ratings

With Washington throwing its full faith and credit behind a new Ukrainian bond issue, it appears it’s time for Moscow to play spoiler to current debt restructuring talks between Kiev and its creditors. Russia holds some $3 billion of Ukraine's debt and doesn't think it should have to incur losses as part of any deal because Vladimir Putin is no average joe private creditor.

*FISCHER SAYS RATE LIFTOFF LIKELY WARRANTED BEFORE END-2015

With the world now convinmced that Janet Yellen is as dovish as she has ever been on rate hikes, today comes the first post-FOMC speech. None other than Vice-chair Stanley Fischer is due to address The Economic Club of New York on the topic of "Monetary-policy lessons and the way ahead." As Art Cashin warned this morning, Fischer "seems to feel that the Fed must raise rates this year. He is also the only Fed official to concede that any rate hike will be different than any seen before."

Fraud grows in good times because rescission is rarely sought (or granted) when asset values rise. Fraud is not a problem, till it is.

The people of Venezuela can rejoice... not so fast. Amid paranoid-sounding (though not unlikely) rantings about US-created coups (and blaming 'economic' war for his nation's Socialist utopia hyperinflation), it appears President Maduro just got another life-line (or more rope to hang himself). After begging China's leader Xi early in January for moar money (and getting it), China - which is already Venezuela's biggest creditor with over $50 billion loaned since 2007 - as Reuters reports, is said to plan on signing another $5bn loan to Venezuela for "wide-ranging" projects like "mature oil fields." So, it appears China is enabling Maduro to hollow out his economy even more.

Goldman is so confident in the upside for shares of company which "saves lives" by helping cars drive themselves that the bank sells 4.6 million shares to muppets. 

Santander, fresh off the largest auto repossession-related settlement in history, finds voracious demand for a $712 million ABS deal backed by loans made to buyers classified as "deep" subprime.

Moments ago we got confirmation that the next domino from the appearance of the Austrian black swan has tipped over, following a Reuters report that Germany's deposit protection fund will take over the property lender Duesseldorfer Hypothekenbank AG (DuesselHyp), which has "run into problems" due to its exposure to Austrian lender Hypo Alpe Adria's "bad bank" Heta.

"Central banks are not all singing and all dancing," and cannot avoid the consequences of what they are doing, concluding, "you and I have got grandstand seats here [to an imminent market shock]," and investors are about to "find out just how illiquid it really is out there."

"...we have now graded two years worth of Cramer’s picks: those made from January 2011 through December 2012. That amounts to 552 calls overall, of which 254 outperformed the index (46% hit rate). On average, Cramer’s picks returned -0.08% versus the 1.35% S&P 500 return over the corresponding period. That amounts to 142 basis points of quarterly underperformance, or 568 basis points on an annualized basis, which amounts to an F grade in our grading system."

Austria’s decision to wind down Heta Asset Resolution AG sent ripples through the financial system, causing credit rating downgrades in Austria and bank losses in Germany: "It’s a mini-Greece going off in the heartlands of Europe." Here are some of the consequences, and delightful ironies, of a completely unexpected black swan landing in the south of Austria.

When we parsed the newly released 2009 Fed transcripts yesterday we were too busy looking to uncover things like a previously unreported plan to create a bad bank to look for signs of central planner levity, but fortunately, the research department at Bloomberg was looking for the important stuff. Thanks to their efforts we have the official Fed Chuckle Count for 2009.

It’s not that long ago, in 2001, that Jim O’Neill, then still with Goldman Sachs, coined the term BRICs, for the fast emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China. O’Neill saw a global power shift from the west to these four nations happening. Fast forward to today, and we see Russia under multiple attacks, including economic ones, from the west, as India just announced the second rate cut this year and China is attempting controlled demolition of the possibly biggest financial bubble in the history of the world. And Brazil? If anything, it’s falling even faster off its pedestal than the other three nations.

Just a day after Blackrock saw its biggest Bond ETF outflows in history ($525.8 million pulled on Monday), Actavis sold $21 billion of almost-junk 'BBB-' rated debt (at a minsicule yield of only 3.5%) in the 2nd largest bond issuance ever (2nd only to Verizon's massive $49 billion deal in 2013). The issue was oversubscribed 4.5x (around $90bn in the order book) as a ten-part offering varying from 18-month floaters to 30Y fixeds all went off below guidance. With Treasury liquidty disappearing fast, one wonders just how much rate-locking on this massive deal was responsible for a net short overhang on the Treasury complex the last few days...

Fake orders, fake customers... And that's just the beginning! Completing the bizarro circle, one can now buy classes on Alibaba that teach you how to fake Alibaba customers!

The deterioration in the subprime auto market is perhaps the clearest sign yet that we have learned literally nothing from the crisis years. That is, this is precisely the same dynamic and it will end precisely the same way: defaults will rise, investors in assets backed by these loans will suffer outsized losses, and the assets themselves will become completely illiquid.