Archive - Jul 2011 - Story

Somehow, in all the confusion, the endangered species known as the American "consumer" missed the economic recovery. The reason, as Bloomberg writes, is that consumers are increasingly "using credit cards to pay for basic necessities as income gains fail to keep pace with rising food and fuel prices." The data comes from credit card transaction processor First Data which reported that the dollar volume of charged purchases rose 10.7% in June (a 6.8% increase in the number of transactions). "The difference probably represents the increasing cost of gasoline, said Silvio Tavares, senior vice president at First Data, the largest credit card processor. "Consumers, particularly in the lower-income end, are being forced to use their credit cards for everyday spending like gas and food,” said Tavares, who’s based in Atlanta. “That’s because there’s been no other positive catalyst, like an increase in wages, to offset higher prices. It’s a cash-flow problem." Alas, it gets worse. As Bank of America's Joshua Dennerlein
reports today, the end of the year will see 3.7 million Americans stop
receiving jobless benefits. "This will act as a hit to consumption in
the first quarter of 2012." This number is completely independent of any
possible new legislation to extended jobless benefits for new
unemployed labor pool entrants, as it merely affects those about to hit
the 99 week cliff. Unfortunately even more "growth" over the next 6-9
months will have to come from the Fed and the only thing it knows how to
do: print, print, print.

The best analogy I have heard so far about today's European Solution is that EFSF is being asked to do a lot of what TARP did for the U.S. I cannot disagree with that assessment. The EU is clearly pushing it well beyond it's original design. The question that remains to be answered is, who would fund the EFSF? There are stories that EFSF might buy assets from the ECB at cost. It is clearly going to lend to countries at rates that are massively off-market. It may buy debt in the open market? It may recapitalize banks? I am not sure it can have such a broad mandate and get the rating it needs or to get outside investors. What private investor would have lent to TARP? I think for this program to work, Germany and France will have to suck it up, skip the whole CDO methodology and just fund the EFSF directly. TARP only worked (or got the money it needed and was flexible enough) because the U.S. government gave the treasury carte blanche to do what they wanted.

If someone is hell bent on breaking the bond market, they are doing a bang up job.

UPDATE: CARNEY DENIES NYT REPORT: "THERE IS NO DEAL" 30 Year plunging

Just breaking news from the NYT for now. 30 Year surging.

Today, in addition to the official launch of Europe's PPT, we get a reminder that our own version, the Federal Reserve, is as criminal and corrupt as always, especially when working in conjunction with that old standby, Goldman Sachs. Just like back in 2009 and 2010 it was discovered that former Goldman director and New York Fed Chairman Stephen Friedman had bought tens of thousands of shares of Goldman stock while the entire system was being bailed out by the very same Fed, so today we learn that another former Goldmanite and then Plunge Protection Head team (i.e., Brian Sack predecessor) Bill Dudley had held shares of AIG stock while the Fed was arranging the bailout of the doomed insurer. But it's all good: Dudley had a waiver. Mostly likely signed by his then boss and former Goldman coworker Friedman. We wonder if it was Dudley who signed Friedman's waiver? From Bloomberg: "The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s William C. Dudley got a waiver in 2008 to keep personal financial holdings of American International Group Inc. (AIG) after the company received a Fed rescue, a U.S. senator said. Dudley, who was the New York Fed’s markets-group chief at the time and is now the bank’s president, is the senior New York Fed official identified in a Government Accountability Office report today as receiving the waiver, Senator Bernard Sanders, a Vermont Independent, said today in a statement. Jack Gutt, a New York Fed spokesman, declined to comment." Of course, when one is from Goldman, one does not care about the glaring impropriety of one's actions. After all, one rules the world. And speaking of Bernie Sanders, he earlier tore the Fed a new one, after he released details of the Fed's GAO audit and took every opportunity to make his opinion on the master criminals well-known: "As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," he said. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else." Well, didn't everyone know that by now?

There is only one section of the proposed European Bailout draft statement that is relevant to traders: Section 7, bullet 3 which says: "To improve the effectiveness of the EFSF and address contagion, we agree to increase the flexibility of the EFSF, allowing it to intervene in the secondary markets on the basis of an ECB analysis recognizing the existence of exceptional circumstances and a unanimous decision of the EFSF Member States." Everything else is noise. Europe just legalized its own Plunge Protection Team and off balance sheet Quantitative Easing program with one signature. Good luck trading in this, or any, market which even the politicians now admit is nothing more than a central banking policy tool.

We know two things: 1) the official policy of the Federal Reserve is to engineer and maintain inflation and 2) inflation is theft. As I have recounted here many times, in nominal terms, it looks like average wages (earned income) in the U.S. have been rising smartly for decades. But measured in purchasing power, i.e. adjusted for inflation, earned income has declined for most workers, especially in the past three years. Whenever a pundit scoffs at the idea that the dollar might lose 95% of its value, readers remind me it already has lost 95% of its value in the past century. The Federal Reserve robs savers every day of millions of dollars, which it then transfers to the "too big to fail" banks by paying interest on those banks' reserves. Savers earn .01% on their cash while banks are paid 2% interest. The difference is what is stolen from savers and funneled to the banks.

