Archive - Aug 2013 - Story

This 4 year Bull market has been registering new all-time highs on a nearly daily basis. Days like today’s 57 basis point drop in the S&P 500 are being mocked as a correction or large sell off for the current environment. It appears that after so many years of the “Great Rotation” being hyped, the public has (to an extent) been trained to take their Bond fund proceeds and roll them into equity ETFs. While it is unlikely that baby boomer money will come back to equities and sustain the rotation, there is money flowing in. While we are no fans of the bond market, we are still stunned that there are people selling “safe” assets and rolling the proceeds into “risky” assets at all-time highs. There are three cornerstones to our current view that risk far outweighs opportunity...

If destruction is nothing but a boost to the economy as the global Keynesian brotherhood of voodoo priests believes, than Kenyan (not to be confused with Keynesian of course) GDP is about to go vertical.

• Libor Settlements Said to Ease CFTC’s Path in Rate-Swaps Probe (BBG)
• Manhattan Homes Under $3 Million Never Harder to Buy (BBG)
• Just two years late: Abe Pledges Government Help to Stem Fukushima Water Leaks (BBG)
• Chesapeake drops energy leases in fracking-shy New York (Reuters)
• Hedge Fund Magnetar Won't Face Charges Tied to Mortgages (WSJ)
• U.S. envoy leaves Cairo after talks declared over (Reuters)
• Credit-Crisis Oracle Rajan to Head India’s Central Bank (BBG)
• Bank of England Changes Policy Tack (WSJ)

While there was little macro news to report overnight, the most notable development was yet another USDJPY-driven crash in the Nikkei 225 which plunged by a whopping 576 points, or 4%, to 13825, while the Yen soared to under 96.80 in the longest series of gains since mid-June before recouping some of the losses on pre-US open program trading. The reason attributed for the move were reports that Japan would adhere to pledge to cut its deficit which is the last thing the market wanted to hear, as it realizes that boundless QE is only possible in a context of near-infinite deficit spending.  The index, which has now become a volatility joke and woe to anyone whose "wealth effect" is linked to its stability, pushed not only China's Shanghai composite lower by 0.7% but led to losses across the board and as of this moment is seen dragging US equity futures lower for the third day in a row.

Moments ago the Bank of England's Mark Carney, very much as expected and warned previously, announced for the first time as part of the BOE quarterly Inflation Report press conference (the full August inflation report can be found here) the official linkage of monetary policy outlook to unemployment and pledged to expand stimulus if needed as he tried to quell investor bets on higher interest rates. Specifically as part of the BOE's forward guidance, Carney linked interest rates to a 7% unemployment threshold while forecasting that unemployment would be higher than 7% until at least Q3 2016, or in other words, no threat of an end of extraordinary monetary policy any time soon. However, while the market enjoyed the announcement initially and sent cable 100 pips lower to 1.5200, the initial dovish mood was quickly reversed after the market observed that Carney's statement carried with it three "knock out clauses" which made the forward guidance far less explicit and put doubts into the market about the credibility of this latest monetary experiment as a result unwinding an initial 100 pip drop in cable and sending it over 200 pips higher from the lows.

How al Qaeda broke hundreds of bad guys out of the world’s most notorious jail -- and what it means for America.

"More than 50 gunmen wearing tribal robes then entered the grounds, wielding pistols, AK-47s, and hand grenades. They had been on the road and in nearby villages, waiting to storm the facility. The power was cut, and the detainees broke out in cries of "God is great."

The Abu Ghraib prison break was not only a counterterrorism disaster, it laid bare Iraq's political dysfunction.

For many years, we have been extremely focused on shadow banking and most specifically the repo markets (recently here and here). Most market participants will go through their trading life ignorant of the fact that the leverage in this market is what drives their assets up or down in most cases (because understanding something new is so 'old normal' even if it remains a major potential catalyst for problems ahead). The regulators get it though (kinda). As Barclays notes, changes to the risk-weightings of low-risk assets in the repo markets means US banks will need to deleverage by raising $30bn of fresh capital or reducing their (mostly low-risk) assets by $598bn - not chump change in a market dominated by the Fed (and one that some have already raised default and liquidity concerns about).

The USA is veering into a psychological space not unlike the wilderness-of-mind that Germany found itself in back in the early 20th century: the deep woods of paranoia where our own failures will be projected onto the motives of others who mean to do us harm. The USA cannot come to terms with the salient facts staring us in the face: that we can’t run things as we’ve set them up to run. We refuse to take the obvious actions to set things up differently. That disorder has infected our currency and the infection is spreading to all currencies. The roar you hear in the distance this September will be the sound of banks crashing, followed by the silence of business-as-usual grinding to a halt. After that, the crackle of gunfire.

The rapid pace of China credit expansion since the Global Financial Crisis, increasingly sourced from the inherently more risky and less transparent "shadow banking" sector, has become a critical concern for the global markets. From the end of 2008 until the end of 2013, Chinese banking sector assets will have increased about $14 trillion. As Fitch notes, that's the size of the entire US commercial banking sector. So in a span of five years China will have replicated the whole US banking system. What we're seeing in China is one of the largest monetary stimuli on record. People are focused on QE in the US, but given the scale of credit growth in China Fitch believes that any cutback could be just as significant as US tapering, if not more. Goldman adds that China stands to lose up to a stunning RMB 18.6trn/$US 3trn. should this bubble pop. That seems like a big enough number to warrant digging deeper...

"Many people still refuse to work in Germany; it's the language and demons of the past," but for many, crossing the Rhine is now the only option to escape the dismal depression-like economic environment that is engulfing France (as we most recently discussed here and here). As one border-crossing employee noted, "in Germany, they take people more easily and train them for new work even if you have worked in a totally different area than the one asked for," and with unemployment in Alsace (France) at about 10% and the jobless rate in the bordering German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg at a mere 4%, it is little wonder that an increasing number - around 24,000 French people (from this 'symbolic' region) are crossing over for work.

Of the 28 million Americans with federal student loans, 60%, or 17 million, don't pay the US government a single cent!

As Detroit begins to sort through the ill-begotten public liabilities that have driven it to bankruptcy, an important opportunity is at hand to revitalize the city that was once the epicenter of American entrepreneurship and manufacturing, while setting an example for other municipal governments that appear to be headed toward a similar fate. Here is an “Austrian moment” in the making, a potential libertarian awakening guided by the market-oriented, non-interventionist principles of the Austrian school of economics. For years, Detroit’s expenditures vastly exceeded its revenues. But, as long as investors were willing to purchase risky bonds, neither politicians nor unions would admit how unsustainable Detroit’s situation was. Detroit’s bankruptcy is thus exactly what the financial system needs.

Given that the demand for physical gold among private investors has remained strong throughout 2013, the significant price declines in recent months took many investors by surprise. Attempting to make sense out of this situation, speculation has arisen that the so-called 'bullion banks' (the mostly "Too Big to Fail" institutions that are known to work closely with the central banks) have lent out, or even sold, gold on a fractional basis, far in excess of what is supposedly held in their vaults. The result would have been to multiply greatly the amount of 'apparent' gold in the market and thereby depress prices. Such an action would provide needed cover for the embarrassment of currency depreciating central banks' policies.

Recent data releases have contained mixed messages. Bulls cling to anecdotal data points to support their 'recovery around the corner' green-shoots justification for equity valuations while bears remain mired in the reality of a slow and dismal recovery-less recovery. The following 13 charts (with 1 bright shining point of government sponsored exuberance) paint a different picture than the all-time high stock prices suggest.