Archive - Jul 2013 - Story

Curious how the comprehensive revision of GDP looks like? Here's how: following the "revised data", Q1 GDP in nominal terms stood at $16.535 trillion. Previously, it was $15.984 trillion. And that is how you add $550 billion in "growth." More importantly, here is the full breakdown of GDP on a quarterly basis: of note - Q1 2011 GDP growth was revised from +0.1% to -1.3%: close call with recession there.

UPDATE: Markets are reacting in a very 'Taper-On' way with Gold down, bond yields surging, and the USD rising (with stocks leaking lower)

The Q2 GDP printed at 1.7% compared to expectations of 1.0%, however this was entirely offset with the Q1 revision from 1.8% to 1.1%. Since the series is being entirely revised, it is safe to say that these are Apples to Oranges numbers. Q1 was revised to the worst miss in 27 months...

While the ADP jobs number is noise, it is no more noise than the BLS' NFP monthly print. And since the NFP jobs number has been targeting the 200K support level for all of 2013, with the 6 month average at precisely the taper-permissive 201K, it was natural that the Mark Zandi-supervised ADP would ultimately revise its data to substantiate the BLS message, which is simple: taper on. Sure enough, ADP beat expectations of 180K coming at 200K, while the previous number of 188K was revised to 198K.

In a few minutes, the BEA will revise US GDP figures going back nearly one century, for one simple reason: the economists in charge will do all they can to reconcile the observed drift between GDP and unemployment in stark refutation of Okun's Law, which we have previously disclosed, and which if left unattended will continue crushing the credibility of said economists. Since all it will take are some number additions to "generate" growth, the result is predictable. But what specifically are the upcoming changes to the various accounts and components? Bloomberg's Joseph Brusuelas explains.

Today's broad "rewriting of history" GDP revision is set to "boost" US GDP by about 3% cumulatively (or about the size of Belgium's economy) and shave off 1-2% from US GDP. That's great. For the sake of the world, however, we hope that the rest of the developed (and less than developed) world's countries promptly follow in America's footsteps and fudge their own numbers post haste because things are rapidly getting out of hand, as the following chart conveniently reminds. Nowhere is this more so than in Japan, where as has been the case now for almost a year, Goldman Sachs, the central bank and local government (in order of decisionmaking importance) have all doubled down on their "all in" bet that the only thing that fixes recorder debt is moar recordest debt.

• Ackman Says Pershing Square Takes 9.8% Stake in Air Products (BBG) - So is APD Carl Icahn's biggest ever short yet
• Latest Hilsenplant: Summers Hedges His Doubts on Fed's Bond Buying (WSJ)
• China Stocks World’s Worst Losing $748 Billion on Slump (BBG)
• U.S. Spy Program Lifts Veil in Court (WSJ)
• Abenomics on the rock again: Japan July manufacturing PMI shows growth at 4-month low (Reuters)
• EADS to be renamed Airbus in shake-up (FT)
• Goldman's GSAM has significantly increased its exposure to European equities (FT) - there is a reason why this is Goldman's worst division
• Japanese Megabanks Post Mega Profit Gains (WSJ) - when one excludes MTM impact from rate surge of course
• Ex-workers sue Apple, seek overtime for daily bag searches (Reuters)
• Hong Kong Yuan Deposits Snap Eight-Month Increase on Cash Crunch (BBG)
• Downtown NYC Landlords Remake Offices in Shift From Banks (BBG)

As readers are well aware by now, at 8:30 am today we get to see the rewriting of US GDP history back to 1929 with the revisions from the BEA. It’s a big last day of July with the Fed meeting coming after the GDP release. For GDP, real growth is expected to be as low as 1.0% in Q2. Opinions vary widely on today’s GDP number with one major US investment bank’s estimate as low as 0.2%, a number of bulge bracket banks at 0.5% while there are also plenty of economists above 1.5%. It is not news to anyone that nominal GDP is very low at the moment - especially in a world of nosebleed high debts - and today could see this have a 1-handle YoY (and at best a 2-handle) - a level not even normally seen at the depths of most recessions.

