Archive - May 7, 2013 - Story

By now everyone knows that POMO is the daily physical manifestation of the Fed's love for the "1%", and the trillions in underfunded pension and stock-linked entitlements, taking place (almost) every day in the hours between 10:15am and 11:00 am Eastern, when the NY Fed's trading desk injects between $1 and $6 billion in the stock market. What many may not know is that while POMO was the name of the game since 2009 (just think where the S&P would be if the "market" was only open on Thursday, during the 45 minute duration of POMO, and between 3:30 pm and 4:15 pm), it may have finally met its homophonous match, courtesy of Citigroup. So step aside POMO. Presenting.... FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out.

The venerable UBS floorman asks (and answers) an interesting question. With the re-institution of the payroll tax and higher level rates and with spending lowered by sequestration, will the Treasury need to offer fewer bonds? And if so, will the Fed remain steadfast in its purchasing 'size' (good for bond bulls since secondary demand will increase) or reduce its 'size' to meet the lower monetization needs of the Treasury (bad for equity bulls since flow is all that matters.) Thoughts below...

Since it is Tuesday, and since the bubble formerly known as the "stock market" is once again completely disconnected from reality, fundamentals, math, logic, gravity and everything else, and watching its relentless climb higher on nothing but central bank liquidity tsunami and attempts to hit any remaining upside ES stops is about as exciting as watching Bernanke print electronic money, here is a small diversion courtesy of @911Buff:

• NEW JERSEY: PHOTO - GARBAGE TRUCK DRIVER SNEEZED, LOST CONTROL AND SLAMMED INTO HOME.

And the result...

As we reported earlier, spending on home improvements has paradoxically tumbled, a fact which did not escape Santelli, who brings it up and gets the following logical response: "when the homeowner is confident about the future of price appreciation, they're willing to invest and remodel." And vice versa: so does that by impliation imply a slide in expectations about future home appreciation? Santelli's conclusion is, as usually happens, spot on: "who will remodel more: a homeowner or a renter?" The answer is self-explanatory, as is any doubt as to whether the US is becoming a nation of renters.

The biggest surprise from the JOLTS report is not in any of the standalone series, but in the time progression of the Net Turnovers number, which is simply the total new hires less total separations. Historically, the Net Turnover number tracks the total monthly nonfarm payroll change (establishment survey) on a almost tick for tick basis. Not this time. In fact as the chart below showed, the upward revised March NFP number to 138K, which preceded the even more optimistic, and much cheered April print of 165K, which sent the S&P and the DJIA soaring to new all time highs on Friday, not only did not get a confirmation, but in fact the JOLTS survey for Net Turnovers  - which came at only 46K in March compared to a revised 138K jobs added per the establishment survey - implied that the real NFP number in March should have tumbled to a level last seen in September of 2010!

Since the mid-November lows, the S&P 500 has gained a remarkable 268 points on the back of faith, hope, and Bernanke/Kuroda charity. But perhaps what is more mind-numbing is that this efficient market has given us more than 50% of those gains on Tuesdays. With 17 up-days in a row, Tuesday is the Monday dip-buyers dream. Since 1/18, absent Tuesdays, the S&P 500 has gone nowhere. Maybe Bob Geldof needs to write a new song for the US investor "I do like Tuesdays", or at least a slightly revised cover version of the Bangles' "Manic Tuesday".

The Cypriot deposit confiscation has come and gone (and in a parallel world in which the global Bernanke-put never existed and in which bank shareholders were not untouchable, this is precisely how real-time bank restructurings should have taken place), but fears remain that the country's "resolution" mechanism will be the template for future instances of "resolving" insolvent banks. That may or may not be the case: the only way to know for sure is during the next European bank bailout, but one thing is certain - Cyprus was certainly a template when it comes to how a world full of insolvent sovereigns (all engaged in currency warfare), where easing, quantitative or otherwise no longer works to boost the economy, will approach what is the last chance for monetary replenishment - taxation of financial assets, just as we warned first back in 2011. Specifically, Cyprus showed the "template" for confiscating Russian oligarch billionaire "ill-gotten", untaxed cash, which many in Germany demanded should be the quid for ongoing German-funded quo. And here's the rub. There is more where said "ill-gotten" cash has come from. Much more... $32 trillion more.

The debate rages... Soros: "The euro crisis has already transformed the European Union from a voluntary association of equal states into a creditor-debtor relationship from which there is no easy escape. The creditors stand to lose large sums should a member state exit the monetary union, yet debtors are subjected to policies that deepen their depression, aggravate their debt burden, and perpetuate their subordinate position. As a result, the crisis is now threatening to destroy the EU itself. That would be a tragedy of historic proportions, which only German leadership can prevent." Sinn: "Soros is playing with fire... Many investors echo Soros. They want to cut and run – to unload their toxic paper onto intergovernmental rescuers, who should pay for it with the proceeds of Eurobond sales, and put their money in safer havens... Soros does not recognize the real nature of the eurozone’s problems. The ongoing financial crisis is merely a symptom of the monetary union’s underlying malady: its southern members’ loss of competitiveness... His accusation that Germany is imposing austerity is unfair. Austerity is imposed by the markets, not by those countries providing the funds to mitigate the crisis."

