The unsurprising and yet depressingly real budget data from California today should shock no-one and CNBC's Rick Santelli provides the most succinct and even more saddening reality check on the situation this morning as he points out the $15.7 billion shortfall and how cuts and compromise will fill that gap. His sane response to the implicit rise in taxation that this compromise realistically requires will mean - happy feet as Californians leave the state. His rant is one of the best but a little later in the day, the problem appears to be on its way to being fixed by none other than the hoody-in-chief himself. According to Bloomberg, Facebook Inc.’s initial public offering likely will account for 20 percent of California’s personal income growth this calendar year, the state fiscal analyst said. The state expects personal income to grow 4.9 percent in 2012. If the Facebook IPO were excluded, that would total 4.0 percent, the agency said. Money paid to company executives, investors and insiders would equal 1 percent of all personal income in 2012, the agency said. So two things come to mind: 1) we sure hope there are more mega-IPOs due next year to fund CALI's shortfall or we may have to pull the 'transitory' or unsustainable card out of the drawer; and 2) how will all those Facebook employees (and the corporation itself) feel when they start facing higher taxes (as Saverin just pre-emptively did?). Will they follow Santelli's happy feet out of the state? In the meantime, it would appear that the Facebook IPO is just the snake-oil medication that everyone needs - how could the IPO go wrong?

It would seem, just as during the crisis in 2008/9, that now might be an opportune time to push for 'improvement' in how banks are regulated (and more importantly how the instruments they trade in colossal size are priced and marked-to-market). Rick Santelli believes now has never been a better time but as his guest Tim Backshall of Capital Context notes, regulation of the CDS market can be summed up in one sentence "Get Them On Exchange". Something we have been saying for years (and has been tried before) but with dealers holding all the keys (to market-making) and exchanges cowering for fear of losing clients, we remain less optimistic. Santelli and Backshall critically address the complicity of banks, regulators, analysts, and The Fed in giving 'banks the benefit of the doubt' with regard their use of the bottomless pit of capital they implicitly have but what is more important is for the hordes of sell-side analysts and buy-side sheeple to understand just what this JPM debacle exposes about bank risk (VaR is useless), bank transparency (mark-to-model or worse is widespread), and bank valuation (traditional Price/Book metrics have no merit anymore).

"Sometime the math just doesn't add up" is how CNBC's Rick Santelli begins what should become must-watch viewing for the youth of America as he tries to "Wake Up Young People" to the incredible realities of the level of debt encumbrance they are being born with. The lessons we are learning from our European brothers is that no-one is going to volunteer for austerity and fundamentally, to Rick, austerity is about 'past due bills'. From birth (where the average soon-to-be-taxpayer is already encumbered by $138k) to the future (looking for growth through capital attainment and job creation), Santelli starkly looks into camera, addressing the under-27-year-old demographic and tells them straight "you are paying for a meal that previous generations have eaten". The worrying point is that in order for the youth not to revolt against this 'unfairness' they need optimism and what appears to be occurring now is a fading of that generational optimism (except for CEOs whose last name begin with Z) as joblessness, and the costs of college and healthcare anchor our traditionally upwardly mobile bias. So how do 'we' hook the younger generations in? Student loan forgiveness? But where's that money going to come from? ...and so the ponzi feeds on itself once again.

Everyone's favorite Chicago-ite, Rick Santelli, once again presents himself as the truth-teller-in-chief on the propaganda channel. This morning's dismal jobs data but utopian reporting of the improvement in the headline unemployment rate appears to have hit a nerve. Santelli takes on just how bad the employment picture really is, how mainstream media practices 'Ostrich Economics', and finally how nothing is deemed important to most politicians except who is to blame. One of Rick's best as perhaps CNBC has been looking at its ratings and realizes investors want the truth not the spin.

