Janet Yellen

When we broke the story of China's "secret" money laundering into US real estate scheme, we said "So what happens next? Assuming there is the anticipated resulting backlash and crackdown on Chinese banks, which will finally enforce the $50K/year outflow limitation, this could well be the worst possible news not only for Chinese inflation, which suddenly - no longer having a convenient outlet for the unprecedented liquidity formed in the country every month - is set to soar, but also for the ultra-luxury housing in the US. Because without the Chinese bid in a market in which the Chinese are the biggest marginal buyer scooping up real estate across the land, sight unseen, and paid for in laundered cash (which the NAR blissfully does not need to know about due to its AML exemptions), watch as suddenly the 4th dead cat bounce in US housing since the Lehman failure rediscovers just how painful gravity really is." What we forgot to add is that virtually every other financial mainstream outlet would promptly pick up on the story even as the original source back in China took its secrets to the grace. Metaphorically speaking, we hope...

Exactly 50 years ago last month the US Supreme Court ruled on the now famous case of Jacobellis v. Ohio. At stake was whether a French movie with graphic sexual content could be outlawed by the state via its obscenity laws. The court ruled that it could not because the film wasn’t hardcore pornography. How could they tell? In an explanation that has now turned into one of the most famous quotes in court history, Justice Potter Stewart explained that although he could not define exactly what hardcore porn was, “I know it when I see it” Like porn, asset bubbles are also hard to define, but given our economic history, and especially our recent economic history, we know it when we see it, and now we see it everywhere. We all see it. Apparently the only people that don’t see the bubbles are the people creating them.

If the notion that the single most powerful entity in the world economy is ignoring warnings signs everywhere and continues to operate based on debunked and delusional academic theories worries you, you’re not alone. 

"Stocks are going up for reasons [investors] don't really want to understand," warns Titanium Capital's Philip Manduca. The main reasoning, reflecting on the market's shrug at Portugal's problems is "We have survived so many crises. What is another," but Manduca blasts "It's a cynical approach. The real problem is the guys who have got the dice in their hands keep changing them. They can do whatever they want. They are making new rules all the time." With that background he say there are good reasons for this market to fall and "nothing can make [him] bullish stocks now." While Janet Yellen should "introduce two-way risk" this week, he reminds us that "she is a political appointee... whose job is make sure they stay in power as long as possible." The problem is - US monetary policy is the world's lowest common denominator and has consequences...

Now that the World Cup is over, and following last week's global macro reporting slumber (aside for the Portuguese risk flaring episode of course), things pick up quite a bit in the coming week. Here are the key events.

Market participants are far too levered up, all on the same side, and well behind the monetary normalization curve of when the first rate hike is actually going to occur. 

"We’re in a world where there are very few unambiguously cheap assets...If you ask me to give you the one big bargain out there, I’m not sure there is one." But frustrating as the situation can be for investors hoping for better returns, the bigger question for the global economy is what happens next. How long will this low-return environment last? And what risks are being created that might be realized only if and when the Everything Boom ends?

Maybe its time for a new version of the old regime at the Fed. That is, for the Eccles Building to eschew interest rate-pegging and ZIRP entirely, and thereby allow financial markets to once again engage in honest price discovery and two-way trading; and to allow the natural business cycle to meander along its own capitalist path as determined not by the 12 members of the monetary politburo, but the 317 million consumers, producers, investors, entrepreneurs and even speculators who comprise the real main street economy.

The overpowering and incessant statist economic management of the American economy, as reflected in the Ex-Im extension mobilization now underway, is causing the engines of capitalist prosperity to shutdown. The main culprit, of course, is our monetary central planners in the Eccles Building. But they are only the leading edge - the exemplar that tells Washington day in and day out that without constant ministrations by agencies of the state, our capitalist economy would continuously under-preform and tumble into the ditch. So what is at stake in the Ex-Im battle is the future of market capitalism itself. If Washington lacks the capacity to say no to the shareholders of a few big US corporations that can be counted on one hand, then the statist predicate will triumph finally and for ever more.

While we enjoyed the hours of amusement formerly micro-cap company Cynk Technology (CYNK, with Mr. Marlon L. Sanchez serving as President, CEO, CFO, Secretary, Treasurer & CAO) provided us today, we must sadly conclude that the company is nothing but a fraud. And it is nothing short of a testament to just how broken this excuse for a market is that a company with no assets, no revenues, no website, and one employee can go from zero value to nearly $5 billion in market cap in a few days , adding 150%, or over $2 billion in market cap today alone. That said, the question always is: who is next. Who is the company that is as big a fraud as CYNK and will generate as great a profit in as short a time. For the easiest possible answer we simply found out who the company's "auditor" is (that would be Messineo & Co, CPA LLC of located at the following address) and then we backed into which other companies also use this auditor for their own fraudulent purposes. The full list is below.

As most Fed watchers know, last week was interesting because Janet Yellen, speaking at IMF came out and said something quite surprising. In a nutshell, she said “It’s not the Fed’s job to pop bubbles”. While many market participants immediately took this to mean, “To the moon, Alice!” and started buying equities hand over fist, there’s another possible explanation for Mrs. Yellen’s proclamation of unwillingness: The Fed could be preparing to do exactly what it said it wouldn’t. Bringing forward the next leg of the cycle, may well be on the Fed’s agenda.

The trouble with capitalism’s guardians is that they have no respect for it. Markets have been around for at least 2,000 years. Since then they have evolved in many directions, with fancy and sophisticated techniques… and elaborate systems and complicated instruments that take a PhD to understand. But despite all the brain power put into trying to figure them out, markets still surprise, confound and puzzle everyone. You’d think Janet Yellen and other central bankers would take a step back and stand in awe. Heaven and hell are full of people who thought they could take the risk out of markets. Some went broke. Some blew their brains out... others both.

Many seem to believe that if we worked our way out of debt problems in the past, we can do the same thing again. The same assets may have new owners, but everything will work together in the long run. Businesses will continue operating, and people will continue to have jobs. We may have to adjust monetary policy, or perhaps regulation of financial institutions, but that is about all. I think this is where the story goes wrong. The situation we have now is very different, and far worse, than what happened in the past. We live in a much more tightly networked economy. This time, our problems are tied to the need for cheap, high quality energy products. The comfort we get from everything eventually working out in the past is false comfort.

Boeing has had a tough week or two - the scandal over Ex-Im bank - its cheap funding source of competitive advantage, this weekend's train derailment of Boeing fuselages, and now, in Barcelona, a 767 and an Airbus A340 battle for the same airpsace coming within a few hundred feet of total carnage. We can only hope Janet Yellen's 'macro-prudential' policies will be less of a near-miss of the total collapse in risk assets we suspect is coming...

Risk assets have started the week off on a slightly softer footing but overall volumes are fairly low given the quiet Friday session last week and with the lack of any major weekend headlines. Equity bourses are down between 25-50bp on the day paced by the Nikkei (-0.4%). In China, a number of railway construction stocks are up 3-4% after reports that China Railway Corp will buy around 300 sets of high speed trains and may potentially launch 14 news railway construction projects soon as part of national investment plans.