European Central Bank

These are the issues to consider going forward. Our view is that it is quite possible the Fed has played its hand too strongly and thereby damaged its future efforts to maintain market stability via intervention. Given that stocks were already decoupled from the underlying economic realities, this has made the market highly vulnerable to a sharp correction.

“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” Isaac Newton tells us. It is within this context that we also account for “unintended consequences;” those nasty things that no one thinks of that tend to jump out of the bushes at you when you thought you had everything figured out. In Bernanke’s rush to increase employment and raise asset prices and lower mortgage rates, if not to help the President with his re-election; we would assert that the Fed did not go far enough in its thinking and that they may get stung by what they have not considered. The issue here is gas at the pump. Far more important to most Americans than the interest rate on their mortgages is how much they have to pay to fill up their cars. The recent position of the Fed was spelled out and will be enacted. The ECB, though, waved the banner of “unlimited” and “without cap” subject to the CONDITION of the EU’s acceptance and audits and the approval of any nation applying for aid. If 'A' depends on 'B' and 'B' is not forthcoming then 'A' is a worthless proposition. Tell no one that we told you though. After this weekend’s meeting of the European Finance Ministers it is crystal clear that no new banking oversight authority is imminent.

What is it that makes Keynesians so insanely self destructive?  Is it their mindless blind faith in the power of government?  Their unfortunate ignorance of the mechanics of monetary stimulus?  Their pompous self-righteousness derived from years of intellectual idiocy?  Actually, I suspect all of these factors play a role.  Needless to say, many of them truly believe that the strategy of fiat injection is viable, even though years of application have proven absolutely fruitless.  Anyone with any sense would begin to question what kind of madness it takes to pursue or champion the mindset of the private Federal Reserve bank… Quantitative easing has shown itself to be impotent in the improvement of America’s economic situation.  Despite four years of free reign in central banking, employment remains dismal in the U.S., the housing market continues its freefall, and, our national debt swirls like a vortex at the heart of the Bermuda Triangle.  Despite this abject failure of Keynesian theory, the Federal Reserve is attempting once again to convince you, the happy-go-lucky American citizen, that somehow, this time around, everything will be “different”.

Fresh out of the flashing red headline-a-tron:

• IMF OFFICIALS SAY GREECE WILL NEED A THIRD BAILOUT
• IMF SAYS GREECE CAN'T FILL FUNDING GAP ON ITS OWN, UP TO EUROZONE AND ECB TO FIND MONEY FOR GREECE
• GREECE MET ONLY 22% OF PROGRAM TARGETS FOR 2011
• EURO EXIT WOULD SET GREECE BACK BY MANY DECADES

Nobody, NOBODY, could have anticipated that fighting record debt with recorder debt, could possibly fail. And cue Germany telling Greece the party is now over, which, is what (a sliding EURUSD for those confused) it has wanted all along.

After almost forty years on Wall Street we understand both the joke and the punchline and you cannot pay off old debt with vastly greater amounts of new debt without consequences and, we assure you, there will be consequences. This paradigm does not work for a corporation or a sovereign nation and the borrower is eventually brought to his knees by the sheer weight of the debt that he has laden upon his back. The interest rate paid is only part of the equation with the rest being the absolute size of what is undertaken. The Euro and the equity markets rally upon misperception. It is not “unlimited” or “no cap” that are really the operative words for the scheme but the “condition” of use that is the most important part of the recent “Save the World” speech of Mario Draghi. Spain is an admitted user of “dynamic provisioning” which is a long and academic argument for shifting reserves but in the end it means but one thing and one thing only and that is they are admittedly fiddling with their books. Spain is scared to death of the “Obermeisters of the Troika,” the refrains of the three brothers Reich, that will show up in Madrid and demand explanation and sacrifice.

Below is an extract of the full statement whose summary kept everyone up this morning, most certainly the headline reacting algos, and which the robots so far seem to like more than dislike.

The unmentionable class, the class that doesn’t exist in America, is ballooning

“Hit the road, rich idiot”

We will mince no words: Mr. Draghi has opened the door to hyperinflation. There will probably not be hyperinflation because Germany would leave the Euro zone first, but the door is open and we will explain why. To avoid this outcome, assuming that in this context the Eurozone will continue to show fiscal deficits, we will also show that it is critical that the Fed does not raise interest rates. This can only be extremely bullish of precious metals and commodities in the long run. In the short-run, we will have to face the usual manipulations in the precious metals markets and everyone will seek to front run the European Central Bank, playing the sovereign yield curve and being long banks’ stocks. If in the short-run, the ECB is the lender of last resort, in the long run, it may become the borrower of first resort!

