Creditors

• Euro Tremors Risk Market Respite on Spain-Italy, Banks (Bloomberg)
• Obama Says U.S. Needs Revenue Along With Spending Cuts (Bloomberg) 
• China Regulators Moved to Restrain Lending (WSJ)
• Low Rates Force Companies to Pour Cash Into Pensions (WSJ)
• JAL wants to discuss 787 grounding compensation with Boeing (Reuters)
• Abe Shortens List for BOJ Chief as Japan Faces Monetary Overhaul (Bloomberg)
• Monte Paschi probe to widen as Italian election nears (Reuters)
• Hedge funds up bets against Italy's Monte Paschi (Reuters)
• Spain's opposition Socialists tell Rajoy to resign (Reuters)
• Electric cars head toward another dead end (Reuters)
• BlackRock Sued by Funds Over Securities Lending Fees (Bloomberg)

While we can only hope the following screed posted in an otherwise serious BusinessWeek, by David Kemper, CEO of Commerce Bankshare, and more importantly, a former president of the Federal Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve and thus indicative of the kind of "advice" the Fed receives, is a joke we have a very nagging feeling that the text below is actually serious. Which is why instead of Friday humor, we have decided to err on the side of caution and call this segment Friday tragicomedy. Because with a statement such as the following: "Why not expand the Fed balance sheet exponentially, from its current $3 trillion to $33 trillion... Would $30 trillion in extra buying power be inflationary when our entire current GDP is only about $15 trillion? Maybe, maybe not—but we need a game-changer here. First let’s celebrate the Fed’s record profits and its contribution to reducing our deficit. Then let’s seize the moment to do something truly grand: eliminate that stubborn deficit. We have the tools, and I, for one, say let’s give it a try."... it shows that the idiotic trillion dollar coin, Sheila Bair's farcical suggestion to let every American borrow $10 million from the Fed at zero rates, or even our suggestion from a year ago that the government build a Death Star, may appear as sheer genius in comparison to what else the Fed may be considering, and implement, before all this is said and done.

Our credit-based financial markets and the economy it supports are levered, fragile and increasingly entropic – it is running out of energy and time. When does money run out of time? The countdown begins when investable assets pose too much risk for too little return; when lenders desert credit markets for other alternatives such as cash or real assets.

Back in 2011, BlackRock's Larry Fink revealed one of the great unspoken truths of capital markets, namely that "markets like totalitarian governments." They also like authoritarian socialism, sprinkled in with a healthy dose of nationalization, because as Bloomberg reports, one of the biggest beneficiaries of over ten years of the "glorious socialist revolution" in Venezuela, coupled with over 1000 nationalizations by the bed-ridden and roughly 15 times deceased Hugo Chavez (if one believes all the rumors), is none other than Goldman Sachs, which generated some 681% in returns due to "aligning its interests" with those of the unshakable Venezuelan ruler.

My colleague and erstwhile nemesis Gonzalo Lira posed the question above in a recent essay, and it is indeed a most puzzling one.  Given that the world’s central banks — joined most recently by a shockingly reckless Switzerland — are waging all-out economic war by inflating their currencies, shouldn’t gold be soaring?

Prior to the crisis, the 29 largest global banks benefitted from just over one notch of uplift from the ratings agencies due to expectations of state support. Today, those same global leviathans benefit from around three notches of implied support. Expectations of state support have risen threefold since the crisis began. This translates into a large implicit subsidy to the world’s biggest banks in the form of lower funding costs and higher profits. Prior to the crisis, this amounted to tens of billions of dollars each year. Today, it is hundreds of billions. Too-big-to-fail is far from gone.

Europe has now officially become the Schrodinger continent, demanding both sides of the economic coin so to speak, and is stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place (or "a cake and eating it"). On one hand it wants to telegraph its financial system is getting stronger, and doesn't need trillions in implicit and explicit ECB backstops, on the other it needs a liquidity buffer against an economy that, especially in the periphary, is rapidly deteriorating (Spanish bad debt just hit a new all time high while Italian bad loans rose by 16.7% in one year as more and more assets become impaired). On one hand it wants a strong currency to avoid any doubt that there is redenomination risk, on the other it desperately needs a weak currency to spur exports out of the Eurozone (as Spain showed when the EUR plunged in 2012, however that weak currency is now a distant memory and it is now seriously weighing on exports). On the one hand Europe wants to show its banks have solidarity with one another and will support each other, on the other those banks that are in a stronger position can't wait to shed the stigma of being associated with the weak banks (in this case by accepting LTRO bailouts).

