Archive - Apr 24, 2012 - Story

Economic Debunker Steve Keen is interviewed by outspoken Irish journalist Vincent Browne and no holds are barred as he describes the Maastricht Treaty as a suicide pact of critically poor central-planning design of a supposed market-economy, based on financial crises never occurring, locking European governments into an austere path when stimulus is required. "Ultimately the Euro has to fail and the longer we continue the farce of believing we can make it function the larger the ultimate crash will be" is how Keen portrays the situation and describes the foreign-exchange, fiscal policy, and monetary policy shackles that have created and exaggerated the situation. This leads into a longer discussion of the state of the World and its inability to 'export into the ponzi' like Japan could from 1990 to 2010 since the entire developed world is trying to do the same thing and "there is no ponzi scheme on Mars that we can export to" leaving the globe without Japan's initial way out. The must-watch 10 minute interview goes on to discuss the endgame (a break in the political compact based on austerity pressures and military or political coups) as Keen sums up "it's amazing to see us repeating the same mistakes that were made during the 1930s but we are doing just that." ending with some potential solutions noting that there is no easy way out of this.

Leading neoconservative (read “closet Trotskyite“) commentator Charles Krauthammer’s latest Washington Post editorial pays homage to the glory days of NASA and the retirement of the space shuttle Discovery.  Titled “Farewell, the New Frontier,” the piece evokes mental images of Uncle Sam losing his international prestige as President Obama scales down NASA’s space exploration endeavors. Contrary to Krauthammer, NASA has never represented America’s collective vision of frontier exploration.  It has been just another bureaucratic black hole for Washington to throw dollars at in hopes of buying reelection. Because one of the main tenets of economics is considering the unseen, then it can be assumed that space exploration would very well be advanced far beyond what we see today if it was left completely out of the hands of the state.  If Krauthammer truly wished the human race capable of traveling into the new frontier of the stars, he would welcome NASA cuts rather than lament. How ironic then is today's news of Planetary Resources as investor and avowed anarchist Doug Casey thoughtfully observes on the inefficiency of NASA: "We should have colonies on the moon by now, and more: We should be mining the asteroids and developing real estate on Mars."

"Europe is in big trouble, and the trouble is getting worse - much worse" is how Charles Biderman begins his latest missive. The diatribe focuses on the shortcomings of both the left (the existing political structure of government-dominated economies) and the right (a German-style austerity program of slashing spending and raising taxes) of inane politicians in Europe as the two main issues of over-spending and declining economic activity come home to roost. Starting from the Euro's inception and its implicit permission to allow each country to borrow as much as they want without regard to what was going on in their local economy is just as pernicious as the cradle-to-grave welfare state that is the prevailing mantra "everyone deserves to be taken care of". Therein lies the crux of the matter as borrowing (excessively) to support the people's supposed 'deserved' welfare is viewed as 'just-and-fair' whereas in reality, simply put, "the economies of most of Europe do not work." The Bay-Area bad-boy does offer reasoned solutions that offer hope for growth as opposed to just austerity for the sake of it as, among other things, he suggests eliminating red-tape to create a more entrepreneurial environment but ultimately he sees the probability of this as low and suggests being short via EUO (the double-levered Euro short) and EFZ (short non-USD developed - mostly Europe - markets).

And here they are:

APPLE 2Q REV. $39.19B, EST. $36.87B
APPLE 2Q EPS $12.30, EST. $10.02
APPLE SOLD 35.1 MILLION IPHONES IN QTR, EST. 31.2M   
APPLE 2Q IPOD UNITS SOLD 7.7MLN , DOWN 15%            
APPLE 2Q IPAD UNITS SOLD 11.8MLN                      
APPLE 2Q GROSS MARGIN 47.4%, EST. 42.8%              
APPLE 2Q MACINTOSH UNITS SOLD 4MLN , UP 7%            

But:

• APPLE SEES 3Q REV. ABOUT $34B, EST. $37.49B
• APPLE SEES 3Q EPS ABOUT $8.68, EST. $9.96
  

Draining your banking system dry of deposits and loans is no easy task (just see chart below), and yet the Greeks sure have succeeded. There was only one open question: where did all this money go. Now we know.

