Debt Ceiling

As we first pointed out, yesterday's stunning, near-failure in the 4-Week Bill auction, was the straw that broke the illusion of the market stability's back and as even Goldman pointed out, led to the first true "fear-driven" drop in stocks. Today, things are getting from bad to worse, as it is not the Halloween Bill, but the October 17 issue that is getting Friendo'ed as can be seen on the chart below - the 10/17s just hit 42 bps, a nearly 20 bps move in minutes! But while disturbing, what is going on in cash is just the beginning of the story. It is what is going in the shadow markets that could really light the fireworks on fire.

"Over the last 12-24 hours the small cracks that have appeared in financial markets over the last week have started to edge open a little bit wider. On the plus side this may start to help concentrate the minds of the politicians a bit more after another day of stalemate and lack of urgency. Our thoughts are that this will get resolved when either the market forces the issue with a big sell-off or when we get closer to an as yet unspecified hard-date as to when the US runs out of money." - DB's Jim Reid

For all expectations of a big jump in US futures overnight on the largely priced in Janet Yellen nomination announcement which is due at 3 pm today, the move so far has been very much contained, as expected, with a modest 90 minute halflife, as the markets' prevailing concern continues to be whether the debt ceiling negotiation will be concluded by the October 17 deadline or if it would stretch further forcing the government to prioritize payments. There is however some hope with Bloomberg reporting that some possible paths out of the debt impasse are starting to emerge with less than a week before U.S. borrowing authority lapses after Obama said he could accept a short-term debt-limit increase without policy conditions that set the terms for future talks. Whether this materializes or just leads to more empty posturing and televized press conferences is unclear, although as Politico reports, the stakes for republicans are getting increasingly nebulous with some saying they are "losing" the fight, while the core GDP constituency is actually liking the government shutdown.

As we have discussed previously, the "partial government shutdown" that we are experiencing right now is pretty much a non-event - especially with the un-furloughing of The Pentagon.  Yeah, some national parks are shut down and some federal workers will have their checks delayed, but it is not the end of the world.  In fact, only about 17% of the federal government is actually shut down at the moment.  This "shutdown" could continue for many more weeks and it would not affect the global economy too much. On the other hand, if the debt ceiling deadline (approximately October 17th) passes without an agreement that would be extremely dangerous. A U.S. debt default that lasts for more than a couple of days could potentially cause a financial crash that would make 2008 look like a Sunday picnic. If a debt default were to happen before the end of this year, that would bring a tremendous amount of future economic pain into the here and now, and the consequences would likely be far greater than any of us could possibly imagine.

All the histrionics over the next Fed chairman, pardon chairwoman, choice are over. WSJ reports that Obama is set to announce Mr., pardon Mrs Janet Yellen as Bernanke's replacement tomorrow at 3 pm at the White House. "The nomination would conclude a long and unusually public debate about Mr. Obama's choice which started last June when he said that Ben Bernanke wouldn't be staying in the post after his term ends in January. Mr. Obama gave serious consideration to his former economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, who pulled out in September after facing resistance from Democrats in the Senate." However, while a Yellen announcement, largely priced in, in a normal environment would have been good for at least 10-20 S&P points, with the debt ceiling showdown the far more immediate concern, the choice of the Chairwoman may not be the buying catalyst that it would have otherwise been.

The consensus meme remains that a US government shut-down will have minimal economic effect if it is not protracted. Well, the US government shutdown is now 8 days old. To put things in perspective there have been 17 previous shutdowns through history and this is now the equal 6th longest - the average being 6.47 days.

China's predominant foreign policy has been cutting business deals, while the US policy has been one of military deployment followed by pressuring trade deals. Reception to the latter, not surprisingly, is increasingly being viewed as one-sided and not a win-win.

If Obama's intention in his CNBC interview was to get Wall Street to start selling, then congratulations: today he finally made some headway. However, he will have to do more before the capitulation dump we saw in the summer of 2011 pushes the House, and Boehner to finally fold (in the case of the latter, for the last time). Much More. Goldman's Sales and Trading desk explains: "Today was the first day that concerns about the debt ceiling really started to be felt."

Last week we showed the cognitive dissonance, nurtured by a liquidity-providing Fed, that has growth this year between stocks and economic confidence. In the last week, fed by a diet of DC headlines, Gallup's economic confidence index has collapsed. In fact, this is the worst 3-week plunge since Lehman - worse than during the 2011 Debt Ceiling debacle.

It’s clear to everyone by now that the government of the largest country in the world is careening towards default in just over 200 hours. Yet curiously, even though the US government’s completely ridiculous, untenable fiscal situation is a front page embarrassment for the entire world to see, markets have barely budged. A few very short-term rates have shot up, but for the most part, stocks are very close to where they were before the shutdown. Stocks and bonds haven’t moved because nobody cares what’s happening in the US government anymore. And that’s because every serious investor understands that the US government long since abdicated any economic power to the banking sector. Everyone knows that the Fed is going to keep printing money, ergo they’re going to keep sending markets higher. And this debt ceiling charade only proves it. The secret is out there in the open. And now it’s completely obvious who’s really in charge.

"Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit" Anthony Coley, spokesman for the Treasury Department.

In an ominous supplication to the fact that a deal may not be coming President Obama admitted that his administration is "exploring all contingencies on the debt limit." We assume, given his dismissal of the 14th Amendment and the idiocy ("there are no magic bullets" to avoid default) of the trillion-dollar-coin and premium-bond issuance to the Fed, this implies - unlike the ECB - that they are conceding it is possible we cross the "X" date. His remarks were a perfect rehash of everything he has said before... unless the Republicans stop demanding 100% of what they want and give him 100% of what he wants, he will not negotiate. In Summary: no negotiation with extremists holding hostages

Isn’t it wonderful how the US believes (whether that be the citizens or the politicians) that the state will never default on its debt repayments?

The BPC, whose initial analysis of the US default has become the staple "go-to" analysis for Treasury cash obligations and key events in the day surrounding and following the X-Date, has released a new update on when the US runs out of money. The latest: October 22 - November 1. Which means that if it so desires, the GOP can and probably will delay a debt ceiling bargain until the last possible moment which may well be, appropriately enough, Halloween. In the meantime, the US Treasury now has about $40 billion in total cash on hand and available extraordinary measures and declining fast.

Amid the bluster of yet another press conference, equity markets chopped around jerking up and down 5 points at a time for the S&P 500. But one market, the Treasury Market, went only one way. While it is all too easy to watch the tickers and listen to the glib bloviation of any and all talking head exclaiming that there is no-way, zero-chance, totally unlikely, impossible that the US government would technically default - the Treasury-Bill market is less confident (10/17s +8.5bps to 22.5bps, 10/31s +7.5bps to 23.5bps). In fact, the T-Bill yield has now spiked massively more than during the 2011 Debt-Ceiling debate (and stocks - for now - have not).