RBC Capital Markets

January's hopium catchphrase of the month was that Europe's recession would be "technical" which is simply a euphemism for our Fed's beloved word - "transitory." Based on the just released Euroarea PMI, we can scratch this Euro-accented "transitory" addition to the lexicon, because contrary to expectations that the Euroarea composite PMI would show expansion at 50.5, instead it came out at 49.7 - the manufacturing PMI was 49.0 on Exp of 49.4, while the Services PMI was 49.4, on hopes of expansion at 50.6, which as Reuters notes suggests that firms are still cutting prices to drum up business and reducing workforces to cut costs. This was accompanied by a overnight contraction in China, where the flash manufacturing PMI rose modestly from 48.8, but was again in contraction at 49.7. We would not be surprised if this is merely the sacrifice the weakest lamb in the pack in an attempt to get crude prices lower. So far this has failed to dent WTI much if at all following rapidly escalating Iran tensions. What is curious is that Germany and France continue to do far better than the rest of the Eurozone - just as America has decoupled from Europe, so apparently have Germany and France. This too is surely "sustainable."

All you need to read.

It took Europe two days to go from fixed to fully broken all over again. Those curious why they are waking up to a see of red, Italian 10 Year yields back over 7%, stock futures tumbling, the EUR/$ sliding, Italian, French and Belgian CDS at fresh records, and a record scramble for Bund short-dated bonds (2 Year under 0.030%) is due to two main things: a failed Spanish auction now that contagion is back to sleepy Iberia, which sold €3.2 billion of bills, below the €3.5 billion target, with the yield soaring to 5.02% from 3.61% at Oct. auction leading to Spanish 2-, 10-yr yield spreads to Germany both significantly wider to records.  The second main factor is the realization that Mario Monti is not the second coming and will in fact face major resistance to form a government. Bloomberg reports: "Monti, a former European Union competition commissioner, struggled to get political parties to agree to participate in his so-called technical Cabinet during talks in Rome yesterday. A government lacking political representation will find it harder to muster support from the parties in parliament to pass unpopular laws. Monti said he’ll conclude his talks today." And if Monti can't do it, nobody can. Which explains why the fulcrum European security, the Italian 10 year BTPs, just fell off a cliff, and is now yielding back over 7% at a euro price of under 85 cents. This could well be crunch time: there are no more magic rabbits in the hat, or deus ex prime minister resignations in the hat for Italy.

Italian borrowing costs reached breaking point on Wednesday after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's promise to resign failed to raise optimism about the country's ability to deliver on long-promised economic reforms.

Italian 10-year bond yields shot above the 7 percent level that is widely deemed unsustainable, reflecting investors' concerns that they may not get their money back, a fear that also showed up in a jump in the cost of insuring against Italian debt default.

When sharing our perspective last night on why the alleged MF Global crime of commingling client capital with the firm's deficiency capital we asked, "What happens next? Why customers at all other brokerages, all other exchanges, afraid that their money will suffer the same fate as MF, even if they transact with perfect solvent clearers and agents, will proceed to pull their money, as they know they have nobody to trust but their own prudent and forward looking actions. Which in turn will start the kind of liquidity drain that killed not only Lehman, but froze money markets, and with that brought the complete capital markets to a standstill, only to be thawed after the Fed pledged multiples of the US GDP to rescue Wall Street in October of 2008." Sure enough, here it comes. "Reports of short falls of client money ... if true would be a disaster for all the smaller brokers and banks as nobody will trust them anymore," one London trader said. Reuters continues "MF Global filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, putting a sudden end to Corzine's drive to transform the more than 200-year old MF Global into a mini Goldman by taking on more risky bets on euro zone sovereign debt. In Australia, trading in grain futures and options was suspended by bourse operator ASX Ltd , prompting concerns about the integrity of the country's agricultural futures market. "We're sitting out here with risk that we can't cover," said Jonathan Barratt, head of Sydney-based Commodity Broking Services. MF Global was one of the largest participants in the country's agricultural futures market. And it is all only going to get worse as the liquidity outflow avalanche is realized, following the market's most recent distraction with Europe.

Despite another round of unsubstantiated rumormongering by the FT yesterday (more on this in a second), investors in this morning's critical round of Italian bond issuance were nonplussed and demanded 10 pounds of flash with every bond, which in turn sent 5 year BTP yields to the highest since the introduction of the zEURo. If the purpose of the planted Debtwire/FT story was to make this auction attractive, one can only conclude that it failed. The result is yet another"Europe is Open" type market session, where everything is tumbling on Greek default and contagion fear, further stoked by a front-page WSJ story which says what we have been warning about every single day for the past 3 weeks (those pretty Libor charts that go from the lower left to the upper right are not just there to make the place pretty): namely that banks, in this case French mega institution BNP, no longer have access to dollar funding markets. The result: yet another increase in the actual 3M USD Libor rate, nearly the 40th day in a row, which in turn makes the dollar lock out even more painful. From the WSJ: ""We can no longer borrow dollars. U.S. money-market funds are not lending to us anymore," a bank executive for BNP Paribas, who declines to be named, told me last week. "Since we don't have access to dollars anymore, we're creating a market in euros. This is a first. . . . we hope it will work, otherwise the downward spiral will be hell. We will no longer be trusted at all and no one will lend to us anymore. He's not the only one worried. Société Générale has lost 22.5% of its value since the beginning of the summer. In early September, BNP released a statement—in English, which is highly unusual—explaining that it has abundant dollar liquidity and that BNP has nothing to worry about, unlike other banks. France's three biggest banks have been the subject of whisper campaigns about their solvency throughout the summer." It gets worse: "Now that the situation is bordering on catastrophe, analysts are suggesting that the government is set to start nationalizing France's banks. The banks have remained silent on the matter, and the government denies this talk." Well, whatever good will the FT tried to create with its rumors,the WSJ destroyed with its facts.

