Archive - Aug 2011 - Story

A day after the US downgrade to AA+, Warren Buffett (who elsewhere continues his op-ed uber-campaign in hypocrisy by writing in the NYT that the government should "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich") said that in his book the US is AAAA. Amusingly, hours later S&P downgraded Berkshire to pari with the US. Judging by the record near surge in volatility in the ensuing days, the market was not too convinced with the octogenarian of Omaha's latest orations. What it was more convinced by, judging by market results, was the fact that Bank of America upgraded something totally different to an AAAA rating: gold, with a $2000 12 month target. To wit: "High commodity prices have now created a terms-of-trade shock for importers, feeding into current accounts, the financial sector and, ultimately, sovereign debt. How will these imbalances unwind? Physical gold is the ultimate collateral because it has no credit risk, so EM Central Banks have been diversifying their foreign exchange reserves into gold and other non-dollar, non-euro assets in recent quarters. Looking ahead, the deterioration in credit quality in Europe and the US coupled with an increased probability of QE3 means these pressures will continue. As a result, we revise our 12-month gold target to $2000/oz." Basically everything that Zero Hedge has been saying for about two and a half years now. Naturally, this coming from Bank of America, should set of contrarian call alarm bells everywhere. Regardless, here is BofA's Michael Widmer explaining his call, as well as the full upgrade report from BAC, which lately has far, far greater problems than getting its commodities call right or wrong.

Some time ago we predicted that for Germany the calculus on the bailout of Europe is simple: at some point the costs, in the form of contingent liabilities as a % of GDP, from backstopping an insolvent Europe will become simply too high and offset the benefit of keeping the EUR (a currency which more than anything boosts the German export sector courtesy of a peg that equates German "strength" with that of the weakest members of the Eurozone). Granted, should the EFSF be launched in its peak formation at €3.5 trillion, and be coupled with a eurobond, the direct and indirect Europe bailout costs to Germany become simply so high to where they will be politically untenable. Yesterday we also said that we anticipate any talk of support for a Eurobond would be promptly refuted by German government officials. Both of these happened late yesterday, when German Finance Minister told Spiegel that Germany is willing to help out... to a point. And yes, the report by Die Welt which said that the German authorities are actually considering the implementation of a Eurobond, that received so much press and was noted on Zero Hedge, was immediately denied by officials. Here is Goldman's Dirk Schumacher with a complete summary of the rapidly changing events.

A snapshot of the European Morning Briefing covering Stocks, Bonds, FX, etc.

For our closing post of the day we once open the floor to Sean Corrigan who proves that just when we thought all historical comparisons to the current deplorable economic miasma have been used up, a new one springs up, this time perhaps the one most indicative not so much of the past but of the future. Indeed, if history is any indication, and it is, America's catastrophic and untenable position is worse than even that of one Louis XIV, better known as "The Sun King", whose rule set the stage for the downfall of the French monarchy and which ultimately culminated with the French Revolution of 1789. For arguably the best indication of historical parallels to the present, and yet another confirmation that there really is nothing new in this world, especially in the world of central planning of monetary affairs, we present the following summary of the practices of Louis XIV which is verbatim applicable to the actions of the current central planning cartel: "The administration of the finances appears to have practised a subtle and ingenious tactic… [and] by modifications in the monetary unit, attempted to influence economic phenomena. Changes… were made to prepare for the issue of loans or to audit the circulation of the treasury notes, or to regulate exchange, to modify the balance of trade… to effect a redistribution of wealth, to influence the price level of commodities, perhaps to attenuate economic crises and famines…" It may come as a surprise to some that the very same type of central planning that Bernanke, and his central banking brethren, are trying to inflict (and failing) upon the world, was the same that was attempted on so many occasions in history, most poignantly, and catastrophically in the late stages of the French monarchy. And unfortunately, that's just the beginning of the parallels...

I wonder what goes through Ben Bernanke’s mind as he sits in his gold plated boardroom in the majestic Marriner Eccles building in Washington DC and decides to screw grandmothers in order to further enrich Wall Street bankers. He just pledged to keep interest rates at zero percent for two more years. Ben is a supposedly book smart man. Does he have no guilt or shame for what he has wrought? How does he sleep at night knowing he has created bloody revolutions around the globe due to his inflationary zero interest policy? People are dying because he has decided that an elite group of Wall Street bankers who recklessly brought down the worldwide financial system in 2008 deserve to be kept alive and enriched at the expense of the many.

