Archive - May 16, 2010 - Story

It is early in the Asian morning session and the mood is decidedly like that in late September, early October of 2008, when every day felt like it could be liquidity's last. And while we have long discussed that the "liquidity"situation in equities is laughable, with May 6th confirming our concerns, tonight we are seeing, for the first time, the evaporation of liquidity from the FX market, where tight bid/ask spreads are needed for proper market functioning. The EURUSD and EURJPY as well as various cable pairs are plunging, taking out massive 10 pip steps lower with every block, something unseen since the Lehman collapse. Furthermore, with funds anticipating something, anything out of Europe this weekend after the major move down in the euro last week, and the disappointing silence out of both Brussels and Luxembourg, the EUR will likely test the next support of 1.18. It appears that tonight the LBMA is too busy with putting out other fires than to worry about a surging gold. At last check it was back on its way to retest $1,250. So the very same conditions that pushed gold higher today, were responsible for it plunging on Friday... The intervention (and lack thereof) is just getting far too blatant.

This isn’t a “call to action”. Nor is it a brow-beating for those who care about the political institutions of this country. It is just an indication that when a national/global economy toilet-bowls there are neither easy nor satisfying answers. The powers that be are going to do what is necessary to prolong their survival. This is applies very generally. You can see this in the source materials of democracy, the original material.

When it comes to the framing minds of the United States of America, you can keep that ideologue Jefferson. The real genius was James Madison: pragmatic and driven by strategic reasoning married to direct observation. The whole structure of governance depends on his notion of checks and balances. He also had some things to say about monetary policy in extreme circumstances.

When Zero Hedge first wrote about the adverse role of prop trading in capital markets, long before it was a mainstream issue, which in turn incited the response of one Lucas van Praag, in which they assured us and our readers that there were never any issues with Goldman's prop trading desk and that all concerns about prop trading are misplaced. A few months later one of the luminaries of modern finance picked up the Zero Hedge banner and proposed a rule that would end banking prop trading for ever, in essence overriding Mr. van Praag explanation. Yet for the past three months most had left the Volcker Rule for dead, after the banking lobby had once again bought a two year full recourse lease on Obama and his cronies. Until the last two weeks, when first on May 6 we saw what happens how an entire market, gripped in computerized gambling and speculating can break in the span of a few minutes, without doubt facilitated by the banks' prop operations, and also when we saw that the big 4 banks had monopolized prop trading to such an extent (and disingenuously masking it as flow trading: yeah, right, flow trading with a VaR of $150 million... better luck finding greater idiots next time) that none had a losing day, in essence making Madoff's ponzi scheme, with its worse "win" track record a joke in comparison with the ponzi that the market has become. Which is why we read with great satisfaction in the FT that the banking lobby's power is slipping at a critical time: this week the Volcker Rule will be voted on by the Senate, and it may very well pass, despite the "cornered rat" response by the banks. As the FT notes, "the political mood is such that a straight vote on derivatives would be close and the Volcker Rule would be likely to pass." Should the Volcker Rule pass, this will be the beginning of the end for the current casino capitalism system that has gripped Wall Street. And don't be surprised to see a 10% drop in the market as a last ditch self defense mechanism by the primary dealers.

Some appear to believe that "confidence in the banks" can be rebuilt by a new round of good economic news, by rising stock prices, by the reassurances of high officials – and by not looking too closely at the underlying evidence of fraud, abuse, deception and deceit. As you pursue your investigations, you will undermine, and I believe you may destroy, that illusion. But you have to act. The true alternative is a failure extending over time from the economic to the political system. Just as too few predicted the financial crisis, it may be that too few are today speaking frankly about where a failure to deal with the aftermath may lead. In this situation, let me suggest, the country faces an existential threat. Either the legal system must do its work. Or the market system cannot be restored. There must be a thorough, transparent, effective, radical cleaning of the financial sector and also of those public officials who failed the public trust. The financiers must be made to feel, in their bones, the power of the law. And the public, which lives by the law, must see very clearly and unambiguously that this is the case. Thank you. - Professor James Galbraith

One of the more peculiar phenomena in the current Great Recession has been the persistent drop in the Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate, after averaging around 66.5% for the past 20 years, in the past 18 months it has plunged, and despite a marginal improvement over the past several months, is still at 65.2%. This is counterintuitive when one analyzes the data side by side with the overall civilian population in the United States. An indexed chart, using the January 2000 level as a baseline demonstrates that while the US population has been climbing at a fairly steady arithmetic growth rate, the civilian labor force, which should track the changes in the actual population, has been behaving in an erratic pattern, having more to do with BLS data interpretation and the nuances of the business cycle than demographics. Which is why when reindexing data for nominal changes in the US rate of population growth, yields some troubling variations from the just disclosed 9.9% unemployment rate. Basing the adjustment to the unemployment rate on nothing but a statistical regression to the growth of America over the past ten years, would yield an unemployment rate of 12.7%. More troubling is that the underemployment rate would be a number far higher than the 17.1% disclosed for April. According to our calculations, a reading closer to 22% would be more appropriate to represent the level of real joblessness in the US. A number, which is higher than the corresponding metric in austerity-ridden Spain.

