Archive - Oct 2011 - Story

There are few opinions in the middle regarding the China story. People are either convinced China is a juggernaut that can’t be stopped and will become the dominant world power (a recent, global Pew Poll found that 47% of respondents think China is or will be the dominant global power), or they see a colossal bubble that will burst and cause worldwide mayhem. While some might think my world-view has a negative slant, I tend toward what I think is healthy skepticism that causes me to view things in a more realistic manner. Based on the facts as I understand them, the Chinese government has created a commercial and residential real estate bubble in an effort to keep peasants employed and not rioting in the streets. In the case of the US subprime mortgage bubble, critical thinkers like Steve Eisman and Michael Burry figured out it was a bubble three years before it burst. Jim Chanos and Andy Xei have been warning about this Chinese bubble for over a year. They have been scorned by the same Wall Street shills who denied the US housing bubble. As Eisman and Burry proved (reaping billions), just because you are early doesn’t mean you are wrong.

In a piece of news that can not be taken well by students of Dr. Copper, the FT reveals for the first time that China's estimated copper inventories, based on numbers from the China Non-Ferrous Metals Industry Association, were 1.9 million tonnes at the end of 2010 which is almost double the lower end of the consensus estimate of 1.0-1.5 MM tonnes (and, as the FT points out, "more than the US consumes in a year). So while copper is doing its high beta thing on the n^th short squeeze day in stocks, the smart money is starting to bail for very obvious reasons. And if the reasons are not obvious, this means that "The estimates, which were announced at a recent meeting of the International Copper Study Group but have not been made public, imply that real Chinese copper demand may have been lower than thought in recent years." In other words, and to all who are still confused by why Zero Hedge jokes at each and every iteration of economic growth driven by "inventory stockpiling", this is nothing other than trying to do at the national level, what Goldman and JPM do at the LME level each and every day: hoard and sell, only in China's case it is more hoard and forget. Alas, when China itself is the only real marginal buyer (not to mention that millions of domestic businesses operate using Letters of Credit backed by copper), things get very, very ugly, and explains why China has been so secretive about this number.

Philly Fed dissenter and rebel Charles Plosser, said something stunning during a Q&A session at the Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center at Wharton. When asked what he thought of Operation Twist, his response: "it is fiscal, not monetary policy, and does not have much credibility ....Treasury debt issuance could undo much of the effect of the Fed's attempt to lower borrowing costs, known as 'Operation Twist', Plosser said. "It doesn't have a whole lot of credibility attached to it." While we have no doubt that Twist has no credibility and both the Fed and the market will figure this weakest link out within a month, forcing the Fed to proceed, over the 3 dissenters pseudo-dead bodies, with much more LSAP, it is somewhat shocking to hear confirmation that the Fed itself now sees its duties as those of the legislative, or the body tasked with writing America's laws and funding required amounts of money via debt issuance. Granted, it is well known that America's congress is now in a state of perpetual impasse with no further stimulus likely to come as long as the GOP controls the Congress and Obama is president. But at least the American people (deserving as they are of their representatives and president) pick those in congress. The last time we checked, the "popular election" of the Fed chairman is not in the purvey of the US constitution, and the only capacity given to public representatives is to veto his nomination. Everything else is decided in a banker-filled conclave. Which then begs the question: has the Fed admitted the archaic concept of the US republic is now over and done with?

That there are theories (and facts) blasting manipulation by various central banks to supress the price of gold over the years is not a secret to anyone (which incidentally is good for anyone who wishes to purchase gold at cheaper price, but that is the topic for another day). Yet one "conspiracy" we had not heard of until now is that America is actively doing what it can to send gold higher. That is no longer the case. A few days ago, none other than the capo di tutti Mexican cappi, Iran president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, proclaimed that "Iran's enemies were deliberately causing the price of gold and foreign exchange to rise in a bid to undermine the Islamic Republic's economy. "The enemies and ill-wishers want to make a fuss and present wrong information to provoke and deviate the market." The plot thickens. From Reuters: "In order to disturb the market they buy a lot of gold coins with their huge amount of money ... they do the same in the foreign exchange market. But we have got enough reserves to meet all the country's needs." And there you have it: America is willing to risk the reserve status of its currency and send everyone chasing after gold simply so it can destabilize the Iranian economy... And now we've heard it all.

It appears Operation Twist was not enough for all...

