Archive - May 8, 2013 - Story

Confirming that while Central Banks may have halted economic logic and reason indefinitely, supply and demand still have some relevance in the real world was today's earlier news that in the aftermath of McDonalds' 20% price hike of basic burgers in Japan three weeks ago, that the company's Japanese same store sales tumbled by a whopping 3.7% in April, a major contributor for the miss in the expected global same store sales for April which came at -0.6%, below Wall Street expectations. One can only guess what the SSS drop would have been had MCD implemented the price hike at the start of the month. One can also guess if the increase in average price offset the drop in sales volume - we will know soon, but just to make doubly sure if what MCD loses in volume it makes up for in price, McDonalds announced that one month after the 20% price hike in Japan, its Indian franchise operator said it too would proceed with a price hike - the second one this year - amounting to 5-6%.

We have a sinking suspicion we know who the ultimate winner of this particular war will be.

As we reported a month ago, when we reported that Enron CEO Jeff Skilling may be released from prison early, moments ago we just learned that, to nobody's real surprise, the mastermind of the biggest US bankruptcy in the early 21st century may be behind bars for just four more years, cutting his total sentence, which was scheduled to expire in 2028, by 11 years. From Bloomberg:

• ENRON'S SKILLING AND JUSTICE DEPARTMENT REACH SENTENCE DEAL
• ENRON'S SKILLING MAY BE RELEASED IN 4 YEARS, LAWYER SAYS
• ENRON'S SKILLING WAS SENTENCED TO MORE THAN 23 YEARS IN PRISON
• ENRON SENTENCE DEAL ALLOWS OVER $40 MLN RESTITUTION PAYOUT
• ENRON'S SKILLING HELPED MASTERMIND MASSIVE FRAUD AT ENERGY FIRM

Indeed he did: which is why it is surprising he served any prison time at all.  So in brief: justice for all, except for those who have $40 million set aside for "restitution payments."

Today's star-studded Ira Sohn conference was led by two behemoths - Elliott's Paulk Singer and Hayman's Kyle Bass. We recently discussed in detail Paul Singer's perspective on the "most dangerous" investing environment but today he summarized and added to those comments at the Ira Sohn conference. "There is no safe haven in today's markets," he explained, "those holding long-term bonds in US, UK, and Japan own assets that are trading at the wrong price," and went on with more brutal honesty, QE causes a distorted recovery - financiers doing well, ordinary person not experiencing recovery. Kyle Bass also stuck to the script noting that in Japan "mindsets are changing - the beginning of the end has begun," and exclaiming in his subtle and forthright manner, "you have to be shitting me, you're adding a ponzi scheme to a ponzi scheme." We leave the summation up to Singer, "the ultimate question for a fiat money regime is at what point does confidence in money disappear?"

Moments ago the Treasury sold a fresh batch of $24 billion in 10 year bonds (CUSIP: VB3 - remember it: it will promptly be monetized by the Fed in the next few POMOs) in an auction that can at best be described as weak. The When Issued had been trading 1.80% moments before the announcement that the auction priced at a high yield of 1.81%: a 1 bp tail, and quite a bit wider than market levels in the 10 Year seen earlier today. The result surprised the market and pushed the bond complex lower. The internals were not good either: the Bid to Cover was 2.70, the lowest since February, and far below the TTM average of 2.96. Notably, as the chart below shows, the BTC ratio has been declining slowly over the past year. The Indirects took down 33.9%, below the average of 37.07%, Directs took only 16.9%, the lowest since January, leaving Primary Dealers with the lion's share or 49.2%, or well above the past 12 month average of 40%. And since correlation algos are pegged to see any bond weakness as good for stocks (as pretty much everything else too), the weak bond auction was an "trigger" for the algos to send the stock market to fresh all time record highs.

An independent, critical account of the American economy would soon raise questions about the structural causes of inequality by asking cui bono, to whose benefit is the system arranged? If we can honestly say that the system's primary source of inequality is a dynamic economy that rewards the top 10% who are best able to deploy skills and capital, then that suggests one set of potential remediations. If however we find the system is unequal largely as a result of its cartel-state structure, then that suggests a political and financial reset is needed to clear the deadwood of corruption, malinvestment and state/central bank manipulation of statistics, finance and credit. We had to destroy the economy to save it. Indeed.

Presented with no comment - because none is needed...

