Testimony

UPDATE: *BARCLAYS SAYS HAS RECORDING OF DIAMOND, TUCKER CALL, SKY SAYS

We suspect the Treasury Select Committee hearing with Barclays ex-CEO Bob Diamond will have a few more fireworks than Jamie Dimon's congressional hearings. The Chairman of the committee noted "This is the most damaging scam I can recall" as the goal of the hearing is to ensure "the public know what went wrong and whether the perpetrators have been rooted out." While we will have our own fireworks on this side of the pond, we suspect the live stream below will contain more than a few as the independence of Libor remains in question.

Local Governments Which Entered Into Interest Rate Swaps Got Scalped

With Europe, the BBA, and virtually everyone shocked, shocked, that the global bank cabal schemed and colluded for years to manipulate interest rates, so far only America appears relatively blase, and totally ignorant, about the issue. Perhaps it is because the first bank exposed in the manipulation scheme so far is European, perhaps because it is just tired of all the endless crime coming out of the criminal complex known as Wall Street. It is unclear. Then again, America will soon have its own manipulation scandals to deal with: and if it is not the US BBA member banks, all of whom were just as guilty as Barclays, and the only question is which bank will be the sacrificial scapegoat whose CEO will have to demonstratively depart (to warmer, non-extradition climes), it will be the following story from Bloomberg which will likely pick up much more steam over the next weeks and months, detailing how the bank which just barely avoided a triple notch downgrade (wink wink) has had previous dealings with the very same rating agencies seeking to, picture this, artificially inflate ratings! So to summarize: Fed manipulates capital markets, HFT manipulates bid ask spreads, "self-policing" CDS pricing market groups fudge the prices on trillions in Credit Default Swaps, bank cabals collude and manipulate short-term interest rates, and now banks are confirmed to have manipulated the ratings on tens of billions of bonds using monetary incentives and threats. Is there anything in this "market" that was fair over the past several decades, and was actual price discovery ever actually possible? Because by now it should be very clear going forward all the things that actually make a free and fair market are forever gone, and that without endless fraud and manipulation by all the market participants who realize that anyone defecting the ponzi group means immediate and terminal losses for all, and all those calls for an S&P 400 would actually prove to be overly optimistic.

We have no doubt that everyone is tired of bad news, but we are compelled to review the facts: Europe is currently experiencing severe bank runs, budgets in virtually every western country on the planet are out of control, the banking system is running excessive leverage and risk, the costs of servicing the ever-increasing amounts of government debt are rising rapidly, and the economies of Europe, Asia and the United States are slowing down or are in full contraction. There's no sugar coating it and we have to stop listening to politicians and central planners who continue to downplay, obfuscate and flat out lie about the current economic reality. Stop listening to them.

Someday, it will go down in history as the first trial of the modern American mafia. Of course, you won't hear the recent financial corruption case, United States of America v. Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm, called anything like that. If you heard about it at all, you're probably either in the municipal bond business or married to an antitrust lawyer. Even then, all you probably heard was that a threesome of bit players on Wall Street got convicted of obscure antitrust violations in one of the most inscrutable, jargon-packed legal snoozefests since the government's massive case against Microsoft in the Nineties – not exactly the thrilling courtroom drama offered by the famed trials of old-school mobsters like Al Capone or Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo. But this just-completed trial in downtown New York against three faceless financial executives really was historic. Over 10 years in the making, the case allowed federal prosecutors to make public for the first time the astonishing inner workings of the reigning American crime syndicate, which now operates not out of Little Italy and Las Vegas, but out of Wall Street.

There has been much talk today about Obama's use of the "executive privilege" yet few are familiar with the details of this relatively unknown presidential option. The AP sheds much needed light on this practice: perhaps the most fitting, to the constitutional expert president, is that the "privilege" isn't in the Constitution nor has been clearly defined by the courts. In other words - just the kind of loophole that one needs to mask the fact that the very person tasked with imposing justice is himself guilty of performing just the opposite. Yet Obama has only used it once (so far) during his tenure as president. Dubya used it six times, Bush Sr used it once also. Slick Willie however takes the cake with 14 cases of executive privilege during his 8 years on top.

As expected, absolutely nothing new was disclosed in today's latest Jamie Dimon dog and pony show. To summarize what we did learn:

• "JPM is not too big to fail, but it is not at risk of failing unless the earth is hit by the moon"
• "We make CDS for the benefit of veterans, retirees, orphans and widows"
• "We only bought Bear's assets in a firesale while the Fed backstopped its liabilities, because the US government made us"
• "VaR can be made to show anything. We have a closet full of models"
• "Gambling is not investing"

Finally, Jamie Dimon once again refused to disclose the to-date losses on the CIO trade, but promises the firm will be profitable. Which only leaves one question open: how much "profit" from "reserve release" and "DVA", aka blowing out in JPM CDS, will the firm need to take to mask the CIO losses?

