Archive - 2013 - Story

While a military campaign against Syria (and Iran) on the usual grounds has been postponed indefinitely, two nations in the Middle East have been seething: Saudi Arabia and, of course, Israel. Yet while Saudi Arabia rarely if ever gets its own hands dirty, instead executing its geopolitcal strategy through puppet states in need of its oil, Israel has never had a problem with engaging in offensive wars. And now that the threat of an imminent war, one which would have been largely carried out on the back of the US military, is gone Israel is preparing to do just that. According to UPI, "Israeli generals are preparing for a decisive -- and probably brief -- war against Hezbollah, one of Israel's most implacable foes, with plans to smash the Iranian-backed Lebanese movement's military power, a study says. The Israelis' primary objective will be to eradicate Hezbollah's reputedly massive arsenal of missiles and rockets "for years to come," the report by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv said."

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Pleased to announce former US Congressman @BarneyFrank has joined @CNBC as our latest contributor.

— Nick Dunn (@NickDunnCNBC) December 20, 2013

The Fed's announcement Wednesday to begin the tapering of its bond buying program (to our surprise) has been followed by a spike in the US 10 year yield; however, Citi's FX Technical group cannot help but feel that we have seen this dynamic play out before.

When it comes to key players in a global fungible monetary system, a far more important decision-maker than the US government is the FDIC-insured hedge fund that controls all central banks: Goldman Sachs. Which is why it is certainly notable that moments ago none other than Goldman effectively downgraded Russia's sovereign risk by announcing it is "shifting from constructive to neutral view on Russian sovereign risk." With the legacy rating agencies now largely moot and irrelevant, what the big banks say suddenly has so much more import. But when the biggest - and most connected - bank of them all, outright lobs a very loud shot across the Gazpromia Russian bow, even Putin listens.

Late last night, with just 4 days left until the December 23 deadline to choose plans that will begin Jan. 1, Washington Post reported that the Obama administration finally caved and "significantly relaxed the rules of the federal health-care law for millions of consumers whose individual insurance policies have been canceled, saying they can buy bare-bones plans or entirely avoid a requirement that most Americans have health coverage." The ability to get an exemption means that the administration is freeing these people from one of the central features of the law: a requirement that most Americans have health insurance as of Jan. 1 or risk a fine. The exemption gives them the choice of having no insurance or of buying skimpy “catastrophic” coverage.

"USDJPY bulls must use caution going forward," is the ominous warning BofAML's MacNeil Curry sends as the firm closes its long position on reaching their upside objective of 104.60. A closer look at the uptrend from early October says that this is a maturing advance and is growing increasingly prone to a reversal. From an Elliott Wave perspective, Triangle breakouts represent the terminal move of a trend, meaning that the potential for a top and medium-term reversal lower is growing quickly; one that could ultimately take prices back to the 97/96 area. While this is likely a story for 2014, Curry warns - USDJPY bulls should beware.

Earlier today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis surprised everyone by announcing a final Q3 GDP growth of 4.1% compared to 3.6% in the first revision (and 2.8% originally), driven almost entirely by the bounce in Personal Consumption which rose 2.0% compared to estimates of 1.4%. As a result many are wondering just where this "revised" consumption came from. The answer is below: of the $15 billion revised increase in annualized spending, 60% was for healthcare, and another 27% was due to purchases of gasoline. The third largest upward revision: recreation services.

Blackstone Group appears to be trying to oligopolize the business of renting single-family homes in the U.S.. As Bloomberg reports, after the housing crash left more than 7 million foreclosed homes in its wake, the investment firm has spent more than $7.8 billion purchasing about 41,000 single-family homes for rental conversion. The world's largest private equity firm has quickly become the largest landlord (of rental homes) in the U.S. and in October, Blackstone offered the first-ever "rental-home-backed" security on Wall Street. One has to wonder if this was the plan all along?

It seems that absolutely nobody was surprised to see the BEA mysteriously keep virtually every other GDP component unchanged but boost Personal Consumption Expenditures from 0.96% of GDP to 1.36%. The end result is that the GDP reported in the first revision number has been boosted once again to a simply ludicrous 4.1%, smashing expectations of a 3.6% print. Putting this "revision" in perspective, the final GDP is now 45% higher than the first GDP estimate of 2.84%, and there is a whopping 1.5% delta between the first and final revision, which in our record books is the biggest revision on record.