Following the latest set of revelations on the Benghazi embassy attack, the House is back to doing what it does best: pontificating, pointing fingers, and talking, and making a TV spectacle of it all. As the Hill notes, "New revelations about the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, are pulling Hillary Clinton back into a political firestorm that the presumptive 2016 candidate had so far managed to escape unscathed. House Republicans have unearthed new evidence suggesting the Obama administration could have done more to help the U.S. diplomats under attack last Sept. 11. State Department whistle-blowers testifying Wednesday before the House Oversight panel are also expected to say the then-secretary of State was personally involved in the decision to depict the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans as something other than terrorism." Sadly, Hillary will not be there to vehemently ask, rhetorically of course, of anyone interested in the failings in US foreign policy, "what difference does it make?"

As if charts of endlessly grinding lower hourly earnings was not enough to show the increasingly desperate plight of the US worker, here is another nugget from the BLS, this time showing the annual change in real US wages, where we have conveniently highlighted the long-term trendline, and where Q1 wages just posted a -0.1% annual decline, which makes one wonder: with "recoveries" like these who needs any wage growth? Another question: what happened to the Fed's trickle-down - or are government handouts and transfer payments to a nation addicted to government handouts all that matters? Final question: since some cash is transferred to the US workers ultimately, what happens to worker wages when the Fed's QEternity finally ends?

While POMO and its unstopppable force of liquification will lift the nominal price of each and every stock to the point of no return, it seems VIX, Treasury, and JPY-carry traders are not quite as convinced that today is the day to be backing up the truck...

After the "humiliating" performance in Q4 2012, when Bank of America had a whopping 2 trading loss days out of 61, in has managed to redeem itself in the first quarter of 2012, when not only did it record seven trading days when it generated revenue of over $100 million daily, but more importantly it had zero days (of 60 total) with any net trading losses: a track record that can only be matched by any daytrader on Twitter. After all, what is better than trading when there is no risk of loss.

Back in February we introduced the world to their last best hope in controlling the largesse of the world's central bankers. The 'Brent Vigilantes' were shown to have taken over the mantle of the now totally-repressed and benign bond vigilantes (since deficits don't matter apparently). Each time retail gas prices have breached $3.80 in the past six years, the S&P 500 has crested (specifically the crossing of that threshold has seen P/E multiple expansion brought to a halt). With current gas prices around $3.53, we hear you cry, "what are you worried about?" Well, simply put, the answer lies in what is coming. Prices at the pump follow crude oil prices extremely closely with around a 30-day lag; the current WTI crude prices imply a price of gas at the pump around $3.80. So, if there is anything that can stop us from hitting 2,000 on the S&P 500 (or Dow 30,000), we suspect it is the 'tax' that gas prices represent and we now know what the trajectory of those prices is likely to be in the next few weeks.

Gross: Central bank credit & hope for real growth drive risk markets. Both must continue to support current prices.

— PIMCO (@PIMCO) May 8, 2013

A panel of bankers warned the Fed in February that their extreme monetary policy is forcing institutions to "accept greater credit-risk" than "makes sense" and student debt and farmland prices are in a bubble. We first started to explain the bubble in student debt over two years ago and since then the bubble has become larger (and the underlying structure much more fragile as delinquencies soar). Farmland rose in price over 16% last year (according to the Chicago Fed) and has surged 8% per annum over the past decade. Credit risk is now at levels associated with the CDO-driven liquidity excess of 2006. "Further accommodation is not warranted," the minutes of this meeting show - uncovered by Bloomberg via the FOIA. The comments should cause Bernanke and his merry men to pause for breath but of course it is likely what he wanted all along. "Growth in student debt... has parallels to the housing crisis," and "agricultural land prices are veering further from what makes sense," are just two of the bankers' comments, adding that this "will ultimately result in higher loan losses," which is odd since every bank is adjusting down its loan-loss-reserves and juicing earnings.

In what must be an inexplicable move to momentum-chasers everywhere, as gold continued to decline in price in March, and long before its targeted smash in April, China was not backing off its gold purchases of the yellow product. Quite the contrary: as export data released by the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department overnight showed, Chinese gold imports in March exploded to an all time record high of 223.5 tons. This follows 97.1 tons in February, and brings the total imports for the first quarter of 2013, or 372 tons, on par with what China imported in the entire first half. It also means that since January 2012, China has imported an absolutely stunning 1,206 tons of gold. Putting this number in context, this is 20% more than the entire reporter official gold holdings of 1054 tons, and represents roughly half of the total 2500 tons of gold mined every year.