Archive - Feb 2013 - Story

With gold dropping nearly 3% on February 20, we had to look closely at the FOMC minutes, which were partially responsible for that movement. Since there are quite a few highlights, we have split this analysis into three sections: the confusion over the minutes in the market; the ambiguous language hinting at deep problems; and a few quotes to make your blood boil.

You know America is in trouble when a company that does nothing but create TV-style shows of college-age women in next-to-no clothes goes bankrupt but sure enough the company behind the "Girls Gone Wild" videos filed Chapter 11 today to protect itself from $10.3 million debt claimed by Steve Wynn’s Wynn Las Vegas LLC (after losing a slander lawsuit suggesting Wynn knowingly tricked high-end gamblers) and a $5.8 million award won by a woman who says the company used naked images of her without permission in the “Girls Gone Wild Sorority Orgy” DVD series. The bankruptcy enables the company "to restructure its frivolous and burdensome legal affairs," and just like GM and UA (the company states reassuringly) it will be business-as-usual for Girls Gone Wild. In perhaps the clearest analog for America, the company had $16.3mm in debt and $50k in assets - now that is leverage-able wealth-effect.

The dark ages were an awful time. Considering the brightest days delivered constant warfare, the burning of books, and the fear of barbarians, no one ever looked forward to the darkest days. Fast forward 1,600 years, and the darkest days of the European debt crisis are finally over - not because the bad debt has been written off or due to the consolidation of all debt, but simply because everyone has said so. Exactly who is telling lies and who is telling the truth will only be determined in due course. Without a doubt, global economic growth remains stagnate, yet stock markets are booming. Our message on financial markets remains very consistent – do not confuse strong financial markets with a strong underlying economy. While this may sound like hogwash to many investors and investment professionals, it is the extreme, unorthodox, and never-before-tried policies by the World’s central banks that is the reason for the march higher for stocks. Regardless, for those who honestly believe in the recovery, ask yourself the following questions...

If we can't even cut federal spending by 2.4 percent without much of the country throwing an absolute hissy fit, then what hope does America have?  All of this whining and crying about the sequester is absolutely disgraceful.  The truth is that even if the sequester goes into effect, the U.S. government will still take in more money than ever before in 2013 and it will still spend more money than ever before in 2013.  So it is a bit disingenuous to call what is about to happen "a spending cut", but for the sake of argument let's concede that point. If this is how bad things are now, how bad will they be when a day of reckoning for our economy arrives? And a day of reckoning is coming. Our politicians can try to keep kicking the can down the road for as long as they can, but eventually time will run out.  We can borrow our way to prosperity for a while, but in the end there is always a very bitter price to pay for doing so. I would love to tell you that there is a chance that all of this will be turned around, but the truth is that all of this whining and crying about the sequester shows that America is doomed.

With Rajoy quietly gloating at his political fraud being off the front-pages thanks to Italian elections, it seems the more we dig into Italian reality, the weaker the story becomes. The meme of the last few years has been that "at least we're not as bad as Greece" and rightly so, for as Bloomberg's Niraj Shah notes today, Greece's poverty rate is a stunning 31% (against Holland's 15.7%). However, while all eyes have been focused on Spain's dismal economy, the sad reality is that Italy is worse than Spain in that its poverty rate is a breath-taking 28.2% (relative to Spain's 27%) - even though the unemployment rates in the two nations are vastly different (Spain 26% and Italy 11.2%). Given this fact it is perhaps not surprising that the 'people' voted against austerity and furthermore, that Italy's CDS has pushed above Spain's for the first time in over a year.

As if today's collapse in JCP's stock price, Bill Ackman had his nose bloodied both figuratively and numerically when his now arch-nemesis appeared on Bloomberg TV to explain his gaining two seats on the board and option to purchase 25% of Herbalife. While obviously not full of the to-and-fro fireworks of their recent encounter, Icahn had quite a few jabs at Ackman record lately, "he has made a few very big mistakes," and thanked him for his big mistake in "giving us an opportunity to buy a company at a discounted price." The interview was full of Icahn's normal bluster but he once again brought up the fact that this whole 300-page dog-and-pony show was undertaken right before year-end, "I do not understand why someone... talks about the fact that he is short," for obvious reasons, "except to say that it certainly helped his year-end numbers."

Since the Fed is doing all it can to relieve the big banks and all legacy debtors of their debt obligations, it is only fair that those incumbered with student debt - impacting those who can least afford it - and which is at least on the surface nondischargeable, are afforded the same opportunity. So here is a primer for the rest of us - those who don't have $1.8 trillion in very fungible reserves holed up with the Federal Reserve. As Christopher Glazek and Sean Monahan note, discharging student debt is a black-box dilemma. While bankruptcy protocols are always complex, student debt is loaded with its own special brand of illegibility. Debtors are misled by the media into thinking that discharging student loans is impossible and shamed into treating the mere notion of relief as a form of extravagant welfare-queenism - however, there is a way (or 12 ways) to show your future life prospects are characterized by a “certainty of hopelessness.”

