Archive - Jul 25, 2010 - Story

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Crash or Skyrocket during the "Cardinal Cross"??

Is something (abnormally) fishy in the state of precious metals manipulation? GATA's Adrian Douglas (recently famous for facilitating the emergence of whistleblower Andrew Maguire) seems to think so, after his observation that the LBMA has decided to block "access to statistics relating to the trading activities of its member bullion banks. This information has been available to the public since 1997 but as of this week it is available only to LBMA members." His conclusion: "There is a cover-up of back-door injections of liquidity of physical gold, and the LBMA now is trying to conceal trading information. I interpret the LBMA's move to secrecy as a sign that the opportunity to get real metal is closing fast." Read on for his argument...

Hot on the heels of our earlier disclosure that the Landesbank stress test passage is either a joke or a scam, comes the knowledge that 6 out of the 14 tested German banks, including Landesbanks, have decide against posting their stress test details, specifically withholding the breakdown of their sovereign debt holdings. "Every other European bank, bar Greece’s ATEbank, which failed the test, complied with the disclosure requirement. Analysts said the German banks’ non-compliance would fuel suspicion they had something to hide, and risked further undermining faith in the whole stress test exercise, already criticised for its benign scenarios." Um "further undermine"? Has it not been made abundantly clear that the entire stress test soap opera was merely a pretext for Liberty 33 and Johnny 5 to ramp the market for the last hour of trading on Friday? Are people still confused that whenever Tim Geithner "plans" something, be it for the US, for his own tax estate, or for another continent, scammery, corruption and opacity are pretty much a necessary and sufficient condition for any "swiss watch" plan's execution.

In today's NYT, Gretchen Morgenson does a good summary of how Goldman was demonstratively net short net short AIG (or net long its CDS, depending how one looks at it) via nearly 100 counterparties to the tune of just over $1.7 billion in net notional, after Chuck Grassley released several previously classified documents disclosing Goldman's CDS position as of September 15, 2008, the day of Lehman's bankruptcy. As Gretchen summarizes: "According to the document, Goldman held a total of $1.7 billion in insurance on A.I.G. from almost 90 institutions. Its exposure to A.I.G. at that time was $2.6 billion. Goldman bought most of the insurance from large foreign and domestic banks, including Credit Suisse ($310 million), Morgan Stanley ($243 million) and JPMorgan Chase ($216 million). Goldman also bought $223 million in insurance on A.I.G. from a variety of funds overseen by Pimco, the money management firm." While the topic of how the world's biggest asset management firm in the face of Pimco (and specifically its massive Total Return Fund) could have a net short CDS position (i.e., unlimited downside exposure), and how this is supposed to demonstrate prudent capital management, is ripe for evisceration, we will leave it for another day, as there is something more notable in the Grassley disclosure that has to be discussed. While Gretchen is correct that the external position of Goldman's exposure vis-a-vis AIG is indeed a total of $1.7 billion in long CDS, if one were to actually present the gross number, the truth would be starker: as the Grassley document reveals, the firm's gross exposure for its IG flow and structured finance desks goes from a positive $1.7 billion net exposure, to a ($2.9) billion net exposure, a massive $4.8 billion swing! What is it that in one fell swoop moved the firm from having a huge long bet on AIG, to a major short CDS position, one that nearly entirely covered the firm's $2.6 billion in legacy risk exposure? Enter Goldman's Counterparty Valuation Adjustment desk.

Last week's European stress test is by now, luckily, part of propaganda history. Easily the most ludicrous finding of the "test": all seven of Germany's largest Landesbanks, NordLB, WestLB , LBBW, BayernLB, HSH, Landesbank Hessen Thueringen and Landesbank Berlin, magically passed with flying colors. As the Landesbanks are at the same level (or far worse) of capital deficiency, courtesy of underwater and mismarked real estate assets accumulated over decades of lax lending practices and still marked at par, as are Spain's cajas (of which 5 were generously allowed to fail, although with laughable tier 1 capital shortfalls of a few hundred euros each), this finding alone is worth a few chuckles, for those who actually care. We won't speculate on the stress test any more - everyone knows it is a farce. Yet the role of the Landesbanks in European, and especially American markets, deserves a prominent discussion. And not just any market, but the very shadow banking system which at last check was vastly bigger than regular plain-vanilla commercial banking. As even the New York Fed acknowledges in its recent paper "Shadow Banking", by Zoltan Poszar, in which there is a whole section on the critical Landesbank function in the shadow economy, "As major investors of term structured credits “manufactured” in the U.S., European banks, and their shadow bank offshoots were an important part of the “funding infrastructure” that financed the U.S. current account deficit," the proper functioning of the Landesbanks is crucial to maintaining a stable and efficient market funding structure. This is actually extremely important, as for years most economists and pundits have considered only the non-shadow banking funding aspect of the massive US current account deficit (a topic most critical now that even the US is embarking on fiscal austerity, and the government sector will be unable to further fund the multi-trillion deleveraging ongoing in the private sector, thus pushing the topic of the current account to the forefront as Goldman did recently). Generically, everyone has always looked at China and Japan as those parties responsible for funding the US Current account deficit. Alas, that is only (less than) half the truth. As the New York Fed suggests, the shadow banking system is likely a more important economic funding factor than even China and Japan combined when it comes to the CA. Which is why the all time record decline of over $1.3 trillion in shadow banking liabilities should be a far greater warning sign than any month to month change in China's UST purchasing patterns, than whether WestLB is "really" broke or only "never never" so, and than the debate whether China will decouple, float or just continue posturing vis-a-vis the CNYUSD exchange rate. As everyone contemplates navels, a major portion of liability funding is literally evaporating as shadow banking implodes. Yet nobody bothers to discuss this most important to the future of the US economy topic.

Looking at the European theater of Keynesian war, Erik Nielsen says, "We optimists have had a very good week in Europe." Well, when after a 70 year sabbatical, it is once again the pan-continental doctrine to fabricate a lie so bold, the population has no choice but to believe in it, it is truly a victory for the bulls. Yet even the consummately rosiest outlook out of Chiswick agrees there are at least a few thunderclouds on the horizon: "Hungary is a space worthwhile watching. Orban’s government seems to have taken a populist line, but I think the EU and IMF will be prepared to make a demonstration effect out of Hungary, if needed. The government will most likely end up caving, but it could become quite messy before then."