Archive - May 2012 - Story

You may think only European countries have VAT (value-added taxes), but America has one, too--it's just hidden in the sprawling "healthcare" system, i.e. sickcare. A value-added tax (VAT) is a broad-based consumption tax designed to raise tax revenues from across the entire economy. Since it's in everything you buy, you can't escape paying it unless you go to another country without a VAT. While the U.S. doesn't have an official VAT, it has an unofficial one that we all end up paying for indirectly: the 8% difference between what we pay for our bloated, fraud-ridden healthcare system and what our global competitors pay for their universal-care healthcare systems.

When given the opportunity to expand on his thoughts, Marc Faber, of the Gloom, Boom, & Doom Report, provides dismally clarifying detail on the state of the world. In this excellent (must-watch on a day when nothing changed but European stocks dead-cat-bounced) Bloomberg TV interview, the admittedly ursine Faber reflects on the US (slowing of revenue growth and the real linkages to European stress) noting that unless we get a huge QE3, there will be "a crash, like in 1987" noting he believes we have seen the highs for the year; on the likelihood of QE3 (agreeing with us that the Fed won't act unless asset markets plunge first); on Greece's exit of the Euro and whether policy-makers can manage the exit properly "bureaucrats in Brussels and the media are brainwashing everybody that if Greece exited the euro, it would be a disaster. My view is the best would be to dissolve the whole euro zone"; on the difference between investment markets and economic reality (thanks to financial repression); and on the global race-to-debase "I do not have a high opinion of the U.S. government, but the bureaucrats in Brussels make the government in the U.S. look like an organization consisting of geniuses. The bureaucrats in Brussels are completely useless functionaries".

Remember the "no brainer", "trade of the year"? Looks like all hell may be about to break loose as the trade of the year, becomes the mistrade of the decade...

For the third year in a row, crude oil prices have stumbled in April (-26% in 2010, -17% in 2011, and -10% in 2012 so far). Much has been made of the help this will offer the economy and consumer spending but this is ceteris-paribus linear thinking. There are a few other critical aspects to consider that make many, including Barclays, believe "there is little to the latest price action than the increasingly self-fulfilling prophecy of ‘sell it in May and go away’, exaggerated by market positioning, with broader macroeconomic concerns used as a lightening rod." With crude inventories on the high side and gasoline (and other oil product) inventories relatively low and falling - we would hold our breaths on the recent crude price drop funneling along to the retail pump price anytime soon as there is one critical aspect of the supply-demand equation that many have missed - a period of heavier-than-usual refinery maintenance which while temporary have reduced demand but tell us nothing about the state of final demand. In other words, even if a balance of sorts was achieved in terms of crude flows in March and April due to maintenance, that balance is likely to be disturbed from June onwards. The mainstream media is full of talking-heads on the chronic weakness in US oil demand, but it does not appear to be a real phenomenon according to the steadily improving flow of data and while Greece, Hollande, and US macro data has dragged out macro shorts, it would appear the fundamentals support oil prices higher from here. With the upward-sloping curve in crude to year-end and the relatively small drop this week (-1.2% only in WTI) despite all the derisking, perhaps the market is already starting to realize.

I’m in favour of consenting adults being able to do whatever they like with each other, but the fact that the current push for gay marriage is supported by Lloyd Blankfein and Goldman Sachs makes me very suspicious (does he want to sell securitised gay marriage debt?). It just seems like an easy issue for Obama to posture on, while trampling the Constitution into the dirt. When it comes to civil liberties, Obama has always talked a good game, and then acted more authoritarian than Bush. He talked about an end to the abuses of the Bush years and an open and transparent government, yet extended the Fourth-Amendment-shredding Patriot Act, empowered the TSA to produce naked body scans and engage in humiliatingly sexual pat-downs, signed indefinite detention of American citizens into law, claimed and exercised the power to assassinate American citizens without trial, and aggressively prosecuted whistleblowers. Under his watch the U.S. army even produced a document planning for the reeducation of political activists in internment camps. Reeducation camps? In America? And some on the left are still crowing that talking about being in favour of gay marriage makes him “pro civil liberties”? Is this a joke?

