive - Apr 16, 2015

And they will follow...

A summary of the internal report shows the DEA doled out punishments to 10 of its agents, which ranged from a letter of caution to a two-week suspension. None of the agents who participated in the parties was fired. Re. Elijah Cummings exclaimed, the report depicted “truly breathtaking recklessness” and showed “DEA agents as completely out of control," lamenting “Hello? Am I missing something? I think we are at an all-time low here." We suspect it can get a lot lower yet.

"We Win More Than We Lose"

As we reported earlier, the former chief of the IMF Rodrigo Rato, who was succeeded in 2007 by another scandalous figure, Dominique Strauss-Khan, was recently put under investigation by Spanish authorities for money-laundering, benefiting from a tax amnesty to repatriate previously undeclared offshore funds. This is in addition to previous investigation into his role as chairman of Caja Madrid, the failed savings bank, and its successor Bankia. And, unlike every single JPM banker pretty much ever, moments ago Rato became the second former IMF head in several years (following DSK), to be placed under arrest.

Having generously (if not obliviously) stepped up to the plate to bail out Ukraine (with open-ended bond guarantees), US taxpayers are opening their wallets again - this time for Iraq. As Reuters reports, cheap oil has ravage Iraq's state finances just as the government faces rising military spending from the war it is waging against ISIS; and so it has decided to issue $5 billion in international bonds. However, Iraq is considering other ways to cover its budget deficit, including asking the IMF (i.e. US taxpayers) for relief funding and also requesting the controversial U.S. Export-Import Bank (US Taxpayers) finance the purchase of 10 planes from Boeing Co, which cost the government $500 million.

Lately the Greek finmin is far more in the media for things he doesn't say, or "allegedly says" (or which fingers he extends during his speeches), than for his official statements, however his statements are still relevant especially with the Greek endgame according to many having started. So feel free to watch him without any lost in translation moments as he speeks at the Brookings Institute, the place where Citadel's latest trader Ben Bernanke blogs out of, on the topic of  "the Greek economy and its global partners." It may be a short speech.

Over the past several weeks we have heard repeated comments that you should ignore the recent retail sales weakness for a variety of reasons such as cold winter weather, consumers don't believe the drop in gas prices, etc. Putting aside the fact that cold weather almost always occurs during winter (which is why the data is seasonally adjusted to begin with), or that more than 70% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, should we dismiss the data entirely?

Late last year, Grexit "expert" Willem Buiter decided that he was a greater expert on the topic of monetary metals than on geopolitics by stating that "Gold Is A 6,000 Year Old Bubble." Now, he has decided that after gold, it is best to just do away with any physical currency altogether and the time to ban cash has arrived.

The sudden decision to buy EUR and dump USDs (after a slew of Fed speakers spewed their usual spew) has sparked a buy everything trade across markets as bonds, stocks, and crude are surging...

If you said these are all things that current or former IMF heads are or have been accused of, you are 100% correct.

 Oil prices should become 'lower for longer", but the wild card would be the OPEC meeting this June... 

The situation in Greece boil down to the single most important issue for the finacial system, namely collateral.

It is almost too coincidental to be a coincidence: on the day Ben Bernanke, who until a year ago was the biggest fixed income portfolio manager in the world courtesy of the Fed's $4.5 trillion in assets, joins Citadel as an advisor, the massively levered "market-neutral" hedge fund which as we showed earlier has $176 billion in regulatory assets, "loses" its global head of fixed income, senior managing director Derek Kaufman. Well not exactly loses. The reason for his "voluntary" departure: according to Bloomberg Kaufman is leaving Citadel not because he is about to be replaced by the former Fed chairman but because last year he lost $1 billion "in a variety of trades."

Surprise! Surprise! Five years ago I said the only way Goldman would ever break $200 again was to ratchet up risk. Guess who broke $200 this morning. Better yet, guess how they did it! Every financial rag and business blog should read this BEFORE writing another word about GS blowout earnings!