As if last week's bought and paid for by JPMorgan media circus in the Senate was not enough, in which Jamie Dimon played several bribed muppets like a fiddle, today we get part two. Momentarily, the Committee on Financial Services will pick up the baton where the Senate left off, and confirm to everyone that the people who lead this country, at least on paper, are some of the most incompetent, and outright clueless when it comes to financial matters. The same matters that have led America to the Second great depression, which has so far been prevented from wiping out 20% of the economy only courtesy of Bernanke's relentless money printing. Dimon's testimony, which is a replica of last week's, can be found here. In other news, Jamie Dimon is furious he never bribed Maxine Waters before. Now he will have to explain introductory math for absolute idiots. Karma is a bitch.

It seems our warning of yesterday's perfect algo-driven retracement in Treasuries and stocks was spot on. The dead cat bounced just too perfectly for our liking and despite an early attempt to ramp markets on Dimon's testimony (which worked at first and then faded all the way into the close), broad risk assets led equities lower with a horrible close. It appears the 10Y auction was today's catalyst and it is clear from the charts that TSYs indeed turned lower (in yield) before equities woke up. The 1315 level (in September S&P 500 futures) was a stumbling point all day as decent sized blocks were dumped each time we moved above it until the market finally gave in and fell. WTI gave all its Dimon-spike gains back. Gold, Silver, and Copper wriggled along sideways (also giving back all the Dimon-Spike gains) but while the USD retraced higher into the close (-0.3% on the week now), Gold and Silver remain up around 1.5% on the week (with gold the outperformer on the day). VIX pushed dramatically higher to 24.5% (+2.3vols) and as stocks tumbled so equity correlation to risk-assets picked up (with notably stocks finding support as they converged with CONTEXT near the close). A last minute pop into the day-session close took us back to Thursday's close of last week but IG credit continues to point to lower risk appetites.

Shifting away from the theatrical travesty for a moment, we move to the other such travesty: Europe, where while nothing has been fixed, despite what the BIS is trying to do with the EURUSD which is now up 100 pips in a straight line since the Dimon testimony started, we find that while the world is concerned about Greek elections, the real gamechanger may be the old and known one: Greek cash, or the lack thereof, and more specifically yet another bailout for the country. RTE reports that as of today Greece has about €2 billion in cash left, pro forma for the recent cliffhanger cash infusion from Europe which almost did not come, which is expected to last the country for just about one more month.

• How original: Syria prints new money as deficit grows (Reuters)- America is not Syria
• Former SNB head Hildebrand to become BlackRock vice chairman (FT)
• Osborne says Greece may have to quit euro (Reuters)
• Osborne Risks the Wrath of Merkel (FT)
• China second-quarter GDP growth may dip below 7 percent - government adviser (Reuters)
• Italian Borrowing Costs Surge at Auction of 1-Year Bills (Bloomberg)
• Greeks withdraw cash ahead of cliffhanger vote (Reuters)
• Merkel’s Choice Pits European Fate Against German Voter Interest (Bloomberg)
• Italy Tax Increases Backfire as Monti Tightens Belts (Bloomberg)
• Dimon says JPMorgan failed to rein in traders (Reuters)

Presenting JPMorgan's CEO Jamie Dimon's prepared remarks for tomorrow's debacle: The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the totally unvarnished version of the truth that will fulfill Jamie Dimon's obligations to sit through a few hours of snide remarks, condescension, and bating. It does seem however that our initial perspective on this being a systemic risk hedge (i.e. a 'delta-hedged' senior tranche position as opposed to some easily managed and understood pairs trade) that rapidly grew out of control due to risk control inadequacies, is absolutely correct - though we suspect that is as close to the real truth anyone will ever get.

We are just about 16 hours away from Jamie Dimon's sworn testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, which even has the theatrical name: "A Breakdown in Risk Management: What Went Wrong at JPMorgan Chase?" Will anyone learn anything? Of course not: Jamie Dimon has been well-schooled in not disclosing critical trading information, and will certainly use the "proprietary position" and "more shareholder losses" excuse for any directed question asking how big the JPM CIO loss has become. Because while the hearing could have been productive, if indeed its purpose was to seek to prevent future massive losses of scale such as the suffered by the JPM prop trading unit and its hundreds of billions in CDS notional position, the last thing anyone will care about tomorrow is market efficiency and actual regulation. First and foremost: grandstanding and posturing, in the case of the politicians, and not disclosing anything, without saying too many "I don't recall"s in the case of Dimon. Which is why we have little hope to get anything out of tomorrow's formulaic 2 hours of largely meaningless droning. That said, considering we have already covered the topic of the JPM loss from a mechanistic standpoint more than any other media outlet, there is one more chart we would like to share with readers.

One day ahead of Jamie Dimon's blockbuster appearance before the Senate Banking Committee, Bloomberg has released the definitive timeline infographic of who knew what, when, together with damning evidence that, contrary to what has been represented by JPM execs, the firm knew about the massive risk, which an in house risk manager described as "trying to land a Boeing 747 without flying lessons", as far back as 2010. Not only that but the firm was actively engaged in fudging its VaR for years in an attempt to hide the monster in the closet which we dubbed, long before the details were exposed, the "world's largest prop trading desk". Well, now the monster is out, and nobody wants to come within one bid/ask spread of it. And tomorrow, Jamie will have a fun time explaining just how he let all of this happen for years while potentially engaging in material 10(b)-5 fraud in his public filings and statements.

Rampant overproduction, channel stuffing, and an inventory glut: the China auto bubble is hissing.