Capital Markets

While hardly saying anything new, more and more pundits are waking up to the reality that faced with an environment of epic capital outflows predicated by a complete loss in the system (see Greece), Spain simply can not survive. We wrote about the record outflow in Spanish deposits last week (here and here) and the fact that with banks urgently seeking to plug liquidity holes, coupled with soaring NPL levels, in the absence of actual profits they are forced to sell all those SPG bonds they had been purchasing during the open ponzi phase, where ECB funding would be recycled by local banks to meet primary market demand. Overnight even the New York Times has finally understood this simple identity: record outflows = the end. And now, the banks begin to chime in, pointing out what is patently obvious: from Nomura - "Spain will need full-blown bailout which will include more active role of ECB in Spanish bond markets."

If one needs a shining example of why the days of Europe's artificial currency are numbered, look no further than the EU's poorest country which moments ago said "Ne Mersi" to the Eurozone and the European currency. From the WSJ: "Bulgaria, the European Union's poorest member state and a rare fiscal bright spot for the bloc, has indefinitely frozen long-held plans to adopt the single currency, marking the latest fiscally prudent country to cool its enthusiasm for the embattled currency. Speaking in interviews in Sofia, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and Finance Minister Simeon Djankov said that the decision to shelve plans to join the currency area, a longtime strategic aim of successive governments in the former communist state, came in response to deteriorating economic conditions and rising uncertainty over the prospects of the bloc, alongside a decisive shift of public opinion in Bulgaria, which is entering its third year of an austerity program. "The momentum has shifted in our thinking and among the public…Right now, I don't see any benefits of entering the euro zone, only costs," Mr. Djankov said. "The public rightly wants to know who would we have to bailout when we join? It's too risky for us and it's also not certain what the rules are and what are they likely to be in one year or two."

Over the past months (and particularly in the last weeks), we have increasingly read negative comments on the ongoing zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP) and in some instances, negative-interest rate policy (NIRP). Today, we want to examine the origins of the idea that ultra-low rates of interest can exist, how this idea came about, why it was flawed and how it leads to an informal economic system. It was a fallacy based on misunderstanding of the rate of interest and human action. Another way of examining this is the following: The zero interest rate indicates that time is free. And as anything that is free is wasted, time will also be wasted. It should be clear that there is an inconsistency in simultaneously believing that investment demand and savings are mainly driven by income but that it is necessary to lower the interest rate to boost investment, as the Fed does... and the Fed is Keynesian! Finally, we note one last thing: As productivity, employment and production decrease, even a steady and low rate of inflation has the potential to morph into hyperinflation.

Poison the country's well.

Playing the disconnect, for now. 

Yesterday, Jens Weidmann called it a "drug addiction"; for the past 4 years we have called it sheer insanity (and other less polite words). Whatever one calls it, it is obvious that using monetary policy to delay the need for real (not theatrical) fiscal policy involvement that sees to restore debt credibility (i.e., deleverage) does nothing to fix the underlying problems, and merely provides an ever briefer respite from the symptoms of insolvency without ever addressing the underlying cause. Today, even Bank of America has realized this fundamental Catch 22 that is now the paradox at the heart of what remains of capital markets: more easing serves to appease politicians, who see no need to change any of their broken policies, in the process requiring even more QE in the future, and so on, until this always ending in tears game of extend and pretend comes to a sudden and violent end.

The EU political leaders are screaming, “It’s all, or nothing!” That stance takes the cards out of Draghi’s hands.

Ben talks, the WSJ blows smoke and storms grow.

Beginning in January of 2010, and continuing into July of this year, we explained how one of the most insidious attempts at capital controls undertaken by the authorities, namely to replace the $1.00 NAV method that money markets have employed since inception, forcing money markets to imposed capital buffers, and most importantly, to enact mandatory gating if and when the time comes for investors to withdraw their money when they so desired, was taking shape. In other words, to institute capital controls when it comes to money market funds. We already explained that the idea to kill money markets is not new, and originated at the Group of 30 many years ago (its members explain its interests vividly enough) , as an attempt to have investors voluntarily shift their capital allocation out of a liquid but very much inert from the fractional reserve banking system $2.7 trillion market into other liquid, but fractional banking levered markets such as stocks and bonds. In essence, this would generate an up to $2.7 trillion incremental demand as those invested in money markets would find it more "appealing" to keep their cash equivalents in the "security" of 150x P/E stocks like Amazon, or in the worst case, Treasury Bills. After all faced with the option of being "gated" or investing their money in other "non capital controlled" markets, one would be an idiot to pick the former. This is precisely what Mary Schapiro hoped would be the case when she put the vote to the SEC, only to find that she couldn't even get a majority to support her own proposal (which as a reminder was supported by two Fed presidents: uber doves Eric Rosengren of Boston and William Dudley of New York, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner) in her own co-opted house. It is also the reason one person decided to vote against Schapiro's proposal - Luis Aguilar. His explanation why he voted against money market fund capital controls is attached.

In a "new normal" "market" that has long since given up discounting fundamental news, and merely reacts to how any given central planner banker blinks, coughs, sneezes, or otherwise hints on future monetary injection plans at any given moment, it is useful to know the only market players that matter. Courtesy of Guggenheim, they are listed out below - these are no longer the major TBTF banks, Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein ambitions to rule the world notwithstanding; they are now the world's central banks, whose assets are rapidly approaching their host sovereign GDPs even as their overall leverage is increasing by leaps and bounds on a daily basis, putting such recent Investment Bank overlevered behemoths to shame. It is in this playing field where the price of any one "risk asset" is no longer indicative of anything more than monetary, and in a world in which politicians have long been made obsolete by the central planners, fiscal policies. It also means that capital markets are only whatever the various central bankers want to make them... and nothing else.

