Archive - May 16, 2012 - Story

Key highlights:

• SEVERAL ON FOMC SAID EASING MAY BE NEEDED IF RECOVERY FALTERS
• MOST' FOMC PARTICIPANTS SAW GRADUAL DECLINE IN JOBLESS RATE
• MOST FOMC PARTICIPANTS SAW INFLATION SUBSEQUENTLY AT-BELOW 2%
• MOST FOMC MEMBERS SAW UNEMPLOYMENT ABOVE TARGET IN LATE 2014
• SOME PARTICIPANTS SAW RISKS INFLATION PRESSURES COULD BUILD

Actually, nothing new in the minutes which are largely a rehash of the official statement already released.

When Ron Paul stands up in front of a crowd and explains the fictional-reserve banking system's unreality, some listen, many shrug and bury their heads. When ZeroHedge does the same, comments are heavy but change is slow to come. But when a 12-year-old girl, in a little over five minutes can explain the total farce that is our monetary system, surely people have to listen and break free of the matrix. Victoria Grant, 12, explains how "The banks and the government have colluded to financially enslave the people of Canada," and as CTV notes, 'Grant lays out a brief history of the Canadian banking system, referencing obscure historical figures such as former Vancouver mayor Gerald McGeer and explaining that the Bank of Canada held primary control over government lending until the 1970's. Starting then, she says, governments began borrowing from private banks instead at considerably higher interest rates than those available through the central bank. The result, Grant argues, is a rapidly increasing national debt. The pint-sized pundit is quick to offer a solution. "If the Canadian Government needs money, they can borrow it directly from the Bank of Canada," she says. " ... Canadians would again prosper with real money as the foundation of our economic structure." The truth is out there - whether it comes from Alan Simpson, Ron Paul, ZeroHedge, or a 12-year-old Canadian young lady.

Update: not so fast: Bloomberg reports that the whale is still beached: JPMorgan Chase Still Employs Trader Bruno Iksil, Spokesman Says. So... pile into the IG9 trade still?

Yesterday we speculated that the final confirmation that JPM has unwound its disastrous skew trade will only came once Bruno Iksil joins all the other members of the CIO team in being involuntarily retired: "As for the question of how much additional P&L loss JPM has sustained from Friday through today is a different matter entirely, and we are confident the next announcement from JPM will come momentarily, coupled with the announcement that Bruno Iksil, the last remnant of the CIO desk, and now having completed his duty of unwinding the trade that brought so much pain for Jamie Dimon, has been retired." Sure enough, the NYT reports that Iksil is now history.

We have all thought it. We have all muttered it under our breaths (and some of us have even written about it on blogs) but the Keynesian Krusader's borrow-and-spend-our-way-to-growth dogma was bazooka'd by former Senator Alan Simpson yesterday. "I say why don't you read our report and then get back to me", Simpson says of Krugman in a must-watch interview on Bloomberg TV, adding that "Paul Krugman is a great economist, but he ain't the best in the world. This is nuts...I love to read his stuff because it borders on hysteria" Critically, he adds on the growing demographic crisis "This is not 20 years ago, it isn't 10. It is now. You have 10,000 a day coming into the system. The demographics are there. It is all different -- it is not the same". The former Senator goes on to discuss whether US will become the next Europe, how lawmakers will sell cutbacks to the American public, whether policymakers keeping rates low are contributing to the problem, and finally on Simpson-Bowles 2.0. - "The people of America are telling their elected people how it is. Erskin and I go all over the country and tell them we do not do BS or mush, but pull up a chair and we will tell you where the country is, and they are thirsting for that."

As US weak hands keep piling out of gold whether to make space for the Facebook IPO tomorrow, or just to load up on paper currencies in advance of central banks printing much more, two things have happened: China is now on its way to becoming the biggest source of gold demand, surpassing India, but more importantly as of hours ago, in a truly historic move, "Okayama Metal & Machinery has become the first Japanese pension fund to make public purchases of gold, in a sign of dwindling faith in paper currencies." Not our words: the FT's.

What we have is a system where the full-time worker to beneficiary is already 1-to-1 and the system pays out 10 times more per person than it collects in taxes. The Medicare system would need about 10 workers for every beneficiary to be sustainable. Right now the ratio is just above 2-to-1. That simply is not sustainable. Tweaking the payouts doesn't change the basic math: "pay as you go" entitlements are not sustainable when the number of recipients equals the number of full-time workers. Programs that pay out $400,000 per person (many of whom did not work a lifetime) and collect $40,000 per lifetime of full-time work are not sustainable.

Wishing the math were different does not make it different.

