India

S&P threatening to downgrade India... UK double dipping... Germany having a failed auction. It is all irrelevant, for the great fruit has spoken and people are buying iGadgets at record levels, which can only mean that once the great credit spree ends, Apple will likely be forced to use its $110 billion cash hoard to start an in house "Acceptance Corporation" vendor financing purchases of its products directly. And while the AAPL earnings beat has become a contrarian bet, now that even Gartman has said he is turning bullish on stocks, here is a summary of what happened and what will happen. In a nutshell, just like Apple was the only thing that mattered yesterday, today it is only the Fed and the subsequent press conference that matter, with the market likely to only take away whatever it wants to take away.

All you need to read.

While gold demand from the western investors and store of wealth buyers has fallen in recent months, central bank demand continues to be very robust and this is providing strong support to gold above the $1,600/oz level. IMF data released overnight shows that Mexico added 16.8 metric tons of gold valued at about $906.4 million to its reserves in March. Russia continued to diversify its foreign exchange reserves and increased its gold reserves by about 16.5 tons according to a statement by its central bank on April 20. Other creditor nations with large foreign exchange reserves and exposure to the dollar and the euro including Turkey and Kazakhstan also increased their holdings of gold according to the International Monetary Fund data.Mexico raised its reserves to 122.6 tons last month when gold averaged $1,676.67 an ounce.Turkey added 11.5 tons, Kazakhstan 4.3 tons, Ukraine 1.2 tons, Tajikistan 0.4 ton, and Belarus 0.1 tonnes, according to the IMF. Ukraine, Czech Republic and Belarus also had modest increases in their gold reserves. Central banks are expanding reserves due to concerns about the dollar, euro, sterling and all fiat currencies.

Here is the point; Bernanke thinks he can deal with this falling growth outlook and a deleveraging consumer by adding to QE to keep rates very low. I am not sure it will work and if it doesn’t yields could start to rise and the more he throws at it the more yields actually rise as vigilantes will fear pent up inflationary pressures. This is a potential disaster for central bankers and at some point the impact of QE may be proven limited. When it is the central banks will have shot the last bullet. Why is no one discussing this?

All you need to read and some more.

European stocks are trading lower as North America enters the market with participants coming to terms with the political events of the weekend. The collapse of the Dutch government has clouded the future for fiscal harmonisation in the Eurozone and the outperformance of the far-right in the French Presidential elections has highlighted the discontent of the populous with mainstream politics. As such, all European bourses are trading significantly lower, with the Bund seen trading higher by around 70 ticks. European government bond yield spreads against the German 10-yr reflect the caution, with the Dutch/German spread widening by over 10BPS and the Spanish yield holding above 6% for most of the session.

Another political bump in the road?

So far, 2012 has been a banner year for the stock market, which recently closed the books on its best first quarter in 14 years. But Casey Research Chairman Doug Casey insists that time is running out on the ticking time bombs. Next week when Casey Research's spring summit gets underway, Casey will open the first general session addressing the question of whether the inevitable is now imminent. In another exclusive interview with The Gold Report, Casey tells us that he foresees extreme volatility "as the titanic forces of inflation and deflation fight with each other" and a forced shift to speculation to either protect or build wealth.

On April 16, Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner announced that her Argentine government would expropriate and re-nationalize YPF, an energy company operating mostly in Argentina founded by its government in the 1920s and de-nationalized in the 1990s. Repsol, a Spanish company that owns (owned) 57% of YPF called the act “illegal and unjustified” and vowed to sue. As Paul Brodsky and Lee Quaintance of QBAMCO note, in times past such expropriation would surely be an act of war. FdeK’s timing was brilliant, to re-nationalize the Spanish-controlled energy company when Spain’s economy and funding are teetering means the Spanish government and businesses domiciled there lack the clout to make demands of Euro confederates. The political calculus among leaders of sovereign governments reduces to short-term domestic political benefits vs. threats of economic or military retaliation but with regard to natural resources, the QBAMCO pair critically note, the bigger implication that it is sovereign vs sovereign as the paper bets representing global production and resources that we call “capital markets” is in jeopardy of becoming a sideshow. Baseless paper money, fractional banking, revenue shuffling, financial returns, ever-increasing debts, unwarranted confidence building, nominal output growth and politicians posing as policy makers cannot sustain the most basic needs of societies.

