Archive - Mar 2011 - Story

• Jury to hear gripping opening of Rajaratnam trial (Reuters)
• S.E.C. Chairwoman Under Fire Over Ethics Issues (NYT)
• Remember this rumor? OPEC sees no need to meet, supply ample: delegate (Reuters)
• Berkshire Takes $2.25 Billion in Dividends From Burlington (Bloomberg)... triple the
  railroad’s payout rate prior to the February 2010 acquisition. Better to milk company than to actually use cash to hire people.
• China Growth Plans to Slow Commodities (FT)
• Tchenguiz brothers arrested in Kaupthing raids (Telegraph, Bloomberg)
• As Oil Muddies Outlook, Fed Policy Less Certain (Reuters)
• Deja vu idiocy: Europe Blinks on Bank Test: Regulators Seen Easing 'Stress' Gauge, Undercutting Effort to Restore Confidence (WSJ)
• S&P Warns on Asian Inflation (WSJ)
• Americans Oppose Government Shutdown, Fault Cuts in Poll (Bloomberg)... You don't say

Update: Rebel witnesses say storage tanks in east Libya terminal of Es Sider hit an exchange of fire between Gaddafi forces and rebels . Reuters reports that three plumes of black smoke are rising from the area around As Sider oil terminal. This is in addition to Al Jazeera video coverage of comparable activity at Ras Lanuf. Whether this indicates that Operation Apres Moi Le Deluge by Gaddafi has commenced, is unclear for now.

Two top ECB officials indicated yesterday that interest rate increases might come sooner than ECB Trichet alluded to last week. Given Europe’s slow economic recovery, opinions are mixed on the matter. Recession-predicting economist Nouriel Roubini told reporters yesterday that if oil reaches $140/barrel, a level seen in the summer of 2008, the rate action will cause many advanced economies to slip into double-dip recession. Recent turmoil in the Middle East has sent oil prices nearing $120/barrel. Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese yields rose again yesterday as Friday’s EU summit on a new debt crisis solution draws closer. Portugal sold €1.0B in 2Y bonds at 5.993% v 4.086% prior with b/c 1.6x v 1.9x prior. The SOVXWE widened out again to 183bp from 177bp a week ago with Spain underperforming as it is most vulnerable to rate hikes. We feel that the longer the periphery/core support process drags out, the more rating agencies will be forced to look at interest rate burdens for periphery countries as being normal moving forward. German industrial production rose 1.8% MoM v 1.7%E. Greek unemployment for December moved up to 14.8% v 14.5%E and 13.9% prior. U.K.’s visible trade balance for January strengthened to -£7.1B v -£8.5B E, its smallest deficit since April of last year. The figures show an improvement over December’s -£9.7B even after considering weather’s impact on exports that month.

Do you see what happens Larry when your labor participation rate (wink wink BLS) doesn't plunge to near all time record and the unemployment rate reflects, gulp, reality (pro forma for Goldman Sachs currency swaps)? "Greece's unemployment rate in December jumped to 14.8 per cent, with
more than 40,000 people losing their jobs in a month, The Hellenic
Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) said Wednesday. ELSTAT, providing
the latest jobless data it has available, said that the December jobless
rate compared with 13.9 per cent in November. In December a total of 41,068 people lost their jobs, pushing the number of unemployed to almost 734,000. As
unemployment keeps rising, survey results released earlier this week by
the Greek daily Kathimerini newspaper showed that job prospects in the
coming months appeared to be gloomy, particularly in the construction
and manufacturing sectors. Greece agreed to a series of
cost-cutting measures in exchange for a 110-billion-euro (154 billion
dollar) rescue package by the EU and IMF in May to avoid bankruptsy." Not to worry, Greek CDS have just hit all time wides well north of 1,000 bps, confirm that all is fucked, which only means that the ECB is about to bail out the totally and utterly bankrupt country once again, as more European taxpayer money is thrown down the sovereign funding black hole. In other news Greece is not Libya (for now).

