Archive - Oct 29, 2014 - Story

Because, allegedly, according to a divorce complaint filed by his admittedly "cocaine-snorting" estranged wife and mother of two, former UBS healthcare banker poached by Jefferies in 2009, Sage Kelly (henceforth known as the "defendant") is quite an entertaining, all around swell guy who singlehandedly would have boosted Spain's GDP by several basis points. Here are the details from her recently filed affidavit.

Presented with little comment.. because realistically what is there to say about a so-called 'housing recovery' when the volume of applications for home purchases is the lowest since August 1995. Keep believing that lower rates will support home prices... keep believing the Fed's QE worked... or face facts, this is not your mother's housing market any more...

Whether it is European banks (Greece and Italy) plunging again, lower-than-expected crude inventories, or expectations of an uber dovish Fed this afternoon, the US Dollar has suddenly gone bidless against the major currencies.

QE has finally come to an end, but public comprehension of the immense fraud it embodied has not even started. In stopping QE after a massive spree of monetization, the Fed is actually taking a tiny step toward liberating the interest rate and re-establishing honest finance. But don’t bother to inform our monetary politburo. As soon as the current massive financial bubble begins to burst, it will doubtless invent some new excuse to resume central bank balance sheet expansion and therefore fraudulent finance. But this time may be different. Perhaps even the central banks have reached the limits of credibility - that is, their own equivalent of peak debt.

10Y Russian bond yields have broken above 10%, trading at the highest yields since 2009 as the Ruble plunges once again to fresh record lows against the dollar. These significant moves come on the heels of two notable headlines overnight. First, German exports to Russia slumped 26.3% YoY in August (down a stunning 16.6% year-to-date with vehicle exports plunging 27.7%) as sanctions batter bilateral trade. Secondly, Rosneft has proposed what is being described as "radical" reactions to the West's sanctions, which the Kremlin has (for now) denied.

Ever since the April 2010 disaster on the BP-operated Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, there was one big outstanding question: where did the bulk of the oil gol? Now, thanks to a research team led by David Valentine, a microbial geochemist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, sampled more than 534 locations near the spill site, gathering more than 3,000 individual samples, we know the answer: the oil spill - some 10 million gallons of coagulated oil - left an oily "bathub ring" on the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico, about 25 miles from the well, that's about the size of Rhode Island.

In what appeared to be a sign of discord, Bloomberg reported in September that Ferrari Chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo was poised to leave the super-car maker because of a clash over strategy with the brand’s parent Fiat, proclaiming "Ferrari is now American," which represents "the end of an era." It now seems Marchionne's Fiat strategy to compete with Volkswagen's Lambo division is no set to fail as Bloomberg reports: FIAT CHRYSLER PLANS TO SPIN OFF FERRARI. Expected to list in US and European markets, the IPO of 10% of Ferrari is expected to be completed in 2015... another sign of the top?

Could we have imagined anything more far-fetched and unlikely as this practice by the SEC itself?  We’ll answer this question. No.

There it was --- a real market come and gone in half an hour, like a pregnant panda at Edinburgh zoo. What did it mean and what should you do? You should pay attention to what happens to the direction of prices when volumes surge and markets work. When the veil is lifted, pay attention to what you see beneath. Last Wednesday, in the space of half an hour of active trading, the Treasury market had one of its most rapid rises ever recorded and equities fell sharply. There is a very simple lesson that when the markets finally break through the manipulation they move to price in deflation and not inflation. This is key because it means financial repression has failed. Such repression requires the artificial depression of interest rates but, crucially, it must be paired with boosting inflation above such rates. On October 15th 2014, if only for a few short minutes, market forces broke out and the failure of central bankers was briefly evident.

• Fed set to end one crisis chapter even as global risks rise (Reuters)... you mean, for the third time?
• Insider-Trading Probe Focuses on Medicare Agency (WSJ)
• He's sorry: Rajoy Apologizes as New Wave of Graft Allegations Hits Spain (BBG)
• China could 'punish' Hong Kong over protests, says ex-HK central bank chief (Reuters)
• Dubai Insists the Boom is Not a Bubble This Time Around (BBG)
• Bank-Data Sharing Accord Expands Push to Find Tax Cheats (BBG)
• Deutsche Bank Sinks to Third-Quarter Loss on Legal Costs (BBG)
• Kim Jong Un Executes 10 Officials for Watching Soap Operas (BBG)
• French drugmaker Sanofi sacks CEO Viehbacher (Reuters)

As Deutsche Bank observes, the Fed has been wanting to hike rates on a rolling 6-12 month horizon from each recent meeting but never imminently which always makes the actual decision subject to events some time ahead. They have seen a shock in the last few weeks and a downgrade to global growth prospects so will for now likely err on the side of being more dovish than in the last couple of meetings. They probably won't want to notably reverse the recent market repricing of the Fed Funds contract for now even if they disagree with it. However any future improvements in the global picture will likely lead them to step-up the rate rising rhetoric again and for us this will again lead to issues for financial markets addicted to liquidity. And so the loop will go on for some time yet and will likely trap the Fed into being more dovish than they would ideally want to be in 2015.