Archive - Oct 1, 2012 - Story

Spot Gold just jumped above its February 2012 highs to trade at $1791.45. This is the highest since November 2011 as the precious metals continue to outperform stocks post-QEternity.

Gold and Silver and surging this morning as the Fed's Charles Evans talks on CNBC of the need for more accomodative policy by the Fed. His 'infiniter' easing seems to have sparked this move as he clarifies the seeming psychopathy of the Federal Reserve's actions. His message clearly is that the amount doesn't matter (nor the unintended consequences), the printing and flooding of money into an already stuffed banking system will continue until morale improves.

Remember when last week Spain disclosed the terms of its 2013 Austerity budget, and everyone, literally, came out of the trunk in the ZZ Top wagon, including Olli Rehn who said Spain had done even more than Europe demanded, which led many to believe this was the basis for Spain preparing to announce its bailout request? Well, today Europe is kinda, sorta force to reevaluate said statement, and poor Mr Rehn has to self-flagellate himself in some Helsinki sauna for speaking too fast, because over the weekend Spain preannounced (the first of many) 2012 budget target misses. The Spanish government said the deficit would hit 7.4% of GDP, which misses the 6.3% target set for the year. The 6.3% number in turn, was a "loosened" goal as the original deficit target for the country set by the Commission was 5.3%. What will happen is that at some point, in late December just like in 2011, Spain will say it was only kidding and the real budget deficit will be in the double digits, or about 100% more than the preliminary announced one. But don't worry: in 2013 all shall be well: IMF, ECB, Spain and Princeton economists all over the world promise, so it must be.

Leading up to the American Financial Crisis. We all had the data, we all saw the sub-prime mess, we all saw the leverage, we all saw the money handed out for nothing and the non-disclosure documents, we all saw the lack of credible ratings supplied by the ratings agencies and yet we went on like it would all continue forever. We ignored it all. We turned our backs but then; we got scalped and so the prime questions must be asked: Are we wise men or are we fools? Did we learning anything from the last go round? Should we act now before we are scalped again considering we only have one head? Since the American Financial Crisis the world has lived off the largesse of the major central banks. It has been a slippery slope and each capital injection or “save the world” speech has been met by risk-on and higher markets as liquidity floods the system. It is a judgment call on our part but we think we are about done with the effectiveness of moves by the central banks.

Factory output has shrunk for 14 consecutive months and businesses must continue to trim the fat of their organizations during these recessionary times. The report showed that 18.2 million people were jobless in September; this is an increase of 34,000 people versus the previous month. As living standards fall and livelihoods are being wretched voter anger is becoming increasingly palpable, especially in countries such as Spain and France. History provides countless lessons as to the political consequences of detached economic policies and their real effects.  Northern Europe’s gamesmanship in rewriting previously agreed banking debt support may set a dangerous precedent and tear apart the tenuous ties of trust between governments - who after all must act together if they are ever to forge a solution to their current economic plight.

Curious why distinguished, Nobel-prize winning economics professors (most of whom have their own Op-Ed columns and blogs to fill all that free time they have when they are not actually filling impressionable minds with "this time the model will work" ideas, keeping Solitaireoffice hours or coming up with arcane, meaningless equations to explain human behavior) have gone "all in" to defend a system which promotes the ubiquity of cheap credit, and the creation of a generation of nondischargeable debt slaves? Because if it wasn't for said cheap, ubiquitous debt, their salaries would be utterly unsustainable (and for once austerity would hit the academic ivory tower headquarters of Keynesianism located in Cambridge, New Haven and West Philadelphia). And for this they have to thank an economic system they created which is now disintegrating before their eyes, and in which every incremental dollar of systemic debt raises total disposable income per capita by less and less and less.

• Trade Slows Around World (WSJ)
• Debt limit lurks in fiscal cliff talks (FT)
• Welcome back to the eurozone crisis (FT, Wolfgang Munchau)
• Euro Leaders Face October of Unrest After September Rally (Bloomberg)
• Dad, you were right (FT)
• 25% unemployment, 25% bad loans, 5% drop in Industrial Production, and IMF finally lowers its 2013 Greek GDP forecast (WSJ)
• Global IPOs Slump to Second-Lowest Level Since Financial Crisis (Bloomberg)
• France's Hollande faces street protest over EU fiscal pact (Reuters)
• EU Working to Resolve Difference on Bank Plan, Rehn Says (Bloomberg)
• China manufacturing remains sluggish (FT)
• Samaras vows to fight Greek corruption (FT) ... and one of these days he just may do it
• Leap of Faith (Hssman)
• Germany told to 'come clean’ over Greece (AEP)

After dropping to its 200 DMA, and threatening to breach its recent support level of 1.2800, the EURUSD has seen the usual powerlift over the past 4 hours, on two key events out of Europe: Eurozone unemployment, which came at a record 11.4%, up from 11.3% (which just happened to be revised to 11.4%) but because it was in line with expectations of the ongoing recession, all was forgiven. The other event was Eurozone manfucaturing PMI, which rose by the smallest amount possible from the 46.0 in August to 46.1, on expectations of an unchanged print. That 0.1% "beat" is what has so far set off a near 100 pip rush higher in the EURUSD, which has ignored the Chinese weakness overnight (the SHCOMP is closed for the Chinese Golden Week), as well as the UK PMI which did not share in the European "improvement" and tumbled from 49.5 to 48.4 on expectations of a 49.0 print (so much for that latest BOE easing), and instead is transfixed by headlines proclaiming the strongest PMI in 6 months. What also is being ignored is the components in the Eurozone PMI, with the leading New Order index falling to 43.5 from 43.7. But the data being ignored the hardest is the French PMI which tumbled to 42.7, the lowest print in 41 months, of which as MarkIt's chief economist Chris Williamson said "France is perhaps the new worry, with its PMI slumping to the lowest for three-and-a-half years." Coming at a 3+ year low when France desperately needs its new wealth redistribution budget to be credible, is not the best possible outcome. Bottom line: Europe is in a recession, but maybe not outright depression just yet, so the thinking is - buy the EUR, strengthen the currency, make German exports weaker, and make sure the recession becomes a full on depression. Or something like that.