Archive - Mar 2012 - Story

Dumbfounded. That’s the only way to describe the reaction that future historians will have when they look back and study the utter perversion that is our global financial system. We live in a time when a tiny handful of people have their fingers on a button that can conjure trillions of dollars, euro, yen, and renminbi out of thin air. In the United States, it comes down to one man. Just one. With a single decision, he controls the lever that dominates the entire economy. When you control the money, you control everything– financial markets, consumer prices, risk perceptions, investment habits, savings rates, hiring decisions, pay raises, sovereign debt, housing starts, etc.  One man.

Today's primetime popcorn event is about to begin: as reported earlier, the House Financial Services Committee will hold an oversight and investigations hearing on the collapse of MF Global, beginning at 3 pm. The hearing will focus on the decisions during the company's final days that led to the disappearance of up to $1.6 billion in customer funds. The party line is that "The investigation aims to "not only to find out where the money went but to identify what went wrong in order to prevent this from happening again," Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) said." What instead will happen is that a bunch of politicians will huff and puff, and nothing will happen once again, because to take down Corzine, would mean to start eating away at the entire rotten core of today's captured political system, which has and always will be run out of Wall Street. It will also be amusing to listen to Edith O’Brien plead the Fif

Nothing has changed. You are counting the commitments of people who need the money.  It is like getting a loan from the bank and trying to make them more comfortable by telling them, not only will we co-sign our own loan, but we will give them a guarantee that we will pay it back. These are the same people who constantly try to overwhelm current problems with huge headlines and promises of a better future.  They don’t have the money, and never will.  They also promised speculators in Greece would lose their shirts. We need to see the details, but be prepared to be underwhelmed.

There was a time when Mr. Pink would send out witty activist letters full of zing and sarcasm, which would brighten many a trader's day. Then Mr. Pink started running a multi-billion fund and Mr. Pink matured into Dan Loeb. Today, Loeb returns with a vengeance having submitted a zinger letter to YHOO CEO Scott Thompson, in his capacity as a 5.8% shareholder of YHOO stock. Needless to say, Loeb is less than pleased with Yahoo's recent snub of his board of director candidates. The result are sentences such as the following: "Only in an illogical Alice-in-Wonderland world would a shareholder be deemed to be conflicted from representing the interests of other shareholders because he is, well, a shareholder too."..."this “long-term vs. short-term” excuse is a canard and particularly inapt in the case of Yahoo!. If there ever was a company in need of a sense of urgency, it is this one."..." Was it “short-term” thinking that led Third Point to push for the resignations of Jerry Yang, Roy Bostock, Arthur Kern and Vyomesh Joshi? If so, is there a Yahoo! shareholder on the planet who thinks this “short-term” thinking was bad for the Company? Was it “short-term” thinking that led Third Point to speak up for shareholders by questioning the fairness of the attempt by the Company to give away control to private equity funds – without receiving a premium – to entrench Roy Bostock and Jerry Yang? Or to suggest, as Third Point has, that the Company’s stake in Alibaba is more valuable than generally understood, and that the Company should hold on to it unless it can get fair value? Was it “short-term” thinking to point out the lack of media and advertising expertise on the Board and nominate extraordinarily qualified nominees to fill that gaping hole?" And so on. Loeb concludes amicably: "We remain willing to engage further with you but will not deviate from our demand for badly-needed shareholder representation." We are confident his next letter, which will be released in 1-2 months, will hardly be so pleasant.

That idiocy is job requirement for the bulk of sell-side "bankers" has long been known. That Bloomberg wishes to glorify it by making Wells Fargo's prediction of S&P 3700 by 2022 its "chart of the day", however, is absolutely ridiculous, and certainly qualifies for the WTF moment of the day.

