Yen

In a move that will surely shock, shock, the monetary purists out there, the Bank of Japan has just gone and done what we predicted back in May 2011, with the first of our "Hyprintspeed" series articles: "A Look At The BOJ's Current, And Future, Quantitative Easing" (the second one which discussed the imminent advent of the ¥1 quadrillion in total debt threshold was also fulfilled three weeks ago). So just what did the BOJ do? Why nothing short of join the ECB, the BOE, and the Fed (and don't get us started on those crack FX traders at the SNB) in electronically printing even more 1 and 0-based monetary equivalents (full statement here). From WSJ: "The Bank of Japan surprised markets Tuesday by implementing new easing policies and moving closer to an explicit price target, the latest sign of growing worries around the world about the ripple effects of the European debt crisis on the global economy. With interest rates already close to zero, the BOJ has relied in recent months on asset purchases to stimulate the economy. In Tuesday's meeting, the central bank expanded that plan by ¥10 trillion, or about $130 billion. The facility, which includes low-cost loans, is now worth about ¥65 trillion, or $844 billion." The rub however lies in the total Japanese GDP, which at last check was $6 trillion (give or take), and declining. Which means this announcement was the functional equivalent to a surprise $325 billion QE announced by the Fed. What is ironic is the market reaction: the BOJ expands its LSAP by 18% and the USDJPY moves by 30 pips. As for gold, not a peep: as if the market has now priced in that the world's central banks will dilute themselves to death. Unfortunately, it is only at death, and the failure of all status quo fiat paper, that the real value of the yellow metal, whose metallic nature continues to be suppressed via paper pathways, will truly shine.

Much has been made of today's Reuters story how "Iran turns to barter for food as sanctions cripple imports" in which we learn that "Iran is turning to barter - offering gold bullion in overseas vaults or tankerloads of oil - in return for food", and whose purpose no doubt is to demonstrate just how crippled the Iranian economy is as a result of the ongoing US embargo. Incidentally this story is 100% the opposite of the Debka-spun groundless disinformation from a few weeks ago that India was preparing to pay for Iran's oil in gold (they got the asset right, but the flow of funds direction hopelessly wrong). While there is certainly truth to the fact that the US is actively seeking to destabilize the local government, we wonder why? After all as the opportunity cost for the existing regime to do something drastic gets ever lower as the popular resentment rises, leaving the local administration with few options but to engage either the US or Israel. Unless of course, this is the ultimate goal. Yet going back to the Reuters story, it would be quite dramatic, if only it was not the case that Iran has been laying the groundwork for a barter economy for many months now, something which various other analysts perceive as the basis for the destruction of the petrodollar system. Perhaps regular readers will recall that back in July, we wrote an article titled "China And Iran To Bypass Dollar, Plan Oil Barter System." Specifically, we wrote that "according to the FT, China has decided to commence a barter system in which Iranian oil is exchanged directly for Chinese exports. The net result: not only a slap for the US Dollar, but implicitly for all fiat intermediaries, as Iran and China are about to prove that when it comes to exchanging hard resources for critical Chinese goods and services, the world's so called reserve currency is completely irrelevant." Seen in this light the fact that Iran is actually proceeding with a barter system, something that had been in the works for quite a while, actually puts the Reuters story in a totally different light: instead of one predicting the imminent demise of the Iranian economy, the conclusion is inverted, and underscores the culmination of what may have been an extended barter preparation period, has finally gone from beta to (pardon the pun) gold, and Iran is now successfully engaging in global trade without the use of the historical reserve currency.

• Please - we beg you, help us - IMF Urges Beijing to Prepare Stimulus (WSJ)
• Stalemate in talks on Greek austerity measures (Telegraph)
• U.S. Sets Money-Market Plan (WSJ)
• Forty States Sign On to Foreclosure ‘Robo’ Settlement (Diana Olick)
• Greece bail-out funds could be split (FT)
• Japan Adopts Stealth Intervention as Yen Gains Hurts Growth (Bloomberg)
• Papademos to Meet Greek Party Chiefs as ‘Great Sacrifices’ Loom (Bloomberg)
• Glencore-Xstrata deal meets shareholder opposition (Reuters)
• Romney campaign takes aim at rival Santorum (Reuters)

Just when Japan can least afford it....

Mind versus technicals. 

Daily news.

The vast majority of professional investors are unable to contemplate truly dark times for the markets. After all, the two worst items most of them have witnessed (the Tech Bust and 2008) were both remedied within about 18 months and were followed by massive market rallies.Because of this, the idea that the financial system might fail or that we might see any number of major catastrophes (Germany leaving the EU, a US debt default, hyperinflation, etc.) is on par with Bigfoot or Unicorns for 99% of those whose jobs are to manage investors' money or advise investors on how to allocate their capital. 

All you need to read.

Just a matter of when?

