Archive - Nov 27, 2011 - Story

Back in August when Bloomberg first scoured the depraved depths of the almost-30,000 pages of FOIA-released Fed documentation surrounding the biggest ever bailout in history, the sheer volume of the loans, ultra-low cost of funds, and lying-through-their-teeth nature of the bank CEOs was enough for some vindication of tin-foil-hat-wearing fringe blogs. In this month's Bloomberg Markets magazine, much of this is rehashed but the truly incredible part - though not entirely shocking to us - is the magnitude of the profits that the banks amassed directly as a result of these 'secret' bailouts. Almost a quarter of their entire income was generated during this period from bailout-related sub-market funds. Over $13bn profit was 'appropriated' during the crisis with Citi and BofA among the largest profiteers.

As the hopes of an IMF bazooka fades, Market News is reporting that the ever-ready-to-print-a-story European newspaper Die Welt says Germany and the other 5 AAA-rated nations of Europe are discussing jointly issuing 'Elite' bonds. We assume the borrowings could be used to fund the less-well-rated nations and avoid a true Euro-bond joint-and-several issuance which Merkel and other have been so opposed to. For now, it is clear that the 'Have's and the 'Have-Not's are becoming increasingly divided and this - much like our earlier discussion of the recap section of the EFSF draft - seems to be further from a fiscally united Europe and any inevitable endgame. We wonder what will happen when Austria gets downgraded? It certainly seems that the much-ridiculed ratings agencies are now playing an even more important role?

It is increasingly clear that Europe is bifurcating in many ways - High-grade and everyone else - and it appears the preparation is beginning. Is Germany becoming the mercantilist vendor-financier to its hugely imbalanced European trade partners?

UPDATE: Some comments from China not helping sentiment

*MOFCOM'S CHEN: EU RESCUE FUNDING STILL FACES SHORTFALL :MOCZ CH

*MOFCOM'S CHEN: CHINA OBSERVING QUIETLY EURO SITUATION  :MOCZ CH

*MOFCOM'S CHEN: WORLD ECONOMY FACES DOWNWARD PRESSURE ON EU DEBT

Well they bought the rumor and now comes the sell-the-news/rumor/denial part of the evening as Dow Jones cites an official that 'No Discussion Within G-7 Of Reported Large Package For Italy".

The week ahead brings key cyclical data in the form of the global PMIs and the all-important non-farm payrolls report for the US. For China's official PMI we are looking for a flat reading, while consensus is looking for slight moderation below the 50 threshold. Our forecasts for both the ISM and non-farm payrolls are below consensus, though – given the volatility of both numbers – not significantly so. The week brings central bank meetings in Hungary, Israel, the Philippines, and Thailand. In terms of FX, with European bank funding stress continuing to become more acute – EUR/$ 3-month cross-currency basis has now moved out to 146 bps (Figure 3) – heavy bond issuance by the likes of Belgium, Italy, Spain, and France this week, and Euro zone growth weakening sharply, we think CE-3 FX will remain under pressure. We maintain our tactical recommendation to be long RUB/HUF with a target of 8.00. Our Sunday trade idea for the upcoming week is to be long EUR/CZK. Although CZK has less exposure to rollover risk than its CE-3 neighbors (see here), it has a large export exposure to Western Europe and has sold off relatively less than its peers.

Buy the rumor, sell the news? Investors bought the rumor, then sold the lack of news, I think you are supposed to sell the news again, as there is nothing in this document that provides evidence that they get it, or that any scale can ever be achieved, and if anything, it makes you wonder if they will even get to the 440 billion of support the market thought they had back in July.

Because if stocks like the prospect of imminent printing, or at least the latest daily rumor thereof, until Germany once again opens its mouth and refutes everything, gold should love it. Sure enough, the yellow metal has opened $20 higher and is back over $1700 again.

In case anyone was wondering why the EURUSD is back to levels from several hours ago and well off the ramp highs (with ES continuing to pretend nothing matters), it is due to Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer who speak the following bullet points at a forum in Tokyo:

• Crisis Has Worsened Significantly
• Market stress has intensified and Europe is in a “true financial crisis,”

In other words precisely what Zero Hedge readers have known all along, the same as this article from the FT which shows what we presented to readers last week. As for those who like listening to the French grovel here is you desert:

• Markets and some governments think the ECB should buy more govt debt

Because €1 trillion is never enough...

