Archive - Dec 2012 - Story

On November 27th, 2012, the Eurogroup (comprising the Eurozone’s finance ministers) reached a decision on Greece. Its essence is a guarantee that Greece will remain in the Eurozone (and therefore off the Northern European agenda) for another ten to twelve months; at the very least until the German federal political cycle has seen through the election of a new Bundestag. The repercussions of this short-sighted agreement are grave not only for Greece but for the Eurozone, and indeed the European Union, more broadly. The fact that the markets’ expectation of some OMT assistance for Italy and Spain are keeping their bonds’ yields low, for the time being, does not alter the fact that the vicious contagion dynamic is gathering strength. Beyond this ‘small’ matter, Rome, Madrid and, indeed, Paris must now reckon with a Eurogroup decision that demonstrates how bogus all talk of a Growth Pact really has been. The fact that the Eurozone’s finance ministers declared, without the slightest hesitation, that substantial growth will come to depression-hit Greece without an iota of a smidgeon of a hint of fresh public investment reveals that Europe is truly blind to what it will take to deal with the recession it faces in aggregate and with the various depressions in its Periphery. So, what will come of Greece, given the latest Eurogroup ‘decision’? It is my fear, and belief, that the country is becoming a version of Kosovo – a protectorate in which the euro remains the currency, sovereignty is minimal, the population is ruled over by a glorified kleptocracy with strong links with Berlin and, last but not least, a permanent migratory flow is established that sees the young and the skilled move to northern Europe and beyond.

The personal income and spending report Friday morning left a lot to be desired for those expecting a stronger economic environment soon.  However, the report fell well in line with what we have been expecting over the past several months as the drag on real wages and incomes have weighed on the consumer; and with personal consumption making up more the 70% of the economy, changes to employment, incomes or credit has an immediate and significant impact to growth. When it comes to the economy, and particularly the ongoing recession watch that has nearly become a sporting event, it is real (inflation adjusted) incomes that matter.  In the most recent report we see that real personal incomes declined for the month from $11,546 to $11,532 billion for the month reflecting a -.12 change. Economic expansion since the last recession has been hovering around a flat line for the past seven months. The next couple of months will be very telling about the strength of the underlying economy.  The manufacturing data continues to point to further economic weakness, hiring plans have deteriorated and the main drivers of economic growth have all stagnated. While we can hope to get lucky that things will work out for the best - "hope" rarely works out as an investment strategy.

The natural reaction from policy makers, so far, has not surprised us. Rather than addressing the source of the problem, they have and continue to attack the symptoms. The problem, simply, is that governments have coerced financial institutions and pension plans to hold sovereign debt at a zero risk-weight, assuming it is risk-free... and just like since the beginning of the 17th century almost every serious intellectual advance had to begin with an attack on some Aristotelian doctrine, I fear that in the 21st century, we too will have to begin attacking anything supporting the belief that the issuer of the world’s reserve currency cannot default, if we are ever to free ourselves from this sad state of affairs. This problem truly brings western civilization back to the time of Plato, when there was nothing “…worthy to be called knowledge that could be derived from the senses…” and when “…the only real knowledge had to do with concepts…”. Policy makers then believe in recapitalization and coercive smooth unwinds. With regards to recapitalization, I will just say that we are not facing a “stock”, but a “flow” problem. With regards to smooth unwinds, I think it is obvious by now that the unwind of a levered position cannot be anything but violent, like any other lie that is exposed by truth. Establishing restrictions to delay the unmasking would only make the unwinds even more violent and self-fulfilling. But these considerations, again, are foreign the metaphysics of policy making in the 21st century.

After this year's presidential campaign, private equity and certainly Bain Capital, will likely be the last entity that those pandering to populist agendas will go to advice over the future of the business cycle in broad terms, and the future of US labor, most certainly including outsourcing, in narrow terms. And Goldman - that staunch defender of the superiority of capital over labor - will hardly be confused as ever taking the role of workers in any discussion. Which is why we read the following interview by Goldman's Hugo Scott-Gall with Bain Capital partners Michael Garstka and Alan Bird on such topics as corporate restructurings and the future of outsourcing with great interest, as it is very much unlikely that any of the conventional media sources would carry it. And while one may have ideological biases in whatever direction, the truth as presented previously, is that US private equity is a massive "behind the scenes" juggernaut, whose portfolio holding companies account for a whopping 8% of US GDP, and is directly and indirectly responsible for tens of millions of currently employed US workers! At the end of the day, it may well be that what private equity firms such as Bain think about the future of US labor prospects is the most important thing that matters for the future of the so very critical US unemployment rate. Which is why we present, for your reading pleasure, the somewhat unorthodox interview below...