The soundbite response from Wall Street on the latest GDP disappointment is, as expected, decidedly not bullish.

Change in Non-Farm Payrolls M/M 117K vs. Exp. 85K (Prev. 18K)
Change in Private Payrolls (Jul) M/M 154K vs. Exp. 113K (Prev. 57K)
Change in Manufacturing Payrolls (Jul) M/M 24K vs. Exp. 10K (Prev. 6K)
US Average Hourly Earnings (Jul) M/M 0.4% vs. Exp. 0.2% (Prev. 0.0%)
US Unemployment Rate (Jul) M/M 9.1% vs. Exp. 9.2% (Prev. 9.2%)

More coming as soon as bls.gov actually comes up

Joining the Manufacturing ISM in the disappointment column is the just released Non-Manufacturing ISM which printed at 52.7 below consensus of 53.5, down from 53.3 previously. This is the lowest reading since January 2010. The employment index dropped from 54.1 to 52.5, the New Orders index missed contractionary territory barely at 51.7 down from 53.6, and lastly, the Prices Paid was down from 60.9 to 56.6, potentially opening up the way for QE3, even more that is. Elsewhere, June factory orders dropped by 0.8% in line with expectations, down from 0.6%, meaning no dramatic revisions to the already abysmal Q2 GDP, and Durable Goods was revised from -2.1% to -1.9%. Altogether another ugly economic data set, with the bounce in stocks most likely dictated by even higher QE3 expectations.

Make no mistake, something big is afoot behind the rhetoric and political talking points being thrown around by the White House and the GOP. That something will be some means of letting the banks get through this period without getting crushed.

As was announced before, Sprott's PHYS fund (which previously had not disclosed terms of its offering) has just priced 19 million units at $14.00/unit for a total raise of $266 million, all of which will go to removing another 5 tonnes of physical gold out of the broader lendable circulation.

The Trust will use the net proceeds of this Offering to acquire physical gold bullion in accordance with the Trust's objective and subject to the Trust's investment and operating restrictions described in the prospectus related to this Offering. Under the trust agreement governing the Trust, the net proceeds of the Offering per unit must be not less than 100% of the most recently calculated net asset value per Unit of the Trust prior to, or upon determination of, pricing of the offering.

Courtesy of the recently declassified Fed discount window documents, we now know that the biggest beneficiaries of the Fed's generosity during the peak of the credit crisis were foreign banks, among which Belgium's Dexia was the most troubled, and thus most lent to, bank. Having been thus exposed, many speculated that going forward the US central bank would primarily focus its "rescue" efforts on US banks, not US-based (or local branches) of foreign (read European) banks: after all that's what the ECB is for, while the Fed's role is to stimulate US employment and to keep US inflation modest. And furthermore, should the ECB need to bail out its banks, it could simply do what the Fed does, and monetize debt, thus boosting its assets, while concurrently expanding its excess reserves thus generating fungible capital which would go to European banks. Wrong. Below we present that not only has the Fed's bailout of foreign banks not terminated with the drop in discount window borrowings or the unwind of the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, but that the only beneficiary of the reserves generated were US-based branches of foreign banks (which in turn turned around and funnelled the cash back to their domestic branches), a shocking finding which explains not only why US banks have been unwilling and, far more importantly, unable to lend out these reserves, but that anyone retaining hopes that with the end of QE2 the reserves that hypothetically had been accumulated at US banks would be flipped to purchase Treasurys, has been dead wrong, therefore making the case for QE3 a done deal. In summary, instead of doing everything in its power to stimulate reserve, and thus cash, accumulation at domestic (US) banks which would in turn encourage lending to US borrowers, the Fed has been conducting yet another stealthy foreign bank rescue operation, which rerouted $600 billion in capital from potential borrowers to insolvent foreign financial institutions in the past 7 months. QE2 was nothing more (or less) than another European bank rescue operation!

The Philly Fed, which was expected to rise from the April number of 18.5 to 20, instead collapsed to 3.9! This compares to the March level of over 43. So much for the "Economic Recovery"^TM. The survey’s broadest measure of manufacturing conditions, the diffusion index of current activity, decreased from 18.5 in April to 3.9, its lowest reading since last October (see Chart) and the 3rd largest 2 month drop on record. The demand for manufactured goods, as measured by the current new orders index, showed a similar slowing: The index fell 13 points while the shipments index declined 23 points; both remained positive, however, suggesting slight growth last month. For the first time in eight months, firms reported that unfilled orders and delivery times were falling—both indexes were slightly negative this month." And even thought the prices paid dropped from 57.1 to 48.3, this was little solace for survey respondents: "A majority of firms continued to cite input price pressures and a sizable share of firms reported higher prices for their own manufactured goods again this month." Time for Tim Geithner's 2011 NYT OpEd edition, titled appropriately, "Welcome to the Economic Stagflation." And, oh yes, bring on the QE3.

As competition that is as inevitable as gravity itself both validates our contrarian thesis and causes Research in Motion’s stock to imitate amateur base jumpers, sans parachute…