The fact that European banks have just a tad more leverage compared to their US cousins has been well-known for quite some time. One need merely to look at the chart from our February 2010 post to see how American financial institutions stack up relative to European ones as a %-age of host country GDP. This issue came to a very violent head last week when market participants finally realized the painfully obvous, namely that even without direct Greek exposure (and there certainly is a lot of that), SocGen is simply not a viable business model for the long-run courtesy precisely of its tremendous leverage. And unfortunately, while SocGen's CEO was quick to appear on any TV station that would have him and deny rumors of the bank's viability, he had little if anything to say about the bank's actual solvency and leverage. Alas, therein lies the rub. As the attached table created by Jean-Piette Chevalier demonstrates, SocGen is back at the leverage it had back in 2007 at just over 50x. As a reminder, not even Lehman was this bad when it blew up (and that excludes the beneficial boost from Repo 105). In other words, SocGen has a Tier ratio of 2.0%... a number which the bureaucrats at Basel will have no choice but tell the bank must go up. And go up it will... assuming SocGen can issue €84 billion in new capital to pad its equity (on €19 billion of market cap... mmhmmm). Of course, in order to raise capital, SocGen would have to admit that the market was, in fact, correct in its assessment that the bank was undercapitalized, which would then send the stock even lower, and so forth, chicken or egg style. While we doubt any of this is new to the market, we doubt the response will be one of buying euphoria. Luckily, the only thing that can send the price tumbling now is actual selling, as opposed to shorting. And as we all know, nobody could possibly sell stocks: after all it is simply the evil shorters who are responsible for every market collapse in history, never the long idiot money which never did its homework, and suddenly becomes the last bagholder standing and first to bail from what is obviously a disastrously bad investment.

Not even minutes after we finished ridiculing Springer/Die Welt's attempt at propaganda spin whereby eurobonds were actually presented as not only good for Germany, but about to be "instituted" (and fully expected the immediate response to be one of refutation via official channels), here comes the FT with the official denial: "Germany and France are ruling out common eurozone bonds to solve the bloc’s current debt crisis, in spite of renewed pressure ahead of a meeting of chancellor Angela Merkel and president Nicholas Sarkozy on Tuesday. Wolfgang Schäuble, German finance minister, made clear in an interview with Der Spiegel, that Berlin remains opposed to such a policy. “I rule out eurobonds for as long as member states conduct their own financial policies and we need different rates of interest in order that there are possible incentives and sanctions to enforce fiscal solidity,” he said. So, uh, Die Welt's prognostication that "The federal government is now willing, if necessary, to accept a Eurobond transfer union" is about, oh, 100% wrong? Oops. As for those expecting an announcement of a eurobond on Tuesday following the latest round of "emergency" Merkel-Sarkozy, we suggest you put down the Eurobong: "Senior French officials also played down speculation that any firm announcement on jointly issued bonds would be issued after meetings when Ms Merkel comes to Paris on Tuesday. “Eurobonds would require a much more determined integration of budgetary policy,” one said. “We do not have that today. It could be a long-term project, but you cannot have eurobonds and at the same time national economic and budgetary policies.” Translation: "there is this thing called elections coming, and some of us career politicians, who have no idea how to do anything actually valuable for society, and still have not plundered enough in the form of bribers, pardon, lobby money, are not insane enough to propose that German and France foot the bill for the entire European bailout." Even though that is precisely what they will do via the EFSF. And we certainly expect yet another round of eurobond rumors the next time the EURUSD tumbles by 200 pips in the span of 10 minutes (which courtesy of the broken FX market as described by Sean Corrigan earlier, is roughly every several hours).

After two incredibly volatile weeks, where more Americans now know the ticker symbol for Gold (GLD) than its Periodic Table Symbol (AU), I'm just not sure what to write. Trying to make sense of it all is hard enough, and by this time on a Sunday, what hasn't already been written? I guess I could have tried to write something title "Circular reasoning and cognitive dissidence in the markets" , but that seemed fairly complex. Instead, maybe looking at the past couple of weeks through the eyes of a child, is a better idea.

Why? Because if "the unelectable one" were to become president, the financial kleptocratic, oligarchic status quo, which just so happens is the big legacy media's biggest advertising base, would be wiped out overnight. Next up: big media becomes very small media. The clip below from CNN explains it all.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is a magician. He can make trillions of debt disappear. Impossible? Let me show you how...

