Archive - Mar 2013 - Story

On October 2, 2012, news hit that Barry Zubrow, JPM's Chief Risk Officer from November 2007 to January 2012 (in other words, key supervisor of the risk onboarded by the CIO, aka JPM's prop trading desk, for the biggest part of its existence), and then briefly head of corporate and regulatory affairs, would retire from JPMorgan. As Bloomberg reported then, "Now is the right time in my life" to retire, Zubrow, 59, wrote to colleagues in a note today. "We have learned from the mistakes of our recent trading losses." We wonder, if the time was "right" for Zubrow's retirement because the firm realized that the Senate was in possession of the following email sent from Zubrow on April 12, a day before the first fateful Q1 earnings preview conference call in which Jamie Dimon, responding to media reports of Iksil's blow up, said the whole situation was a "tempest in a teapot", in which the Chief Risk Officer essentially told the firm's executives: Braunstein and Dimon, to lie to the public and shareholders?

For those curious about the timeline of the world's biggest prop-desk blow up, here it is day by day and, pardon the pun, blow by blow.

'Too Big To Jail' and 'Too Big To Fail' appears to pay extremely well... It seems it pays to lie - especially compared to your peers.

This, too, is why Jamie Dimon is richer than you...

Presented with no comment...

"Since my departure I have learned of the deceptive conduct by members of the London team, and I was, and remain, deeply disappointed and saddened to learn of such conduct and the extent to which the London team let me, and the Company, down."

It appears paying more for gasoline and higher taxes trumps the exuberance of the equity markets as UMich Consumer Sentiment crashed in February. Printing at 71.8 on expectations of 78.0 this is the biggest miss on record based on Bloomberg data. The 71.8 level is the lowest since December 2011 as it appears that the Fed's only remaining policy tool is just not sparking that animal spirit in the real economy's anchor - the US consumer - as while current conditions did drop, it is future expectations that plunged.

As Marc Faber noted, we hardly expect China to report GDP growth rates that do not perfectly fit the goal-seeked solution for utopian society, but under the covers, there appears to be some considerably more ugly real data. One of the hardest to manipulate, manage, or mitigate for a centrally planned economy is Electricity production. The year-over-year drop in China's electricity production is the largest since the slump in Q1 2009; and the seasonal drop (associated with the New Year) is the largest on record at 25.3%! So on one hand China is discussing tightening monetary policy amid inflation anxiety and a potential real estate bubble - thanks to the rest of the world pumping free money - and on the other hand Chinese officials are faced with the reality of a drastically slowing 'real' economy. At the same time, we note that it appears China's export-import data appears overstated. Rock meet hard place.

In the marked absence of JPM CEO Jamie Dimon who will sadly not be present to explain to Senate why he is richer than (most) of the people present while wearing his signature presidential cufflinks, Carl "Shitty Deal" Levin will be the main highlight in today's Senate hearing "JPMorgan Chase Whale Trades: A Case History of Derivatives Risks and Abuses" which as reported previously found that JPM "lied" and "deceived" regulators.  As the Seante's report concludes, "The bank’s initial claims that its risk managers and regulators were fully informed and engaged, and that the SCP was invested in long-term, risk-reducing hedges allowed by the Volcker Rule, were fictions irreconcilable with the bank’s obligation to provide material information to its investors in an accurate manner." Today, those fictions will attempt to be reconciled, primarily with the help of the "voluntarily retired" former CIO Ina Drew, as well as JPM's vice Chairman Doug Braunstein and IB Co-CEO Michael Cavanagh. Will anything change as a result of today's hearing? Will JPM be broken down? Will the DOJ begin an inquiry into JPM? Of course not. But it makes for a good 3 hours of theater.