As reported yesterday, following a surge in various short-term and money market rates in the aftermath of the Fed's taper announcement, the PBOC admitted after the close that it used Short-term Liquidity Obligations (SLO) to add funding to the market, and in doing so, bailing out money markets - the same product that nearly collapsed the financial system in the aftermath of Lehman. The bank didn't specify when it added the funds but, in another direct echo of the June panic, the PBOC said it is prepared to add more. However, it seems the market was less the convinced, and despite an early plunge in the seven day repo rate by over 2%, it suddenly and rapidly reversed direction and instead blew out hitting a whopping 9%, the highest since the June near-crash of the Chinese banking sector. The outcome: China said it injected another $50 billion to bailout and stabilize its money markets in what is increasingly looking like a replay of this summer's liquidity lock up. Perhaps the PBOC hinting at tapering at a time when the Fed is actually doing so is not the smart choice...

HSBC is back in the news. This time it relates to their transferring funds on the behalf of financiers for the militant group Hezbollah. If transactions such as these had even the slightest link to Bitcoin, there would be endless uproar, calls for countless Congressional hearings and demands to stop the currency at all costs. But when HSBC is caught doing it, what happens? A $32,400 settlement.

• China cash injection fails to calm lenders (AFP)
• European Union Stripped of AAA Credit Rating at S&P (BBG)
• Last-Minute Health-Site Enrollment Proves a Hard Sell (WSJ)
• Bernanke’s Recession-Fighting Weapon Developed by 1900s Banker (BBG)
• Asia Stocks Are Little Changed Amid China Funding Concern (BBG)
• Regulators' Guidance on Volcker Rule Gives Banks Little Relief on Debt Sales (WSJ)
• On one hand: Man Who Said No to Soros Builds BlueCrest Into Empire (BBG); on the other: Michael Platt's BlueCrest Capital Poised for Rough Close to 2013 (WSJ)
• BOJ Keeps Record Easing as Fed Taper Helps Weaken Yen (BBG)
• Bank of England becomes more cautious on economic predictions (FT)
• Gold Climbs From Lowest Close Since 2010 as Goldman Sees Losses (BBG)

Overnight one of the main stories is that the European Union has been downgraded to AA+ from AAA by S&P. While the market digests the impact of the downgrade, all eyes remain on the US treasury market. As Deutsche Bank notes, treasuries are increasingly being viewed as a potential sign of the success or not of the Fed taper in early 2014. From the lows in the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s FOMC, 10yr UST yields have added more than 10bp. Yields continue to leak this morning (-2bp to 2.95%) though we’re still hovering at levels last seen in early September just before the Fed surprised markets with its non-taper. Despite this, US equities and credit were both reasonably well supported yesterday. However the combination of higher UST yields and a stronger dollar resulted in a fairly difficult day for EM. In EMFX, the Brazilian Real fell 1.1% against the USD, underperforming most other EM currencies. The move was exacerbated by the announcement from the BCB that it would wind back its intervention in the currency market, following the initial positive reaction to tapering on Wednesday. Other EM currencies also struggled including the TRY (-0.7%), MXN (-0.7%) and IDR (-0.3%). A number of EM equity markets struggled including in Poland (-0.7%) and Turkey (-3.5%).

Today gold slid under $1200 per ounce, dropping to a level not seen in three years. Judging by the price action one would think that gold is not only overflowing from precious metal vaults everywhere, but can be found thrown away on the street, where nobody even bothers to pick it up. One would be wrong. In fact, as Bloomberg's Ken Goldman reports, "you could walk into a vault in London and they were packed to the rafter with gold, and the gold would trade from me to you to somebody else. You could walk into these vaults today and they are virtually empty. All that gold has been transferred out of London, 26 million ounces...." To find out where it has gone and why it is never coming back, watch the clip below.(spoiler alert: listen for the line: "the Chinese don't want US dollars anymore, they want gold"

While we joked on Monday this week with regard the Harvard evacuations, we were still a little shocked that, as the NY Post reports, a Harvard University student was due in court Wednesday after prosecutors said he made bomb threats to try to get out of a final exam. Eldo Kim, 20, acting alone, sent the bomb hoax messages to five or six Harvard email addresses he picked at random (via the Dark Web browser Tor), about half an hour before he was scheduled to take a final in Emerson Hall, one of the buildings threatened. The maximum penalties for a bomb hoax are five years in prison and a $250,000 fine - plenty of time to study there...