It was only logical that hours after Jim Cramer "Whitney Tilsoned" gold, China would come out and say it needs to buy more of the precious metal. After hitting an overnight low of $1,423/oz for some unknown reason, perhaps the latest overdue shakeout of the weakest holders, gold has since retraced half the distance to its all time highs, following a report from Reuters that "China should use some of its $2.85 trillion foreign exchange reserves to buy more gold, a government adviser was quoted as saying by local media reports on Wednesday. Li Yining, a senior economist at Peking University and member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Committee, an advisory body to the national parliament, said that China should use the precious metal to hedge against risks of foreign currency devaluations. "China should increase its gold reserves appropriately, and China
must take every chance to buy, especially when gold prices fall," Li was
quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying." And so the immaculate record of all those calling for the "inevitable" correction in gold continues with a roughly 0% success rate.

Three weeks ago we first mused about the irrational endgame of it all when we asked: "When Hussein left Kuwait he set the oil wells on fire. Will Ghaddafi?" It now appears that this could well be the endgame, after Al Jazeera reports that "desperate Gaddafi might hit oil facilities in an attempt to fend off encroaching rebels, sparking a human catastrophe." And obviously in order to prevent this, the US will be "forced" to institute a no fly zone, thereby commencing a full blown invasion of the country, and eventually destabilizing the region completely.

RANsquawk European Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 09/03/11

Earlier, when we penned the post "In Anticipation Of Our Own "Department Of Truth" we disclosed some very blatant examples of media  manipulation by the Chinese propaganda bureau. We left that piece with an open ended query of when we may see comparable "information" massaging in the U.S. We didn't have to go too far to demonstrate a rather clear domestic example. A recent article by Bloomberg's Susanne Walker and Wes Goodman titled "China Adding to $1 Trillion of U.S. Debt Caps Rise in Rates" made the following bold statement: "Investors outside the U.S. have boosted their holdings of
longer-maturity Treasuries to the highest level since the credit markets
froze in 2008, helping curb rising yields amid concern inflation is
accelerating." The data massaging, in case it is not clear, has one goal only: to instill the reader with the impression that foreign buyers are stepping in to buy US debt, despite inflation concerns, and make the role of the Fed's relentless monetization of virtually all US gross debt issuance seem less relevant in response to the recent letter by Bill Gross highlighting precisely the opposite. The authors go on to say: "The shift toward long-term debt shows bond buyers outside the U.S. agree
with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s assessment that
inflation will be contained even as global food and energy prices soar.
Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment
Management Co., warned last week that yields on Treasuries are too low
with inflation accelerating and the central bank planning to complete
$600 billion in asset purchases in June." Alas in their attempt to validate their thesis Walker and Goodman make the blatant mistake of comparing Chinese holdings data from before and after the just announced TIC data holdings revision. To wit: "China, the largest investor in U.S. government debt after the Fed,
increased longer-term notes and bonds by 39 percent to $1.145 trillion
in December from a year earlier, while its stake in bills declined 78
percent to $15.4 billion, the most recent Treasury data show." Alas, in making that statement, it confirms how clueless the authors are in interpreting ever critical Treasury data. We can only hope this error was made without premediation, or else we can now conclude that the Department of Truth is now actively manipulating "data" in our own backyard, to reach pre-determined goalseeked conclusions.

Global pension assets are estimated to be – drum roll, please – $31.1 trillion. No, that is not a misprint. It is more than twice the size of last year’s GDP in the U.S. ($14.7 trillion). We know a few hedge fund managers have invested in gold, like John Paulson, David Einhorn, Jean-Marie Eveillard. There are close to twenty mutual funds devoted to gold and precious metals. Lots of gold and silver bugs have been buying. So, what about pension funds? According to estimates by Shayne McGuire in his new book, Hard Money; Taking Gold to a Higher Investment Level, the typical pension fund holds about 0.15% of its assets in gold. He estimates another 0.15% is devoted to gold mining stocks, giving us a total of 0.30% – that is, less than one third of one percent of assets committed to the gold sector. Now here’s the fun part. Let’s say fund managers as a group realize that bonds, equities, and real estate have become poor or risky investments and so decide to increase their allocation to the gold market. If they doubled their exposure to gold and gold stocks – which would still represent only 0.6% of their total assets – it would amount to $93.3 billion in new purchases. If these funds allocate just 5% of their assets to gold – which would amount to $1.5 trillion – it would overwhelm the system and rocket prices skyward.

