Consumer Sentiment

Fed Chairman Bernanke told Congress the recent rise in inflation appears likely to be transitory, where in fact the only 'transitory' effects are the QE3 euphoria and the once prevalent "deflation alarm".

Nobody could have foreseen this now typical Friday night bomb from the 200 West macroeconomic wrecking crew. Nobody. Well... "Here is the first official Q3 GDP downgrade, courtesy of JPM's Michael
Feroli. We fully expect every other clueless Wall Street lemming to
follow suit in minutes." But as long as the lemmings all move in a herd over the cliff, they will still somehow all get paid the same $5 million (of which 25% is cash and the rest is indentured cliff-vesting equity servitude) at the end of the year. Either way, can we all now agree that Goldman did indeed jump the shark in December, especially now that it sees Q1 GDP at below stall speed in real terms. So here it is: "Following another week of weak economic data, we have cut our estimates for real GDP growth in the second and third quarter of 2011 to 1.5% and 2.5%, respectively, from 2% and 3.25%. Our forecasts for Q4 and 2012 are under review, but even excluding any further changes we now expect the unemployment rate to come down only modestly to 8¾% at the end of 2012." Here is why Hatzius gets paid the big Bernankebux: "The “bugbear” is that we are still unsure about the precise reasons
for the slowdown in 2011 to date, which is sharply at odds with our
expectation at the end of last year that growth would accelerate in
2011." And the punchline: "Our forecast remains no fresh monetary easing from the Federal Reserve, but the probability has risen. In particular, Fed officials would undoubtedly ease if the economy returned to recession—not our forecast, but clearly a possibility given the recent numbers." Our prediction is that when Bill Dudley's 2011 calendar is released in December, his first meeting with Jan Hatzius at the Pound and Pence will have taken place right.... about.... now.

The one stop summary of all the key positive and negative news in the week that was.

Today's bad economic data trifecta is complete, with the UMichigan consumer confidence number plummeting to 63.8 from 71.5, and well below consensus of 72.2. The number is far below the lowest Wall Street prediction of 68 (upper end of range was 75) and the worst since March 2009. The good thing for the Fed's QE3 plans is that high future inflation expectations are getting unanchored, with 1 year expectations down from 3.8% to 3.4%, and 5 Year down to 2.8% from 3.0%. A little lower and it will be just right.

Several important economic updates due today, among which CPI, Empire Index, Industrial Production and UMichigan consumer confidence. There is a small QE Lite Pomo today closing at 11 am. The Stress Tests are released at noon. Expect more European headlines to whip the EURUSD, and thus ES, around.

Important News by www.thetrader.se

Today's ISM manufacturing index will be watched by everyone for signs that America is reverse decoupling again (despite a 70% services-based economy), following the overnight barrage of ugly global PMI data. The median forecast has risen modestly to 52.0 even as regional Fed indices and other June data predicts a sub 50 print. And to baffle everyone with BS, we fully expect that the UMichigan index will come stronger than the median forecast of 72.0, even as the Conference Board consumer confidence index missed earlier this week. Oh yes: there is no POMO today.

With industrial production falling, the likelihood of an economic recovery seems farther and farther away for Messrs. Bernanke and Obama. The way I look at the data, the US economy continues its slide into stagnation. This isn't a "double-dip" -- we never did recover from the '08 Crash -- but a consequence of monetary and fiscal stimulus.

Bizarro time is here, now that we have another market surge based on another economic indicator miss, in this case the uber-irrelevant UMichigan confidence, which came at 71.8 on expectations of 74, and a drop from May's 74.3. Granted the only reason stocks are rising is not on any fundamentals, but purely due to the clobbering the USD just took, which sent the EUR surging, and pushed the Dow into triple digit territory. To whoever continues to trade this centrally planned farce, our condolences. The only relevant data in the index was that the 5 year inflation expectations jumped from 2.9% to 3.0%, the second highest in 2011, and only below March's 3.2%. Time for the Fed to panic once again, now that Operation Twist 2 is just matter of months if not weeks.

Today we get two very circular resonance amplifiers in the form of Consumer Sentiment and the Index of Leading Indicators. When markets go up, these go up, pushing the market higher. When the market goes down, these go down, and push the market lower. In other words, the only relevant thing, correlating at 1.000 and leading the market, will once again be the EURUSD which is the only chart one needs these days, while one can trace the critical fate of Greek bank deposits by looking at the EURCHF.

As the great Yogi says: "It ain't over 'till it's over" but May is now officially over and it was, in fact, a down month, despite the TREMENDOUS effort that was made in the past week to keep it from being a 5% loss.

Personal income, completely irrelevant and mostly made up consumer sentiment and pending home sales.

Jan Hatzius' economic team finally comes out with a report that bears presenting as it aptly discloses one of the core conundrums facing the Fed: you can have low unemployment (eventually... courtesy of many years of ZIRP and QE in an environment of "fiscal adjustment", or Goldman's term for Congressional "austerity"), or you can have low gas prices. But you can't have both. To wit: "The combination of tight energy markets and high unemployment poses a dilemma for monetary policy. If policy is kept easy to boost growth, unemployment will decline but the oil market is at risk of overheating. But if policy is tightened to confront the pressure from higher oil prices on (headline) inflation, unemployment is likely to remain  far above desirable levels for a long time to come." And while the price of gas can be (very briefly) controlled by various volatility enhancing margin moves by the exchanges (which for those confused are nothing but self-reinforcing loops - increased vol leading to a margin hike, leads to more vol, leading to more margin hikes, etc). Too bad the CME can't just lower margin on unemployment to -100%. But it can't. Which is why very soon the Fed will be forced to admit to the whole world that "ultimately, a return to equilibrium in both the oil and labor market is likely to require an increase in the real price of oil. In theory, policymakers could react to this by  targeting either a combination of temporarily higher headline inflation with stable core inflation, or stable headline with lower—and in an extreme case negative—core inflation."  And here Goldman throws a stunner: when debating the implications for fiscal policy (we all know what monetary policy will look like: QE 3 through N), the firm proposes the following: "one complement to a low interest rate policy could be a higher energy tax. If one believes that higher real energy prices will be needed in coming years, an energy tax would promote that shift and also capture some of the surplus that would otherwise have gone to foreign producers." Is the government about to unleash some EPS destruction in the E&P and refining space? It appears Goldman has already given the green light which is really all it takes.

Just two reports today: CPI and Confidence, both expected to paint worse picture and thus should be favorable to stocks.

Data on Personal Income should indicate another reduction in the savings rate, Chicago PMI will miss consensus confirming economy is in Japan-induced freefall, UMichigan will poll a couple of Wall Street CEOs who have never seen Jeeves happier, and lastly Bernanke will speak in some televized conference and not providing any new data as usual.