Archive - Jan 2010 - Story

It doesn't get any more subtle: "We believe most of Pershing Square’s assertions as it relates to valuation and leverage are inaccurate and misleading...Upon further review, we believe Pershing Square’s analysis is not only deeply fundamentally flawed, but it contains numerous factual errors and methodological inconsistencies, which we detail in this presentation, that cause it to be materially misleading in its conclusions....Given that Pershing Square has a representative on GGP’s Board of Directors, how can GGP’s Board of Directors allow Pershing Square to disseminate such inaccurate and misleading data? How can investors blindly follow the recommendations of Pershing Square without scrutinizing the factual accuracy of the supporting analysis, which we have shown to be faulty?"

Yesterday we brought attention to China's overheating economy. In response, Deutsche Bank analyst Michael Spencer is now estimating an earlier than expected rate hike for the newly-minted second largest world economy. "We think January CPI inflation will be similar to December, but in February inflation could rise to 2.5%, above the 2.25% benchmark deposit rate. This implies some likelihood of the first rate hike coming in the second half of March, earlier than our current expectation of an April rate hike." Just look at China markets at what tightening means for equities. Then extrapolate to the U.S., once Bernanke someday wakes up on the right side of the bed and realizes that America is in a very much comparable situation (although 10.7% GDP growth would be something even Obama would have some problems with digesting). And now that Volcker is finally about to supplant the soon to be defunct Larry Summers as Obama's key financial advisor, one can extend Deutsche's conclusion and say that the rate hike in the U.S. may also come earlier than expected.

Goldman reported a blow out EPS number today on a minor miss to revenue: this was mostly due to a substantial cut to employee compensation accrual, which went down from an annualized accrual of $20 billion previously to $16.193 billion for FYE 2009. In fact in Q4, Goldman reported a negative expense to compensation and benefits of ($519) million compared to $5.351 billion in Q3. Did Rahm have some tete-a-tetes with Lloyd recently? With 32,500 FTE, per employee compensation was $498,153. We will provide bonus numbers for some key individuals in the days ahead.

After the double dip in new home sales and NAHB confidence, we are starting to see the beginning of the end of the improvement in firings: initial claims in the week ended January 16 came in at 482,000, higher than the estimate which expected a number of 440,000, which was supposed to be an improvement from the prior week's 446,000. The good news was that the spread between seasonally adjusted and non-seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate tightened by 20 bps from 110 bps to 90 bps (3.5% SA vs 4.4% NSA). But by far the worst news was EUC, or Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which as even Mr. Liesman acknowledges now is important, which shot up by a stunning 652,364 to 5,654,544. The end-beginning of the year transition sure caught the DOL offguard. The combination of initial, continuing claims and EUC for the most recent period is a record 10,701,794 Seasonally Adjusted or a whopping 12,021,880 Non-Seasonally Adjusted. The double dip is here, and unfortunately for Obama, he is all out of stimulus bullets.

You asked for more, more, more Bob. You got it.

"I would expect to see a move in S&P thru 1080, 1030 and into the 950/1000 range over the rest of Q1. In this move credit does badly, esp. weaker rated credit, and govvies do well, as does the GBP and the UST. Why? Because the market will be pricing for lower grwth, and tighter money + smaller deficits esp in the UK and US)." - Bob Janjuah

• China money market rates rise after economic growth, inflation accelerate.
• China’s Q4 GDP grew at the fastest pace since 2007, at 10.7%.
• Crude oil trades below $78/bbl on concern China may take steps to curb growth.
• Gold pares advance as Dollar rallies after China growth spurs curb concern.
• Japanese demand for bank loans dropped the most in more than 5 years on lower spending.
• Most Asia stocks fall, Chinese swap rate rises on concern growth to slow.
• Obama to propose rules on proprietary trading to reduce bank risk taking.

For this edition of Join My Fantasy Accounting League, how about a brief thought experiment for the early morning Zero Hedge Reader?

It appears that prop trading could soon be on its way out. Luckily, it only accounted for "just over" 10% of Goldman's revenue: it will therefore likely not be missed. Bloomberg writes: "President Barack Obama tomorrow will offer new proposals on limiting the size and complexity of proprietary trading systems as a way to reduce risk-taking, a senior administration official said." While this is not yet the formal end of prop trading which may or may not be a legal way to take advantage of the commingling between flow and prop trading, thus scalping clients in a perfectly acceptable manner (define the word "acceptable"), it has all the makings of the beginning of the end. And, much more importantly, this marks the long-awaited beginning of Glass-Steagall's return.

Chinese GDP is officially in the redzone: at 10.7% YoY, while Q3 was revised to 9.1%. For all of 2009, Chinese GDP rose at 9.7% (2008 came in at 9.6%): China's mystical printing machine helped the country avoid any aspect of the global recession, and these are not the droids we are looking for. At the same time the country announced a 1.9% CPI increase YoY in December, even as 2009 saw a -0.7% decline in CPI, compared to a 5.9% increase in 2008. Retail sales in 2009 surged at 15.5% nominal and 17.5% real.

Rep. Darrell Issa comes out guns blazing once again, alleging that the Fed provided a selective response to the subpoena to provide all documents relating to the AIG bailout, and asks Edolphus Towns, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, to hold Fed officials responsible for this act, in contempt. While we are confident that the Fed will promptly respond to this request for incremental disclosure, we would like to propose some additional very material and non-public information that Congressman Issa should request from the Fed...

Well, if yesterday did not seal the Democrats' fate ahead of the mid-term election, this proposal, if passed, certainly should.

Update from reader Steak (via Politico): President Barack Obama is expected to appoint a special deficit reduction commission as part of a tentative agreement between Democrats and the White House—each trying to find the votes to raise the federal debt ceiling in the coming weeks.

From Mary Schapiro's speech at the 37th Annual Securities Regulation Institute at the Hotel del Coronado, California, surely a very much deserved, and taxpayer sponsored boondoggle, on the changing landscape in financial markets. Presented without expletive filled commentary.

Developing story. Too much other fallout to deal with than to promote the bubble blower for another term? Only 11 days left... Better hurry

In his latest weekly commentary, Inflation Myth and Reality, Dr. John Hussman makes the argument that changes-in federal government spending dictate the future path of inflation. As shown below, his data set covers the period from 1951 through 2008 and there appears to be a decent correlation.

Has it been a whole 24 hours since we last heard about Mutual Assured Destruction if bankers don't get their way? It must be, because according to Dow Jones the Treasury market is presumably considering how to exclude the $5 trillion repo market from any "banker" taxation after "market participants" implicitly threatened with failed bank auctions unless this exemption is granted.