Archive - Sep 27, 2012 - Story

Presented with little comment as the populist media mogul steps back into the European political landscape with these little beauties:

• *BERLUSCONI SAYS EURO A `SCAM' WITHOUT CENTRAL BANK BACKING IT
• *BERLUSCONI SAYS GERMANY LEAVING EURO WOULDN'T BE A TRAGEDY
• *BERLUSCONI: BAILOUT CONDITIONS WOULD LEAD ECONOMY TO COLLAPSE
• *BERLUSCONI SAYS ITALY RISKS HEADING TOWARD 'ENDLESS CRISIS'

It appears he has a new plan then - Allow Germany to leave; and let the rest of the broke insolvent European countries print themselves to socialist utopia. Vote Bunga...

A massive 13% collapse in durable goods, the biggest since January 2009; a $20 billion miss to annualized Q2 GDP estimates, and well below the lowest estimate, 60+ weeks of constant upward BLS revisions to initial claims "data" and not to mention assorted atrocious economic (note: not to be confused with market - the two are now completely unlinked) data from around the globe. And what does the White House say: the data shows that the "US is making progress." We sure wouldn't want to know what it would look like if after 3 episodes of easing, trillions injected into the economy via the Fed, and of course $6 trillion in extra debt the US was not making progress. Oh and yes, everything else is Bush's fault.

As the words were spewing from the mouths of Saenz, Montoro, and Guindos - with little to no substance at all, so EURUSD started to push higher - in a hurry. In today's quiet market, the correlated-monkeys took over and US equities - thanks to weakness in the USD - and Gold and Oil spurted higher. AAPL - as the high beta proxy for all things market - surged 2% (we assume as the Spaniards will need to buy more AAPL stock to fund the shortfalls in their pension funds). The bottom-line is we have fallen for a few days and so a bounce is not unlikely but the timing and size smells very fishy and the front-running of quarter-end front-running wind-dressing front-runners remains a quagmire of circular logic to us. The bottom-line is that the media can now say the words "the market seemed to 'like' what Spain was saying - is the bottom in?" despite there being no news at all.

The Fed can create money but if it doesn't end up as household income it is "dead money." In the consensus view, the Federal Reserve's unlimited quantitative easing (QE3) programs will do two things: 1) boost stocks and other "risk on" assets and 2) generate inflation. The two follow-on effects are related, of course; gold and other hard assets are rising in anticipation of higher inflation. But all is not quite as it seems when it comes to the inflationary effect of creating money. Add all this up and here's what we get: money is not just being created by the Fed, it's being destroyed by declines in asset valuations and writedowns of impaired debt. Money velocity is plummeting and banks are hoarding Treasuries as much-needed collateral. As for the "wealth effect," it only affects the 5% who own enough equities to make a difference. That narrows the whole "wealth effect" to 7 million people out of 142 million workers.

Lots of headlines but little action. Germany will not be pleased:

• SAENZ SAYS SPAIN PLANS 43 NEW LAWS TO BOLSTER ECONOMY
• SAENZ SAYS REFORM PLAN IS TO MEET PLEDGES TO EU PARTNERS

The kickers:

• SPANISH BUDGET BASED ON UNCHANGED ECONOMIC FORECASTS, SEES GDP DOWN 0.5%

In other words everything will be massively wrong for the country with the epic bank run. And the one the people have been waiting for:

• SPAIN TO TAP €3 BILLION FROM SOCIAL SECURITY RESERVES IN ORDER TO FUND LIQUIDITY NEEDS.
  

Incidentally this is the same fund which has 9 months of pension reserves and is invested in... drumroll... Spanish Bonds! And cue to the riotcam.

Today's prime-time event is about to begin. In a few moments (pending further delays) Mariano Rajoy will begin listing the terms of his 2013 Austerity Budget which is expected to delineate the cuts, and further austerity measures (which so far have been non-existent - recall that Y/Y Spain has seen its tax revenues slide by nearly 5% while spending has increased by almost 9%) which will be a precursor to the Spanish bailout, that Spain has less and less time to enact before it runs out of cash. This could possibly lead to further violent outbursts among the throw of protesters which has once again surrounded parliament, as happened on Tuesday, depending on the resolve of the protesters.

