Middle East

Syria and Iran are, in a way, the first dominos in a long chain of terrible events.  This chain, as chaotic as it seems, leads to only one end result:  Third world status for almost every country on the planet, including the U.S., leaving the financial institutions, like monetary grim reapers, to swoop in and gather up the pieces that remain to be fashioned into a kind of Frankenstein economy.  A fiscal golem.  A global monstrosity that removes all sovereignty whether real or imagined and centralizes the decision making processes of humanity into the hands of a morally bankrupt few. The only people celebrating at the end of the calamitous hostilities will be the hyper-moneyed power addicted .01%, who will celebrate their global coup in private, laughing as the rest of the world burns itself out, and comes begging them for help.

Gold’s remonetisation in the international financial and monetary system continues.  LCH.Clearnet, the world's leading independent clearing house, said yesterday that it will accept gold as collateral for margin cover purposes starting in just one week - next Tuesday August 28th. LCH.Clearnet is a clearing house for major international exchanges and platforms, as well as a range of OTC markets. As recently as 9 months ago, figures showed that they clear approximately 50% of the $348 trillion global interest rate swap market and are the second largest clearer of bonds and repos in the world. In addition, they clear a broad range of asset classes including commodities, securities, exchange traded derivatives, CDS, energy and freight. The development follows the same significant policy change from CME Clearing Europe, the London-based clearinghouse of CME Group Inc. (CME), announced last Friday that it planned to accept gold bullion as collateral for margin requirements on over-the-counter commodities derivatives.  It is interesting that both CME and now LCH.Clearnet Group have both decided to allow use of gold as collateral next Tuesday - August 28th. It suggests that there were high level discussions between the world’s leading clearing houses and they both decided to enact the measures next Tuesday.  It is likely that they are concerned about ‘event’ risk, systemic and monetary risk and about a Lehman Brothers style crisis enveloping the massive, opaque and unregulated shadow banking system.

We're doomed, doomed, I tell you. 

Two days ago, historian Niall Fergsuon had the temerity to voice a personal opinion, one which happens to not exactly jive with the rest of the media's take on current events, on the cover page of Newsweek (Newsweek is still in print?) titled, succinctly enough, "Hit the road Barack: Why we need a new president." The response was fast, furious, and brutal, particularly emanating from what Ferguson has dubbed the "liberal blogosphere." Naturally in an election year, said blogosphere has much CPM-generating rumination to do (after all who knows what happens to all those ad revenues if the US corporate base implodes and all that cash on the sidelines stays there due to "policy uncertainty"), so Ferguson merely provided the chum in the water (once the time comes to pick up the calculators again after the presidential election, things will immediately quiet down but until then there is, sadly, at least two more months of ever rising cacophony). So did Ferguson back off having said his piece? Hell no. In fact, he has just made sure that the "liberal blogosphere" is will be burning the midnight oil for weeks to come engaged in completely meaningless point-counterpoint between itself and the historian, when, in reality nothing changes the simple fact that come August 2016, the US will have a simply idiotic 130%+ debt/GDP completely independent of who is in the White House, or in other words, there very well may not be another presidential election. For now, however, we have much needed bread and circuses. Below is Ferguson's just released interview from Bloomberg TV in which he responds to the salient accusations that have been leveled at him (a more essayistic version can be found here).

Whether its 'Trade' Wars or 'Real' Wars, tensions appear to be escalating at an increasing clip around the world. The AP is reporting that Israeli officials say Egypt is violating their 1979 peace treaty by deploying tanks in the demilitarized Sinai desert, which borders Israel.

Why Do They Need So Much Ammunition?

While the geopolitical focus is once again all over Iran and Israel, it may be time to take a quick look Egypt, where the recently elected, and pro-US president Mohamed Mursi is "preparing to use aircraft and tanks in Sinai for the first time since the 1973 war with Israel in its offensive against militants in the border area." Reuters continues: "The plans to step up the operation were being finalised by Egypt's newly appointed Defence Minister General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as he made his first visit to Sinai on Monday following the killing of 16 border guards on August 5. Egypt blamed the attack on Islamist militants and the conflict is an early test for President Mohamed Mursi - elected in June following the overthrow last year of Hosni Mubarak - to prove he can rein in militants on the border with Israel. "Al-Sisi will supervise the putting together of final plans to strike terrorist elements using aircraft and mobile rocket launchers for the first time since the beginning of the operation," an Egyptian security source said. Another security source said the army was planning to attack and besiege al-Halal mountain in central Sinai, using weapons including tanks, where militants were suspected to be hiding." Of course, what can possibly go wrong in the middle east once a government decides to escalate military expansion against militant terrorists. Look for crude to rise ever higher, and for SPR release rumors to hit the tape daily as yet another market is ensnared in price controls ahead of the election.

No, He Didn’t Say That!

