Lehman

Less than three weeks ago, when the PBOC proceeded with its latest "surprise" rate cut, we showed a chart that should scare everyone who is hoping that China will avoid a hard-landing would prefer would never have been revealed: the annual collapse in Chinese home prices is now so sharp and so widespread, that it has surpassed the housing collapse in the aftermath of the Lehman collapse." Overnight things went from bad to worse, when China's National Bureau of Statistics reported that contrary to hopes for a modest rebound, China's average new home prices fell at the fastest pace on record in February from a year earlier.

While we try to our patriotic duty every day, Jack Lew's comment that: U.S. ECONOMIC RECOVERY WELL ESTABLISHED, LEW SAYS was too much to bear... so we provide the following 3 charts for guidance in comprehending the propaganda. Why would he blatantly lie in the face of unequivocally bad data? Simple, they are desparate to spin US economic strength as the world comes to realize it no longer needs to rely on a unipolar US-based model...

unlike the late summer and early fall of 2014, when the rise in the Chinese stock market could be attributed to the PBOC's PSL "QE Lite", the relentless buying leg that started in mid-November has stunned most people, as nobody has been able to figure out just who is responsible for all this buying. Until now. According to Reuters, it is precisely China's trust firms, with total assets of $2.2 trillion, and who together with Banker Acceptances comrpise the bulk of China's shadow banking pipeline, are shifting more cash into frothy capital markets and over-the-counter (OTC) instruments instead of loans. In other words, instead of using their vast cash hoard of over $2 trillion to re-lend and stimulate China's economy, China's unregulated, shadow banking conduits are now directly buying stocks!

The prospects of a rate hike by the Fed are looking increasingly shaky and downright laughable, not just because the start to 2015 for the US economy has been the worst in "negative surprises" terms since Lehman, or because the Atlanta Fed Q1 real-time GDP forecast is about to go negative (consensus originally expected this print to be 3.5% if not higher), but because the last time this happened, the Fed launched QE2. What is "this"? Bank of America explains.

Along with a massive revision for January (from +0.2% to -0.3%), February's Factory Output fell 0.2% (missing expectations for the 3rd month in a row). This is the 3rd drop in a row for factory output - the worst run since 2009. Overall industrial production missed for the 3rd month in a row but managed a meager 0.1% rise on the back of the biggest rise in utility output ever. Auto vehicles and parts production tumbled 3.0% MoM.

It started off as the perfect storm for futures: after Sunday night's latest plunge in WTI, which saw it drop to the lowest price since Lehman, the double whammy that has now forced Deutsche Bank to become the first major institution to forecast no growth for S&P500 EPS in 2015, namely the strong dollar, reared its ugly head and the EURUSD seemed dangerouly close to breaching the all important 1.04-1.05 support level we first noted last week. However, overnight parties tasked with preserving "financial stability" appear to have once again stepped in, and not only has the EURUSD rebounded off 1.05, but crude is now just barely down from the Friday close as all firepower is put to the same use, that sent the Shanghai Composite soaring by 2.3% overnight, and which sent the Dax over 12,000 for the first time ever.

When even JPMorgan strongly implies that the ECB's QE is about to fail, one short week after it started, now may be a time to panic: "In all, we note the above analysis challenges the ability of the Eurosystem to meet its quantitative target without distorting market liquidity and price discovery."

Even though the US has seen so-called 'strong' job numbers and Europe is forecast to grow 1.5% this year, Saxo Bank’s Chief Economist Steen Jakobsen says 2015 will be a lost year. That’s because the two supposed growth engines of the world - the US economy and emerging markets - will grind to a halt and slow Europe down in the process. As we already pointed out, for the first time since Lehman, US earnings are now expected to drop in 2015 - apparently confirming this second-half hockey-stick is now dead... and as Jakobsen explains in this brief clip, capital preservation remains a must going into the second quarter of the year... with 10Y Treasury yields expected below 1.5% by the end of the year.

No matter how bad the overall profitability picture got, S&P500 earnings per share (assisted almost exclusively by a record amount of stock buybacks in 2015 putting downward pressure on the PS in EPS) would grow by the tiniest of amounts, just so the profit recession stigma could be avoided in a world in which the stock market is the last remaining bastion of faith in central planning and confidence in the economy. No more. Overnight, Deutsche Bank finally did the unthinkable, and "broke the seal" of optimistic groupthink, when its strategist David Bianco became the first sell-sider to forecast that not only will 2015 EPS not grow (at 118 on a non-GAAP basis, this will be unchanged Y/Y), but "down a bit ex bank litigation costs."

Well that escalated quickly...EURUSD has broken the key 1.05 trendline level; and having rallied yesterday on the worst data since Lehman, today it appears some sense of resignation to the fact that The Fed is boxed in to a rate hike no matter what is setting in... and that the exuberant hockey-stick expectations of earnings growth is spiralling the toilet of near cycle lows oil prices. US equity prices have roundtripped most of yesterday's dead-cat-bounce spike with Nasdaq leading the drop and The Dow and S&P are back in the red year-to-date.

"Although the market seems obsessed with the euro/dollar parity, SG's Technical Analysis guru Stephanie Aymes stresses that it is the $1.05/1.04 level that is more important, being the lower limit of the EUR/USD?s massive upward channel (see chart below). Stephanie argues that the move since last summer has been relentless and is very similar to the one seen in the late 1990s. She suspects that a break below $1.05/1.04 will confirm that the ongoing move is not a correction of the upmove since 2000, but a much larger down move. In such scenario, the EUR/USD will achieve parity, but this may well be just a temporary support before the downleg extends towards $0.98/0.96 - and even perhaps towards the lows of $0.84/0.82 reached in 2000."

There was a point in 2010 when American capitalism might have had an opportunity to heal itself and commence on a long march toward sustainable growth and real wealth gains. But the monetary politburo would have none of it - keeping the pedal to the metal until this very moment... and the rest is history. The Fed and the other central banks around the world have fomented a new and even more virulent and dangerous financial bubble.

Dear Federal Reserve, we have just solved the biggest riddle that your "smartest economist PhDs in the room" have been unable to figure out for the past year...