Australia

Once again massive corporate behemoths show those bankrupt sovereigns who is in charge. Case in point China's great resource subsidiary-cum-housing bubble known as Australia. The Australian reports that a mere three weeks after the Rudd unveiled its new resource super tax, the government will back track on this proposal, and will "lift the threshold definition of a super profit from 6 per cent to 11 or 12 per cent following a ferocious campaign by the mining companies." Not to look completely toothless, the government will still keep some vestige of the tax, although now that corporations know they have the upper hand, look for this tax proposal to be soon eliminated completely. In fact, mining companies have already declared the changes do nothing to stop the risk to investment in Australia. Quite possibly one of the main reasons for this capitulation has been the huge drop in the AUD over the past several weeks, as investors have unwound long AUD trades with gusto. In the meantime, the slow, concerted creep by corporations to take over the world continues. Next step: the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks.

We already know that the Federal Reserve System was blind, mute, dumb, and frankly, retarded when it came to Lehman's Repo 105, and pretty much every other aspect of the Lehman collapse. As the Examiner discloses: "Secretary Geithner “did not recall being aware of” Lehman’s Repo 105 program", "Jan Voigts, who was an Examining Officer in FRBNY’s Bank Supervision Department, had no knowledge of Lehman removing assets from its balance sheet at or near quarter?end via a repo trade", "Arthur Angulo, who was a Senior Vice President in FRBNY’s Bank Supervision department, likewise was unaware that Lehman engaged in repo transactions at quarter?end" although the latter did point out that "the described repo transactions appeared to go “beyond other types of [permissible] balance sheet management.” And lastly, "Thomas Baxter, FRBNY General Counsel, had no knowledge of Repo 105 transactions, either by name or design." Yet it is these clowns that want to become America's uber-regulator. Now that is funny, considering that at the apex of the greatest cataclysm for the financial industry, the Fed was blissfully unaware of one of the most egregious book cooking scams ever conducted by a Wall Street firm. Yet with all the Fed's bells and whistles, with all its Bloomberg terminals, all its fancy daytraders, all its Flash trading enabled momentum chasing algos, one central bank, half way around the world, knew all too well what was going on at Lehman - the Reserve Bank of Australia. Which is why we nominate the RBA's chair, Glenn Stevens, to be direct supervisor of the entire ungodly and corrupt mess that is Wall Street (and to make Ben Bernanke his butler). We also strongly endorse the nomination of Amanda Drury to supersede that of Janet Yellen, as the Fed's new chair of vice. At least she will bring some inflationary pressures to the Marriner Eccles building.

"With respect to financial market infrastructures, the Federal Reserve is working with a broad range of private-sector participants, including dealers, clearing banks and tri-party repo investors to dramatically reduce the structural instability of the tri-party repo system." - Oh, so it is structurally unstable. All this, and many more remarks of the "I say X, but really mean Y" variety in the attached speech.

The earlier announcement of a 25 bps rate hike by the RBA was not a big surprise. What was, however, was the knee-jerk reaction by both the USD and the JPY, and specifically the relative sizes of said jerk. As both currencies are funding currencies to AUD longs, the relative reactions provide a good, if crude, way to quantify the relative concentration of shorts in any givencurrencies (USD and JPY). Then again, it may merely indicate that tonight's USD-trading night shift at Goldman had much more Red Bull than the OZ one. In either way, both the initial knee jerk reaction as well as the subsequent follow through, indicate a roughly 50-100% greater concentration of dollar than yen-based shorts: in other words: the carry ratio funded in USD and JPY is between 2:1 and 3:2.

A just issued update publication by ABARE on Australian Commodities (June 2009), in the section summarizing projected 2009-2010 economic activity, ABARE provides a -0.5% estimate for economic decline.