A snapshot of the US Afternoon Briefing covering Stocks, Bonds, FX, etc.
Market Recaps to help improve your Trading and Global knowledge

Courtesy of the IEA which earlier loudly announced 'No More SPR Releases' (although like the ECB earlier announced it would not accept defaulted Greek debt as collateral only to reneg, this is total bullshit), and another massive taxpayer funded iteration of EFSF monetization-infused moral hazard, crude is back to $100. Since the EFSF will very soon be expanded to over $1 trillion and since this is nothing less than Europe's version of QE, and paradrops money that just like the Fed's own daily POMOs will ultimately find its way into the market, as holders of toxic Greek debt shift their assets into risk holdings, we expect crude to surge to $110, then $120, then $130 and so forth until another global depression has to be called in. And, naturally, the same with every other hard asset that can not be diluted.

With increasing chatter that no matter what Congress agrees on, if anything, vis-a-vis the debt ceiling, the preemptive spin has begun, with the first salvo coming out of UBS' George Bory who has released a note "The difference between downgrade and default" which paints a very placid picture of the consequences of the US losing it AAA rating. Coming from a credit strategist, Bory naturally looks at the tightly confined consequences of such an event within the rates space exclusively without any mention of other cross-linked securities. In UBS' view, we would expect i) 10-yr yields rise 20-25bps, ii) a steeper yield curve, especially long end, iii) Treasuries underperform bunds and other highly rated sovereign debt iv) Vol term structure inverts further, v) Corporate spreads tighten, especially at long end, vi) Bank credit quality re-rated lower. Altogether not too bad. The problem is that there are a few trillion in money market related rating triggers which would grind to a halt the repurchase of paper of a sovereign that no longer has the AAA mark, resulting in our opinion in a dramatic crunch in short-term liquidity, and set the stage for a Lehman-like monetary system paralysis. But that is a topic for another day. Since today reality is to be ignored (see "transitory default"), here is why according to UBS America can simply call Moody's and S&P's bluff.

As more news comes across the tape, we now learn that somehow Greece is expected to experience a default but not just any default: a "transitory" default. From Bloomberg: European officials are trying to orchestrate a second Greek bailout so that a default would only last for a few days, said two officials familiar with the discussions.

After posting two consecutive negative prints, the most recent of which coming at -7.7, the July Philly Fed rose modestly to 3.2, just above consensus estimates of 2.0. Reading between the lines however confirms that there is nothing to write home about - from the report: "Responses to the Business Outlook Survey suggest that regional manufacturing activity remained weak in July. The survey’s indicators for activity and new orders, which had turned negative last month, recovered somewhat but are at very low positive readings. Firms indicated that employment grew modestly while the average workweek lessened. Indexes for prices show a continuing trend of moderating price pressures. The broadest indicator of future activity improved markedly this month, rebounding from its lowest reading in 31 months in June." Among the key components of the index, those relating to corporate margins, the prices paid declined by 1.7 even as prices received declined by 3.3, once again confirming that economic margin reality and corporate ZIRP driven surreality refuse to match. And while number of employees increased from 4.1 to 8.9 the Average Employee Workweek plunged from 1.9 to -5.4. Just hire many people and have them all work 1 hour a day: sounds like the unions building the 2nd avenue subway. Nt surprising, inventories rose from -8.5 to 1.4. The survey conclusion: "The survey’s indicators suggested flat demand for manufactured goods this month, while shipments and employment grew only slightly. Price measures suggested continued moderation in price pressures. The broadest indicators for future activity rebounded after falling sharply last month and firms are somewhat more optimistic about their hiring plans over the next six months."

Those so inclined can watch the Chairsatan and other regulators testify on financial oversight on year after Dodd-Frank enactment. Dep. Treasury Sec. Wolin, SEC Chair Schapiro, CFTC Chair Gensler, FDIC Acting Chair Gruenberg, Acting OCC Comptroller Walsh will also testify.

John Taylor, the "Fed Chairman who should have been", has penned a terrific op-ed in the WSJ. Advocating nothing short of a great reset, this is one of today's must read pieces: "If government interventions are the economic problem, then the solution is to unwind them. Some lament that with the high debt and bloated Fed balance sheet, we have run out of monetary and fiscal ammunition, but this may be a blessing in disguise. The way forward is not more spending, greater debt and continued zero-interest rates, but spending control and a return to free-market principles. Unfortunately, as the recent debate over the debt limit indicates, narrow political partisanship can get in the way of a solution. The historical evidence on what works and what doesn't is not partisan. The harmful interventionist policies of the 1970s were supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. So were the less interventionist polices in the 1980s and '90s. So was the recent interventionist revival, and so can be the restoration of less interventionist policy going forward. "

Citi, whose Steven Englander has been bearish on the EUR for a while, and with good reason although when faced with central planning, and Chinabot of course, it is tough to remain rational, sane, and certainly solvent, when the market can remain idiotic and socialist for far, far longer, has just released another note bashing the kneejerk reaction in the EUR. Bloomberg's terrific new All News service summarizes.