Archive - Apr 26, 2011 - Story

How much gold would an individual investor need as a hedge against the total depreciation of fiat currencies? Here is a back-of-the-envelope calculation...There are about 5.3 billion ounces of gold "above ground," roughly 160,000 tons. At the current price of $1,500 an ounce, all the available gold is worth about $8 trillion. About half is in jewelry, 10% in industrial uses and 40% as central bank reserves and investment. If gold took the place of fiat currencies as "money," the available gold would have rise to about $140 trillion in value. In today's dollars, that's about 18 times its current price. So $1,500 X 18 = $27,000 an ounce...To hedge $250,000 in paper financial wealth (recall that productive real estate, windmills, factories, etc. would still retain their productive utility value after currency depreciation), you would need 10 ounces of gold, or $15,000 worth at today's prices.

Today's dose of Mutual Assured Destruction brought to you by Reuters:

• Chairman of US Treasury borrowing advisory committee tells Geithner in letter there is an "urgent need" to raise debt limit
• TBAC says any delay in Treasury on making interest, principal payments could trigger "another catastrophic financial crisis"

Apparently, we now have at most 3 weeks before America, if the TBAC is correct, launches a suicidal nuclear attack on itself. Because as you recall the world ended when the Fed released its uber top secret classified docs.

Yesterday it was the Dallas Fed confirming our assumption that the US economy in Q2 has hit stalled speed. Today, it is the Richmond Fed which plunged compared to expectations and the March print of 20, instead dropping to 10, and indicative of a major slowdown in the manufacturing sector. From the index: "In April, the seasonally adjusted composite index of manufacturing activity – our broadest measure of manufacturing – fell ten points to 10 from March’s reading of 20. Among the index’s components, shipments decreased seventeen points to 6, new orders dropped ten points to finish at 10, and the jobs index eased two points to 14....All broad indicators – including shipments, new orders and employment – continued to grow but at a rate below March’s pace. Other indicators were mixed. Fifth District contacts reported that capacity utilization continued to grow more slowly, while backlogs turned slightly negative. Vendor delivery times edged higher and raw materials inventories grew at a somewhat higher rate." Now "Below March's pace" means trending Q2 GDP is now at or below 2%. But that's fine: somehow the economy will really hockeystick in Q3. And if not, there is QE3, 4 and 5. And the kicker, as usual, Prices Paid jumped as Prices Received plunged: which is always bullish for (collapsing) margins. Elsewhere the CON board called 7 Wall Street CEOs w

Once again, it is the world's biggest bond manager which either is really tempting fate by telling the truth in an increasingly more aggressive manner day after day, or is engaging in the most acute case of reverse psychology ever seen, coming out with the most critical opinion of the Fed's actions on the verge of the Fed's historic first press conference. And this one is truly a stunner, far more real than anything even Bill Gross has said in the past: "Just as Charles Ponzi needed donuts to turn back a suspicious crowd
of investors, the Fed needs “donuts” in order to fill the bellies of
the literally millions of investors worldwide who worry about the
alarmingly large U.S. budget deficit and the impact that the U.S. debt
dilemma could have on their Treasury holdings...Their
collective buying has created what we believe to be a profit illusion
with many investors mistakenly believing they can continuously reap
profits from perpetually falling bond yields and rising bond prices,
just as they have had opportunity to do over the past 30 years, amid the
great secular bull market for Treasuries and the bond market more
generally...For many reasons, this “duration tailwind” for Treasuries can’t
last, particularly because the United States has reached the Keynesian
Endpoint, where the last balance sheet has been tapped." Must read.

Another day, another worthless Chinese company - Gulf Resources: (and no kidding - this time the price target on GFRE is a rather bold $0.00). This time the report comes from Glaucus Research which promises to create another massive shorting opportunity for those who can find the borrow in this alleged Nasdaq Fraud. From the report: "we present evidence that GFRE engaged in an inappropriate self-dealing transaction, the details of which GFRE intentionally concealed from the SEC and investors, that GFRE’s largest customer is privately owned by GFRE’s chairman, that GFRE engaged in dubious capital expenditures that may have been a smokescreen for transfers of cash to insiders, and that GFRE is exaggerating the size of the company’s operations. We also present evidence that the company’s CEO has a close relationship with a notorious puppet master of Chinese small cap scams."

Another month, another accelerating double dip. And this just in as futures are about to rip, "With an index level of 139.27, the 20-City Composite is virtually back to its April 2009 trough value (139.26); the 10-City Composite is 1.5% above its low...In February, the 10-City and 20-City Composites were both down 1.1% from their January 2011 levels. Nineteen of the 20 MSAs and both the 10-City and 20-City Composite fell in February versus January. Of these, 14 MSAs and both Composites posted negative monthly returns for more than six consecutive months. With the February 2011 report, 11 of the 20 MSAs and both Composites are down by more than 1% compared to their January levels." So much for that particular part of the recovery. And why buy houses when you can buy Netflix at 100x fwd P/E and retire un 3 days?

