Archive - Jan 28, 2013 - Story

The hypocrisy of the government knows no bounds. The writing on the wall couldn’t be clearer.

Beginning with the "Yes or No" questions only, everyone's favorite talk-show host takes on The Bernank in this earth-shattering interview. While Lance Armstrong managed to keep the dream alive for over a decade as all around him showed point-blank-proof of artificial stimulation, it took Oprah to get the truth from his lips (oh and a USADA threat). It seems The Federal Reserve has been forced to 'fess up in this entertaining interview as Bernanke sits sobbing across from Ms. Winfrey - and comes clean to years of monetary policy artificial stimulation and performance-enhancing economic-doping. Just like Armstrong, Bernanke admits that it is widespread and that this generation of central bankers "all do it" as he notes that "some retard from the FT or NYT will write excruciatingly thoughtful op-eds about how this is actually a good thing." From the raging parties at Club-Fed to "good f##king times" with Alan Greenspan to "telling people to chillax and enjoy the good times" as the housing bubble popped, Bernanke leaves us with these chilling words: "Buy food, guns, and gold, this $hit is about to get real!" Print-strong.

"Jesse Litvak arranged trades for customers as part of his job as a managing director on the MBS desk at Jefferies.  Litvak would buy a MBS from one customer and sell it to another customer, but on many occasions he lied about the price at which his firm had bought the MBS so he could re-sell it to the other customer at a higher price and keep more money for the firm.  On other occasions, Litvak misled purchasers by creating a fictional seller to purport that he was arranging a MBS trade between customers when in reality he was just selling MBS out of his firm’s inventory at a higher price.  Because MBS are generally illiquid and difficult to price, it is particularly important for brokers to provide honest and accurate information. The SEC alleges that Litvak generated more than $2.7 million in additional revenue for Jefferies through his deceit.  His misconduct helped him improve his own standing at the firm, as his bonuses were determined in part by the amount of revenue he generated for the firm." 

Things don’t look so good for China.

Prior to the crisis, the 29 largest global banks benefitted from just over one notch of uplift from the ratings agencies due to expectations of state support. Today, those same global leviathans benefit from around three notches of implied support. Expectations of state support have risen threefold since the crisis began. This translates into a large implicit subsidy to the world’s biggest banks in the form of lower funding costs and higher profits. Prior to the crisis, this amounted to tens of billions of dollars each year. Today, it is hundreds of billions. Too-big-to-fail is far from gone.

Given our recent discussion (here and here) of the rising importance of Africa in the world's power and money echelons, it is not entirely surprising that the NY Times reports that US military command in Africa is actively preparing to establish a drone base in northwest Africa to increase "unarmed surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups" that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region. It would appear Niger will be the most likely place for the base - from which officials envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones though, of course, they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens. “This is directly related to the Mali mission, but it could also give Africom a more enduring presence for I.S.R.,” one American military official said Sunday, referring to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Perhaps, actually scratch the "perhaps", what is really happening is the US now has a drone base with which to supervise Chinese expansion in Northweast Africa, anda drone fleet to use defensively and offensively as it sees fit.

Amid all of this messy thinking we miss the simple truth behind our material wealth: It has been achieved through the accumulation, by us and inherited from our forefathers, of a stock of highly configured and embedded tools that make human effort more effective and things possible that never were before. And we turn our backs on this truth when we turn more and more of these tools over to government bureaucrats. Profits are but an intermediate end of capital investment. Its ultimate end, in fact, is the material progression of our civilization. How easily we lose sight of this, at our and our progeny's peril. We all want more economic growth, but we ignore the means to get there: the onerous choices and commitments made along the round-about path to those ends. We even confuse the means with the ends.

Things in France must not be very serious, because the French labor minister accidentally let the truth come out a little earlier today. As the Telegraph reports, France's labour minister sent the country into a state of shock on Monday after he described the nation as “totally bankrupt."

Once again equity markets disconnected (positively) from their risk-related cousins at around the European close and while broad equity markets closed around unchanged, the weakness in HY credit, and rise in VIX and Treasury bond prices as the day wore on told a slightly more concerned story than stocks would suggest. AAPL rose helping the tech sector; homebuilders saw their biggest loss in 5 weeks following weaker than expected housing data; and CAT's incredulous rally on total lack of clarity for their outlook provided just enough juice to keep the Dow near unchanged. S&P 500 futures fell rapidly to Friday's low as the US day session opened but found support and oscillated around unch/VWAP for the rest of the day. The USD round-tripped from early strength to end unchanged with GBP weakness and JPY strength. Oil rallied, Silver slipped, Gold tracked the USD, but Treasuries' overnight weakness halted instantly as the US day-session opened. Volume and average trade size were low which combined with the VIX expansion and broad risk-off suggests the equity rally is losing steam - but who knows anymore.

In yet another victory for not bowing to the great-and-good of modern orthodoxy, Iceland has won a court ruling that enables it to repay billions of Euros (in failed bank deposits to the UK and Holland) on its own terms. Icesave collapsed in 2008 and left thousands of depositors, who had chased higher yielding deposits, with losses. The Dutch and British governments demanded prompt payment; Iceland denied, preferring (rationally) to repay what they could from the then-bankrupt entity. As RTE notes, Icelanders in referenda twice voted against repayment schemes drawn up by their government to satisfy the British and Dutch claims, leaving the estate of Landsbanki to pay back the funds, which it has steadily done, instead of the taxpayers of Iceland being force per se to fund this shortfall. The implication being: Bank deposit insurance schemes in the European Economic Area are NOT backed by government liability, neither explicitly nor implicitly - which could well reignite concerns of the much-hoped-for Europe-wide deposit-guarantees.

