Archive - May 30, 2013 - Story

Jim Rogers was recently interviewed by GoldMoney and had plenty to say (as usual):

On Bernanke: "He doesn’t want to be around for the consequences of what he’s doing."

 

On Fiat: "Paper money doesn’t have a very glorious history, but again, nothing imposed by the government has a very long and glorious history."

 

On Europe's Crisis: "You can postpone it all you want, but the problems just mount."

 

On Capitalism: "You are not supposed to take money away from the competent people and give it to the incompetent so that the incompetent can compete with the competent people with their own money. That’s not the way capitalism is supposed to work."

China’s credit growth has been outstripping economic growth for five quarters with the corporate debt bubble looking increasingly precarious (as we explained here and here). This raises one key question: where has the money gone? As SocGen notes, although such divergence is not unprecedented, it potentially suggests a trend that gives greater cause for concern – China is approaching a Minsky moment. At the micro level, SocGen points out that a non-negligible share of the corporate sector and local government financial vehicles are struggling to cover their financial expense. At the macro level, they estimate that China’s debt servicing costs have significantly exceeded underlying economic growth. As a result, the debt snowball is getting bigger and bigger, without contributing to real activity (see CCFDs for a very big example). This is probably where most of China’s missing money went.

There are countless examples of rampant criminality and corruption as well as blatant evidence of a two-tier system of justice in America today.  Too many to note or write about, but in this case we want to focus on this concept of “money laundering” in light of the recent shutdown of Liberty Reserve.  The crackdown on Liberty Reserve has nothing to do with “money laundering.”  It’s about a cartel of “too big to jail” banks and the fraud financial system they operate eliminating any players that try to encroach on their turf.  That isn’t capitalism, or socialism and it certainly isn’t anything close to freedom.  It is a parasitic, oligarch created feudalistic structure that must be done away with.  We often hear people say “we never learn from our mistakes.”  Incorrect.  People learn from their mistakes when there are consequences to their actions.  Of course criminals don’t learn from their mistakes when there are no serious consequences to their crimes.

In his recent presentation, Grant Williams picked out several mathematical equations that simply don't work: equities vs. fundamentals, the gold price vs. the price of gold, Chinese economic activity vs. the Chinese GDP number, and France vs. well ... logic. In his latest 'Things That Make You Go Hhmm' extravaganza, he extends this series of 'Bizarro' situations to Japan, US Housing, high-yield credit, the outlandish effects that comments by central bank policy makers have on markets, and the curious disconnect between insider trades and the broader market among others. There are countless more of these disconnects (the strength of the euro vs. EU economic data being a key one), which lead to a fundamental conclusion that is hard to deny: Sdnob, seitiuqe, setar tseretni, and seicnerruc will all eventually leave Bizarro World and come crashing back down to Earth (where they are known as bonds, equities, interest rates, and currencies); and when they do, they will likely do the opposite of what they're doing right now.

The head of the U.S. Cyber Command said that the U.S. military is unprepared for cyber attacks, specifically singling out China.

"What we're seeing in cyber is going to continue and it's going to grow and it's going to get worse,"

Contrary to popular belief, Bozo wasn’t the first clown to drop the ball. That honour goes to 16th century jester William Sommers simply told one joke too many, and before he knew it, both his juggling balls and his head were hitting the floor at the same time. Today, we have the making of the biggest financial clown of all time. As head of the world’s most powerful institution, the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke has lobbed one giant money ball into the global financial system. This ball continues to bounce along one market to the other, and so long as it doesn’t touch the ground everyone is happy. Yet, should this ball grow so large it cannot be supported, one simple slip will be unfortunate for everyone. To follow the interconnectedness of markets, just follow Bernanke’s bouncing ball.

JPY is clinging sheepishly to the 101 level versus the USD almost as if there is an 'agreement'. It has been testing this level for a week now with many viewing the 100 line in the sand as a pass/fail mark for Abenomics. Tonight's heavy data flow is mixed. While we noted yesterday the inconsistencies in Abenomics, there are two interesting anecdotes this evening worth paying attention to. First, Household spending missed expectations by the largest amount in 18 months (not a good sign for real growth coming back); and second, in a brief moment on CNBC this afternoon, the CEO of Japan's mega corp Sony admitted that while, "the preconception is that a weaker Yen is good overall. Unfortunately for us, versus the USD, it goes the other way." Futures markets signal a green open (just like last night) for the equity markets and a slight red open for JGBs.

The periodic Munk debate spectacle out of Canada is memorable for bringing together very flamboyant personalities, discussing very germane topics. The one that has just started has a topic of whether the rich should be taxed. More. Surely an issue that has seen its share of discussion in the US in the past year, so we hardly expect to learn anything new. What is most amusing, however, is that the debate tonight pits none other than Paul Krugman (and former Greek socialist leader and economic destructor extraordinaire George Papandreou, whose family incidentally was found with tax-evading Swiss accounts so brownie points for extra hypocricy) defending more tax hikes, and pitting Newt Gingrich and Arthur Laffer on the "don't tax me bro" side. The result should be quite a memorable catfight.

