recovery

We have gotten to a point where each country is trying to talk down its own economy in a pursuit of having the worst (DXY constituent) currency. Yesterday it was Bernanke warning about future growth prospects, last night it was Japan, and today it is Goldman Sachs, which is claiming that the economy is really worse than expected. What is the point of all this rhetoric: simple. In the current stock market bubble where the only driving force is the strength, or rather, weakness, of any given underlying currency (read- dollar), and where inflation and deflation pressures are inverted, such that a weak dollar would cause a market melt up, and thus, inflation spillover from overpriced stocks into commodities and other products, the only way to stimulate inflation is to posture having the weakest economy. Whether that is in fact "weakest" or merely most debt-laden, with worthless CRE, housing and other 'assets' serving as collateral on bank balance sheets, we leave to much smarter analysts such as Dick Bove and Meredith Whitney.

While Bernanke is criticizing the banks one the one hand, Bernanke is patting the banks on the back with the other hand and giving them a big wink.

In this interview with CNBC on Nov. 4, 2009, Dr. Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University and chairman of RGE Monitor, cautions investors of the coming asset bubble and crash caused by the dollar carry trade, and at the same time shared his views on the economy and housing.

This is the second time in many weeks that Dr. Roubini warned of a growing dollar carry trade and threatening to cause a global implosion. The following is a summary of his CNBC interview along with my comments.

The sudden surge of optimism regarding the global economy resulted in the massive reduction in the costs of sovereign debt insurance. While the drop is not a surprise, the reasoning and the actions behind it surely are.

The rally in global stock markets has helped fuel the partial recovery in OECD pension assets but it will take years before these assets fully recover. Why? Because given the low bond yields throughout the developed world, it is unrealistic to expect stocks to continue rising at this blistering pace. Moreover, the fundamentals suggest the recovery will be more modest than what is currently priced in.

Some Mutual Assured Destruction, Friday edition, courtesy of CIT: $35 billion in estimated General Unsecured Claims recovering between $2 and $13 billion if company is "forced" to file for bankruptcy.

Art Cashin shares some of his as always pragmatic market views this morning: "Yesterday was a good day for bulls and a great day for hat makers." And on the 10,000 cross: "there was some artificially induced euphoria... It's only about the 29th time we've crossed 10,000 so it's not that significant - we did it 10 years ago." And on the most important issue: "The economy is just not living up to these numbers."

As for Joe Kernan's question on "who is trying to talk the market up" - we didn't know CNBC also did slapstick comedy.

So Does the Future Look as Good as the Past? Not in a million years. The Bubble fuelled car sales numbers of 2000-2007 now look to be permanently relegated to the rearview mirror. Since March 2009, amidst all the cries of a V-shaped economic recovery and a booming stock market, car sales have lagged badly. For almost all months of 2009, with the exception of July and August U.S. car SAAR has been stuck in the mid to high 9’s, their lowest levels in a decade. Now that the July-August cash for clunkers is gone, car sales are trending back to their low 9’s trajectory.

Does all this mean the W-recovery is off the table? Not necessarily. What it means is that there is a lot of liquidity in the system that will spur another asset bubble. And we all know that asset bubbles do not end well.

Just don't tell that to delinquent loans: now at 9.24% of all loans.

And thus the original question is how quickly can the accumulated corporate cash buffer be converted into revenue growth? It seems companies don't really care to answer that: the growth will come from "elsewhere" they will be happy to announce, and refer you to the GDP - where all "growth" comes from transfer payments, and other fictitious items indicating "growth" yet all those merely do is sucker more and more people into the stock market at bubble valuations (why are not more companies doing follow on offerings, absent REITs of course? Is it because institutional stock managers know that valuations, which this is all really about, are simply insane?). Absent some investment in CapEx you can kiss your V-shaped revenue (and thus earnings) recovery goodbye. But who honestly cares about how a stable economy works any more when you have trillions in excess liquidity provided by Bernanke Capital LLC?

"So on we go, riding the wave of yet another recovery fueled by stimulus. They work great,
until they don’t; sadly, the MSCI World Equity index trails money market fund returns since
1989, when Fed policy began in earnest to solve investment bubbles gone wrong by setting the
real cost of money to zero. Today, a sober view argues for a portfolio with moderate exposure to global markets, but with a close eye on the fissures which did not exist at the inception of prior bull markets (e.g., 1947, 1962, 1982, 1991). Giga-stimulus carries the day for now, but the morning after may come sooner this time around…"

Monday the Obama administration and China begin talks- namely on currency tensions, the US budget deficit and the massively huge trade gap with China.

China, in addition to the hundreds of billions of low-cost, high-labor manufactured goods they’ve come to be known for; are importing 150 Chinese economic officials, in one of the largest visits ever to the United States.

Market tests are useful as they best indicate just what is the real value of hundreds of billions of distressed securities stripped away from any unwarranted optimism and green shoot propaganda. Today's Visteon CDS Auction was just one such test. And if there was a way to grade the test, it would be an emphatic F: not so much for bankrupt Visteon which is already in the morgue, but for other comparable auto suppliers whose bonds and loans recently have seen overambitious PMs buying their debt as if every single credit instrument would be rolled into Taxpayer Capital LLC's Worthless Assets Fund.

Market tests are useful as they best indicate just what is the real value of hundreds of billions of distressed securities stripped away from any unwarranted optimism and green shoot propaganda. Today's Visteon CDS Auction was just one such test.