Mary Schapiro

The big driver of market declines Friday was led by the Non-Farm Payrolls report. The jobs data was a dreadful miss which leads to the major “disconnect” we’ve been seeing between stock prices and overall economic data which we posted just last week. This is the nagging and confounding reality of the QE and ZIRP grand experiment for many investors.

When Mary Schapiro quit the laughing stock US stock market regulator, the only question was which Wall Street firm the latest SEC "revolving door" migrant would end up with, with most bets being on, naturally, Goldman and JPM. Today, to some surprise, the news hit that the former head of the internet porn-addicted regulator (which like clockwork always complains about its low budget: maybe get a refund for that bangbus.com subscription?) has decided to join none other than the revolving door extraordinaire consulting firm Promontory Financial. Per the WSJ: "Ms. Schapiro will work full-time in Promontory's office in Washington as a managing director leading the consulting firm's governance and markets practice and advising clients on risk management and compliance. Ms. Schapiro and a Promontory spokesman declined to say how much she will be paid in the new job." So who is Promontory? Nothing short of an "expert network" of all former government workers who having moved on, are willing to spill the beans about all the secrets of government operations... for a fee of between $1000 and $10,000 per hour. The chart below shows a sampling of all current and former employees of Promontory, explaining why it is a perfect fit for anyone intent on justifying the allegations of those who claim all the SEC does is provide a revolving door opportunity for ex-government workers.

• The revolving door continues: Mary Schapiro joins Promontory Financial (WSJ)
• First Peek at Health-Law Cost (WSJ)
• Abe warns over Japan inflation target: warns 2% inflation target may not be reached within two years (FT)
• BoJ's Kuroda tested by divided board (Reuters)
• Nanjing poultry butcher fourth person infected with H7N9 bird flu (SCMP)
• What time do top CEOs wake up? (Guardian)
• Cyprus Seeks More Time to Meet Targets in Talks With Troika (BBG)
• Investors Ignore Negativity at Their Peril (WSJ)
• Apple bows to Chinese pressure (FT)
• One can only laugh: North Korea to restart nuclear reactor in weapons bid (Reuters)
• Visa Demand Jumps (WSJ)
• Bloomberg's refutation of Stockman: yes, yes but... look over there, stocks are up! (BBG)

No, American Banks DON'T Need to Be Big to Compete with Bigger Foreign Rivals

• Here come the low margin products: Apple Tests Designs for TV (WSJ)
• Obama and Republicans Trade Offers to Avert Fiscal Crisis (BBG)
• Carney broaches dumping inflation target (FT)
• Bernanke Critics Can’t Fight Bonds Showing No Inflation (BBG)
• Corporate Taxes on Table in Cliff Talks (WSJ)
• US business chiefs back tax rise (FT)
• Greece Confident Bond Buyback Needed for Aid Succeeded (BBG)
• New Faith in Europe's Banks (WSJ)
• European Bank Sees Little Room for Rate Cuts (WSJ)
• North Korea Claims Success in Rocket Launch (WSJ)

Moments ago the SEC, with about a two year delay, decided to finally act tought, and in a parting present to the most ineffective and clueless chairman of the coopted and corrupt organization ever seen, that would be Mary Schapiro of course, lashed out at Chinese affiliates of Big Four accounting firms as well as BMO, for refusing to produce audit work papers and other documents related to China-based companies under investigation by the SEC for potential accounting fraud against U.S. investors. Of course, readers of Zero Hedge will recall what we dubbed the formation of a cottage industry exposing Chinese fraudcaps back in November of 2010 when we warned that virtually every reverse merger out of China will soon prove to be a fraud, but because of the listing fees that US exchanges would get as a result of local listing, nobody cared, and only that now extinct class of gullible and naive investors would lose their entire investments. It is now two years and one month later, and the SEC has finally acted on it.

