Switzerland

• Rough start for fiscal cliff talks (Politico)
• Europe Fails to Seal Greek Debt-Cut Deal in IMF Clash (Bloomberg)
• Japan’s Exports Reach Three-Year Low as Recession Looms (BBG)
• Beggars can be angry: Greek leaders round on aid delay (FT)
• More financial blogs launching soon: Financial Times Deutschland closing (Spiegel)
• China's backroom powerbrokers block reform candidates (Reuters)
• BOE Voted 8-1 to Halt Bond Purchases as QE Impact Questioned (Bloomberg). In the US the vote is 1-11
• UK heads for EU budget showdown (FT)
• Eurodollars - another epic scam: How gaming Libor became business as usual (Reuters)
• Clinton Shuttles in Mideast in Bid for Gaza Cease-Fire (Bloomberg)
• Fed Still Trying to Push Down Rates (Hilsenrath)

"When you let the politicians run monetary policy, well, that is how it [ends]... All of the ingredients are there [for Japan now] for this vicious cocktail to fall apart" is how Kyle Bass concludes this broad and succinct recent interview. With total credit market debt-to-GDP globally around 350% (or ~$200 trillion), his thesis remains that many countries will reach their profligate endpoint soon (if not already in Greece's case - where investors have already lost 90c on the dollar); but that managing around this current evolution is the single-hardest period for investing of the last few decades. The modest Texan notes it is naive to think he can call the end of a 70-year debt-super-cycle with any precision (as in mid-December's Japan fiscal data and Abe's election) but when you look at all of the inputs, he believes that Japan has crossed the proverbial Rubicon in the last two months and describes in this rather breathtaking clip how the end of twenty years of conjecture on what may happen to Japan will come to pass.

Who owes what to whom?

Over two years ago, on November 5, 2010, weeks before news broke out that the SEC had caught hedge funds in a massive insider trading scheme involving expert networks, and before the phrase expert network was even mentioned in places away from hedge funds, we wrote an article, titled "Is The SEC's Insider Trading Case Implicating FrontPoint A Sting Operation Aimed At S.A.C. Capital?" that predicted everything that has transpired with SAC since then: we said expert networks would be exposed as the root of virtually all "information arbitrage" alpha by Steve Cohen, more importantly, we exposed various biotech stock trading patterns, where the informational benefits from easily bribable doctors would result in immediate profits courtesy of advance knowledge of Phase 2, 3 and NDA results. Today, we discover not just how deep the SAC insider trading schemes went, but that the profit from such information abuse amounted to hundreds of millions in standalone cases. Adding these together and one can see why Steve Cohen - whose knowledge of these epic inside trading scheme is of course never implied by us: after all, that's what the DOJ, the SEC and the various DA offices are for - was generating 20% returns year after year and able to pocket 3% and 50%.

Remember Kweku Adoboli: the 32 year old rogue trader who was solely responsible for UBS' massive $2.3 billion trading loss, and cost the firm's then CEO his job?

• ADOBOLI SENTENCED TO 7 YEARS IN PRISON BY LONDON JUDGE
• JUDGE SAYS ADOBOLI MUST SERVE AT LEAST HALF OF HIS TERM

So the trade off: 3.5 years in exchange for several million in hush money. Where does one sign up?

Another day, another melt up overnight wiping out all the post-Moody's weakness, this time coming courtesy of Europe, where following the French downgrade, the EURUSD filled its entire gap down and then some in the span of minutes following the European open, when it moved from 1.2775 to 1.2820 as if on command. And with the ES inextricably linked to the most active and levered pair in the world, it is is no surprise to see futures unchanged. It appears that the primary catalyst in the centrally planned market has become the opening of said "market" itself, as all other news flow is now largely irrelevant: after all the central planners have it all under control.

[And now it’s time for Mr. Obama to start paying for all those votes by reaching deep into our pockets. If you intend to avoid paying your “fair share,” however, please take note: There will be  few places to hide. For a gimlet-eyed view of what may lie in store for taxpayers and citizens of all political persuasions during the next four years, ponder the guest commentary below, from Wayne Siggard, a regular in the Rick’s Picks forum. RA]

After 40 years of boozing on easy money and feasting on fantastical asset price inflations, the global monetary system is approaching catharsis, its arteries clogged and instant cardiac arrest a persistent threat. ‘Muddling through’ is the name of the game today but in the end authorities will have two choices: stop printing money and allow the market to cleanse the system of its dislocations. This would involve defaults (including those of sovereigns) and some pretty nasty asset price corrections. Or, keep printing money and risk complete currency collapse. We think they should go for option one but we fear they will go for option two. In this environment, how can people protect themselves and their property? Our three favourite assets are, in no particular order, gold, gold and gold. After that, there may be silver. We are, in our assessment, in the endgame of this, mankind’s latest and so far most ambitious, experiment with unconstrained fiat money. The present crisis is a paper money crisis. Whenever paper money dies, eternal money – gold and silver – stage a comeback. Remember, paper money is always a political tool, gold is market money and apolitical.