Accounting for “Sunk costs” – money already spent that cannot be retrieved – is likely both the best understood and most widely ignored bit of wisdom on Wall Street and beyond.  As ConvergEx's Nick Colas notes, whether you buy a stock or make a corporate investment or purchase a theater ticket, that money is gone forever.  If the investment doesn’t pan out or you hear that the play stinks, you are better off cutting your losses or, in the case of the ticket, just going out to dinner.  But, Colas quickly reminds us, that is way easier said than done, as apparently humans are generally hard wired to fall further in love with whatever they have already chosen.  The single largest sunk investment of recent decades is the Federal Reserve’s bond buying program, with $2.4 trillion in QE 1, 2, and 3 on the line. Tomorrow, we’ll get a another glimpse of how well the Federal Open Market Committee knows its sunk cost theory – and what they know about Friday’s jobs number.

In the first act of the movie "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," Bill, the owner of the sweetshop, sings a song called "The Candyman", which praises the wonderful world created by Wonka and espouses the pure joy of living in a place where everything is deliciously sweet; miracles, dreams, and rainbows are ubiquitous; and any sorrow is separated and discarded in favour of cream... pure cream. As Bill hands out free candy to a group of wide-eyed kids, you can see in their eyes the pure joy that only comes of living in a world where everything is wonderful and nothing bad ever happens. Ring any bells?

There are certain potential catastrophes that can be so threatening we must take steps to insure ourselves even though the probability of one actually occurring is slim. It’s like keeping a small fire extinguisher under your kitchen sink and hoping you never have to use it. We cannot put our life savings and our family at risk by trivializing dangers potentially on the horizon. While CNBC may want to pooh-pooh the probability of something similar happening in our country, we all know that creating massive amounts of currency out of thin air always results in the currency collapsing, or at the very least being revalued in a way that most of us will suffer from. A prudent investor (particularly one on either side of the cusp of retirement) would do well to take out some insurance. That is generally done by investing in metal, farm land, and other forms of hard assets.

When one observes the decline in Deutsche Bank's two net derivative exposures since 2011, one notices something curious: over the past year, the nominal net exposure of the bank's positive and negative derivative market values has collapsed from a combined total of €1.678 trillion to just €1.253 trillion, with consecutive declines over each of the past 4 quarters for a cumulative net deleveraging of €425 billion.

Despite Tom Keene's best efforts to appear fair-and-balanced, this brief interview on Bloomberg TV places ECRI's Lakshman Achuthan in the uncomfortable position of destroying every propagandized 'fact' that the mainstream media is entrusted with disseminating to the Pavlovian investing community. From recessions with job growth ("a US recession began in 2012") to the wealth divide and from GDP revisions to job quality differentials, Achuthan warns the US is becoming Japan, "U.S. growth over the last five years is weaker than Japan during the Lost Decades." Keene's insistence that things are on-the-up (though admitting that Achuthan's call on the decline in growth was correct) is met with the rhetorical question, "you wouldn't have four years of zero-interest rate policy and quantitative easing if everything was okay."

We previously showed hard evidence of the Bank of England's complicit hiding of the truth about the quality of Bundesbank gold stored in the Fed's vaults. A few weeks later in a "completely unrelated" action, the Bundesbank dramatically shifted its recent stance, and demanded that its gold be repatriated into its own vaults (and we now know the impact that has had on the paper-physical paper markets). However, in yet another one of the 'darkest episodes in central banking history' the FT reports, the Bank of England facilitated the sale of gold that was looted by the Nazis after their invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Of course, judging today's central bankers by this ethical (and potentially criminal) behavior of over 70 years ago is unfair but it is notable that the pattern of whatever-it-takes and at-all-costs decisions, coupled with pervasive opacity and stark unaccountability, appear to have been formed a long time ago.

As the world waits breathless for tomorrow's preliminary (only to be revised again and again) GDP estimate for Q2 2013 (having seen expectations collapse in recent months), there remains the ever-present faith that Q3, Q4, and on and on will see the mean-reverting growth lift the US economy from its current 'Better-Bargain'-less dystopia. So what happens next? Well, let's look at the trajectory of GDP expectations in 2007...

While we know that the Fed will be forced to taper in the short-term as it desperately avoids the 'appearance' of outright monetization that a falling deficit will create, Marc Faber sums up the endgame perfectly in this clip: "I don’t think they will come to their senses for the simple reason that insane people don't realize that they are insane." Faber adds, "they think they’re doing a great job," and in fact they believe - in general - that "if anything, we need to do more, not less." The 'forced-taper-to-plunge-to-untaper' progression means it's going to get worse; as Faber notes, QE/printing will continued indefinitely "until the system breaks down." Having printed this much money with such dismal results, Faber concludes, "the Fed is completely clueless."