First a big caveat: the following comes from CNN, the world's farce leader, so take it with a quarry of salt. That said, CNN's household access is pervasive and when it comes to setting the social mood based on a news report, be it completely fabricated or not, the news organization is second to none. Which may be precisely why it is CNN that is reporting that in Syria - a place just itching for the proverbial match to be struck on a mountain of geopolitical gunpowder involving all the key actors: from the US, to Russia, Europe, China, and of course Israel, said match may have just been lit. To wit: "Syrian state-run television reported Thursday that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad killed three Westerners, including an American woman and a British national, who they claim were fighting with the rebels and were found with weapons and maps of government military facilities."

Does it really make any sense at all that Bernanke would leave gold to trade in an open and transparent market? Hardly. Consider. The Fed has conjured multiple trillions of digital dollars out thin air in the last five years. These efforts have propped up the Treasury market, the domestic TBTF banks, the foreign TBTF banks, the ECB, the BOE, every European sovereign bond market, the RMBS market, the CMBS market, the equity market, the housing market and the entire industrial and soft commodity complexes, to name a few. Since the price of gold we see on our Bloomberg screens is set via derivatives and overwhelmingly settled in USD, the ability for central banks and bullion banks to manipulate the price of gold is way too easy. All the bullion banks have to do is coordinate (as in LIBOR), sell in size and punish anyone in their way. Take losses? No problem, more fiat can be conjured post-haste. So long as no one is taking physical delivery, the band(k) plays on. (Actually, physical demand delivery IS becoming a major new problem for the banks but this is a topic for a different note.) A quickly rising gold price upsets this fiat-engineered, centrally planned, non-market based recovery. Gold left to its’ own devices would signal the unwinding the rehypothecated world of shadow banking where latent monetary inflation goes to summer (think of it as the monetary Hamptons where only the Wall Street elite get to play). Most importantly, it would signal a huge lack of faith in the US dollar. A currency backed by nothing more than faith in central banking.

While the acceptance ratio at Harvard, the lowest of any university, is 5.9%, Goldman Sachs has just topped it for 'exclusivity'. As Gary Cohn explains in this brief Bloomberg clip, the firm hired 350 summer 'intern' analysts in its investment-banking division from a pool of more than 17,000 applicants - an acceptance ratio of 2%. It seems the firm has no problem attracting 'talent' but it remains in second place for most 'difficult' job to attain... behind flight attendant at Delta Airlines.

US Treasury yields have risen sharply in the last four weeks with 10yr yields higher by about 50bps. Direct causation is hard to find. While the economic data has improved in places, the prices have moved much more than the facts. For just about every good piece of data, there was an equal piece of bad news. Then of course, there is Ben Bernanke who made the slightest hint to the possibility that a tapering of purchases could begin "in the next few meetings" if the economics warranted. But trying to position a trade based on the impact of the Fed quickly becomes a reflexive exercise going no place because the Treasury market finds a way to reflect macroeconomics despite them. The history of the Fed shows that economics always trumps their effects. This isn't to say that at any given moment, the Fed may have interest rates at a different level than they otherwise would be, but it isn't useful to use this as a reason to buy or sell because a change in their buying could just as easily mean that the economy will be weaker and thus rates would fall as that they would cause rates to rise. What this recent yield back-up boils down to is that the market is expecting that there is self-sustaining, above trend, GDP growth coming. It isn't often that prices become this divorced from fundamentals. Expecting self-sustaining above trend growth is hoping, not the result of a careful analysis. We continue to think that no matter how forceful this back-up has been, or where it ultimately peaks, we will see new low yields in the Treasury market before this cycle is over. Here are 7 short-term and 3 long-term reasons why we think they won't stay up here for long...

US consumer confidence is soaring. That's great - there is a problem: the two year drop real US wages has never been lower.

Both VIX and credit markets decoupled to the downside soon after Europe closed as equities clambered higher amid lower and lower volumes. As we headed into the last hour though both markets snapped higher to catch up to stocks and that mini-capitulation seemed enough for the equity rally to run out of steam. With the JPY strengthening all day, equities ignored the message of the carry traders until the close - when a big sell-side imbalance (and reality) smacked stocks lower to catch down to the all-important VWAP level once again. The USD saw its worst two-days since Oct 2011 giving up 3 weeks of gains. Gold and Silver are up nicely on the week (1.6 to 2%), outperforming today. Equities still managed gains on the day (despite the late-day tumble) and (oddly) Treasuries also ended very marginally in the green. The last few minutes of the day - normally kept open for some levitating algo to save the day - was a cliff-dive as news of FX margin controls on the all-important JPY carry driver smashed all risk-assets lower.

Moments ago the 101 USDJPY tractor beam was broken, sending the pair lower, as a red headline hit the tape saying that...

• JAPAN TO IMPOSE NEW RULES ON FOREX MARGIN TRADING, NIKKEI SAYS

Which incidentally was long overdue: with the BOJ scrambling to contain bond (and stock, if only to the downside) volatility, it was always the FX market that was the primary uber-levered culprit moving both asset classes. As such, it was very surprising that in a world in which all correlated asset classes (just look at the USDJPY-ES relationship) are driven by FX, that currency leverage and margin rules have remained largely untouched by regulators and central bankers whose credibility is suddenly slipping away, alongside the surge in global market volatility in the past week.