Debt Ceiling

Important News by www.thetrader.se

We think what’s happening is almost comical. Most Western governments are in a race to the bottom to get their currencies as low as possible. This is an attempt to cheapen their debt by debasing their currencies. Every time the dollar spikes it must make Bernanke pull the hair he has left out of his head. Every time the euro weakens the Fed does what it can to strengthen it. One way is by opening swap desks with the European banks to give them all the dollars they need. Another way is to say the magical phrase QE3. While the timing of this news is in many respects a coincidence (because the minutes are released weeks after the event) we do recognize that Western economies must devalue their debt. We are in a race to the bottom and the euro is winning, hence the rally in gold. Gold goes up for two reasons now. The first is obvious: gold is a dollar-denominated asset and as the dollar weakens it will increase in value. The second is sovereign or default risk, which is actually deflationary. Europe and the U.S. will continue taking turns driving gold higher with the Chinese chasing it all the way up.

Something troubling happened in D.C. today, where it seems that the Senate Republican leader basically just folded like a cheap suit in the ongoing farscial standoff on the debt ceiling (which luckily should bring the whole comedy to an end and the nation can progress with its previously scheduled ponzi collapse). In essence, as Bloomberg says, according to McConnell's proposed 3-Stage plan, "The debt-ceiling increase could occur without the companion spending cuts, McConnell said." Ironically, when we observing comparable posturing by Boehner from two days ago we said "in two weeks we get news of no tax hikes, and no deficit reduction, which will be spun by the great diversionary media machine as the great compromise, and, of course, leading to a $2.5 trillion debt ceiling hike. Win, win for everyone." It seems precisely this is on the agenda. Details on McConnell's plan to basically let the President do whatever he chooses: "Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell proposed a “last choice option” for increasing the U.S. debt limit in three stages in case President Barack Obama and Congress can’t agree on a deficit-reduction plan. McConnell’s plan would let the president raise the limit, while accompanying it with offsetting spending cuts, unless Congress struck down his plan with a two-thirds majority. Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, said the plan would allow Obama to raise the debt limit while putting the onus on him and congressional Democrats for any failure to cut spending." Surely the president would be shaking in his boots knowing that if he were to cut spending the "onus" would be on him. Here is how the Republican justifies this betrayal: "The proposal is “not my first choice,” McConnell said, adding that he wanted to show the financial markets that the U.S. will not default on its debts. He said he continues to seek a broader deal to raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit with congressional Democrats and the White House." Funny: this is the same logic that Jean-Claude Juncker used when validating outright lying to the media, and general public. It appears there are little if any differences between politicians in Europe and the US when it comes to lies.

My take on what may happen to confidence.

It worked for Hank Paulson who showed up in Congress with a three page termsheet, delusions of grandeur, a scary story, and an easily frightened audience. Why should it not work for the president. As Reuters reports, "Barack Obama said in an interview on Tuesday that checks to recipients of the Social Security retirement program may not go out in early August if he and congressional leaders do not agree a debt deal. "I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue," Obama said in an interview with CBS, according to a transcript on the network's web site. "Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Obama said." Is that so Mr. President? Please explain then how according to the most recent DTS the YTD (fiscal) amount paid out on Social Security is $469 billion, well below the amount collected from Federal Tax Deposits of $780 billion. As a comparison, this number is lower than the combination of Medicare and Medicaid ($638 billion YTD), and the combination of Defense and Education Payments ($480 billion). Indicatively, Federal salaries are a whopping $137.6 billion, or said otherwise, all of the SSN payments to date are just three times bigger than what the government pays its own employees. Perhaps a bigger issue is that the debt held by the public has increased by $720 billion YTD, a number which will soon grow to $1.5 trillion if the government does get debt hike it so desperately needs.

"The rule of law has basically been thrown out the window. Money printing is the order of the day. And when politicians take control of central banks, which they have done in the United States and they are also doing in Europe, that basically destroys the currency. It puts the currency on the road to what I call the Fiat Currency Graveyard, so I expect there are going to be massive currency problems as we go forward. The financial crisis that we have been dealing with for the last several years has not been solved." So cautions James Turk, widely-respected precious metals expert and founder/chairman of GoldMoney. In this detailed interview (recorded in June), Chris and James explore the probable outcome of the current US debt-ceiling operatics, the likelihood of future Fed money printing, and strategies for preserving wealth. In short, James believes we are witnessing the decline of the world's major fiat currencies, and expects gold to be remonetized in the aftermath.

