Archive - Apr 16, 2011 - Story

Tipping points are funny: for years, decades, even centuries, the conditions for an event to occur may be ripe yet nothing happens. Then, in an instant, a shift occurs, whether its is due a change in conventional wisdom, due to an exogenous event or due to something completely inexplicable. That event, colloquially called a black swan in recent years, changes the prevalent perception of reality in a moment. This past week, we were seeing the effect of a tipping point in process, with gold prices rising to new all time highs day after day, and the price of silver literally moving in a parabolic fashion. What was missing was the cause. We now know what it is: per Bloomberg: "The University of Texas Investment Management Co., the second-largest U.S. academic endowment, took delivery of almost $1 billion in gold bullion and is storing the bars in a New York vault, according to the fund’s board." And so, the game theory of a nearly 100 year old system of monetary exchange has seen its first defector, but most certainly not last. With an entity as large as the University of Texas calling the bluff of the Comex, the Chairman, and fiat in general in roughly that order, virtually every other asset manager is now sure to follow, considering there is not nearly enough physical gold to satisfy all paper gold in existence by a factor of about 100x. The proverbial Nash equilibrium has just been broken.

The Fed, in bailing out the world (a meme that has only now received popular acceptance following the release of formerly classified Fed documents, despite our claims precisely to that end from back in October 2009) has become the world's largest hedge fund and with a DV01 of over $1.5 billion by now, has taken on virtually unlimited interest rate risk (a topic discussed back in April 2010). As such controlling inflation expectations, or more specifically, Long-Term rates (the part on the curve that Quantitative Easing is powerless to control) is the most critical aspect of the viability of the monetary system. Stunningly, today we learn that to keep long rates low, the Fed may have resorted to nothing short of the same suicidal trade that destroyed AIG FP and brought the entire system to its knees. Namely, Ben Bernanke is now quite possibly the second coming of Joe Cassano, since in order to keep rates low, Bernanke is forced to a last resort action of selling billions upon billions of Treasury puts to "pin" rates low contrary to natural supply-demand mechanics. If so, the Fed is now basically AIG Financial Products, although instead of being synthetically long mortgages (and thus betting on a rate decline) and selling hundreds of billions in CDS to amplify its bet, Bernanke has done the same thing, only this time with Treasurys. Of course, Ben has the printing press on his side apologists will claim. Alas, that will have no impact whatsoever, if indeed the Fed has been reduced to finding ever fewer counterparties to a synthetic bet to keep long-term rates low, as very soon, with inflation ticking up, all hell may break loose in an identical replay of what happened to AIG once the Fed's put is called against it. Only this time there will be nobody to bail out the ultimate backstopper, resulting in the long overdue end of the current failed monetary system experiment.

One of our favorite economic commentators - Jim Grant of Grant's Interest Rate Observer - was on Consuelo Mack continuing his ongoing crusade against Ben Bernanke's lunacy, and the monetary central planning of the Federal Reserve, particularly focusing on the topic of pernicious inflation which for good reason has received much attention of the past year. Grant, who unlike Steve Liesman correctly observes that inflation is now rampant (those who need a reminder can do so at the only objective source for actual inflation tracking, MIT's Billion Price Index), is eating away at the standard of living of the bulk of the population, even as this same population can not benefit from anything beyond minimal rates on their saving deposits. "The Fed is unconscionably complacent about the consequences of what it is doing, and let us not blink at what it is doing: it has imposed the lowest money market interest rates anyone remembers, it has expanded its balance sheet into something grotesque all in the space of a couple of years. These are monetary events that have never before been seen, and indeed, never before imagined...The Fed's policies are certainly great for one class of society: the speculative classes.... We have socialized risk, we have privatized gains, much to the relief of Greenwich, CT where our zillionaires live, and the unconscionable and indefensible fallout of this is that savers get zero on their savings balances, and the speculative classes get to borrow in wholesale markets at zero and get to make their zillions all over again... The Chairman is whistling by the graveyard in this manner of 2% inflation rate being harmless." On Grant's expectations for inflation rates: "there will be a lot of suddenly - 4 or 5% let us say...So much of our speculative apparatus is powered on these zero percent interest rates... Think how hard it is to hold back a cash reserve in this economy... Your stupid neighbor who is watching this program is making a lot fo money in the stock market: how hard is it not to participate? You can't do it... But 4% inflation would mean that the party is over... Everything would fall out of bed... Gold and silver would right themselves, because they are money that would come into their own at the end of the cycle of disillusionment but for a time there would be terrific chaos in investment markets."

Following this week's ebullient UMichigan consumer confidence readings (which continue to diverge from reality as per Gallup which oddly enough does not poll Wall Street CEOs who are always eager to give their economic assessment from the infinity pool while vacationing in Fiji) one would think that the price of gas had fallen of a cliff. Alas no. In fact quite the opposite. And the propaganda logic of the domestic ministry of disinformation, consumers in Hawaii must be by far the most confident as it is the state where gas prices are now at virtually all time highs, well ahead of the peak summer driving season. Businessweek reports: "Hawaii's average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline hit a nation-leading $4.46 on Thursday, 28 cents higher than second-place California. The national average reached $3.81, according to AAA data. Wyoming had the cheapest gas in the country at $3.53. As many states brace for gas to climb to $4, Hawaii was the first to reach that mark a month ago. The Aloha state's average on Thursday was 12 cents higher than a week ago, according to the automobile association." The weekly increase is double what the national spike for regular gas was, which moved from $3.750 to $3.818 in the span of a week (compared to $2.858 a year ago). And as the LA Times reports, the ongoing surge in gas prices has led many to paradoxical outcome of literally run out of while driving from station to station looking for the cheapest refuelling option.