Archive - Feb 3, 2012 - Story

The real meaning of a treasury bear market may not be a flight out of treasuries into another asset class. Rather it real import could be the lack of liquidity available anywhere for nearly any asset class... Liquidity acts in a financial system like ample water, ambient temperature, and clean air act in an ecosystem. It makes trading strategies proliferate. Further, it makes meaningful intermediation possible, fostering the growth in high yield bonds and marketable loans. Yes, derivatives like vanilla stock options and others too. A financial system without liquidity is like a tropical ecosystem dried into a desert. Without liquidity, it is an open question whether the arbitrage pricing revolution will outlast the antiquated mark-ups of reinsurers. Liquidity makes random processes stationary, which is crucial to make the probabilistic foundations of risk neutral pricing work. Is it intuitively possible to price (and even more buy and sell) credit and interest rate risk without some liquidity in the underlying? How can a bank generate carry when the curve is flat and there is no appreciable differential anywhere that has a minimum tolerance of liquidity?

While Marc Faber shares the usual stock of insightful market commentary, together with timing inflection points, and extended thoughts in the attached Bloomberg TV clip, it is the fact that he has officially joined Bill Gross, and so many others, in supporting the candidacy of Ron Paul as president. It is rather sad that only those who see beyond the surface of the current pyramid scheme facade, are bold enough to endorse the only man who is right for the White House. Fast forward to 15 minutes into the video to hear Marc Faber: "Ron Paul would be a very good president."

While the world rejoices in the aftermath of the enjoyable diversion in which a fake market surges on fake, politically-motivated data, which incidentally refutes the warning voiced last week by the Fed Chairman who has a far better grasp of the economy than the BLS, warned last week, the confluence of real events continues to indicate that something is brewing in the middle east. Only this time it is not the US adding another aircraft carrier to the three already situated by the Straits of Hormuz. This time the smoke and fire come from Israel. ABC reports that "Israeli facilities in North America -- and around the world -- are on high alert, according to an internal security document obtained by ABC News that predicted the threat from Iran against Jewish targets will increase. "We predict that the threat on our sites around the world will increase … on both our guarded sites and 'soft' sites," stated a letter circulated by the head of security for the Consul General for the Mid-Atlantic States. Guarded sites refers to government facilities like embassies and consulates, while 'soft sites' means Jewish synagogues, and schools, as well as community centers like the one hit by a terrorist bombing in Buenos Aires in 1994 that killed 85 people." Hopefully the head of security's prediction track record is better than that of the CBO, and that the very act of prediction does not in effect "make it so." At least courtesy of this latest escalation by Israel we get a clue of what to focus on, if not so much who the actual aggressors will be. In the meantime, Iran, which has been dealing with hyperinflation for weeks now, and likely has bigger problems to worry about than focusing on "soft sites" will naturally sense this escalation as the provocation it may well be meant to be, respond in kind, which will lead to further responses of definite attacks imminent by Iran's adversaries, and so on, and so forth, until finally the dam wall finally cracks.

A one-stop shop summary of bullish and bearish perspectives on this weeks news, data, and markets.

Rarely do we have two Friday Humor pieces in a row, but the following seminar announcement from the Banco de Portugal, of all places, is truly priceless...

Just when you thought it was safe (well not really) to dip your toe back in the ocean of European equities on the back of the LTRO-enthused hope that credit contraction will cease and growth will return, we note another (perhaps more instantaneous) drag on the economic fortitude of the long-suffering people of the EU. Belgium's Beursduivel notes that the national average price for a liter of petrol (gas) has reached a Euro-zone record high of EUR1.76 which equates to a US (not imperial) gallon cost of (drum roll please) USD8.75 (given current EURUSD levels). As Greece, for example, basks in the hope of the failing Troika talks, they unfortunately will have to pay significantly more (double from 3 years ago) for their driving (or boat fuel) as despite the faltering economies across Europe, the price of petrol, diesel, and LPG are also near record highs - and all this without an actual Iran invasion.

We have examined the nuance of the euphoric jobs data this morning from every angle and by now there should be plenty of 'information' for investors to make their own minds up on its credibility. However, the avuncular CEO of TrimTabs, who despite channeling Lewis Black lately, likely knows this data a little better than the average Jim on the street having collected tax witholdings data for the past 14 years, is modestly apoplectic at the adjustments. In one of his more colorful episodes, and rightfully so, Charles Biderman notes that "Either there is something massively changed in the income tax collection world, or there is something very, very suspicious about today’s BLS hugely positive number," adding, "Actual jobs, not seasonally adjusted, are down 2.9 million over the past two months. It is only after seasonal adjustments – made at the sole discretion of the Bureau of Labor Statistics economists – that 2.9 million fewer jobs gets translated into 446,000 new seasonally adjusted jobs." A 3.3 million "adjustment" solely at the discretion of the BLS? And this from the agency that just admitted it was underestimating the so very critical labor participation rate over the past year? Finally, Biderman wonders whether the BLS is being pressured during an election year to paint an overly optimistic picture by President Obama’s administration in light of these 'real unadjusted job change' facts. Frankly, in light of recent discoveries about the other "impartial" organization, the CBO, we don't think there is any need to wonder at all.

