Portugal Parliament Approves Regional Finance Law

Portugal's 9.3% budget deficit is about to get a whole lot worse. A proposed Law of Regional Finances, which was approved yesterday by a parliamentary committee, which would increase funds sent to Portugal's Madeira and Azores regions by €50 million, and keep rising until it hits €86 million by 2013, was just ratified into law by the Portuguese parliament. This is precisely what the Finance Minister had been dreading.

Here Comes The Short Selling Ban, More Money Market Restrictions

Just flashing headlines for now:

SCHAPIRO:IN COMING WKS,WILL PROPOSE SHRT SELLING RESTRICTIONS

SCHAPIRO:REPEATS CONSIDERING MORE MEASURES ON MONEY MKT FNDS

SCHAPIRO:REPEATS STAFF TO EXAMINE MERITS OF FLOATING NAV

NFP -20,000, Consensus +15,000, Non-Seasonally Adjusted Unemployment Rate (U3 And U6) Surges To Record 10.6% And 18%

The January NFP number came in at -20,000, a mere 5k away from Goldman's -25,000 estimate. Consensus was for +15,000. December, as all prior months, saw an expected major downward revision to -150,000 from -85,000. The January Birth/Death adjustment was for -427K from +25K in December. Despite a deterioration in every metric, the unemployment rate dropped from 10.% to 9.7%, even with a consensus at 10.0%. A glitch in the excel model is further corroborated when one considers that the civilian labor force participation rate actually rose in January from 64.6 to 64.7. Yet a number that avoids some of the constant fudging by the BLS, the Non-Seasonally Adjusted number, hit a new recent record: instead of 9.7%, this number was 10.6%, a 0.9% increase from December! The same can be seen in the U-6 data. NSA U-6 is now at a record 18%, even as the seasonally adjusted number declined to 16.5%.

Market Update: A Few Targets Reached, A Touch More To Come

We saw almost to the tick the downside targets mentioned last night in S&P futures and EURUSD as per the hourly and 3-hour charts. However we see more downside potential on the Dax as we have not yet reached the target at 5,396. Also we do not have much hourly divergence in S&P and EURUSD's RSI low coincides with the lows which would suggest we can push a bit lower while remaining in the downtrend channel. S&P futures should bounce (maybe as high as 1070 here) but a break of 1051 on the downside could take us to 1,038.50 as the last leg started yesterday seems to be missing a 5th wave lower (caveat is that catching wave 5 of 5 is a tricky game as it can sometimes be so protracted you hardly see it on a chart!). - Nic Lenoir, ICAP

RANsquawk 5th February Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

RANsquawk 5th February Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

Goldman's Levitt Calls Obama's Gimmick To Keep GSEs Off The Balance Sheet "Shades Of Enron"

A few days ago we made some observations on the just-announced nearly $4 trillion 2011 budget. The key point was that while the ugly numbers already looked like a superglued Frankenstein monster without a Kardasian botox treatment, or even simple lipstick, it would have been truly disastrous had the administration done what Peter Orzsag threatened he would do 2 years ago, namely bring the GSEs, Freddie and Fannie, on the government's balance sheet. How this is not the case yet is simply stunning: the GSEs enjoy not only the constant "bid of first refusal" courtesy of the Fed's MBS QE program, but an explicit Treasury guarantee that has no ceiling as of last Christmas eve. Bloomberg's Jonathan Weil today came to the same conclusion, although being a Bloomberg employee he was characteristically much more crass, uncouth and downright cynical than the paragon of respected journalistic patois that is the establishmentarian concept known as Zero Hedge. In an attempt to awake the morts out of their stupor, a pandering Weil uses such cheap tricks as hyperventilating allegory, sarcasm, and hyperbole when saying that  "[b]y all outward appearances, it seems
Obama and his budget wizards decided that including the
liabilities at Fannie and Freddie would be too much reality for
the world to handle. So they left the companies out, in a trick
worthy of Enron’s playbook, except not quite so hidden." Obviously, Bloomberg has an uphill struggle if its ever wishes to reach profitability (in the trillions of dollars that is... billions is so fin de pre-bailout siecle). We also fear for Weil's job prospects should he ever wish to find an occupation at such a highly respected place, where not only is there a 4 syllable word minimum but no sentences ever end in prepositions, as the Reuters blogosphere. Ironically, Bloomberg did redeem themselves somewhat later today, when in a Tom Keene interview, Goldman policy advisor Arthur Levitt is caught on tape performing more of the same hyperventilating, and in doing so blasting the administration, using the same Enron-esque analogy, when analyzing the paradox of the GSEs and the sovereign balance sheet.