All morning we have been blasted with 2011 deja vu stories how the IMF panhandling effort has finally succeeded, and how Lagarde's Louis Vuitton bag is now full to the brim with $400 billion in fresh crisp US Dollars bills courtesy of BRIC nations, and other countries such as South Korea, Australia, Singapore, Japan (adding $60 billion to its total debt of Y1 quadrillion - at that point who counts) and, uhh, Poland. From Reuters: "The Group of 20 nations on Friday were poised to commit at least $400 billion to bulk up the International Monetary Fund's war chest to fight any widening of Europe's debt crisis." We say deja vu because it is a carbon copy of headlines from EcoFin meetings from the fall of 2011 in which we were "assured", "guaranteed" and presented other lies that the EFSF would surpass $1 trillion, even $1.5 trillion on occasion, any minute now. Alas, that never happened, and while we are eagerly waiting to find out just what the contribution of Argentina will be to bail out Spanish banks (just so it can expropriate even more assets from the country that rhymes with Pain), we have one simple question: does the I in the IMF stand for Idiots? Why? Because this is merely yet another example of forced capital misallocation, only this time at a global scale.

Over the past month, the world has finally awakened to the reality that when it comes to easing, there is more than just one central bank (i.e., the Fed). in fact, as we have been showing since early this year, the bulk of the easing over the past 5 months has happened elsewhere, primarily in Europe with LTRO 1+2, and subsequently at the BOE, and more recently at India and Brazil. Yet some holdouts still remain. One of these naturally is China, which everyone would love to see cut RRR or even the benchmark rate, yet which as recent CPI data has shown still has lingering packets of inflation precisely where it hurts: food (and of course recall China's Schrodinger economy). Which leaves Japan, which already eased more a few months back when it expanded its LSAP program... but it is never enough. Needless to say strategists, in their quest to shake any and every central banker here or there for some free money, have been seeing imminent BOJ easing in the form of yet another Y5 trillion LSAP any second now. Yet it is one thing for bankers to do what they are programmed to do, which is demand more free money, it is something very different when politicians step in and defuse the myth that any central bank is even remotely independent, especially when reelection is at stake. As Bloomberg points out this morning, the fight for the BOJ's "independent" balance sheet is starting to get lethal.

• Current account surplus recycling goes global: BRICS demand bigger IMF role before giving it cash (Reuters)
• Obama oil margin plan could increase price swings (Reuters)
• Britons Abandoning Pensions Amid ‘Outdated’ Rules (Bloomberg)
• Hedge-Fund Assets Rise to Record Level (WSJ)
• Way to restore confidence: SEC considers case against Egan-Jones (FT)
• Qatari wealth fund adds 5% Tiffany stake  (FT)
• "Do we file?" Dewey Pitches Plan for Rescue (WSJ)
• French president slips further behind Socialist challenger Hollande (ANI)
• Nine U.S. Banks Said to be Examined on Overdraft Fees (Bloomberg)
• Capital Rotation: Investors fret on emerging markets and look to U.S. (Reuters)
• Verizon's Answer to iPhone: Windows (WSJ)

All you need to know.

Within the last few minutes, Bloomberg has popped up a few rather disturbing headlines - that for all intent and purpose have been totally ignored by the trading public at large (we assume WWIII is priced in). So Asia in general is in major sabre-rattling mode tonight with the following comment: South Korea’s military will firmly and thoroughly punish North Korea for any reckless provocation, Yonhap cited Shin as saying. We choose 'not to play'.

• India Test Fires Long-Range Missile Agni-V, CNN-IBN Says
• *INDIA MISSILE TEST FLIGHT `IMMACULATE,' DEFENSE MINISTRY SAYS
• S.Korea Deploys Missiles in Case of N.Korea Provocation: Yonhap 
• *N.KOREA'S KIM JONG UN CALLS FOR STRENGTHENED MILITARY, NHK SAYS

The global reliquification continues:

• BRAZIL CENTRAL BANK DECREASES BENCHMARK LENDING RATE TO 9.00%
• BRAZIL CEN BANK SAYS RATE CUT PART OF CONTINUED ADJUSTMENT

First India, now Brazil (even if the move was largely expected). When are Russia and China joining the fray?