Archive - Oct 2012 - Story

There was a time, long ago, when economic data mattered, and when Goldman's NFP forecast was considered one of the best on the street due to the proximity of The Pound and Pence to both 85 Broad and 33 Liberty. Then Goldman went to 200 West, central planning took over, and Bizarro world was the result, where a huge NFP beat would mean a collapse in the stock market once the prospect of QEternity actually ending returns. In other words, Goldman lost its touch. Yet their insight can still be valuable. Which is why below we present the argumentation that Goldman's Sven Jari Stehn uses to expect a BLS payroll number of 100,000 tomorrow, translating into an 8.1% unemployment rate.

Hint: It's not the "sovereigns." The chart below (an update of a chart we showed some years ago: not unexpectedly, Dexia no longer made the cut) shows the ratio of the biggest European and American bank assets to domicile nation GDP. The red line is the 50% assets/GDP breakeven. It is safe to say that if a bank's "assets" whether marked to myth, unicorns, or markets (sadly nobody has done the latter in the past 3 years) represents at least half of a domicile nation's GDP, the bank is obviously Too Humongous To Fail, and when it comes to leverage it is its unelected executive committee which calls the real shots for not only the host country, but any monetary union it may be part of. This is how 20 or so corner offices hijacked Europe. The ironic observation is that for all the complaints about the TBTF phenomenon in the US (banks in red), it is Europe where the TBTF spectacle will truly unfurl once the central banks finally lose control, and the giant unwind begins.

While the discussions between these two legends varied from Phat Phong nightlife to Dow 30,000, and from China bullishness to AAPL bearishness, it was the conversation about the actions of Bernanke, and more importantly our political leaders that summed up perfectly the dreadful reality in which we find ourselves. The punchline: "It is very dangerous to have ignorant people believing that they know something."

A gang of 16 shady individuals have been arrested by Iranian officials for allegedly smuggling currencies outside the banking network in order to increase the value of foreign currencies and to disturb the public. As CNN reports, amid the protests in the clip below, Iran says the 16 unidentified individuals "had used an atmosphere of psychological war created by the enemy" and colluded with "certain domestic and foreign groups" to exacerbate conditions. One of the accused, allegedly, had $300mm going through a bank account and "will be dealt with soon." Those arrested "were the main players in the recent fluctuations in the foreign currency market," the Tehran Judiciary said in a statement as the public panics over a 60% drop in its currency's purchasing power in the last few weeks. Of course, a 99% drop in the USD's purchasing power is acceptable to the US public since it has been achieved over a century or so...

UPDATE: ZNGA re-opened -13%, now -16%

That foundation of social media monetization has just announced a cut to its outlook and plenty more. The stock is currently halted but its proxy FB is being sold after-hours...

• *ZYNGA SEES YR BOOKING $1.085B TO $1.100B, SAW $1.15B-$1.225B
• *ZYNGA 3Q PRELIM EST. $286.4M, SAW $300M-$305M,       :ZNGA US
• *ZYNGA SEES YR ADJ EBITDA $147M-$162M, SAW $180M-$250M :ZNGA US
• *ZYNGA 3Q PERLIM ADJ. BREAKEVEN-LOSS 1C; SAW BREAKEVEN
• *ZYNGA CITES REDUCED EXPECTATIONS FOR `THE VILLE,' OTHERS
• *ZYNGA SEES CHARGE ON INTANGIBLE ASSETS ACQUIRED ON OMGPOP

Who couldanode? Securitizing synthetic farms and paying huge premia for acquisitional growth wouldn't pay off? Is OMGPOP accepted as collateral at the ECB yet?

The fact that naturally scarce currencies like gold do not hyperinflate — even in times of extreme economic stress — suggests that the underlying mechanism here is of an extreme exogenous event causing a severe drop in productivity. Governments then run the printing presses attempting to smooth over such problems — for instance in the Weimar Republic when workers in the occupied Ruhr region went on a general strike and the Weimar government continued to print money in order to pay them. While hyperinflation can in theory arise either out of either ?Q or ?M, government has no reason to inject a hyper-inflationary volume of money into an economy that still has access to global exports, that still produces sufficient levels of energy and agriculture to support its population, and that still has a functional infrastructure.  This means that the indicators for imminent hyperinflation are not economic so much as they are geopolitical — wars, trade breakdowns, energy crises, socio-political collapse, collapse in production, collapse in agriculture. While all such catastrophes have preexisting economic causes, a bad economic situation will not deteriorate into full-collapse and hyperinflation without a severe intervening physical breakdown.