The present is a time when things are in great confusion. We are creating money from nothing and yet enjoying the fruits of their labors. The economies in Europe and in Japan and America are worsening and yet yields for their sovereign debt are barely off all-time lows. The stock markets of the world, following the 2008/2009 financial crisis, are back at new highs. All of this has taken place because the world’s central banks, acting in concert, have pumped enough small pieces of paper into the fire to keep it burning long into the night and so all of the markets on the planet have been stoked with fuel. When the fundamentals of the markets are out of line with their performance then history teaches us that at some point rational behavior will cause a correction. It was just five years ago when the world learned a rather harsh lesson. It was a lesson that cost Americans 36% of their wealth.

A Chinese solar firm which nearly produced the country's first domestic bond default will complete an interest payment on schedule after a local government intervened on its behalf. Investors say the latest instance of a government riding to the rescue of a troubled Chinese firm has led to moral hazard and inefficient credit allocation. In previous near-defaults, local governments had stepped in directly to arrange bailout funding. But as in past cases, the deal flouts legal notions of debt seniority by allowing one group of creditors - bondholders - to get paid in full, even as a pre-existing default remains un-cured. Analysts say the market does not effectively price in risk because investors assume the government will never allow a default.

Cyprus is the euro area’s third-smallest economy in GDP terms, accounting for less than 0.2% of the region’s output. Yet, we believe it is big enough to cause trouble. The country urgently needs external funding and applied for an EU/IMF/ECB (in short: troika) program last summer. However, the conditionality that comes with this program does not go down well with the current Cypriot government, whereas politicians in core eurozone countries have started to point fingers at the small economy’s low-tax, soft banking regulation business model. What emerges is the threat of another deadlock, in which a small country pulls the eurozone’s consistency per se into question. So despite the small size of the economy, Cyprus therefore has the potential, in our view, to become a catalyst that may eventually end the complacency brought about by the ‘Draghi plan’ in H2 last year. If this proves correct, it would likely mean that peripheral spreads widen and risk assets could turn more volatile, especially in view of Italy’s election and Spain’s funding needs.

China now buys more gold than the Western world. Does that mean, as some commentators are suggesting, that future price growth for the gold price depends on China? That if the Chinese economy weakens and has a hard landing or a recession that gold will fall steeply? Of course, this is only one factor. With the global monetary system in a state of flux - with many nations creating bilateral and multilateral trade agreements to trade in non-dollar currencies, including gold - emerging market central banks see gold — the oldest existing form of money — as an insurance policy against unpredictable changes, and as a way to win global monetary influence.  As Zhang Jianhua of the People’s Bank of China said: "No asset is safe now. The only choice to hedge risks is to hold hard currency - gold."

“Repression” is what Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher called “the injustice of being held hostage to large financial institutions”

In this piece, I re-examine what many economists call "financial repression" and I find it to be sorely lacking as a description of what is happening. I also look at a related concern about the loss of central bank independence. Color me skeptical.

Call it "X Date", call it "D(elinquent/efault)-Day", call it what you will: it is simply the day past which the US government will no longer be able to rely on "extraordinary measure" to delay the day of reckoning, and will be unable to pay all its bills without recourse to additional debt. It is not the day when the US defaults, at least not defaults on its debt. It will begin "defaulting" on various financial obligations, such as not paying due bills on time and in full, but since this is something Europe's periphery has been doing for years, it is hardly catastrophic. It will hardly be pleasant, however, as some 40% of government obligations go unfunded, and the US is converted to a walking, talking bankruptcy as unsecured claimants rush to demand priority, as the market, long living on hope and prayer, realizes that only now is it truly without a cliff under its feet, and most importantly, as suddenly $500 billion in maturing debt between February 15 and March 1 finds itself in a very, very precarious position.

It's been a while since the Syntagma square riotcam was broadcasting live from Athens. After all, despite the ongoing collapse in its economy, where only 3.7 million people have jobs compared to 4.7 million who are unemployed or inactive, the general sentiment was that "austerity" measures have been put on hiatus, and no more tax, pension, or benefits cuts are on the table. That changed last night when Greece was the latest country to become the US, following a tax hike on its highest earners. However, unlike the US, this increase in "rich" taxes is being offset by at least some spending cuts such as tighter control of the budgets of ministries and state utilities, and the reduction of parliamentary employees’ wages in line with cuts to the wages of other civil servants. In other words, it is almost time for the Syntagma square daily pay-per-view daily webcast. The good news, at least for Greece, is that it does not have a debt ceiling to worry about. Then again, when all your debt is zero coupon perpetuals in the hands of the ECB and other "official" institutions, the balance sheet is the last thing you have to worry about. It's the income statement, one where not even all the one-time charges or loan loss reserve releases in the world will do any difference, that suddenly matters far more.