Lehman

Another quarter of no “escape velocity” on main street and a further round of Kool Aid drinker speculation on Wall Street takes us just that much closer to the brink. Yet the Fed remains oblivious and continues to manufacture excuses and equivocations as to why ZIRP should extend into its 80th month and beyond. This is mis-governance on a colossal scale. So when the next thundering crash occurs - it is devoutly to be hoped that “audit the Fed” turns out to be the least of the threats descending on the Eccles Building.

And then there were 21. Hours ago on Saturday, the country whose currency is largely pegged to the dollar which itself is now anticipating a rate hike in the coming months, surprised the world by confirming its economic slowdown yet again following a recent rate cut just this past November when it lowered its benchmark rate by 40 bps, after it again cut benchmark lending and deposit rates by 25 bps starting on March 1. Specifically, the PBOC will lower the one-year lending rate to 5.35% from 5.6% and its one-year deposit rate to 2.5% from 2.75%. It also said it would raise the maximum interest rate on bank deposits to 130% of the benchmark rate from 120%.

"While the wealth effect is a theoretical possibility, it is not supported by economic fact. The stock market is not a good guide to the economy, but...the bond market is a very good economic indicator. When bond yields are very low and declining it’s an indication that the same is happening to inflation and that economic activity is weak. The bond yields are not here for any fluke of reason. They are here because business conditions in the US and abroad are quite poor."

US Macro data has collapsed to 12-month lows with 38 data 'misses' and only 6 'beats. Earnings expectations have plunged most since Lehman (over 5% in the last 3 months) hovering at 10-month lows. So it makes perfect sense that, unless we see a late-day collapse today, the S&P 500 will post the best monthly performance since October 2011.

January's brief 'hope' bounce following 3 months of weakness is long forgotten as February's Chinago PMI crashes to 45.9 (missing expectations of 57.5) - its lowest since July 2009. This is the biggest MoM drop since Lehman in Oct 2008. New Orders suffered the largest monthly decline on record, leaving them at the lowest since June 2009. Seems like it is time to blame the weather... PMI says it is "difficult to gauge magnitude of weather and port strike" but blames it nonetheless.

What in god’s name does Janet Yellen think she is doing? Just a few weeks ago she established the ridiculous Fedspeak convention that “patient” means money market rates will not rise from the zero bound for at least two meetings. Now she has modified that message into “not exactly”.

In today's deluge of macro data, one number stood out: the parallel release by the BLS of the real average hourly earnings, which is simply taking the previously reported nominal hourly wage data, and applying whatever deflator gets released in parallel by the BLS. And, not surprisingly, after the nominal jump in January wages, a number which may very well be revised lower as has been the case so often before, courtesy of the headline deflation, the real jump in hourly wages was even higher. In fact, rising to an inflation adjusted $10.55/hour from $10.42 in December, it meant real wages rose by 1.2%, which was the best jump in hourly wages since... the months following the Lehman collapse. Because everyone remembers how the deflationary vortex in the aftermath of the Lehman bankruptcy led to a sense of wealth and eagerness to spend deflation adjusted wages.

As previewed earlier today, January CPI data was historic in that, 6 years after Lehman, the US just reported its first negative headline CPI print, with overall inflation, or rather deflation, in January coming at -0.1%, in line with expectations, and down from the 0.8% in December. On a monthly basis, CPI tumbled by 0.7% from December, driven almost entirely by collapsing energy prices. Excluding the Great financial crisis, one has to go back a few years to find the last time the US posted annual headline deflation.... all the way back to August 1955, or just about the time Marty McFly was trying not to dance with his mother.

Following a quiet overnight session in which the main event appears to be a statement by Chinese premier Li for more active fiscal policy, which has pushed the metals complex higher, although technically every other asset class as well, with US equity futures set to open in fresh record high territory, even as 10Y yields around the world continue to decline, attention today will fall on the CPI print due out shortly, because if consensus is correct, January will be the first month this decade when US inflation posts a negative print, mostly due to the delayed effect of sliding commodity prices. As Deutsche recaps, the most important number today is the headline CPI where the headline YoY rate is predicted to be negative by the market (-0.1%) for the first time since 2009. Over this period the YoY rate stayed negative for 8 months. However before this we hadn't seen a full year decline since August 1955. In other words, a few months before what may be the first US rate hike for a new generation of traders, the US is set to print its first annual deflation since Lehman, transitory or not.

Janet Yellen is very alarmed that some members of Congress want to conduct a comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve for the first time since it was created. During testimony this week, she made “central bank independence” sound like it was the holy grail. Even though every other government function is debated politically in this country, Janet Yellen insists that what the Federal Reserve does is “too important” to be influenced by the American people. Does any other government agency ever dare to make that claim? If the Fed is doing everything correctly, why should Yellen be alarmed? What does she have to hide?

As a frequent contributor to Bloomberg, I would welcome the opportunity to debate this with Barry.
What say you @ritholtz ?  : )

This is the biggest problem facing the world today, namely that at least 9 countries have debt/GDP above 300%, and that a whopping 39% countries have debt-to-GDP of over 100%!

With Greece moving to the, ahem, periphery if only for a few days/hours, this week the US calendar returns to the forefront with Fed Chair Yellen’s semi-annual monetary policy testimony before the Senate Banking Committee tomorrow night and the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday, which the market will be paying very close attention to for the reconciliation of how the Fed plans to continue on its rate-hiking path despite rapidly deteriorating US macro data that has started 2015 at the worst pace (in terms of downside surprises) since Lehman.

First it was ruthless snow (in the winter), then we got a port blockade (caused by well-paid US workers demanding even more), and now, unveiling the last pillar of the holy trifecta of economic disappointment scapegoats, earlier today the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, aka the "Department of Fear", Jeh Johnson said that in a video the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group al Shabaab called for attacks on US shopping malls, specifically citing the Minnesota mall, and that the agency is taking this threat against the Mall of America “very seriously” and that people should be “particularly careful” when visiting the mall in Minnesota. It was unclear just how being "careful" would protect one from ad hoc explosive detonations and other mass murder event, but that's a bridge the Department of Fear will cross when it gets to it.

Maybe one day investors, or at least the 1%-ers, will finally grasp that in a centrally-planned world in which the central banks themselves assure that there is "no risk", there is also no point in paying billionaire hedge fund managers 2 and 20 to "hedge" away risk, since there simply is none left.  However, since most people are too lazy to do any work (this includes hedge funds themselves), and would rather piggy back on other people's work (such as the rating agencies back in 2005-2007) that day is still far away. So for the time being, to satisfy everyone's natural curiosity why hedge funds continue to suck so bad, here are their biggest long, and far more importantly short, positions.