Warsh

Presenting Dave Collum's now ubiquitous and all-encompassing annual review of markets and much, much more. From Baptists, Bankers, and Bootleggers to Capitalism, Corporate Debt, Government Corruption, and the Constitution, Dave provides a one-stop-shop summary of everything relevant this year (and how it will affect next year and beyond).

In “The Biggest Myth About the Fed,” David Beckworth, an assistant professor of economics at Western Kentucky University, suggests that the pessimists are wrong to be concerned about what Mr. Bernanke and Co. are up to. The notion that current benign market conditions are a reason for optimism sums up just how out of touch with reality most academic economists (and other alleged experts, including journalists-cum-forecasters who parrot this nonsense) are.

By this sort of logic:

• Mid-2005 was the right time to be optimistic on housing
• January-2007 was the right time to be optimistic on the banking sector
• The spring of 2007 was the right time to be optimistic on credit markets
• The fall of 2007 was the right time to be optimistic on global equity markets
• Mid-2008 was the right time to be optimistic on commodities
• This past September was the right time to be optimistic on technology stocks

Of course, we know how those all worked out (hint: not well).

Ex-Fed Governor Kevin Warsh provided much food for thought during his appearance on CNBC this morning. Over the course of the following clip, he addresses concerns from just how bad the reality of the global economy must have been for Bernanke and his merry men to have gone "all-in" aggressive - reflecting on this as a panic-like reaction during times now where we are not panicking, the ineffectiveness of QE3 "iPhone 5 will do more for the real economy than QE3", fears over how bad this could get as "there is a reason 'exit' is a four-letter word." Warsh notes the paradox of Bernanke "trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat' each time the economy loses control while calling for Washington to do more - as the politicians know "there's not much we need to do, Bernanke has our back." When asset prices are driven less by fundamentals and more by speeches and policies coming out of Washington, you're taking risks. "Risks are highest in the economy when measures of risk are he lowest"

On occasion of the publication of his new gold report (read here), Ronald Stoeferle talked with financial journalist Lars Schall about fundamental gold topics such as: "financial repression"; market interventions; the oil-gold ratio;  the renaissance of gold in finance;  "Exeter’s Pyramid"; and what the true "value" of gold could actually look like. Via Matterhorn Asset Management.

There is no free-lunch - especially if that lunch is liquidity-fueled - is how Gluskin-Sheff's David Rosenberg reminds us of the reality facing US markets this year and next. As (former Fed governor) Kevin Warsh noted in the WSJ "The 'fiscal cliff' in early 2013 - when government stimulus spending and tax relief are set to fall - is not misfortune. It is the inevitable result of policies that kick the can down the road." Between the jobs data and three months in a row of declining ISM orders/inventories it seems the key manufacturing sector of support for the economy may be quaking and add to that the deleveraging that is now recurring (consumer credit) and Rosenberg sees six rather sizable stumbling-blocks facing markets as we move forward. On this basis, the market as a whole is overpriced by more than 20%.

Sprott strategist John Embry has never been a fan of the existing financial system. Today, he makes that once again quite clear in this interview with Egon von Grayerz' Matterhorn Asset Management in which he says: "I think that the current financial system, as we know it, will be totally destroyed, probably sooner rather than later. The next system will require gold backing to have any legitimacy. This has happened many times in history." Needless to say, he proceeds to explain why a monetary system based on gold, one in which one, gasp, lives according to one's means, is better. Logically, he also explains why the status quo, whose insolvent welfare world has nearly a third of a quadrillion in the form of unfunded future liabilities, will never let this happen. Much more inside.

One of the salient questions asked of Bernanke by Congress relates to a Kevin Warsh oped in the WSJ, in which he said the following: "Private investors are crowded out of the market when the Fed shows up as a large and powerful bidder. As a result, the administration and Congress make tax and spending decisions—with huge implications for our standard of living—with heightened risks around future funding costs." This is arguably the question that dominates Fed policy making under the Operation Twist doctrine, in which the Fed buys up long-dated paper and sells Short dated (under 3 years), the second leg of which however is completely irrelevant, as the Fed has already guaranteed ZIRP until 2014, in essence confirming that Twist was nothing but a stealth QE3 as we have claimed all along, as the Fed's ZIRP4EVA policy effectively offsets any and all short-dated sales. Needless to say Bernanke's response was irrelevant. However, here is the most jarring statistic. As Barclays showed a few days back, under Twist, the Fed has monetized virtually all, and specifically 91% of all gross issuance in the 20-30 year maturity bucket. In other words, Warsh is absolutely spot on, and once again we are left with an artificial market in which it is only the Fed that defines the UST curve shape by molding the long end. What happens when Twist ends? Will the 30 Year collapse? What happens when there is no explicit back stop to the long end? Is this the reason why Bill Gross yesterday said that he fully expects much more check writing by the Fed for the next '12, 24, 36 months." And how can it not: we don't have a market of rational players any more - the entire market is merely one irrational player, whose biggest counterparty incidentally, the ECB, is beyond broke. Finally, what happens to the Fed's balance sheet when interest rates start rising? Holding a portfolio with a duration greater than it has ever been, the DV01 is currently well over $2 billion (i.e. a $2 billion loss on every basis point increase in rates). And rising.

Kevin Warsh, the last real hawk at the Fed, excluding the primadonnas who keep bitching and moaning against QE2 yet continue to vote with the Chairsatan, has announced he will leave the Fed.

Just crossing the tape are the following comments from Kevin Warsh at the 2010 SIFMA conference.

• *DJ Warsh:Fed Should Reconsider Bond Plan If US Dollar Continues Drop
• *DJ Fed's Warsh Urges Regular Review Of US Treasury Purchases
• *DJ Warsh: Fed Risks Losing Its Hard-Earned Credibility
• *DJ Warsh:US Fiscal, Regulatory, Trade Policies Must Change
• *DJ Fed's Warsh:US Must Resist Temptation To Raise Spending
• *DJ Warsh:US Needs Pro-Growth Policies Like Changing Tax Code

In a word: Fed mutiny in the making... or some damn good acting.

Last week's Op-Ed du semaine was Ben Bernanke's WaPo glowing endorsement of the Fed market put, whose sole purpose was to remind stocks, which ended up drooping on the day QE2 was announced, that Bernanke will stop at nothing to achieve his now primary goal (as loosely interpreted under the Fed's broad, and unsupervisable, mandate) - surging stock prices. This week, however, may likely belong to Fed Board Governor, and former member of the President's working group on capital markets, Kevin Warsh. In an Op-ed just released in the WSJ, Warsh, whose series of accomplishments include being the youngest ever appointee to the Fed BOD at 35, and being married to Jane Lauder of Estee Lauder fame, writes "Lower risk-free rates and higher equity prices—if sustained—could
strengthen household and business balance sheets, and raise confidence
in the strength of the economy. But if the recent weakness in the
dollar, run-up in commodity prices, and other forward-looking indicators
are sustained and passed along into final prices, the Fed's price
stability objective might no longer be a compelling policy rationale. In
such a case—even with the unemployment rate still high—we would have
cause to consider the path of policy. This is truer still if inflation
expectations increase materially." Translation: if gold continues to exhibit a beta > 1 w/r/t ES, then we are screwed, and all Fed policies will have failed. Elsewhere, look for most commodities to open limit up again tomorrow for the n^th day in a row as inflation expectations continue to "increase materially" and more and more Fed members understand just what Warsh is saying.

Fed Governor Warsh wrote his 'Blog'on QE. He may have penned the words, but not without Bernanke's approval. This was intended to calm the concerns over QE. It did not work for me.