The ECB seems to be quite happy to comment on Greece, and most of the comments seem to say that Greece isn’t doing their part.  Well, what about the ECB?  What have they been doing for Greece?  So far, not very much and I think they need to start to play nicely with their holdings.  If the ECB just plays nicely, at no cost to the ECB, the situation in Greece would improve quickly and dramatically.  The ECB must go from being a lender of last retort to a bona fide contributor to Greece and a true lender of last resort. Maybe the ECB should “Ask not what Greece can do for you, but what you can do for Greece”?

That China has finally given up on Europe is no news (granted, however, it will make it more complicated for various European newspaper to make up articles alleging China will bail out Europe now that this is no longer the case): after all even the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund has finally learned its lesson, and having been burned enough times, has made it quite clear it will have nothing to do with Europe's insolvent periphery. China, which has already lost enough money on Europe, has now decided to do the same. From Bloomberg: "China Investment Corp. has stopped buying European government debt because of an economic crisis on the continent, though it continues to look for new investments there, said CIC President Gao Xiqing. “What is happening in Europe right now is of course of concern,” Gao said yesterday in an interview in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during the World Economic Forum on Africa. “We still have our people looking at opportunities in Europe, even though we don’t want to buy any government bonds.” Sorry Europe: you had your chance. As for where China will invest its capital in the future? Why the one continent so far untouched by globalization, and which has the most debt capacity of all...

Having staggered along the bottom, mired in misery and reality, for over 3 years, the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index finally signaled depression-fatigue in January of this year and started to break out - albeit to historically still low levels. This was then heralded in self-fulfilling style as an indication that everything was good again in the world, money would come off the sidelines, consumers would buy more iPads and American cars, and all would be well in the world. Well the sad reality is that the last 3 weeks - as stocks have begun to lag, economic data has begun to reflect an un-warmed winter reality, and Europe's conflagration reignites - have seen the largest collapse in consumer comfort in over 3 years and has fallen to 3-month lows. Digging into the detail is even more worrisome as in the last 3 weeks the comfort with personal finances has fallen by the most ever and back to six-month lows.

Overnight we got some good news on Italian industrial production. Well, get ready to scrap them as according to Italian Trade Union Confindustria, and validating the collapse as predicted by PMI indicators, Italy's Q2 GDP is now expected to shrink more than 1% in Q2: the worst print since 2009, cementing the country's "double dip", and that real-time industrial output in April, now that LTRO has fizzled, is expected to fall 0.6%. None of this should come as a surprise to anyone: after all the only way the periphery can rise is if it crashes hard enough to force the ECB to intervene again. Finally, the country that is next in line after Spain to nationalize its banks, need some pretext after all. Complete economic collapse will surely make stockholders, of other countries' banks at least, happy, as their Italian counterparty risk will soon be footed by the Italian taxpayers themselves.

It appears that today's +3.5% jump in IBEX (from decade-lows) is being heralded as some kind of indication of a bottom or turning point in stress in Spain. By way of context though, Spanish 10Y bond yields remain above 6% (and spreads at 450bps near record wides), Spanish 5Y CDS are unchanged at record wides over 500bps, and the banking bailout remains woefully small relative to the size of the hole they are trying to fill (and all of that is funded by a sovereign that only retains access to the public debt markets thanks to its circular banking system's bid). To be more clear, the last time IBEX increased by +3 sigma marked the very top last July before Europe fell apart and IBEX plummeted 23% in just 2 weeks. Anchoring bias can be a dangerous thing and dead cat bounces are often misleading when selling-fatigue is all around.

When we presented the latest chart of the Bundesbank's record TARGET2 imbalance last night we had one simple message: we hope Germany is prepared for the rout its central bank will soon experience once the Eurozone's members start dropping like flies. Today it appears that Germany has decided to go with the flow, and in what Spiegel classifies as a "turning point in monetary policy" notes that Germany, in an abrupt shift to its Weimar-impacted history, is getting ready to embrace inflation. What this likely means is that the ECB is about to set off on its most aggressive monetization experiment ever, which also explains why all of Europe is trading diggy limit up this morning: it is not on the latest batch of horrible news - it is on the return of speculation that the ECB is, with the Bundesbank's blessing, baaaack.

