BIS

With America shut for Thanksgiving today, what was going to be an abysmal volume day, coupled with the usual any news is good news levitation following the lowest volume day of the year, will be even worse. Sure enough, the overnight session started off with a bang, when in the vacuum of night, a lift everything algo sent the EURUSD soaring by 40 pips higher on no news. With the entire risk complex firmly anchored to the EURUSD pair as the key driver, it pushed risk across the entire market well higher to set the early session mood with the very first trade. Followed light trading and a gradual drift lower which could not be offset even with a China HSBC Flash PMI print of 50.4, up from 49.5 in October, and the first 50+ print in 13 month (to accompany the new political regime: after all, the US is not the only nation where economic data mysteriouly levitate with key political events). This continued until about Europe open, when the monthly release of European PMIs came out, which once again were confusing to say the least with France posting the biggest and most surprising pick up, after its Manufacturing PMI rose from 43.7 to 44.7, on expectations of 44.0, while the Services PMI increased from 44.6 to 46.1, well above the expected 45.0 print. Germany was less exuberant with manufacturing rising from 45.5 to 46.2, although the Services PMI dropped from 48.4 to 48.0, missing expectations of 48.3, sending the series to its lowest in 41 months.

Umm yeah...close-to-close, equity indices were mixed (Dow small red - HP/IBM, NDX/SPX small green on closing rampfest) amid dismal volumes but for anyone that paid attention to the debacle in the markets today, this was another odd one. Thanks to EUR strength's correlated power (retracing last night's France loss), stocks trickled up all morning into the European close; Bernanke suggested he was not omnipotent and stocks dumped 13 S&P points (~1%) to yesterday's day-session open; and then on no news - as Greece remains unfixed and cease-fire deadlines come and go, we pumped ingloriously on small lots and stupid volume up to VWAP/unch - paused for thought - and then ran to the day's highs just after the close day-session close in S&P futures. Treasuries suffered - yields up 5-6bps on the day as our broad risk-asset proxy lifted along with modest moves in FX carry pairs and USD weakness into the close. Oil was headline-maker (away from BBY and HPQ that is) - down almost 4% from the highs yesterday but closing still green on the week just above $87 as Israel re-flared. Credit was less noisy and VIX compressed a little more to 15.11% at the close (lowest in 5 weeks).

For the third time in a row, a speaker from the Fed has opened their mouth and the market has fallen in. This time, unlike Yellen's silliness, Bernanke admitted a few ugly truths by removing hopes for an IOER cut and bluntly explaining that the Fed 'will not go back to work' to help Schumer and his fiscal cliff buddies:

• *BERNANKE SAYS FED ABILITY TO OFFSET HEADWINDS `NOT INFINITE'
• *BERNANKE SAYS FED DOESN'T HAVE TOOLS TO PREVENT GOING OFF CLIFF
• *BERNANKE SAYS HIS FISCAL ADVICE IS `DO NO HARM'
• *BERNANKE: WRONG TO THINK INTEREST ON EXCESS RESERVES MAJOR TOOL

S&P futures fell around 8 points as he uttered these words but was rescued by some anxious BIS scrambling in EURUSD, before falling back to reality (along with AAPL).

Earlier today, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), one of the few transnational financial "supervisors" which is about as relevant in the grand scheme of things as the BIS, whose Basel III capitalization requirements will never be adopted for the simple reason that banks can not afford, now or ever, to delever and dispose of assets to the degree required for them to regain "stability" (nearly $4 trillion in Europe alone as we explained months ago), issued a report on Shadow Banking. The report is about 3 years late (Zero Hedge has been following this topic since 2010), and is largely meaningless, coming to the same conclusion as all other historical regulatory observations into shadow banking have done in the recent past, namely that it is too big, too unwieldy, and too risky, but that little if anything can be done about it. Specifically, the FSB finds that the size of the US shadow banking system is estimated to amount to $23 trillion (higher than our internal estimate of about $15 trillion due to the inclusion of various equity-linked products such as ETFs, which hardly fit the narrow definition of a "bank" with its three compulsory transformation vectors), is the largest in the world, followed by the Euro area with a $22 trillion shadow bank system (or 111% of total Euro GDP in 2011, down from 128% at its peak in 2007), and the UK in third, with $9 trillion. Combined total shadow banking, not to be confused with derivatives, which at least from a theoretical level can be said to offset each other (good luck with that when there is even one counterparty failure), is now $67 trillion, $6 trillion higher than previously thought, and virtually the same as global GDP of $70 trillion at the end of 2011.