Today's $35 billion 5 Year auction was not very pretty: coming at a high yield of 1.04%, it was a tail to the When Issued trading 1.03% at 1pm, and the highest rate since October's 1.055%, and the first 1%+ print in 2012. Also notable was the drop in the Bid To Cover to 2.85, which in turn was the lowest since the 2.71 in August of last year. Aside from that the internals were in line: Directs took down 11.3%, in line with the 11.4% average, Indiricts 41.9%, just below the 42.8% TTM average, and the remainder was Dealers, whose 46.8% allocation was just slightly lower than the 45.8% they have taken down previously. All in all another auction that squeezed by courtesy of the PD syndicate, which as has been noted before, is already loaded to the gills with the short-term bonds that Uncle Ben is selling. More importantly, this is the auction that in conjunction with tomorrow's last of three, will send total US debt higher by another $39 billion and brings it to a fresh record high $15.6 trillion. There is now about $700 billion in debt issuance capacity before the debt ceiling is breached again. At this run rate, this is just under 6 months before the debt ceiling scandal ramp up again, or just in time to be used by the GOP as the biggest trump card in the Obama reelection debates, just as we suggested here first back in February.

We were delighted to see that the old headline scanning algos are still in charge of the FX market following "news", which were not even news, having been expected by absolutely everyone, that the EU is about to propose an expansion of Europe's bailout fund to a total of €940 billion for one year, by merging the €440 billion EFSF and €500 billion ESM - leading to a very transitory spike in the EURUSD. From Bloomberg: "European governments are preparing for a one-year increase in the ceiling on rescue aid to 940 billion euros ($1.3 trillion) to keep the debt crisis at bay, according to a draft statement written for finance ministers. The euro-area finance chiefs will probably decide at a meeting in Copenhagen March 30 to run the 500 billion-euro permanent European Stability Mechanism alongside the 200 billion euros committed by the temporary fund, a European official told reporters earlier today in Brussels. Beyond that, they are also set to allow the temporary fund’s unused 240 billion euros to be tapped until mid-2013 “in exceptional circumstances following a unanimous decision of euro-area heads of state or government notably in case the ESM capacity would prove insufficient,” according to the draft dated March 23 and obtained by Bloomberg News." Three  things here: 1) Of the bombastic €940 billion in headline bailout money, only €300 billion or so will actually be available (sorry PIIGS - you can't bail out the PIIGS, also a third of the EFSF money is already tied up); 2) Europe is already preparing for the fade of the impact of the LTRO, which as pointed out earlier, has not only peaked, but courtesy of the LTRO stigma, which we suggested months ago to trade by going long non-LTRO banks and shorting-LTRO recipients, is starting to hurt all those firms who thought, foolishly, that the market would not go after them. They were wrong. And now Draghi is also boxed in an runaway inflation corner. And 3) Europe is back to the old mode of thinking that more debt will fix debt, even as the banking sector is forced to delever ahead of Basel III and due to shareholder requirements. This simply means that the eye of the hurricane over Europe's sovereign debt is about to pass. Those who miss 7% yields on BTPs won't have long to wait. Reality is once again starting to reassert itself.

In a wonderfully straightforward explanation of just what needs to be cut to fund the government from its current D-Day (July 31st) to the end of the year, Professor Antony Davies explains the shocking truth that is our total and utter inability to cut spending in any meaningful way. This comment sums it up perfectly: "We can reduce the federal government to a glorified assisted living facility and we still wouldn't be able to balance the budget."

With Chinese and European data disappointing and Weidmann commenting on the futility of the 'firewalls' (as we discussed earlier) ahead of the discussions later this week, European equities dropped their most in almost three weeks over the last two days closing right at their 50DMA (the closest to a cross since 12/20). Credit markets (dominated by financial weakness) continue to slide as the LTRO euphoria wears off. The LTRO Stigma, the spread between LTRO-encumbered and non-LTRO-encumbered banks, has exploded to over 107bps (from under 50bps at its best in mid Feb when we first highlighted it) and is now up over 75% since the CDS roll as only non-LTRO banks have seen any improvement in the last week. Aside from Portugal, whose bonds seem to be improving dramatically on the back of significant Cash-CDS basis compression as opposed to real-money flows as the spread between Bonds and CDS has compressed from 500bps to 250bps on the back of renewed confidence in CDS triggering, sovereign bond spreads are leaking wider all week with Italy and Spain worst.

