fixed

We dont' need any water, let the mo@#$#%ker burn!

"I hold a deeply held view of Ron Paul as an honorable, genuine and trustworthy American statesman. In fact, I cannot really think of anyone else in the tepid cesspool of American politics today whom I could even remotely categorize as a statesman as opposed to a run of the mill politician (or ideologue as Mr. Lucas puts it). Mr. Lucas moves on to explain that to an ideologue it is current ideas that matter, while to a statesman it is certain principles that matter. He states that an ideologue’s view of the world and its inhabitants is political, while to a statesman it is historical. These simple sentences are what I believe inherently separate Ron Paul at his very core from everyone else currently running for president. This is merely what separates the man’s character from the others. This is reason enough to consider him, but not reason enough to vote for him. His ideas about liberty, war and economics also separate him from the pack and it is his strongly held principles on these subjects that in my view make him the only one capable and with enough conviction to help heal this country’s wounds, get us back on the right and moral path and foster real change as opposed to a campaign slogan."

Those attempting to pressure Iran by increasing "tensions" and thus the price of oil have it precisely backwards. The one sure way to fatally destabilize the Iranian theocracy is to adjust the demand and supply of oil so the price plummets (as it did in December 2008) to $25/barrel, and stays there for at least six months. It has been estimated that the Iranian theocracy cannot fund its bloated bureaucracies, military and its welfare state if oil falls below around $40-$45/barrel. Drop oil to $25/barrel and keep it there, and the Iranian regime will implode, along with the Chavez regime in Venezuela. Saber-rattling actually aids the Iranian regime by artificially injecting a "disruptive war" premium into the price of oil: they can make the same profits from fewer barrels of oil. The way to put them out of business is drop the price of oil and restrict their sales by whatever means are available. They will be selling fewer barrels and getting less than production costs for those barrels. With no income, the regime will face the wrath of a people who have become dependent on the State for their sustenance and subsidized fuel. How do you drop oil to $25/barrel? Easy: stop saber-rattling in the mideast and engineer a massive global recession with a side order of low-level trade war. Though you wouldn't know it from the high price of oil, the world is awash in oil; storage facilities are full, and production has actually increased a bit in North America.

Is idiosyncracy the substitute for a fledgling Sovereign Bond Market?  Including our recommendations for 2012

Stock futures are up sharply after another week of unprecedented volatility. Although last week was relatively tame, only 13 times in the last 60 years has the S&P 500 had a down 1% day during the week between Christmas and New Year's.  We managed one of those days last week.  We also had a 1% positive day.  Futures are strong and looks like stocks will open above 1272 (where they closed on Jan. 3, 2011). Not only does volatility remain elevated, the stories are about the same. We have some new acronyms to contend with, but ultimately the European Debt Crisis (it is both a bank and sovereign crisis) and the strength of the US economy and China's ability to manage its slowdown are the primary stories. Issues in the Mid-East remain on the fringe but threaten to elevate to something more serious with Iran flexing its muscles more and more. So what to do?  Prepare for more headlines, more risk reversals, and more pain.

It seems that rotating a few pawns at the top is not quite the bazooka everyone expected it to be last week. Case in point: CDS in the core European trio of France, Spain and Belgium just hit new all time wides. But before anyone blames evil CDS speculators, it is notable that CDS is significantly outperforming cash bonds. And since everything that can be said about Europe's ongoing implosion has been said already, the only question is which Goldman "advisor" will replace Sarko in a few weeks.

Forget Europe though, the scariest news of the week to me is HSBC taking $1.8Bn of loan impairment charges last quarter as large amounts of customers simply stopped paying their mortgages.  

That today democracy died in Greece is no surprise to anyone (see note from Greek reader below). What may be unexpected, however, is that despite expectations that any talk of a Referendum is over and done with, this is hardly the case. In essence, what G-Pap said in parliament today is that there will be no referendum if and only if there is an agreement from the main opposition party. Alas, as the following headlines from Reuters indicate, this now appears to be a non-starter.

• GREEK OPPOSITION LEADER ASKS PM TO RESIGN
• GREEK OPPOSITION LEADER SAYS PM MUST QUIT, ELECTIONS MUST BE HELD

But most importantly,

• GREEK OPPOSITION LEADER SAYS RESIGNATION IS A CONDITION FOR TALKS

And so back to square one, as G-Pap's bluffing blows up in his face and any agreement is now contingent on his departure, something he has said will not happen.

This is getting ridiculous. Citing a Socialist Party Official Dow Jones is reporting that "The Greek PM's Referendum Call is 'Basically Dead'"! Instant knee-jerk reaction is a 1% rally in ES and 75pip rally in EURUSD. Evidently the people will not get their say in how much suffering they will face - which perhaps makes the military brass changes even more relevant?

Wondering why the future for housing as an asset is so bleak, why median housing prices continue to tumble and recently saw their biggest three month drop ever, and why there is no bottom in sight? Simple: the American public appears to have woken up to the reality that homes are no longer a flippable asset, and in fact continue to drop in price, an observation that is obvious to virtually all now. So what happens next? Why renting of course. Here is Morgan Stanley explaining (granted in a pitchbook for REITs but the underlying data is quite useful) why the Housing 2.0 paradigm is all about renting.

Turning a minor incident like Greek debt into a World-shaking economic crisis is BRILLIANT! 

Even as stocks surge on the back of the latest rumor that yet another perpetually wrong Medley report has been released and states that the Fed may cut the IOER to zero in addition to Operation Twist (we have not seen the report nor have any interest in putting any faith in a "think tank" work product), someone has apparently forgotten to tell Europe it is all filed. Here is the CDS rerack, which unfortunately shows that this latest stock ramp is to be faded, especially since QE3-666 are already priced in, and will all eventually fail.

Presenting the chart of Greek 1 Year bonds. Looking at this alone, one might get the feeling that not all that much is fixed in Europe, whose weakest link is about to file for bankruptcy any minute.

It looks like SOVX completely broke down for periods of time yesterday where bid/offer widened, and in spite of that, the index moved on no trades. For a brief period this morning, that looked like it affected MAIN as well. So far U.S. credit markets have been far more stable and the technicals seem better, though I'm not sure how true that would have been if people were trading IG when Main went to 127 bid earlier. Main is back to 120. That is a very large swing. This heightened volatility needs to subside soon, or we will see weakness in the market as investors (particularly hedge funds) are forced to shrink their positions because they do not (cannot) tolerate the P&L volatility from these sorts of moves. Main traded in a 10 bp range (95.75 to 105.75) from March 20th until June 8th. Almost 3 months and the entire range was 10 bps, and most of the time it traded in a tighter band. Today it has traded in a 7 bp range. That level of volatility is unsustainable, but even if we continue at the pace of the past couple of weeks, investors will have to scale back their positions as the only way to manage their P&L. We may continue the bounce, but without real evidence of some new plan, I think the upside is credit is very limited short term.

The Greek vote went great. Now we just have to fix the Economy. Remember, the ship is still sinking. After Greece short term liquidity has been “fixed”, we expect the problems in Spain to regain attention. Kathimerini on the Vote;