The United States’ current fiscal and monetary policies are unsustainable. The US government’s net debt as a share of GDP has doubled in the past five years, and the ratio is projected to be higher a decade from now, even if the economy has fully recovered and interest rates are in a normal range. An aging US population will cause social benefits to rise rapidly, pushing the debt to more than 100% of GDP and accelerating its rate of increase. While the future evolution of these imbalances remains unclear, the result could eventually be a sharp rise in long-term interest rates and a substantial fall in the dollar’s value, driven mainly by foreign investors’ reluctance to continue expanding their holdings of US debt. Investors frequently rely on two key arguments to dismiss the fear of a run on the dollar: the dollar is a reserve currency, and it carries fewer risks than other currencies. Neither argument is persuasive.

The best performing currency year-to-date has no home country, no central banker and no physical scrip; it is the online-only ‘Bitcoin’ and as we noted recently, it is becoming more mainstream.  BTC, as the currency is known, up 130% year to date in dollar terms, thanks to rising demand from a wide variety of adherents, which ConvergEx's Nick Colas notes, includes libertarian activists, small businesses, online drug dealers and gambling sites.  That makes the Bitcoin a controversial subject, to be sure, but Nick notes we can also learn from this unique case study a lesson in global economics.  Bitcoin ‘Money supply’ growth is capped at a slow rate – far below its current levels of demand.  That makes it prone to boom-bust cycles.  It also has no sovereign sponsorship, which means it works outside any nation’s security apparatus.  Lose your bitcoins to hackers?  Tough luck – there is no FDIC in these parts.  Still, Colas concludes, in the creation and growth of the Bitcoin it is not hard to see the online future of currency, especially as real-world alternatives continue to struggle with sluggish economies.

Andrew Mason, the CEO of once fast-money favorite Groupon has been, umm, let go. With the shares trading 77% below their IPO price, dumping 25% today alone, the board has decided enough is enough. His witty letter to 'the People of Groupon' (in full below) starts, "After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding – I was fired today. If you’re wondering why... you haven’t been paying attention." Shares popped 12% after-hours on the news (ouch), and of course in the whimsical land of the BLS this 'layoff' will be seasonally-adjusted into broad-based hiring in the tech sector.

Whether or not you believe it would have made a difference to 'know' or not, the facts are that over the course of US economic history, you rarely know you're in a recession until long after it starts. Would you still chase day after day? Could you stand to watch the greater fools buying in the belief they are not the patsy? The following six facts might put things into perspective...

It seems the truthiness is growing louder in Washington:

• *DALLAS FED'S FISHER FED HAS BEEN `SOURCE OF FUEL' FOR RECOVERY

Once again, there you have it, as we noted here, the admission that indeed it is the Fed that has been the visible hand. Fisher went on to note:

• *DALLAS FED'S FISHER SAYS IT'S TIME TO TAPER OFF BOND-BUYING
• *DALLAS FED'S FISHER SAYS FISCAL AUTHORITIES HAVE CREATED 'FOG'

Fog, smoke, and mirrors... perhaps those tin-foil-hat wearing digital dickweeds were on to something?

We came so close. Every trick in the bag was pulled to run stops and get the momos to take us into virgin territory for retail investors following the Dow. Think of the headlines on the news tonight... But alas, we will have to wait for tomorrow's POMO to see if it comes then. From the moment voting began, equities rolled over and as the slide picked up speed so did volume and trade size. We noted that Bonds and FX markets were largely unimpressed by equity's lurch for the highs, and sure enough, stocks rotated lower into the close but still green for the month of February (just to ensure the headlines remain positive). S&P futures dropped 1% off their highs into the close and the deadbeat volume of the dribble higher surged above average. Treasuries ended the day -2bps (-8bps on the week so far) with 10Y back under 1.90%; the USD rallied as JPY and EUR weakened taking DXY up 0.6% on the week; VIX's bearish divergence from yesterday seemed prescient as it snapped higher to 15.5% on the day suggesting caution was high into the close.

As equity indices 'stabilize' ready for their CNBC-counted-down surge to new all-time highs and the holy grail of economic-growth-creating money-printing-fed inflationary-wealth-effect, we thought a blast from the past would 'help'...

The push higher in stocks today peaked as the voting began and now as we receive the 'shocking news' that:

Senate Lacks Votes to Advance Democratic Sequestration Plan

We see the equity market fading fast - reverting to VWAP first of course. Whocouldanode? What happens next is anyone's guess but FX and bonds sure aren't buying it.