Eurostat just updated their statistics for government debt to GDP for 2011, so here is an updated graph over Belgium, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, France, UK, Netherlands, Germany and Sweden and the development of their gross government debt to GDP from 1996 to 2011. Countries not matching the new Merkozy-limit of a maximum of 3% budget deficit were Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and... France. But we can forget the old euro convergence criteria of 2% deficit and at most 60% debt to GDP as instead of working back to the green 'safe' quadrant, the PIGS are heading in the exact opposite direction missing both deficit and debt convergence criteria.

Just in case one is wondering what is a greater crime in America: vaporizing $1.5 billion in client money or having the temerity to downgrade the US (twice), JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, here is the SEC with the answer:

• SEC SUES EGAN-JONES, SEAN EGAN ON ALLEGED MISREPRESENTATIONS

Somewhere Jon Corzine is cackling like a mad cow.

UPDATE: via Bloomberg:

*MEAT FROM ANIMAL DID NOT ENTER FOOD CHAIN, USDA SAYS

*COW WITH MAD-COW DISEASE CONFIRMED IN CALIFORNIA, USDA SAYS

Rumors of the return of bovine spongiform encephalopathy - or mad cow disease - in the US as the USDA conducts a conference to discuss the potential find of an infected animal has sent Live and Feeder Cattle futures limit-down and back to almost 8 month lows prices. The find has been confirmed, according to The Farmer-Stockman. Now, where is that zombie survival chart?

Modern investing offers the promise that investors who "do their homework" and use data more intelligently than the herd can gain a valuable edge. But what if the underlying data available to the investing public is fundamentally flawed?

Presented with little comment except to give some context for the current weakness in what was the world's largest market cap stock a few days ago. In the last 11 days, Apple has dropped over 12.5% - the largest such drop since January 2009 - as today sees the stock's fall continue to yesterday's lows down over 2.7%. With just a few hours to the event-horizon, options traders are active and stock volume run-rates are high as selling pressure dominates.

We have discussed the exuberance and dysphoria that is exhibited by economists in the context of extrapolating trends many times and nowhere is that more clearly pictured than in Citigroup's Economic Surprise Index which tracks the rise and fall of both misses and beats as well as better or worse data. For the first time in over six months, macro data for the G-10 has turned negative (with Europe having been there for a while and the US getting very close) indicating significant weakness. When this data turned from positive to negative in July 2010 it pre-empted the 'rescue' of the global economy via QE2 and each time it has dropped below its 200DMA (which it also just did) we have seen notable deterioration in equity prices soon after. What is more worrisome perhaps is the rate of deterioration over the last two months or so. Four of the last five times we dropped this rapidly we saw significant drops in stock prices soon after (Dec 2008, August 2010, and June 2011). Europe and the US are now trending lower in macro data 'surprises' as decoupling disappears but the US remains a little less bad for those looking for silver-linings - for now.

Just because try hard as it may, the Chairman's printer simply can't issue infinite electronic equivalents of the 79 proton element, newspapers with a circulation of 435,000 (same as the Chicago Tribune) on this side of the Ganges will hardly ever be allowed to show the following anti-patriotic advertisement. 

Equity and credit markets in Europe followed the same-old-same-old path of a successful short-dated auction means buy-buy-buy and ended the day in the green today. A few things of note however stand out to us. First, the ramp in stocks/credit this time around is much less than last week's post-auction bliss which was also less than the prior week's post-auction squeeze higher. Second, there was a very notable dispersion between senior financials and subordinated financials credit today - with the spread between the two at almost 3 month wides. Third, Italy notably underperformed Spain today - by the largest in six weeks as the spread between these two is now back at 18bps, six-week tights and dramatically lower than the almost 50bps just a week ago. So while all may look rosy at the surface, we remain wider in spreads on the week and lower in stocks with all the real event risk ahead of us still.