Housing Market

Europe's chicken or egg problem is about to strike with a vengeance. As a reminder, the biggest paradox of the recently conceived "make it up as you go along" bailout of Europe is that "in order to be saved, Spain (and Italy) must first be destroyed". Sure enough, the markets have long since priced in the "saved" part with the Spanish 10 year sliding to multi-month lows, but in the process everyone forgot about the destruction. Because as has been made quite clear, secondary market bond buying will not be activated without a formal bailout request by a country, in essence admitting its insolvency, and handing over domestic fiscal and sovereign control to the IMF and other international entities. As a further reminder, many, Goldman Sachs especially, had hoped that Spain would request a bailout as soon as Friday. To wit: "With a large (and uncovered) redemption looming at the end of October (and under pressure from other Euro area governments), we expect Spain to move towards seeking support." Alas, as we expected, this is now not going to happen, and the pricing in of the entire "saved" part will have to be unwound as Spain is forced to accept being "destroyed" first. To wit: "I don't know if Spain needs to ask for it," Rajoy told parliament in a debate session, referring to an international rescue for Spain."

Bill Gross may be credited with inventing the term 'the New Normal', although his recommendation to purchase gold above all other asset classes, something which only fringe blogs such as this one have been saying is the best trade (in terms of return, Sharpe Ratio, and the ability to sleep soundly) for the past three and a half years, he is sure to be increasingly ostracized by the establishment, and told to take all his newfangled idioms with him in his exile to less than serious people land. Which takes us to David Rosenberg, who today revisits his own definition of the New Normal. And it, too, is just as applicable as that of the Pimco boss: "The new normal is that the economy doesn't drive markets any more." Short and sweet, although it also is up for debate whether the economy ever drove the markets in the first place. But that would open up a whole new conspiratorial can of worms, and is a discussion best saved for after Ben Bernanke decides to save the "housing market" by buying more hundreds of billions in MBS and lowering mortgage yields further, even though mortgage rates already are at record lows (something that mortgage applications apparently couldn't care less about as we showed last week), while "avoiding" to do everything in his power to boost the S&P, which recently was at 5 year highs, and certainly "avoiding" to listen to Chuck Schumer telling him to do his CTRL+P job, and "get to work" guaranteeing Schumer's donors have another whopper of a bonus season.

It is not news that California, despite what the money laundering practices aided and abetted by the NAR at the ultra-luxury segment of housing may indicate, is and has been for the past 5 years neck deep in a massive housing glut (with millions of houses held off the books in shadow inventory), which together with a complete economic collapse of this once vibrant economy, which happened to be the world's 7th largest, led various cities to resort to the socialist practice of expropriation, or, as it is known in the US, eminent domain, whereby a citizen's rights in property - in this case their home - are forcefully expropriated with due monetary compensation, naturally set by the expropriator. It is also no secret, that Wall Street, which has the most to lose by handing over property titles on mortgaged houses in exchange for money that is well below the nominal value of the mortgage, is not happy about this draconian quasi-communist measure, and has apparently told California to cease and desist. It is, apparently news that California has had enough of these bourgeois capitalist pawns, and has decided to, appropriately enough, channel El Duderino, and to tell Wall Street that this aggression against forced socialist expropriation, by broke deadbeats, will not stand... man.

The Little Investor Is About to Get Hosed Again by Ben and the Boyz ...

It took the ECB a year of endless behind the scenes Machiavellian scheming to restart the SMP program (which was conceived by Jean-Claude Trichet in May 2010, concurrent with the first Greek bailout). The markets soared with euphoria that this time will be different, and that the program which is a masterclass in central planning paradox, as it is "unlimited" yet "sterilized", while based on "conditions" none of which have been disclosed, and will somehow be pari passu for new bond purchases while it retains seniority for previous purchases of Greek and other PIGS bonds, will work - it won't, and the third time will not be the charm as we showed before. Yet it has been just 48 hours since the "bailout" announcement and already Europe is being Europe: namely, it turns out that nobody wants the bailout.

