Creditors

Read between the lines and you will see the "R" word (restructuring), clearly and plainly.

And so things move from the simply violently revolutionary to the outright surreal, and once again they originate in Africa where today's TheOnion reality seems to feel most at home in practice (unlike its mostly theoretical, for now, US counterpart). Ivory Coast, the biggest producer of cocoa, today told bondholders of $2.3 billion in debt that unless creditors legitimize the corrupt incumbent regime, and recognize voted out president Laurent Gbagbo, then the country will not make an interest payment on its bonds which already are in a grace period, and will essentially default, unless the political gridlock is resolved in two weeks. “It’s a joke, right?” said Phillip Blackwood, head of emerging markets at Sydbank A/S, Denmark’s fourth-largest bank and holder of Ivory Coast debt. No, unfortunately it isn't. And just like Tunisia is a harbinger of the food riots to come to the developed world, so Ivory Coast is a leading indicator of how the world's greater debtor - the US Treasury - will one day negotiate with its own creditors. As both countries are bona fide banana republics, it won't be much of a stretch...

David Rosenberg summarizes this weekend's Barron's roundtable, and while chock full of amusing quips, the take home surely belongs to one of our favorite newsletter writers, Fred Hickey: “Last August, things weren’t looking so well. Then Ben Bernanke gave a speech in Jackson Hole that implied the Fed would engage in quantitative easing, and from that point forward, the Dow added 1,400 points. Gasoline prices went from $2.65 a gallon to well over $3.00 ? a $50 billion hit to consumers. Food prices rose to record levels. It caused a major imbalance in the economy. If you own financial assets, you’re doing quite well. If you don’t, you’re getting hit by higher food prices, higher insurance costs, higher everything, and you’re not getting any interest on your savings ... The economy has structural problems and we aren’t dealing with them. Money-printing won’t work, yet that’s the prescription we continue to give the patient. If the Fed keeps printing after June we’ll have higher gasoline and food prices and more imbalances until this ends. And at some point, it will end, because the dollar will fall apart. What we are doing now makes everything appear rosy. But it is devastatingly terrible policy for the long-term.” And Rosenberg's own contribution: "The era of spending-beyond-our means denial is on its last legs." One can only hope he is right for the sake of everyone...

It's 3 pm on a holiday. It means it is time for another Op-Ed by Mohamed El-Erian. Tomorrow: the same. Day after: the same. Etc.

Twofer.

It is refreshing to see that an economist of David Rosenberg's statute agrees with Zero Hedge that the third mandate (we personally believe it is the one and only) of the Fed is "Higher Equity Valuations." While a faux-indignant Corker pretends to attempt to cull the Fed's powers and remove the inflation mandate, maybe someone can finally eliminate the one mandate that the Fed does not even have in its charter, yet which is the only one that it is beholden to: namely to get the Dow to 36,000. Which brings us to another point: instead of giving us his forecast on the GDP, maybe Bernanke can simply give everyone his price target for the Russell 2000. It will save everyone a lot of second-guessing effort: after all the Fed now has complete control over the stock market, and the whole frontrunning the Fed shtick is getting old.

How is the government STILL bailing out the giant banks? Let me count the ways ...

You might think the banks have all the leverage in the world, the big secret is it's actually the opposite. Who do you think has more leverage, those who make payment on 7 trillion in securitized mortgage debt, or those who collect the payments? Who do you think is more worried? You probably make your income from a wage, they make their income from an investment, you wouldn't believe how quickly investors can become insecure, that's why your servicer doesn't want you talking to them directly, their brokers, and make a handsome living at it. Our thinking is the guy who writes the check has the leverage. After all, if you owe the bank $100,000 dollars you've got a creditor, If you owe them 7,000,000,000,000.00 we're pretty sure you've got a partner. Stop making rental payments on the home your supposed to own, then just sit back and feel the love.

What to make of this stuff?

This hypothetical comes pretty close to the perfect definition of a TBTF FUBAR.

Some unpleasant news for pensioned workers who believe that their insolvent state will be able to afford ridiculous legacy pensions in perpetuity. According to Pensions and Investment magazines, Newt Gingrich is pushing for legislation that will allow insolvent states to be taken off bailout support and file bankruptcy, in the process allowing them to renege on pension and other benefit obligations promises to state workers. And if there is anything that will get government workers' blood pressure to critical levels, it is the threat that money they had taken for granted is about to be lifted, courtesy of living in an insolvent state (pretty much all of them). And obviously what this means for equity investors in assorted muni investments is that a complete wipe out is becoming a possibility, as Meredith Whitney's prediction, which everyone was quick to mock and ridicule, is about to come back with a vengeance.

When it comes to providing analytical perspectives and empirical insights into the realm of sovereign deterioration, few come close to the work of Reinhart and Rogoff. Citi’s Willem Buiter is one such man. In his latest summary piece describing in excruciating detail just how bad things are at the sovereign level (and judging by tonight's opening print in the EURUSD more are starting to realize this), Buiter provides a terrific country by country guide of what is now an insolvent world, starting with the merely extremely risky, going through the backstop-baiters, and finishing with the time bombs that have already gone off and everybody pretends not to care. For those who do care, this is a definitive guide to what each individual European (and not only) country can look forward to in an age of global moral hazard. The only open question: with China's interest now to preserve the Euro's viability, how will Beijing act in the next few months as the eurozone finally starts unraveling.

With gold poised to close 2010 a hair's breath away from its all time nominal high price, all those who had been calling for a major correction in the gold metal "just around the corner", have been completely discredited. In fact, what may come as a surprise to many, gold is Reuters' best performing asset class of the year, well above the Nasdaq, and nearly doubling the S&P performance YTD. Yet the fact that gold continues to be a risk hedge as we suggested first about 6 months ago, has not deterred the empty chatterboxes from providing empty predictions: ten days ago we provided Doug Kass' prediction that gold is about to tumble. Granted our read of his "analysis" was one that suggest a jump in the price of gold was imminent. Sure enough, gold since then surged by nearly $50. And with global central banks having to beat their heads over the issue so well encapsulated by John Taylor, namely that global assets barely generate enough cash to service global debt, lat alone retire it, the only long-term outcome will be one of continued fiat devaluation and appreciation in hard currencies such as gold and silver (naturally with bouts of marked volatility, where one will be able to BTFD). So where will gold end 2011? Here are some more respected pundits' views on what may happen to gold in the coming year.

The economic problem is not caused by sovereign debt but by bad bank loans, deceptive financial practice and neoliberal bank deregulation...

After it was announced earlier by the EU that it would launch its first bonds under the EFSF and EFSM in January, of which €17.6 billion are slated for Ireland in 2011, and €4.9bln in 2012, it is useful to recall just what the dynamics of this last recourse fund are, and why not all is as good as the EU may want the broader population to believe. Below, we present the thoughts of Knight's Brian Yelvington who has a rather damning view of what this latest development means for the EU: "This latest band-aid solution obfuscates the issue that the EMU needs
the ability to print money and tax across member states in order to
match its common central bank and currency. There might well be a rally in spreads commensurate with what we have
seen for other band-aid like packages over the past two years.  Once the
measure has been revealed to be inadequate by the market, discussions
around size will begin to emerge.  Our view has been that the facility
was flawed from the start and we believe that view has become more
widely held during this most recent spread widening.  Future upsize
discussions will no doubt see the specter of haircuts raised again –
this time more seriously – and this will serve to push sovereign spreads
wider." In other words, long-term bearish, short-term very bullish. Just like everything else in the battle to preserve the ponzi.