fixed

As Many Have Predicted for Years

I believe this is Germany’s final push for EU control. If this fails and Germany ceases to offer additional bailout funds in some form then the EU will collapse (as noted earlier, the ECB, IMF, and US Fed cannot prop the EU up nor will the ESM mega bailout fund work). Spain’s literally on the verge of seeing a bank holiday. Germany is the only one who might have the funds to prop it up. And Germany wants gold. In plain terms, the EU will likely not last through the summer. It’s literally GAME OVER time. Various proposals will crop up (such as Germany’s “cash for Gold” program), but no one (not even Germany) actually has the funds to support the avalanche of banking failures that is coming.

"Risk on, risk off" might be the most essential hallmark of the current market, but just focusing on the day-to-day whims of capital markets ignores longer term changes to investor risk preferences.  Nic Colas, of ConvergEx looks at the topic from the vantage point of gender-specific investment choices.  For example, more women are participating in deferred compensation (DC) plans, and the data from millions of 401(k) accounts tells a useful story.  Their retirement accounts still lag those of their male counterparts in total value and they remain a bit more risk-averse. But for the first time in at least a decade they are more likely than men to contribute to a retirement account and are contributing a greater percentage of their earnings. You’ll never see pink or blue dots on the “Efficient Frontier” of academic models, to be sure.  However, both empirical data and psychological studies do point to subtle – but notable – differences in how men and women consider the classic risk-reward tradeoff inherent in the challenge of investing. Nick suggests it may make sense to reconsider the notion that continued money flows into bonds and other safe haven investments are really "Risk off" market behavior.  At least a piece of it may well be "Risk shifting," driven by the demographic and psychological factors as assets controlled by women are clearly increasing. "Risk off" may well be "risk shift."

Last quarter, upon the release of the Q4 2011 Z.1 (Flow of Funds) report, we penned "The US Deleveraging Is Now Over", because, well, it was: all the categories tracked by the Fed's Credit Market Debt Outstanding series posted a sequential increase over Q3.. As it turns out, the entire "releveraging" was merely a one time artifact of consumers relying more than ever on credit to purchase items in the holiday season. Because as the just released update from the Fed indicates, deleveraging is back with a vengeance. In Q1 the Household sector saw its total debt decline by $81 billion, or the most since Q1 of 2011, to $12.85 trillion. That this happened even as overall net worth supposedly soared by $2.8 trillion as noted in the previous article is truly disturbing, and confirms what everyone knows: not only is nothing fixed in the US economy, but the deleveraging wave continues on its merry way.

On the surface, the overnight Spanish bond auction, in which the country sold a tiny €2.1 billion of 2, 4 and 10 year bonds was a success, simply because it wasn't a failure. Anywhere below the surface and things get fishy. The Treasury sold €638 million of a 2-year bond, €825 million of a four-year bond and €611 million of a benchmark 10-year bond. And while the bid-to-cover ratios were higher than at recent auctions, with the 2012, 2014 and 2022 bonds covered 4.3, 2.6 and 3.3 times respectively, so were the yields: the 2014 bond was issued at a yield of 4.335 percent, the 2016 bond at 5.353 percent and the 2022 bond at 6.044 percent, a lower price than the 6.14 percent the same maturity bond trades at in the secondary market. In other words, Spain is back to using the same tricks it did back in the fall when bonds would magically price well over 10 bps inside of fair value. Just don't ask why.  More notably, as Bloomberg reminds us, this was the lowest amount allotted to a 10 year note since 2004. In other words Spain sold the bare minimum of the longer-bond just to keep up with appearances: an amount likely recycled by its broke banks, which scrambled to get the last remaining LTRO cash and to show just how strong the demand for the country's debt is. In fact as Nicholas Spiro of Spiro Sovereign said, "If it wasn't for its banks' continued support at auctions, Spain would be unable to sell its debt. Right now confidence in Spain is at an all-time low." Either way, the good news is that according to Spain it has now covered 58% of its borrowing needs for 2012. the bad news: 42% remains uncovered. Especially in the aftermath of an EU announcement that not only has it not received an aid request from Spain, but that there is no EU rescue plan for Spanish banks. Europe has now completely lost the script and is making up day by day.

