Archive - Nov 2, 2011 - Story

The October ADP Private Payrolls report, which is the butt of all jokes when it comes to accurate NFP predictive ability, has come and gone, printing at 110K on expectations of 100K, and down from a revised 116K in September. For those who actually care about the quality of jobs, services added 114K of the total 110K jobs, while good-producing jobs subtracted 4K, and manufacturing jobs as a subset declined by 8K. And then they complain that China is making everything in the world...

• Market talk that China may contribute towards the EFSF. Meanwhile, Japanese PM Noda said Japan will consider continued buying of EFSF bonds
• According to an EFSF spokesman, the EFSF is putting off the sale of its 10-year securities
• Weakness in the USD-Index boosted EUR/USD, GBP/USD and commodity-linked currencies
• According to the German foreign minister, the Greek rescue plan cannot be renegotiated
• Markets look ahead to the FOMC rate decision followed by Fed’s Bernanke press-conference

Paul Krugman’s latest post is extremely bearish and he warns that “things are falling apart in Europe; the center is not holding” Krugman warns that this could lead to a “gigantic bank run” and “emergency bank closing”. Not only does Krugman warn of a massive bank run and emergency bank holidays but he warns of the euro breaking up and Italy returning to the Italian lira and even warns of similar problems confronting France. “The question I’m trying to answer right now is how the final act will be played. At this point I’d guess soaring rates on Italian debt leading to a gigantic bank run, both because of solvency fears about Italian banks given a default and because of fear that Italy will end up leaving the euro. This then leads to emergency bank closing, and once that happens, a decision to drop the euro and install the new lira.” “Next stop, France.” Uber Keynesian Krugman, has been one of the most vocal gold bears in recent years and his opinion on gold has been biased and uninformed. It will be interesting to see if his attitude towards gold has changed given the appalling vista he is now warning of. An important question we have posed for some time – is what price gold in drachma, lira, pesetas, escudos and punts? What should the ordinary people in European countries do to protect themselves from currency debasement and devaluations? Unfortunately, we may find out the answer to these questions in the coming months.

While as usual only headlines will be market moving, today we get the always completely irrelevant and very much worthless October ADP report, followed by the FOMC statement and press conference this afternoon.

Uhm, what was that? The Bund-OAT spread just soared by 7 bps to an all time record 129 and widening, which we expect is due to the EFSF bond pull. Expect a 130 handle any second...So Europe now has France to add to the Greek and Italian communicating vessels? Good work.

Once again the desperation level is high as seemingly the core driver of overnight strength was a rumor that China would inject €700 billion in the EFSF, coupled with the even more desperate expectation that in a few short hours Ben will launch the LSAP version of QE: something that is virtually impossibly unless stocks drop to triple digits, and a fact that the market with its constant attempts at Fed frontrunning makes practically impossible. Yet this was good enough to tighten the all critical Italy-Bund spread to 422bps overnight (recall it hit the catastrophic 455 bps yesterday). However some news since then have put a major damper on sentiment, notably another recessionary data point from Europe, where the October Manufacturing PMI printed at 47.1 on expectations of 47.3, and German unemployment posting a rare disappointing miss printing +10K on consensus of -10k. Yet the nail in the coffin for today's European action was that the EFSF, which as we noted already reduced its €5 billion Irish bailout package to €3 billion on subpar market demand, pulled the entire issue citing the trusty old fallback "market conditions" confirming that not only is the latest China bailout rumor a complete fabrication yet again (as explained both here and here). What is more troubling is that the EFSF has set off on its path to raise €1 trillion+ with an epic failure and an inability to raise even €3 billion. That realization has finally spread to the market and not only is the Italy-Bund spread back to morning wides at 438, but, just as disturbing, the French-Bund spread is back to all time wides of 123 bps! That the European interbank liquidity market just collapsed again with ECB deposit facility usage hitting a three week high of €229 billion, coupled with Euribor-OIS spread jumping +6 bps in a week to 0.86% and just off the 3 year highs of 0.89%, is certainly not helping things. Look for more mayhem out of Europe as the G-20 meeting slowly unwinds over the next day, and the complete lack of organization in Europe is exposed for all to see all over again.

• The FOMC is expected to keep the Fed funds rate unchanged in the range of 0%-0.25%
• Policymakers may consider large-scale purchases of MBS to help the housing sector
• The FOMC may cut its growth and inflation projections for 2011 and 2012

This week's MoF intervention in the FX markets, while not quite unprecedented (trailblazer Hildebrand aside), was certainly sizable, surprising, and potentially sustained - no matter how many times we were told by Mr. Azumi that he was 'watching' closely. Our question, and one discussed in a Bloomberg story this evening, is it possible to change the course of USDJPY via intervention - and perhaps more presciently (given growing global interest in capitalist/Keynesian spending escalation), was the expected $512bn loss that the country faces on these FX positions alone worth it? Tohru Sasaki, of JPMorgan's Global FX Strategy group, address his concerns at both the unilateralism and the worrying perspective that the Japanese might try to emulate the SNB - which he sees as almost impossible to achieve - especially since the ceiling on CHF leaves JPY and USD as the only anti-cyclical currencies.

“It’s difficult to change the trend of the currency market.

Even if the action can stem the currency’s gains temporarily, the yen will eventually appreciate.”