Archive - Aug 21, 2011 - Story

While Bloomberg has done a tremendous job of digging through 29,346 pages of FOIA data, its discovery is not at all surprising: that Wall Street's (not to mention the rest of the world's) biggest banks received a total of $1.2 trillion in previously secret Fed loans, in addition to the trillions in public backstops and loans from the US Treasury. As a reminder, "denominated in $1 bills, the $1.2 trillion would fill 539 Olympic-size swimming pools." The best summary of this ongoing collusion between the Fed and Wall Street, in which it once again for the nth time becomes clear that all the Fed cars about is making sure its banking masters are never impaired, is from the article itself: "Even as the firms asserted in news releases or earnings calls that they had ample cash, they drew Fed funding in secret, avoiding the stigma of weakness." And there you have it: everything that come out of Wall Street is and has always been a lie: either courtesy of 30 years of great interest rate moderation, in which only cheap money adds to banks' top and bottom lines, or due to the Fed making sure the same banks never suffer a dollar loss when central planning fails, such as it does increasingly often lately (and forget about 10(b)-5 violation charges coming from the corrupt regulators: after all they are all in bed together). That Morgan Stanley, Dexia and Citi are, and have been since 2008, dead men walking, is by now known to all financially literate readers: additional confirmation can be found in the Bloomberg article, which we won't paraphrase because it has all been said over and over. That said, Bloomberg has done a great visual interactive chart summary of who got what, when, how much, over peak and average metrics and so forth. We urge readers to play around with it (don't worry, it won't break the banks; and if it does the Fed will secretly bail them out again) and every time they consider putting money into our "solvent" financial system.

Why is printing money the best solution? Why isn't trying to pick up the pieces after some defaults, a better solution than printing. With stock futures down again already, and Jackson Hole coming up, you know we will hear Wall Street (and anyone caught long) clamoring for the Fed and ECB to PRINT more money. It seems to be the only "solution" to the debt burden too many countries are facing. I agree that it is the only way to avoid some defaults and some pain....So, we will get money printing. That to me, is dangerous, since we don't know what printing so much more money will do. It doesn't in any way, shape, or form address the root cause of the problem. It is hard to hedge (buy more gold?) and it potentially unleashes problems we haven't even contemplated. Hyper-inflation causes riots in countries where China bought land to produce food and gives them an excuse to enforce their rights by sending in troops? Maybe that is crazy, but in my defense, I am wearing my IG200 hat, not a tin foil hat. I am not sure what can or can't happen in a world where we decide that printing money is the best way out of our problems. So many bizarre things have come out of our alternative solutions, and few of them good, that we should spend more time thinking about accepting the default of the weak, and seeing what we can do with that.

Joe Biden came to China, saw, and failed to conquer the locals' ridicule. Punctuating just how "effective" Biden's visit to China was in order to "reassure that the US is solvent" (no seriously, that;s the name of the article) is a just released article in the Securities Times by Wang Tialong, member of Chinese think tank Center for International Economic Exchanges in which he went on to blatantly say that "The U.S. may be on its way to default on its debt despite the U.S. government's ability to print more money, a Chinese think tank researcher said Monday." Now this is nothing new in the escalating war of words between the two countries, although increasingly China appears to be attacking the primary loophole that defenders of the unsustainable US debt use, namely the fall back to the USD as a reserve currency. Wang went on further to implicitly accuse the US of fabricating economic data: "There is also no way to punish the issuer country if it falsifies its accounting and there is no way to restructure the issuer either, Wang said." Well, when China accuses the US of "falsifying accounting" you know you have hit rock bottom.

For those of you who are familiar with the Ichimoku Kinko Hyo (One Glance Balanced Cloud Chart), one of its strengths is in communicating when major long term trends are beginning and ending.  This can either be done through the TKx signal (Tenkan-Kijun Cross) or a Kumo Break (cloud break).  Based on our Ichimoku analysis, we suspect the SPX is headed for much lower ground as an event that has happened only twice in the last 8 years has just occurred, a weekly Kumo Break.

