Archive - Apr 2013 - Story

The week ahead is light on major market moving data releases. From a policy perspective and in light of the recent moves in treasuries, FOMC minutes are likely to be followed by markets. Retail sales in the US are likely to print below consensus both on the headline and on the core metrics. That said, this needs to be seen against the backdrop of first quarter retail consumer spending data surprising to the upside. Producer prices are also likely to come in on the soft side of market expectations. Finally, do not expect large surprises from the U of Michigan consumer confidence.

• Finally the MSM catches up to reality: Workers Stuck in Disability Stunt Economic Recovery (WSJ)
• China opens Aussie dollar direct trading (FT)
• National Bank and Eurobank Fall as Merger Halted (BBG)
• Why Making Europe German Won’t Fix the Crisis - The Bulgarian case study (BBG)
• Nikkei hits new highs as yen slides (FT)
• Housing Prices Are on a Tear, Thanks to the Fed (WSJ)
• Why is Moody's exempt from justice, or the "Big Question in U.S. vs. S&P" (WSJ)
• Central banks move into riskier assets (FT)
• N. Korea May Conduct Joint Missile-Nuclear Tests, South Says (BBG)
• North Korea Pulls Workers From Factories It Runs With South (NYT)
• Illinois pension fix faces political, legal hurdles (Reuters)
• IPO Bankers Become Frogs in Hot Water Amid China Market Halt (BBG)
• Portugal Seeks New Cuts to Stay on Course (WSJ)

With every modestly positive datapoint being desperately clung to, now that even Goldman's Hatzius has once more thrown in the economic towel after proclaiming an economic renaissance in late 2012 just like he did in late 2010 only to issue a mea culpa a few months later (and just as we predicted - post coming up shortly), the key prerogative is to ignore the elephant in the room. That, of course, is that the JPY 1 quadrillion bond market had to be halted for the second day in a row as the Japanese capital markets are fast becoming a very big and sad joke. The resulting flight to safety from Japanese investors, who sense that their own bond market is on the verge of breaking down completely, has managed to send French and Belgian bonds to record lows, the Spanish 2 Year to sub 2%, the German 6 month bill negative in the primary market, the US 10/30 year constantly bid and so on. The immediate result is that the bond-equity disconnect continues to diverge until one day we may get negative 10 Year rates coupled with an all time high stock market. Gotta love the fake New Normal market, in which the Japanese penny stock market was up another 2.8% to well over 13,000 even as the Shanghai Composite plumbs ever redder territory for 2013 on fears the birdflu contagion will hurt the already struggling economy even more.

Following Friday's epic collapse, snap-back, and circuit-breaker halt in JGB Futures, it appears that investors cannot get enough of Japanese bonds today. From the JPY144.02 close, JGB Futures traded up at the open, oscillated and then gapped higher (on heavy volume) to JPY145.25 before the TSE halted trading once again (on a volatility-based circuit-breaker limit) due to 'rapid price fluctuations. The quadrillion JPY cash JGB market appears very illiquid as we scan the benchmark issues with the 30Y yield higher by 4bps, the 20Y lower by 14bps, and the 10Y lower by 3bps as it appears the futures are the weapon of choice. Since the halt ended, JGB Futures have slipped back notably. It seems pretty evident when and where the BoJ monetization took place but desk chatter was that it was poorly run.

How do you know when the people "just say no" to chicken over rampant bird flu concerns? When even McDonalds is forced to slash chicken-related prices, in this case the 20 piece McNuggets, from CNY 36 to CNY 20. Pretty soon not even giving away the McMystery meat will clear out the shelves of all chicken-related fast food first in Shanghai and soon elsewhere in China. Finally, we dread to imagine the horrors that will befall Yum (read China KFC sales), now that after so much pain, the fast-food chain had finally reported a modest bounce in Chinese sales. So much for that.

Do we need 50 states? With the corporatocracy increasingly looking to cut costs, wouldn't it make more sense to right-size the number of 'regional' centers of democracy? With an increasingly Federally dominated US, perhaps 50 disparate decision-makers is too many. It turns out, that based on some wonderfully complex math (spatially embedded multi-scale interaction networks) and data from wheresgeorge.com, the United States Of America is more 'optimal' from a monetary and mobility-sense if it were managed around these 8 regions. Theoretical physicist Dirk Brockmann says the borders of the United States are out of date, and as Fast Company notes, "no longer correlate with our behavior." By combining network theory with the travels of our dollar bills, the 'real' effective boundaries in a new USA are far simpler, reflecting where money 'stays' as opposed to more arbitrary state boundaries.

Confused by the day to day happenings in the land of the rising sun, and liquidity tsunami? Don't be, instead read the following series of papers by former SocGen strategist Dylan Grice who predicted everything that is currently happening nearly three years ago. The titles of the enclsed five pieces are self-explanatory especially in light of recent events: "A global fiasco is brewing in Japan", "More on Japan’s brewing fiasco, and some musings on recent pushback", "Fooled by anecdotes: Japan’s coming inflation, JGB toxicity and what to do", "Nikkei 63,000,000? A cheap way to buy Japanese inflation risk" and finally "Buy Japan, and prepare to buy with both hands." Oh, and spoiler alert, Grice doesn't see a Hollywood ending to what is about to happen in Japan.

