fixed

GDP revision, existing home sales, Richmond Fed, FOMC minutes, weekly confidence and micro TIPS POMO as the market prepares to wind down ahead of the holidays yet Korea is looking like last year's Dubai…

This is certainly true of most classic movies, and it applies quite well to shock and awe emergency/extraordinary economic or monetary policies. Indeed it has so far been true of QE 2.0, and we are finding out for now this could also be true of PIIGS bailout. Part of the reaction is completely natural. Bailing out Greece was a first within the EU and perceived as a sign of dedication to fighting the crisis by European institutions it squeezed out weak shorts and profit takers in PIIGS bonds. However the second time around the surprise effect is lost, and if anything it raises the questions as to how many countries really bailed out, is austerity working (Ireland was one of the first to adopt measures), and how many can Europe reasonably bail out before the euro currency's existence is put in question and the richer countries simply throw in the towel on helping their poorer neighbors in an attempt to save themselves. As of now it appears the worries are dominating euphoria. - Nic Lenoir

Earlier tonight, Ireland applied for conditional funding assistance and will therefore be the first Eurozone sovereign accessing the EU-IMF support framework instituted in May. The latest European Economics Analyst provides background. There are still several uncertainties surrounding the deal, including the government’s political support (a by-election is due this Thursday), and negotiations on the banks. The yield spread between 5-yr Irish government bonds and their German counterparts has fallen by around 100bp from the 600bp highs reached on 11 November. At this point, we see scope only for a further 50bp tightening. That said, we think that this represents an important step towards a resolution of EMU sovereign woes, and a gradual relaxation of the risk premium that has built up in Italy and Spain, and in Eastern Europe. - Goldman Sachs

One of the more persuasive analyses on the fate of the EMU that we have read recently, comes, oddly enough, from JP Morgan, although not from the firm "proper" but from its somewhat more iconoclastic Private Bank division (which manages portfolios for the ultrawealthy). At the core of the argument, which is far more subtle and nuanced than any report by Ambrose-Evans Pritchard, yet which reaches the same conclusion on the viability of the Eurozone, is the now accepted schism between the core and the periphery, in virtually every aspect of their economies: "how can the European Central Bank simultaneously maintain the “right” monetary policy for inflation-phobic Germany and the weak periphery at the same time?" What many don't know, however, is that this very dichotomy was the reason for the collapse of the first attempt at a monetary union in Europe, the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which ended with a loud thug back in 1992, "when the UK needed a much weaker monetary policy than Germany, which was overheating in the wake of Unification stimulus." Of course, instead of taking no for an answer, Europe merely upped the ante and layered monetary unification on top of an artificial political and customs union. The current state of affairs is all Europe has to show for it. So what happens next? Just as Dylan Grice suggested on Friday that China may have realized that its inflationary endgame has now entered its "out of control" phase, so too perhaps Europe, now accepts the realization that the same unsuccessful outcome as 1992 is inevitable and the premise of a European Union can finally be shelved. Yet in a world in which, as JPM claims, the need for an artificial European union to preserve the peace ended in 1954, and the far more critical peace-perpetuation mechanism - global corporatocracy - is far more important, perhaps Europe should instead focus on doing all it can to promote the interests of various multinational corporations, whose viability may be far more important to Europe's continued non-wartime status. Or perhaps that is the idea all along - with corporate viability more reliant on a healthy banking sector than anything else, are Europe's taxpayers now expected to pay for the 50+ years of peace and social welfare they have received by rescuing the various banks whose bad investments would not sustain one day without an explicit and implicit sovereign backstop. Is Europe essentially saying that should Europe's banks be impaired, that war will certainly follow? Or if the message is not too clear yet, perhaps it will be made soon enough...

A topic we covered extensively in the past makes a second appearance, this time courtesy of Abigail Doolittle and The Weekly Peak, whose weekly musings focus on the much fabled ratio between the price of gold and silver. Some observations:

• 323 B.C. – The ratio stood at 12.5 upon the death of Alexander the Great.
• Roman Empire – The ratio was set at 12.
• 12th to 17th Century – The ratio was around 12.
• End of 19th Century – The nearly universal, fixed ratio of 15 came to a close with the end of the bi-metallism era and England’s attempt to demonetize silver and conceivably because the country had little of the precious metal.
• 1980 – At the time of the last great surge in gold and silver, the ratio stood at 17.
• 1991 – When silver hit its lows, the ratio peaked at 100.
• 2003 - 2007 – This part of the bull market in silver caused the ratio to drop to 45 from 80.
• 2008 – The ratio rose back to 80 on the Great Recession.

A recap of the day's key action in equities, futures, FX, rates, commodities and credit.

Can you visualize a possible scenario that could put a sudden end to the secular rise now underway in gold and silver? In a recent conference call with the research team of The Casey Report, we once again collectively tried to imagine what situation… what scheme… what government manipulation… might finally put a stake through the heart of gold. Setting the stage, I think it’s safe to assume that in order for the gold bull to decisively reverse direction, the following general conditions would have to be precedent in the economy...

