Archive - Aug 16, 2013 - Story

We hope the Bundesbank, and certainly the German people, will be using one of these in the near-term (up to and including 2020) future.

Presented with little comment aside to note that while every night we are told by how much the Dow closed green, many await the day the chart below flashes anything but red.

We can waste readers' time with the latest revelations about the NSA's espionage activities against Americans, highlighted fully in the following WaPo article "NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds" whose title is sufficiently self-explanatory about how seriously the administration takes individual privacy, or we can just showcase the following cartoon which shows how the Miranda rights have been 'adjusted' for the New Normal...

Real or fake, you decide (and there are ample reasons to consider doctored imagery). For Reuters it was definitive enough to go straight to the front page.

That China faces a number of serious economic (and potentially social) problems is no surprise and as Guggenheim's Scott Minerd notes, trying to predict when persistent structural problems will lead to a shock for markets is extremely difficult (as we noted here). However, from a symbiotic collapse in the previously 'virtuous' bond-market-to-banking-system relationship, to the drying up of easy credit for all but the largest (and least over-capacity) firms, it appears that China's private sector leverage has crossed the tipping point that signalled crises in the US, UK, Japan and South Korea. Although the recent data (believe it or not) show signs of a stabilization in the Chinese economy, the elevated debt burden should continue to cast doubt over its growth sustainability and the "childish" and non-transparent nature of China's bond market offers little or no hope for a free market solution.

After 2000 years, why do we not know which economic theory is correct: Keynesian, Marxism, or Hayek-Friedman? Surely, there is a demonstrably, statistically correct answer. It appears not. Then why do we have cargo-cult faiths (Keynesianism) instead of demonstrably correct models of economic behavior.

The Hilsenrumor turned out to be a Hilsenstocktease, and with a closing that will leave many wondering "why hast he forsaken us" and ES going into the weekend at the lows, stocks end their worst week since November.

Just in case there is still some confusion about what passes for a "catalyst" in this market, moments ago just as the 10 Year was threatening to run away on its unmerry way to 3.00% and higher in the aftermath of the fatalistic tweet by Bill Gross, there promptly emerged, since it is 3pm on a Friday after all, a rumor that Hilsenrath was about to hit public on the latest NYFed plant handed to him in order to stabilize the market. Not in itself surprising: we have seen it a million times in the past, the only difference is that this time the target of the WSJ "intervention" would be the bond market, not stocks. Which is the saddest thing: while idiot stocks traditionally move on the dumbest of triggers, at least bonds had been immune from such stupidity. To see even the bond market succumb to the lowest of rumormonerging, is indeed a slap in the face.

John Adams famously described the American government as being “of laws and not men.” The managerial state has wiped clean that wisdom in favor of countless and arbitrary dictates enforced by worthless bodies. The narcolepsy-inducing USA Today recently reported the Federal Bureau of Investigation granted informants immunity to break government law in certain circumstances. Newly disclosed documents reveal that thousands of so-dubbed “crimes” were committed in 2011 by the FBI’s pet players. The misdeeds include drug trafficking, plotting robberies, and bribery. Last year, the New York Times published a damning report on how the good-natured agents of Washington’s infamous law investigator work tirelessly at foiling terrorist plots they go to great lengths at concocting. These faux plots of destruction are used to beef up the reputation of the agency so as to solidify its monopoly of police power.  The selective enforcement of law negates the very purpose of social order. How can there be a universally recognized limits to mankind’s behavior if a minority are permitted to disregard governing laws? The result is a contradiction – either the law applies everywhere or it does not.

With the latest hope-mongering rumor du jour that the beleaguered handheld device maker Blackberry will be LBO'd (or seek 'strategic partnerships'), we couldn't help but recall the proceedings of the previous decades' best known handheld device maker - Palm. As Needham's Charlie Wolf warns, "I saw what happened with Palm 3 years ago [HP's take-under] - the stories are very similar," as it appears the patents are what counts for BBRY.

Guess what comes next in the numbered sequence: 30.0%, 60.0%, 66.666%? If you said 71.4%, or 2/5, which just happens to be Larry Summers' latest Fed Chairmanship odds according to Paddy Power, you are correct. Janet Yellen, who was once a 1/3 favorite has now plunged to just 7/4 or about 30% odds. And while Bill Gross' tweet certainly moved the market, perhaps a far greater concern to longs everywhere (of both bonds and stocks) is the realization that with every passing day Larry Summers gets closer to becoming the next Fed chairman.

Bonds are being sold off as concerns about the Fed's taper (aka the Zero Hedge-penned in May "Taper Tantrum") propagate through the bond market, and as Bill Gross reminds everyone of what a non-centrally planned, and Fed-backstopped, market may one day look like (nothing good). But today's action is nothing compared to what a real tapir tantrum looks like as one unluckly child and its mother were forced to find out.

Gross: Pogo said, We have met the enemy & he is us. I say, All asset mkts peaking; W/o central bank ck writing we only have ourselves 2sell2

— PIMCO (@PIMCO) August 16, 2013

There is one problem with the Fed's plan that bond yields will progress ever higher in calm, cool and collected fashion from here to 3%, 4%, 5% and onward: it assumes that those who don't sell today, will patiently await turn to sell (with much bigger) losses tomorrow. Of course, what happens instead is that everyone will try to sell today, to avoid any losses tomorrow. What results, are spikes such as the one seen on the chart below, which just took the 10 Year yield to a fresh 2 year high of 2.8269% and rising. But perhaps most important, there are now just under 70 bps until the 3.50% "disorderly rotation" threshold beyond which bad things start happening.

The chart below explains, in the simplest possible terms, why there are many more "Detroits" on deck. It shows the underfunded status of public vs private retiree healthcare plans. It needs no commentary, although it may deserve one question: what happens when all those public servants who have been promised over a trillion in healthcare benefits upon retirement, realize it was all a lie? And then come... the pensions.