Archive - Aug 2012 - Story

Two weeks ago we explained why the drought-inspired soaring price of Soybeans  - specifically from the US - would notably influence global central-planners' actions - and more specifically the Chinese (given its high impact on food price inflation). Food prices remain elevated and the PBoC is undertaking Reverse Repos - the exact opposite of an RRR-driven easing program so many expected. However, there is a further, deeper, and more troubling consequence than 'simple' inflationary arguments - that of social unrest. The Chinese devote more than 20% of their income to food (three times more than Americans - according to the USDA) and their newly affluent soybean-oil inspired tastes are being dramatically impacted by these rising prices; "Inflation has a long history of sparking discontent, so obviously it's on the forefront of the Chinese leadership's mind."

Late on Friday, the BBC reported that the German military will in future be able to use its weapons on German streets in an extreme situation. This ruling, we hope purely a technicality - but clearly warranting some concern as to 'why now?' - by Germany's Constitutional Court, reverses some of the severe restriction on military deployments that were set down in the German constitution after Nazi-era abuses. After WWII, the new constitution ruled that soldiers could not be deployed with guns at the ready on German soil - the court has now changed that (it seems on the basis of terrorist concerns - as opposed to widespread bank runs, populist revolts at bailout-back-downs, or Hollande/Monti/Draghi sending over some boys).

The deleveraging trap is a catch-22; while debt remains excessive, economic activity remains subdued, and while economic activity remains subdued, generating more production than consumption to pay down debt is extremely difficult. As we have seen in Japan — where the total debt load remains above where it was 1991 — fundamentals can remain depressed for years or even generations. Certainly, the modern debt jubilee isn’t going to cure the culture that led to the excessive debt. Certainly, it won’t wash away the vampiristic TBTF megabanks who caused the GFC and live today on bailouts and ZIRP. Certainly, it won’t fix our broken political or financial systems where whistleblowers like Assange are locked away and fraudsters like Corzine roam free to start hedge funds. And certainly it won’t wash away the huge mountain of derivatives or shadow intermediation that interconnect the economy in a way that amplifies small shocks into greater crises.

From AP: "the number of Americans with incomes at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty level - the income limit for qualifying for legal aid - is expected to reach an all-time high of 66 million this year. A family of four earning 125 percent of the federal poverty level makes about $28,800 a year, government figures show." And visually...

The bottom line is, the 1st Amendment is NOT conditional.  ALL speech must be protected, no matter who you are, or where you happen to be speaking.  Just because our current criminal government decides 1st Amendment protections do not apply to Facebook does not mean they have the authority to make such distinctions.  In fact, the Constitution explicitly outlines how they are restricted from making such distinctions.  If a government entity, ANY government entity, attempts to violate Constitutional restrictions, it must be removed by any means necessary. Take note that the FBI used the accusation of "terrorist threats" by Brandon Raub as an excuse for the arrest even though there is no indication that any actual threats were present on his Facebook page..

Last week we reported on the searing woes plaguing the Karma "supercar" of green automaker Fisker, following the most recent episode of automotive spontaneous self-immolation. In fact, things for the company that has so far received $529 million in federal subsidies are so bad that also last week Fisker announced its third CEO hire in the past year (when in a supremely ironic move it hired the former head of the Chevy Volt program Tony Posawatz). As of last night things just went from bad to even worse, following the inevitable next step: a total recall of all Karmas currently on the road. Oh well: nothing that burning, quite literally, severeal hundred more million in taxpayer funding won't solve.

The modern “debt jubilee” is characterised as “quantitative easing for the public”. It has been boiled down to a procedure where the central bank does not create new money by buying the sovereign debt of the government. Instead, it takes an arbitrary number, writes a check for that number, and deposits it in the bank account of every individual in the nation. Debtors must use the newly-created money to pay down or pay off debt. Those who are not in debt can use it as a free windfall to spend or “invest” as they see fit. This, it is said, is the only way left to restart economic “growth” and finally get the spectre of unending financial crisis out of the headlines. It is the latest of a long string of “print to cover” remedies.

First Tunisia, then Greece, now Italy (the same Italy where the economy is "picking up" where yields are "stable", and where much "progress" is being made). From Reuters: "A 54-year-old man died on Sunday after setting himself on fire outside the Italian parliament last week to highlight his struggle with unemployment, police said. Angelo di Carlo suffered 85 percent burns after the incident in front of the lower house of parliament - the Chamber of Deputies - in central Rome during the early hours of August 11, Italian media reported. Police on duty nearby put out the flames with fire extinguishers and took him to hospital. The widower was facing economic difficulties after losing his job and had struggled for years before that with temporary work contracts that offered little protection or benefits, according to media reports...Di Carlo's death is the latest in a wave of highly publicized suicides linked to financial woes in recent months which have highlighted the human cost of the country's economic crisis."

Just as Germany was warming its "Nein, Nein, Nein" machine, now that Merkel is solidly back from vacation and has caught up with all the desperation emails in the inbox, as reported yesterday, the ECB, in a furious attempt to preempt the unwind of every innuendo, speculation, "unsourced rumor", and everything else the ex-Goldman controlled printer of European currency (which however now and always is powerless without German support) has done in the past month to keep sovereign rates low, has just resorted to yet another deja vu preemption tactic: rate caps on sovereign bonds. Spiegel reports the based on unsourced data, "The European Central Bank (ECB) is considering to establish in its future bond purchases interest rate levels for each country. Thus, it would buy sovereign debt of the crisis countries whenever interest rates exceed a certain spread to German Bunds... At its next meeting in early September, the Governing Council will decide whether the interest rate target is actually installed." Which of course it won't for one simple reason: the same reason the ECB has done lots of talking in the past 3 months, and implemented absolutely nothing: the Bundesbank's Jens Weidmann, and the fact that as Danske (see below) and everyone else already explained when this idea was floated unsuccessfully the first few times, it would require an infinite balance sheet, something the ECB does not have, especially not when Germans are 'consulted.'