• OECD slashes 2013 growth forecast (FT)
• Fiscal Cliff Compromise Elusive as Congress Returns (Bloomberg)
• China’s PBOC Chief Search Spurs Focus on Finance Regulators (Bloomberg)
• Elected, but Still Campaigning (WSJ)
• Pentagon Readies Options for Afghanistan Force After 2014 (Bloomberg)
• Greece Wins Easier Debt Terms as EU Hails Rescue Formula (Bloomberg)
• Monti presses Cameron for EU referendum (FT)
• Welcome, Mr Carney – Britain needs you (FT)
• Argentina seeks halt to $1.3bn debt order (FT)
• Asean chief warns on South China Sea disputes (FT)
• South Korea Tightens FX Rules to Temper Won Surge (WSJ)

Moments after Goldman completed the trifecta of controlling every major developed world central bank, with its tentacles now in charge of the Fed, the ECB and now the BOE, Obama announced his designee for the new head of the SEC. The name of Mary Schapiro's replacement: Elisse B. Walter, and no, she did not most recently work for Goldman. Yes. Shocking (for Gary Gensler). Oh, and don't worry Mary Schapiro. Nobody will shed any tears over your departure: perhaps if someone had known you were there even one day over the past 4 years this would be different.

We know many will be devastated by the loss of such a leading figure in the oversight and prosecution of fraud throughout our financial system...

• *SEC CHAIRMAN MARY SCHAPIRO TO STEP DOWN DECEMBER 14

In the interest of openness and fairness, please use this open forum to leave your farewell wishes for Ms. Schapiro as she heads into what we can only imagine is some influential position in compliance at a major sell-side financial institution.

About a month ago, in the third-quarter report of a Canadian global macro fund, its strategist made the interesting observation that “…Four ideas in particular have caught the fancy of economic policy makers and have been successfully sold to the public…” One of these ideas “…that has taken root, at least among the political and intellectual classes, is that one need not fear fiscal deficits and debt provided one has monetary sovereignty…”. This idea is currently growing, particularly after Obama’s re-election. But it was only after writing our last letter, on the revival of the Chicago Plan (as proposed in an IMF’ working paper), that we realized that the idea is morphing into another one among Keynesians: That because there cannot be a gold-to-US dollar arbitrage like in 1933, governments do indeed have the monetary sovereignty. It is not; and in the process of explaining why, we will also describe the endgame for the current crisis... "…We cannot arbitrage fiat money, but we can repudiate the sovereign debt that backs it! And that repudiation will be the defining moment of this crisis…"

...the pushback from Wall Street was intense and multi-pronged. The Blob oozed through the halls of government, seeking, through its glutinous embrace, to immobilize the legislative and regulatory apparatus, thereby preserving the status quo. The executive jets of the Wall Street air force flew sortie after sortie, transporting high-ranking emissaries from new York to Washington to meet with the SEC, [Senator Chris] Dodd and [Senator Richard] Shelby staff, and the staff of other senators on the Banking Committee. Some of the executives, no doubt less enthusiastically, even met with Josh and me. The research companies and market experts Wall Street employs also raised their voices against us. At times it got ugly. Ted was called a crackpot and dangerously uninformed. He was accused of “politicizing” market regulation (a strange notion considering he wasn’t running for election). It seemed as if Wall Street, which wasn’t used to someone on Capitol Hill asking in-depth questions about arcane issues, wished to silence or marginalize its critics. Industry people would always ask me, “What got Kaufman so interested in this stuff?” Used to politicians whose top priorities were to please their home-state business interests and raise money, they had trouble fathoming that Ted was so interested because it was the right thing to do. He believed in fair markets. And because he was genuinely concerned about emerging issues that threatened the stock market, where half of all Americans keep a sizable portion of their retirement savings.

