Rating Agency

When Standard & Poors is not engaged in "Puffery" (a defense which admits "our entire business model is worthless") it pretends to analyze credits and assign ratings, usually with both humorous and systematically catastrophic results. Just as it has done in the chart below. In the aftermath of the Detroit filing, one may be interested to see just how the rating agency, which had Greece rated at "A" months before the Eurozone's bananaest-republic member had its first bailout, evaluated America's various states since the start of the 21st century through 2012. Among the best: Florida. Worst: California. Michigan, whose main city just went bankrupt: AA-. And with countless cross-default provisions and collateral waterfalls upon a multi-notch downgrade, one can be certain that as reality finally comes to the muni space with roughly a 3 years delay, that this too will have a happy ending.

"In the last week of June, the dollar value represented by ARM applications accounted for 16 percent of mortgage requests, the highest share since July 2008, two months before Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed, according to Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington." Oops.

There is more to this Ponzi than meets the eye...

Yesterday, in a widely leaked move, the ECB announced it was lowering haircut higher rated collateral (and rising haircuts on lower rated collateral) for European banks in a move that is supposed to ease credit channels in Europe and boost lending. But will it? And what is the impact on actual eligible collateral as a result of this move. According to Goldman analysis, the impact of the ECB's move is virtually non-existent (but then why do it?) or 0.1% to be specific. Specifically, what yesterday's announcement does is boost the pool of eligible collateral, estimated at €15 trillion, by €20 billion.

With little going on today besides the just reported GE earnings, which beat consensus EPS expectations of $0.35 by the smallest possible increment but, as expected, missed consensus revenue of $35.56 printing at $35.12, and both the Japanese (which experienced a 500 point drop in minutes overnight) and Chinese (which closed below 2000 again) markets sliding, it is perhaps better to summarize the day that just was: Detroit City files for bankruptcy (send in Detroika!), Moody's take the US off negative outlook, Google and Microsoft miss on earnings and the S&P 500 hits a new record high. As DB says, the above certainly made for an eventful close to the US session after what was a fairly dull second day of testimony and Q&A for Bernanke. He has said all that can be said for now and we're left waiting for the data. And the earnings data so far has been abysmal if mostly on the top line, with corporate revenues now assured to double dip and decline for the second quarter in a row. And if the tech bellwethers all of which have been major disappointments to date and have guided down, are an indication of what is coming, Q3 may and will be even worse.

Just in case there was any question if a thousand monkeys armed with iPads could not only give Moody's a run for the money (even without leaking LBO information to the highest bidder) but solidly trash Uncle Warren's rating agency, the following statement should put any doubts to rest: "The bankruptcy filing by Detroit is a credit negative, Moody's Investors Service said on Thursday, because it creates uncertainty for bondholders, will likely interrupt payments on general obligation and limited tax bonds, and begins a process that may span years." That this statement comes from the same rating agency which concurrently with the Detroit bankruptcy raised its outlook on the US (a/k/a established a DOJ litigation reserve) due to, among other things, the "secure status of US dollars" is not surprising at all.

Just more meangingless drivel form a clueless, paid for rating agency (which recently disclosed it would plead "puffery" in its defense against the US lawsuit) now that the ECB is intent on actually lowering the EURUSD, because unlike last year, there is no (immediate) fear of redenomination risk as a result of a sliding EURUSD. Thank you Japanese carry trade.

Tonight out of Bloomberg: ": "China’s money-market cash squeeze is likely to reduce credit growth this year by 750 billion yuan ($122 billion), an amount equivalent to the size of Vietnam’s economy, according to a Bloomberg News survey. The number is the median estimate of 15 analysts, whose projections last week ranged from cuts of 20 billion yuan to 3 trillion yuan"... Two weeks ago from Zero Hedge: "The country is about to undergo an unprecedented deleveraging that could amount to over CNY1 trillion in order to force reallocate capital in a more efficient basis. That's right: a massive deleveraging coming dead ahead in China just in time to shock the market still reeling from the threat of the Fed's tapering." And here is the reason why.