I believe this is Germany’s final push for EU control. If this fails and Germany ceases to offer additional bailout funds in some form then the EU will collapse (as noted earlier, the ECB, IMF, and US Fed cannot prop the EU up nor will the ESM mega bailout fund work). Spain’s literally on the verge of seeing a bank holiday. Germany is the only one who might have the funds to prop it up. And Germany wants gold.

Everyone's worried about EU soveriegn debt. Once all of that rapidly depreciated real estate collapses mortgages that have been leveraged 30x, you'll really see the meaning of AUSTERITY! I'm trying to make it very clear to you people, you ain't seen nothing yet!!!

Stripped of acronyms and pseudo-economics, Central banks have one lever: monetary easing. Whatever the name offered for creating money electronically and suppressing interest rates, it boils down to making money abundant and cheap to borrow, at least for banks and other favored players, such as buyers of homes using 3% down-payment FHA mortgages. The problem is that easy money doesn't fix what's broken. Incentivizing debt and leverage does nothing to reduce leverage or debt, and incentivizing speculation does not reduce household debt loads or increase household incomes. And without improving household incomes, you have a recessionary economy held aloft by unsustainably profligate Federal borrowing and spending.

Is this a "solution"? No. Is this sustainable? No.

Last September we were delighted to bring you the following great news:

DAVID BIANCO NO LONGER WORKS AT BOFA, SPOKESWOMAN SAYS

Now, we are even more delighted to bring you the following breaking news:

BLACKROCK CHIEF EQUITY STRATEGIST BOB DOLL TO RETIRE

And then there were three...

The reality that the global Status Quo has fixed absolutely nothing in four years is finally coming to roost in the global economy. Though there is an endless array of complexity to snare the unwary, the source of instability is both visible and easily understood: too much debt that will never be paid back. Making matters much worse, much of the money that was borrowed--by sovereign governments, local governments, households and private enterprises--was squandered on consumption or malinvestments, and so there are precious few assets or collateral underlying the debt. Even when there is an asset--for example, a vacant house in a vacant development in Spain, or a Greek bond--the market value is considerably lower than the purchase price. The reality is that trillions of dollars, euros, yen and renminbi in phantom wealth will disappear when the losses that have already taken place are finally recognized. Everyone in the world with exposure to the global economy will become poorer in terms of abundant money floating around buying goods and services as credit dries up and deleveraging wipes out trillions of dollars, euros, yen and renminbi of phantom wealth.

The past two weeks it was Spain, now it is back to Portugal, which overnight announced it is bailing out three banks to the tune of €6.65 billion. If at this point who is bailing out whom is becoming a confusing blur - fear not: that is the whole point. From AAP: "Portugal will inject more than 6.65 billion euros ($A8.49 billion) into private banks BCP and BPI, and the state-owned CGD to meet criteria established by the European Banking Authority. "In all, the state will inject more than 6.65 billion euros in these banks," though five billion euros is to come from an envelope worth 12 billion included in a financial rescue plan drawn up in May 2011, the finance ministry said. Portugal last year became the third eurozone country after Greece and Ireland to be bailed out, receiving an EU-IMF package worth up to 78 billion euros in return for a commitment to reform its economy and impose austerity measures." And surely that will be it, and Portugal will be fixed. Just like Spain was fixed, until someone actually did some math and found a hole up to €350 billion out of left field. Funny how those big undercapitalization holes just sublimate into existence, usually moments before client money is vaporized.

Two weeks of utter confusion by most market participants out there, when the complete deja vu scenario is so very clear. To help out those banging their heads over what is happening, here, once again, is the full playbook as it was laid out here for eveyone to read and prepare, because it explained to the dot precisely what will happen, and has been happening since May 19. And yes, that 1000 bps on XO is still about 25% away... Do the math.

This chart, better than any we have seen so far, summarizes just how much has been injected already to preserve the Eurozone from collapse.

We finally get to continue what we started in 2008. Becuase the TPTB insisted on kicking the can down the road, the resulting pain will be excruciatingly devastating versus simply horrible! Alas, once you get you short positions/puts/futures in before the inevitably ill-informed short ban, money can still be made. 

All you need to read.