Archive - Nov 2012 - Blog entry

The Bernank is beginning to wind down his "non-bailout" of Europe.  On 12/14/2011 the Chairsatan himself reportedly told Senator Corker that he had no intentions of furthering the US's involvement in the European Crisis. Coincidently , a few weeks later CNBC interviewed Gerald O'Driscoll who is a previous Dallas Fed Vice President, after he released an Op-ed in the WSJ calling out the FED's European bailout.  O'Driscoll is dead on with his claims and his suspicions about Bernanke's reasoning behind going through the FED market arm to lend USD to the ECB.

Desirable areas in Los Angeles County are finding bidding wars and many places are selling for prices last seen during the peak of the bubble. A fierce competition between flippers, foreign money, and households with healthy incomes leveraging low mortgage rates are pushing prices higher. A few readers were sending over some of the recent action taking place in Culver City. A few recounted their tales of open houses and the sense of urgency to purchase a property. The flood of easy money has certainly had an impact on mid-tier and prime locations. Only a two hour drive up north, in California City you can find homes selling for rock bottom prices. This is a trend bearing out in income statistics. It is becoming harder for the middle class to find affordable housing in California. Some have mentioned in zombie like fashion that some areas are becoming fortresses while other areas are left struggling. Let us take a look at some recent data.

The plight of Chinese Homeowners Attempting to Resist Eviction When the Government Wants to Build Something on their Land ...

Chicken race update...

If common sense was truly common, the rating agencies should get the shit sued out of them unless & until they start downgrading EU countries en masse, and quite quickly. Read this & you'll have all you need to start suing! Hmmm, the best laid plans....

Dominoes are lined up. Next in line: one of the world’s largest (but dying) shipyards.

Got me thinking about hedge fund cheaters and too-good-to-be-true results.

Imagine scanning lines and lines of code looking for a specific error which was causing a constant hemorrhage of money through bad trading executions.  Now imagine having a cocktail at a party and discovering through the aid of a napkin drawing exactly what type of order was causing your firm to destroy its Alpha over a consistent 6 month period.  That's the reason we're hammering the table, because it's not merely about reading the information wrong, its about inside connections to the exchanges.  These connections have helped many firms skirt the REG-NMS rules and Rule 610 as exchanges cater to the HFT in effort to garner the most fee's possible. 

Generally bullish, sitting back and enjoying the show while it lasts.

In other words, if they announce today what we already know –that some sort of compromise is forthcoming –then the market wouldn’t have any reason to go higher.

Looks like yesterday put into practice: Let’s thank everyone to turn around markets, when they sink. Nothing to break the barn stomp in Periphery bonds (but themselves). Italy brilliantly stuffed its primary dealer at a 2-year low. Core EGBs holding quite steady, given ROn in Risk and Periphery. Strong US GDP revision – but, as expected anyway. Given the actual level in Risk, good numbers are seen as given. Nothing weak, no more, never. Swimming in a Sea of (Risk) Love. Watch the Event / Headline risk on FC (& Greece. The math still seems quite odd…). Hard Periphery (especially Spain) slap-back in the afternoon, though.

"Sea Of Love" (Bunds 1,37% unch; Spain 5,32% +1; Stoxx 2579 +1,3%; EUR 1,298 +50)

Things are so bad that the ECB has put the entire Spanish banking system on life support to the tune of over €400 billion Euros. To put this number into perspective, the entire equity base for every bank in Spain is only a little over €100 billion.

"We all know what to do, we just don't know how to get re-elected after we have done it."--Jean Claude [Banzai7: And precisely who elects Mr Euro?]