As Europe opened last night markets were very weak with Sovereigns gapping dramatically wider and equity and credit markets under pressure. Just as in the last few days in Europe though, early weakness has been tempered by a modest belief that the ECB will save us all if it gets bad enough. Today was a little different - as we noted it appeared the ECB was starting to play chicken a little more vocally and while equity, credit, and sovereigns rallied in their usual way off the open - there was one critical difference - financials did not. Early on it was clear that many traders were looking to place the short-financials, long-sovereign credit trade, this implicitly forced LTRO-encumbered banks to underperform (as Greek, Italian, and Spanish banks were crushed in stocks and spreads) moving the LTRO Stigma wider still - back near record wides. The EURUSD was choppy but once the ECB headlines hit and rumors swirled of more bank runs, cessation of support, and capital controls, it fell back below 1.2700 once again (only to surge a little into the Europe day-session close - back to unch. Treasuries and Bunds were in lockstep - leaking higher in yield as the technical support for sovereigns came in (not from the ECB but via our financials-sovereign spreads arb) but this gave way into the close as risk asset weakness dragged yields lower in Germany. US equities faded into the Europe close (as normal) ending back at a balanced VWAP, with EU financial stocks down over 1% on average, and EU stocks overall down around 0.75% (BE500).

Just as we predicted moments ago, and as Dutch Dagblad warned overnight:

• ECB STOPS MONETARY POLICY OPERATIONS TO SOME GREEK BANKS AS RECAPITALISATION NOT IN PLACE -CENBANK SOURCES

The beginning of the end? Or just more political posturing? In the meantime, EURUSD tumbles.

ECB President Draghi just admitted that while the ECB Governing Council would like Greece to stay, there is a limit to what they will do to save it and will do everything they can to preserve their 'pristine' balance sheet - which sounds a lot to us like - 'we are not lending/printing/supporting your financial system anymore as you are far too big a risk (and are asset-stripped) and to be honest, it might be better if you just left - since we have encumbered all your assets anyway'. As a reminder, when thinking of Europe, the shorthand rule is: assets. And specifically, the lack thereof. Why is the ECB scrambling to collateralize every imaginable piece of trash that European banks can procure at only some valuation it knows about? Simple - quality, encumbrance and scarcity. When one understands that the heart of Europe's problem is the rapid "vaporization" of all money good assets, everything falls into place.

In one of the most fascinating psychological shifts, there has been a massive shift in the perspective of the Greek electorate since the election two weeks ago. Almost as if the size of the actual votes for Syriza, the far-left anti-bailout party, gave citizens 'permission' to be angry and vote angry. The latest opinion polls, as per Credit Suisse, show the center-right New Democracy party crashing from 108 seats to only 57 as Tsipras and his Syriza colleagues soar from 52 seats to a hugely dominant 128 seats. Is it any wonder the market is pricing GGBs at record lows and 'expecting' a Greek exit from the Euro as imminent given the rhetoric this party has vociferously discussed. On the bright side, the extreme right Golden Dawn party is seen losing some of its share. As UBS notes, "expressions of frustration in debtor countries have their analogue in creditor countries as well. No one is happy with the status quo." Still, how Europe's political leaders address voters' grievances will go a long way to determining the fate of the Eurozone and, quite possibly, the course of European history in the 21st century. Europe's politicians will undoubtedly prevaricate and deny. The troika will, with minor modifications, probably insist on 'staying the course'. Yet it seems to us that ignoring clear voter demands for change might well be Europe's worst choice.

Now that we have entered the summer phase of 2012 it is time to recall how the summer of 2011 ran: in a nutshell - unsubstantiated rumor emerges usually one involving central banks being "generous", sending stocks higher, rumor is then denied a few hours later, but the ramp persists. Sure enough, it has begun anew (because 2012 is 2011). Minutes ago we got the first such instance, where a European "think tank" came up with the brilliant conclusion that any minute now the ECB will be dragged back into the fray, announcing either LTRO 3 (because it will be different this time), or after 9 weeks of inactivity, the ECB's SMP program will resume buying plunging peripheral bonds. Any factual basis to this? Of course not. But once the algos pick up the headline and create buying momentum for the sake of buying momentum, it is all uphill from there. So just as the market was on the verge of turning red for the day, the "think tank" appeared. Prepare for many more such short covering instances, because there really is nothing else left in the status quo arsenal.

You saw it all unfold here blow by blow yesterday. Now Art Cashin gives the post-mortem.

Today begins the 17th annual pilgrimage of hedge-funders near and far to the Ira Sohn conference, where some of the "best and brightest" share their top picks with everyone else in an attempt to generate a buying (or shorting) frenzy and more hedge fund hotel traps. Sadly, this is what to many passes for alpha these days. Yet does the Ira Sohn conference actually lead to any outperformance? Well, Absolute Return has compiled the 1 year return of the recommended investments from last year's conference. The results are absolutely abysmal. Which makes us wonder if the time of groupthink has peaked, and instead the time to fade absolutely everything to come out of such conferences, where analysts pretend to do homework by piggybacking on others' often times very, very wrong research, and which confuse beta expansion with alpha, has come. 

Only two weeks ago, we noted that the 30 most systemically important financial institutions in the world were seeing risk surging to 3-month highs. Today has seen that eclipsed dramatically as the credit risk of these entities soars to the year's worst levels jumping 22% in the last two weeks alone. At 264bps, we are now close to the 3/9/09 peak crisis levels (of 274bps) and pushing up to the Q4 2011 peaks over 300bps as every region is deteriorating systemically - with the US and Europe worst (US below previous peak levels but Europe at record wides), Asia accelerating wider, and even the Aussie banks now losing it. While markets are staging a mini-recovery this morning, financials are not really participating as this index of global systemic risk has now retraced all of the LTRO benefits.