Archive - May 2012 - Story

There are some people who also believe that the private Federal Reserve with the Treasury in tow has the ability to prolong the worst symptoms of the collapse indefinitely, or at least, until they have long since kicked the bucket and don’t have to worry about it anymore (the ‘pay-it forward to our grandkids’ crowd) .  I can say with 100% certainty that most of us will live to see the climax of the breakdown, and that this breakdown is about to enter a more precarious state before the end of this year.  You can only stretch a sun-boiled rubber band so far before it snaps completely, and America’s financial elasticity has long been melted away.  A pummeling hailstorm of news items and international developments have made the first half of 2012 almost impossible to track and analyze.  The frequency at which negative information has surfaced is almost dizzying.  However, a pattern and a recognizable motion are beginning to take shape, and, I believe, a loose timeline is beginning to form. 

Hardly a surprise to anyone, but here it is black on white - Greece officially makes the odds for a Euro departure well over 50%:

• TSIPRAS SAYS GREEK RESULTS MAKES BAILOUT ACCORD NULL AND VOID
• TSIPRAS SAYS GREEKS HAVE VOTED AGAINST BARBARIC BAILOUT
  
• TSIPRAS SAYS WON'T JOIN A GOVT OF NATIONAL SALVATION FOR LOAN
• TSIPRAS SAYS GREEKS HAVE ENDED PLANS FOR ADDITIONAL AUSTERITY
• TSIPRAS ASKS VENIZELOS, SAMARAS TO RENEGE PLEDGES IN WRITING

And here it comes

• GREECE'S TSIPRAS SAYS WANTS INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE IF GREECE'S DEBT IS LEGAL
• TSIPRAS SAYS MUST BE MORATORIUM ON GREEK DEBT PAYMENTS

Remember Odious Debt?

While Turkey has assured the U.S. government it will cut purchases of oil from Iran by 20% this year, its total trade with the Islamic Republic increased 47% to $4.8 billion in the first quarter from a year earlier. Sanctions aimed at isolating Iran because of its nuclear program, combined with revolutions in the Middle East, have spurred a tripling in the region’s purchases of Turkish precious metals and jewels to $942 million in the first three months, from $282 million in the same period last year. This 30% increase in demand is contributing to gold remaining above $1,600/oz in what has all the hallmarks of another period of consolidation prior to higher prices. “Turkey is exporting massive quantities of gold to Iran and Arab Spring countries as citizens in those countries switch to portable wealth,” Mert Yildiz, chief economist for Turkey at Renaissance Capital, told Bloomberg on April 30. The increase in trade with Iran comes as sanctions make it harder for trading partners such as Turkey, India and China to pay in dollars and euros. Iran said in February it would accept payment in any local currency or gold. Reuters report today that Iran is accepting payments in yuan for some of the crude oil it supplies to China, the Iranian ambassador to the United Arab Emirates said on Tuesday. "Yes, that is correct," Mohammed Reza Fayyaz told Reuters when asked to comment on an earlier report in The Financial Times.

European equity markets are seen trading in negative territory across the board at the midway point as the lack of a Greek governing coalition continues to weigh on sentiment. As such, an earlier Greek T-Bill auction passed by with an unsurprising increase in borrowing costs for the country. The concern over sovereign debt is clear elsewhere, as the spread between peripheral 10-year government bond yields remain wider against the German Bund. Very strong German Industrial Production data has failed to provide relief for the DAX index as concerns on the periphery outweigh the strength in the core. The monthly reading for March beat expectations, coming in at 2.8% against estimates of 0.8%. Overnight reports from the Spanish press concerning a government intervention in the lender Bankia have been denied by the Spanish Ministry, commenting that the aim for the company is a cleanup and restructuring, not a seizure. EU’s Almunia has commented on the developments, saying that it seems likely the bank will receive state aid.

Confirming that the market is now completely insane is a rehash of the actual catalyst data flow: recall that yesterday the one thing that pushed stocks higher, as described in Clutching at Straws, was the surge in German factory orders. Today, we get another huge beat of expectations in German Industrial Production and everything is red. Although now that US traders, most of them originating at Liberty 33, are starting to walk in, we may get yet another of the much anticipated and largely loved turns from a blood red premarket to green everywhere.

• It just get worse and worse: After McClendon's trades, Chesapeake board gave blessing (Reuters)
• Iran Accepts Renminbi for Crude Oil (FT)... which is not news: recall China and Iran Bypass Dollar from July 2011
• As Gas Prices Fall, a Sigh of Relief  (WSJ)... so now people can direct their disability payments to where they belong: extra fries
• Greece Braces for a Repeat of Elections (FT), as first predicted by Zero Hedge, this will be a recurring affair
• China dissident Chen says officials must face justice (Reuters)
• Merkel Urges Athens to Stick With Reform (FT)
• Hollande’s Win is a Chance for Change (FT)
• U.K. Manufacturers Expect Exports to Rise (WSJ)
• U.S. Says Bomb Plot Disrupted Before Public Threatened (Bloomberg)
• Santorum Endorses Romney as Republican Nominee (Bloomberg)
• Beijing May Host OTC Market (China Daily)
• India Delays Tax Avoidance Laws (FT)