The main overnight event, if not very surprising, was the formal announcement of the power moves at the top of China from the now concluding 18th Communist Party Congress, which occured largely as expected. To summarize: "Xi Jinping took the helm Thursday of a new, trimmed down Communist Party leadership that insiders said was shaped less by the daunting economic and political challenges facing China over the next decade than by bitter personal and factional rivalries within a secretive Party elite.  In a surprise move, Mr. Xi replaced outgoing Party chief Hu Jintao as head of the powerful Central Military Commission, which controls the armed forces, making Mr. Hu the first Communist Chinese leader to cede all formal powers without bloodshed, purges or political unrest. But the new leadership lineup did not include the two figures with the strongest track record on political reform, dimming prospects that a new generation of rulers is committed to tackling vested interests within its own ranks." In other words and just like after the US elections - to quote the announcement during every 2:15 FOMC release from now until eternity - "no change, repeat, no change" (and the SHCOMP closing down 1.22%, and the Hang Seng down by over 1.5% more or less confirmed this). An interactive infographic of who's the new who in China can be found here, while a summary of what this means and what to expect are here and here.  Elsewhere, the other main event was the formal announcement that, as everyone certainly expected, Europe officially is now in a recession. The euro-area economy slipped into a recession for the second time in four years, with GDP falling 0.1 percent in the third quarter. The official start date of Europe's recession is now Q3 2011. And with October Eurozone CPI pushing at a perky pace of 2.5%, one can add stagflation to the official list of terms haunting Europe.

In what should be news to precisely nobody (especially our readers, for whom we laid out the next Easing steps very clearly on the day QEternity was announced, including the continuation of Twist after December 31, 2012 at which point the Fed would merely monetize long-dated paper without selling short-end, i.e. unsterilized), the just released FOMC minutes indicated that "a number" of FOMC members favored more (infiniter) QE after the end of Twist. In other words, the Fed will have to continue monetizing the long-end of the Treasury issuance in lieu of other willing buyers. Recall that the Fed is currently buying up all the 10 Year+ gross issuance. To assume that this can change in some way is ludicrous. It also means that going forward, anything less than $85 billion in monthly flow from the Fed will be seen as tightening. Apparently, this update was big news to the algos (and the BIS FX traders) in charge of daytrading the EURUSD, which ramped by 30 pips on the news. Stocks, however, are oddly enough, the rational instrument today, and have barely budged on this news, once again indicating (as shown during yesterday's Yellen comments), that the Fed has priced itself and its future decisions out of the market, also exactly as we predicted would happen minutes after QEternity was announced.

Will Congress go over the fiscal cliff?  Yes, we've been going for decades, really since the social unrest of the 1970s. 

Earlier today, the BIS, which has been doing everything in its power today to defend the 1.27 support in the EURUSD since the market open this morning, released its H1 OTC derivatives presentation update. There was little of material note: total OTC derivatives were virtually unchanged at $639 trillion gross, representing $25 trillion in net outstanding (market value), and $3.7 trillion in gross credit exposure. Here the PhD theorists will say gross is irrelevant because Finance 101 said so, while the market practitioners will point to Lehman, counterparty risk, and less than infinite collateral to fund sudden implosions of weakest links in counterparty chains, and say that it is gross (which until a recent revision of BIS data had been documented at over $1 quadrillion) that mattered, gross which matters, and gross which will always matter until finally everything inevitably collapses in a house of missing deliverable cards. Because not even the most generous sovereigns and central banks can halt the Tsunami once there is a failure of a major OTC Interest Rate swap counterparty. And whereas Basel III had some hopes it would be able to bring down the total notional in derivative notionals slowly over the next few years with a gradual deleveraging across all financial firms, the bankers fought, and the bankers won, because the last thing the current batch of TBTFs can afford it admit there is any hope they can ever slim down. The will... but never voluntarily.

If one is curious why the EURUSD has been ramping as if no one will ever sell one more euro ever again, the reason is simple: the BIS is desperate to mask the fact that the fragile Greek coalition, whose creation sent Europe to the edge back in June during the Greek re-elections that just barely avoided a Grexit, has just crumbled. And with an illiquid market, the reflexive argument always is a simple one: if someone is buying, the news must be good, so dear momo-chasers - buy along. Only the news isn't good, and in a centrally-planned world, the only buyer left are central banks, who are now solely political, and not market, forces. What the news really is, is that with Greece poised to vote on critical labor reforms (read more layoffs) next week, which must be passed in Parliament with a majority vote in order to get the next Troika bailout tranche, the Samaras-led coalition just lost one of its three members, after the Democratic Left announced it would take its 16 votes and vote against any further austerity. In doing so it has effectively joined Syriza and any other anti-bailout powers, and has made certain that yet another Greek election is imminent, one which will finally see the rise of the "anti-memorandum" forces on top, and finally launch the 3 year overdue departure of the Greek ferryboat from the monetary landmass, with even more dire consequences for the USS EURtanic.

