Florida

While the naive public has been inundated with stories that the foreclosure pipeline has been finally unclogged following the robo-settlement (see here and here) and as a result the home "price discovery" process is well on its way, reality is just a tad different. Make that totally different. As usual, the only foreclosure report that matters, and that is even remotely close to reality, comes from RealtyTrac, and we are sad to say, it brings no good news. Quite the contrary. According to the real estate specialists, March 2012 foreclosures plunged from 206,900 in February to 198,853 in March, the first time the total number of foreclosures (either Default Notices, Foreclosure Auctions, or REOs) has dropped under 200,000 since July 2007! Which sadly means that the foreclosure dam wall has yet to crack. Of course, when it does, well "The Second Foreclosure Tsunami Is Coming, And Is About To Kill Any Hopes Of A "Housing Bottom."

NOAA just released confirmation that the first quarter of 2012 was the warmest on record. The fact that we rely on 'seasonal adjustments' in macro data that are so critical in our seeming belief in the recovery of the US economy (and its extrapolation into how many iPads will be bought next month) when the temperature is 20% hotter than average is simply incredible.

Now that the Mega Millions Jackpot has just hit a record $640 million, people, mostly those in the lower and middle classes, are coming out in droves and buying lottery tickets with hopes of striking it rich. After all, with $640 million one can even afford a few shares of Apple stock. Naturally, we wish the lucky winner all the (non-diluted) best. There is, however, a small problem here when one steps back from the Sino Forest trees. As ConvergEx' Nicholas Colas explains, "Lotteries essentially target and encourage lower-income individuals into a cycle that directly prevents them from improving their financial status and leverages their desire to escape poverty.  Yes, that’s a bit harsh, and yes, people have the right to make their own decisions.  Even bad ones…  Also, many people tend to significantly overestimate the odds of winning because we tend to assess the likelihood of an event occurring based on how frequently we hear about it happening.  The technical name for this is the Availability Heuristic, which means the more we hear about big winners in the press, the less uncommon a big payday begins to seem." Call it that, or call it what one wishes, the end result is that the lottery is nothing but society's perfectly efficient way of, to use a term from the vernacular, keeping the poor man down while dangling hopes and dreams of escaping into the world of the loathsome and oh so very detested "1% ers". Alas, the probability of the latter happening to "you" is virtually non-existant.

All you need to read and more.

Housing is improving! Housing is improving! Housing is improving!

if I say it enough will someone believe it?

This post has a link to a Bloomberg story about a revival in Seattle where house bidding wars are in progress: Date March 27, 2012. You won't believe it. It reads like a story from the heart of the days of the bubble market.

How to get rid of unwanted pests?

Deny that, bottom deniers.

In an interview with Louis James, the inimitable Doug Casey throws cold water on those celebrating the economic recovery. "Get out your mower; it's time to cut down some green shoots again, and debunk a bit of the so-called recovery."

From Historically Miserable Level

Fourteen months, one MF Global carcass and $1.6 billion in "vaporized" funds later, does the CFTC still regulate the futures markets by fax?

Yet another whistleblower has stepped up, this time one already known to the general public, and one that Zero Hedge covered just over a month ago: we refer to the case of former CBO worker, Lan T. Pham, who, as the WSJ described in early February, "alleges she was terminated [by the CBO] after 2½ months for sharing pessimistic outlooks for the banking and housing sectors in 2010" and who "alleges supervisors stifled opinions that contradicted economic fixes endorsed by some on Wall Street, including research from a Morgan Stanley economist who served as a CBO adviser." As we observed in February, "what is most troubling is if indeed the CBO is nothing but merely another front for Wall Street to work its propaganda magic on the administration. Because at the core of every policy are numbers, usually with dollar signs in front of them, numbers which have to make sense and have to be projected into the future, no matter how grossly laughable the resultant hockeystick." As it turns out, somewhat expectedly, the WSJ version of events was incomplete. There is much more to this very important story, one which has major implications over "impartial" policy decisionmaking, and as a result, Ms. Pham has approached Zero Hedge to share her full story with the public.

Minutes ago on CNBC, Jim Cramer announced that Greg Smith will never get a job on Wall Street again as "one never goes to the press. Ever." Naturally, the assumption is that the secrets of Wall Street's dirty clothing are supposed to stay inside the family, or else one may wake up with a horsehead in their bed. There is one small problem with that. Now that compensations on Wall Street have plunged, and terminations are set for the biggest spike since the Lehman collapse, the opportunity cost to defect from the club has also collapsed. And if anything, Greg Smith's NYT OpEd has shown that it is not only ok to go to the press, but is in fact cool. So what happens next? Well, as the following Reuters article reports, 'whistleblowing' over corrupt and criminal practices on Wall Street is suddenly becoming the next growth industry. Yes - people may get 'priced out' of the industry, but since the industry will likely fire you regardless in the "New Normal" where fundamentals don't matter, and where the only thing that does matter is the H.4.1 statement (as Zero Hedge incidentally pointed out back in early 2010), why not expose some of the dirt that has been shovelled deep under the coach, and get paid some serious cash while doing it?

Nic Colas, of ConvergEx, waxes nostalgic at the dreadful deja-vu he sees in his monthly review of the Street’s revenue expectations for the companies of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Finding that while markets may be in rally mode, analysts are still fretful about near term sales momentum at these large multinationals. Currently, they expect the average Dow company to post only a 3.6% sales “Comp” in Q1 2012 versus last year, or 5.0% for the non-financial companies in the index.  That is the lowest expected growth rate for the current quarter since we started keeping tabs on what the analysts had in their models a year ago. They don’t have to bump numbers to pound the table on their favorite names.  The current rally has been more about valuation than revenue and earnings momentum – our revenue expectation data is all the proof you need on that score.  So why raise numbers if your “Buy” rated names are rallying without the need to put yourself on that limb? All of this sets up market psychology on a razor’s edge for Q1 earnings reports. And what about ‘Sell in May and go away?'  Only 31 trading days left until May 1st. 

Today at noon Eastern, the storied aircraft carrier Enterprise, aka CVN-65, left its home port of Naval Station Norfolk one final time for its final voyage with a heading: Arabian Sea, aka Iran. There in a week it will join CVN 72 Lincoln and CVN 70 Vinson, as well as LHD 8 Makin Island, all of which are supporting any potential escalation of "hostilities" in the Persian Gulf region. As a reminder, back in January we learned that the Enterprise's final voyage will be in proximity to Iran, and in the meantime, the aircraft carrier held extended drills off the Florida coast to attack a "faux theocracy"  consisting of fundamentalist "Shahida" states. Why the Arabian Sea in about 7-10 days will be home to not two but three aircraft carriers and a big deck amphibious warfare ship is very much an open question, although we may have some thoughts. 

Has BP Made “Natural” Oil Seeps In the Gulf Larger?