Goldman Sachs has for the time being been very quiet in joining all of its colleagues from around the street in screaming for an immediate intervention by the ECB or else. The reasons are glaringly obvious: with a Goldman alum in charge of the ECB, and a 23 year Goldman veteran acting as ambassador to Germany, whatever Goldman wants, Goldman will get, without the need for convincing pitchbooks and dramatic expostulations that the world is ending unless... Intuitively it makes sense for Goldman to wait: after all why not take advantage of the situation a la Bear and Lehman, and wait for 3-4 major European banks to collapse, which will be the green light for Goldman to do what it does best: step in and fill the financial and power vacuum. Needless to say, when UniCredit, Commerzbank or Raiffeisen are down, the ECB will have no choice but to intervene with or without the Fed's help. Which is why anyone looking for clues as to what will happen in Europe has to focus on Goldman alone as we already know too well how everyone else is axed. Luckily GS' Francesco Garzarelli and Huw Pill have just released a much overdue note presenting just how the firm feel ont he topic of Europe's continuation as a going concern, or, alternatively, collapse. While we present the full note below in its entirety which naturally seeks to avoid broad panic, here are some notable extracts from a nuanced read: "considering how much damage to confidence has now been inflicted, one must also entertain the possibility that the intensification of market tensions and/or deterioration of economic activity reinforce each other feeding domestic political and social pressures precluding a final agreement among EMU member states from being reached. In this case, rather than being the ‘forcing mechanism’ that drives agreement, the economic and financial environment could feedback into the political process in a negative way, leading to a vicious downward spiral and, ultimately, to the failure of the Euro project." Simply said "an alternative scenario of a ‘break-up’ of the Euro area certainly cannot be ruled out", which leads to Goldman's conclusion: "For the same set of reasons, as the ‘end game’ approaches the rally in AAA-rated Euro area sovereign bonds (Germany’s especially) no longer seems sustainable and could reverse in coming weeks. In our base case of more intrusive control on future deficit financing, the core countries will, in exchange, have to shoulder a greater part of the legacy credit risk of their peers if they want to keep EMU alive. In a ‘break-up’ scenario, the creditor ‘core’ countries will be confronted with a wave of insolvencies, which would also worsen their fiscal position. And in the middle ground between these two outcomes, where we currently stand, the ECB will be intermediating growing intra-Eurosystem imbalances. Through this monetary channel at the heart of EMU, the ‘shadow’ credit risk of the core countries is already rising, and at an increasingly rapid pace." As expected, it appears that Goldman sure will like occupying those European bank HQs for about $1 in equity.

As if we needed another reason to send the ES higher by a few more percent in the premarket session on 10 or so ES contracts, the news that ICAP is already preparing for the end of the Euro should do it:

• ICAP Testing Trades In Greek Drachma Against Dollar, Euro
• ICAP has reloaded old drachma templates for spot foreign exchange and derivatives (NDFs)
  
• ICAP Drachma Tests Are Only Precautionary
• Drachma Currency Pairs Not Yet Launched For Trading, May Never Be Used - Execs
• ICAP Testing Trades In Greek Drachma Against Dollar, Euro - Executives

And so the market is once again shooting first, and doing the math later. While the EURUSD has since dropped substantially from its afternoon premarket highs and was trading just over 1.33 last check, the ES is now about 15 points higher per the bid/ask stack or at 1173, well over 1% more than Friday's close, even though CONTEXT fair value demonstrates a roughly 15 point arbitrage. Looks like the futures are all alone in this latest attempt to ramp everyone on the wrong side and sell to the greater fool. Fade the massive arbitrage to risk fair value.

A few months ago we reported that unlike in any other Banana Republic, where the natural bias is to fudge one's numbers higher to make the economy look better and get the stock market to rise, in Greece even the traditional banana metrics are upside down. To wit: "Greek newspaper Eleftherotypia reports that according to a just terminated member of the Greek Statistical Authority, Greece artificially misrepresented its 2009 15.4% deficit number to Eurostat in order to obtain aid from the EU and IMF." Sure enough, two months later even this absolutely bizarre story has been confirmed. The FT reports that "The head of Elstat, Greece’s new independent statistics agency, faces an official criminal investigation for allegedly inflating the scale of the country’s fiscal crisis and acting against the Greek national interest." Not surprisingly, the man who allegedly cooked the books is none other than a 20 year former IMF employee: precisely the kind of guy who knows just what buttons to push to get the US-funded organization to dole out capital. "Andreas Georgiou, who worked at the International Monetary Fund for 20 years, was appointed in 2010 by agreement with the fund and the European Commission to clean up Greek statistics after years of official fudging by the finance ministry." And just because someone needs to be made a scapegoat, if convicted Georgiou may face the same sentence as Madoff: "Mr Georgiou is due to appear before Greece’s prosecutor for financial crime on December 12 to answer the charges. If convicted of “betraying the country’s interests”, he could face life imprisonment." Well, that's fine: the man should rot in hell for not learning that "minus" is not really "plus" - surely no greater ex-capital punishment crime exists. Yet we wonder - will the same life sentence follow all those others who are found to have betrayed their countries interest and inflated numbers higher thus not getting US taxpayer-funded bailouts? Because when it comes to Europe, it is now every many for himself (as the soon to be faded rumor du jour of a €600 billion IMF-funded bailout of Italy confirms)... all the way to Joe Sixpack's wallet.

