Archive - Oct 9, 2012 - Story

The Federal Aviation Administration is working towards putting the finishing touches on rules and regulations for widespread domestic drone use, and the agency expects as many as 30,000 UAVs will be in America’s airspace by the decade’s end. As Russia Today notes, given that the department has already addressed the issue of acquiring drones to give the DHS a better eye of domestic doings, though, those law enforcement operations in question could very well transcend away from legitimate uses and quickly cause civil liberty concerns from coast-to-coast. All drones will be equipped with Electro-Optical/Infra-Red sensors, as well as the technology to sniff out certain chemicals from thousands of feet above our heads. Have no fear though, since the "Robotic Aircraft for Public Safety" program is for your own protection, we are sure Janet Napolitano would suggest.

Just as we will not tire of pointing out the unintended consequence of the Fed's central-planning efforts, so it is time, courtesy of the IMF's latest missive, to point out the vicious circle that the ECB has created and encouraged in Europe. The unintended consequence of the ECB's intervention - as both perpetual backstop and lender of last resort - has created an ever-increasing fragmentation between the core and the periphery (exactly the supposed 'issue' Draghi is attempting to fix with his OMT). The toxic-debt-loop as capital leaves the periphery for the core, pressuring peripheral bond yields/spreads, and forcing private sector borrowing to be replaced by public-sector not only clouds the true picture for real-money investors or depositors (risk-based pricing has been destroyed) but encourages front-running fast-money flows which do nothing but provide short-term cover for banks/sovereigns to delay the inevitable (and potential market-clearing) deleveraging/restructuring that is required. Because the fundamental issue is one of solvency - not liquidity - the ECB's continued artifice of plugging liquidity shortfalls does nothing but lessen the confidence in the system and reduce any faith in price levels as without addressing the real insolvency, trust will never return.

If your predictions are wildly out-of-whack with reality, you need to change your approach. Jared Bernstein and Christy Romer Administration predictions have been an unmitigated disaster. Not only did the real figures not match up to the advertised ones, but they are also much worse than the baseline expectations. Romer and Bernstein appear to have both severely under-estimated the depth of the crisis, and over-estimated the effectiveness of the stimulus package. Obama might talk about spreading the wealth around, but the aggregate effect of the policies pursued during his administration have squarely benefited large corporations and the financial sector, and not the middle class or small business. Is reinflating financial bubbles and pumping up corporate profits Obama’s idea of recovery? The money isn’t trickling down, and small businesses and the middle class are more in debt than they were before the crisis started.

While yesterday it was the sovereigns who suffered the wrath of the IMF's wholesale growth outlook downgrade (unbeknownst to Christine Lagarde), today it is the turn of the financial sector (which is increasingly being blurred with the former in a world in which central banks are used to both backstop bank liabilities and fund endless public deficits, unafraid of the consequences in a closed loop fiat world in which defection is, so far, impossible) to be greeted by a cold dose of reality emanating from the IMF's "Global Financial Stability Report" especially as pertains to Europe's insolvent banking system. The most notable finding of said report is the admission that the IMF was only kidding when it said six months ago, in April of this year, that the worst case outlook now has European banks deleveraging to the tune of $3.8 trillion through the end of 2013, or over the next 14 months: now this number is 18% higher, or a gargantuan $4.5 trillion (12% of bank assets). This is how much debt Eurobanks will need to shed in a "weak policies" case in which Europe continues to delay implementing fiscal reform, aka austerity, as per Figure 2.14. Even the baseline (and this being the IMF it means it has zero chance of happening) scenario is not much better, at a revised $2.8 (7.3%) trillion in deleveraging. The reason for the increase is due to "lower expected earnings, higher losses linked to worsened economic conditions, and greater funding pressures on banks."

US corporations are sitting on more cash than at any point since World War II. That's without including banks. We're only talking about nonfinancial corporations – the ones that sell goods and services and make the economy go. Those businesses hold $1.4 trillion. As investors, we can infer quite a bit from corporations' inability (or unwillingness) to deploy their cash. For one, it indicates that business have assumed a very defensive stance. Cash, of course, is a buffer against uncertainty - the uncertainty that business slows for any reason. But $1.4 trillion? That tells us that businesses are not just a little jittery about the future. They're prepared for an apocalypse.

With the market seemingly oblivious to the dismal reality of the fiscal-cliff (from a priced-in perspective) in the same way as equities trade at four-year highs while earnings are at three-year lows; it is perhaps useful to get a grasp of the maelstrom that awaits congress as they begin to tackle the fiscal-cliff on November 12. As we discussed here, the downside potential is considerable with complacency high and just as Goldman expects no real progress to be made until December (at the earliest), the market (i.e. a correction) may be the only lever to move our political elite from their respective higher ground. While talk will be of 'grand bargains', we, like Goldman, remain skeptical that any broad reform package will be completed and instead some short-term extension may be achieved. The following Q&A explains how that sausage could be made in all its gory detail. (e.g. Q: Can Congress actually put together a "grand bargain" fiscal agreement in the short time available? A: It is difficult to see how.)

Since the release of the most recent BLS Employment Situation Report, which showed an astounding drop in the unemployment rate, we have spent a good bit of time dissecting the release and discussing why the real unemployment rate is really between 17% and 22% depending on how you calculate it.  (See Here and Here)  However, today's release of the September NFIB Small Business Survey shows the extent to which the current BLS employment calculation method may have detached from reality. No matter how you look at the data there is a clear disconnect between the BLS report and economic realities.  From the NFIB's point view it is "economic uncertainty" that weighs on business owners and keeps them on the defensive.  The actions by the Federal Reserve to buy bonds and inject liquidity into the financial system does not solve the problem of "poor sales", reduce regulations that strangle growth or solve the "fiscal cliff" issues that threaten business profitability by the end of the year.  

