Switzerland

With Abe talking his down explicitly, Weidmann talking his up explicitly, Draghi's subtle talk-down, Hollande's outright plea, and the developing world in full 'war' mode, Citi's Steven Englander sets out some brief 'rules of engagement' for the G-20 nations as competitive devaluation escalates.

China has been a very active purchaser of gold for its reserves in the last few years, as we extensively covered here and here, but another nation has taken over the 'biggest buyer' role (for the same reasons as China). Central banks around the world have printed money to escape the global financial crisis, and as Bloomberg reports, IMF data shows Russia added 570 metric tons in the past decade. Putin's fears that "the U.S. is endangering the global economy by abusing its dollar monopoly," are clearly being taken seriously as the world's largest oil producer turns black gold into hard assets. A lawmaker in Putin's party noted, "the more gold a country has, the more sovereignty it will have if there’s a cataclysm with the dollar, the euro, the pound or any other reserve currency." It appears Russia-China is now the 'hard-money' axis and perhaps, to some extent, it is the relative price of oil that defines their demand for the barbarous relic.

Whether you're aware of it or not, a great battle is being waged around us. It is a war of two opposing narratives: the future of our economy and our standard of living. The dominant story, championed by flotillas of press releases and parading talking heads, tells an inspiring tale of recovery and return to growth. The other side, less visible but with a full armament of high-caliber data, tells a very different story. One of growing instability, downside risk, and inequality. As different as they are in substance, they both share one fundamental prediction – and this is why you should care: This battle is about to break. And when it does, one side will turn out to be much more 'right' than the other. The time for action has arrived. To position yourself in the direction of the break you think is most likely to happen. It's time to choose a side.

The official lie is most effective when we want to believe the lie more than we wish to know the truth.

Do the "deciders" in the globe want to enrich those that are now parking hot money in gold? "No" is the answer.

As we have been reporting over the past ten days (most extensively here and here), the one European scandal that gets virtually no coverage on this side of the Atlantic, remains the escalating fiasco involving Italy's third largest bank, Banca dei Monte Paschi, which gets worse by the day due to its extensive political implications - the bank is seen domestically as the domain of the frontrunning centre-left candidate, something Berlusconi reminds his followers at every opportunity, but also will likely ensnare the head of the ECB as we predicted a week ago when we noted the aggressive attempts by the Bank of Italy, which was headed by the former Goldmanite at the time, to wash its hands of having had anything to do with the BMPS fiasco (and thus by implication indemnify that other Goldmanite, Mario Monti). As it turns out, and as Bloomberg reports today, the Bank of Italy did know of Monte Paschi's dirty laundry as long ago as 2010, but more importantly, and hence the title, the Italian law (and we use the term loosely) is now in play: "Prosecutors in Trani, Italy, opened an investigation into the Bank of Italy and market watchdog Consob’s supervisory activity on Monte Paschi, consumer group Adusbef said in an e- mailed statement today." Adding fuel to the fire is the just blasted headline from Reuters that Monte Paschi is now under investigation in Siena under law on company responsibility for crimes committed by staff, and suddenly life for the ECB head, not to mention the "stabeeleetee" of the banking sector looks quite problematic.

My colleague and erstwhile nemesis Gonzalo Lira posed the question above in a recent essay, and it is indeed a most puzzling one.  Given that the world’s central banks — joined most recently by a shockingly reckless Switzerland — are waging all-out economic war by inflating their currencies, shouldn’t gold be soaring?

A regular feature back in 2010 when we had our first taste of global currency warfare as Brazil's finance minister accurately summarized when he said "a currency war has broken out" (and yes: currency war existed then, and especially in the 1930s which led to the Great Depression, long before the recent eponymous book came out desperate to take credit for this simplistic concept) were the global FX heatmaps which showed how any given currency is doing on any given day. Since currency warfare is now back and more violent than at any time in the past 80 years, it only makes sense to bring back a long-time reader favorite: the currency warfare heatmaps which show who, on any given day, is winning and losing, the global race to debase and in the process beggar all globalized and SWIFT-interlinked neighbors. But don't forget: in a relativistic fiat world, nobody can actually win the global race to debase. Well, not nobody: gold (and other precious metals) can, assuming it is not confiscated as it was the last time the US ended the global currency war with a 50%+ devaluation of the USD relative to gold... and promptly confiscated all gold.