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke is a Reverse Robin Hood, robbing from the lower 95% and giving to the financier class. It's worth understanding the mechanisms of this wealth transfer: in essence, the Fed extends low-cost credit (i.e. "free money") to the financier class which then uses this free money to buy rentier assets, that is, assets that generate economic rents for the owners, who add no value and create no wealth. This is of course the neofeudal model. Goebbels would approve of the Fed's masterful propaganda campaign: rob the bottom 95% to benefit the financier class, all the while piously proclaiming that its policies were aimed at increasing employment for the bottom 95%. In terms of propagandistic chutzpah, it doesn't get any better than this. Congratulations, Bernanke, Yellen, et al.

Gross: Dow hits 15,000 & PIMCO’s internal Corp & Hi Yield Index hits all-time yield lows. Thanks Chairman #Bernanke! Got any more?

— PIMCO (@PIMCO) May 7, 2013

Following on the widely telegraphed rate cut by the Australian central bank overnight to a record low 2.75%, here comes a truly surprise move out of the Kenya Central Bank, and its Governor Njuguna Ndung'u whose central bank just showed the world how it's really done:

• KENYA CENTRAL BANK CUTS BENCHMARK RATE TO 8.50% FROM 9.50%
• KENYA CENTRAL BANK SAYS CONFIDENCE IN ECONOMY HAS INCREASED

As long as the confidence is there... Incidentally, the expectations, by those who have nothing better to do than forecast what the Kenya central bank will do, was for a mere 25 bps cut. We expect the credit carry traders out of Niarobi to scramble for yield in places like Greece, now that their cost of funding has dropped by over 10%. The good news for those doing the inverse trade, and looking to trade Kenyan Eurodollar futures, or the "Kenyo-dollar" as the case may be, is that there still is a long way to go before all time lows rate lows are taken out.

With retail stocks surging on the back of the any-minute-now recovery (justified by the might of the Federal Reserve printing press), we thought it perhaps useful to consider just how great things are in the retail sales space. Given the non-stop accelerating rise in the equity prices, retail sales must be accelerating or must have turned up green-shoot-like? Well not so much. As the following chart shows, while retail sales (ex-food) is still rising modestly YoY, it is doing so a decelerating pace (as income growth stagnates and discretionary income slumps). But for now, all we must believe is the market knows best (until, 2008-like) it doesn't.

In the beginning there were a handful of core nations equal in partnership and full of the excitement of a new venture. Much of the esprit was a desire to band together and compete against the United States for economic dominance and world power. Now we find the EU headquarters no longer staffed by equals but a useful front for Berlin which resides in another country. This point is critically important to understand. Yes, sure, the Germans will smile and nod and give way on agricultural supplements and on fishing rights and trivial matters but when it gets down to it and the decision is important; Berlin will have its way. The fact that the equity markets have done fabulously and that the interest rates for European sovereign debt have done remarkably well all rest on one thing and one thing only; the creation of money and a massive amount of it. Europe, and the rest of the world for that matter, has been transformed by the printing of money. The dislocation between economies and markets is huge and the glue is the twenty-four seven machinations of the printing presses. Politicians in Europe and America have taken a back seat to the heads of the world's central banks. Lastly, as I stare out at the horizon, you should understand the German viewpoint of the State. You win by being in control and control must always be exercised and never relinquished.

French industrial production came in considerably lower than expected overnight. France's output fell 2.5% YoY against an expectation of a mere 1.4% drop and manufacturing production dropped 4.9% YoY - almost its worst since the crisis. This data confirms what we have discussed in detail (here and here) that France is heading for a depression. After the briefest of renaissances in Q3 2012, the Gallic nation now looks set for a triple-dip recession, further stretching the core of an already tense European Union. The last few days have seen 10Y French debt yields increase a little (+17bps off the lows) but they remain (much as the rest of Europe) near record lows.

One of the widely accepted misconceptions surrounding the so-called "housing recovery" fanfared by misleading headlines such as this "Remodeling activity keeps up positive momentum", which in reality has merely turned out to be a housing bubble in various liquified "flip that house" MSAs (offset by continuing deteriorating conditions in those places where the Fed's trillions in excess reserves have trouble reaching coupled with ongoing foreclosure stuffing), is that "renovation spending", the amount of cash spent to upgrade and update a fixer-upper, has surged. Sadly, this is merely the latest lie about the US economy: as the attached chart showing renovation spending in the past 6 months, it has absolutely imploded, confirming that not only is a broad housing recovery a myth (instead of localized pockets of bubbly liquidity here and there), but that the US home-owning household is now more tapped out than at any time in the past two years.