Archive - Dec 17, 2010 - Story

After the rather tumultuous events of the past 48 hours, it is time to take a moderate to quite moderate break. Please use this space to hyperventilate, or else breathe normally, at your leisure.

None can foretell the future, and yet the shape of what we face can be shrewdly estimated with enough attention to historical trends; with broad contextual understanding; and with sufficient insight into the character of leaders, their societies, and the structures which define their basis. These estimates will be tempered by the sudden acts of nature, the sudden emergence of true leadership from unexpected quarters, or key breakthroughs in science. Still, we can hazard reliable views on the shape of the world in, say, a decade — in 2020 — if present trends and characters remain, and on a knowledge of certain baseline levels of wealth and capability which presently exist. In 2011, the world will probably remain beset by the lingering of the present crisis of currency levels and economic performance. This is essentially a mass psychological crisis, based around the perceptions which create trust, particularly trust in asset values and institutions. In some respect, historical trends have given populations in modern societies excessive trust in the ability of their institutions to remain operational, untended by their populations. As a result, governments have grown larger and less efficient, and have arrogated to themselves more and more of the resources of societies, thereby inhibiting productivity. At some point, those societies, when beleaguered and impoverished, lose faith in the institutions of governance and leadership succession.

Lately, anywhere we look, there seems to be a pattern emerging: those economic thinkers who actually construct and run their own macro models (not the glorified powerpoint presenter variety) and actually do independent analysis and tracing of the money flow, instead of relying on Wall Street forecasts that have as much credibility as a Moody's home price hockey stick from 2006, almost inevitably end up having a very dire outlook on the economy. One such person is and has pretty much always been Shadowstats' John Williams, whose "shadow" economic recreation puts the BLS data fudging dilettantes to shame. That said any reader of Zero Hedge who has been with us for more than a few weeks, knows all too well our eagerness to ridicule the increasingly more incoherent lies coming out of the US department of truth, so no surprise there. Yet another aspect over which there is much agreement is that no matter how one slices the data, the outcome for the US currency is a very grim one. Which is why Williams over the past several years has become a major fan of the shiny metal. Below we recreate portions of his latest observations on the upcoming currency collapse, courtesy of King World News.

As we suggested earlier, there would be virtually no trading volume at all today, and any moves would be driven purely by the deltas. And following the close the fireworks would follows. Sure enough, here's the whoosh immediately following the start of the AH session.

It is no secret that Zero Hedge's favorite contemporary painter since what now seems time immemorial is none other than the unbeatably original Geoffrey Raymond. While his art has not made Sotheby's yet, it will eventually: after all who would not rather bet on the upside appreciation of an annotated painting of Dick Fuld, capturing the bipolar euphoria of a just insolvent Lehman Brothers for $30K than a diamond skull by Damien Hurst for a hundred million, with guaranteed downside?  That said, $30K may be a little steep for a population which still has to feel the impact of inflation on its paycheck. Which is why we are delighted to once again offer Zero Hedge readers the chance to get what Raymond calls The Perfect Gift for the Person who has (Almost) Everything... and at a discount. Geoffrey is offering signed and numbered prints of five of his favorite paintings with guaranteed delivery by the 24th.  They are "The Annotated Fuld", "The Annotated Fed", "The American Investor", "Big Lloyd 3 (The Root)" and one of my all-time favorites, "Cramer:  Naked Short".  Taken together, they are an amazing visual document of the American financial meltdown.  All these can be found at www.annotatedpaintings.blogspot.com. After all what better inflation hedge than acquiring a print of the unbridled genius presented below. Considering the subject's most recent Nielsen ratings, it may be archival very, very soon.

