Archive - 2013 - Story

The recovery since the 2008 financial crisis is just an illusion created by the papering-over of our insolvency by central-bank printing. Doug Casey adds that the current state is akin to being "in the eye of the hurricane thanks to this 'cover'" and believes the printing which will ultimately lead to very high inflation once bank lending starts to pick up again. This excellent interview moves from Casey's view of a looming loss of confidence in the dollar (and the impact of mass repatriation) to what must the Keynesians be thinking as the "apparency of prosperity" remains all that we have to lift animal spirits. With an eye to gold (and non-western central banks behavior towards it as they realize "the USD is just an unsecured liability of a bankrupt government"), he evaluates the likelihood of a western economic collapse in 2013 and what that would imply for an implicit gold standard in the world. From Austrian economist Hans Herman-Hoppe's view of a post-Keynesian-crash era to his potential triggers for this collapse (such as gold-energy barter and non-dollar blocs), Casey succinctly reminds us that there is not just one asset-class bubble but that "we are living in the middle of the biggest bubble in history."

The USD ends the week up over 0.6%, Treasury yields down 2-4bps, Silver up 4.6%, Oil 2%, and Gold 1.4%; but it is VIX that rules the waves of unreality this week as it collapsed from this morning's unchanged on the week, played catch down to stocks (from yesterday) and then led stocks on a vol steepening/compression extravaganza down to 12.31% - its lowest since June 2007 as the 'contingent' extension of the debt-limit appeared the initial trigger and nothing at all the secondary trigger. AAPL wavered below and tested up to $500 (amid very large average trade size) but was the distinct loser once again with size sellers as S&P 500 futures surged (yet agin inferring the unwind of the long-AAPL, short-ES trade continues). Once the fire was lit, there was no stopping the stop-chasing momo run in stocks as ES chased all the way up above the week's highs. VXX was crushed (as the curve also compressed) and high-yield credit and stocks tracked each other in the rampapalooza. Of course the moment the day-session close, ES cracked back lower but for now no one cares (ending up just 5 points in the S&P cash). Average trade size was high once again in the S&P as the USD, Bonds, and Stocks were bid.

On August 17, 2007, the Fed's Board of Governors announced a key change to primary credit lending terms, whereby the discount rate was cut by 50 bp — to 5.75% from 6.25% — and the term of loans was extended from overnight to up to thirty days. This reduced the spread of the primary credit rate over the fed funds rate from 100 basis points to 50 basis points. News of the emergency measure was supposed to be kept secret from market participants as it was substantially market moving. It wasn't. And just when we thought our opinion of the outgoing Treasury Secretary and former NY Fed head Tim Geithner, whose TurboTax incompetence is now legendary, couldn't get lower, it got lower. Much lower.

It is no secret to anyone that as we said some 3 years ago, the world is now engaged in all out currency warfare whose sole goal is destroying one's own currency faster and more brutally than "the other guy" can. Because while devaluing one's currency is imperative in order to return to a viable debt load, about $40 trillion less than where it is now (as per BCG) by pushing monetary inflation upon one's people and inflating said debt away, just as important is to stimulate one's economy and exports which, all else equal, can only be done by making them cheaper to one's trading partners. It is, after all, a zero sum world. This is precisely the tug of war that the developed world is caught in currently, where every attempt is made to talk down one's currency, and when that fails, to dilute it by printing more of it (the Fed), to backstop it with collateral of every lower quality (the ECB, although in Europe's case it is more of an involuntary phenomenon), or just to talk, and talk, ant talk (Japan). Yet while every country with a self-respecting central bank (i.e., currency printer) hopes that they will be the ultimate winner of the currency debasement export race, what has become obvious over the past 30 years, is that when it comes to specializing in exports, there is just one true winner: a winner which is self-evident from the chart below.

After witnessing the fighting of undeclared never ending wars, passage of freedom destroying legislation like the Patriot Act & NDAA, approval of pork barrel spending to the tune of hundreds of billions, rule by Executive Order, using ZIRP to extract hundreds of billions from senior citizen savers and give it to criminal Wall Street banks, forcing the American people at gunpoint to replenish the Wall Street banks with $700 billion after they had committed the greatest financial fraud in history, and a continuing trampling of the U.S. Constitution, the American people continue to remain willfully ignorant of the truth. The American Dream is dead. We’ve allowed a rich, privileged, elite few to achieve hegemony over our economic and political system with their control of the media and manipulation of our financial markets. They will collapse the country because they will never be satisfied with the amount of wealth and power they’ve accumulated. Their voracious greed will be their downfall.