That precious metals are not the best friends of central banks, whose sole provenance is in creating, and lately massively diluting, faith-based fiat currency is no secret, especially not after the recent snafu involving the Bundesbank and its shocking gold repatriation announcement which came in direct refutation of its public statements just 2 months earlier about faith in the NY Fed this, and bashing of a "phantom debate" on the safety of gold reserves that. Yet it was not gold gold, silver or even tungsten that was the object of derision in an amusing paper released by the ECB in early November titled "Virtual Currency Schemes", which we profiled at the time, but rather the decentralized electronic currency BitCoin, which was supposed to highlight what, in the eyes of the Draghi-led Frankfurt institutions, is nothing but a Ponzi scheme. Why the ECB suddenly felt threatened so much by Bitcoin, it felt an imperative to issue a 55 page paper decrying such electronic currencies we will never know. What we do know, however, courtesy of a reminder by Bloomberg's Max Raskin, is that since the publication of said paper, the value of Bitcoin as tracked by the Mtgox exchange, has soared some 40% in just under three months, from a "fiat equivalent value" of $13 to a most recent closing price of $18.50, and has doubled in the past 12 months alone.

There are numerous myths flying around the screens we all remain glued to - from inflows suddenly becoming correlated with equity market performance to a 'real recovery' in housing. TrimTabs CEO Charles Biderman paid a brief but fact-full visit to CNBC's Rick Santelli and the two somewhat skeptical gentlemen expounded on four of the critical fallacies supporting hope in our markets currently. First, the last time inflows were this big we saw dramatic reversals in stocks; and coincidentally, secondly, we also saw companies buying back less stock (in fact we saw float rising at those periods) and sure enough that is what Biderman notes is happening in January too. Third, current 'economic' euphoria appears due to the drag forward of incomes into Q4 2012 due to tax concerns (which is being spent/saved now) - however that means Q1 2013 and on will be negatively impacted (even if we see a decent print in Q4 GDP) as that pull-forward reverts; and finally, fourth, interest rates are rising and simultaneously refinances have plunged - hurting the 'housing recovery' meme which has been the driver of a lot of euphoria (be careful what you wish for). It appears facts, once again, get in the way of a good story.

G4+CHF can fight the currency wars longer and more aggressively than small G10 and EM countries can.  However, as Citi's Steven Englander notes, it also takes a lot of depreciation to crowd in a meaningful amount of net exports. His bottom line, GBP, CHF and JPY have a lot further to depreciate.  In principle, the USD can easily fall into this category as well, but right now the USD debate is focused on Fed policy – were it to become clear that balance sheet expansion will end well beyond end-2013, the USD would fall into the category of currency war ‘winners’ as well. Critically, though, the reality of currency wars is that policymakers do not use FX as cyclical stimulus because of its effectiveness; they use it because they have hit a wall with respect to the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policies, and are unwilling to bite the structural policy bullet. The following seven points will be on every policymakers' mind - or should be.

Back in July 2008, just before all hell broke loose and the S&P was trading in the upper 1,200s, everyone's favorite permabull, JPM strategist famously reiterated his S&P 500 price target for the end of 2008: 1450. Two months later Lehman filed for bankruptcy, and 4 months later the S&P closed 2008 some 40% lower than said price target. Another two months later and anyone who had listened to Tom Lee lost 50% of their investment. Today, as the Fed's balance sheet crosses $3 trillion, and the global central banks have pumped a total of some $15 trillion into the markets, Tom Lee ws back on CNBC with what is his most permabullish prediction ever: he now expects the S&P to generate some 150 in earnings to which he applies a 17x multiple. His conclusion "If you put a 17 multiple on $150, the S&P really sort of peaks around 2,400 or 2,500." In Dow terms, this means a Dow Jones Industrial Average of, drumroll, 20000. He does, caveat it, however: "that's obviously 4 years away." And if Tom Lee was off by 40% in 4 months, we can't help but wonder what the hit rate on his 4 year prediction will be, and if, by using the same ruler extrapolation mechanism he applies to corporate earnings nand multiples one extrapolates the Fed's balance sheet at some $7 trillion in 4 years, what a loaf of bread will cost just as the DJIA crosses 20,000. For future humor purposes, it may be useful to bookmark this post.

As Mark Carney steps aside from his role at the Bank of Canada to undertake all manner of easy money in the UK, we thought a reflection on the 'stealth' QE that he has been engaged with, very much under the radar, in the US' neighbor-to-the-north was worthwhile. It seems quietly and with little aplomb, Carney's BoC has grown its balance sheet by over 21% YoY - the most since 2009. If that was not enough to make someone nervous, the quantity of Canadian government bonds on the BoC's balance sheet has grown at a remarkable 46% YoY! All of this has taken place during a time when 'supposedly' the Canadian economy has been reasonably strong and foreign demand for debt high. With Canada's CAD267bn debt due in 2013, we suspect this 'stealth' QE will continue to rise.