Archive - Nov 2010 - Story

RANsquawk European Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 22/11/10

Tonight's stunning financial piece de resistance comes from Wyatt Emerich of The Cleveland Current. In what is sure to inspire some serious ire among all those who once believed Ronald Reagan that it was the USSR that was the "Evil Empire", Emmerich analyzes disposable income and economic benefits among several key income classes and comes to the stunning (and verifiable) conclusion that "a one-parent family of three making $14,500 a year (minimum wage) has more disposable income than a family making $60,000 a year." And that excludes benefits from Supplemental Security Income disability checks. America is now a country which punishes those middle-class people who not only try to work hard, but avoid scamming the system. Not surprisingly, it is not only the richest and most audacious thieves that prosper - it is also the penny scammers at the very bottom of the economic ladder that rip off the middle class each and every day, courtesy of the world's most generous entitlement system. Perhaps if Reagan were alive today, he would wish to modify the object of his once legendary remark.

A year ago Irish Green Party politician Paul Nicholas Gogarty told Irish Labor Party TD "With all due respect, in the most unparliamentary language; Fuck you, Deputy Stagg, fuck you!... We Are Screwed As A Country Because Of The Wrongdoing Of Others." It took a year for Gogarty to be proven correct. Now that the "others" have been identified as virtually every UK and German bank, not to mention every insolvent financial institution in the world, and of course, the Fed's banking buddies, one wonders: just how will Ireland respond? Also, when will America finally see one of its pathetic excuses for representatives finally do the right thing and actually speak the truth. InTrade over/under: never. 

Earlier tonight, Ireland applied for conditional funding assistance and will therefore be the first Eurozone sovereign accessing the EU-IMF support framework instituted in May. The latest European Economics Analyst provides background. There are still several uncertainties surrounding the deal, including the government’s political support (a by-election is due this Thursday), and negotiations on the banks. The yield spread between 5-yr Irish government bonds and their German counterparts has fallen by around 100bp from the 600bp highs reached on 11 November. At this point, we see scope only for a further 50bp tightening. That said, we think that this represents an important step towards a resolution of EMU sovereign woes, and a gradual relaxation of the risk premium that has built up in Italy and Spain, and in Eastern Europe. - Goldman Sachs

The Government today agreed to request financial support from the European Union and the Euro Area Members States. The IMF will also be requested to assist in the provision of support. The Government welcomes the agreement reached at the Eurogroup meeting today that providing assistance to Ireland is warranted to safeguard financial stability in the EU and in the Euro Area...

A few days back we asked whether if as part of the now certain Irish austerity package, the imminent rise in the corprate tax rate for offshore companies based in Ireland would result in a crunch in the bottom line for US corporations such as Google. Now that a hike from the prevailing 12.5% rate is inevitable, US companies have launched an offensive to make it clear that only Irish citizens will be subject to the critical austerity measures. The Telegraph reports that "the Irish government has been given a stark warning from some of the biggest American companies in Ireland on the risk of a mass exodus if the country's low corporation tax rate is raised." If companies, which are purely circumventing much higher US corporate tax rates, also have to share the burden, they will simply depart from the already insolvent country, leaving it with even less tax revenues, thus accelerating the toxic loop of greater insolvency coupled with even less revenue. And since the IMF is backed primarily by the US, which is end-domicile to the bulk of the corporations in question, it is obvious that corporations have all the leverage and will most certainly get their wishes, further widening the chasm between the "corporation" and the simple Guiness-drinking, potato chewing peasant. In the brave new world, the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness appliues only financiers and corporations. Everyone else has been relegated to footnote status.

With Ireland now a lost cause, the next country which will see its bond yields surge to new records is Portugal. And just so vigilantes don't miss the hint, the Portuguese opposition party has stated that the country's budget deficit and public debt are "higher than those reported by the government." The claim is that Portuguese debt is about 30% higher than claimed by official statistics: instead of 82% of GDP, it is actually 112%. With bankrupt Greece having lied about virtually every aspect of its comatose economy, it is not as easy to dismiss the announcement as merely political bickering, and is sure to leads to at least a modest double digit basis point jump in Portuguese spreads. And once Portugal is rescued, just after New Year's, then it will be time for those last two countries of the peripheral block: Italy and Spain. And after them, it's the core's turn.

