Rosenberg

As usual, those who want the truth behind the cheery, and misleading, headlines don't have many options. David Rosenberg continues to be one of the best options. Here is his take on today's NFP, recent market action, impact of D.C. gridlock (bad for fiscal policy, no impact, we believe on monetary - all hail emperor Ben), and why $5 trillion in total QE means Goldman's estimate for $1,650 gold may need to soon add an extra zero to it.

What the Fed is clearly trying to do is reflate asset values in order to generate a more positive wealth effect on personal spending and pull the cost of debt and equity capital down in order to re-ignite business “animal spirits” and hence corporate investment and hiring. In a balance sheet or deleveraging cycle, success is not always guaranteed even by the most aggressive of monetary policies.

In a word - skeptical: "There is a growing hope that the Tea Party has tapped a raw nerve and will serve as a lightning rod for change. And change is needed in a really big way when one considers the financial strains that mandatory entitlements, such as Social Security, will pose as the demographics, in terms of an ever-higher dependency ratio, ascends further. These mounting “locked in” fiscal costs have to be addressed as do the $3.5 trillion of actuarially unfunded state/local government pension plans. Social contracts will have to be re-written — perhaps with implications for contracts with bondholders. But hope is never a good strategy. Results are what matter. It took two full years for the Reagan rally to really take hold. An economy growing at a 7% clip in the aftermath of the 1980-82 malaise and an unemployment rate that came crashing down more 300 basis points from the highs certainly helped. So, while there is hope that the stage is being set for meaningful political change in 2012 (where the Republicans stand a very good chance of reclaiming BOTH the House and the Senate) the near-term outlook is muddled. Investors should not lose sight of the fact that the recovery is so listless that we are only one negative shock away from tilting the economy back into contraction mode." David Rosenberg

Various rumblings started at Zero Hedge and a few other fringe sites, and now essentially mainstream (not to mention emanating from such firms as, oops,  Goldman Sachs) as pertains to a rather curious correlation between POMO days and market outperformance, appear to have finally gotten to such institutional stalwarts as Bank of America and its traditionally imperturbable Jeff Rosenberg (whose opinion we tend to respect). In a piece released tonight titled appropriately enough, "The POMO Conspiracy Theory", Rosenberg (not to be confused with former M-Lyncher David) sets off to debunk that POMO days have an impact on risk assets. Alas, he fails. The conclusion: "Our analysis points to the correlation, but not causality of POMO with rising stock prices." Sure enough, if one could confirm definitive "causality" of Fed intervention in the stocks markets, that would pretty much be the ballgame right there. And it appears that even his correlation results force Rosenberg to step back: "We likely are about to get a lot more days of POMO if the market’s expectations of $500bn further expansion of  the Fed’s balance sheet is confirmed at the conclusion of Wednesday’s FOMC meeting. If the correlation of POMO purchases and stock prices were to continue to hold going forward as it has since August, than we should expect more frequent days where stocks go up as the Fed pumps in liquidity into the financial markets." Thank you for proving our point Jeffrey. Amusingly, at the end of his "debunking", Rosenberg, in typical banker fashion inverts the argument by 180 degrees, and says essentially that even if POMO is goosing markets, it basically creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that "can contribute to a better economic outcome" as it boosts inflation expectations. Jeffrey: a better outcome yes, but for you. And nobody else.

A week ago, we presented a comprehensive analysis by Moody's highlighting the key items in the cash flow statement of non-financial corporate America. Not surprisingly, we noticed that one of the biggest sources of cash over the past several years, in addition to cutting expenses to the bone and the resulting surge in unemployment, was the lack of investment in organic growth opportunities, via a plunge in Capital Expenditures, meaning that a revenue flat lining is the best most companies could hope for as most have now given up on traditional top-line growth and instead are either hording cash or investing it in an occasional M&A transaction. Now, in addition to that, courtesy of the Fed's free money policy resulting in surging input prices (see Jones Apparel), the next shoe to drop on the path to an upcoming EPS collapse for the S&P is the imminent drop in gross, operating and net margins for these very companies which are now seeing a contraction at both the top and bottom line. Today, David Rosenberg dissects this issue further, and sees nothing good on the horizon.

Eerlier we pointed out that Goldman anticipated that a surge in the inventory number (which it did, coming at $115.5 billion compared to Goldman expectations of a sub $100 billion change), would simply lead to even more Cash 4 Clunker like forward performance pull, resulting in a collapse in the quarter in which inventory clearances finally took place. It seems the quarter in question is the current one. Indeed, various channel checks have confirmed that inventory levels at assorted businesses have been trimmed aggressively into the year end, and it is not unfeasible that we could see a $30-40 billion drop in inventory levels in Q4. Problem with that is, it will result in a negative GDP print due to the high marginal impact of a swing as seemingly small as the anticipated. Here is Rosie's explanation for why the government can play timing tricks all it wants but at the end of the day, it is inevitable that the economy is now contracting. How long before it is officially disclosed is at this point far more of a political issue than an economic one.

Who says Canadians lack a sense of humor... And are ever wrong about the ECRI.

Despite every commodity opening limit up virtually every day for the past two weeks on expectations of a free money tsunami about to be unleashed (and a 14th weekly increase in M2 which we will describe shortly), David Rosenberg still adheres to the belief that deflation is not only here to stay but get worse. And, frankly, we don't disagree. It has long been our contention that the sublimation from deflation to hyperinflation will not pass through the inflation phase at all (or it may, but will last for exactly one millisecond as $3 trillion, by then, excess reserves are released and send every price up by a few quadrillion percent). In the meantime, the input cost-price mechanism is still broken, which leads Rosie to believe that the fact that the 30 Year just closed at an increasing inflection point with the rest of the curve going tighter, is to be ignored. Alas, with corporate margins approaching zero (and if you are Amazon, probably already there) companies face one of three choices: become banks, and borrow at ZIRP, and lend money to their customers via private label credit cards (unlikely), shut down, or raise prices. The last one is what will happen, and will finally put an end to the ridiculous consumer disrectionary rally that has perplexed humans (but not robots) for quarters on end. Furthermore, as to Rosie claims: "For all the talk of how higher Chinese wages were going to be transmitted to higher prices of these imported items, it does not seem to be happening" we will shortly post some thoughts which confirm that this is precisely what is happening.

