Archive - May 12, 2010 - Story

All we can hope for is for this to get to trial. And any case which in its brief says: "As American citizens, the Plaintiffs allege the financial and banking system imposed on them by the Federal Reserve Banking sytem is a violation of their Constitutional and Human Rights. That the banking system practiced by the New York Federal Reserve Bank, owned and controlled by the Defendant Wall Street Banks, is the most sinful and evil PONZI scheme man is capable of devising" deserves a hearing.The ratings for C-Span will blow the Superbowl away. A 30 second ad slot will cost exponentially more as the case progresses adversely for the Federal Reserve, and the dollar gets increasingly devalued.

Couldn't resist.

The weekly ICI number for long-term domestic mutual fund flows is out, and not surprisingly, retail investors were bailing out in droves from the stock market even before the massive flash crash of May 6. In fact, in the week ended May 5, retail investors had pulled a massive $2.235 billion out of the market, after the S&P had dropped a mere 5% or so from the prior week. We are positive that when the number for the current week comes out, the outflows will be stunning now that investors have no faith left in the rigged casino "capital markets." Of course, this is simple to explain: with everyone and their grandmother habituated to a market that can only go up, at the first sign of jitteriness everyone and their grandmother bails, although only the big institutions really get to exit: everyone else has to hope the SEC will not cancel their trades the next day. And now that the market has been thoroughly discredited, the primary dealers have no choice but to ramp it up on no volume yet again, in hopes of pulling in the momos and the housewives into it as usual, courtesy of the CNBC cheerleaders, just to pull the rug a few days before the next trillion dollar bail out is needed and "justified." Oh, and whoever cares, retail domestic flows into stocks year to date are negative by $1.5 billion. Tells you all you need to know about who is buying this "market" - momo emptor.

Spreads rallied today with HY outperforming IG but neither IG nor HY able to get down to Monday's tightest levels as we note 3Y continuing to underperform 5Y (albeit both compressing today) as risk seems to be dragged nearer-term and credit is definitely less Utopian than equities.

Earlier we noted that the Austrian mint was on its way to depleting its gold reserves following "panicked buying" from Europeans, who now openly fear the demise of their currency. Now, courtesy of Slim Beleggen, we understand that the situation in the silver market is just as bad and has also spilled over to Germany: the contagion is no longer one of sovereign debt, but of precious metal physical inventory. The primarily silver focused (but holding gold as well) Kronwitter precious metal online retailer is not only not accepting any orders, but has entirely taken down its website. The only message left for visitors is (translated from German) as follows: "Dear customers, due to the enormous number of orders we can take at the moment no new orders via the Internet, email or fax."

All you need to know is highlighted in red (we'll leave the 10 paragraph recap to those who enjoy building narratives out of noise). We are now back to the old regime where a 25 handle move is based purely on Vitamin H(ope). And now, the EURJPY is completely decoupled as the carry trade is once again the USDJPY. At this point the Euro can fall to 0 and nobody will bat an eyelid: that signal has been terminally disconnected from all algos.

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 12/05/10

Re: Winning at Ethics, the Goldman Way

I have reviewed no less than seven times your entire
episode on Charlie Rose.
Your artful simplicity, studied humility and former
hairline all positively radiated against the set’s dark
background.
As one of my lesser colleagues on the desk marveled,
“Lloyd seemed almost human: Why?” To which I replied, evenly:
“because he finally read my last memo.”
Of course there was no reason you should look to one of
your own traders for advice. But now that you have, we must
proceed quickly. American public opinion is volatile; our
exposure to it is peaking, and it will be more difficult than
usual to create the illusion for American mortals (or as we like
to call them, “The Morts”) that our business is in their
interest, much less that we share anything in common.
This time, please, do not wait five months to internalize
my new action items.

The sovereign debt bear raids continue unabated, yet investors fear nothing, and continue buying U.S. Dollars, lap up new U.S. Treasury offerings, ramp up various consumer stocks and REITs. Another stampede towards the infalliable U.S. economy while the rest of the world crumbles.

On August 9, 2007, game over. If you have to pick a day for the Minsky Moment, it was August 9. And, actually, it didn’t happen here in the United States. It happened in France, when Paribas Bank (BNP) said that it could not value the toxic mortgage assets in three of its off-balance sheet vehicles, and that, therefore, the liability holders, who thought they could get out at any time, were frozen. I remember the day like my son’s birthday. And that happens every year. Because the unraveling started on that day. In fact, it was later that month that I actually coined the term “Shadow Banking System” at the Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole.

It was only my second year there. And I was in awe, and mainly listened for most of the three days. At the end, Marty Feldstein always does the wrap-up. Everybody wanted to talk. And since I was a newbie, I didn’t say anything until almost the very end. I stood up and (paraphrasing) said, “What’s going on is really simple. We’re having a run on the Shadow Banking System and the only question is how intensely it will self-feed as its assets and liabilities are put back onto the balance sheet of the conventional banking system.” - Paul McCulley

Gasparino has broken news which everyone knew was pending, namely that Deutsche Bank's Greg "I am short your house" Lippmann, who abruptly left the firm a few days after the SEC complaing against Goldman was made public, is about to get the probe. In other words, the toxic CDO sale probe is escalating, and the latest lucky contestants are Citi and Deutsche Bank, which according to Fox Biz' Charlie Gasparino have been subpoenaed for further documentation after a preliminary investigation left far too many questions open.

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J. – May 12, 2010 – John Carney will be joining CNBC.com, the online destination for real-time global business news and expert analysis, as Senior Editor, it was announced today by Allen Wastler, Managing Editor, CNBC.com. In addition to writing for the site, Carney will also appear regularly on CNBC’s Business Day programming.

“John has deep connections on Wall Street and has a unique insight into its trading community,” said Wastler. “He is well-known within the financial world and we are delighted to have him on our team.”

Well, if nothing else, we now know officially just how great those tax receipts were. Good thing too - we can end that whole superficial tax receipt debate and focus on important things. April's tax deficit of $83 billion was the highest April deficit on record. America is now more bankrupt than ever. Income was $245.3 billion, 8% below the total recorded last April. Spending was $328.0 billion, up 14% year-over-year. A year ago in April the deficit was $20.9 billion. And here is the data: tax receipts down 7.9% YoY, Individual Income Tax down 21.5% YoY, and more importantly, spending: Total spending up 14.2%, National defense up 17%, Medicare up 39.4%, Social Security up 4.2% and General Government up 5.6%. At least interest payments were down 9.5%.

And now back to your regularly scheduled bankrupt country market melt up.

We brought up the other day the CAC index as one of the indices we would like to short on a rebound. Being French I can promise you first hand that if there is any form of austerity required as part of the $1Tr package it will not fly one bit by main street and we are likely to see some footage reminiscent of Athens last week. We had riots with a daily car burn rate above 1,200 for over a week because a teenager electrocuted himself trying to escape from the cops, so just try and imagine if railway workers can no longer retire at 50 or 55 after being driven to exhaustion watching a computer do their job 35 hours a week? - Nic Lenoir

A web page of precious metals prices provider Kitco.com has sparked rumors that Germany will leave the Eurozone and reintroduce German Marks, sending gold to a new record of $1,244 and silver to a multi-year high of $19.64.
It is this half-ready page shown below that has created excitement as it lists precious metals in Deutschmark units.