Just what Europe needs (where the EURUSD and EURJPY opened earlier at level below the Friday close): more air traffic shut downs due to the unpronounceable Iceland volcano. Beginning 1 AM GMT, so in about an hour, Heathrow and Getwick will be shut down, "with more disruptions likely over coming days" reports the BBC. Virtually all airports in the UK, including Heathrow and Gatwick will be shut down, causing more millions in losses for both commercial aviation and crimping trade in and out of Europe, especially for time-sensitive products. As of yet it is not certain when airports will resume operations. In the meantime if you are flying into Europe with a UK connection over the next 24 hours, you are out of luck.

Last week we noted that several prominent Austrian and German gold dealers had run out of inventory and were no longer transacting with a European population that has suddenly discovered gold religion. As a result, dealers are now focusing procurement efforts outside of Europe, with South Africa receiving the brunt of Europe's panic for physical precious metals. As the FT reports, "At the Rand refinery in South Africa, the phone has not stopped ringing this week." Just imagine what will happen when the gold bug goes airborne and jumps across the Atlantic...

With 30 people already dead, the escalating "live fire" violence in Thailand's capital, which shows no signs of abating, will surely have a wide-ranging and adverse impact on the entire Asian region shortly. Attached is a video of the warzone that Bangkok has morphed into via RTN.

As a profession, divining the intentions of third parties has a long and somewhat ignominious history.  One need but train the dim spotlight of memory on the personages of Grigori Rasputin, Arthur Neville Chamberlain, the Iranian Desk at the Central Intelligence Agency in 1978 and those Jewish voters in the United States who cast their ballots for the current administration to come to the conclusion that such predictions can be dangerous- and for more than the just the prognosticators.  Against this backdrop- or perhaps even despite it- it may well be constructive to project the potential consequences implied by a somewhat hyperventilating article by Marie Woolf and Jonathan Oliver that appeared on the Times Online website today, dramatically entitled "Labour Hid 'Scorched Earth' Debts With Billions."  Sayth Woolf and Oliver:

Part II of a multi-part series on the global rise of Farcism.  Part I, "The Silver Curtain" can be viewed here.

With recent news that Lloyd Blankfein paid cash for his 15 CPW residence in 2008, it is useful to see just what other masters of industry (or, as the case may be, services), reside at New York's most desirable property. In addition to Lloyd, quite a few other Goldmanites seem to have a particular predisposition for expensive West Central Park views. Here is the full list courtesy of AmazonAWS.

When the SEC'a Robert Khuzami recently recused himself of pursuing an investigation against Deutsche Bank in regard to potential CDO malfeasance, a bank where it is common knowledge the CDOs flowed (and were shorted "where appropriate" by Mr. Lippmann and his henchmen) like manna from heaven, we were curious just how large the conflict of interest must be for him to not pursue hisofficial duty. Luckily, we were able to answer this question when we recently encountered Mr. Khuzami's Public Financial Disclosure Report for Executive Branch Personnel. It appears that Mr. Khuzami, who from 2002 to 2009 worked at DB, most recently as General Counsel, might have directly profited quite handsomely from the very activity he is now prosecuting Goldman, and other banks very likely soon, for engaging in. How handsomely? His 2007 bonus, 2008 salary and bonus, and 2009 salary added up to $3,804,537. This works out to about $1.9 million in comp per year. And let's not forget that 2006/2007 was the peak years for DB's CDO issuance. It sure seems Mr. Khuzami benefited nicely as a participant in precisely the kind of CDO gimmickry that he is currently all over Goldman for. Yet most ironic, is that Robert is expecting to receive between $100,001 and $250,000 in vested deferred stock comp from Deutsche Bank in August 2010. Should he, or someone else at the SEC, commence an investigation into Khuzami's former employer, the SEC's Director of Enforcement is sure to lose a substantial amount of money tied into the absolute value of Deutsche Bank stock.

Must watch hour long video from Inflation.us that is now making the viral rounds, explaining what everyone on this website understand, in simple language. Please forward to your friends and neighbors. Inflationist or deflationist, the facts behind this video are undeniable. It is time for the truth about our economy to break through the propaganda machine.

The only benefit of hitting rock bottom is you can't really fall further. Which is precisely what has happened with Greece. The little country that started off the chain reaction that has already led to a currency and liquidity crisis, and made the solvency crisis in Europe all too tangible, by belonging to a monetary union it had no place in (a union which no reason to exist in the first place), is once again reminding the world of its existence, this time by G-Pap opening his mouth and inserted two whole legs in it. In an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria to be aired today, G-Pap has threatened he may sue US banks for "contributing" to his country's debt crisis. For those of you lacking in analogy skills, Greece is in the same shoes as a bankrupt debtor who wants to sue his creditors for daring to hike up his interest rate when the only means he has to roll his debt is by using another credit card (this one issued by US and European Taxpayers), even as bankruptcy is literally hours away. The Greek summation: that of a petulant 5 year old who has just broken dad's favorite gadget: “We have made our mistakes,” Papandreou said. “We are living up to this responsibility. But at the same time, give us a chance. We’ll show you.” Now that would be amusing - after Greece destroyed its economy the first go round, we can't wait to see what the country does for an encore. The only reason Greece is not bankrupt now is because even as its past mistakes have caught up with it and climaxed in a solvency and liquidity crisis unseen since the Lehman days, the country's end would bring down all of Europe. If Greece would not have impaired French, German and UK banks, the country would have long been allowed to default. Yet diversion is always a good tactic: let's bring the "speculators" into this yet again. After all it is unheard of in these turbulent Keynesian times for anyone, especially our own Fed Chairman, to own up to their endless mistakes. It is always, without exception, someone else's fault.