Unemployment

While many would argue that youth unemployment (the real scariest chart here), in fact we suspect it is the following two charts that are really keeping Mario Draghi up at night. The lip service paid by the French and the Germans to growth strategies and youth unemployment pale in relation to the desperation of the European collateralizer-of-last-resort to de-fragment his transmission channels and unleash his own QE to the starving banking systems of Spain and Italy. As BNP notes, recent data on Italian and Spanish banks’ bad and non-performing loans (NPLs) have reignited the debate on the health of the banking sector in the eurozone’s peripheral economies and its implications for the bloc’s credit supply and, ultimately, economic growth. But what is worse is that interest rates on new loans for a company in Italy or Spain are almost double those in Germany and France. It is against this backdrop that Draghi expressed plans to revive the ABS market - but implementation will prove significantly more challenging than market hopers believe (as is clear in credit markets) and direct purchases will probably face vetoes by a number of influential members of the board. To add further salt to these fresh wounds, the FT reports that Spanish banks will need to set aside more than EUR10 billion more reserves to cover the rolling over of EUR 200 billion of 'extend-and-pretend' loans.

"The last 36 hours have perhaps been evidence as to what might happen if stimulus is withdrawn before the global recovery has been cemented and what might happen if Japan makes mistakes along the way to their attempted new dawn. With the Chinese data still ambiguous, Europe still in recession, Japan in the very  early stages of a growth experiment and with the US recovery still historically very weak one has to say that liquidity has been the main market fuel in recent months. So central banks have to tread carefully and the Fed tapering talk and the BoJ's seemingly benign neglect policy towards JGBs has had the market fretting." - Deutsche Bank

The Nikkei dropped by 7.3% at the end of the day and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dipped by 2.5%. Shanghai maintained a moderate fall at just 1.2% (if you believe that data now!). The Asian markets are down.

Popularity is something that can be determined by two things. Firstly, it doesn’t last! When too many people start liking you anyway, there is always someone that is there ready to knife you in the back. ‘Heil Caesar!’ soon turns into ‘Et tu, Brute’! 

A data-based look at the financial context of the past 30 years from the perspective of Gen X.

Following the ongoing rioting in until-now-calm Sweden, we thought it interesting to revisit the increasing chance of more broad-based social unrest in Europe. With the summer rapidly approaching, austerity still heavy in the air (well fauxsterity at least), there is a massive and growing divide not only between core and peripheral nations' youth unemployment but also within a nation. For instance, while Greece tops the overall youth unemployment level in Europe, 4 of the Top 5 regions (some with youth unemployment levels of over 70%) are from Spain. As lip-service is paid to addressing this pressing issue by the French and Germans (who themselves are increasingly at loggerheads over policy), as Bloomberg's Niraj Shah notes, the chasm between the rich and poor in Europe continues to gap ever wider.

Last week (May 11^th) there was a peak of 32, 000 new claims being made taking the US to 360, 000 new unemployed claims being filed, which is the biggest increase since March. 

With Greece suffering the biggest economic depression in decades, all so a few rich men can preserve their wealth and not have their EUR-denominated savings wiped out (even if the alternative means finally being able to rebalance externally using the Drachma instead of forcing internal rebalancing via unemployment and plunging wages), it was only a matter of time before we found out just how humiliating the conversion of the entire economy to a "gray", non-tax paying one would be for the citizens of Greece.  As the NYT reports, in just the past two years, the numbers of Greeks engaging in prostitution as a last course source of income has more than doubled: according to the National Center for Social Research, the number of people selling sex has surged 150 percent in the last two years.

As the global equity and bond markets grind ever higher, abundant signs exist that we are once again living through an asset bubble – or rather a whole series of bubbles in a variety of markets. This makes this period quite interesting, but also quite dangerous. This can be summarized in one sentence:  How could this be happening again so soon?

Well that escalated quickly... the S&P is now 30 points off its earlier highs and it seems (for once) that it is stocks and none of the other risk-assets that are taking the brunt of the disappointment. And no, it wasn't the mention of a June taper that spooked markets: as the Fed itself said that will be a function of the economy, and as everyone knows there bad news and good news are both goods news. What spooked the market is that finally someone on the FOMC is not only acknowledging asset bubbles, but putting it in writing: "a few participants expressed concern that conditions in certain U.S. financial markets were becoming too buoyant.... One participant cautioned that the emergence of financial imbalances could prove difficult for regulators to identify and address, and that it would be appropriate to adjust monetary policy to help guard against risks to financial stability." Now this is a problem because unlike the economy where QE may or may not trickle down to the unemployment rate (it won't as QE is causing it but fear not - more QE is just around the corner to fix a problem caused by QE) asset bubbles only get bigger and bigger and bigger, until QE has to be not only tapered, not only stopped, but actually unwound. And with some finally on the record, the blame will be cast squarely at those who ignored the first warnings.

It appears (as we noted here) that the size of the balance sheet, difficulty of the exit, frothiness of markets, and not-totally-dismal labor headlines have even the doves a little more hawkish about the possibility of an exit at some point - though obviously the minutes are clear that the 'flow' can increase (as well as decrease) based on the data.

• FOMC MINUTES: MANY SAID MORE PROGRESS NEEDED BEFORE SLOWING QE
• FED'S BROAD PRINCIPLES ON EXIT `STILL VALID,' FOMC MINUTES SHOW
• SOME ON FOMC WILLING TO SLOW ASSET PURCHASES AS EARLY AS JUNE
• SOME SAID "CONDITIONS IN CERTAIN FINANCIAL MARKETS WERE BECOMING TOO BUOYANT"
  

Two things seem clear: 1) the Fed is explicitly forcing the market to hope for bad data to maintain gains as the gap between market and reality is now too large for a soft-landing; and 2) the Fed has explicitly admitted that it is the 'flow' not the 'stock' that matters - as we have been vociferous about for years. But what is worst, is that now that some at the FOMC are openly seeing asset bubbles, Bernanke is facing a mutiny on his hands!

With part two of today's Fed-a-palooza due out shortly in the form of the May 1 FOMC meeting minutes, here is an informative recap of the current roster of assorted birds at the FOMC via Bank of America. Of course, since every decision always begins and ends with Ben, and soon his replacement Janet, all of below is largely meaningless.

Sparked by the police shooting of a machete-wielding 69 year-old man, traditionally calm-and-collected Sweden is suffering amid its third night of riots. It seems underlying tensions from high youth unemployment and rising nationalism against the nation's large immigrant population have been catalyzed by this seemingly unrelated event. As the Daily Mail notes, immigrant ghettos have been created where unemployment is high and there are few opportunities for residents with left-leaning commenters adding that the riots represented a 'gigantic failure' of government policies, which had underpinned the rise of ghettos in the suburbs - "We have failed to give many of the people in the suburbs a hope for the future." An anti-immigrant party, the Sweden Democrats, has risen to third in polls ahead of a general election due next year, reflecting unease about immigrants among many voters. What is driving this tension? After decades of practicing the 'Swedish model' of generous welfare benefits, the country has been reducing the role of the state since the 1990s, spurring the fastest growth in inequality of any advanced OECD economy. Given Sweden's 24.7% youth unemployment, we wonder just what will happen to the 60% of unemployed youths in Greece and Spain when school lets out this summer?

Perhaps the best answer to the question posed to Bernanke moments ago whether US unemployment is structural or cyclical comes courtesy of Microsoft, which announced earlier that it was set to hire "several thousand" workers. Sadly, the catch is that the hires will be in China.

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