Citigroup's macro risk aversion index just tested record lows (i.e. record high complacenecy levels with regard investors' view of macro uncertainty going forward). Coinciding as it did with Bernanke's all-in moment we wonder if we just saw the 'peak complacency' moment as the wall of worry was officially scaled only to find that the grass is indeed NOT greener on the other side. For sure, it would appear that all the talk of bearish sentiment as the driver of the nextt 'secular' leg in stocks seems just that - 'talk'.

It was inevitable. After demonstrating for years that week after week after week domestic equity mutual funds saw outflow after outflow which now amounts to a third of a trillion since 2010, regardless of how the policy vehicle known as the stock market, long since populated almost exclusively by vacuum tubes, performed and coupled with inflows into bonds, it was only a matter of time before this happened. This being the historic announcement by Fidelity that as of Wednesday bond and money market assets now total $848.9 billion, more than half of the company's $1.6 trillion in managed assets. Ford O'Neil, a top bond manager at Fidelity, underscored the milestone on Wednesday during a media presentation in Boston. "The rise of bond and money market funds, including institutional assets, is a remarkable turn of events for Fidelity. The company built an empire in the 1980s and 1990s on stock funds and star stockpickers like Peter Lynch. Fidelity's stock mutual funds held $761 billion at the end of June... The rise of bond and money market funds, including institutional assets, is a remarkable turn of events for Fidelity. The company built an empire in the 1980s and 1990s on stock funds and star stockpickers like Peter Lynch. Fidelity's stock mutual funds held $761 billion at the end of June." So much for the empire that Peter Lynch built. Luckily we all know whom to thank - a certain Princetonian central planner who would make the 1954 Stalingrad politburo blush with envy.

European riots protests are on UBS' Art Cashin's mind. Furthermore, Art notes that Spain has seen a fifth region (Castilla La Mancha) request a billion-euro-bailout (along with Catalonia's secession concerns) and Greece is hotting up. However, it is Egypt that is becoming an increasing concerning for the avuncular aristocrat of the exchange floor, as he fears the region's growing instability along with its potential need to devalue the pound may see the current 'sporadic outbursts of social unrest' spill over into more broad based protestations on the streets of Cairo.

It appears that JPM and HSBC's monopoly in the warehousing of tungsten gold is coming to an end. Just two weeks after QEternity was announced, it has become obvious that the only things, literally, that will matter in the future are the ABCDs: Anything Bernanke Can't Destroy. And as a result of a surge in physical purchases, buyers need to store their metal somewhere. Sure enough, one of the the UK's most insolvent banks - Barclays - is more than happy to provide its brand spanking new warehousing services, with the opening of what will be on of Europe's largest PM vaults. From Dow Jones: "Barclays has opened its first precious metals vault in London in a bid to satisfy growing client demand for bullion as a store of value, the bank said Thursday. The vault, which houses gold, silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium and began operating earlier this month, is one of the largest in Europe. While the bank already has extensive trading and clearing capabilities, this is the first time that Barclays has been able to offer its own precious metals storage facility to its customers, having previously relied on third-party storage." Of course, if and when the scramble comes and everyone demands their gold from the vault located in an unknown location, but somewhere in the inner loop of London's M25, Barclays will just say "Ooops." But we will cross that bridge when we get to it.

The ECB has $15 trillion in loans outstanding to Europe. They claim a $4 trillion balance sheet based upon not counting guaranteed loans by various nations and by not counting contingent liabilities. This is the same scheme that is used for calculating the debt to GDP ratios of the countries in Europe. If a loan, a debt, is guaranteed by a nation or if the liability is “contingent;” it is not counted. This, of course, does not mean that possibility of having to fund or write-off something is not there; it just means it is not counted. Do not disregard or minimize the recent announcement by Germany, Finland and the Netherlands that was joined twenty-four hours later by Austria. The funding nations in Europe placed a line in the concrete when they rejected assisting legacy issues and loans. This group of nations vacated, in this one statement, all of the pleas and demands of the periphery countries that had lined up for aid and ever-more aid relying upon the pledges of the solidarity of Europe and they got an answer, a very Germanic answer which is not, I am quite sure, what they wanted to hear.