By now the broader population has been inundated with reports of what a stunning retail experience Black Friday was. And for those who haven't just head over to CNBC: "Sales rose an estimated 6.6 percent to a record $11.4 billion on Black Friday, typically the busiest shopping day of the year for Americans, while the traffic at stores rose 5.1 percent, according to ShopperTrak. The day's sales growth was the strongest percentage gain since 2007, when sales rose 8.3 percent on the day after Thanksgiving, said Ed Marcheselli, chief marketing officer at ShopperTrak, which monitors retail traffic." This is happening despite the savings rate recently dropping to pre-Depressionary level, and despite revolving consumer credit (as in not cars and colleges), continuing to contract. That there is more than enough fine print will be largely irrelevant for the mainstream media which will naturally trumpet this as the next best thing to the S&P actually rising for once: "More than 120 stores at the Mall of America opened at midnight. The crowd at that point was about 15,000 people. Mall operators estimated that it was the largest crowd ever at the mall, which is big enough to hold seven Yankee Stadiums. While eager shoppers emerged from stores around the country lugging big-screen TVs and bags full of video games and toys, it was far from certain that people will pull out their wallets for much more than the best deals this year. Shoppers with limited budgets started using layaway at chains such as Walmart as early as October. Retail shares fell more than the overall market on Friday. "Americans are still worried about jobs, still worried about the economy," said Mike Thielmann, group executive vice president at J.C. Penney, who noted that shoppers were buying gifts and for themselves, and said jewelry was selling well." Yet what really caught our attention was the Retail Group comparison of this "record" black Friday Weekend. From Bloomberg: 'RETAIL GROUP SAYS SECOND-BEST BLACK FRIDAY WEEKEND WAS IN 2008." As a reminder, Thanksgiving 2008 happened just after a nearly 400 point plunge in the S&P in two months as can be seen in the chart below. Which begs the question: with the world on the verge every single day once again, is it a coincidence that people spent more than they did only compared to 2008 when the world was once again ending. In other words, did Americans really spend "like there is no tomorrow" (more so than ever that is)... and what happens when the bill (because there is no doubt the purchasing was entirely on credit) is in the mailbox?

Our guess is they were hoping for a little more than a 30pip lift out of the gate...Have no fear though...

*SCHAEUBLE SAYS HE'S `CONFIDENT' 'EURO CAN BE SAVED

*SCHAEUBLE SAYS EURO WILL BE `THE STABLE WORLD CURRENCY'

"There are four indicators today which show as clearly as anything can be shown the state of our global debt-based monetary and financial system. Any one of them alone should be all the evidence one needs that the system is unsustainable. Put them together and much more than the canary is singing."

Everything that 'deluded' orthodox economists have done so far has been designed to aid the creditors (who remain the problem) while Steve Keen, the most familiar face of the non-orthodox economists, sees the only solution to this crisis as aiding the debtors. His interview with BBC’s HardTalk this week covers a great deal of ground from modern debt jubilees (and how they should be structured), the Tea-Party and Occupy movements (and his growing fear of historically repeating the endgames of previous economic and social disenfranchisements), and the parasitic nature of our existing financial sector.

He is unequivocal on the outcome of the status quo, as he has been for many years, citing politicians as reactors not leaders with the view that the youth movements we are seeing will force change of leadership to enable non-orthodox solutions to our simple problem – too much private debt. “Write off the private debts, nationalize the banking system, and start all over again” is his starting point but his ideas on implementation warrant some attention as he attempts to promote creative instability and reduce the destructive instabilities of capitalism – recognizing that our world is not in equilibrium as every Keynesian economist would believe but inherently cyclical and unstable.