After a weeklong smackdown in muni securities of all kinds, both cash and synthetic (read CDO-like ETF time bombs), today for the first time we have seen confirmation that investors are starting to say enough. Reuters reports that for the first time since April 14, mutual fund investors withdrew a net $115 million from tax-exempt funds last week. "Funds are the largest players in the municipal market so to the extent there are outflows, that will put more upward pressure on rates[downward pressure on prices]? said Jack Bauer, managing director of fixed income at Manning & Napier, a money manager in Fairport, New York, who oversees $25 billion in assets. "It's been kind of ugly this week." See Jack Bauer is all confused - one would have though that 28 consecutive outflows from domestic stock funds may have put in just a little "downward pressure" on stocks. Wrong and wrong - in fact stocks have proven that they levitate best on fraud, mark-to-krazy klowns, and scammery precisely when redemptions and Fed-Citadel involvement is highest. Which is why we expect that once there is no money left in stock funds (a few weeks at this rate) and in muni funds soon, muni will actually surge to never before seen highs as the bizarro effect appears in full force, and whatever muni ETFs are out there will do an SRS circa November 2008.

As discussed earlier this week and last week, Murphy's law is verified in the bond market as we are inching closer to 122-30 in TY futures and the 5Y future is leaning dangerously on the 100-dma, eyeing the 118-30 support below. The market is arguably still long but trimming. All the buying last week post long end supply is getting stopped out for those who did not cash in on a quick buck, and a lot of pre-FOMC positioning is getting pushed out as well. The irony? People are starting to feed the sell-off mentioning next week's supply... just when real money is about to step up and bid the market again! If you have been playing from the short side the past couple weeks you have been right. I tried to play that way mostly with more or less success catching the tops on the pullbacks (or missing them by a few ticks), and even schatz which I thought would hold up broke the 108.80 level.

In his latest letter, in addition to again broaching the subject of the upcoming Eurozone collapse, SocGen's Albert Edwards shares his increasingly high level of conviction that the US will slip into recession and also explains why Ben Bernanke's trashing of the dollar is just a "devious ploy" to force a real exchange rate revaluation on the Chinese via rampant food price inflation. Keep in mind, in China food prices are actually important, noted and measured, and were the primary reason for the October spike in inflation which oddly caught so many by surprise, probably more for the reason that the government actually agreed to disclose it. In essence, Albert argues that the Chairman has raised the stakes on the global monetary game to such a level, that he risks social discontent either in the US or in China, or both, should China refuse to blink in what has quickly become the most important game of chicken in the history of modern economics.

Understanding that credit default swaps are a way to step up the capital structure absorbs them into fixed income trading in a natural way. At the same time they opened up some terrific opening lines. One can basis trade based on the whether a CDS is priced rich (or no) against an underlying bond. One can trade dispersion, by selecting name(s) that outperform an index basket, or by selecting a CDS that outperforms another CDS. There is curve trading of same-name CDS at different maturities. I’m not going to go further, but the cap arb strategies can extend beyond the strictly fixed income space. That “sell VIX- buy CDS” arb is an example.

A recap of the day's key action in equities, futures, FX, rates, commodities and credit.

Bernanke is like the Sorcerer's Apprentice: Given the magic hat - he commands his broom army to fetch buckets of dollars to inflate the economy the easy way but his lazy solution quickly turns into disaster as the waters start rising and he finds he has no way to stem the rising tide

First city of Hamtramck filing bankruptcy, now this... From Moody's: "The downgrade to A2 reflects continued weakness of the city's finances, which had improved from 2005 to 2007, but deteriorated in fiscal 2008 and 2009, and improved in 2010, but continue to face challenges in the coming few years. Although fiscal 2010 results are favorable, General Fund balance remains negative, both on a budgetary and GAAP basis, and we believe the city has little budgetary margin over its five-year plan which includes significant repayment of deferred pension contributions in 2013 and 2014. In response to the significant financial stresses that began in fiscal 2008, city officials created a fiscal recovery plan that included a temporary sales tax increase and the pension deferral in fiscal 2010 and 2011; the plan gained the required approval from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania legislature at the end of September 2009, allowing for the sales tax increase to begin at the beginning of October. Additional revenue and expenditure reductions in fiscal 2010 resulted in surplus operations, although these were diminished from previous forecasts due to a late state aid payment of approximately $70 million; much of that revenue has since been received."

A combination of Fed front-running and perspectives of a more fiscally conservative Federal government (including the ever so independent Federal Reserve Bank) has had the bond market on the backfoot the past few days with a lot of stops being run through. As we discussed last week, how the market digests the actual liquidity injections by the Fed and the buybacks is what will drive all other asset markets. Indeed liquidity injections by central banks has been the sole driver of asset prices with the shadow credit markets contracting. - Nic Lenoir