Archive - Oct 2010 - Story

• Marc Faber Says World Heading for "Major Inflection Point" (Bloomberg)
• French Strikes Disrupt Air and Rail Travel (NYT, BBC)
• Jobless America threatens to bring us all down with it (Telegraph)
• Will they be paid in gold? Fed's latest reflation attempt comes via Wall
  Street, which is expected to pay $144 billion in bonus this year (WSJ) - this number represents 8% of M1
• Two Faces: Demystifying the Mortgage Electronic Registration System's Land Title Theory, Christopher Lewis Peterson, University of Utah (SSRN, h/t Karl Denninger)
• States to Probe Mortgage Mess: Attorneys General Hope Lenders Will Re-Write Loans With Troubled Documents (WSJ)
• Citigroup Stops Using Foreclosure Law Firm Facing Florida Probe (Bloomberg)

Another quiet day with just small business sentiment and more from Fed speeches. However, bonds are now reopen, and the 10 year was trading at 2.35% last. This means the Fed has about 235 basis point to extract out of it before it starts buying stocks in the open market.

• Aluminum prices in China may gain more than 10% on output cuts.
• Asian stocks fall on lower commodity prices, Yen concerns; Toyota declines.
• China may worsen trade tensions with biggest quarterly surplus since 2008.
• China reportedly lifts reserve ratio for top banks.
• Greece raises $1.6 billion in oversubscribed 26-week treasury bill auction.
• Japan's Noda says ready to take 'bold' action after Yen hits 15-year high.
• Oil falls a second day after stronger Dollar reduces appeal of commodities.

European Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX – 12/10/10

The biggest piece of news this evening is, surprisingly, not the latest monsoon season suddenly to hit Manhattan, but comes from a few thousand miles to the East, out of Ireland to be specific, where we learn via the FT that the country "has opened the door to a renegotiation with senior bondholders of its two nationalised banks despite previously opposing any such move for fear of drawing the wrath of creditors around the world." This would be a huge change in strategy, and if effectuated, would mean that Ireland (for lack of an alternative) would be forced to do what the US was terrified of doing when Citi, Fannie and all the other still-bankrupt companies were on the brink. While the US never impaired the senior debt, for fear of enraging creditors (mostly China) who would have experienced their first capital loss on US-debt, it seems the dominoes are about to topple for Ireland as Irish eyes are about to stop smiling and take their bitter medicine, which our own Uncle Sam will avoid until well past the bitter end. Alternatively, this would also mean the end of the strong EUR regime once again, as the ping-ponging burden of proof of solvency shifts once again to Europe.

By now it should be common knowledge to everyone that in American society, the top wealthiest 1 percentile controls all the political power, holds half the wealth, and pays what is claimed to be the bulk of the taxes (despite mile wide tax loopholes and Swiss bank accounts). The rest of the population is merely filler, programmed to buy every latest self-cannibalizing iteration of the iPad/Pod while never again paying their mortgage and brainwashed to watch 2 hours of prime time TV commercials to keep it distracted from the fact that the last time America was a democracy was around the time the Wright brothers were arguing the pros and cons of frequent flier programs. So far so good. But what about the rest of the world? How is wealth stratified in a global perspective? Where do the "rich" live? What kind of wealth is controlled by various countries? Where are the Ultra High Net Worth people? For answers to all these questions, and much more, confirming that just like in America, the wealthiest 0.5% control over 35% of world wealth, Credit Suisse has compiled and released its latest "Global Wealth Report." The findings are summarized here.

After trading higher in trading overnight, it looked like we might have another day higher in the energy complex on Monday. In the early trading in Asia and then in Europe, equities had followed the DJIA’s inspirational close over 11,000 on Friday and built on it. Resources companies led the advance in China long before the sun rose over European markets. The euro was holding its own in early morning trading, and it looked like equities, currencies and commodities were set to start yet another week using the same carefully rehearsed script. Oil prices did open higher on Monday, but a suddenly stronger us dollar brought selling into commodities and managed to press crude oil prices into negative territory by the day’s settlement. - Cameron Hanover

In his latest letter Van Hoisington cuts through the bullshit and asks the number one question (rhetorically): why are bank excess reserves (aka the ugly, liability side of Quantitative Easing) still so high. He answers: "Either the banks: 1) are not in a position to put additional capital at risk because their balance sheets are shaky; 2) are continuing to experience large write-downs on commercial and residential mortgages, as well as on a wide variety of other loans; or 3) customers may not have the balance sheet capacity or the need to take on additional debt. They could also see no expansionary prospects, or fear an uncertain regulatory future. In other words, no viable outlets exist for banks to loan funds." Which leads him to conclude quite simply that while risk assets may hit all time highs courtesy of free liquidity, the economy, also known as the middle class, will be stuck exactly where it was before QE2... and QE1. Van also looks at that other critical variable: velocity of money - "Velocity is primarily determined by the following: 1) financial innovation; 2) leverage, provided that the debt is for worthwhile projects and the borrowing is not of the Ponzi finance variety; and 3) numerous volatile short-term considerations." As an uptick in velocity is critical for any wholesale reflation (as opposed to merely hyperinflation) plan to work, this is one metric Van is unhappy with. Lastly, Hoisington also looks at the fiscal headwinds facing the country (which more so than anything terrify the Goldman economics team), and presents his vision on the bond-bubble argument.

