BIS

Six months ago we warned that Austria was considering it, and now, as Kronen-Zeitung reports, with no rigged Swiss-like referendum required, Austrian Central Bank Governor Edwald Nowotny has committed to repatriating 110 tonnes of gold. This is part of Nowotny's new "gold strategy" and with his position (on paper) as one of Draghi's foremost lieutenants, appears to be a huge stab in the back for super-Mario.  While gold withdrawals from the NY Fed are incessant, this time it appears the Bank of England faces the trust-fall as 80% of Vienna's gold is held there.

Things are getting more surreal by the moment. First the ECB leaks material, market moving information to hedge funds 12 hours before disclosing it to the entire world, and now the central bank that has taken central planning to the next level, is revealing its displeasure with how the quote unquote "market" has responded to the Euro. Via BBG:

• PRAET: SOME ANALYST FORECASTS ON THE EURO'S DEPRECIATION HAD GONE BEYOND WHAT ECB EXPECTED: WSJ

Oddly no comment if the ECB's stealthy selling of Bunds to open up capacity for 15 more months of purchases also moved the massively illqiuid market too far in the opposite direction.

In a stunningly honest turn of events - though likely self-preserving - a number of senior financial services executives are reportedly urged authorities around the world to bolster their crisis-busting arsenals amid fears that ultra-low interest rates have increased the risks of financial instability. As The FT reports, the heads of companies including HSBC, UBS and BlackRock will on Monday release a joint statement demanding policy-makers "address emerging market inefficiencies in the financial system, such as over-exuberance within asset classes." Policy-makers must “lean against something that is making people feel good but is actually going to give them a hangover they will find difficult to cope with."

• Full picture of Clinton charities' foreign government funding remains elusive (Reuters)
• Greece Readies for Another Week of Deadlines (BBG)
• Greece says deal will be 'difficult' at Eurogroup meeting (Reuters)
• Saudi Arabia’s Rulers Snub Arab Summit, Clouding U.S. Bid for Iran Deal (WSJ)
• Saudi Aramco Said to Plan Spending $80 Billion Overseas (BBG)
• The $900 Billion Influx That’s Wreaking Havoc in U.S. Bills (BBG)
• Cameron rules out another Scottish independence vote (Reuters)
• Banks Prep Defense for Anti-Wall Street Campaigns (WSJ)

"From the BIS to BlackRock, and Jamie Dimon to Jose Vinals, everyone seems to be talking about market liquidity," Citi's Matt King writes, before taking an in-depth look at just how broken the 'markets' truly are. To summarize: no depth in the Treasury market, a duration mismatched powder keg in "long-term" mutual funds thanks to the fact that ZIRP has destroyed money market yields causing investors to find a new 'cash substitute,' and a magically shrinking repo market in the wake of new regulations ironically meant to promote stability.

QUESTIONER: Just a few questions about other countries. A quick clarification on SDR, in January the managing director mentioned there would be an informal board briefing in May. Is that still happening, or has it been pushed back?

MR. RICE: .... the board meeting has been deferred because the work is underway and we'll let you know as soon as that board meeting is scheduled again....

Until the advent of the BIS, gold held by central banks came in one version. Physical. It was only after the BIS arrived on the scene did gold's macabre doppelganger, so-called paper, registered or "earmarked", gold emerge for the first time. Here is a brief history of how earmarked gold came into being...

With London, Paris, and Basel’s compliance, Nazi Germany had just looted 23.1 metric tons of gold without a shot being fired.

First it was Blythe Masters (and the Fed). Now, the most important FDIC-insured hedge fund in the world, Goldman Sachs, adds its name to a growing list of Wall Street institutions exploring digital-currency technology’s potential to provide faster and cheaper financial transactions and payments.

"An 'oil-debt nexus' could create a vicious circle whereby overindebted companies pump more oil to ensure they can pay interest on their loans, adding to the current global oil glut, and further depressing energy prices," WSJ notes, citing a BIS report. The interplay between the industry's growing debt pile and falling prices is a microcosm of the deflationary dynamic that’s taking hold in the macroeconomy and that serves, in Citi's words, to destroy creative destruction, creating "zombies" along the way.

Germany had lost the war, the Nazi industrialists agreed, but the struggle would continue along new lines. The Fourth Reich would be a financial, rather than a military imperium. The industrialists were to plan for a “postwar commercial campaign.” They should make “contacts and alliances” with foreign firms but ensure this was done without “attracting any suspicion.”... The State Department’s efforts on Schacht’s behalf worked. He was initially found guilty but was then acquitted, to the fury of the Soviet judge.

With everyone's attention pegged on the Grexit, what everyone appears to be forgetting is a nuanced clause buried deep in the term sheet of the second Greek bailout: a bailout whose terms will be ultimately reneged upon if and when Greece defaults on its debt to the Troika (either in or out of the Eurozone). Recall that as per our report from February 2012, in addition to losing its sovereignty years ago, Greece also lost something far more important. It's gold: To wit: "Ms. Katseli, an economist who was labor minister in the government of George Papandreou until she left in a cabinet reshuffle last June, was also upset that Greece’s lenders will have the right to seize the gold reserves in the Bank of Greece under the terms of the new deal."

The trio of macro-prudential policy, the onset and evolution of shadow banking, and the nebulous concept of financial stability may have become a toxic cocktail which can be instrumental in moving forward the Federal Reserve’s timeline for lift-off zero bound rates.  The intuition here is stooped in concepts of volatility and how market structure evolution may contribute or detract from asset volatility. Volatility is the square root of time. Financial repression times time equals volatility. Financial repression and/or macro-prudential policy times time equals the inverse of financial stability. Financial stability inverted equals volatility squared.

All problems, all crises, have at least one solution, if not many solutions. There is no such thing as an unwinnable scenario. Some may not be smart enough or courageous enough to see it, but the solution is always there, waiting to be discovered. The only fight that cannot be won is the fight in which the enemy makes all the rules and we foolishly abide by those rules. Life is not a game of chess, and a man can choose to be more than a pawn anytime he has the guts to do so. Collapse is already upon us; now we must decide who will determine what happens next.

"Take the New York Times -- the greatest newspaper in the world. Take one example, at the first article that appeared today, that the tentative [nuclear] agreement with Iran was reached. It’s a thinkpiece, by Peter Baker, one of their main analysts. He discusses in it the main reasons to distrust Iran, the crimes of Iran. It’s very interesting to look at. The most interesting one is the charge that Iran is destabilizing the Middle East because it’s supporting militias which have killed American soldiers in Iraq. That’s kind of as if, in 1943, the Nazi press had criticized England because it was destabilizing Europe for supporting partisans who were killing German soldiers."