Archive - Aug 2012 - Story

Eventually — because the costs of the deleveraging trap makes organicy growth very difficult — the debt will either be forgiven, inflated or defaulted away. Endless rounds of tepid QE (which is debt additive, and so adds to the debt problem) just postpone that difficult decision. The deleveraging trap preserves the value of past debts at the cost of future growth. Under the harsh discipline of a gold standard, such prevarication is not possible. Without the ability to inflate, overleveraged banks, individuals and governments would default on their debt. Income would rapidly fall, and economies would likely deflate and become severely depressed. Yet liquidation is not all bad.  The example of 1907 — prior to the era of central banking — illustrates this. Although liquidation episodes are painful, the clear benefit is that a big crash and depression clears out old debt. Under the present regimes, the weight of old debt remains a burden to the economy.

Just because Italy's 2 Year bond yield has plunged, bringing its cost of short term funding to manageable levels, if only for a day or two, it is suddenly "obvious" that it will not need Germany's goodwill ever again. Sure enough...

On the day Knight blew up, and its stock tumbled initially to the $7 range, when the market speculated the loss may be "only" as large as $150-$250MM, we calculated courtesy of a Nanex analysis which suggested the modus operandi of the "berserk" algo, that the finaly loss would be far greater. This was confirmed a day later when it was made public that the final loss KCG experienced in just 45 minutes of trading was at least $440 million, and will be far greater when the losses associated with all the external trading reroutes are calculated. Nonetheless, with the SEC still completely mum on the whole issue (for one simple reason: it has no idea what happened, and is quiet not out of malice, but sheer incompetence), there is still an open question of just what happened. Here, once again from Nanex, is the complete post-mortem of a firm that was almost fully mortem, explaining everything that happened.

I was sitting across from an impossibly blonde account executive this afternoon when I heard three words I never thought I’d hear at a foreign bank.

“Are you Greek,” she asked me with a bit of a smile…

me: “Uh, no. I have a US passport, among others…”

she: “OK good, as long as you’re not Greek.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Let me explain.

Every now and then, US taxpayer money goes for something useful and surprisingly informative. Such as this infographic from the US Census Bureau deconstructing the "American Economic Machine" or at least justifies its generally accepted popular representation in the aftermath of the recently concluded Census. The graphic cites facts dealing with manufacturing, services, retail trade, construction, government and much more as seen through the numerous economic programs and surveys conducted by the Census Bureau. And while entertaining, we urge readers to remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and that the American "economic machine" is merely the culmination of a global financial system that is full to the gills with credit money to the tune of $707 trillion as shown in this infographic previously. Is the trade off worth it? We will find out in the coming years when at some point, we hope, the economy will be allowed to take off on its own and attempt to recreate the virtuous cycle, however without the training wells of the world's central planners who day after day steal from the future to preserve today's house of cards. We are not very hopeful.

Just because one foreign - note: not local because US bankers know very well where the bodies are buried -  bank (whose CEO forgot to bribe American congressmen as efficiently as some other bank CEOs), namely HSBC, was not enough to convince Americans just how active America's corrupt political muppets are when it comes to eradicating the evil banking scourge, here comes redirection target #2:

• STANDARD CHARTERED MAY FACE SUSPENSION OVER IRAN TRANSACTIONS
• BANK HAD $250 BLN IN TRANSACTIONS WITH IRAN, REGULATOR CLAIMS
• STANDARD ORDERED BY N.Y. FINANCIAL REGULATOR TO HIRE MONITOR
• STANDARD CHARTERED ORDERED TO APPEAR BEFORE N.Y. REGULATOR

Many finance-oriented critiques start from the position that our problems largely stem from the financial/political dominance of Elitist cartels and cabals. Clearly, the malinvestment, exploitation, predation and disregard for the law that characterizes the rule of political-financial Elites in both developed and developing nations have wreaked havoc on societies and economies around the globe. Implicit in this critique is a dangerously naive assumption: if all our problems can be traced back to Elitist cabals such as the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, then it follows that the subjugation or eradication of these concentrations of self-serving power would remove the cause of our problems. Alas, that would be a welcome step in the right direction, but that alone would not resolve the structural causes of our devolution. Freeing ourselves of self-serving Elites would certainly create an opening for structural transformation that is currently impossible, but the transformation will require changing much of what the average citizen takes for granted as a "given" or even "right."

And the update comes as expected: RUSSIAN INTERIOR MINISTRY DENIES ISSUING ANY STATEMENT ON ASSAD'S HEALTH VIA TWITTER: REUTERS

Moments ago, the apparently fake twitter account of the Russian minister of the interior Vladimir Kolokoltsev (which was created days ago) sent out the three completely unconfirmed and uncorroborated tweets stating that Syria's president Assad "has been killed or injured" which the market, in all its ultra-high speed trading wisdom, took and ran with, not waiting for any actual confirmed news to be released (because obviously Russian official channels have never heard of news wires such as Interfax).End result: WTI soaring by over $1 to just shy of $92, on what very well may be completely fake news, dragging the entire market higher with it.