A free market is one in which government intervention and regulation is limited to tax collection, and the enforcement of private ownership and contracts. A controlled market is one in which governments directly regulate how goods, services and labour are priced and sold – the dynamics of economic supply and demand are ignored. Then there is the gong show market. Until recently, this type of market has only been available to 1970s TV game shows. Yet today, this exceptional form of dark comedy has been adopted by our global leaders as an acceptable approach to dealing with the World’s debt crisis. Unfortunately for every human being that fully grasps the enormity of the financial problems facing the World today, the reason for their dissatisfaction with the response from our global leaders is simply due to them not knowing the rules of the Gong Show. For your convenience, we provide them as follows...

Alas, it is not a liquidity problem, it is a solvency problem. After delaying this realization for over two years, Greece, and Europe, are about to understand just how flawed "bailout" strategies that address the symptoms and not the cause, have been since the beginning of 2010. And while the world is engaged with the latest victim of the Bernanke-inspired, food-price inflation political upheaval better known as the Arab Spring, whose final stop is nothing less than Times Square, Greece quietly avoided the failure of smallish Proton bank (there is no FDIC backstop of failed banks in Greece), which would have resulted in a market wide panic, and a terminal bank run that would have toppled the Greek financial sector. Luckily, this was prevented in the last second courtesy of a capital injection in the last minute by the big 4 Greek banks. From the FT: "Greece’s four largest banks agreed to take up a €50m convertible bond to help recapitalise Proton Bank, a small lender, the central bank announced this weekend, in what is being seen as an attempt to avert a run on the country’s fragile banking system...“In this environment, it was essential to prevent Proton from collapsing and creating a mood of fear with unpredictable consequences,” said one banker, explaining the rationale for the take-up of the Proton bond." In summary, Greece was lucky... this time around, they had enough cash to save the smallish lender. The next time around they will not be so lucky.

Update: while the initial bulletin was unclear just which Gadaffi has been captured it now appears it was referring to Saif al-Islam, the Colonel's son. The end game for the others, however, is likely just a matter of time.

According to Reuters. And with that, the Libyan central bank hands over its keys to the LBMA.

Because the stealthy take over of Libya by its rebel forces is matched only by the stealth soaring of silver in the last two days. We wonder how long until the perfectly normal and completely SEC-uninvestigated May 1 silver sledgehammer formation repeats again, and when will we see another 5 silver margin hikes in the san of a few days?

Following a 6 month stalemate in which neither side had attained any advantage, it suddenly took just a few days for the Libyan rebel forces to steamroll unopposed into Tripoli. While we are confident that the political aftermath of this outcome will be very much comparable to what is happening in Egypt right now, many wonder why it is that the Libyan situation has progressed with such speed. Perhaps the answer can be found in the 143.8 tons of gold held by the Libyan Central Bank. Granted it is nowhere near close the 366 tons of gold that Venezuela supposedly has per the WGC, most of it likely held offshore and not being repatriated, the question of where the global gold cartel may find some of the much needed physical to satisfy Chavez' demands has been now answered. Of course we assume that said gold has not already departed Libya in direction Caracas over the past 6 months. Which, in retrospect, we probably should, as it would explain why gold is now at $1875 and rapidly rising.

With local American stations too busy to cover what appears to be the end of the Gadaffi regime, here is a live feed form Sky News which inexplicably has a penchant for covering live breaking critical news. Since everyone is blatantly lying, on both sides of the conflict, we leave it to readers to decide what is actually happening.

Following earlier reports from Reuters, that the Libyan rebels had closed in on Tripoli, Al Jazeera has now reported that the brigade in charge of Gaddafi's security has surrendered and laid down its arms (although it is sourced to the Rebel National Transitional Council so official confirmation may be required). And while according to an earlier TV appearance by Gaddafi, the soon to be deposed ruler of Libya has vowed he will remain in the country until the end, we can't help but wonder whether i) he is in the country, and ii) if, as ZH speculated back in February, he will employ a scorched earth tactic to destroy anything of value in his wake. Namely Libya's oil infrastructure.  "I am afraid if we don't act, they will burn Tripoli," Gaddafi said in an audio address broadcast on state television. "There will be no more water, food, electricity or freedom." Keep an eye on crude futures when they open shortly.