Jens "I don't say no to everything" Weidmann just said "nein" again. This time confirming Germany's position that the banking union idea - or an aggregation of deposit guarantees - will not cover existing bad debts. In other words, this will not be allowed to become a back-handed way of transferring wealth from Germany to peripheral banks in a free lunch. He had more to say (via Bloomberg):

• *WEIDMANN: MUST ENSURE PEOPLE DON'T LOSE TRUST IN CENTRAL BANKS
• *WEIDMANN SAYS CENTRAL BANKS SHOULDN'T TAKE ON FISCAL TASKS
• *ECB'S WEIDMANN SAYS PRINTING TOO MUCH MONEY LEADS TO INFLATION
• *WEIDMANN SAYS BANKING UNION NEEDS TIME FOR PROPER PREPARATION
• *WEIDMANN SAYS BANK UNION SHOULDN'T COVER EXISTING BAD DEBTS

So much for the US recovery (we will never tire of saying that). After the first Q2 GDP revision bubbled up from 1.5% to 1.7%, the sellside brigade was confident that the rate of growth would continue and final Q2 GDP would be in line. Instead, we got an absolute shock of a print, with the final Q2 GDP print coming in at a ridiculously low 1.25% (rounded up to 1.3%), below the lowest Wall Street estimate of 1.4%, and the lowest number since the revised 0.1% reported in January 2011. Here is the final GDP trendline: Q4 2011: 4.1%; Q1 2012: 2.0%; Q2 2012: 1.25%. Luckily, at least "housing has bottomed." The reason for the major contraction in the final print: a downward revision to all favorable components except Government which detracted the least from growth in years at just -0.14%. Of note - Personal Consumption was 1.06%, down from the 1.20% per the second revision. If nothing, we now know just what data Bernanke was looking at on an advance basis to come up with QEternity, and we also know the reason for the media and administration's all in gamble to reflate housing yet again. If the housing market does not go up courtesy of infinite cheap leverage, it could be curtains for the Bernanke reflation experiment.

Durable Goods orders expectations were pushed down to a dramatically low -5.0% after last month's dismal reading and the PMI data since but the print at -13.2% is mind-blowingly bad. Perhaps this is the sneak peek that Ben had? This drop is the largest since January 2009 when world trade had fallen off a cliff. It appears the seasonal-adjustments are the driver of the plunge as NSA is -7.2% (still very weak for August). We are sure there will be calls for the V-Shaped recovery from this but with a very different stimulus-environment around the world (i.e. jaded and soaked in much more debt), we suspect that will be less than forthcoming. The sub-indices were all weaker than expected but we note that defense -40% and non-defense aircraft orders plunged. On the bright side, all this terrible production data inspired less layoffs as Initial claims beat expectations modestly falling to its lowest (best) in two months - sigh.

The crux of the "pain for Spain" was exposed in August, when the world learned that despite all attempts to the contrary, Spanish banks are no longer perceived as safe by the locals, and the result was a record 5% deposit outflow in one month from local banks: cash that was promptly redeposited elsewhere in the Eurozone. And as money flow theorists know all too well, if cash is exiting the Spanish banking system - i.e., if the confidence is just not there, not only is growth impossible, not only are any austerity plans or otherwise to push GDP higher futile, but all attempts to save the local banking system - which is now reliant on the ECB for funding to the tune of a record €412 billion, and which means the country has already been bailed out by the ECB - are futile and merely sunk, literally, costs. In short: the deposit outflows continued, and while not at the record July 5% pace, a whopping €17 billion, or 1.1% of total, deposits left the country for good and is unlikely to come back.