Two days ago we reported that the German Court of Auditors demanded that the German Central Bank, the Bundesbank, verify and audit its official gold holdings consisting of 3,396 tons, held mostly offshore, namely New York, London and Paris, at least according to official documents. It also called for repatriation of 150 tons in the next three years to perform a quality inspection of the tungsten gold. Today, in a surprising development, via the Telegraph we learn that none other than the same Bundesbank which is causing endless nightmares for all the other broke European nations due to its insistence for sound money, decided to voluntarily pull two thirds of its gold holdings held by the Bank of England. According to a confidential report referenced by the Telegraph, Buba reclaimed 940 tons, reducing its BOE holdings from 1,440 in 2000 to 500 in 2001 allegedly "because storage costs were too high." This is about as idiotic an excuse as the Fed cancelling its reporting of M3 in 2006 because "the costs of collecting the underlying data outweigh the benefits." So why did Buba repatriate its gold? Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has an idea...

In case there is still any wonder why absolutely nobody has no faith in the centrally planned house of cards that is the modern capital markets system, not retail investors, not institutional ones, not HFT vacuum tubes lately, and as of Monday, not even the Bank of International Settlements, aka the central banks' bank, here it is. In a report released yesterday, the BIS complained surprisingly loudly that in glaring disregard for the ever stricter demands of the Basel III rules (which incidentally will never be met), a very broke Europe continues to ignore every regulatory demand. To wit: "The EU’s plans for tightening bank capital rules fail to live up to the Basel III banking reform, an inspection team of global regulators has decided. The draft EU directive is “noncompliant” with the global deal in two important areas. Its definitions of top-quality capital are looser in at least seven ways and a loophole allows many big banks to assume that their sovereign debt holdings are risk-free."

The highlights from Bill Gross' latest monthly piece:

• Armageddon is not around the corner. I don’t believe in the imminent demise of the U.S. economy and its financial markets. But I’m afraid for them.
• Unless we begin to close this gap, then the inevitable result will be that our debt/GDP ratio will continue to rise, the Fed would print money to pay for the deficiency, inflation would follow and the dollar would inevitably decline. Bonds would be burned to a crisp and stocks would certainly be singed; only gold and real assets would thrive within the “Ring of Fire.”
• If the fiscal gap isn’t closed even ever so gradually over the next few years, then rating services, dollar reserve holding nations and bond managers embarrassed into being reborn as vigilantes may together force a resolution that ends in tears. The damage would likely be beyond repair.
• The U.S. and its fellow serial abusers have been inhaling debt’s methamphetamine crystals for some time now, and kicking the habit looks incredibly difficult.

One of the classic short cons, three-card Mario is a new swindle that uses official and misleading statements and trickery to swindle victims out of large amounts of cash. It’s one of the oldest cons around, and dates back to “the shell game,” a similar scheme that was popular during the Middle Ages. The new version uses a Central Bank and a Ponzi Scheme that loans money for debt, substitutes debt for collateral and then returns cash back to the grifter as he pledges the collateral back to those that lent him the money. This new European con has eliminated the use of cards in its play. Investors are the ‘marks’ and governments are the perpetrators.

If there's printing going on in your neghborhood
Who you gonna call?
CENTRAL BANKERS!
If a loaf of bread costs a trillion bux
Who you gonna call?
CENTRAL BANKERS!

The case for ultra easy monetary policies has been well enough made to convince the central banks of most Advanced Economies to follow such polices. They have succeeded thus far in avoiding a collapse of both the global economy and the financial system that supports it. Nevertheless, it is argued in this stunningly accurate paper via none other than the Dallas Fed (and BIS economist William White), that the capacity of such policies to stimulate “strong, sustainable and balanced growth” in the global economy is limited. Moreover, ultra easy monetary policies have a wide variety of undesirable medium term effects - the unintended consequences. They create malinvestments in the real economy, threaten the health of financial institutions and the functioning of financial markets, constrain the “independent“ pursuit of price stability by central banks, encourage governments to refrain from confronting sovereign debt problems in a timely way, and redistribute income and wealth in a highly regressive fashion. While each medium term effect on its own might be questioned, considered all together they support strongly the proposition that aggressive monetary easing in economic downturns is not “a free lunch”. Absolute must read!