Japan recently made waves with the news that its total debt would hit north of one quadrillion yen over the next several months: a number greater than the GDP of the entire Eurozone. Yet the one saving grace for Japan has long been the strawman that the bulk of its debt is locally held, and thus the risk of a sharp sell off is minimal as the capital has to be recycled within the borders of Japan, especially as the USA and soon the rest of the world will provide the same returns on debt as Japan, which has been locked in a 30 year deleveraging cycle, does. However, one thing that continues to be widely ignored is the demographic top that Japanese society is experiencing as ever more workers enter retirement, and there is no replenishment of young workers (perhaps Spain can export some of its youth to Tokyo?). This may change soon because as the AP reports, the Japanese population will be cut by 30% by 2060. Furthermore the country's workforce of people aged 15 to 65 will shrink to half the population (a BLS wet dream as under those conditions the US unemployment rate would be very negative). Alas, the prospect of Japan's population of 128 million dropping by 1 million every year over the coming decades, should be sufficiently sobering. This naturally means that any existing paper supply-demand equilibrium will soon have to start being reevaluated. But by 2060 we will likely have bigger problems than placing the 1 billion googol in JJBs that have to find a buyer to fund the country's deficit. Lastly, we would love to see one of those charts showing how many working people will have to fund each and every retiree by the year 2060, first in Japan, and then in every other country.

A strong yen strikes again. 

A brief and comprehensive summary of the main events in the past week, both good and bad.

With everything from stocks and bonds to 'roo bellies rising as one trade, it may be a good time to ask: what's priced into the market's uptrend? We say "bad news is priced in" when negative news is well-known and the market has absorbed that information via the repricing process. When the market has absorbed all the "good news," then we say the market is "priced to perfection:" that is, the market has not just priced in good news, it has priced in the expectation of further good news. Markets that are priced to perfection are fiendishly sensitive to unexpected bad news that disrupts the expectation of continuing positive news. So what have global markets priced into this uptrend across virtually all markets? 

Somehow the fact that the PIIGS can issue Bills (sub 1-year debt) in an environment in which both the ECB and the Fed have made any debt investment under 3 years risk free is taken as a positive sign. But in a continent starved for even the most optically irrelevant good news, this may be all it gets, which it did last night after Italy auctioned off €8 billion 182 bills at a 1.97% rate, the lowest since May. A far more relevant question is where peripheral debt with a maturity greater than 3 years, and thus with implicit risk, would price. But for now at least some of the banks appear to be dipping their toe into a very short-term carry trade, with ECB deposits declining from €484.1 billion to €464.8 billion overnight. Whether or not this is on the back of the assumption that a Greek default is contained remains to be seen: it would be truly laughable if Europe believes things are ok and thus underutilizes the next LTRO in one month only to find itself with a several trillion euro shortfall 3 weeks later. Yet this, being Europe, is the most likely outcome. Offsetting Bill issuance optimism is the ongoing uncertainty over the outcome of the Greek PSI talks, which for now at least have stalled with the cash coupon being the straw man sticking point. The truth is that if hedge funds want a default to proceed with international litigation arbitrage, that most lucrative of hedge fund strategies, they will get a default. Everything else is irrelevant. Below is Bloomberg's summary of how the newsflow is affecting markets.

Yesterday the Japanese Finance Ministry made a whopper of an announcement: in the year ending March 2013, total Japanese debt will surpass one quadrillion yen, or ¥1,086,000,000,000,000. This is roughly in line with the Zero Hedge expectations that by this March total Japanese debt would surpass one quadrillion yen. In USD terms, at today's exchange rate, this is precisely $14 trillion. And while smaller than America's $15.4 trillion (net of all post debt ceiling breach auctions), which was $14 trillion about a year ago, the GDP backing this notional amount of debt, which just so happens is greater than the GDP of the entire Euro area, is a modest ¥481 trillion, so by the end of the next fiscal year, Japan will have a Debt to GDP ratio of 225%. And that's not counting all the household and financial debt. So prepare to add quadrillion to the vernacular. At this exponential rate of increase quintillion will appear some time in 2015 and so on. Yet the scariest conclusion is that as Bloomberg economist Joseph Brusuelas points out, America is not only next, it already is Japan. Actually scratch that, America is worse than Japan, which at least generated a real housing bubble in the years just preceding the onset of its multi-decade credit crunch, something not even America could do in comparable terms. More importantly, "the debt-to-GDP ratio of the U.S. recently surpassed 100 percent, and it did so in the four years after the onset of the recession, compared with the six years it took the Japanese debt-to-GDP ratio to do so." The Japanese may be better than America in most things, but when it comes to destroying its economy, the US has no equal. Brusuelas' conclusion: "If below trend growth is the most probable scenario in the U.S., the most likely alternative is that the U.S. economy is headed for a lost decade… or two." So... go all in?