Archive - 2013 - Story

• Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households (BBG)
• Bipartisan House Backs Tax Deal Vote as Next Fight Looms (BBG)
• Fresh stand-off looms after US cliff deal (FT)
• Congress Deal Averting Tax Increase Curbs Risk to States (BBG)
• How Colombian drug traffickers used HSBC to launder money (Reuters)
• Danes Face New Reality in Struggle to End Crisis, PM Says (BBG)
• Ban on demanding Facebook passwords among new 2013 state laws (Reuters)
• Oil Climbs to Three-Month High as U.S. House Passes Budget Bill (BBG)
• Cameron seeks bold steps from G8 leaders (FT)
• China to outstrip Europe car production (FT)
• North Korea Picks Stronger Economy, South Ties as Top 2013 Tasks (BBG)

And so after much pomp and posturing over the past 48 hours, much of which will likely reshape the layout of the GOP in both chambers, both the Senate and the House passed the first concurrent tax hike and permanent tax cuts in about two decades. The net result of this will be a roughly 1% drag on GDP, even as the US budget deficit increases relative to the CBO's old baseline, and the beneficial impact from the tax hikes offsets roughly two weeks of spending. In other words, while addressing the tax part of the equation, politicians delayed the spending part of the problem for exactly 60 days by punting on the expiration of the sequester, or the government spending cuts. They also delayed addressing the debt ceiling, perhaps the most integral part of the Fiscal Cliff, which has now been breached and which as of this moment means the US can't incur one additional dollar in additional debt. So looking forward it means the US now has about 4 separate cliffs: the debt ceiling cliff in February/March, the sequester cliff in March, the farm bill cliff in September and the expiration of jobless benefits on December.But that's all in the future, and it will all be a function of just how quickly the GOP rolls over to once again confirm that when it comes to the stock market, America has just one political party. The party of up at all costs, which in turn is manifested right now in the first futures print of the New Year, with both the S&P and the DJIA futures up nearly 2%, and with the E-Mini up some 50 points, or half a turn of S&P multiple expansion in two trading sessions: a nice rally to show just who Washington truly works for.

Moments ago, Boehner voted to enact "Obama's tax cuts", which is the new de facto Bush tax cuts (which expired yesterday), and which will raise the budget deficit over the next decade by $4 trillion, yet which at the same time paradoxically also hiked taxes on nearly three quarters of Americans with an emphasis on the wealthiest 1%. Now, Boehner also issues a statement to advise his constituency just what issue he will cave on next: spending.

They came; they spoke; they voted...

• *HOUSE BEGINS VOTE ON AVERTING TAX INCREASES FOR MOST WORKERS
• *HOUSE HAS ENOUGH VOTES TO PASS BUDGET BILL; VOTE CONTINUING
• *CANTOR VOTES NO ON BUDGET BILL
• *PAUL RYAN VOTES YES ON BUDGET BILL
• *BOEHNER VOTES YES ON SENATE BILL
• Republicans: Yea 85 - 151 Nay
• Democrats: Yea 172 - 16 Nay

'Cliff'-Off (for now)...'Debt-Ceiling'-on. Time to start buying March vol steepeners? But the bottom line is simple: the Bush tax cuts are dead. Long live the Obama tax cuts.

Presented with little comment (via Bloomberg):

• *HOUSE REPUBLICANS ABANDON EFFORT TO ADD SPENDING CUTS TO BILL

It appears everyone grows tired of the pantomime, even the main actors. Well that was fun while it lasted...

UPDATE: Sure enough - *COLE SAYS MAJORITY OF REPUBLICANS TO VOTE FOR SENATE BILL ... and the market is rallying

Following Monday's fiscal-cliff-gasm in markets in the US, the Australian stock market is the first indication of the post-cliff on-again-off-again reaction to the reality that is a stymied House and stubborn Senate. Some are noting the fact that it is 'up' as a signal of confidence - however, given its 'catch-up' nature, it is actually signalling considerably less confidence than US stocks showed at their close. Why is this important? Because all that matters is the market...

"Everyone knows once the markets open tomorrow our courage drops in direct proportion to the market fall," said one Republican lawmaker

Of course, this could all change based on the next flashing red headline.

Ironically, the very success of stock market manipulation only thins the market of legitimate participants and thus increases the probability that risk that has been suppressed for years will erupt uncontrollably. That the stock market is manipulated is no longer in question. One explicit goal in the Fed's zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP) is to drive capital into risk assets such as stocks. That is a first-order, transparent policy of manipulation, i.e. a centrally managed policy aimed at managing markets to meet a key central-planning goal: creating an illusion of prosperity via an elevated stock market and the resultant "wealth effect" for the 10% who own enough stocks to matter. Indirect manipulation is hidden from public view lest the rigging of the market taint the perception that a rising market is "proof" that Federal Reserve and Administration policies are "succeeding." Indirect manipulation is achieved via Federal Reserve quantitative easing operations, unlimited liquidity and lines of credit to fund bank speculations and masked buying of market futures. This multilevel manipulation creates a Boolean either/or for any Bear market: either it is a planned "panic" that profits the banks or a systemic failure of the orchestrated campaign of market manipulation.