As if we needed more warnings that the US is rapidly losing its position as the world's superpower and wealth aggregator, is the following chart from Credit Suisse, which ranks the top 10 countries in the world in terms of average wealth per adult. While the US was #1 10 years ago, due to an abysmal growth rate of only 23%, by far the lowest of all the ranked countries, the US has now dropped from first to seventh, falling behind such countries as Sweden and France. At the top - such perennially voted "top places to live" as Switzerland and Norway. Hopefully the US can fix its ever-expanding black hole of problems soon, as once the wealthiest decide they have had it here and move away, look for this number to drop ever faster until the US drops out of the ranking altogether.

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 11/10/10

I'm sorry, but I don't see anyway out of this. With fraud absolutely everywhere in our banking system, like some advanced metastatic cancer, financial metabolism comes to a sickening stop. Nobody can buy or sell property. Nobody can trust any American financial institution. Money can't circulate. Nobody will be able to get any money. It won't be long before that translates into nobody getting any food. We may be a nation of clowns, but as Lon Chaney famously observed a while ago - when explaining his technique of horror movie-making - "...there's nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight...." - James Howard Kunstler

The ratio between VIX (implied vol as determined by 1 month out SPX options) and VXV (3 month Implied Vol) has just dropped to the lowest it has been since the end of 2006. After hitting a post-Lehman high of just under 1.3, VIX/VXV has plunged to 0.7917, a steep drop of 0.07 in just one day, as near-term equity vol is being aggressively sold, even as forward implied vol remains resistant to day to day changes in the market. Whether or not this is predicated by the QE2 event occurring somewhere inbetween the 2 term points is unknown, and irrelevant, but traders certainly seem to be far more comfortable with 1 month volatility and are selling much more of it than its longer-dated cousin. However, as Chris Cole pointed out earlier, this could be a very dangerous underestimation of the possibility for an exponential jump in near-term vol, in a time when correlations are near all time highs.

Chris Cole of Artemis Capital Management submits the following very interesting observations on a unified risk theory, which posits a unified connection between QE, cross-asset correlations, and the historically steep vol surface. As Chris suggests: "higher cross-asset correlations and vol curves are the unintended consequence of aggressive monetary expansion in developed economies. If this recovery was healthy correlations would be dropping and the volatility surface flattening, not the opposite!!  Both are omens that profound systemic risk is building underneath the surface of this market." Must read material for our new "QE normal."

And she is so worth every sub-penny of it.

The irresponsible actions by MERS are rapidly becoming the stuff of folklore: from their direct and indirect involvement in every fraudclosure, to the president himself falling for what appears to be a MERS agent with a split signature personality, to MERS just-released refutation of it ever having done something wrong, the hammer on MERS seems to be preparing to fall with a resounding thud. Yet with everyone focusing on MERS' involvement in the residential mortgage space, pundits have ignored that "other" space where MERS made the possibility of outright robosigning fraud a distinct possibility - commercial real estate. For specifics one has to go back 7 years in time, to July 28, 2003, and read the following press release from the company titled: "MERS Liberates Commercial Marketplace From Assignments" in which we read that "MERS announces the release of its latest
product, MERS® Commercial, designed to eliminate the repurchase risk and
costs associated with preparing, recording and tracking assignments for
the commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) marketplace." Ah yes, how convenient for MERS to come to the CMBS market with a "time saving" yet fraud facilitating product, at precisely the time when various CMBS issues would start propagating and flooding the market with hundreds of billions of commercial real estate securitizations. Which begs the question: if residential mortgage foreclosures are being halted and if the very fabric of the MBS securitization architecture is put into question, when will someone ask whether MERS® Commercial allowed such pervasive title fraud as is now apparently ubiquitous in the residential space, to take the CMBS space by storm, and how many billions in dollars will Banc of America Securities, Bear Stearns (d/b/a JP Morgan), GE Capital Real Estate, GMAC Commercial, John Hancock and Wells Fargo be forced to buy back loans that were fraudulently certified.