Here are some common-sense rules for such a "new market":

1. Every offer and bid will be left up for 15 minutes and cannot be withdrawn until 15 minutes has passed.
2. Every security--stock or option--must be held for a minimum of one hour.
3. Every trade must be placed by a human being.
4. No equivalent of the ES/E-Mini contract--the futures contract for the S&P 500--will be allowed. The E-Mini contract is the favorite tool of the Federal Reserve's proxies, the Plunge Protection Team and other offically sanctioned manipulators, as a relatively modest sum of money can buy a boatload of contracts that ramp up the market.
5. All bids, offers and trades will be transparently displayed in a form and media freely available to all traders with a standard PC and Internet connection.
6. Any violation of #3 will cause the trader and the firm he/she works for to be banned from trading on the exchange for life--one strike, you're out.

Is such a retail-trader friendly exchange possible? There would certainly be a nice profit in it, for everyone who is tired of providing liquidity for HFT firms would flee the existing exchanges in a New York minute.

That the SEC is the most incompetent, corrupt, irrelevant and captured organization "serving" the US public is known by everyone. And while the details of the SEC's glaring lack of capacity to do anything to restore investor confidence in the capital markets, which has become a casino used exclusively by Wall Street to defraud any retail investor still stupid enough to play (which lately a moot point as there have been no material retail inflows into mutual funds in over three years), are scattered, courtesy of Bloomberg we now have the best summary of just how the utterly clueless SEC is a muppet plaything of Wall Street, and together with it, the "grand regulation" that was supposed to keep Wall Street in check, is nothing but what Wall Street demand it to be, and forced the SEC, way over its head on regulation, to accept every change, that the very banks that are supposed to be regulated, demands as part of Dodd-Frank reforms. In short: everything we know about Wall Street 'regulation' has been a farce, and a lie, exclusively thanks to corruption rampant at the now documentedly incompetent Securities And Exchange Commission.

• So Draghi was bluffing after all: ECB Said To Await German ESM Ruling Before Settling Plan (Bloomberg)
• German finance ministry studying "Grexit" costs (Reuters) - it would be bigger news if it wasn't
• Money Funds Test Geithner, Bernanke Resolve as Schapiro Defeated (Bloomberg)
• Top Merkel MP says Greek deal can't be renegotiated (Reuters)
• China Eyes Ways to Broaden Yuan's Use (WSJ)
• Armstrong ends fight against doping charges, to lose titles (Reuters) - Dopestrong?
• Need more socialism: Public confidence in France's Hollande slips (Reuters)
• Seoul court rules Samsung didn't violate Apple design (Reuters)
• France, Germany Unify Approach to Greek Talks (WSJ)
• Stevens Sees Mining Boom Peaking, RBA Ready to Act (Bloomberg)

Beginning in January of 2010, and continuing into July of this year, we explained how one of the most insidious attempts at capital controls undertaken by the authorities, namely to replace the $1.00 NAV method that money markets have employed since inception, forcing money markets to imposed capital buffers, and most importantly, to enact mandatory gating if and when the time comes for investors to withdraw their money when they so desired, was taking shape. In other words, to institute capital controls when it comes to money market funds. We already explained that the idea to kill money markets is not new, and originated at the Group of 30 many years ago (its members explain its interests vividly enough) , as an attempt to have investors voluntarily shift their capital allocation out of a liquid but very much inert from the fractional reserve banking system $2.7 trillion market into other liquid, but fractional banking levered markets such as stocks and bonds. In essence, this would generate an up to $2.7 trillion incremental demand as those invested in money markets would find it more "appealing" to keep their cash equivalents in the "security" of 150x P/E stocks like Amazon, or in the worst case, Treasury Bills. After all faced with the option of being "gated" or investing their money in other "non capital controlled" markets, one would be an idiot to pick the former. This is precisely what Mary Schapiro hoped would be the case when she put the vote to the SEC, only to find that she couldn't even get a majority to support her own proposal (which as a reminder was supported by two Fed presidents: uber doves Eric Rosengren of Boston and William Dudley of New York, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner) in her own co-opted house. It is also the reason one person decided to vote against Schapiro's proposal - Luis Aguilar. His explanation why he voted against money market fund capital controls is attached.