The Treasury just auctioned off today's $28 billion 4 week Bill. Details of the auction were expected by the investor community to see what the closing yield on the auction would be. And at 0.02% it probably shouldn't be very memorable. Yet it is, because this just happens to be the worst yield in over a month (and certainly a deterioration from the free money the Treasury was able to get during the last 4 week bill which closed at 0.000%). The last time we had a 4 Week Bill price wider than this high yield was June 1, when the auction priced at 0.04%. Now is this micro move indicative of much? Probably not, although it does show that the quarter end window dressing phenomenon was not responsible for the surge in Bill demand (the prior auction was July 6 or after the Q2 end period), and that is now over. Also, demand for General Collateral is as high as ever at -0.01%, thus this is not an aversion from short-term paper. So is the money scrambling into equities? Hardly. This begs the question: is this micro move in ultra short term yields, the first canary in the coalmine from the bond market which may, just may, be getting a little nervous that there won't be a resolution to the debt ceiling issue by the July 22 deadline. We will know for sure next week when the next 4 week Bill is auctioned off. In the meantime, later today we get the first test of QE2-less demand when $32 billion in 3 Year bonds are auctioned off.

In simple terms, what I’m trying to say is that we are about to witness another “2008” only on a sovereign scale. The EU will be first, but China, Japan, and even the US will be defaulting in the future. The implications these actions have for asset classes will be HUGE as all assets move relative to sovereign bonds which used to be considered the primary low risk asset class in the world.

While the European economy is imploding, the Chinese are struggling to hide 10% of their GDP in bad debt, and the US is scrambling to come up with a compromise to the debt ceiling, which is so far not even close with only 10 days left until the July 22 deadline (no, it's not August 2), one can be forgiven to forget that the US stock market continues to be nothing short of a crime scene. We are happy to remind you. Nanex has just spotted today's flash crash du jour, which promptly took $10 billion Brown Forman from $70 to $16.64, a 75%, or $7.5 billion, loss, in about one second. No, not a fat finger: an algorithm, which hit every bid on the way down for precisely 8,409 shares. We fully expect the pustular math Ph.D. (most likely out of Getco) to be promptly relieved of any responsibility for coming up with a massively wrong algorithm, as the NYSE shortly cancels all the bad trades. If nobody else is punished for their mistakes, why should the parasites who churn our stocks be treated any different?

Keep your eye on the ball and don't be fooled by all the ugly macro smoke...

Now that the market's bipolar yet brief attention span has once again shifted back to Europe, the vacuum tubes have completely forgotten that last week just confirmed that the labor part of the US economy (one part of the Fed's original dual mandate, before the whole market manipulation thing became dominant) has joined housing into sliding back into near outright contraction (and the just released news that Cisco will fire 10,000 people - more on that later - will only make things much, much worse). And so the US, which up until two weeks ago was supposed to be the source of "reverse decoupling" has been quietly swept under the carpet. Yet Goldman's economics team, which in addition to being wrong about NFP forecasts, is unable to conveniently avoid discussing the US economy, has just released its latest macro report, titled, appropriately enough: "Still Disappointing." Needless to say, Hatzius still refuses to acknowledge that his December 1 "economic renaissance" call was abysmal, and so continues to push for a 3% growth in H2, but is finally getting closer to admitting defeat: "The bottom line is that acceleration to a slightly above-trend growth pace in coming months, coupled with unchanged monetary policy through 2012, remains our modal forecast, but the risks to this view are very much tilted to the softer side. In order to hold on to the modal forecast, we will need to see a clear improvement in the indicators as well as a resolution to the debt ceiling debate that imposes fiscal restraint of not much more than the 1% of GDP that we are currently building in for next year. We should have more clarity on both of these issues by early/mid-August." Good luck Jan.

I have to tell you some terrible things.

How bad must things be getting that Geithner, a man who has lied and swindled the American people with impunity, and has never once suffered the consequences of his actions, is voluntarily “getting out of Dodge”? The answer: BAD.

Risk-aversion remained the dominant theme during the European session, as lack-lustre economic data from the US last week, and China, during the weekend, weighed on market sentiment. Allied to that, the ongoing contagion fears in the Eurozone dented the appetite for risk-among investors. European equities traded lower throughout the session, with particular weakness seen in financials, which was also reflected in the Italian FTSE MIB and Spanish IBEX 35 indices underperforming their European peers. Weak equities provided support to Bunds, whereas general widening was observed in the Eurozone peripheral 10-year government bond yield spreads. European sovereign concerns together with strength in the USD-Index weighed upon EUR/USD and GBP/USD, whereas safe-haven currencies including JPY and CHF received a boost. Elsewhere, WTI and Brent crude futures traded under pressure weighed upon by a strong USD as well as diminishing hopes of a sustainable economic recovery.

• Merkel's Migraine: The Man Who Wants Greece to Give Up the Euro (Spiegel)
• Up to 15 years needed to fix Greece: German president (Reuters)
• Taxes still a stumbling block in debt talks (Reuters)
• EU stance shifts on Greece default (FT, first in the WSJ)
• EU calls emergency meeting as crisis stalks Italy (Reuters)
• China Boosts Lead in Global Exports (WSJ)
• Italy's Market Regulator Imposes Measures To Curb Speculation (WSJ)
• NOTW reporters tried to access 9/11 phone data (Reuters)
• Trichet says debt is global, not European problem (Reuters)