Archive - Apr 2015

A funny thing happened in Britain... as calorie intake has fallen by 8% in the last decade and 4.4% since 2010, driven both by eating out less and eating healthier at home, so obesity levels are stabilising versus recent years with the number of patients diagnosed as obese also declined by 15% yoy in 2013/14, following a 7% decline in 2012/13. In the US, however, the latest data shows that obesity is still rising...

"The Fed is 'ever-interested' in doing something later," Jim Grant notes, explaining why he believes the timetable for rate hikes will be pushed back further as fear of allowing a free market in the "most critical" of prices - that of interest rates - would lead to the "unmasking of the misallocations of capital that will have come about through the levitation of asset prices." Grant further unleashes his verbal attack of truthiness when he points out that the central bank's persistent easy money policies is on display currently in the form of stifling American enterprise and sending millions of people from the workforce "more or less permanently."

Anyone wondering what the bond market thinks about the prospects of an imminent rate hike need but look at the high yield of the just concluded 3 Year auction, which saw a yield of only 0.865%, pricing through the 0.87% when issued, and the lowest since March of 2014. While one can barely see it on the chart below, the Bid to Cover was a fraction lower compared to March, at 3.252 down from the 3.330 TTM average. Completing the internal picture was an Indirect take down of 49.4% which was in line with recent auctions and solidly above the 12 month moving average of 37.6, while Dealers took 1% less than in March, at 39.5% of the final allotment, leaving Directs with 11.1% of the auction.

It wasn't a pleasant sight for hundreds of onlookers at the Zvezdochka shipyard in Russia's Archangelsk region overnight when an Oscar II-class nuclear sub undergoing repair work suddenly caught on fire.

The move by California to require mandatory cuts in water use for the first time in its history has highlighted the world’s looming water crisis and increased the focus on the links between sustainable water and sustainable energy. “We need a new paradigm,” says Steven Solomon, author of Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization. “The days when we could just go further into the mountains and find new sources of water are past. We need to make better use of the water we have.”

"While on the navy ship, the soldiers ate pickles, but we had an eight course meal, and beer as well,"

"The Fed has been pushing everybody into the public markets... it makes sense to reduce your exposure to the most trafficked assets."

As the following chart shows, whereas in the past the total number of hires tracked closely the cumulative 1 year change in jobs, this time is has failed to do so, and as the chart below shows, the hires rate has dropped sharply, and at 4.916MM was not only the lowest since August but also represents the biggest two-month drop since Lehman!

In short, Bernanke bankrupted the US and most Americans in the span of ten years. He created the biggest housing bubble in 100 years and also casue the greatest Crash in 100 years. A few blog entries won’t change this.

"...I don’t think we know enough about how the private financial system works under these conditions... If you are an institution that is doing well within the parameters under which you’re used to functioning, you will fight any change without any notion as to whether that change is good or bad. That’s because there’s a very large uncertainty premium associated with the change... "

As was largely expected, in the first monthly report of ECB Q€ purchases in which the European central bank reported a total of €47.4 billion in purchases, the one country with the largest proportional allottment was Germany, whose €11.1 billion in bond purchases represented a 23.4% of the total monthly purchase. This is somewhat less than the mandated capital key allottment to Germany, which as a reminder, is at 26%, however the remaining balance is where the €5.7 billion in supernational purchases came in.

When Will Bad News Cease to be Good News for Stocks? It is quite amazing to watch this. Even as one economic datum after another indicates that a major slowdown is underway that could well turn into a recession (keep in mind that this is not a certainty – at similar junctures in recent years, aggregate economic data recovered just in the nick of time), the US stock market continues to take everything in stride. The longevity, intensity and persistence of a bubble is per se not proof that it will inevitably continue – it is only an indication of the likely amount of pain the market will eventually dispense.

It appears time for the Oracle of Omaha to start pressing his bought-and-paid-for Washington well-be-dones as his immensely profitable rail freight business - built on the back of massive deflation-inducing malinvestment in US Shale businesses thanks to ZIRP and QE - is running out of steam. As WSJ reports, in March, oil-train traffic was down 7% on a year-over-year basis amid safety concerns and with lower crude prices, "the extra cost of rail makes it a tougher choice," notes on analyst, adding that the WTI-Brent spread needs to increase "for the economics of crude by rail" to make sense.

First it was Jim Bullard in October, after US equity markets had fallen almost 10%, dropping the only word that matters to headline scanning algos, i.e., "QE4" and suggesting that asset purchases will make a comeback if the market drop continues. And now, with stocks fractions-of-a-percent off record highs, Minneapolis Fed president Narayana Kocherlakota spouts this idiocy: KOCHERLAKOTA: THERE IS EVEN A THEORETICAL ARGUMENT TO BE MADE FOR MAKING ASSET PURCHASES NOW IF ECONOMY FALTERED.

Stocks, rather stunningly, appear to have finally given up responding to this utter farce, and are falling.