Borrowing Costs

Very few, it seems...

Essentially, our analysis suggests that there is a large divergence in the perceptions of both sides but the rational choice is to hold to their respective positions. In other words, our analysis of the payoffs suggest that the EU won’t offer debt relief and Syriza won’t back down from demanding it. Our fear is that the markets, inured by previous bailouts, expect the Greeks to cave, leaving the risk of an unexpected negative outcome in Europe is probably higher than what is currently being discounted. At the same time, EU policymakers are assuming that contagion will not occur, which may not be accurate.

There have been ZERO times that the Federal Reserve has entered into a rate hiking campaign that did not have a negative consequence...

While PRexit is yet to hit the headlines, Puerto Rico bonds joined an illustrious club of ne'er-do-wells today with its 10Y yield spiking above 10%...

It took a while, but three months after we wrote "How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed", someone finally noticed.

Given the spate of recent poor economic numbers in the U.S. and internationally, analysts are beginning to question the veracity of some of the U.S. government's economic statistics including their jobs numbers today. “The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie ...”

ECB putting interests of banks over those of people … again.

People versus the banks ... time to take a stand ...

ECB's Jazbec: QE Could End Sooner Than Sept. 2016

The ECB kills the Troika!

There has been much debate about the current low levels of interest rates in the economy today. The primary argument is that the "30-year bull market in bonds", due to consistently falling interest rates, must be near its end. Of course, this debate has devastated the "bond bears" who have consistently been frustrated by lower interest rates despite their annual predictions to the contrary. However, just because interest rates are currently low, does this necessarily mean that they must rise?

So much for the Greek "conciliatory proposal" story, driven by yesterday's FT article, and the catalyst for Monday's late day market surge.

Having fallen 4 months in a row in December to its lowest since last January, one could have been forgiuven for expecting the ubiquitous hope-driven bounce we so often see in soft-survey-based data and sure enough, Markit's US Manufacturing PMI eked out a very small (53.9 vs 53.7 previous) rise in January - hovering at practically one-year lows. On the heels of China's disappointment, it appears the cleanest dirty short of America is not decoupling too much (if at all). This is not the "crisis has passed", "economy is strong" narrative-confirming data that Obama and The Fed would have everyone believe and as markit notes, “Manufacturing remains in a lower gear compared to that seen last summer... adding to the suspicion that the pace of economic expansion in the first quarter could even fall below the 2.6% rate seen in the final quarter of last year."

• Germany Sees No Need to Scrap Troika in Overseeing Greek Turnaround (WSJ)
• European markets subdued as Chinese data weighs (Reuters)
• U.S. Oil Workers Strike Enters Second Day as Crude Prices Slide (BBG)
• Oil prices rally above $55 as investors pile in (Reuters)
• Obama Wants a New Tax on U.S. Companies' Overseas Profits (BBG)
• If Trading Bonds Is Hard, Think About Pain When Rates Rise (BBG)
• Julius Baer Braces for Swiss Franc Impact (WSJ)
• Coke, Budweiser win as Super Bowl ad battle gets serious (Reuters)

What Denmark has just done is "back-door QE", because as some forget, there are two ways to push the price of an asset higher (thus pushing its yield lower in the case of a bond): increase demand, which is what conventional QE does when central banks buy bonds, or reduce supply. Which is what Denmark just did by completely cutting off all Treasury issuance "until further notice". As a result, paradoxically, increasingly more speculators are betting that the "Trade of 2015" could be doing precisely the opposite of what the Danish central bank is hoping will happen: i.e., shorting the EURDKK (or going long the DKKEUR) in hopes that when the Danish peg finally does break, it too will result in long Swiss France-type profits.

At 30 basis points yield, a short on this German Bund via the futures market is basically a call option on the utter destruction of this Massive Yield Chasing Strategy on behalf of financial institutions...