After several weeks ago, the New York Fed was kind enough to tell us that absent perpetual expectations of Fed generosity, the stock market would be over 50% lower, today its intrepid bloggers focus on another critical aspect of the US financial system, and the Fed's mediation thereof: namely visualizing the "plumbing" that keeps the financial system afloat. From the FRBNY: "On a typical day, more than $14 trillion of dollar-denominated payments is routed through the banking system. Critical to a well-functioning economy are the timing and smooth flow of dollars for large-value transactions and the infrastructure that enables that dollar flow. This financial market infrastructure provides essential economic services—“plumbing” for the economy—and is made up of a variety of entities." How does this look on an hourly chart? Thanks to the Fed, now we know.

It is no secret that just like the Achilles heel of China's goalseeked GDP number is the country's ever declining electric output, so the best coincident indicator of what is really going on behind the scenes with US GDP is railcar loadings of waste and scrap: i.e., garbage. As Bloomberg explains: "One closely watched economic indicator is the rail car loads of waste and scrap materials." Logically: "The more we demand, the more waste is generated by that production." In other words, if one is seeking validation that numbers reported by the BEA are even remotely credible, the best place to turn to is railcar loads of garbage. However, not surprisingly, such validation will not be found in the actual data. As the chart of the day, courtesy of Bloomberg Brief, demonstrates, if garbage is the benchmark, the US economy is now contracting faster than it has at any one point in the past 3 years and is on pace to recreate the economic collapse last seen after the Lehman bankruptcy. Perhaps another reason why central planners have latched on to stock markets and will just not let go.

The second quarter earnings season is almost over with 87% of companies reporting. And so far it has been an unmitigated disaster, with only 51% of companies beating on the far easily fudgible bottom line number (which further facilitates the transition of America to a "part-time worker society" as repeatedly demonstrated here), but a stunning 60% of all S&P member missing on the top line. More importantly, for the first time since the Lehman collapse, year-over-year revenue "growth" will be negative, declining at 1% from Q2 2011. Whether the reason is due to FX exposure in a world in which the USD suddenly found a major bid in the past 3 months, or because of corporate unwillingness to reinvest their cash into their business and increase CapEx is unknown. But one thing is certain: absent central bank intervention, which for some inexplicable reason has seen the PE multiple of the S&P rise to 2012 highs, the stock market would not be where it is today if corporate fundamentals had anything to do with actual stock price.

Update: IBEX resumes for trade with a nearly 5 hour delay, last seen higher at 1.68%. We can only hope the Knight algo is not to blame for yet another round of headless chicken buying.

Last week it was Knight, today it is the Spanish stock market. Following a halt for a "technical glitch" just after 4 am Eastern time, Spain'sstock exchange , the IBEX, is still not trading as of this posting. So how will Spain and the ECB declare victory if they are unable to demonstrate the daily ramp in Spanish stocks (where shorting financials is once again forbidden.... because Europe continues to be "fixed").

The company which has lately is best known as Amazon's physical showroom, aka Best Buy, is in play once again, this time on yet another highly dubious speculation of a takeover by the company's founder, Richard Schulze, who has offered to take the company private at $24-26/share. So far so good. The problem: a highly confident letter by Credit Suisse meaning zero fixed financing is in place. Frankly, it is surprising Jefferies did not engage here, because as those who have observed the kinds of "weak" MBO offers as this one will certainly be, "highly confident" financings almost never work out, especially those which assume to refi $1.7 billion in debt for a distressed company. It gets better: Schulze has not even done due diligence for which he is asking the board's permission. Expect the initial pop on the headline to fizzle very quickly the realization that the probability of this deal actually happening is negligible (see every other "highly confident" take over by Trian's Nelson Peltz virtually all of which have fizzled in the past 3 years).

Virtually all developments in Europe over the past two years can be easily explained using a simple version of three actor game theory. So can the endless delays in reaching an actionable resolution. The problem, however, as Bill Gross earlier, and now Bank of America, shows, is that the incentive to delay, based at least on one the actors' preferences - that of the market - is becoming very tenuous, and "the risk of an ugly end game is rising." By implication, this means that the goodwill of both Europe's monetary and political authorities is waning by the day, as last Thursday demonstrated so very vividly.

Never forget; there are two sides to the European fiscal proposition. There are the funding nations and the borrowing nations and I suggest that the focus of the markets will soon turn to the funding countries and their capacity to provide capital without endangering themselves. I think the attention of the markets is about to turn to Germany and France, the largest components of the European Union, and with GDP’s of $3.2 trillion and $2.77 trillion respectively the question is going to come around to just how much these two countries can support without sending themselves into a serious economic quagmire. The EU officially recognized sovereign debt of Greece is now 22.33% of the GDP of Germany and 25.80% of the GDP of France. The banks in Europe dwarf the sovereigns with balance sheets three times larger than of all of the EU nations and with Spain having now fallen and Italy about to go; just how much that can be afforded is quickly coming into the focus of many money managers.