From 9/11 on, Gold and the world's central bank balance sheets were as correlated as over-consumption and a hangover (and linked just as causally we suggest). Then a funny thing happened in 2008 - gold slid as the central banks went extreme. Of course, as this divergence occurred, the world's stock markets imploded almost as if the central banks knew their status quo was about to go entirely pear-shaped. From 2008 until November of 2011 (when the world's central banks began their coordinated ease-fest) the correlation went limit up once again. Since then, Gold and CB largesse once again decoupled as liquidity is flushed around the world's markets to suspend reality just a little longer. While this divergence is not as extreme as in 2008, something is afoot.

We can’t predict the future – if it was actually possible fortune tellers would all win the lottery.  They don’t, we can’t and we aren’t going to try to.  However, we can analyze what has happened in the past, weed through the noise of the present and try to discern the possible outcomes of the future. For every almost every positive tailwind there is an opposing headwind, and in the coming year, the political and economic decisions domestically, and globally, will define the coming landscape.

UPDATE: *LATOURETTE SAYS CANTOR WON'T SUPPORT BILL 'IN CURRENT FORM'

It seems all is not going according to plan in D.C.. Perhaps it was the $4 Trillion deficit rampage the CBO just scored, or that the Republicans awoke from their slumber but as House meetings end, it appears Citi's worst case scenario is about to take place - the bill is going back to the Senate with spending cut amendments. As Politico notes, amending the bill would throw into serious flux the carefully negotiated agreement between Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Joe Biden. While headlines noted the possibility, Rep Spencer Baucus (via Robert Costa) just confirmed the deal will "go back to the Senate."

• *BACHUS SAYS HOUSE REPUBLICANS 'THERE' ON TAX PROVISIONS
• *BACHUS SAYS HOUSE MAY SEND BILL BACK WITH SPENDING CUTS ADDED

One thing is clear, Politico adds: there is serious disdain among House Republicans for what the Senate did in the middle of the night. Retiring Rep. Steve LaTourette of Ohio asked House Republicans why the House would “heed the votes of sleep deprived octogenarians,” according to a source in the meeting.

Two things:

First - it is no longer the "Bush (temporary) tax cut" - it is now the "Obama (permanent) tax cut", with a loophole for the 1%ers (whose big picture "impact" we showed previously)

Second - according to the just released scoring by the CBO, the total impact to the US budget deficit of said permanent tax cuts, will be a $4 trillion increase in the deficit over the next decade. In reality, due to the CBO's perpetual optimistic bias, this number will likely be orders of magnitude lower than what it ends up being.

Maybe the US can just increase the taxes on the uber wealthy some more, and pray that unlike Obelix, they have never heard of Belgium.

...That would be the far more important cliff to America's middle class, the "Welfare Cliff" as a result of which the country's workers, especially those that fall in Obama's middle class sweet spot -  those tens of millions earning between $30,000 and $70,000, are perfectly agnostic if they make $29,000 or $69,000 as their net income and benefits amount to one and the same. Because being "aspirational and upwardly mobile" is so 1999, especially in a nation where it is more important to drag down the rich, than to become them. But hey - just toss this one too in the bin of perverted statist disincentives, along with all those other unintended consequences of central planning and a governmental power grab, not the least of which is the misallocation of trillions to satisfy immediate shareholder demands such as dividends and buybacks in a ZIRP world, instead of actually reinvesting in capital, growth, and hiring of workers: those things that capitalism, at least on paper, used to be all about.

Presented with little comment except to rhetorically ask (Tom Lee) - where's the value?

The return of inflation, in official Japanese liberal newspeak, will make the economy less sickly even if the strategy "has risks". One of these is war with China, if only as a (Japanese) crowd pleaser, and another is selling off Japan's over-one-trillion dollar holding of US Federal debt at exactly the right psychological moment to implode the US economy, already teetering on the brink of its fiscal cliff. Japan's endgame flirt with Neoliberal mindwarp, what we can call the "slogan based economy", has brought about a situation where War and Circuses is surely on the Japanese political agenda, along with Japan's threats to sabotage the global economy. The inventors of kamikaze suicide war now have an Old Guard of political deciders who are prepared to pilot the economy straight into the ground, while bleating about "national pride".