The unremitting deterioration of the eurozone’s sovereign debt landscape continues to fuel uncertainties about the longevity of the euro as a hard currency. Such uncertainties are not only leading to capital flight from the EMU’s periphery to the core and destabilizing markets worldwide, but they are also beginning to frighten southern European savers into seeking refuge outside their 10-year-old currency. Such is the case of Spain – the latest tumbling economy to threaten the euro’s survival. As the crisis deepens, there is still a window of opportunity for Spaniards to turn to gold as a means to protect their wealth against the risks of increased foreign exchange volatility, forced re-denomination, or even a total currency collapse.

There is a Transfer Union underway in Europe. While Germany has tried to avoid this at all costs, Europe, has found a clever way of implementing such a program and keeping it under the radar from the German citizens. In Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy the ECB has implemented a program where the sovereign guarantees some bank’s bonds. The bank then pledges them as collateral at the ECB and gets cash. The bank then turns around and lends the money back to the sovereign nation and provides liquidity and economic sustenance. The Transfer Union is completed as Germany guarantees 22% of the ECB and the European Central Bank is nothing more than a conduit to lend money to the various nations. This contrivance is also not sterilized so that the ECB is, in fact, printing money. In a very real sense the ECB is the only fully operational part of the European construct at present as the European Union does not have the “political will” to carry out its mandate.

• China Output Growth Slows as Leadership Handover Looms (Bloomberg); Weak China trade data raises Beijing spending stakes (Reuters)
• Italy Q2 GDP revised down to -0.8% year-on-year on weak domestic demand (Economic Times)
• Troika disagreed with €2 billion in Greek "cuts" (Reuters)
• No Greek bottom in sight yet: Greek IP, Manufacturing Output plunge compared to year earlier (WSJ)
• France's Hollande sees 2013 growth forecast about 0.8 pct (Reuters), France plots tax hikes of up to 20 bln euros (Reuters)
• Euro Crisis Faces Tests in German Court, Greek Infighting (Bloomberg)
• Geithner sells more AIG stock (FT)
• Japan infuriates China by agreeing to buy disputed isles (Reuters)
• Euro crisis to worsen, Greece could exit euro: Swedish FinMin Anders Borg (Economic Times)
• ‘Lead or leave euro’, Soros tells Germany (FT)
• German MP makes new court complaint against euro plans (Reuters)
• Obama super-Pac in push to raise $150m (FT)

In closing, the new ECB program will ultimately prove to be Mario Draghi’s big bluff. By presenting an old, failed program as something “new” and “unlimited” in scope, the ECB has actually shown that it’s essentially out of firepower.

There are two key events in the coming week: first, on September 12, is the decision of the German Constitutional Court, aka the Krimson Kardinals of Karlsruhe, whether the ESM, or the ECB's primary market bond monetization program, is legal. A no vote would severely cripple the European "make it up as you go along" bailout and leave Europe's peripheral nations with little recourse, and Spain with even less cash as it faces a wall of bond maturities in both October and 2013. Then, on Thursday, the Federal Reserve will most likely underwhelm the market which is expecting a new substantial round of outright Asset Purchases, aka NEW QE, which however as we explained will almost certainly not occur due to various reason first described here last Friday. A third, and perhaps far more important event, will be the Dutch parliamentary election also on September 12, but more on that in a further post. For now, looking at Germany, and the piecemeal attempt to put back together the European house of monetary cards, we find that in Germany - the country taksed with funding the European implosion - the population has decided, by a 2 to 1 margin - that the constitutional court should just say "nein" to the ESM, and let Europe go on its merry way without German backing (because as a reminder, the primary source of ESM funding is Germany). From Spiegel: "A survey shows that the majority of Germans hope that the judges in Karlsruhe reject the permanent rescue fund ESM. 54% want a reversal of the Bundestag decisions on the ESM and Fiscal Pact, which should be legally halted. Only 25% believe that the court should dismiss the urgent appeals of the Euro-skeptics."

It took the ECB a year of endless behind the scenes Machiavellian scheming to restart the SMP program (which was conceived by Jean-Claude Trichet in May 2010, concurrent with the first Greek bailout). The markets soared with euphoria that this time will be different, and that the program which is a masterclass in central planning paradox, as it is "unlimited" yet "sterilized", while based on "conditions" none of which have been disclosed, and will somehow be pari passu for new bond purchases while it retains seniority for previous purchases of Greek and other PIGS bonds, will work - it won't, and the third time will not be the charm as we showed before. Yet it has been just 48 hours since the "bailout" announcement and already Europe is being Europe: namely, it turns out that nobody wants the bailout.