Archive - Jul 13, 2011 - Story

So far, every iteration of the trite, overused and cliched "X is not Y" has meant to generate confidence, when all it really does is inspire laughter. Today we get Nomura's stimulus advocate Richard Koo giving a different spin on the "Greece is not Argentina" perspective.

Despite a sovereign downgrade of Ireland to "junk" by Moody's late last night, risk-appetite was observed in the market, led by out performance in Italian asset-classes after Moody's said that Italy is not in the same situation as Ireland due to its market access. This supported EUR across the board as well as the European equities, which together with comments from PIMCO that it is using the latest sell off in Italian bonds to increase its own holdings, weighed on bunds. Bunds came under further pressure following speculation that official names were checking European bond prices, and the peripheral Eurozone 10-year government bond yield spreads narrowed across the board. Weakness in the USD-Index provided strength to EUR/USD, GBP/USD and commodity-linked currencies, however, some weakness was observed in GBP/USD following the release of jobless claims change data from the UK, which showed the biggest jump in two years in June.

With several economic items on the docket, the key event today is the start of Ben Bernanke's Humphrey Hawkins semi-annual report on the monetary policy to Congress (tomorrow an identical one will be delivered to the corrupt, brain dead zombies in the Senate). Look for select key words such as "QE3", "Ponzi", "Catastrophe", "Pray", and, of course, "Get tu da choppa"

Gold for immediate delivery rose to new record nominal highs of 987.58 British pounds and 1578.8 U.S. dollars in London this morning. New record nominal highs were seen for gold in euros (1,123.50 euros per ounce), pounds and dollars yesterday. Gold rose soon after FOMC minutes showed that the Federal Reserve is considering further quantitative easing or QE3 and after Moody’s downgraded Ireland’s debt to junk status. The very poor trade deficit numbers in the U.S. yesterday ($50.2 billion in May) and the UK this morning (£8.5 billion in May) is also supporting gold today. The Moody’s downgrade of Ireland was expected but the timing was very bad given the increasing turmoil in Eurozone bond markets and deepening risk of contagion due to bond risk in Spain and Italy, the world’s third largest debtor after Japan and the U.S. While Italian and Spanish bond yields have fallen today, the Irish 10 year yield rose to new euro era record highs at 13.74%. While UK inflation figures yesterday were slightly better than expected, today’s unemployment figures were worse than expected. Jobless claims rose at their fastest pace since May 2009, showing the UK recovery is faltering and jobs are being lost as the deepest government budget cuts since World War II take hold.

Market regulators forcing short squeezes? Check. Central banks using mob-style gimmicks to push the price of "assets" around? Check. Market confidence back to 100%? We'll have to get back to you on that. Gold spot just touched on a fresh new intraday all time high of just under $1,579... and is going much, much higher. After all, the most important question - Everyone is broke? Check.

Despite empirical evidence that someone big stepped an and bought the bejeezus out of Italian bonds yesterday ahead of the Bill auction, and despite Willem Buiter's warning that tomorrow's critical BTP auction will fail absent ECB intervention, some of our transatlantic colleagues were panning long-winded essays that it is supremely irrational for the ECB to even think it can control the Italian bond market because of X, Y and Z. We, on the other contend, that precisely because it is supremely irrational is why the ECB will do it. And now we have evidence that if nothing else (and we will know for sure next week if the ECB bought the bonds after the weekly SMP details are released over the weekend, as else it would show that the PBOC is actively buying Italy bonds in the secondary market). And in the absence of actual buying, yoday we get another view at just how the ECB thinks it can manipulate markets. From Dow Jones: "Moody's junking Ireland is of particular concern "as many market participants have more hope for the Irish recovery story relative to Greece and Portugal," says ING rates strategist Padhraic Garvey. "Moody's have a different view." Garvey also says that the ECB asked for prices of sovereign bonds Tuesday but "there was no evidence that the ECB actually bought peripheral paper." Translation- the ECB sends out a OWIC (Offers Wanted in Competition), and dealers are supposed to soil themselves knowing full well that even if Trichet does or does not bid, other dealers may. Game theory 101.

Frequent Zero Hedge readers may recall that back in the spring of 2009, when the market needed a desperate boost by any and all insivible hands, we exposed one of the methods of ramping stocks as being stock custodians, in this case State Street and Bank of New York, generating a wholesale squeeze by pulling borrow, or in other words retrieving lent out shares so those who are short are forced to cover. Many laughed assuming this was merely yet another deranged rant. It wasn't. Fast forward to today, when we learn that the Consob, Italy's market regulator and SEC equivalent, has "recommended to stakeholders who have lent shares in Italian companies to retrieve them" - i.e., playbook artificial short squeeze 101. This is two days after the Consob banned naked short selling: a move which had disastrous consequences after the market continued plunging and would have collapsed entirely had it not been for the ECB and/or China buying Italy bonds before yesterday's Bill auction. ""Yes, we've exercised moral suasion by asking all those who have lent shares to retrieve them," Consob Chairman Giuseppe Vegas told journalists on the sideline of a conference." And now you know how to generate a market-wide short squeeze.

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