Lehman

• Israel Ready to Invade Gaza If Cease-Fire Efforts Fail (Bloomberg)
• Petraeus: A Phony Hero for a Phony War (NYT)
• IMF'S Lagarde says Greek deal should be "rooted in reality" (Reuters) "rooted" or "roofied"? And where was it until now?
• ECB's Asmussen says Greece to need aid beyond 2014 (AP)
• EU makes budget plans without (FT)
• Japanese Poll Shows LDP Advantage Ahead of Election (WSJ)
• Shanghai Composite Dips Below, Regains 2,000 Level (Bloomberg)
• Bond investor takes big punt on Ireland (FT)
• Noda defends BoJ’s independence (FT) Indewhatnow?
• Inaba Says BOJ Could Ease More If Government Reins in Debt (Bloomberg) Actually it's the other way around
• Miles Says Bank of England Can Do More If U.K. Slump Persists (Bloomberg) So much for the end of QE
• US tax breaks worth $150bn face axe (FT)

Everything that has happened since 2007, every Central Bank move, ever major political decision regarding the big banks, every trend, have all been focused solely on one issue.

Countless pages have been written about why Lehman caused the system to almost implode. However, the reality is that Lehman nearly took down the entire financial system for two reasons... and Spain will be far far worse.

Moments ago the MTS released the final October budget report. It was not pretty, although those who read our report on how much debt was added - $195 billion to be precise - in the first month of the 2013 Fiscal Year will know where this is going. The US budget deficit was expected to soar after the September surplus of $75 billion, driven entirely by calendar shifts and pre-election propaganda, to -$113 billion. That was optimistic: the total amount of overspending in October was $120 billion. What is distressing is that this was well above the $98.5 billion deficit from a year ago, and confirms that the long-term trendline of ever greater spending continues. This was also the fourth largest October deficit in history. And looking merely at the spending side of the ledger, the US government's outlays in October alone were $304 billion. This is the third biggest October monthly spend for the government ever, and just why of the all time high $320.4 billion record in October 2008, when everything imploded after Lehman failure and Hank Paulson was literally dousing the monetary flames with brand new Benjamins.

Earlier today, the BIS, which has been doing everything in its power today to defend the 1.27 support in the EURUSD since the market open this morning, released its H1 OTC derivatives presentation update. There was little of material note: total OTC derivatives were virtually unchanged at $639 trillion gross, representing $25 trillion in net outstanding (market value), and $3.7 trillion in gross credit exposure. Here the PhD theorists will say gross is irrelevant because Finance 101 said so, while the market practitioners will point to Lehman, counterparty risk, and less than infinite collateral to fund sudden implosions of weakest links in counterparty chains, and say that it is gross (which until a recent revision of BIS data had been documented at over $1 quadrillion) that mattered, gross which matters, and gross which will always matter until finally everything inevitably collapses in a house of missing deliverable cards. Because not even the most generous sovereigns and central banks can halt the Tsunami once there is a failure of a major OTC Interest Rate swap counterparty. And whereas Basel III had some hopes it would be able to bring down the total notional in derivative notionals slowly over the next few years with a gradual deleveraging across all financial firms, the bankers fought, and the bankers won, because the last thing the current batch of TBTFs can afford it admit there is any hope they can ever slim down. The will... but never voluntarily.

On October 21^st, 2012, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote a note titled “IMF’s epic plan to conjure away debt and dethrone bankers”, on UK’s The Telegraph. The article presented the International Monetary Fund’s working paper 12/202, also titled “The Chicago Plan revisited“. I will begin the discussion on this working paper with two disclosures: a) my personal portfolio would profit immensely if the Chicago Plan, as presented by the IMF’s working paper 12/202, was effectively carried out in the US. The reason I write today, however, is that to me, it is more important to ensure that my children live and grow in a free and prosperous world, and b) I have not read the so called Chicago Plan, as originally proposed by H. Simmons and supported by I. Fisher. My comments are on what the IMF working paper tells us that the Chicago Plan proposed, without making any claim on the original plan.

Regardless of who owns them

• ECUADOR WANTS BANKS TO REPATRIATE ONE THIRD OF FOREIGN HOLDINGS
  
• ECUADOR TAX CHIEF CARRASCO SPEAKS TO CONGRESS IN QUITO

For millions of common people in New York and New Jersey, Sandy has been a historic disaster, with leaving ruined, homeless or forced to live in the dark and cold indefinitely. Sandy was a historic event for the Wall Streeters (a term used loosely as many of them reside in midtown or in Connecticut) among us too. And now, courtesy of Bloomberg's Max Abelson, we see how some of them managed to (just barely) scrape through...

Ridin' the pipe...

Hugh Hendry: "I have resigned from the professional undertaking of coin flipping. I am not here to tell you where gold’s going to be. I have no idea. That’s my existentialism. I am a student of uncertainty, I have no idea where the stock market is going to be. So when I am creating trades in my portfolio for my clients, I am agnostic. I just want to enhance the probability that I make money come what may."

Two days ago we reported that the German Court of Auditors demanded that the German Central Bank, the Bundesbank, verify and audit its official gold holdings consisting of 3,396 tons, held mostly offshore, namely New York, London and Paris, at least according to official documents. It also called for repatriation of 150 tons in the next three years to perform a quality inspection of the tungsten gold. Today, in a surprising development, via the Telegraph we learn that none other than the same Bundesbank which is causing endless nightmares for all the other broke European nations due to its insistence for sound money, decided to voluntarily pull two thirds of its gold holdings held by the Bank of England. According to a confidential report referenced by the Telegraph, Buba reclaimed 940 tons, reducing its BOE holdings from 1,440 in 2000 to 500 in 2001 allegedly "because storage costs were too high." This is about as idiotic an excuse as the Fed cancelling its reporting of M3 in 2006 because "the costs of collecting the underlying data outweigh the benefits." So why did Buba repatriate its gold? Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has an idea...

Him, with his big foot in his mouth

I realize that the situation in Europe can be very confusing. Aside from the fact that we’re dealing with over 20 different countries all with their own respective economies and debt issues, we also have the European Central Bank and the numerous bailouts and bailout funds (the LTRO 1 and 2, the EFSF, the ESM and now the OMT) to keep track of.