Remember when Jim O'Neill was openly taunting the "bears"? Yeah, those days are long gone. In his latest weekend letter the BRICster proceeds to do what so many have already been doing for weeks and months, namely compare the current precarious global economic situation to 2008: "Another ugly week passes, and it is still only August 20th. What a particularly brutal August this is turning out to be so far, even when compared to many challenging ones in recent and distant years. Although there are many substantive reasons why things are very different, many cannot resist the temptation to make comparisons with 2008. So, I thought I would discuss the comparison this weekend." And like a true Keynesian, O'Neill proceeds to do not just that but to provide his solution to all the world's problems: more G7 intervention. Because they keep getting it so right time after time after time...

A few days ago we penned "As Chavez Pulls Venezuela's Gold From JP Morgan, Is The Great Scramble For Physical Starting?" in which, logically, we wondered if the unwind of the great gold cartel, whose purported price manipulation has always resided in the domain of paper, or confidence-based, precious metals, may have started from the most unexpected source: Venezuelan "dictator" Hugo Chavez who just announced that he will not only nationalize the country's gold industry but reclaim his physical gold (however much of it may exist) from custodians such as JP Morgan and Bank of Nova Scotia. The practical implications of this move are substantial- since then gold has seen record high after record high. Whether one attributes these moves to Chavez, or to yet another global "risk-flaring" episode is unclear. Luckily, Grant Williams, author of the always entertaining "Things That Make you Go Hmmmm", provides some very fascinating observations on this very interesting topic...

Well over two months ago we first reminded the Marxists of the world that something big may be coming over the horizon in "Attention Marxists: Labor's Share Of National Income Drops To Lowest In History" a theme, whose violent reprisals in the real world we have been observing since before the Arab Spring began (courtesy of the Fed of course).  Lo and behold, suddenly the coolest thing among the post-sophist punditry is to bring up the name of Marx for this and for that, because, guess what -  he was right all along or something. Where were these same pundits when Marxist postulates were becoming apparent not only across the past year, but past century, we wonder. That said, one analysis that does merit mention is that by UBS George Magnus, who several days ago does the most comprehensive summary of the modern world through the lens of Marxism. His conclusion is spot on: "We have had a gathering crisis of political economy this year, which is partly about economic growth and jobs, but also and importantly, about a malaise in politics and policymaking, in which governments are seen as unwilling, unable, divided or ineffective when it comes to economic management and stability. It’s this resistance or backlash against the political order that runs through the propagation of the political economy convulsions around the world, including, in extremis, the uprisings through North Africa and the Middle East." Granted this is not at all surprising, nor is it odd considering that all that central planning under the modern monetary system has done is to perpetually push off disasters, with each increasingly frequent subsequent one hitting with greater severity until not all the money printing in the world can save the modern broken socio-political (and economic) framework. But everything in due course. And yes, expect many more references to Marx by hollow econo-historians who bring nothing new to the table and merely stampede in where the herd has already boldly gone before.

Those of us who are history buffs, specifically World War II, including events that preceded and postdated that war (1937-1947), tend to look at the Nuremberg Trials (1945-6) with different degrees of criticism.  One does not need to be a legal scholar to realize that much of the Nuremberg proceedings simulated more a lynching party, or a guillotine exhibition, than a trial conducted according to universal precepts of common law.  The defendants, prisoners of war, were not allowed to challenge the fairness of the judges, nor were they given the right to appeal.  Many of the crimes for which they were charged, and convicted of, had been and were being committed by the accusers, or their governments; at times such crimes falling under retrospective law.  And, to top it all, the trials were conducted under their own, and unchallengeable, rules of evidence. Yet, even if History ultimately renders the Nuremberg Trials as illusory justice, or even a mockery of justice, the argument will remain strong that an important purpose was served by these trials: placating the demands for justice of a bleeding continent which had shed 40 million lives and experienced ruinous destruction; even if in reality it was a victors’ justice, it was by most accounts a remarkable improvement over past historical situations where post-war resolution usually amounted to no more than vengeance over an entire nation or people.