Archive - May 2014 - Story

"Stocks in the advanced economies are basically fully priced," Faber pronounces, and adds that, given their low yields, government bonds are also expensive. The true contrarian play is the "most under-appreciated asset - cash." Even though investors won't earn any money and will actually lose money in the long-term because of Federal Reserve-induced dollar depreciation, Faber suggests that "for the next six months, maybe cash is the most attractive," because the US economy is not recovering at all the way stocks are priced and what is more worrisome is the potential for a sudden eruption of inflation. As we have noted numerous times, Faber blasts that despite the prices of everything going up, government statistics "are distorted by the ministry of truth" in order to enable more money printing by the central banks. Crucially, while we may not be seeing wage inflation in the US, that excess liquidity is squirting up everywhere around the world's assets (and wages in China and India for instance), and the 2008 financial crisis could be just a precursor to a more severe economic fallout on the horizon.

When the IRS was targeting conservative groups seeking tax exempt status for special scrutiny, they demanded the list of donors supporting those groups in 17 cases. Despite assurances from the agency that the lists had been destroyed, a search requested by Congress revealed that at least 3 lists had survived.

And of the donors on those lists, fully 10% of the individuals had been audited (the rate of audits for ordinary Americans is about 1%)

Now, the House Ways and Means Oversight Committee is demanding that the Government Accountability Office investigate the IRS to see why so many Tea Party donors were audited.

Presented with no comment...

...What’s left for the Empire of Chaos is to pray for chaos to keep spreading across Ukraine, thus sapping Moscow’s energy. And all this because the Washington establishment is absolutely terrified of an emerging power in Eurasia. Not one, but two – Russia and China. Worse: strategically aligned. Worse still: bent on integrating Asia and Europe. So feel free to picture a bunch of Washington angry old men hissing like juvenile delinquents: “I don’t like you. I don’t want to talk to you. I want you to die.”

In recent weeks the concept of capital has been thoroughly, and incorrectly, deconstructed by Marxists and Keynesians alike now that, suddenly, the world caught up with what we said would be the crux issue back in 2011: record wealth inequality (who could have possibly foreseen it following $10 trillion in central bank balance sheet expansion in the last decade), and finding "fair" ways of confiscating the wealth of the rich to - at least on paper - help the poor even if in reality all it would do is simply lead to more government theft, embezzling, corruption, and capital misallocation. It is now time to get an Austrian perspective and courtesy of unrepentant "Austrian" Sean Corrigan we just got one.

...and the 'strategists' think these 2 lines will inevitably converge back into a Nirvanic status quo of leveraged Utopians as if nothing ever happened...

US equity markets were off to the races when stocks opened and Yellen began to speak but the late-day ugliness was written on the wall by a total lack of support from either volume or any other risk-market. The S&P ramped up to last Friday's spike highs, Zero Hedge reminded traders that Biotech P/Es were double what they expected, and the 30Y auction tailed ugly was enough - with a dearth of news (aside from downplayed escalations in Ukraine) stocks dumped and played catch down with JPY (weakness) and Bond (strength). EUR weakness (from Draghi Jawboning) provided the impetus for USD strength but leaves the USD unch on the week. Considerable divergence in bonds today (30Y +3bps, 5Y -3bps) means the curve is steepening modestly. VIX was running stocks today and we slammed back under 13 briefly and closer higher on the day. Ugly day for high beta stocks with the Russell near 6mo lows (and the Dow is back in the red for 2014)

Two days ago, we told you about how the US appears to be destroying its banking system with the FATCA deadline - it’s as if they’re deliberately trying to weaken one of the few things that still gives the US a shred of power in the world anymore. Fast forward to today and the next shoe appears to have dropped... The FT reported yesterday that JP Morgan has started freezing accounts, declining credit card charges, and terminating customer relationships with foreign diplomats and politicians. All of this is under pressure from the US government to scrutinize banking relationships with "politically exposed persons", or PEPs. Apparently once you’re a PEP, you’re always a PEP. So banks are simply shutting these relationships down.

US equity price action warns of trouble, BofAML's Macneil Curry warns. Since the start of this year, Tuesdays have consistently resulted in positive returns for US equities; but this week's failure to follow through with that pattern, coupled with the Russell 2000’s first close below the 200-day moving-average since November 2012, warns of trouble ahead. Indeed, the Russell is dangerously close to completing a 4 month "Head-and-Shoulders Top". A close below 1099 is needed to complete the pattern, exposing significant downside to 1057 (5-year trendline), ahead of 988/975 (Head-and-Shoulders obj.).

"Ukraine’s biggest bank, Privatbank, says the situation in the eastern cities of Donetsk and Lugansk has reached a critical point that is too dangerous for staff to go to work." This is a warning of what can happen in the middle of an economic crisis in the modern era. With everyone relying upon government handouts and the dwindling supply of actual real physical paper money (cash), we can easily end up in a situation of barter.

Despite all the words - and equity market rallies (confirming that it must be true) - it would appear Mr. Putin and his men have been quietly "not" preparing for all-out war (which makes us wonder, aside from the ICBMs, just what it would look like if they were actually preparing for war). Below is a clip of today's "simulated massive nuclear attack" drills conducted in Russia. It is in short, stunning.

Mario Draghi has gone and done it: "Now that the June meeting is explicitly going to be crucial, not doing anything next month would in our view completely shatter the ECB’s credibility, and trigger a further appreciation in the euro exchange rate" - Deutsche Bank

As "The Russian Spring" spreads across various sub-regions of current non-Russian sovereign nations, Russian historian Sergey Lebedev warns that Transdniestria is “the first liberated part of Novorossiya,” Putin’s term for what he sees as a new state spreading across Ukraine into Moldova and perhaps beyond... here is what that region will look like... welcome to Novorossiya, or as one would translate it... New Russia.

Something amusing, or rather, shocking was revealed when we decided to check on a fact Jim Grant noted yesterday in the fine print of the iShares Biotech ETF, also known as the IBB...

If one had to use one word to describe today's 30 Year bond auction, it would "atrocious." With the When Issued expecting the 30 Year refunding (CUSIP: RG5) to price at 3.40%, instead we got one of the biggest rails in recent history when the Treasury announced that the high yield required to sell $16 billion in 30 Year paper was a whopping 3.44%. To be sure, this was the lowest 30Y auction yield since June of 2013, however we may be reaching a point when there is simply no issuance demand for new paper. This was perhaps best seen in both the Bid to Cover which tumbled from 2.52 in April to just 2.09, the lowest since August 2011, and the hit rate of the Indirects, who took down 40.4% of the auction, and were hit for 99.7% of the bids tendered - a whopping result. Directs fled as well, taking down just 8.4% of the auction, the lowest since March 2013, leaving Dealers with 51.2% of the auction, the most also since March 2013.