• SOME FED OFFICIALS SOUGHT TO RETAIN OPTION OF QE3, MINUTES SAY
• SOME FED OFFICIALS SAW QE3 AS 'MORE POTENT TOOL' TO SPUR GROWTH.
• TWO FOMC MEMBERS FAVORED `STRONGER POLICY ACTION' LAST MONTH

Remember Golidlocks:

• MANY FOMC MEMBERS SAID INFLATION RISKS `WERE ROUGHLY BALANCED'
• FOMC MEMBERS SAW `RELATIVELY LITTLE RISK OF DEFLATION'

• 4:05: “Direct help for bank recapitalization from EFSF is not at all doable” – German Economy Minister (Translation: “Frogs, I thought we told you already, your plan doesn’t fly”)

• 6:00: “It is important to us that all banks are equipped for all eventualities and must go to market first for capital” – German Finance Minister (Translation: “May be they’ll understand if I say it – nobody seems to take Roesler serious”)

• 6:19: “There is no doubt on the soundness of French banks” – French government (Translation: “Hopefully the dim-wits at Agence France-Presse will print my statement without embarrassing typos”)

  etc.

Today's $21 billion 10 Year reopening was not pretty. First, the tail was a notable 3 bps with the When Issued trading at 2.24%, ahead of the auction pricing a disappointing 2.27%, well above the record low 2.00% from September, although still materially lower than average yields in the past year. As troubling was the Bid To Cover which came at 2.86 or the lowest since November 2010's 2.80 (compared to the LTM 3.10). Then looking at the internals should be a cause of concern for anyone who believes that China will not retaliate for the currency bill passed yesterday by Congress, after Indirects took down just 35.0% of the full $21 billion, the lowest since February 2010, at a 81% hit rate. Directs also showed very little interest in the bond taking down only 6.4% compared to an LTM average of 10.7% (and the previous 11%). Who was the savior? The recently expanded Primary Dealers of course, which took down 58.5, the most since May 2009. Overall, an ugly auction although whether the reason for the weak demand is due to inflation expectations returning, or a capital reallocation from bonds into other assets, is for now unknown.

Maybe the moment we should be trying to avoid is the one that allows weak institutions to exist. The weak institutions do not provide loans because they are too afraid of losses since they mainly survive by the good grace (and money) from governments at central banks. That is bad enough, but they crowd out new money. Who is going to go after markets where even a sleepy BAC could briefly wake up and crush you before you ever got started. I have heard of some interesting companies out there trying to provide loans to those who need them, but they can’t get any traction. Too Big To Fail aren’t too sleepy to allow potential competitors to grow. Stocks can rally. Lehman Moment can be said 500 times today. Every politician can worry about the impact of triggering CDS. Every banker can claim the world would end if they are made to pay for their bad decisions. In the end, Iceland and Ireland both improved only AFTER they let banks fail. The US, for all the talk about Lehman, is only doing worse than that since it decided banks couldn’t be allowed to fail.

I know that America’s politicians and crackerjack team of central bankers don’t see any signs of ‘non-transitory’ inflation, but anyone who has been to the doctor or written a check for an insurance policy knows otherwise. Hey, they’re on government health plans anyways, how could they know? The increase is usually in the ballpark of 10% to 20%. It’s crazy to think about the thousands of dollars each year that go out the door on a plan that I never use, all so that I don’t get stuck with a $200,000 emergency room bill in case of some highly improbable event. It makes no rational economic sense. In every other country that I travel to, I don’t have any insurance. If I go to the doctor, I pay cash. If I go to the emergency room (and it’s happened quite a few times), I pay cash. This is one of the great things about travel and living overseas– healthcare is usually quite reasonable, often downright cheap.

While we understand the motive of Greeks to cripple the financial nerve center of the country by effectively immobilizing the finance ministry and subjecting the country to a 9 day shutdown, we are yet to witness the ingenuity of the people, when angry, to completely lock down the country's financial apparatus, especially when it comes to the revenue side of the ledger. Behold the latest reason why the next time the Troika does its paper napkin "assessment" of the Greek deficit to GDP it will be double digits, and have a 2 handle.