All those who believe (erroneously) that the Department of Truth is just a euphemism, guess again. Below we share some of the recent highlights that the Chinese central propaganda bureau is attempting to keep secret from the public. One can only weep at the "efficiency" of our own propaganda masters. Luckily, they are quickly learning from the best.

After yesterday TrimTabs Charles Biderman made it all too clear who runs the stock market, today the same firm exposes the system's dirty socialist core: "In a research note, TrimTabs highlights that government social benefits —including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance—were equal to 35% of all private and public wages and salaries in the 12 months ended January, up from 10% in 1960 and 21% in 2000. “We have no quibble with the view that the U.S. economy is expanding at a moderate pace,” says Madeline Schnapp, Director of Macroeconomic Research at TrimTabs.  “But we believe Wall Street does not fully appreciate the degree to which growth depends on government support.” Schanpp's conclusion: QE3 is inevitable, leaving aside debt monetization concerns, as without it the US welfare state will collapse. DXY: meet 50, just in time for the NYSE Borse to extends its rollup with the Zimbaber stock exchange.

Tech darling FNSR is plummeting after hours, down by $14, or 35%, to $26 after the company released in line Q3 numbers, but an outlook that has left the investor base, not to mention its sellside lemming brigade, stunned. While the current sellside Q4 consensus is of 48 cents a share on revenue of $257.9 million, the company announced that "revenues for the fourth quarter to be in the range of

$235 to $250 million" and "earnings per diluted share is expected to

be in the range of approximately $0.31 to $0.35." The result: a stock that is down 33% after hours. Perhaps it is time form Miller Tabak's Alex Henderson, who has been ranked #1 11 times in the Institutional Investor "All Star" poll, to reduce his $60/Buy Price Target. Yet what is worst is that perpetual tech dynamo, China, is now growing dim: from the mea culpa: "the Company will be

impacted by...a slowdown in business in China

overall." Is this the beginning of the end for the tech bubble?

Paul Farrell is out with another rather dismal outlook on the financial system (better known in the vernacular as the feloneous Ponzi scheme), and how while the immediate causes of the crash, and its disastrous aftermath, which benefits only the upper class at the expense of everyone else, are certainly a function of the current and previous administration, one has to look further back to see the flawed foundations on which everything is built. As far back as Reagan, in fact, and his eponymous Reaganomic doctrine according to Farrell. "Was their Reaganomics ideology so rigid, so blinding, they couldn’t (and still cannot) admit they were wrong? Forcing them to lie to America? Cover up the lies? The evidence is clear. Today, a harsh lesson from history, facts and a warning. Listen closely America. It’s already happening again. The collective Reaganomics Brain has gone from crash to cover-up to comeback kid to capitalism-for-the-super-rich in three short years. Now with absolute power over America." Sure enough, Farrell sees the events of 2008/9 as only the first step in the unwind of Reaganomics. Step two is coming, and it will be the final end of not only the Great Moderation experiment started in the early 80s, but, luckily, of that organization at the heart of it all: the Federal Reserve.

RANsquawk Market Wrap Up - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 08/03/11

Reuters is now quoting witnesses as saying that 50 protesters have been hurt in Yemen, three of them seriously. Earlier on Tuesday, thousands of inmates rioted at the central prison in Sanaa, taking a dozen guards hostage and calling for President Saleh to resign, according to the Associated Press. At least one prisoner was killed and 80 people were wounded, police said. And elsewhere, gunfire erupted in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where Gbagbo forces killed 4. These are just the latest pieces of news from Reuters in a day in which nothing at all from the tape mattered, as a rumor circulates that the wildcat well drilled in the 1 billion barrel strategic petroleum reserve in Bernanke's back yard has now started producing.