Fail

The next few weeks consist of some crucial events - perhaps most notably the EU summit of 28-29 June - which create scope for governments to offer fundamental responses to the Euro crisis. Goldman Sachs, like us, expects to be disappointed and are not optimistic that resolution will be achieved in the near-term. Until the Franco-German axis at the heart of the Euro area can agree the terms at which sovereignty is foregone in return for a sharing of the debt overhang (and greater fiscal integration), other countries (potentially including larger more globally contagious nations like Spain and Italy) will be kept in a state that Goldman describes as 'suspended animation' via temporary support measures that contain - but do not resolve - their problems. This bodes ill for their real economic performance. This also fits with our ongoing cyclical travel along Einhorn's circle of death chart for Europe.

As we look forward to tomorrow's scorched-earth policy-fest from Draghi-et-al., Jefferies' David Zervos, in his typically understated manner, notes "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. We are back in the kill zone - Apocalypse Europe." There will be no more strategizing, no more war games, no more speeches imploring the politicians to act. This is the real deal - a full scale European led global financial crisis that requires immediate and aggressive response from the only entities with the authority to act in the world financial "theatre". We should all keep in mind that the Europeans have not been able to generate an effective response to their debt/deflation crisis as of yet, and of course it is having global consequences. This is why we are here again looking into the deflationary abyss. The ECB was only set up with a price stability mandate, and its leaders are hence much more constrained than Federal Reserve officials. Simply put, the European armies were not set up with effective weapons.

Everyone's worried about EU soveriegn debt. Once all of that rapidly depreciated real estate collapses mortgages that have been leveraged 30x, you'll really see the meaning of AUSTERITY! I'm trying to make it very clear to you people, you ain't seen nothing yet!!!

All you need to read and some more.

We all know that things are bad and getting worse. Goldman's Jan Hatzius take this opportunity to summarize all the various ways in which the global economy is floundering and once again floats the Goldman solution to everything: More QE, this time with a Bill Gross twist, pun and all, where the Fed again pulls a 2009 and goes for MBS: "Our confidence that the FOMC will ease policy once more at the June 19-20 meeting has also grown... Our baseline remains that Fed officials will purchase a mixture of mortgages and long-term Treasuries, financed via balance sheet expansion and possibly coupled with an extension of the forward guidance into 2015. This would be considerably more powerful than an extension of Operation Twist or other ways of changing the composition of the balance sheet, which are possible alternatives but are limited by the relatively modest amount ($200bn) of short-term paper that is still available for sale on the Fed's balance sheet." Well, if anything, global or Fed-based easing will most likely not come before the Greek June 17 elections - after all Greek confidence has to be crushed heading into the Euro referendum, and the only way to do this is by facilitating collapsing markets. So those hoping for a groundbreaking ECB announcement on June 6 will be disappointed. But June 20? That is fair game. We look forward to seeing PIMCO MBS holdings rise to a new all time high when the monthly TRF update is posted in a few days. Also look for something like this in the EURUSD if and when Bernanke surprises few at 2:15 pm on June 20.

Deflation has effectively been abolished by central banking. But is it sustainable? The endless post-Keynesian outgrowth of debt suggests not. In fact, what is ultimately suggested is that the abolition of small-scale deflationary liquidations has just primed the system for a much, much larger liquidation later on. Central bankers have shirked the historical growth cycle consisting both of periods of growth and expansion, as well as periods of contraction and liquidation. They have certainly had a good run. Those warning of impending hyperinflation following 2008 were proven wrong; deflationary forces offset the inflationary impact of bailouts and monetary expansion, even as food prices hit records, and revolutions spread throughout emerging markets. And Japan — the prototypical unliquidated zombie economy — has been stuck in a depressive rut for most of the last twenty years. These interventions, it seems, have pernicious negative side-effects. Those twin delusions central bankers have sought to cater to — for creditors, that debt is wealth and should never be liquidated, and for debtors that debt is an easy or free lunch — have been smashed by the juggernaut of history many times before. While we cannot know exactly when, or exactly how — and in spite of the best efforts of central bankers — we think they will soon be smashed again.

10 Questions ...

A Micro-Movie on denial and the dollar.

The ECB has €50 billion of GGB bonds still on their books.  Those would not get paid at par by Greece if this is an amicable breakup, but this is quickly heading to a pots and pans thrown in the kitchen sort of break-up.  Why would Greece pay the ECB if they feel like the ECB drove them out?  Don’t forget, not for a second, that most of the money Greece now gets goes to pay back the ECB and IMF.  The EFSF is totally out of luck.  The ECB might be able to offer something to a post drachma Greece, but the EFSF offers nothing.  The IMF has more negotiating power, as their direct loans had more protection in the first place and they are likely to provide additional funds post exit, but quite simply Greece won’t be able to pay them in full on existing loans. With the ECB, EFSF, and IMF all taking big losses, their credibility is hurt.  Worse than that, they have exposure to Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy and the markets (if not the politicians) will become very concerned about those exposures.  The IMF may see its alleged firewall crumble before it is ever launched.  The ECB, integral to any plan to protect Europe will have lost credibility and many will question their solvency.  The EFSF will be hung out to dry and immediately the market will attach all their risk to Germany and France, not making people in those countries particularly happy.