When it comes to Glenn Hubbard, the man needs no introduction, at least to those who have watched the Charles Ferguson seminal movie 'Inside Job.' Indeed, the extensive connections of the Dean of the Columbia school of business to the financial industry is well known, a fact which served as the basis of Ferguson's question: just how corrupt is America's elite educational establishment, and just how much of a factor in the perpetuation of the status quo is Wall Street's puppet control over each generation of rising financial and economic thinkers. For those who are unaware, Hubbard also happens to be presidential candidate Mitt Romney's top economic advisor. The reason why Hubbard has suddenly made the headlines, is because of his overnight statement that contrary to what the potential future president has said, namely that Bernanke's days would be numbered under a Romney presidency, and that the Fed would be audited, Glenn has taken the other side of this argument, and told Reuters that Bernanke should "get every consideration" to stay beyond January 2014, when Ben's term expires. But why? Well, for the answer to this particular question, we have to go back to that long ago year 2004, when Glenn Hubbard together with current Fed president, and former chief Goldman chief economist Bill Dudley, authored a white paper bearing the Goldman sachs logo, titled "How Capital Markets Enhance Economic Performance and Facilitate Job Creation." In a word: for Mr. Hubbard (as well as for Mr. Dudley, Goldman Sachs, and thus, the New York Fed) it is all about the capital markets.

Anyone looking at the broad headline data from the weekly commercial bank asset (H.8) release could rush to the superficial conclusion that cash assets at US-based financial institutions is approaching all time highs, which, again superficially, it is, at $1.9 trillion, the highest in 2012, and just shy of the all time highs of $1.936 trillion from July 2011. Further superficial analysis would lead one to believe that there is a notable divergence between total US bank cash (the bulk of its procured via repoing of previously purchased securities) and the weekly excess reserve balance indicated by the Fed. All these would be useful, if completely, wrong observations. The only relevant and accurate observation in this week's H.8 data is that foreign banks domiciled in the US have taken their cash balance back to all time highs, which at $918 billion is in the ballpark of the highest it has ever been, and merely confirms what everyone has known: the only reason the US market has benefited in the last several months is due to flight to safety into what, for whatever reason, is perceived as the safety of the US capital markets. At some point, this record cash balance will once again flow out, even as US bank cash holdings remain as flat as they have been for the past 3 years.

• German central bank warns country’s financial health not a given (WaPo)
• Secret Libor Committee Clings to Anonymity After Rigging Scandal (Bloomberg)
• Peru Declares State of Emergency to Quell Violent Mining Protests (Dow Jones)
• Euro-Area Economic Adjustment Only Half Complete, Moody’s Says (Bloomberg)
• Wall Street Leaderless in Rules Fight as Dimon Diminished (Bloomberg)
• China Swaps Drop From Three-Month High as PBOC Adds Record Cash (Bloomberg)
• China invest $1 billion in U.S. Cheniere's LNG plant, Blackstone to act as intermediary buffer (FT, Reuters)
• Romney Offers Lukewarm Support for Fed Audit - Hilsenrath (WSJ)
• U.K. Unexpectedly Posts Deficit as Corporation Taxes Plunge (Bloomberg)
• Obama issues military threat to Syria (FT)
• Merkel Allies Signal Concessions on Greece Before Samaras Visit (Bloomberg)
• Chinese banks warned of foreign exchange risks (China Daily)

This month marks the 50th anniversary of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, one of the landmark philosophical texts of the last century.  The central thesis of the book is that science advances in fits and starts, clustered around the advent of new 'Paradigms' - a term that Kuhn introduced in the book and much of academia subsequently coopted as their own.  This was a novel thought for the times, since the conventional philosophy held that science advanced through the ages in plodding but rigorous steps.  Kuhn’s observation about science is equally applicable to capital markets, for the range of 'Paradigm shifts' underway goes a long way to explaining everything from why companies refuse to invest to why earnings multiples on U.S. stocks remain so low.  Today, in celebration of Kuhn's opus, ConvergEx's Nick Colas offers up a list of the 'Top 10 Paradigm Shifts' currently underway; and notes that new paradigms don't often have as much to them as the old ideas they replace.  They are often actually inferior.  Over time they get their bearings, yes.  But the transition is rough.

And to think that the market could have learned its lesson by now. Following the planting of an unsourced, glaringly obvious ECB propaganda report such as that attempted yesterday in Der Spiegel, in which nothing of substance was in fact enacted or even proposed (as rate caps is merely a regurgitation of ideas thrown out previously in the summer and fall of 2011), peripheral bonds once again tightened on absolutely nothing, with the Spanish 10 Year now back in the 6.30% territory, over 100 bps inside where it was a month ago. On not a single enacted reform or actual ECB action. Of course, it was a matter of hours before the German FinMin put an end to this latest rumor, and sure enough an hour ago a spokesman for the German FinMin said they were unaware of any ECB plan to target bond spread. Perhaps because there are none? And of course, if there were, the Germans would promptly put an end to what is my implication an open-ended bond buying program without conditionality: something that worked like a "charm" last summer with Italy. And just to make sure Germany's message was read loud and clear, here is the Bundesbank turning on the "just say 9" machine.