One of the best bond traders on Wall Street said this recently:  “Get ready for The Great Bond Shortage in North America.  If it has a cusip and it is rated, it is going higher/tighter.” The compression in bond spreads since the Fed started all of their “made-up/newly printed money for free” antics is the root of all of this and we do not expect a change anytime soon. There are various estimations for the 2013 net new issue supply in all sectors of Fixed Income but I peg it around $400 billion.  Around $800 billion will be paid to bond holders during the year in coupon payments and, if reinvested, will cause a supply deficit of about $400 billion for the year.  Exacerbating all of this is the Fed, who will buy around $500 billion in MBS this year and perhaps the same amount in Treasuries which could take $1 trillion out of the market all by itself. Consequently we face a lack of bonds denominated somewhere between $900 billion and $1.4 trillion, depending upon the Fed, which will increase the rolling train of compression, lower interest rates further in all likelihood and cause great angst for investors who will find very little of value left in the Fixed Income markets. Safety; yes but yield; no. Inflation and Deflation, it should be noted, only work in operative systems; but it is not Inflation or Deflation that are going to matter in the short run, though it will later; it will be the lack of bonds of any sort to purchase and a stock market that may be dangerously out of sync with the fundamentals opening the possibility of a crash. If so much money is printed and so little regard is placed upon fundamental economic principles then the Real Estate crash of several years ago will look like child’s play by comparison. “Systemic Breakdown” would be the functioning words.

There was a time when flings (insert personal contextual experience) used to be simple, impromptu, largely trivial things seeking instant gratification. That was until Shell's Floating Liquid Natural Gas facility, or FLiNG, came along: currently being built in the South Korean shipyards (largely unoccupied in the past several years after a surge in dry bulk container ship construction left the industry with a massive inventory glut and little demand for its precision engineering), this behemoth of a ship, measuring nearly half a kilometer in length, and displacing 600,000 tonnes of water, will be the world's largest offshore floating facility when deployed 200 km off the north-west coast of Australia in 2017 to process the recently discovered Prelude and Concerto gas fields. It will also likely revolutionize the field of Liquified Natural Gas extraction.

Some policymakers (and commentators) are attempting to make a molehill out of a mountain; seemingly less worried about the outcome of negotiations in the short-term, as they believe the cliff is not a cliff, but more of a slope, since economic damage will initially be limited while any equity market sell-off will only spur a resolution. We tend to side with Barclays and BofAML that the full set of expiring measures constitutes a cliff, not a slope. In brief, here is why - automatic withholdings and in Geithner's words "no authority to delay the process." The extent to which households can buffer this higher withholding is significantly weak as recent 'savings' rates have plunged - implying a need to draw on liquid assets to smooth any consumption shortfall. Citing Winston Churchill, BofAML sums up the siutation well - "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they have tried everything else," and we remain stoic that stock market weakness and severe outside criticism will be important in forcing any agreement, as the politicians appear to face six signficant hurdles ahead. Meet the Three 'F's of Fiscal Policy In America...

Anyone watching the close of the market last night will likely still be shaking off the hangover as we noted 'the most ridiculous' market movements occurred in the space of a few milliseconds. As ever, trusty investigator of all things ridiculous in equity markets, Nanex highlights a rather disturbing trend, now completed its third year, where volume compression simply breaks the market. On 11/30/11, quotes from Nasdaq suddenly stopped for about 20 seconds after another explosive close where multiple seconds worth of trading were jammed into the last second. However, trading at Nasdaq wasn't affected. This is yet another example of where direct feeds illegally give data to one group of subscribers ahead of the consolidated feed. Clearly, the NBBO was ignored. For the last 3 years (2009, 2010, and 2011), there has been unusually high trading activity in the final minutes of trading activity on the last trading day in November. We show one example stock in detail below (SPY). Human discounting of a known rebalancing event? No. Completely 'broken markets' that are driven by self-reinforcing and chaos-reverting algos? Yes.

Thanks in large part to the supply-constructing yield-compressing repression of a few 'apparently well meaning' bad men running the central banks of the world, the divergence between fundamental weakness and credit spread 'strength' is at record levels. The overwhelming 'technical' flow of funds from investors combined with an 'end of equity' cult and belief that tail-risks have been removed (OMT) juxtaposes with earnings crumbling, ratings downgrades, and the exogenous fact that a complex system means a systemic crisis is inevitable (especially after such ongoing volatility suppression). As Citi's Matt King notes, while "it is almost impossible to predict exactly when they start," the desperation for yield has led to highly unstable equilibria - as what investors can't earn they will lever; via lower-quality 'levered' assets (PIKs and BB/CCCs for example) or 'levered' vehicles (CLOs and structured credit). Sure enough, margins (street repo haircuts are low and NYSE margin accounts high) look very 2007-like. While yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater will typically get the people moving, it seems the movie that is playing in corporate credit is simply too engrossing for many to listen.

