Lehman

Against hope-strewnm expectations of a bounce from -4.6 to -4, Empire Fed printed a disastrous -19.37 - the largest miss on record. New orders collapsed, shipments plunged, and employees and workweek continue to contract. Forward-looking employment expectations also plunged. The last time Empire Fed crashed to these levels was the immediate aftermath of the Lehman bankuptcy and the global financial crisis and the peak of the recession in 2001... but we are sure this is just transitory.

Since The Fed hiked rates in December, the market's inflation expectations have collapsed in yet another clear indication of "policy error." 5Y5Y Forward inflation swaps have crashed below 2.00% for only the 3rd time in history (Lehman 2008 and September's Fed Fold were the other two) as despite central banker promises of transitory low-flation, the money is being bet against them as the regime-shift from full-faith to no-faith in Fed support continues.

... more than 100% of Alcoa's "EPS" in the quarter was due to what management thought was another quarter of recurring "non-recurring", non-one time "one-time" charges.

Chinese stocks are trading at the lows of the day after Overnight HIBOR rates (Hong Kong's interbank borrowing rate) exploded a stunning 939bps to a record high 13.4%. It is clear that banks are utterly desperate for liquidity and/or are extremely concerned about one another's counterparty risk. This has dragged HSCEI down 5% (to its lowest since Oct 2011).

An unseen bubble at the heart of the financial system is deflating with unknown consequences. When bubbles deflate, and here we are talking about one in the hundreds of trillions, bad debts are usually exposed. Even though much of the reduction in outstanding OTC derivatives is due to consolidation of positions following the Frank Dodd Act, much of it is not. When free markets reassert themselves, and they always do, the disruption promises to be substantial. We appear to be in the early stages of this event. If so, demand for physical gold can be expected to escalate rapidly as a financial crisis unfolds.

Don't show Phil LeBeau this chart!

The debt valuation adjustment, or DVA, will no longer be included in net income, according to revisions to the fair-value measurement standard published by the Financial Accounting Standards Board Tuesday.  The DVA rule increased net income when a bank’s bonds tanked, on the theory that the firm could buy back its bonds at a lower price and benefit from the decline in value.

See For Yourself ...

Derivatives like credit default swaps turned a mere bubble in the US housing market into a global financial catastrophe... 

Though "another Lehman Brothers" isn't likely to happen with banks, it is very likely to happen with commodity firms and countries that depend directly or indirectly on commodity prices.

This was not supposed to happen. The spread between the 2Y Treasury yield (which is soaring 7bps today) and 10Y (higher by 3bps) has plunged back below 120bps. The current cliff-edge has been support for the curve four times in the last 8 years but with GC rates blowing out to 7 year highs, one wonders if the size of the moves means we break to new regime lows.

The situation is clear: the 2008 Crisis was the warm up. The next Crisis will be THE REAL Crisis. The Crisis in which Central Banking itself will fail.

The Fed will never succeed in its attempt to manage inflation and unemployment by varying interest rates. This is because it and its economists do not accept the relationship between, on one side, the money it creates and the bank credit its commercial banks issue out of thin air, and on the other the disruption unsound money causes in the economy. This has been going on since the Fed was created, which makes the question as to whether the Fed was right to raise interest rates recently irrelevant.

There is just one very big problem with this "solution"...