Why did the U.S. government spend 2.6 million dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly?  Why did the U.S. government spend $175,587 "to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior"?  Why did the U.S. government spend nearly a million dollars on a new soccer field for detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay?  This week when we saw that the IRS was about to pay out 70 million dollars in bonuses to their employees and that the U.S. government was going to be leaving 7 billion dollars worth of military equipment behind in Afghanistan, it caused us to reflect on all of the other crazy ways that the government has been wasting our money in recent years.  So we decided to go back through my previous articles and put together a list.  We call it "The Waste List".

• Global shares pummeled, dollar slumps as rout gathers pace (Reuters)
• Hong Kong to Handle NSA Leaker Extradition Based on Law (BBG)
• Lululemon chairman sold $50 million in stock before CEO's surprise departure (Reuters)
• Companies scramble for consumer data (FT)
• Traders Pay for an Early Peek at Key Data (WSJ)
• When innovation dies: Apple looking at bigger iPhone screens, multiple colors (Reuters)
• Washington pushed EU to dilute data protection (FT)
• Japan-U.S. drill to retake remote island kicks off (Japan Times)
• EM economies in danger of overheating, World Bank says (FT)
• Don't forget the Indian crisis: Chidambaram seeks to quell concerns over rupee (FT)

Obviously with Buffett a major shareholder of Moody's, the only place where a downgrade of Berkshire could come from was S&P. Moments ago, the rating agency that dared to downgrade the US for which it is being targeted by Eric Holder's Department of "Justice", did just that.

With home prices rising at near-record paces in SoCal, corporate debt yields at record-lows, equity markets surging at near-record rates, and high quality assets dwindling by the minute under the heel of a central bank jack boot; it is perhaps no surprise that investors have switched from finding leverage through the balance sheet (i.e. crappy quality firms) to finding leverage through the instrument (i.e. structured credit). The trouble this time is that yields (and spreads) being so low, the creators of the new-normal ABS, CDOs, and CLOs have to stoop to the old tricks to make their money (as we noted here). As Bloomberg reports, bond issuers are once again exploiting the credit rating agency pay-for-performance business model to create "high-quality" collateralizable assets from utter garbage - such as auto loans.

An attempt to look ahead at the drivers of the capital markets in the week ahead.

While most of the US was in deep REM sleep, the Germany stock index, the DAX, had a flashback to May 2010: starting at 3:44 am EDT, in the span of 6 minutes or much faster than the gradual drop that led to the US flash crash from three years ago, the DAX went from well and solidly-bid to having zero liquidity... and dumping nearly 200 points in the process. Whether it was rumors of a (subsequently validated) rating agency downgrade, or just an algo testing its quote stuffing ability, the moves showed vividly that when the current rosy paradigm shifts abruptly and violently, all those hoping to be the first out of the door and hit the sell button, simply won't be able to do so. Because sadly there is no such thing as a free "4 year long zero volume levitation" - one must always pay the piper in the end.

Yes, there was economic news overnight, such as a Eurozone and UK CPI, both of which came in line with expectations (1.7% and 0.4% respectively), and a German ZEW which confirmed Europe's accelerating deterioration, tumbling from 48.5 to 36.3, far below expectations of a 41.0 print (somehow the huge miss has managed to push the EURUSD up by 60 pips to an overnight high of 1.31 but this is merely the pre-US open manipulation to ramp US equities higher), just as there was news that Angela Merkel's support for a Cyprus bailout is growing (was there an alternative?), and that as part of their ongoing investigation into Italy's repeatedly insolvent Monte Paschi, investigators had seized €1.8 billion worth of assets from Nomura Holdings, and that Spain as usual sold more Bills than expected, driven by oversize Japanese and Pension Fund purchases, but what everyone has been looking for is whether the relentless and record rout in gold is over. For now, it appears that is the case, with gold printing an overnight low of just over $1320 and ramping higher ever since, up 3% so far and rising.