The dominant narrative of our so-called 'National Security State' seems to be: we were surprised by a treacherous, shadowy, sinister enemy and we have to set aside the niceties of democracy and civil liberties to combat this new and terrible foe. It's actually very simple: whatever the National Security State does anywhere on Earth is legal. Whatever action you take to protect your civil liberties is illegal. The State holds all the hammers, and you know what happens to raised nails.

Germany's recent 'agreement' to expand Europe's fire department (as Goldman euphemestically describes the EFSF/ESM firewall) seems to confirm the prevailing policy view that bigger 'firewalls' would encourage investors to buy European sovereign debt - since the funding backstop will prevent credit shocks spreading contagiously. However, as Francesco Garzarelli notes today, given the Euro-area's closed nature (more than 85% of EU sovereign debt is held by its residents) and the increased 'interconnectedness' of sovereigns and financials (most debt is now held by the MFIs), the risk of 'financial fires' spreading remains high. Due to size limitations (EFSF/ESM totals would not be suggicient to cover the larger markets of Italy and Spain let alone any others), Seniority constraints (as with Greece, the EFSF/ESM will hugely subordinate existing bondholders should action be required, exacerbating rather than mitigating the crisis), and Governance limitations (the existing infrastructure cannot act pre-emptively and so timing - and admission of crisis - could become a limiting factor), it is unlikely that a more sustained realignment of rate differentials (with their macro underpinnings) can occur (especially at the longer-end of the curve). The re-appearance of the Redemption Fund idea (akin to Euro-bonds but without the paperwork) is likely the next step in countering reality.

You can listen to CNBC, and the president, drone on about the recovery, about the wealth effect, about trickle-down economics, about why adding $150 billion in debt per month is perfectly acceptable, and about a brighter future for America and the world... or you can take a quick look at these two charts and immediately grasp the sad reality of where we stand, and even sadder, where we are headed.

Today at 2 PM, the House Financial Services Committee will hold its third hearing (and the fifth overall) on the ever more confounding topic of MF Global, its bankruptcy, and its vaporized client funds, which amount to about $1.6 billion at last check. And while Jon Corzine will not be there, virtually everyone else from the firm who can promise that said vaporitzation of funds was merely a softward glitch and not the fault of anyone in particular, will be present, from the General Counsel, to the CFO, to the Deputy General Counsel of JPMorgan, all the way to Edith O'Brien, assistant treasurer of MF Global, who is expected to plead the Fifth. One wonders why if there is nothing to hide, but that is the topic of another discussion. And as exposed last week by the WSJ, this hearing will be particularly interesting as now it has been made clear that Corzine specifically gave the order to transfer funds to JPM's account. As NJ.com summarizes: "Per JC’s direct instructions." This line, contained in an email that an MF Global finance official sent to explain a $200 million transfer to JPMorgan Chase from an MF Global account containing customer funds, will be a focal point of a congressional hearing today into the futures firm’s collapse. The email, disclosed in a congressional memo circulated Friday, has raised questions about whether the former governor and CEO of MF Global knew customer money was being used to plug holes in the firm’s finances as it plunged into bankruptcy during the last week of October. As much as $1.6 billion of client funds has gone missing, according to a trustee liquidating the futures firm."

Household net worth has recovered (nominally) around $8.0tn of the $16.4tn lost during the crisis but there has been a regime-shift in terms of the volatility of household net worth since the late 90s. As Credit Suisse notes, this hugely increased and skewed volatility has fueled heightened risk aversion among consumers and retail investors. Just as non-financial corporations are hoarding cash (on the back of their memories of the credit crisis contraction in the money markets), the lesson corporate America will not soon forget is just as resonant with Households as they value liquidity and cash (and safety) much more highly now than ever before.