In a prior post, we discussed the implications of the global shadow banking system having risen to the unprecedented level of roughly 100% of global GDP. By now it should be quite obvious to even the most jaded optimists, that the reason why traditional leverage conduits are no longer applicable (and the only real source of bank credit creation is the Fed via the hopeless blocked up excess reserve pathway), and why credit money (and hence in a Keynesian world "growth") has to come via deposit-free, unregulated "shadow" venues, is that there are no longer enough good money good assets for conventional secured credit creation, and viable levered projected cash flows for conventional unsecured credit creation. Yet not the entire world has gone all in on this gambit, which together with the Fed's money printing, is truly the last bastion of "money' creation. In fact, as the FRB demonstrated, there are three distinct paradigms when it comes to source of credit creation or as it puts it, "financial structure": the US "massive shadow banking system" way, the German "conventional bank deposits funds loan creation" way, and the Saudi Arabian, and soon everyone else, "central planning to the max" way. In a nutshell, these are the three credit system structure extremes, with everything else currently inbetween. These can be visualized as follows:

Earlier today, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), one of the few transnational financial "supervisors" which is about as relevant in the grand scheme of things as the BIS, whose Basel III capitalization requirements will never be adopted for the simple reason that banks can not afford, now or ever, to delever and dispose of assets to the degree required for them to regain "stability" (nearly $4 trillion in Europe alone as we explained months ago), issued a report on Shadow Banking. The report is about 3 years late (Zero Hedge has been following this topic since 2010), and is largely meaningless, coming to the same conclusion as all other historical regulatory observations into shadow banking have done in the recent past, namely that it is too big, too unwieldy, and too risky, but that little if anything can be done about it. Specifically, the FSB finds that the size of the US shadow banking system is estimated to amount to $23 trillion (higher than our internal estimate of about $15 trillion due to the inclusion of various equity-linked products such as ETFs, which hardly fit the narrow definition of a "bank" with its three compulsory transformation vectors), is the largest in the world, followed by the Euro area with a $22 trillion shadow bank system (or 111% of total Euro GDP in 2011, down from 128% at its peak in 2007), and the UK in third, with $9 trillion. Combined total shadow banking, not to be confused with derivatives, which at least from a theoretical level can be said to offset each other (good luck with that when there is even one counterparty failure), is now $67 trillion, $6 trillion higher than previously thought, and virtually the same as global GDP of $70 trillion at the end of 2011.

You've probably noticed the cookie-cutter format of most financial media "news": a few key "buzz words" (fiscal cliff, Bush tax cuts, etc.) are inserted into conventional contexts, and this is passed off as either "reporting" or "commentary" depending on the number of pundits sourced. Correspondent Frank M. kindly passed along a template that is "officially deny its existence" secret within the mainstream media. With this template, you could launch your own financial media channel, ready to compete with the big boys. Heck, you could hire some cheap overseas labor to make a few Skype calls to "the usual suspects," for-hire academics, hedge fund gurus, etc. and actually attribute the fluff to a real person.

There is going to be a pissing match between France and Switzerland over this story

Does China have what it takes to get from here (industrialized export economy) to there (sustainable growth, widespread prosperity)? The same can be asked of every nation: do they have what it takes to move beyond their current limitations to the next level? Consider corruption. Corruption isn't just a "values" issue: corrupt societies have corrupt economies, and these economies are severely limited by that corruption. A deeply, pervasively corrupt economy cannot get from here to there. Corruption acts as a "tax" on the economy, siphoning money from the productive to the parasitic unproductive Elites skimming the bribes, payoffs, protection money, unofficial "fees," etc. By definition, the money skimmed by corruption reduces the disposable income of households and enterprises, reducing their consumption and investment... Pull aside the curtain and what you find is a China crippled by corruption and debt.

We are programed to cheer and act out our sheep-like roles in partisan politics when, like the game, unless we have money bet on the outcome the actual winner will have absolutely no impact on our lives. The bottom line is that voting percentages generate credibility for the failed American political system. "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican parties." George Wallace, 1966 Alabama governor and presidential candidate. Romney lost for two main reasons: First, as he correctly noted during the campaign, 47 percent of American families are dependent on government handouts and they voted for what was in their own best interests; and second, the GOP leadership antagonized the 10 percent of the Republican Party electorate who supported Ron Paul for President. And so over the next four years the people will be provoked and buy more guns they will never have the courage to use to defend themselves against an all-powerful government. The game will go on until the time is up for our nation. It is time we as a generation man up for liberty to redeem ourselves in the tear-filled eyes of future generations. The American people must work peacefully to restore the Articles of Confederation now or else suffer the permanent consequences of the fall of America.