You saw the original, then you saw the mock version, now from BadLipReading, comes the.... well... farce of the original farce? Considering that Big Bird is now the marginal figure in "the most important presidential election ever" it is only fitting that the entire presidential election process is nothing but one big joke.

CMI is down over 7% after-hours as it seems the 16% cut in Aluminum demand that Alcoa just announced can no longer be ignored. Reality is that Cummins is slashing guidance and cutting jobs in "response to the weakening global economy."

• *CUMMINS TO CUT UP TO 1500 JOBS, LOWERS YEAR REV, EBIT FORECASTS
• *CUMMINS SEES YEAR EBIT ABOUT 13.5%, SAW 14.25%-14.75%  :CMI US
• *CUMMINS PRELIM 3Q REV. ABOUT $4.1B, EST. $4.425B       :CMI US
• *CUMMINS SEES 2012 REV. $17B, SAW $18B, EST. $18.11B    :CMI US

"We continued to see weak economic data in a number of regions during the third quarter increasing the level of uncertainty regarding the direction of the global economy.... Demand in China has weakened in most end markets"

Two words - Priced In?

The other day the Huffington Post ran an article by a Bonnie Kavoussi called “11 Lies About the Federal Reserve.” And you’ll never guess: these aren’t lies or myths spread in the financial press by Fed apologists. These are “lies” being told by you and me, opponents of the Fed. Bonnie Kavoussi calls us “Fed-haters.” So she, a Fed-lover, is at pains to correct these alleged misconceptions. She must stop us stupid ingrates from poisoning our countrymen’s minds against this benevolent array of experts innocently pursuing economic stability. Here are the 11 so-called lies (she calls them “myths” in the actual rendering), and Tom Woods and Bob Murphy's responses.

You've heard the CEO's oracular outlook; you've read the press-release; you've seen Maria Bartiromo flush and the algos stymied in after-hours trading. Now here are the facts: Free Cash Flow: Q3 -$39MM; Adjusted EBITDA: Q3 $282mm, down 45% from Q2; Adjusted EBITDA: Q3 2011: $821 MM; Q2 2012: $ 517 MM; Q3 2013: $282 MM; Adjusted EBITDA Margin Changes: Q1 2012: 12.8%;  Q2 2012: 8.7%; Q3 2012 4.8%. Total debt: $9,524; Net debt: $8,092; LTM EBITDA $1,875 million; Total Leverage: 5.1x; Net Leverage: 4.3x

and here is the correlation...

UPDATE: AA earnings beat, missed, won, lost, with forecasts up and down... facts below!

From the close after the Fed's QEternity announcement, it may surprise some that the Russell 2000, Nasdaq, and Dow Transports are all down 4%. S&P futures have retraced all of last week's gains, dropping the most in over week amid significant volume. AAPL dumped to its 100DMA, bounced, failed to break yesterday's VWAP close, then tumbled back to today's VWAP for another down day. VIX popped the most in 2 weeks (up over 1.2 vols) to end at 16.2%. From the 9/14 peak in stocks, only Healthcare is in the green, with Energy/Tech/Materials down around 5%. Oil jumped higher (up 3% on the week) in the face of USD strength that weighed a little on the rest of the commodity sector.

Nothing materially new here from David Rosenberg's latest letter, but it is useful to keep being reminded over and over how central planning has totally destroyed the primary function of capital markets: discounting, and replaced it with a dumb terminal which only responds to red flashing headlines reporting of neverending liquidity. "If the Fed really had its way, the economy would be booming. But it is sputtering. For all the talk of one month's employment report — look at the entire quarter for crying out loud. Looking at total labour input, aggregate hours worked, it eked out a tepid 0.8% annualized gain in Q3....That the stock market is up 16% this year (on track for the best year since 2009) with earnings contracting underscores the major success of Fed policy in 2012 — managing to deflect investor attention away from negative profit trends and towards its pregnant balance sheet. So welcome to the new normal: the Fed has managed to negotiate a divorce between the economy and equity market behaviour.

Couldn't happen to a nicer crony capitalist's favorite stock:

• U.S. FILES CIVIL MORTGAGE FRAUD SUIT AGAINST WELLS FARGO
• U.S. CLAIMS WELLS FARGO FALSELY CERTIFIED FHA LOANS
• GOVERNMENT SEEKS DAMAGES AND PENALTIES FOR RECKLESS LOANS
• FHA FORCED TO PAY `HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS' FOR DEFAULTED LOANS

Well, Charlie: "Suck it in" (even more than just the recent epic collapse of BYD of course). As for Wells, sorry Warren, but just like gold, you can't really fondle that stock certificate, held by DTCC in proxy, either.

A few days after the Fed launched QEternity we posted a roadmap for the post-QE track that Oil prices have mysteriously followed. We are now T+20 days from QEternity which corresponds to the post-QE trough based on the average of QE1 and QE2. What is fascinating about the following chart is just how closely the price of WTI crude has tracked the average path post-QE that we laid out three weeks ago. Is this the short-term lows? Who knows, but it seems that the divergence between WTI and Brent is narrowing with WTI playing catch up...