It may not be a big rise, but the €1 billion increase in Italian bank borrowings from the ECB, from €270 billion to €271 billion in Apirl as just reported by the Bank of Italy, is still a record, and not one Italy should be proud of. The Spanish bank update is pending and will be out in a few days, although if the recent about face by Rajoy, admitting the Spanish banks are about to be nationalized, which today is no longer sending the markets higher, is an indication, it won't be a vast improvement. Sure enough, the fact that the market's attention is once again drawn to an indicator of the PIIGS financial sector insolvency is not good for sovereign spreads and at last check everyone was wider, core and periphery together, as Spain was+5.3 bps, Italy +3.8 bps, Netherlands +0.3 bps, and France 1.8 bps. Even the futures are shocking not green on more bad news.

"The traditional political elites are losing control of the system they once dominated." 12 of the 17 member states of the EMU have seen their governments collapse or been voted out in the last two years. As Stratfor's Kristen Cooper notes, this is testament to the near political impossibility of implementing austerity and maintaining popular support. The tough truth is that while voters initially turn to the mainstream opposition they soon realize that they have little to offer that is different and so radical, extreme, or previously marginalized political parties will, and have done in Germany (Pirates) and Greece (Golden Dawn) already, see an increasing share of the popular anti-establishment vote and implicitly hamper any political solutions to the crisis that Europe awakens to every morning.

One can call the BOJ inefficient, slow and for the most part utterly worthless, but one can certainly not accuse them of lying, and beating around the bush. Because unlike all other central banks, with the BOJ at least it has been fully public knowledge that this particular central bank unlike all others (wink wink), is actively engaged in buying equity products, among them REITs and broad equity ETFs (which provide much explicit tail-wags-dog leverage and explains why the FRBNY's red phone hotline goes directly to Citadel's ETF trading desk). And buy stocks on full tilt and in record quantities is precisely what the BOJ just did, only as one can expect, with absolutely no impact on the broader stock market. Because once even the central bank is exposed as participating in the market, the element of surprise is gone, and the central bank becomes just one mark (if one with a largish balance sheet). As MarketWatch reports, "The Bank of Japan stepped back into the stock market Monday, making its largest single-day purchase of exchange-traded funds to date... The Japanese central bank said it spent 39.7 billion yen (about $500 million) buying up stock ETFs as part of its ongoing asset-purchase program, breaking a previous record of ¥28.5 billion, set on April 16. In addition to the ETF buys, the Bank of Japan also acquired ¥2.3 billion in real-estate investment trusts Monday." Too bad that this latest outright bull in a Japan store (sic) intervention had zero impact: "the move failed to prevent a sharp fall for the Tokyo equity market." But at least they are honest. Imagine the shock and horror (and complete lack of apologies to all those who have predicted just that) when the world finally gets a trade confirm-based proof that Brian Sack was indeed buying (never selling) SPYs and ES. Why everyone would be truly shocked, SHOCKED, that the Fed is nothing but another two-bit gambler in a rigged and broken casino.

All this talk of promoting growth rather than austerity misses the point entirely. Who is going to give the Greeks, or the French for that matter, the amounts of money they would need to fill the almighty hole in which they find themselves along with most of the rest of Europe, the UK and dare I say it the US? If your answer involves a central bank don’t pass Go and head straight for jail which is where the banksters and their politico/media fan club should all be anyway.

"In less than two years, we are now up to a total of seven European leaders or ruling parties that have been forced out of office, courtesy of the spreading government debt crisis — tack on France now to Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. Even Germany's coalition is looking shaky in the aftermath of the faltering state election results for the CDU's (Christian Democratic Union) Free Democrat coalition partner. This is quite a potent brew — financial insolvency, economic fragility and political instability."

This afternoon the CBO reported a number that in itself is quite remarkable: in April, a preliminary estimate of US receipts and outlays showed that the US Treasury posted its first budget surplus in 42 months, or since September 2008. At $58 billion, the surplus was nearly $100 billion more than the the $40 billion deficit from a year earlier. Unfortunately, while superficially this number would have been worthy of praise, digging underneath the surface as always reveals 'footnotes'. Sure enough, in the aftermath of February which saw a record US deficit of $232 billion and March's $198 billion in net outlays, there was a "catch." As the CBO admits: "This April, the Treasury realized a surplus of $58 billion, CBO estimates, in contrast with the $40 billion deficit reported for the same month last year. The results in both years were influenced by timing shifts of certain payments; adjusted for those shifts, the surplus in April 2012 would have been $27 billion, compared with a deficit of $13 billion in April 2011.... The federal government incurred a budget deficit of $721 billion in the first seven months of fiscal year 2012, $149 billion less than the shortfall reported during the same period last year. Without shifts in the timing of certain payments, however, the deficit so far this year would have been only $92 billion smaller." In other words, without various temporal adjustments, the April surplus of $58 billion would have been completely netted out by the cumulative $57 billion in deficit time shifts. However, in an election year, every beneficial item such as this is an extended talking point as the president will gladly take the praise for a number which is indicative of anything but the underlying US financial "health." After all, others can bother with the explanations.