Goldman's Jan Hatzius, who after flipping his view on the economy in early August, and taking all of the street with him, has recently flopped back to a semi-optimistic outlook. What is amusing is that despite his suddenly far more bullish outlook, he, as well as the entire Goldman team, continue to call for $2 trillion in total QE2. Of course the two are completely at odds with each other, but hey - if it means 2011 will be another record bonus year, why leave something as irrelevant as logic stand in the way of that 3rd French Polynesian island. On the other hand, Hatzius is certainly not stupid, so in continuing with his rhetorical device of an hypothetical interrogation, today Hatzius releases his latest Q&A, this time focusing on the future of Quantitative Easing. What is most notable, is that as of today, the Dutch strategist sees the possibility for less QE2 post June, contrary to his recent missives which expected QE2 to continue until the full $2 trillion of expected monetary base "printing" was fulfilled. Then again, as Ireland has so aptly demonstrated today, at this point it is no longer a question of whether any economic policy is viable in the long-run. All that matters is for putting enough lipstick on the bankrupt global pig for another few months at a time, so that yet another sovereign constituency can foot the bills in what has become a rolling global bailout of country after country.

And so the can has been kicked down the road one more time as Ireland's Brian Lenihan has just sold out his country to the IMF, the ECB and the Fed for a few extra years of puppet control. RTE reports that EU Finance Ministers are due to hold a conference call later this evening during which Ireland is expected to make a formal request for a financial rescue package. What is not discussed is how the Irish people, now likely furious at being manipulated over a lost cause will express their anger over being the latest sheep used to bail out Europe's ever more insolvent banking system. They can at least sleep soundly, that they won't be the last. After today's rescue of Ireland, the vigilantes will focus their undivided attention on Portugal and Spain - perhaps these two countries will be a little less timid when it comes to rescuing Germany's banking oligarchy.

One of the more persuasive analyses on the fate of the EMU that we have read recently, comes, oddly enough, from JP Morgan, although not from the firm "proper" but from its somewhat more iconoclastic Private Bank division (which manages portfolios for the ultrawealthy). At the core of the argument, which is far more subtle and nuanced than any report by Ambrose-Evans Pritchard, yet which reaches the same conclusion on the viability of the Eurozone, is the now accepted schism between the core and the periphery, in virtually every aspect of their economies: "how can the European Central Bank simultaneously maintain the “right” monetary policy for inflation-phobic Germany and the weak periphery at the same time?" What many don't know, however, is that this very dichotomy was the reason for the collapse of the first attempt at a monetary union in Europe, the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which ended with a loud thug back in 1992, "when the UK needed a much weaker monetary policy than Germany, which was overheating in the wake of Unification stimulus." Of course, instead of taking no for an answer, Europe merely upped the ante and layered monetary unification on top of an artificial political and customs union. The current state of affairs is all Europe has to show for it. So what happens next? Just as Dylan Grice suggested on Friday that China may have realized that its inflationary endgame has now entered its "out of control" phase, so too perhaps Europe, now accepts the realization that the same unsuccessful outcome as 1992 is inevitable and the premise of a European Union can finally be shelved. Yet in a world in which, as JPM claims, the need for an artificial European union to preserve the peace ended in 1954, and the far more critical peace-perpetuation mechanism - global corporatocracy - is far more important, perhaps Europe should instead focus on doing all it can to promote the interests of various multinational corporations, whose viability may be far more important to Europe's continued non-wartime status. Or perhaps that is the idea all along - with corporate viability more reliant on a healthy banking sector than anything else, are Europe's taxpayers now expected to pay for the 50+ years of peace and social welfare they have received by rescuing the various banks whose bad investments would not sustain one day without an explicit and implicit sovereign backstop. Is Europe essentially saying that should Europe's banks be impaired, that war will certainly follow? Or if the message is not too clear yet, perhaps it will be made soon enough...