That David Rosenberg is very much against QE2 is no surprise (although for such a bond bull he should be exalted) - he knows all too well that the cost/benefit analysis of QE2 just does not make sense: to pick a few bps in GDP in exchange for trillions in new debt (while letting the bankers send the CRB to imminent all time record highs) is simply moronic, and positions US society one step closer to civil war if not worse. Of course it is this kind of truthy candor that cost him his job at BofA. What we are more surprised by is that the "other" Rosenberg - a/k/a Chief Credit Strategist Jeffrey, and the smartest person left at the bank, has just released one of the most scathing reviews from a TBTF bank on the topic of (at least) doubling bank reserve, and that it will do absolutely nothing beneficial, now that lack of liquidity is no longer the economic threat, and if nothing else, will lead to much more bubble creation. As he says: "the costs of further QE2 in the form of raising the risks of asset bubbles - now in emerging markets as opposed to housing - should provide greater ballast against the gusts blowing in the direction of further liquidity provision." Alas, it is too late, and Bernanke will stop at nothing in his attempt to destroy America, absent several million iPitchfork-friendly, very angry, and very hungry people showing up at the doorstep of the Marriner Eccles building.

Daniel Gross, who while at Newsweek saw the end of the recession even as the depression was merely stretching its wings, and generally drank Kool Aid by the supertanker, only to see his media venue blow up (some recovery) and by forced to move to that other bastion of creative thought Yahoo!, gets pummeled in today's letter by David Rosenberg for his most recent lunatic ramblings which not at all surprisingly made it into Paul Krugman's New York Times. Frankly, it was about time someone explained to Mr. Gross that reality is actually quite visible, if only one puts down the mild hallucinogens for at least a minute.

Sick of listening to the dime a dozen "experts" on CNBC every 5 minutes (with no apparent regard for their reputation - just roll the dice) discussing how the US economy will improve in Q4, after a drop in Q3? Too bad none of them can ever formulate even half a logical or sensible sentence to explain just what it is in the next 2 months and 26 days that will make this miraculous transformation happen, when with every passing day the economy gets worse and worse. In fact, can someone please explain to these soon to be unemployed individuals that the only reason stocks are up is because of QE2, which is happening only because the economy is in dire need of even more negative real interest rates, which is the functional equivalent of what buying securities achieves. It is no wonder we can't remember any of their names: they all blur in a gangrenous cloud of lies and stupidity. We can't say the same for David Rosenberg, who has so far been spot on in his predictions on the economy (the market will catch up sooner or later). The Canadian strategist was on Tom Keene's show earlier, in what always becomes an informative and insightful interview. Rosenberg's soundbite from this particular show: "I think fourth quarter [GDP] can be flat to negative, as almost all the GDP growth in Q3 was from auto-production." Yet to keep it from being one-sided, Keene brings on a bull to attempt to diffuse Rosie's permaunrosyness, in this case John Ryding of RDQ Economics. And yes, John fails.

Recently, there has been much euphoria to define all those who believe that gold will outperform as goldbugs. We in turn are fairly confident that pretty soon all those who have faith that the central banks will somehow get it right this time, instead of causing all out war again, will be labeled as "paper bugs." What however, surprises us is that all the so called "gold bugs" continue to be invested in the best performing asset class over the past day, 5 days, 1 month, 6 months, 5 years, and 10 years: on a relative basis gold has outperformed stocks in all these time categories, yet it continues to be more hated than even Ben Bernanke, whose stealthy destruction of middle class purchasing power is in fact cheered by the "paper bugs" - we will not bore you with the chart that shows how the dollar has lost almost 100% of its purchasing power since the creation of the Fed. Anyway, here is David Rosenberg, who several months ago joined the gold bandwagon, and presents one of the better defenses to all those who blame gold bugs for not catching the "bungee jump" in the most manipulated stock market in history. "We continue to field criticism that we “missed the call” on the equity market. Well, no doubt we did not see the 1930-style bungee jump last year, but: (i) it’s over, and (ii) there were many other asset classes we liked that did very well: what has done better than gold, which is up more than 30% in the last 12 months." We obviously agree both now, and about 50% back, at the time of the creation of this blog, when we said that the only natural response to Fed insanity is the otherwise useless shiny metal.

If the way to classify the September stock move as "a confounding ramp on disappointing economic news" gets you stumped, here is Rosenberg to provide some insight. Just call is "deflationary growth or something like that." And as for the NBER's pronouncement of the recession being over, Rosie has a few words for that as well: "this recovery, with its sub 1% pace of real final sales, goes down as the weakest on record."

One more man awake to the farce that are stocks. Although this being a man as realistic as David, it is not much of a conversion. We can only hope that by 2099 Mary Schapiro's just as blatantly incompetent successor will finally dare to take on the Wall Street lobby and bring some normalcy to capital market topology, instead of nickel and diming micro prop shops which do nothing worse than what the biggest Supplementary Liquidity Providers do on a daily basis. Speaking of, it has been a while since Irene Aldridge was on CNBC defending the practice of small- and medium-investors scalping.

At times like this, I find the opening lines to Rudyard Kipling’s “If” inspirational and soothing. That and a tall glass of Dalwhinnie, 15 years old, on ice. - David Rosenberg