What do USD money markets have to do with gold? Money market funds invest in short-term highly rated securities, like US Treasury bills (sovereign risk) and commercial paper (corporate credit). But who supplies such securities to these funds? For the purpose of our discussion, participants in the futures markets, who look for secured funding. They sell their US Treasury bills, under repurchase agreements, to money market funds. These repurchase transactions, of course, take place in the so-called repo market. The repo market supplies money market funds with the securities they invest in. Now… what do participants in the futures markets do, with the cash obtained against T-bills? They, for instance, fund the margins to obtain leverage and invest in the commodity futures markets.  In summary: There are people (and companies) who exchange their cash for units in money market funds. These funds use that cash to buy – under repurchase agreements - US Treasury bills from players in the futures markets. And the players in the futures markets use that cash to fund the margins, obtain leverage, and buy positions. What if these positions (financed with the cash provided by the money market funds) are short positions in gold (or other commodities)? Now, we can see what USD money markets have to do with gold!  Let’s propose a few potential scenarios, to understand how USD money markets and gold are connected...

Perhaps the biggest affront to the natural order of things set in motion by central planners' intervention in capital markets of all varieties, is that through sheer brute force (of a printer, of posturing, and of outright politicized pandering), several academics in a low-lit room can suppress, for a brief period of time, the Darwinian survival of the fittest. Key word here is "brief" because in the end nature always gets even, and usually with a vengeance. In the meantime, however, epic distortions in what are already indefinitely irrational markets, which however always eventually regress to a rational mean (in popular jargon a process better known as "crash"), succeed in driving out legacy traders who no longer can navigate the chaos unleashed by the authoritarian ambitions oh the kind that ultimately resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and every other centrally-planned establishment, when abused on a long-enough timeline... For a vivid example of what happens "when Darwinism fails" we go to a parable from a just released letter to client by the English hedge fund Toscafund, which looks at modern day trading from the perspective of fishing in the Polynesian seas, which also does an admirable job in explaining why being lucky is almost always more important than being good (sadly, one can not sell "luck" in newsletter format for $29.95/ month).

The Organization of Petroleum Economies, in its August report, said Iranian crude oil production in part led to a decline in overall output from the Vienna-based cartel. OPEC said crude oil production for its members, not including Iraq, was reported at 28.1 million barrels per day in July, a decline of 270,000 bpd compared with the previous month.  The decline in OPEC oil production in part was led by Iran, which saw its export options curtailed by sanctions imposed by the U.S. and European governments. Tehran announced it still had a viable consumer base in China, however, which received about 12 percent of its oil needs from Iran. The Indian government, meanwhile, said it would circumvent EU sanctions by extending government-backed insurance to tankers carrying Iranian crude because of the "definite need" for oil.

In four months the debate over America's Fiscal cliff will come to a crescendo, and if Goldman is correct (and in this case it likely is), it will probably be resolved in some sort of compromise, but not before the market swoons in a replica of the August 2011 pre- and post-debt ceiling fiasco: after all politicians only act when they (and their more influential, read richer, voters and lobbyists) see one or two 0's in their 401(k)s get chopped off. But while the Fiscal cliff is unlikely to be a key point of contention far past December, another cliff is only starting to be appreciated, let alone priced in: America's Demographic cliff, which in a decade or two will put Japan's ongoing demographic crunch to shame, and with barely 2 US workers for every retired person in 2035, we can see why both presidential candidates are doing their darnedest to skirt around the key issue that is at stake not only now, be every day hence.

The S&P 500 is at its 2012 highs, and rapidly approaching all time highs, even as nothing has changed over the biggest near-term challenge facing America: the fiscal cliff. Ironically, with every tick higher in the market, the probability that Congress will come to a consensus over what would be a haircut of up to 4% to next year's GDP as soon as January 1 2013 gets smaller. Why - the same reason that Spain is unlikely to demand a bailout now that its 10 Year bond is back to the mid 6% range (ironically on expectations it will demand a bailout!): complacency - both by investors, and by politicians. After all, it's is all a matter of perception, and the market is seen to be "perceiving" an all clear signal. It means that the impetus to do something constructive simply does not exist, as we explained recently in the case of Spain (and Italy). It also means that Congress has no reason to be proactive about the biggest threat facing the economy: just look at the S&P - it sure isn't worried, and the market is supposed to be far more efficient than elected politicians. At least on paper. This line of thinking is also the reason why Goldman's head of equity strategy David Kostin (not to be confused with the person he replaced: permabull A Joseph Cohen, who off the record sees the S&P rising to 1600 or more) refuses to raise his year end forecast for the S&P, which has remained firmly at 1250 for the entire year. More muppetry, more dodecatuple reverse psychology, or is Goldman telling the truth? You decide.

How far is the Fed from reaching the bottom of its ammunition box? Well, both Mario Draghi and Ben Bernanke said no to yet more monetary stimulus recently. Wall Street unsurprisingly was disappointed. Wall Street expected more stimulus, as institutional investors are analyzing monetary policy from their own perspective rather than the central bank's viewpoint – understandable, but a big mistake. Wall Street's Conundrum: with the S&P 500 up less than 7% in 2012, the year is almost over, and the investment firms have little to show for it.