Perhaps there is a reason why Bernanke has not been completely hysterical about the sequester crashing his free-money induced party. The following chart shows the relatively strong correlation between US military spending and oil prices over the past 25 years. As we have discussed in depth, there is only one thing that can stop an over-confident central banker - the Brent Vigilantes - but should the sequester kick in with all its defense-spending slashing might, perhaps - just perhaps - that will weigh on the price of oil at the margin and provide just enough cushion for Bernanke et al. to do moar to maintain their key policy tool - the equity index.

Following last month's surprising surge in the Empire Fed from a deep negative number to 10.04, the March print was less exciting, declining modestly to 9.24, on expectations of an unchanged number. Per the report, the new orders and shipments indexes also remained above zero, though both were somewhat lower than last month’s levels. Price indexes showed that input price increases continued at a steady pace while selling prices were flat. Employment indexes suggested that labor market conditions were sluggish, with little change in employment levels and the length of the average workweek. The Number of Employees index dropped from 8.08 to 3.23, back to September 2012 levels. Naturally, with reality worse than expected, all hopes were put in the future as indexes for the  six-month outlook pointed to an increasing level of optimism about future conditions, with the future general business conditions index rising to its highest level in nearly a year. This is only the 4th year in a row in which optimism about the future is orders of magnitude higher than the current reality. Thank the Fed's "wealth channel to support consumer spending." In other economic news, headline inflation came slighlty higher than the expected 0.5%, with the 0.7% sequential print the highest in one year, driven by a surge in the gasoline index which rose 9.1% in February, "to account for almost three-fourths of the seasonally adjusted all items increase. The indexes for electricity, natural gas, and fuel oil also increased, leading to a 5.4 percent rise in the energy index. The food index increased slightly in February, rising 0.1 percent."

With Greenspan emerging from his crypt to confirm that he is now as clueless about everything as he was 15 years ago (although the absolutely zero reaction out of "stocks" to his statement that stocks are "very undervalued" is perhaps indicative that SkyNet may just be learning), it is appropriate to remind readers that this thing known as the "market" died some four years ago. What we have now is a vehicle with a "role in the policy fight to support spending" while "today’s stock market has arguably lost some of its ability to reflect underlying economic trends." Not our words - those of Bank of America's Ethan Harris, who, four years after the fringe blogs, finally "gets it."

• JPMorgan Report Piles Pressure on Dimon in Too-Big Debate (BBG)
• Employers Blast Fees From New Health Law (WSJ)
• Obama unveils US energy blueprint (FT)
• Obama to Push Advanced-Vehicle Research (WSJ) - here come Solar-powered cars?
• BRICs Abandoned by Locals as Fund Outflows Reach 1996 High (BBG)
• Obama won't trip over Netanyahu's Iran "red line" (Reuters)
• Samsung puts firepower behind Galaxy (FT)
• Boeing sees 787 airborne in weeks with fortified battery (Reuters)
• Greece Counts on Gas, Gambling to Revive Asset Sales Tied to Aid (BBG)
• Goldman’s O’Neill Says S&P 500 Beyond 1,600 Needs Growth (BBG)
• China’s new president in corruption battle (FT)
• Post-Chavez Venezuela as Chilly for Companies From P&G to Coke (BBG)

"Equity prices in the US and Europe have been hovering at multi-year highs. To the extent that this reflects powerful policy easing, equity markets may have lost some of its ability to reflect economic trends in exchange for an important role in the policy fight to support spending." This is a statement from a Bank of America report overnight in which the bailed out bank confirms what has been said here since the launch of QE1 - there is no "market", there is no economic growth discounting mechanism, there is merely a monetary policy vehicle. To those, therefore, who can "forecast" what this vehicle does based on the whims of a few good central planners, we congratulate them. Because, explicitly, there is no actual forecasting involved. The only question is how long does the "career trade", in which everyone must be herded into the same trades or else risk loss of a bonus or job, go on for before mean reversion finally strikes. One thing that is clear is that since news is market positive, irrelevant of whether it is good or bad, virtually everything that has happened overnight, or will happen today, does not matter, and all stock watchers have to look forward to is another low volume grind higher, as has been the case for the past two weeks.