Archive - Nov 2012 - Story

When Darwin conceived his theory of Natural Selection, he hardly had this in mind, but if it succeeds in eliminating the "less than viable", well... so be it.

Because only in America are people ready to kill each other for things they don't need and can't afford, after spending the day before being "grateful" for things they already have.

So we have the Greek debt crisis, the European Union budget problem and the European bank oversight issue and twenty-seven countries all wanting “this, that and the other” except “the other” is not that much fun unless Ms. Merkel surprises everyone by saying she is a little tired and pulling a Mae West and telling all twenty-seven nations that one will have to leave. The scenario is unlikely of course but then everyone involved is now playing the grand old game of “Work Around” where someone must pay and it is going to be anybody but them. “Not this little piggy,” says the IMF and “not this little piggy” says the ECB and “not this little piggy” says the European Union. This is all because no one wants the political winds to “blow their house down.”

Aside from fading any headlines and articles about a "recorder-er" Thankgsiving and holiday sales season...

Brazil’s aggressive efforts to weaken its currency by buying dollars – about $132 billion since the beginning of 2008 – have left the country with the sixth biggest international reserves in the world, about 80% of which is denominated in the US currency. However, recent turmoil in currency markets and concerns over the global financial crisis and fiat currencies in general has given Brazil’s authorities even more reason to diversify their holdings.  It has frequently stated its intention to diversify assets and reduce its exposure to currency risk. Recent sharp weakness in Brazil’s real (see table) and systemic risks are leading central banks, including the BCB to diversify into gold. Brazil raised its gold holdings by 17.2 tonnes in October to 52.5 tonnes, the highest level since January 2001. The move comes on the back of Brazil’s 1.7 tonne increase in September, the country’s first significant gold purchase in a decade. However, there are concerns that the increase in the Brazilian central bank gold holdings' and tonnage are not all that they seem.  It appears that the central bank in Brazil has not actually bought London Good Delivery bullion bars but rather fixed term gold deposits with bullion banks. Recently, the Brazilian central bank was asked about their gold reserves and about a section on gold on their website under 'Official Reserve Assets' lists gold as "gold (including gold deposit and, if appropriate, gold swapped)" with a footnote of "Includes available stock of financial gold plus time deposits."

• Boehner comments show tough road ahead for "fiscal cliff" talks (Reuters)
• Argentina angry at hedge fund court win (FT)
• EU Spars Over Budget as Chiefs See Possible Deadlock (Bloomberg)
• Merkel doubts budget deal possible this week, more talks needed (Reuters)
• Greek deal hopes lift market mood (FT)
• Greek Rescue Deal Faltering Cut in Rescue-Loan Rate (Bloomberg)
• Japan's Abe Pushes Stimulus (WSJ) - Unpossible: a Keynesian in Japan demanding stimulus? Say it isn't so. 
• Authorities Tried to Flip Trader in Insider Case (WSJ)

First it was Greece, which Europe couldn't "resolve" on Monday night despite Juncker's vocal promises to the contrary, and was embarrassed into postponing until next Monday when everything will surely be fixed. Now, the time has come to delay the "resolution" of the EU budget, which was supposed to be implement last night, then a decision was delayed until today, and now every European government leader is saying a new meeting will likely be needed to resolve the budget impasse. As BBG summarizes, "Divisions between rich and poor countries flared over the European Union’s next seven-year budget, leading German Chancellor Angela Merkel to rule out an accord until the new year. France defended farm subsidies, Britain clung to a rebate and Denmark demanded its own refund, while countries in eastern and southern Europe said reduced financing for public-works projects would condemn their economies to lag behind the wealthier north. “Positions remain too far apart,” Merkel told reporters early today after the first session of a summit in Brussels. “Probably there will be no result at the end of this summit. There may be some progress but it is probable that we will need to meet again at a second stage."  In other words the same old absolute and total chaos from the European Disunion we have all grown to love, in which the only solution each and every time is to delay reaching a solution, at least until after Merkel is reelected and in the meantime kicking the ever greater ball inventory in Draghi's court, where he too will promise to make everything better as long as he actually dosn't have to do anything.

The question whether China will suffer a "hard" or "soft" landing is, in the long-term, largely irrelevant and misleading. A far more critical question is whether the period of 10%, or even 7% annual growth, for the world's biggest marginal growth dynamo of the past decade, is now over. Read on for the answer.

Not the wider public.

Technically, a technical default may still be avoided, but it is now unlikely. As the following presentation from JPM's Vladimir Werning shows, the market has already decided what the "next most likely big picture step" will be. The big question is what the less than big picture next steps will be. And as the following flow chart of options to all "potentially" impaired parties shows, there are quite a few possible steps as the variety of causal permutations has suddenly exploded. For everyone who has gotten sick and tired with following the sovereign default story of one Greece and Spain, please welcome... Argentina, where things are about to get a whole lot more interesting.

That Greek suicide rates have exploded over the past two years is very much expected: after all, in order to preserve the sanctity of the failed monetary status quo, the Greek economy and its less than prosperous population have been sacrificed by the legacy elite and the wealthy. The socio-economic collapse has resulted in a total crash in economic production of goods and services, an nosebleed-inducing unemployment rate which increasing at a mindboggling 1% per month, and the rise of neo-nazism, with the Golden Dawn party now the third most popular political organization in the country (and rising rapidly). Sure enough, Kathimerini has confirmed that the" Greece's suicide rate increased by 37 percent between 2009 - 2011, To Pontiki newspaper reported quoting police data. The data, which was presented in Parliament by Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias following a request by SYRIZA MPs, showed that 3,124 suicides and attempted suicides have occurred in the debt-stricken country since 2009, the weekly newspaper said." As noted, no surprise in this very tragic headline on the day in which the world's still wealthiest nation gives gratitude for all its "wealth."

On America's day most famous for over-consumption, we thought a few minutes of reflection on the state of our world would be useful. Infamous for his correct predictions of the great recession, Europe's demise, and the collapse of the US financial system (as well as profiting handsomely from being right), so well captured in Michael Lewis' book "The Big Short", UCLA's Dr. Michael Burry undertakes UCLA's Economics Department's commencement speech with much aplomb. In this "age of infinite distraction", the painful 'truthiness' of this 15 minute speech is stunning from single-sentence summation of Europe's convulsions that "when the entitled elect themselves, the party accelerates, and the brutal hangover is inevitable" he reminds us that Californians, and indeed all Americans, should take note. A quarter-of-an-hour well spent from a self-described 'chicken-little' who was "just trying to figure it all out".

On occasions such as the increasingly binary-outcome world in which we exist today, it is perhaps more important to give thanks not for what has happened, but for what has not, such as this fictional and dramatic potential outcome.

S&P 500 futures limped 3-4 points higher from last night's close helped by a surge in EURUSD (and its correlated-ness). The most liquid FX pair in the world jumped like a penny stock up to a 1.2899 high this morning (up at three-week highs) just shy of its 50DMA. Merkel sprinkling some hope of a somehow favorable EU budget accord, no news is good news for Greece, and a Spanish reacharound auction seemed the catalysts for hope but we note two significant shifts today from the very recent risk-on regime: 1) credit markets in Europe diverged flat to lower from equities today; and 2) US equity futures also did not follow the path of least resistance higher with FX carry. Whether this is simple illiquidity is unclear; but typically on thin days, everything correlates and levitates - today in European corporate and sovereign bonds and US equities, that was not the case... and 2Y Bunds end the day back at 0.00%