Credit Sights on Deutsche Bank: "The capital shortfall of €3.2 bln identified by the EBA's capital exercise at 30 September 2011 has magically disappeared"

Following our note on the flattening (and update on the steepening) in the Chinese yield curve (RMB 10Y - 2Y to be specific) last November, we have continued to keep an eye on the relationship between the Shanghai Composite and the bond market for signals that all is not well in the recent 'soft-landing' rally. While Chinese shares have seen their best January ever, the RMB curve has flattened quite notably. As Morgan Stanley points out in an FX Pulse update today, the yield curve is an early indicator for local shares, which should not be a surprise given the still restricted Chinese capital account. While we have seen this kind of divergence in the US (where given free capital flows the relationship between yield urves and the equity market has loosened over the past 30 years), in China the relationship is still tight and further flattening of the Chinese curve would call into question the equity market rally (and soft-landing thesis). The flattening RMB yield curve suggests the local bond market has become skeptical of Chinese growth prospects. Should the RMB curve flatten further from here, the anticipated decline of commodity currencies (AUD most specifically for US equity carry traders) could be sooner than expected.

According to the Bank of International Settlements, as of June 2011 total over-the-counter derivatives contracts have an outstanding notional value of 707.57 trillion dollars, ( 32.4 trillion dollars in CDS’s alone). Where does this kind of money come from, and what does it refer to? We don’t really know, because over-the-counter derivatives are not transparent or regulated. With regulated economic markets, when an underlying real asset is impaired (i.e. the company in question is bankrupt, the mortgage has defaulted, etc.), market value is assessed, default insurance is paid up to replacement or full value, bond holders and stock holders make claims on remaining value and the account is closed. There is no need for bailouts because order and proportion of compensation has been established and everything is attached to the value of the underlying asset. When the unreal, counterfeit economy intrudes, you now have a situation where a person can put in an unregulated, but recognized, claim to be paid a thousand times over in case of impairment. Say market participants have negotiated for a bankrupt company a 70% payback for bondholders and (36% payback for insurance claims), and I come with not one but rather 1,000 CDS claims demanding to be paid for each CDS.

It appears that Greece will not even have to wait until the dreaded March 20 funding D-Day. As was earlier reported, Greek PM Lucas Papademos may resign if he is unable to persuade his coalition unity government to agree to further Troika demands for additional austerity. It now appears that there will be no agreement, and thus the primary demand from the Troika for further cash disbursement will not be met. The FT reports: "All three party leaders in Greece’s teetering national unity government have opposed new austerity measures demanded by international lenders, forcing eurozone finance ministers to postpone approval of a new €130bn bail-out and moving the country closer to a full-blown default. Representatives of the so-called “troika” – the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund – have demanded further cuts in government jobs and severe reductions in Greek salaries, including an immediate 25 per cent cut in the €750 minimum monthly wage, before agreeing the new rescue. But representatives of all three coalition partners, including centre-left Pasok of former prime minister George Papandreou and the centre-right New Democracy of likely successor Antonis Samaras, said they were unwilling to back the government layoffs." Now we have been here before, and as a reminder the last time Greece threatened to pull out of Europe with the G-Pap referendum threat back in the fall, G-Pap was promptly replaced with the Trilateral Commission member and former ECB Vice President, Lucas Papademos. The problem is that for him to obtain power, he needed to form a coalition government. Well, that now appears to be in tatters, as not one party is willing to break to the Greeks that the minimum wage of €750 will be cut even further. The question is who will blink first this time, as it is quite likely that neither the Troika nor Greece want an out of control default. Unless, of course, this was Germany's plan B to the imposition of a Greek commissar all along...

Whether this is a real hack, or merely an attempt by the FBI to pursue its own ulterior motives is unclear (especially with the broad media coverage it is getting and the fact that the YouTube recording of the call is still online), but supposedly the Anonymous hacker group managed to enter and record a 16 minutes conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard. Per AP: "Anonymous published the roughly 15-minute-long recording of the call to the Internet early Wednesday, gloating in a Twitter message that "the FBI might be curious how we're able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now." The FBI said the information "was intended for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained" but that no FBI systems were compromised. Scotland Yard said that they'd seen no immediate information that their operations had been compromised - but that the force was still checking. The bureau said that "a criminal investigation is under way to identify and hold accountable those responsible." It's not entirely clear how the hackers got their hands on the recording, which appears to have been edited to bleep out the names of some of the suspects being discussed. Amid the material published by Anonymous was an email purportedly sent by an FBI agent to international law enforcement agencies. It invites his foreign counterparts to join the call to "discuss the ongoing investigations related to Anonymous ... and other associated splinter groups. The email is addressed to officials in the U.K., Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and France, but only American and British officials can be heard on the recording." The message contained a phone number and password for accessing the call." The full recording can be heard below and a standalone mp3 can be found here.

As America embarks on its latest pre-IPO tech bubble, driven by a fundamentally broken Ponzi system which relies on the marginally disappearing greater fool, it is time to look back in time to this day in 1637, when the granddaddy of all irrationally exuberant bubbles died: the Dutch Tulip Mania.

A little over a year since the day that the world first learned about robosigning and the broader problem of fraudclosure, which is merely the functional equivalent of infinite rehypothecation of an underlying asset between a daisy-chain of lien holders, we get the first legal incursion into this farce. From Bloomberg we learn that:

• BANK OF AMERICA, WELLS FARGO, JPMORGAN SUED BY NEW YORK OVER MERS
• NY AG SUIT CITES FRAUDULENT FORECLOSURE FILINGS

In other words, kiss that foreclosure settlement goodbye. In the meantime, the  electronic momos keep taking BAC ever higher even as this news confirms that the bank is about to suffer a multi-billion impairment shortly.