Archive - Nov 2014 - Story

While some might scoff at the idea of there even being a bubble in hi-tech start-ups, it appears the massive wall of money that has been thrown at dot-com 2.0 names - all money-losing, social, mobile, cloud name-droppers - has dried up. As The TechCrunch Bubble Index shows, the last 90 days have seen startup-funding announcements collapse over 40% to their lowest level in almost 3 years...

The monetary tectonic plates are shifting, and predicting the next global financial earthquake is relatively easy.

As everyone listens in silence as Goldman's New York Fed's Bill Dudley gets emotional during his Senate Banking Committee testimony, and his only response to why there is Goldman capture of the NY Fed being that $3 trillion in Fed excess reserves have made banks "stable", yet why absolutely nothing will change, there is only one thing everyone needs to see to understand just how the system works.  Presenting the total donations by Goldman Sachs to members of Congress in 2014 alone.

Dear Mr. Draghi, we are very sorry but we messed up on the 'stress test'. The Royal Bank of Scotland shares are sliding after it admitted that it made an error - not in favor the bank - in its stress test calculations...

*RBS: CET1 STRESS TEST RATIOS OVERSTATED ON CALCULATION ERROR

Under the corrected Adverse Scenario, RBS capital cushion was slashed from 6.7% to 5.7% (just barely above the 5.5% minimum). Still - we should all trust the stress tests as 'proof' how strong Europe's banking system is. What a farce!!

The explosive surge in US equity markets off the 'Bullard' lows have swung the Relative Strength Index (RSI) from its most oversold in 24 months to the most overbought in 33 months in a record amount of time. The last time the market was this 'overbought', the S&P 500 fell almost 11% in the following few weeks...

Just days after the NY Fed ousted an employee for providing confidential information to a Goldman Sachs banker (who formerly worked at the NY Fed - and has since been fired by Goldman), Bill Dudley - the president of the NY Fed - will face a very skeptical Senate Banking Committee this morning investigating so-called "regulatory capture." Of course, their eyes were finally opened after Carmen Segarra, a former employee, leaked 47.5 hours of taped conversation (as we discussed in detail here), exposing the dismal reality of the relationship between the 'regulator' and the 'regulated' as New York regulators were deferential to Goldman bankers for a supposedly "shady" deal. Dudley's defense (not denial) so far:  "We understand the risks of doing our job poorly and of becoming too close to the firms we supervise. Of course, we are not perfect. We sometimes make mistakes."

Goldman may have been right that there will be no more multiple expansion in 2015, but there sure was quite a bit overnight thanks to the latest verbal and actual central bank interventions by the ECB and the PBOC. And as a result, the biggest beneficiary is the S&P500, which is set to open just around 2070, or about 30 points shy of Goldman's 2015 S&P500 year-end target. And for those who still care about such things, the chart below shows that fundamentally, the S&P is now trading at 17.5x non-GAAP LTM EPS, and, drumroll, 19.2X GAAP PE!

Speaker Boehner is out with his response to Obama's executive diktum:

*BOEHNER: OBAMA IMMIGRATION ORDERS WILL ENCOURAGE BORDER CRISIS
*OBAMA `DAMAGING PRESIDENCY ITSELF' BY EXECUTIVE ORDER: BOEHNER

As Obama himself noted, these actions are those of a teenager...

The effects of the cut in the benchmark lending rate are likely to be small, Goldman warns, pouringh cold water on the exuberant - "unlikely to have a big direct impact on the economy", since lending rates are not currently subject to either upper or lower limits. Goldman adds that the rate cut may however be slightly useful to borrowers in negotiations with lenders, in our view. This is nevertheless a positive step in interest rate liberalization, in their view.

A week ago, we penned "The Real Reason Why Germany Halted Its Gold Repatriation From The NY Fed", in which we got, for the first time ever, an admission by an official source, namely the bank that knows everything that takes place in Germany - Deutsche Bank - what the real reason was for Germany's gold repatriation halt after procuring a meager 5 tons from the NY Fed. Some took offense with this pointing out, correctly, that the gold held at the NY Fed in deposit form for foreign institutions had continued to decline into 2014 even despite the alleged German halt. Well, today we finally know the answer: it wasn't Germany who was secretly withdrawing gold from the NYFed, contrary to what it had publicly disclosed. It was the Netherlands.  Why did the DNB decided it was time to cut its gold held at the NY Fed by 122 tons? "It is no longer wise to keep half of our gold in one part of the world," a DNB spokesman said.

First Mario Draghi made some strong statements speaking in Asia that "It is essential to bring back inflation to target and without delay," which sent EURUSD tumbling BUT did not spark moves in the S&P 500 (though Gold slipped). It was not until the PBOC cut rates (and sent AUD surging) that the US equity market perked up and started ripping... along with gold and as the morning progressed, gold has kept going as it is clear the Central Banks of the world have only one policy left... (no wonder the Dutch want their gold back)

Recent polls show pro-default parties growing popular in peripheral euro-area countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain. As Bloomberg Brief's Maxime Sbaihi notes, in a depressed economic environment, their promises to restructure public debt might soon bring them to power and tempt traditional parties to adopt their ideas. This return of political risk in the euro area doesn’t appear to be priced in by market participants. As Italy's Beppe Grillo recently exclaimed, "we will leave the Euro and bring down this system of bankers, of scum."

• They go all in: China’s PBOC Cuts Interest Rates for First Time Since 2012 (BBG)
• And all in-er: ECB's Draghi throws door to quantitative easing wide open as recovery wanes (Reuters)
• Global Markets Rally: ECB Head Says Central Bank Is Ready to Expand Stimulus Program After China Cuts Rates (WSJ)
• Obama unveils U.S. immigration reform, setting up fight with Republicans (Reuters)
• U.S. increasing non-lethal military aid to Ukraine (Reuters)
• Russia warns U.S. against arms to Ukraine as Biden due in Kiev (Reuters)
• Ukraine slashed gold holdings in October, Russia added more - IMF (Reuters)
• Abe Dissolves Japan’s Lower House of Parliament (WSJ)

While the biggest news of the day will certainly be China's rate cut (and the Dutch secret gold repatriation but more on the shortly), here is a list of all the other central-banking/planning events which have moved markets overnight, because in the new normal it no longer is about any news or fundamentals, it is all about the destruction of the value of money and the matched increase in nominal asset values.