Remember when on Friday, following the summary of the proposed Italian austerity measures, we said that "within a few weeks we expect the strike (and riot)-cam to be planted firmly in the Piazza Navona and across the streets ot the Trastevere in capturing the latest round of European indignation" and some assumed this was yet more sarcasm? Nope. As the AP reports, "the leader of Italy's largest union is threatening a general strike against an austerity package that Premier Silvio Berlusconi's government hastily pushed through to balance the budget by 2013 and avoid financial collapse. The threat came amid mounting criticism Sunday of the euro45.5 billion ($64.8 billion) package passed Friday in response to demands by the European Central Bank." Incidentally, $64.8 billion in cuts... out of $1.8 trillion in debt....that makes even the farcical $2.1 trillion deficit cut plan passed by the muppets in DC appear gargantuan in context. What happens when S&P tells Italy it has to increase the cuts fivefold to avoid more downgrades? At that point the strikes in Italy will be 24/7/365. And what happens when S&P wakes up and realizes that the same is applicable for France, and that any realistic cuts will force French GDP, which on Friday came at a very disappointing 0.0%, to turn wildly negative, as strikes next shift from Rome to Paris... Just how stable will that vaunted AAA rating of France be at that point? But of course, nobody will have been able to see it coming.

As usual, the most comprehensive stack of technical analysis comes from Goldman's John Noyce who is rarely afraid to go out on a limb. Among the key charts to track, number one is the VIX which recently blew out to prior resistance levels at the 49 mark, which happens to have been the peak during the October 1997 Asian Crisis, the October 1998 LTCM crisis, September 11, the July 2002 equity bear market, and the first Eurozone insolvency in May 2010. For now this level has held, and with major central planner intervention it appears that a base is now being built below it. Of course, all this means is that when the current round of global intervention fails the deferred risk will simply send the VIX to new unseen heights. The only question is when.

In his latest ruminations in ruination, Diapason's Sean Corrigan does nothing short of a brilliant post-modernist collage of all the fragments of our broken economic reality and capital markets which, just like the defining 20th century poem by TS Eliot (further exemplified by the Flesch-Kincaid reading complexity of Max+1 inherent in both works), summarizes the terminal situation that we currently find ourselves in. And while in The Waste Land, Eliot focused more on the existential breakdown of society in the "entre deux guerres" period, Corrigan does the same for the trader/financial archetype of the 21st century. But all is not lost. Just like the Waste Land ended on a glimmer of an optimistic note by invoking the Three Principal Virtues of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (be self-controlled, be charitable and be compassionate) wherein according to the Nobel winning author the germs of social salvation lay in understanding of our own intractable and self-destructive complexities, so too does Corrigan provide an outcome to our mangled reality based on a trio of our own actions which may one day save us from the economic, financial and capital destruction we (through the creeping dictatorial pervasiveness of central planning, but not only) have brought upon ourselves. "What lies broken, we can surely fix, but only if we break in turn the habits of mind and the tyranny of the man-made institutions which we first allowed to break the things we value - our freedom of association, our independence of action, and our individual chance of prosperity." 

The Ames Straw vote results out of Iowa are in, and Michelle Bachmann appears to have won with 29% of the votes, or 4,823 of the 16,892 votes cast. Bernanke nemesis Ron Paul placed second, just 150 votes behind Bachmann, at 4,671, or taking down 28% of the total. For those stupefied by this result, a source on the ground informs us that Bachmann proceeded to hand out 6000 free tickets at $30 each with a mandatory registration at her booth to gain concert entrance. Furthermore, final results were probably tabulated by the BLS. As for other frontrunners, Pawlenty came in a distant third with 14% or 2,293 of the votes. The Hill has more: "A House member has never finished in the top two; extraordinarily, two House lawmakers finished nearly neck-and-neck toward the top. Bachmann is the first woman to ever win the straw poll. "We’re very excited," said Alice Steward, a spokesman for Bachmann. "it’s a very emotional night for her, she’s excited and thankful all the hard work of the supporters and volunteers paid off...Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) won about 10 percent, pizza magnate Herman Cain finished at about nine percent, and Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) drew just 35 total votes. Murmurs of huge crowds at Waterloo native's splay on the campus of Iowa State University persisted throughout the day, suggesting that momentum was with — and never waned — from Bachmann's campaign." Rounding off the field were Santorum with 10% of the vote, Herman Cain with 9%, write ins Perry and Romney with 4% and 3%, respectively, and Gingrich getting 2%. We are not quite sure if this is the cue to laugh or cry. Our money is on the latter.

It is assumed without question that the stock market is some quasi-sacrosanct barometer of the U.S. economy. But who even cares if the market crashes? Only the top 10% who own it. Yes, millions of (generally government) workers have an indirect stake in stocks and bonds via their state/union pension funds, but it's still informative to look at the distribution of who actually has a stake in the market's rise and fall.