The implications of a nation leaving the Euro (and its contagion effects) are becoming clearer but are by no means discounted by the market. The risk of an interruption in the Greek adjustment program has increased significantly - and as Goldman notes - is the most likely eventual outcome for Greece and fears of the missed interest payment in June continue to concern many. The tough decision and dilemma for the international community remains between a rock (of acquiescence and just funding a belligerent member state) and had place (ECB deciding to let Greek banks go) with an odd middle ground seemingly the most likely given Europe's tendency for avoiding the hard decisions. There is no doubt that the near term implications from such an unfortunate turn of events would be profound for markets; fiscal risk premia would widen, the EUR would decline in value and European equities would underperform. The true question though, is how much lasting damage such a situation can do and whether, in the long run, systemic risks can be contained. In principle, to the extent that no other country chooses to go down the same path as Greece, there is no political or practical hurdle for the ECB to crucially safeguard the stability of the Euro area with unlimited liquidity provisions. A liquidity driven crisis can be averted in that sense. Whether risk premia stay on a higher tangent after such an event is a separate and complicated question but game-theoretically it strengthens the renegotiating position of Ireland, Portugal, and obviously Spain with the ECB (and implicitly the Bundesbank) being dragged towards the unmitigated print-fest cliff.

Stop us when this sounds familiar. Last week's 365K number has been revised to 368K, which is where the expectations for this week's print were. Instead, we got 367K claims this week, a 1K beat to expectations, which will be a 2K miss next week of course, but at least the pre-election propaganda media has their headline: "Initial Claims improve by 1,000." And scene. Naturally, the same thing happened for continuing claims, which beat expectations of 3275K, printing at 3229K, with the last week's print revised to 3290K from 3276K. The more disturbing form an end demand standpoint data, is that yet another 40K dropped off extended claims and EUCs. Finally in what is the best new for the market, and worst for the Economy, is that the March trade deficit soared to $51.8 billion, on expectations of -$50 billion, which was the biggest trade balance drop in 10 months. What this means is that Q1 GDP which already is tracking at 1.9%, just got lobbed to 1.5%. Yes: the Q1 GDP first revision will likely show the 2.2% number is now in the low to mid 1% range.

The Immortal Bard must have been referencing Madrid when penning these lines or, if not, would likely approve of their application this morning. The nationalization of Bankia, the third largest bank in Spain, is not some isolated event that is singular and alone in nature regardless of the expected dampening and muted words and phrases issued by the Spanish government. The cancer has been identified but not isolated and you may be assured that it remains in the lymph nodes of the two major banks in Spain. Fortunately, during America’s financial crisis, many of the sub-prime mortgages were securitized and no longer resided on the balance sheets of the American banks. In the case of Spain we find not only the majority of the mortgages resident at the Spanish banks but we find an added dimension which is a huge amount of money lent to Real Estate developers which is impaired and still on the books of the Spanish banks. Further, in my opinion, none of these loans have been accurately accounted for and they are being carried at whimsical valuations by the banks or pledged as collateral at the ECB where the Spanish bank funding jumped 50% in one month and now stands at $294 billion. Following the bouncing ball; there is now so much encumbrance of assets between pledged collateral and covered bond sales that the actual worth of the two major Spanish banks is now someplace between “not much” and “De minimis” should the situation deteriorate to the point of impairment.

European equities continue the downward trend throughout the morning, despite opening slightly higher. Similarly to yesterday the moves are not data-driven, however the ECB have revised their forecasts for Euroarea growth downwards to -0.2% this year from -0.1% and have revised their inflation outlook upwards to 2.3% from 1.9%. The focus remains on Greece as the PASOK leader Venizelos grabs the baton and now attempts to form a stable coalition. Commentary from Greece so far has not been revelatory; Venizelos has reiterated that he wishes to remain within the Eurozone and affirmed that his party has not changed its policy with respect to the bailout. Flight to quality is observed throughout the markets, with the German Bund already testing yesterday’s highs several times and the major cash equities seen lower throughout the continent.