While it won't say much new to those "stupid enough" to exist in the intersection of the "Retired" and "Alive" Venn circles under the Bernanke central planning regime, we suggest any pensioners who hope to see their life savings generate some...any... return (on capital, or of capital) in their lifetime, to simply skip this article and read some of our cheerier fare. So here is the punchline for pension fund managers which now predict an utterly insane 11% equity return which is the only thing that would make their Pension Plans whole: "In the early nineties, plan sponsors, if biased in their forecast, were generally biased toward conservatism. From 1997 through 2007, expectations, although a bit rosy at times, were largely within the realm of reasonableness. In our view, a long-run equity risk premium of 11% is pure jibber-jabber. It is wishful thinking. I dare not predict the level of the S&P 500 ten years out, but an ERP this high suggests the S&P would have to reach unprecedented levels. If this is what plan sponsors are counting on, I, like Clubber Lang, predict Pain." And "Hope is neither a training plan nor an investment strategy." Uh, wrong. Have you seen the EURUSD these days?

Well it wasn't quite the blow out we had expected but the BTC in today's "reverse" POMO, in which the Fed sold $8.870 Billion in 2013 bonds was still a whopping 7.85x following the receipt of $69.6 billion in bids. That said, this number was a dramatic plunge from the over $240 billion that PDs wanted to buy in the first Operation Twist bond sale and one certainly would be delighted to find just what it is that stopped dealers from going hog wild in bidding on this auction, especially with stocks so much higher, and hence the need for excess liquidity that much less. Anyway, the next sales operation will be on October 17 in the 04/15/12 - 07/15/14 TIPS sector. At that operation, the Fed expects to sell between $1 and $1.5 billion of TIPS. Today's sales operation was the first in the 1.5- to 2-year sector. There will not be another operation in this sector until November as the Fed will focus on the far shorter-end of the curve. Cumulatively, the Fed has purchased $12.681 billion of securities, consisting of $11.312 billion of nominal issues and $1.369 billion of TIPS. The largest purchase was $4.590 billion in the 11/15/19 - 08/15/21 sector on October 4. The Fed also sold $17.740 billion of securities.

Wonder why China just bailed out its banks, preemptively, on Monday? Here's why. In a report issued by Credit Suisse's Sanjay Jain, the China strategist, who joins such now infamous skeptics as Bank of Countrywide Lynch's David Cui, has revised his base case Non Performing Loan ratio forecast from 4.5%-5.0% to 8.0%-12.0%: a unprecedented doubling in cumulative losses. Why unprecedented? Because as he explains, this could "would work out to 65–100% of banks’ equity." Crickets? Yes, Credit Suisse just singlehandedly said the equity value of the entire Chinese banking system is between 66% and 100% overvalued (with a downside case of $0.00). So for those putting two and two together, on one hand we have the four horsemen of the Chinese apocalypse, already presented visually before by Bank of America, consisting of i) a surge in underground lending, ii) a property downturn, iii) bad bank debt and iv) and "hot money" outflows, and on the other we have the vicious loop of what this means in terms of a central planning reaction. Simply said look for China to scramble to undo all the signals that it had been trying to spark while it was fighting with the Fed-inspired inflation bubble. Only problem is that like in the US and Europe, finding the Goldilocks point where all 4 are in equilibrium will be next to impossible, especially if investors in the country's banks realize the equity they hold is worthless and scramble to get the hell out of Dalian. Then the fears over a parliamentary vote in Slovakia will seem like a pleasant walk in the park.

Last Thursday we observed the first "reverse" POMO event, in which the Fed sold $8.9 billion in sub 1 year bonds... on $242 billion of submitted bids, or a grotesque 27.4 Bid To Cover (aka Submitted to Accepted) ratio, for bonds that yield several basis point of interest, leading us to speculate that the only reason for this epic surge in buying interest is due to a levered ability to capture a taxpayer funded bid-ask spread courtesy of Primary Dealer BWIC-like collusion. A few minutes ago Ben Bernanke has commenced the second such bond sale as part of Operation Twist, this time selling bonds maturing between 03/31/2013 - 10/15/2013. So if indeed Operation Twist is nothing than a POMO-facilitated conduit to fund the Primary Dealers bond trading desks with precious, precious year end bonuses, what should we expect? Well, the most recent regular Treasury auction of 2 Year notes saw a Dealer Bid To Cover of 5.4 ($95.7 billion Bids tendered on $17.8 billion allotted). Assuming the same incremental efficiency pick up as seen last Thursday of 4.3x difference between the S/A ratio and the regular BTC, we would hope to see nothing short of 23.2 Submitted to Accepted ratio in today's POMO when it closes 30 minutes from now. It would also validate our theory from over a year ago, that no matter how it is structured, QE, Twist, or what have you, is merely a collusive way for Primary Dealers to extract a pound of flesh from US taxpayers via the Fed guaranteed bid-ask spread... With Bernanke's blessings of course.