Two days ago we made a simple observation: back in September 2011, Weinstein's firm SABA Capital hired one of the key JPMorgan prop traders - Maitland Hudson - who "ran JPMorgan’s proprietary trading of derivatives tied to commercial-mortgage bonds" and whose future job at Saba would "focus on relative value trades" - such as, perhaps, IG9 10 Year versus a basket of tranched trades... Our suggestion was that instead of being a brilliant credit trader as he has been called by Bill Ackman, and his antics while in charge of the DB prop desk certainly put theory in jeopardy, perhaps Weinstein is merely a wonderful headhunter: one who knows just whom to hire and when (kinda like Steve Cohen hiring key Pharmaceutical company R&D personnel in a perfectly legal transaction now that expert networks are done, but that is a topic for another day).

We finally get to continue what we started in 2008. Becuase the TPTB insisted on kicking the can down the road, the resulting pain will be excruciatingly devastating versus simply horrible! Alas, once you get you short positions/puts/futures in before the inevitably ill-informed short ban, money can still be made. 

Well, they sold in May but did they go away? If today is any guide, they did as the swings across asset classes intraday were very reminiscent of 'death rattles' with trading scenarios becoming more and more binary and more and more extreme. Into the US macro data this morning risk assets in general were behaving in a synchronized manner. As the dismal data hit, it got wild with gold and stocks gapping down and Treasury yields crashing lower (10Y 1.53 handle!) only to be saved around the European close by chatter of IMF aid for Spain (funded by the selling of unicorn tears) at which stocks erupted (and while bonds, the USD, and Gold also reacted - they were far more muted). The afternoon was quiet until stocks had a mind of their own and went on a stop-hunt up to yesterday's late day highs (and that magical 1315 level) - pulling well away from any other asset-class reality - only to fail dismally, ending with an abrupt tumble back to sanity (just slightly in the red for the day) grabbing VWAP into the close. The signals were everywhere that risk was not 'on' no matter how hard stocks tried with high-yield credit (most notably the ETFs) surging and purging ending with a terrible dive (after popping up to VWAP after our earlier note) on heavy volume.

The global monetary system which has evolved and morphed over the past century but always in the direction of easier, cheaper and more abundant credit, may have reached a point at which it can no longer operate efficiently and equitably to promote economic growth and the fair distribution of its benefits. Future changes, which lie on a visible horizon, may not be so beneficial for our ocean’s oversized creatures. Both the lower quality and lower yields of previously sacrosanct debt therefore represent a potential breaking point in our now 40-year-old global monetary system. Neither condition was considered feasible as recently as five years ago. Now, however, with even the United States suffering a credit downgrade to AA+ and offering negative 200 basis point real policy rates for the privilege of investing in Treasury bills, the willingness of creditor whales – as opposed to debtors – to support the existing system may soon descend. Such a transition occurs because lenders either perceive too much risk or refuse to accept near zero-based returns on their investments. “There she blows,” screamed Captain Ahab and similarly intentioned debt holders may soon follow suit, presenting the possibility of a new global monetary system in future years, or if not, one which is stagnant, dysfunctional and ill-equipped to facilitate the process of productive investment.

"People need to stop expecting simple solutions" is how David Santschi succinctly describes to Charles Biderman the delusion that so many European leaders (and seemingly US and European investors) perceive our world. The prevalence of lying and delusion in Europe is what worries the TrimTabs' chaps the most - especially since in a Fiat money system (where money is backed by nothing but confidence) - with the people running the system lying on a grand scale, the chance of systemic failure are very high. He is careful to point out that this is not just a European issue, we in the US are just as delusional, but the European issues are simply more acute. Simply put, "losses have to be recognized honestly" and Biderman's bro' asks rhetorically "why on earth are we five years on still trying to bailout bondholders and banks so they don't lose money on their crappy debt - it's crazy." The two gentlemen of the Bay Area then describe why money-printing does not solve the problem as Europe faces solvency, not liquidity, problems (detailing exactly our thoughts on the fact that so many of the supposed solutions have/will fail and "there aren't any painless solutions to a debt problem". Avoiding all EUR-exposure, holding USD cash/TSYs short-term, and gold as a long-term insurance cover is how they suggest one is positioned. While the tone is less 'ranty', the content is just as pithy - six minutes well-spent for a summary of why Europe's (and the US) problems are far from over - no matter how much hope is placed in CB largesse.

As anyone who has ever traded CDS (or any other OTC, non-exchange traded product) knows, when you have a short risk position, unless compliance tells you to and they rarely do as they have no idea what CDS is most of the time, you always mark the EOD price at the offer, and vice versa, on long risk positions, you always use the bid. That way the P&L always looks better. And for portfolios in which the DV01 is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (or much, much more if your name was Bruno Iksil), marking at either side of an illiquid market can result in tens if not hundreds of millions of unrealistic profits booked in advance, simply to make one's book look better, mostly for year end bonus purposes. Apparently JPM's soon to be fired Bruno Iksil was no stranger to this: as Bloomberg reports, JPM's CIO unit "was valuing some of its trades at  prices that differed from those of its investment bank, according to people familiar with the matter. The discrepancy between prices used by the chief investment office and JPMorgan’s credit-swaps dealer, the biggest in the U.S., may have obscured by hundreds of millions of dollars the magnitude of the loss before it was disclosed May 10, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to discuss the matter. "I’ve never run into anything like that,” said Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.’s Brad Hintz in New York. “That’s why you have a centralized accounting group that’s comparing marks” between different parts of the bank “to make sure you don’t have any outliers” .... Jamie Dimon's "tempest in a teapot" just became a fully-formed, perfect storm which suddenly threatens his very position, and could potentially lead to billions more in losses for his firm.