With everyone chanting the praises of the "better than abysmal" economy, we decided to post a time lapse video (since cartoons are all that stand an even remote chance of attracting some attention)prepared by John Lohman, of just how the New Normal has been progressing, both since the starts of the great depression in December 2007, and more importantly, since the beginning of the "end" of the recession. The result may surprise you. As John points out: food stamps - the only thing keeping 43 million Americans from going postal." Hopefully the end of extended unemployment benefits coming December 1 won't be that first one additional straw on the camel's back that leads to a full blown fracture.

Over a year ago, Zero Hedge published an expose in three parts (two of them in the form of direct letters to Andrew Cuomo) discussing the possibility that so-called "expert networks" are nothing less than legalized insider trading rings for the uber-wealthy, operating largely unsupervised, and leaking selective information to preferred clients. For those who may be new to this topic, we suggest catching up on Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Subsequently, we also suggested that expert networks would be implicated in the bust of Galleon Partners, the Goldman "Huddle", the collapse of FrontPoint Partners and, most recently, that expert networks may have been directly or indirectly involved in facilitating the record historical P&L of such hedge fund "titans" as SAC Capital. Today, via the Wall Street Journal, we realize that not only have the good folks at the SEC been diligently reading us for the past 13 months, but that we may have been right all along (once again). To wit: "Federal authorities, capping a three-year investigation, are preparing insider-trading charges that could ensnare consultants, investment bankers, hedge-fund and mutual-fund traders and analysts across the nation, according to people familiar with the matter. The criminal and civil probes, which authorities say could eclipse the impact on the financial industry of any previous such investigation, are examining whether multiple insider-trading rings reaped illegal profits totaling tens of millions of dollars, the people say. Some charges could be brought before year-end, they say." Good bye expert networks (and many, many hedge funds) - we hardly knew you. 

The Federal Reserve has decided to buy US Treasury bills for about US$ 600 billion in all, in monthly installments of about US$ 75 billion over eight months, until June 2011. However, this action will not achieve the desired goal of economic growth, nor will it change the US labour market, this according to most analysts and security traders surveyed by Bloomberg in its quarterly “Global Poll”. In fact, more than half of 1,030 experts who took part in the survey, expressed doubts about the Federal Reserve’s move. For more than 70 per cent of them, the Fed’s second round of quantitative easing (QE2) is largely an attempt to adjust the exchange rate of the US dollar against other currencies. Thus, according to such set of views, the Federal Reserve (de facto but not de jure the US central bank) wants to redress the trading disadvantage US manufacturers have accumulated over the last few decades and cut the US trade deficit.

While not directly under the purview of finacial matters, a topic that has received much attention recently are the now two consecutive censures of MSNBC hosts: first Keith Olbermann, and now Joe Scarborough for political donations. The reason given by MSNBC (NBCsubsidiary) president Phil Griffin is that "since [Scarborough] did not seek or receive prior approval for these contributions, Joe understands that I will be suspending him for violating our policy." As for Olbermann: "Days before the November 2 congressional elections, Olbermann gave contributions of $2,400 each to Jack Conway, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Kentucky, and to two members of the House of Representatives from Arizona, Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords." Presumably the decision to censure the two arose out of NBC News, MSNBC's broadcast partner, which attempts to protect the news organization's image as unbiased. Zero Hedge is all for unbiased reporting, even at such purportedly extremely far from the center stations as MSNBC and Fox News. After all, both of these are watched purely for entertainment purposes, and serve to merely create an echo chamber environment. Yet one station, which is also under the control of NBC, and which should pursue neutrality more than anything due to the sensitive nature of its coverage, is financial station CNBC. Which is why we were very surprised to discover that none other than Larry Kudlow recently donated $1,000 to former Connecticut Congressman Chris Shays. We wonder whether this means we actually may a day or two without supply-side general extraordinaire Larry Kudlow at the CNBC helm since obviously NBC will strive to enforce objectivity at all of its broadcast partners?

Chris Martenson who recently launched a fascinating series of interviews and podcasts with a variety of the most interesting pundits in the world, chats with Ted Butler, discussing such germane items as why silver has such a compelling value story, the coming silver supply crunch, the argument behind the allegations of silver price manipulation, drivers behind the recent price action in silver, why price volatility will increase and the expected outcome of the CFTC’s investigation and why Ted thinks it will be "a bombshell for the silver market."