In the recent past we noted the somewhat startling reality that "the single mom is better off earning gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045." While mathematics is our tool - as opposed to the mathemagics of some of the more politically biased media who did not like our message - the painful reality in America is that: for increasingly more Americans it is now more lucrative - in the form of actual disposable income - to sit, do nothing, and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work. This is such an important topic that we felt it necessary to warrant a second look. The graphic below quite clearly, and very painfully, confirms that there is an earnings vacuum of around $40k in which US workers are perfectly ambivalent toward inputting more effort since it does not result in any additional incremental disposable income. With the ongoing 'fiscal cliff' battles over taxes and entitlements, this is a problematic finding, since - as a result - it is the US government that will have to keep funding indirectly this lost productivity and worker output (via wealth redistribution).

What changed in the last 30 days? Did the world just wake up to the idea that the only way out of this quagmire is a twisted currency war that appears to have re-ignited thanks to Abe's efforts? Something appears to have snapped in the American psyche as the last 30 days have seen the largest physical gold sales on record. Between the search volume for 'bulk ammo' and this, we fear something is afoot and while Congress fiddles as our economy burns, Bernanke going 'back to work' is perhaps what the physical 'horders' are thinking... or maybe they understand, as we noted here, that just as Kyle Bass has confirmed previously, Paper Gold is just like allocated, unambiguously owned physical bullion... until it’s not.

Several months after the world rejoiced following the 2011 Arab Spring took the world by storm, and replaced one dictator in the MENA region with what appears to be another now that the US-endorsed "democratically elected" Mursi is better known as Morsillini, having granted himself "temporary" dictatorial powers, we warned that it was only a matter of time before the Arab Spring turns into an Arab Thermodorian Reaction, aka an Arab Counterrevolution. And this time the world is devoid of such romantic concepts as a season of the year to tie this logical reaction to, as it now appears certain that this is going to be a long and drawn out process, lasting not only longer than just one season, but stretching years. Sure enough, after Egypt succumbed to the inevitable power vacuum response, it is now the turn of the place that started it all: Tunisia, where the local national guard is firing against its own people once more.

The 2007 puncturing of housing market prices and the 2008 financial market swoon are the precedents to two much larger and much more dangerous bubbles. These more pernicious threats are the dollar bubble ("printing money") and the government debt bubble ("borrowing money"). While both are expanding at a sickening pace, in the near term they deceptively make things seem much better than they are. But, like all bubbles, they are unsustainable. The Fed is well-aware of this dire probability, but finds itself increasingly stuck to avoid it. The Fed's main strategic consists completely of "hope". It's backup strategy? "Panic" and thus the need to focus on preservation of purchasing power, and positioning one's financial assets safely before the aftershock arrives.

The conflict between labor and capital is a long and illustrious one, and one in which ideology and politics have played a far greater role than simple economics and math. And while labor enjoyed a brief period of growth in the the past 100 years first due to the anti-trust and anti-monopoly, and pro-union laws and regulations taking place in the early 20th century US, and subsequently due to the era of "Great Moderation"-driven "trickling down" abnormal growth in the developed world, it is precisely the unwind of this latest period of prosperity, loosely known as "The New Normal", and in which economic growth will persist at well sub-optimal (<2%) rates for the foreseeable future, that is pushing the precarious balance between labor and capital costs - in their purest economic sense, and stripped of all ethics and ideology - to a point in which labor will likely find itself at a persistent disadvantage, leading to the same social upheaval that ushered in pure Marxist ideology in the late 19th century. Only this time there will be a peculiar twist, because while in relative terms labor costs as a percentage of all operating expenses are declining around the world, when accounting for benefits, and entitlement funding, labor costs are rising in absolute terms if at uneven rates and are now at record highs. Which sets the stage for what may probably be the biggest push-pull tension of the 21st century for the simple worker: declining relative wages, which however are increasing in absolute terms when factoring in the self-funded components paid into an insolvent welfare system. But the rub comes when one considers the biggest disequilibrium creator of all: central bank predicated cost of capital "planning", whereby Fed policies may be the most insidious and stealth destroyer of all of labor's hard won gains over the past century. 

The greater story behind Mark Carney’s appointment to the Bank of England may be the completion of Goldman Sachs’ multi-tentacled takeover of the European regulatory and central banking system. But let’s take a moment to look at the mess he is leaving behind in Canada, the home of moose, maple syrup, Jean Poutine and now colossal housing bubbles. George Osborne (who as I noted last month wants more big banks in Britain) might have recruited Carney on the basis of his “success” in Canada. But in reality he is just another Greenspan — a bubble-maker and reinflationist happy to pump the banking sector full of loose money and call it “prosperity” before the irrational exuberance runs dry, and the bubble inevitably bursts.