It seems, despite the constant "it's all fixed" banter, that Portugal's Constitutional Court decision that the Troika-imposed austerity is unconstitutional (as we discussed in detail here and here) has a few of the 'elites' nervous. And so, late on a Sunday night European time, they launch a press release that is about as passively aggressive as they come, "any departure from the programme's objectives, or their re-negotiation, would in fact neutralize the efforts already made and achieved by the Portuguese citizens, namely the growing investor confidence in Portugal, and prolong the difficulties from the adjustment... it is a precondition for a decision on the lengthening of the maturities of the financial assistance to Portugal." In other words, get your constitutional court in line or the OMT 'promise' get's it! Perhaps that explains why, unlike Spain and Italy who rallied in the last few days, Portugal's bond spreads are at the widest of 2013 (70bps off the tights of the year).

Since the Greek government enacted the remarkable law that property taxes will be enforced via the electricity providers in the beleaguered country, an incredible 30,000 households per month have seen their power supply cut off. Ekathimerini reports that some 700,000 customers have now had their debts restructured (with payment plans) as part of the billing process; but what is perhaps incredible is that while the State has specifically banned 'disconnection' for not paying the property charges, the utility's computer system is unable to distinguish if payment is for electricity or property tax. There are apparently workarounds involving deposits for tax debts but the situation is set to deteriorate further this year due to the increase in electricity rates and expected further reductions in household incomes.

If Friday's session is any indication of what to expect in a few minutes when JGB trading resumes, we are about to have a doozy of a session on our hands (especially with Interactive Brokers already announcing all intraday margins on all Japanese products for Monday trading have been lifted). As a reminder, the 10Y JGB suffered only its second most volatile trading day ever this past Friday when the yield plunged by half (!) to 0.30%, then doubled in a matter of minutes to 0.60% - a 13 sigma move - and the bond trading session was interrupted by two trading halts when it seemed for a minute that the BOJ may lose all control of the bond market. Well, judging by the absolutely ridiculous moves in the USDJPY as of this moment, with the pair soaring 70 pips in a matter of seconds, we are about to have precisely the kind of insanely volatile session that the Japanese Finance Ministry itself warned may lead to a wholesale selloff in JGBs, offsetting even the New Normal Mrs Watanabe kneejerk which is to merely frontrun the BOJ in buying JGBs. Why? Because with implied vol exploding, VaR-driven models will tell banks to just dump bonds as they have become too volatile to hold on their books. The problem is that with trillions and trillions of JGBs held by banks, insurance companies and pension firms, there just not may be anyone out there to buy them.

This is such an incredibly creepy video it’s actually hard for us to believe it’s real. Professor of political science at Tulane University and MSNBC host, Melissa Harris-Perry states the following: We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.  Once it’s everyone’s responsibility, and not just the household’s, then we start making better investments. This clip is very important because it really demonstrates the mentality of a statist. They want to run your lives in every way you can possibly imagine, including the upbringing of your children.  Outrageous.

While Kyle Bass notably remarks that pinpointing the end of a 70-year debt super-cycle is naive, the combination of the resurgence of nationalism (impacting trade with China) and the dreadful impact of the earthquake/tsunami (drastically changing Japan's supply chain) has secularly shifted Japan's trade balance for the worst at a time when the current account is already negative. "They are all in denial," Bass notes as the government has failed to deal with its problems over the last 20 years. Simply put, Japan needs a Schumpeterian 'creative destruction' moment instead of the constant rolling of debts and expanding of government balance sheets to paper over the cracks. The 'moment' feels like it is now, he notes, expanding that "JPY could hit 200," as they lose control; following two decades of volatility-smoothing, the chance of a disorderly collapse are high. Critically, he fears, "the social fabric of Japan will tear," as with one-third of the nations at retirement age, the fallout from the policies of Abe-Kuroda could cause them to "lose 30-50% of their life savings." What is perhaps even more concerning, he adds, "you are starting to see the central banks not trust each other." At a certain point in time, "nationalist interest takes over the global [G7] kumbaya," and that is occurring now. "The insidious nature of a runaway inflation is that it bankrupts the middle class... leading to social unrest globally."

Since the beginning of the Cyprus debacle (followed by Russia's call for repatriation of all offshore capital and then Japan's willful debasement of their currency), which appears to have awoken many to the fact that banks and politicians can't be trusted , the 'price' of the virtual currency Bitcoin has quadrupled - touching an incredible $162 this morning. While most people believe the only way to 'spend' this currency is on drugs or blogging sites, Liberty Blitzkrieg's Mike Krieger points out there are in fact hundreds of places (growing daily) where this as-yet unregulated store of wealth can be spent. However, what is really driving this surge in demand for a different kind of 'money' is the wholesale loss of faith in the status quo - nowhere is this clearer than in the words and actions of the people of Cyprus and this devastating clip capturing the thoughts and feelings of ordinary Cypriots after their bank accounts were frozen. The Cypriots believe, "nothing has started yet... everything is going to fall down like dominoes because people don't trust the banks." And Alt-Market's Brandon Smith's take on Bitcoin, "Ignore it..."

The Chinese Central Bank has so far stoically endured the monthly injection of $85 billion in boiling hot money for the past seven months, lovingly delivered by the inhabitants of the Marriner Eccles building, even if it meant a proportionate hawkish response which has pushed the Shanghai Composite red for the year, and having to deal with a property market that is on the verge of another inflationary blow off top. But while the PBOC will grudgingly take this kind of monetary abuse from Bernanke, now that it has to deal with another de novo created $70+ billion in monthly central bank liquidity (poetically called Carry-O-QE by Deutsche's Jim Reid), this time coming from that loathed neighbor and one time invader across the East China Sea, China won't take it any more. As the SCMP reports, "Many of China's top economists are livid at what they view as an effective currency devaluation by Japan and are calling on the People's Bank of China to retaliate by weakening the yuan to defend itself in what they see as a new currency war."