Central Banks

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.” - Buddha

"Finding customers" remained the dominant concern for euro area SMEs in the survey period, with 25% of euro area SMEs mentioning this as their main problem. "Access to finance” was considered the least important concern (unchanged at 11%)."

With the EUR plunging and everyone primed for dramatic action by Draghi, especially following today's disappointing inflation data where November CPI rose just 0.1%, below the 0.2% expected, the former Goldmanite may still disappoint. According to Market News, "the high bar set by expectations, coupled with notable opposition against aggressive action on the Governing Council as economic data developed largely as expected, creates a risk that the ECB will under-deliver Thursday."

Overnight, Credit Suisse became the latest bank to join Goldman, JPM and increasingly more banks in predicting that 2016 will be a year in which investors will want to rotate out of equities. Specifically, the second largest Swiss bank said that it is "we reduce our equity weightings to our most cautious strategic stance since 2008 and take our mid-2016 S&P 500 target down to 2,150, the same as our end-2016 target." Here are the five reasons why CS just looked at the mounting wall of worry... and began to worry.

The third stock market collapse of this century is near at hand. The global economy is in the midst of an unprecedented commodity deflation and CapEx depression - the payback for 20 years of lunatic monetary stimulus and credit expansion. Yet the central banks are powerless to stop the payback. When the Fed announces a rate increase after 84 months of dithering next week in the face of GDP growth that has already decelerated to barely 1% this quarter the jig will be up. Monumental money printing has failed. Soon there will be no place to hide - not even in the Tremendous Ten.

As previously noted, it has been a bad year for some of the marquee hedge fund names, with Einhorn's Greenlight Capital down 21% YTD, and as reported last night, Ackman's Pershing Square is not doing much better and as of November 30, was down 20.8%.  On the weekly table one can clearly see when Pershing's fortunes turned in mid August when the fund dropped from being up 11% for the year to going negative for the year on the heels of the collapse in Valeant shares.

The central banks are simply trapped. They have bought in bonds under the theory that this will stimulate the economy by injecting cash. But there are several problems with this entire concept. This is an elitist view to say the least for the money injected does not stimulate the economy for it never reaches the consumer. This attempt to stimulate by increasing the money supply assumes that it does not matter who has the money... The attempt to “manage” the economy from a macro level without considering the capital flow within the system is leading to disaster.

"The exception to this global picture is in the US, where sector performance was a Pavlovian response to the much expected upcoming US rate rises (Utilities down and Basic Materials up). Global investors may be cyclically bearish, but US investors appear distracted by the historically cyclically positive message US rate rises might imply. We think this may prove a mistake."

The problem of suggesting that we have once again evolved into a "Goldilocks economy" is that such an environment of slower growth is not conducive to supporting corporate profit growth at a level to justify high valuations. Such a backdrop becomes particularly problematic when the Federal Reserve begins to raise interest rates which removes one of the fundamental underpinnings of an overvalued market which was low interest rates. Ultimately, higher interest rates, particulalry in an economy with a deteriorating economic backdrop, becomes the pin that "pops the bubble."  It is true that the bears didn't eat Goldilocks at the end of the story...but then again, there never was a sequel either.

Long term risk has increased quite a bit, no matter which data points one happens to consider. Whether one looks at valuations, market internals, leverage or positioning, there are now more warning signs than ever. With the support provided by strong money supply growth declining as well, it becomes ever more likely that these potential dangers will actually materialize. It is an accident waiting to happen.

While it is hoped that the economy can continue to expand on the back of the "service" sector alone, history suggests that "manufacturing" continues to play a much more important dynamic that it is given credit for... and that is a major problem as ISM Manufacturing just fell below 50 for the first time since Nov 2012, crashing to 48.6 - the weakest since June 2009. Across the components, new orders collapsed (worst since Aug 2012), and prices paid crashed. Seems like a perfect time to raise rates!!

There was something for everyone in last night's much anticipated Chinese PMI data, with the official number sliding to the lowest in over 3 years, suggesting the PBOC will need to do more stimulus and is thus bullish, while the unoffocial Caixin print rising to the highest since June, suggesting whatever the PBOC is doing is working, and is also bullish. Not unexpectedly, global stocks decided to take the bullish way out, and have risen across the globe led by Asia, where stocks rose as much as 1.8%, Europe also green and US equity futures up 10 points as of this writing.

Even despite the saturation criminality that readers have already seen, many will still argue that we “need” these Big Banks, and that we even “need” fractional-reserve (no reserve) fraud.

"... As the tide of leverage goes out, the full extent of irresponsible lending becomes apparent. The previously virtuous cycle between risk spreads and fundamentals goes into reverse, with lower prices, defaults, and downgrades forcing leveraged investors to sell, leading to even lower prices."

It is Pedro's "courage to write" what Bernanke conveniently forgot to add in his memoir, that makes this review so much more memorable than the generic sycophantic tripe written by his "access journalism" peers.