Silver and gold are lower today after the record nominal highs seen yesterday (gold marginally and silver significantly). Gold reached $1,518.30 per troy ounce, a nominal record, while silver climbed to $49.79 per ounce, its highest nominal level since the short term parabolic spike in 1980. A period of correction and consolidation has been expected for some time and it may ensue as gold and particularly silver are overbought in the short term. However, absolutely nothing has changed with regard the primary fundamentals driving the gold and silver markets.

The trend in house prices appears to be worsening. We expect an acceleration in the decline in the Case-Shiller measure for February. Modest POMO closing at 11am will do little to offset the $35 billion in 2 Year notes to be auctioned off at 1 pm.

• Fed Sweating the Details of First News Conference (WSJ)
• Ex-Morgan Stanley Economist Berner Tapped as Counselor to Geithner (WSJ)
• China Said to Raise Capital Adequacy Ratios for 5 Biggest Banks (Bloomberg)
• CIC Set for up to $200bn in Fresh Funds (FT)
• Monetary Policy in 3-D (Hussman) or a fancy and long way to say DV01 = $1.5 billion
• Japan Auto View Cut (WSJ)
• Asia Faces ‘Serious Setback’ on Rising Food Costs, ADB Says (Bloomberg)
• Some 500 Arrested in Syria Crackdown (Reuters)

A game of 20 questions with the Fed Chairman...

Wednesday afternoon will mark a watershed in Federal Reserve communications strategy. In addition to the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy statement, Chairman Bernanke will give his first post-meeting press conference and the FOMC's “central tendency” economic forecasts will be released. The expected timeline of events is as follows...

RANsquawk European Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 26/04/11

And two more highlights from a floundering Europe once again "validating" the EUR spike to near multi year highs. Eurostat came out earlier and reported that the Greek budget deficit, while declining from 15.4% of GDP in 2009 to 10.5% in 2010, missed expectations by a mile, or over 10%, after consensus was for a deficit print at 9.4% of GDP. And while the second to last PIIGS domino to fall also saw its deficit decline modestly sequentially from 11.1% of GDP to 9.2% in 2010, the country's total debt/GDP rose from 53.3% to 60.1%. With austerity like that, who needs the Teamsters?

Both Italy and Spain came to market this morning, pricing T-bills for E8.5 billion and nearly E2 billion, respectively. And while there was a divergence in bid to cover trends, yields surged across the board confirming that below the European surface not all is as well as the EURUSD would make most believe. Spain priced EUR 1.163 billion in 3-month T-Bills with a slightly improved bid/cover 4.43 vs. Prev. 4.33 although at a cost of a nearly 50% jump in yield or 1.37% versus 0.899% previously. This is the highest yield since December 2010. Spain also sold EUR 806MM in 6-month Bills at a bid/cover 7.11 vs. Prev. 7.65 with the yield surging as well, this time hitting 1.867% vs. Prev. 1.361%. Italy followed suit issuing EUR 8.5 billion in 6 month Bills, however at a lower bid/cover (reduced interest) of 1.432 vs. Prev. 1.61 despite the yield also jumping to 1.659% from 1.396%. Elsewhere the 3 and 6 month Euribor rate fixings continue to skyrocket, hitting 1.361% and 1.657% respectively. Thank you ECB for hiking rates. All this myopic action has done is to make the cost of short-term debt rolls prohibitively more expensive. Luckily, it will last about 3 months tops before Trichet, just like back in 2008, is forced to loosen once again (and yes, AU priced in EUR will be waiting).

And so the proverbial correction in silver may have well been completed in the span of 24 hours. As the attached chart shows from its Sunday night peaks to its Monday night bottom silver has dropped over 10%, what some call a mini bear market (which takes it to those depressionary lows seen on Thursday of last week). Is the climb now set tp resume, although not so much due to anything else (and there is plenty else) but because the USD pounding is back in full brokeback style. The EURUSD is about to break above the Sunday night heights in the mid 1.46s and while weak hands are vacating gold and silver, everyone is scrambling to load up in CHF. We wonder how long until those same people realize that Hildebrand is just as mortal as any other central banker with a balance sheet behind him, and as recently as 12 months ago underwent a failed campaign to halt the surge of the CHF in the process contaminating his assets with some seriously ugly currency assets (if one may call $220 billion of dollars on the left side of your balance sheet assets and thus implicitly "supporting" the SNB liability - the Swiss Franc) whose eventual unwind will not be too kind on the Swiss currency.