Lehman

As the debate regarding whether or not Switzerland should keep the bulk of its gold reserves at home on Swiss soil reaches it's climax - the referendum takes place on Sunday - it is telling that the Dutch announced on Friday that they have just secretly repatriated 122 tonnes of their sovereign gold reserves from New York back to Amsterdam.

With hopes high, at least among corner offices of the majors, that this week's OPEC meeting will somehow manage to slow down the biggest plunge in crude prices since Lehman, it will take much more than mere talk and hollow promises to offset the recent cartel-busting actions of Saudi Arabia. So in a worst case scenario where supply remains unchanged even as global energy demand continues to decline sharply due to the ongoing global slowdown what is the worst case scenario that could happen - aside from the mass energy HY defaults discussed previously - should the price of a barrel of oil continue to correlate the change in 2014 global GDP estimated? Here are some thoughts from Deutsche Bank.

Want to escape a lifetime of debt servitude? Then some of the fields one may want to avoid include drama, music, religion, anthropology, philosophy, psychology and education.

To put the events of October 15 in context, here is a 1-minute clip courtesy of Nanex showing the daily history bond market liquidity starting with 2008 and going through November 2014.

What is the main culprit for the contraction in China's all important credit formation? In two words: shadow banking. As Bank of America summarizes "shadow banking is being tamed" because "the changing structure of TSF suggests that Beijing’s efforts in controlling some types of shadow banking have made some achievements. Two major drivers for the steep decline of TSF from Sept to Oct were the falling of non-discounted bills (down RMB241bn) and falling trust loans (down RMB22bn). By contrast, new corporate bonds were at RMB242bn, a sharp rise from RMB151bn in Sept." In other words, China's shadow banking not only ground to a halt, it actually continued moving in reverse!

Needless to say, this relentless expansion of the bubble eventually kills off the bears, the skeptics, the prudent and even the militantly incredulous. Undoubtedly, that is where we are now because the global economic news has been uniformly negative since the October dip, yet the market has resumed its relentless melt-up. Under such circumstances, therefore, it is well to remember that we are in the middle of the greatest central bank fueled inflation in recorded history, and that this insidious inflation has been channeled into financial assets owing to the arrival of peak debt everywhere around the world. But that is the Achilles heel of the game. As the bubble takes on ever greater girth, it becomes increasingly susceptible to a negative shock to confidence.

Kuroda has fired the shot that looks likely to trigger the next phase of the crazy monetary experiment we’ve all been living in for the last five years. Unfortunately, the next phase is where things start to get nasty. Just because equity markets cheered the latest sugar rush he guaranteed them should not make smart investors lower their guard — quite the opposite, in fact. Colonel Kuroda has gone up-country into the Heart of Darkness, and all we can do is await the Apocalypse now.

WTI Crude plunged another 3.75% to as low as $74.06 today - the lowest since Sept 2010 and dropping at the fastest rate of collapse since Lehman. Airlines popped and Energy stocks dropped 2.7% (now worst sector of the year) but Small Caps were the worst performing major index of the day (turning first around 1030ET and dropping most in over 3 weeks). The S&P tested back into the red for the week but was VWAP-rescued twice. AAPL once again bid saved the Nasdaq. Treasury yields slid lower all day (down 2-3bps across the complex) but remain up 4-5bps on the week. The USD weakened very marginally (still up 0.25% on the week) led by EUR strength. Gold and silver were flat but copper tumbled back below $300 - its lowest close in a month (near lowest close since Jul 2010). HY Credit diverged bearishly this afternoon as stocks ramped to VWAP. VIX rose for the 3rd day in a row, back over 14. Dow record close, Russell biggest drop in 3 weeks.

Simply put, the dollar's rise could destabilize the entire global financial system. To understand why this is so, we have to start with the source of the risk: the world's central banks.

On Sunday in Brisbane the G20 will announce that bank deposits are just part of commercial banks’ capital structure, and also that they are far from the most senior portion of that structure. With deposits then subjected to a decline in nominal value following a bank failure, it is self-evident that a bank deposit is no longer money in the way a banknote is. If a banknote cannot be subjected to a decline in nominal value, we need to ask whether banknotes can act as a superior store of value than bank deposits? If that is the case, will some investors prefer banknotes to bank deposits as a form of savings? Such a change in preference is known as a "bank run."

As expected, the stench in market rigging, be it Libor, FX, gold or anything else, goes to the very top...

"Overseas views on the BOJ’s surprise easing announcement can be broken down into two camps: the reflationists, who commend the BOJ for its bold actions, and those critical of the policy, who say it is a symptom of the final stages of Japan’s economic decline. The critics can further be divided into two groups: those who believe that continuing the current policy of “Banzainomics” will lead to a collapse of the Japanese economy and government finance triggered by a crash in the JGB market, and those who worry that the ongoing devaluation of the yen under this policy will hurt their own countries’ industries.... The first group’s scenario, in which the BOJ’s reckless attempts to achieve a 2% inflation target trigger a bond market crash and an eventual collapse of the Japanese economy, is of greater concern. After all, it is the same scenario the world’s QE pioneers—the US and the UK—are desperately trying to avert at this very moment."

Following Friday's notable weakness in USDCNY (the biggest drop in the market rate since March and an abrupt change of recent trend), and trade data this weekend, the PBOC appears to have decided to try and put a stop to any weakness and smashed the USDCNY Fix lower by 0.37% - its biggest 'stronger CNY' adjustment since 2010 - when the Fed initially ended QE1 (and 2nd biggest shift since Lehman). Of course, we are sure it is nothing but a storm in a teacup that the largest economy in the world just re-valued its currrency fix by the most in 4 years... just days after the end of QE3 and the BoJ's insanity... but as we warned previously, "we think that for China in particular this latest BoJ action is perceived as an aggressive provocation that must be responded to forcefully." We note also that Japan's Abe and China's Xi are due to meet on Wednesday and perhaps this is a tactical move in that chess game.

"What I’m describing here is a sea change in investor attitudes that has profound implications for the rest of the market. What you do with that information is up to you."

Economic forecasting is a dangerous job. As Mark Twain put it in his novel Pudd’nhead Wilson, “October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.” Every wrong prediction could doom a career, or a bank account. Prudence and humility are the only sound tools for building one’s reputation. The talking heads on CNBC appear to know neither. They pledge allegiance to the flag of the tinkering bureaucracy. It explains the loss of ratings, and loss of confidence in the ability of “experts” to see what’s coming down the tracks. Refusing to learn from mistakes will lead to future blunders. Pundits that don’t heed this message are doomed to fail.