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 17/12/10

One of the more peculiar observations we noted in our analysis of the Fed's balance sheet yesterday, was that in the week just ended, reserves held by banks with the Federal Reserve dropped by a very material $64.2 billion even as the Fed ended up buying a net of $4 billion in securities: a $68 billion mismatch between an increase in reserves and Fed asset increases. A quick look at how this mismatch has progressed since the announcement of QE Lite (and QE 2) demonstrates this phenomenon very distinctly: while during the QE Lite phase, net holdings of the Fed were flat, bank reserves, which should have followed suit in fact declined notably, by almost $40 billion. Yet it is during the POMO phase of QE 2 that this difference become glaring. During a period when the Fed added a total of $88 billion (net of MBS paydowns) in securities, reserves increased by only $14 billion. This does not include the cumulative differential since QE Lite. And all this came to a head in the just ended week, when the difference between cumulative asset purchases and reserve changes hit a whopping $138 billion. This is very disturbing for a variety of reasons, the number of which is that, as Jim Bianco points out, banks are rapidly exchange securities with higher reserve requirements for those with lower: the net result is a far slower increase in reserves held with the Fed. It also means that banks ever since QE Lite have been stealthily offloading lower quality fixed income products to the market and replacing these with Treasuries (motivation being unclear but likely having to do with presenting a better capitalized state). If true, this would mean that during the entire orchestrated HY bond rally sine August, those who have been buying are in fact the greatest suckers, and have been buying hundreds of billions worth of lower quality paper from none other than the allegedly smart money banks. Alternatively, what this means, is that instead of opening up capacity for banks to bid up riskier corporates and thus stimulate the economy, banks are forced to gobble up the toxic treasuries, that the Treasury puts upon them each and every week. Should this divergent trend persist, we would be very mindful of obtaining verification of either of these two hypotheses.

On April 15, the VIX contango hit its heretofore steepest of the year. What happened immediately afterward was a peak in the market followed by a plunge, and the flash crash, coupled with a massive flattening of the curve. What also happened was unprecedented pain for Goldman, which had been pushing the Variance Swap so hard, it ended up with residual inventory on its flow (but not prop) desk, resulting in a major loss for the firm once the curve flattened. Yet anyone who thought that Goldman's Delta One prop desk would ever lose money, should just look at today's ridiculous VIX curve which is now trading at a steepness unseen in years. More than obviously someone is pushing very hard on the spot, while ignoring or buying the mid and long end. And as we expected earlier this week, the only driver for stocks right now is what is happening in VIX land, driven by the near record open interest, which is now so disconnected from the volatility in all other assets (FX, bonds), it is beyond deplorable. Yet perfectly expected: with no volume, one market maker can do with the market entirely as they see fit.

... in which a familiar chart appears on page 8.

Because why go B when DD will do (and double as a gas mask). Or is Mark merely wishing he was part of the Power Lunch crew? We doubt it: for some odd reason, and completely independent of wardrobe, that particular segment continues to have some of the lowest Nielsen ratings on the Comcastic station.

At this point it appears Bank of America can't wait for the alleged Assange secret fraud trove to finally be released and put the bank out of its misery: not a week passes without someone suing the bank for gross mortgage fraud. One would almost think that if we had a functioning legal system in which perpetrators of crime, instead of those protesting it, were arrested that BofA may actually be a sell on the f#&^@!g dip. The latest reason why the best job in the world these days is to be BofA's outside counsel, is that as Reuters just reported, Arizona has sued the bank as a result of the latter "consistently misleading consumers about its home loan modification process." Perhaps a greater crime is BofA's consistently misleading the SEC into settling every single case of multi-billion bonus dispersal at or about the time the banks receives a $15 billion taxpayer funded TARP bailout. And while this latest case will also be settled promptly and quietly, to not give some other plaintiffs the idea that such a thing as equitable compensation exists, in the meantime the actual damages sought by Arizona AG Terry Goddard is $25,000 per violation. Ball park estimate of 500,000 of those countrywide (not just Arizona) , and there goes the firm's Christmas Bonus.

RANsquawk US Afternoon Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 17/12/10

Every massive inventory accumulation.... has an equal and opposite effect on GDP. To all those who snickered at the earlier chart of the BDIY, we recommend you read the following brief blurb from Nordea, whose implications may put everything you have heard about a surge in GDP in Q4 and Q1 (primarily from the Goldman bull brigade) in a slightly different light.

Just headlines for now, but not good for BofA: Per Reuters, the SEC has sent out a new round of subpoenas to Wall St. banks, the agency is aking harder look at securitization process; finally, the SEC is looking at role of 'master servicer' that oversees collateral in pool of loans. And here Brian Moynihan was, hoping this thing would disappear like a silent but deadly fart in the wind.

Does anybody else notice the very close correlation between the Baltic Dry and the stock market/myths of economic recovery? Neither do we. Oddly enough, the BDIY did predict the late August S&P surge by about a month. And incidentally, we are back to early August levels all over again. Just as incidentally, the market was about 15% lower back then. Then again, our advice is to pay no attention to this index which tracks nothing relevant, and has no bearing on the world economy (and certainly not markets) whatsoever. And ignore the data on the Bberg chart: the value of the BDIY as of this morning is 1,999.