Sometimes it is useful to reflect back more than a nanosecond to check one's anchoring bias. With US equities back at 2007 levels, we thought it may be instructive to look at what the Fed was thinking - and what the FOMC was looking at - to be better able to judge their 'forecasts' now. To wit Q4 2007, FOMC... "Economic growth was solid in the third quarter, and strains in financial markets have eased somewhat on balance." The reflexivity of the use of market-based measures to preempt their actions is very clear from the presentation materials, as, just like now, there was falling current year EPS expectations but a phoenix-like resurrection due in 2008 based on analyst's expectations. Furthermore, the expectations for rate changes from Q4 2007 to Q4 2008 was remarkably modest (even as they had all the data on subprime delinquencies soaring and monolines collapsing) - and of course, turned out to be absolutely and utterly incorrect. And yet, we listen intently to every forecast word they utter?

The so-called recovery is built on sand, and as stock markets climb and climb, and more traders and investors turn bullish, we come ever-closer to a new 2008-style collapse. Soaring markets, and soaring speculation. Big finance using loopholes to speculate bigger and harder. Mainstream financial journalists becoming more and more complacent about the “recovery”. We’ve been here before. Isn’t repeating the same behaviour and hoping for different results the very definition of insanity?

The market ramped, modestly, on the earlier news that the House would push the debt ceiling by three months with an implied budget/spending cut provision. That the market actually moved on this headline shows front and center just how clueless the algos doing all the trading truly are, because one doesn't need Politico to tell them that this proposal is absolutely DOA and is nothing but more theater. However, those who do need Politico to tell them that, here it is: "House Republicans will vote next week on a bill that would raise the nation’s debt ceiling for three months and attach a provision that would stop pay for members of Congress if the Senate doesn’t pass a budget, GOP officials said Friday. It’s an attempt to force the Senate to lay out a spending plan, but is sure to go nowhere in the Democratic controlled upper chamber."

We are not epidemiology experts, but something tells us the US flu (or is that communist?) epidemic is getting worse, not better.

Keynesian stimulus policies (deficit spending and low-interest easy money) create speculative credit bubbles. The U.S. economy is a neofeudal debt-serf wasteland with few opportunities for organic (non-Central Planning) expansion. The velocity of money is in free-fall, and borrowing, squandering and printing trillions of dollars to prop up a diminishing-return Status Quo won't reverse that historic collapse. Put another way: we've run out of speculative credit bubbles to exploit.

And the game continues as Speaker Boehner appears to be kicking the can across the corridor to the Senate (and implicitly the Democrats) as he quite specifically advises them that with no budget, there is no talk of debt-ceiling extensions. The principle is simple, he notes, "no budget, no pay." As Dow Jones reports, the 'compromise' deal is that the House will propose a three-month extension of the debt-ceiling in exchange for a budget (i.e. spending cuts from the Senate) - which of course is all but impossible given the years of inability to pass a budget anyway. Check to Obama (though we know the response)...

• *U.S. HOUSE WILL PASS 3-MONTH DEBT LIMIT INCREASE NEXT WEEK
• DJN - DJ U.S. HOUSE TO SEEK THREE-MONTH EXTENSION OF DEBT CEILING
• DJN - DJ U.S. REP CANTOR: IF HOUSE AND SENATE DON'T PASS BUDGET IN 3 MONTHS LAWMAKERS WON'T GET PAID

"April 10 was the first trading day in London after the “London Whale” articles were published. When the U.S. markets opened (i.e., towards the middle of the London trading day), one of the traders informed another that he was estimating a loss of approximately $700 million for the day. The latter reported this information to a more senior team member, who became angry and accused the third trader of undermining his credibility at JPMorgan. At 7:02 p.m. GMT on April 10, the trader with responsibility for the P&L Predict circulated a P&L Predict indicating a $5 million loss for the day; according to one of the traders, the trader who circulated this P&L Predict did so at the direction of another trader. After a confrontation between the other two traders, the same trader sent an updated P&L Predict at 8:30 p.m. GMT the same day, this time showing an estimated loss of approximately $400 million. He explained to one of the other traders that the market had improved and that the $400 million figure was an accurate reflection of mark-to-market losses for the day."

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That just about sums up the divergence of opinion among credit (bad) and equity (good) traders had as the week ended on a very sour note for bonds. Financials, which have seen nothing but compression and exuberance, have swung notably wider in the last 36 hours or so - as the spectre of the repayment of LTRO begins to show forth. Meanwhile, stocks are flatly ignoring that reality and close (broadly) at the highs of the week. Sovereigns in general trod water (+/-5bps) except for Spain which rallied 21bps (of course it did, the awesome bad loans data must have been the bad-is-good driver?). EURUSD also started to sag today back to its lows of the week - even as Swiss 2Y rates broke back above 0% for the first time in 9 months and Europe's VIX is stable at around 16%.

UPDATE: VIX and SPX have recoupled

Given the compression in realized volatility and surge in stocks, it is not totally surprising that spot VIX would see some catch down compression. Sure enough, spot VIX just plunged to 13.00 (for the first time in almost 6 years). Stocks are falling as VIX is falling though - in a convergence from yesterday's gap-open. Longer-date VIX futures are also falling but not as much - implying further debt-ceiling deadline steepeners being laid out.