Gold continued gains on Friday receiving a boost from Angela Merkel’s comments saying she supported ‘Super’ Mario Draghi’s pledge “to do whatever it takes” to save the euro. While this sentiment lifted markets and some investors hope ECB action is sooner rather than later - it is also creates the risk of currency debasement and could lead to further falls in the euro. At the beginning of August, the European Central Bank said that it might buy Spanish bonds if the government first applied for the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) support. The ECB has said that specific committees within the bank would design the appropriate mechanisms for the bond purchases in the coming weeks, suggesting a possible green light within a few weeks.

The vital question of the moment is whether of not The Bernank will signal an intention of moving towards QE3 in his much-anticipated 'Jackson Hole' conference in two weeks. Citi's Tom Fitzpatrick believes "it would be irresponsible to do so and that we need a more 'responsible fiscal policy' which will not materialize as long as we have an 'irresponsible monetary policy' bailing policymakers out". However, what we think in this regard is totally irrelevant to this discussion for it is what we think the Fed thinks that is critical. Recent data seems to have been a little more supportive of the economy (on the face of it) and may lead the Fed to stay on hold in the near term (September meeting). This will almost certainly raise the bar extremely high for further easing as we head into the Presidential race proper. If this window closes then a move before December will be extremely unlikely barring a major financial/market/economic shock, since after the 9/13 meeting, there are no more meetings until 12/12. However this increases the danger of the Fed getting 'caught behind the curve' which must be balanced with the 'mistake' of one-monetary-step-too-far with very real inflationary consequences.

Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water of shark-infested algos; just as we hit multi-year equity index highs (with the entire interest rate complex devastatingly divergent still - despite very-recent weakness), we thought it might be at least a little instructive to remember what happened in the late 1970s as analog. These 3 simple charts of Consumer Confidence, Capacity Utilization, and Initial Jobless Claims show just what can happen when you think it's all over. While there are many 'goal-seeked' analogs, we find these extremely timely given the somewhat similar underlying conditions that the world faces; to wit, Citi notes: "A Middle East 'tinderbox' that is very susceptible to a food price shock and a likely cause of an Oil price shock (as we saw in 1973-1974 and again in 1978-1979)."

Think the US has it bad with its "soaring" gas price, which is now back to $3.75 per gallon? Think again. Here, courtesy of Bloomberg, is a list of the countries whose gasoline cost puts what Americans pay at the pump to shame. In order of descending gas prices, below are the 20 places in the world where one does not want to "fill 'er up."

It is just getting stupid. Europe officially enters recession, Japan GDP declines nominally, China admits to food inflation which locks the PBOC out of easing for months, UK inflation is again rising faster than expected which will soon force the BOE to reevaluate its latest easing episode, Brent is once again rising on supply fears and middle east war fears to a 3 month high, corporate revenues have never been worse in this recession cycle and what happens? Futures spike following a very visible invisible finger pushing ES higher by 0.5% at 9 pm Eastern and setting the scene for trading throughout the night. And since the market has reverted back to full retard mode full of hope of an absolution from the Fed, this time at the August 31 Jackson Hole meeting, which will be very disappointing as Ben will say absolutely nothing yet again, why not take the S&P to new 2012 highs? After all well over 100% of QE3 is now priced in. Finally, expect the ES to surge by 10 points should advance retail sales miss wildly the consensus of a +0.3% print. After all, inverted is the NKI.

It is important to note that markets were also unusually calm during the two weeks of the Chinese Olympics in 2008. The 2008 Summer Olympic Games took place slightly later in August than the London Olympics – starting August 8 and ending August 24. Only days after the ending of the Chinese Olympics came massive market volatility in September and then seven months of market turmoil.  Similarly to this Olympic year, in Olympic year 2008, gold traded sideways to down in a period of consolidation prior to further gains. Gold bottomed in September 2008 in euro and sterling terms.  Another brief bout of dollar strength saw gold bottom in November 2008 in dollar terms.  Besides the eurozone crisis (and the significant risk of the German Constitutional Court deciding on September 12th to reject the recently cobbled together alphabet soup response to the crisis (ESM etc etc) and significant instability in the Middle East, there is also the not inconsequential risk from the US Presidential campaign and the upcoming ‘fiscal cliff’.

European equities are trading flat to minor positive territory at the North American crossover having pared losses made following the weaker than expected Japanese Q2 preliminary GDP and reports from Chinese press that China's RRR cut might have been postponed as the People's Bank of China's reverse repo activity still satisfies liquidity needs. Elsewhere, Bank of America cut China's growth forecast from 7.7% to 8.0% for the year, commenting that the country's ability for monetary easing was constrained by house prices. Volumes have been particularly thin, however, and as there is no economic data scheduled for release from the US, it is likely to stay that way. Greek Q2 advanced GDP surprised markets, contracting at a slower pace year-over-year than Q1 and than was expected, boosting risk appetite across the board. As such, Spanish and Italian spreads are seen tighter by 12.6bps and 9.1bps respectively, with the Spanish 10-year yield holding below the key 7% and the Italian's under 6% despite the Italian government debt coming in at a record high of EUR 1972.9bln.