Leading neoconservative (read “closet Trotskyite“) commentator Charles Krauthammer’s latest Washington Post editorial pays homage to the glory days of NASA and the retirement of the space shuttle Discovery.  Titled “Farewell, the New Frontier,” the piece evokes mental images of Uncle Sam losing his international prestige as President Obama scales down NASA’s space exploration endeavors. Contrary to Krauthammer, NASA has never represented America’s collective vision of frontier exploration.  It has been just another bureaucratic black hole for Washington to throw dollars at in hopes of buying reelection. Because one of the main tenets of economics is considering the unseen, then it can be assumed that space exploration would very well be advanced far beyond what we see today if it was left completely out of the hands of the state.  If Krauthammer truly wished the human race capable of traveling into the new frontier of the stars, he would welcome NASA cuts rather than lament. How ironic then is today's news of Planetary Resources as investor and avowed anarchist Doug Casey thoughtfully observes on the inefficiency of NASA: "We should have colonies on the moon by now, and more: We should be mining the asteroids and developing real estate on Mars."

While it is not unusual for everyone's favorite truth-seeker in Chicago to cut to the chase and simplify the over-complex world of data and nuance that is thrust upon us day after day, CNBC's Rick Santelli outdoes himself today. Initially addressing the retail sales and housing data dichotomy, Rick jumps above the noise of day-to-day data and focuses on what is critical - in his view - the weather and the debt. If only he had used the term "It's the debt stupid" as it would have made for better headlines but the clip below should help anyone and everyone decide on whether this dip is for buying or fading/waiting. In the end, Santelli notes, "It is simple. There are questions about weather and questions about debt. First one we'll know more about in the next two or three months. [For the] latter, we'll have to look toward our neighbors in Europe to see how it ultimately turns out and see if our political class is going to do a better job than the European bureaucracies."

We cannot collect enough taxes to catch up with spending

You have seen the trees. Now see the forest.

A warning by the SEC in mid-March 2011 regarding repo-to-maturity trades suggests otherwise.  

We heard it then and we will hear it again (soon we suspect) that unless some huge liquidating bailout event occurs, the world will no longer exist as we know it, iPads will no longer toast pop-tarts, and American Idol will cease to be. The M.A.D. argument remains the go-to move in the government's playbook and Rick Santelli jousts with Steve Liesman (and new glad-man Scott Wapner) in this heated exchange over the reality of TARP's saving the world (from what) and the precedents this sets going forward.

Lies, damn lies and charts.  Why no one in charge dares utter the "F" word (fraud).

#f0f0ea; font-weight: normal; color: #1e1e1e; line-height: 40px; width: 465px; display: inline; font-family: calibri, arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left; padding: 0px; border: 0px initial initial;">CFTC Comissioner Runs From Questions, Admits SEC Should be “Looked Into”

In a moment of surprising clarity this morning (or perhaps driven by simple ulterior motives as his favorite bank may well be unprepared to cover even this moderate cash payment from existing reserves, as we warned back in January) perpetual bank optimist Dick Bove had some harsh words for the now finalized bank settlement, which he called the "mortgage deal from hell" - "Those people lucky or smart enough to stop making payments on their homes may get their loan balances reduced. Other beneficiaries of the agreement may be homeowners who have seen the value of their houses drop below the size of their mortgages. They get a freebie that other homeowners who have paid their mortgages down will not get....Homeowners who made large down payments on their homes or made the terrible mistake to pay down the principal on their mortgages do not qualify. Homeowners who made minimal or no down payments will get the windfall benefit of a lower principal repayment or a cash payment." And the true bottom line: "There is no sanctity of contracts in the United States. Only fools meet their financial commitments. The non-payers are the truly enlightened." And that is the summary of modern US society in a nutshell, and explains why despite all the deleveraging, inflation still remains a potent threat as the bulk of a household's mandatory continues to be merely discretionary, with everyone else footing the bill. Finally, as Rick Santelli pointed out subsequently, the banks are paying for this settlement using cash proceeds from previous bank bailouts which have not yet been paid out. So to be even more blunt than Dick and Rick -the US taxpayers bailed out the banks, which are now using  the balance of said proceeds to pay a settlement which amounts to the tune of $2,000 per every person foreclosed on in the past 3 years, in order to assure their vote for Obama, while in the process trampling contract law, as no longer will anyone in America honor anything printed and signed.

In an effort to reach the angry mob, CNBC's Rick Santelli goes all Sesame Street on the numbers behind the US Debt Ceiling Rise. Focusing for two minutes on what this practically means for every man, woman, child, and politician, the shouting Chicagoan points out that when the US breaches this new limit then the world's entire population will be on the hook for $2,346 each (and $52,409 per US person).

Some observations from the front lines and supply trains in the developing saga of society vs itself