Following yet another quiet overnight session, futures have surprised many walking into work today as the traditional overnight levitation is strangely missing. The reason for that may be the lack of the traditional for 2013 lift in various funding currency pairs, with both the USDJPY and the EURUSD lower. While there was no major macro news, the former may have been dragged lower by various comments from the German BDI industry federation chief who said he is worried about the devaluation race stemming from Japan's central bank policy echoing Merkel's comparable sentiment and revealing that the EURUSD may have topped out, while the latter was pushed lower following today's 7 day ECB MRO, which saw some €124.1 billion allotted at a 0.75% yield. This was largely in line with expectations, with Barclays seeing some €135.4 billion maturing, while BNP had expected modestly more, or some €150 billion. The MRO is the first such operation, with tomorrow's 3 month refinancing operation likely to give a better glimpse of the bank's post-LTRO repayment funding needs. Whether it is this, or the market finally demanding some action out of central banks which, except for the Fed, have been in constant promise mode, or just a random walk, is unknown, but for now the carry funded nominal devaluation of risk may have topped out.

G4+CHF can fight the currency wars longer and more aggressively than small G10 and EM countries can.  However, as Citi's Steven Englander notes, it also takes a lot of depreciation to crowd in a meaningful amount of net exports. His bottom line, GBP, CHF and JPY have a lot further to depreciate.  In principle, the USD can easily fall into this category as well, but right now the USD debate is focused on Fed policy – were it to become clear that balance sheet expansion will end well beyond end-2013, the USD would fall into the category of currency war ‘winners’ as well. Critically, though, the reality of currency wars is that policymakers do not use FX as cyclical stimulus because of its effectiveness; they use it because they have hit a wall with respect to the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policies, and are unwilling to bite the structural policy bullet. The following seven points will be on every policymakers' mind - or should be.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu says his nation must prepare for the threat of a chemical attack from Syria, amid concern at enemy efforts to test a post-election coalition Israel, and has deployed its new Iron Dome anti-missile system near the border with its northern neighbor. Along with this concern, as many have perhaps suspected, the Israeli Defense Minister confirmed yesterday that the US has prepared plans for a 'surgical' military operation to delay Iran's nuclear program. As The Jerusalem Post reports, Ehud Barak, added that in the past the US has been heavy-handed but that under Barack Obama, the United States has "prepared quite sophisticated, fine, extremely fine, scalpels," if the worse comes to the worst - even though the Israeli preference would be to end the nuclear threat diplomatically, calling for tougher sanctions (though he expressed doubt that diplomacy would lead to success). Just another geopolitical hotspot that the world's markets choose to ignore in deference to the one true leader - central bankers.

The name Christian Bittar is well-known to regular Zero Hedge readers. Recall from "Deep Into The Lieborgate Rabbit Hole: The Swiss Hedge Fund Link?": " just like in the case of Barclays (with Diamond), JPM (with Bruno Iksil), UBS (with Kweku) and Goldman (with Fabrice Tourre), there always is a scapegoat. Today we find just who that scapegoat is. From Bloomberg: "Regulators are investigating the possible roles of Michael Zrihen at Credit Agricole, Didier Sander at HSBC and Christian Bittar at Deutsche Bank, the person said on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing." We proceeded to do a circuitous analysis to find that despite assumptions to the contrary, not only has Mr. Bittar not been expelled from the industry for manipulating Libor, but he is still collecting fat paychecks at Swiss hedge fund BlueCrest, Europe's third largest, with some $30 billion under management. Today, courtesy of Bloomberg we get the details of how Mr. Bittar departed Deutsche, and just what his responsibilities there were.

The market gets smoked for 1/4 Trillion in a single name, and we're trading at the highs. Go figure.

“Everyone should keep gold in their portfolios” as the precious metal will be able to offer value to investors even in a worst-case scenario, said Marc Faber, the publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report. "In the worst case scenario, in the systemic failure that I expect, it would still have some value,” Faber, who is also the founder and managing director of Marc Faber Ltd., said today at an event hosted by Evli Bank Oyj in Helsinki. Faber said his outlook was so bleak that he is “hyper bearish”. He joked that “sometimes I’m so concerned about the world I want to jump out of the window.”.. In response to a question from Yale University’s Robert Shiller querying the recommendation to hold gold, Faber said: “I’m prepared to make a bet, you keep your U.S. dollars and I’ll keep my gold, we’ll see which one goes to zero first.” Shiller, who is the co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values, responded "I'm inclined to think gold prices after this crisis might return to a lower level. Given the low yields of the alternatives [ie, bonds], the valuation of the stock market doesn't look so bad." Faber, whose advice has protected millions of investors in recent years, warned of a global systemic crisis possibly due to massive size of the global derivatives market which is now worth over an incredible $700 trillion. He warned “when the system goes down,” and only plastic credit cards are left, “maybe then people will realize and go back to some gold-based system.”

On January 22, 2012, candidate François Hollande called banks the “enemy.” Now you’d think he is being tutored by Jamie Dimon.