Threaky Thursday. Oil perfectly round-tripped its plunge from yesterday (ending back above $91.50) as Treasury yields caught 'up' to equity strength on the week. USD weakness was a one-way street of straight-line trend from 0500ET in EUR today - until the Fed minutes broke something. Gold and stocks continue their synchronized lift - though gold is still the clear winner post QEternity. Trannies outperformed again but the day-session in the Dow and the S&P were largely treading water - after the factory-order-driven stop run surge this morning. Meanwhile, all those front-running winners in MBS land have seemingly started to unwind - as mortgage spreads have retraced post-QEternity gains quite significantly (which is likely what helped Treasury yields higher today - though the convergence to risk also helped). The ubiquitous 3ET AAPL ramp was modestly front-run and epically failed as the stock-that-shall-not-be-named closed red with a $666 handle once again with some major volume at the close. VIX was solidly banged lower right at the close (coinciding with AAPL's high volume action) to end at 14.55 (down 0.88vols) in line with the S&P.

Not much to say here. Hopefully, for the bulls' sake, the Obama reelection odds (which really are Bernanke, and thus QEternity, termination odds) are not a leading indicator to the market. Either that, or the recent spike in Obama's ratings was merely a bubble which got preemptively popped even without 5 consecutive CME margin hikes on the Obama InTrade contract.

As corn prices have rolled over and even the World Bank worries over the impact of financial crises and food prices, we present with little comment, one of the more staple sustenances - now trading at record high prices... transitory we presume?

"The squeeze is on, and people are doing desperate things," is how one independent described the situation in California. As Bloomberg reports, a shortage of supply along with drastically higher wholesale prices of gasoline has caused 'mom-and-pop' gas stations to close down as their margins are destroyed. 

• *VALERO SAYS SUPPLY IN CALIFORNIA HAS TIGHTENED
• *VALERO SAYS IT HAS TEMPORARILY HALTED SPOT SALES IN CALIFORNIA

The problem is likely a short-term one, according to some, thanks to the temporary shutdown of local refineries (after Chevron's Richmond refinery fire) and maintenance but it is clear that even a short-term blip in wholesale prices (whether driven by local supply or global geopolitics) causes pain as it would appear we are close to 'inelastic' levels of demand.

While some have blamed last night's 'performance anxiety' on the President's efforts to save our economy and not having time to practice, and others at Romney's 'bullying' of the moderator, it seems Al Gore has come up with the real reason - it's the altitude, stupid!

Same members, same voters, same views, same tools:

• *FOMC PARTICIPANTS SAW `SIGNIFICANT DOWNSIDE RISKS' TO GROWTH
• *FOMC PARTICIPANTS SAW `PERSISTENT HEADWINDS' TO RECOVERY
• *FOMC PARTICIPANTS SAW FISCAL POLICY AS A `DRAG' ON ECONOMY
• *FOMC PARTICIPANTS SAID HOUSING MARKET IMPEDING RECOVERY
• *FED OFFICIALS SAW MANAGEABLE BOND BUYING RISKS, MINUTES SHOW

Confirming that it is always the markets who make the news, especially when the news is explained by "world renowned commodity experts" who really are only long of newsletter sales in constantly wrong terms, yesterday's slide in oil was quickly and clinically "justified" with the near certainty that Iran's regime was on the verge of collapse following the local currency devaluation. We welcome these same "experts" to justify away why it is that the HFT algos which comprise over 30% of the CME's revenue have decided to send WTI right back to unchanged in yesterday terms. Because it would appear that today the Iranian regime is suddenly more entrenched than ever, and hyperinflation is actually a sure fire way to cement a so called dictator in his throne (as we said previously).

Almost precisely a year ago we posted "268 NY Credit Suisse Employees Learn They Are About To Be Laid Off Via Department Of Labor Website." Now, a year later, irony has struck again, as this time 138 employees from an already substantially trimmed Credit Suisse office in Manhattan, find out courtesy of the DOL's WARN website, but certainly not their HR team who wants everyone as motivated as possible until the "Hammer Hits" day, they have just been made redundant in the critical Christmas bonus season between October and December 29, 2012. Instead now everyone will be undermotivated until they get to learn who gets sacked.  All that is left now are the actual identities of the pink slippees. The only other open question is whether the loss to US Federal and NY State tax revenues and US GDP will be offset by the more broken windows that are increasingly being discounted as a result of the ever rising unemployment and greater social unrest (not to mention part time NYPD jobs especially if sharpshooting is actually involved in their training this time).

The nature of what is ‘legal’ has become a truly bizarre concept these days. Developed nations of the west have hundreds of thousands of pages of rules, codes, regulations, laws, decrees, executive orders, etc., many of which are contradictory, archaic, and incomprehensible. Across these ‘free’ nations, the law is selectively enforced, selectively applied, and completely set aside whenever it pleases the state. As such, even the most harmless of activities (operating a lemonade stand, collecting rainwater, etc.) can be cast as illegal… while the direct theft of people’s wealth through taxes and manipulation of the currency is considered legal. There is no morality anymore in the law. And even still, whatever few activities may still be considered ‘legal’ are subject to consequences if the enforcers simply decide they don’t like it.