It’s easy to be pessimistic over the future prospects of liberty when major industrialized nations around the world are becoming increasingly rife with market intervention, police aggression, and fallacious economic reasoning.  The laissez faire ideal of a society where people should be allowed to flourish without the coercive impositions of the state is all but missing from mainstream debate.  In editorial pages and televised roundtable discussions, a government policy of “hands off” is now an unspeakable option.  It is presumed that lawmakers must step up to “do something” for the good of the people.  Thankfully, this deliberate false choice will slowly but surely bring the death of itself.   Illogical theories can only go on for so long before the push-back becomes too much to handle.  For those who desire liberty, it’s a joy that the statist economic policies of the Keynesians become even more irrational as the Great Recession drags on. The two following examples will illustrate this point.

It is amazing how big an effect a rambling, sleep-inducing speech by a chief central planner can have on financial markets in the short term. Nonetheless, the speech contained a few interesting passages which show us both how Bernanke thinks and that people to some extent often tend to hear whatever they want to hear. Bernanke noted that although he cannot prove it, econometricians employed by the Fed have constructed a plethora of models that show that 'LSAP's (large scale asset purchases, which is to say 'QE' or more colloquially, money printing) have helped the economy. In other words, although no-one actually knows what would have happened in the absence of the inflationary policy since we can't go back in time and try it out, the 'models' tell us it was the right thing to do. However, some indications would suggest that mal-investment is higher than ever - and accelerating - as the production structure ties up more consumer goods than it releases, an inherently unsustainable condition; additional expansion of money and credit will only serve to exacerbate the imbalance.

With the US presidential election looming in just two months, there is hardly a state that is as critical to the outcome of who America’s next president will be, as Florida. As Bloomberg vividly summarizes, Florida - and specifically its five swing counties: Hillsborough, Orange, Pinellas, Seminole and Volusia - was the state that determined the president in all of the last 3 elections: set between the Republican-dominated North Florida and the more Democratic southern counties, these suburban communities of middle-class voters are known for their shifting allegiances. In 2008, Obama took four of the five counties to capture Florida. George W. Bush won three of the counties, and the state, in 2004. In 2000, Volusia’s vote count was disputed by Vice President Al Gore. Gore won the county yet lost Florida by 537 votes, giving Bush his first term as president. It is quite fitting then that these five counties are very much indicative of the primary malaise that has plagued the country for the past 4 years: the inability of the housing market to rebound no matter how many trillions in printed dollars are thrown at it. Which brings us to the key number that probably should (but most likely won’t in this age of ultra short-term attention spans and constant redirection and focus shifts): 11% - this is the foreclosure rate in these 5 critical counties, double what it was 4 years ago, and three times higher than the national foreclosure average rate of 3.4%. In other words, if there ever was a time and place when economics, through its sheer failure to restore “household wealth” in this most decisive region, was a key issue, now is the time.

September has arrived which means for Europe reality can, mercifully, return. First on the agenda: moments ago the French government suddenly announced the nationalization of troubled mortgage lender Credit Immobilier de France, which is also the country's second lagrest mortgage specialist after an attempt to find a buyer for the company failed. "To allow the CIF group to respect its overall commitments, the state decided to respond favourably to its request to grant it a guarantee," Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said according to Reuters. What he really meant was that in order to avoid a bank run following the realization that the housing crisis has finally come home, his boss, socialist Hollande, has decided to renege on his core campaign promise, and bail out an "evil, evil" bank. Sadly, while the nationalization was predicted by us long ago, the reality is that the French government waited too long with the sale, which prompted the Moody's downgrade of CIF by 3 notches earlier this week, which in turn was the catalyst that made any delay in the nationalization inevitable. The alternative: fears that one of the key players in the French mortgage house of cards was effectively insolvent would spread like wildfire, leading to disastrous consequences for the banking system. End result: congratulations France: your Fannie/Freddie-Dexia moment has finally arrived, and the score, naturally: bankers 1 - taxpayers 0.

The tried strategy of "Baffle them with BS" continues today following the release of the June (two month delayed) Case Shiller data. Because whereas last week we showed that New Home Prices are plunging, and the average new home price just dropping to its 2012 lows, when it comes to the Case-Shiller index, things are looking up. In June, the Top 20 composite index rose by 0.94%, well above the expected increase of 0.45%. How much of this is due to the REO-to-Rental program in which we are now seeing actively securitization of rental properties, which in essence is converting more and more of the Residential market into commercial real estate, remains unclear. For now it is clear that those entities with access to cash are buying up properties in beaten down areas in hopes these will be filled by renters. On the other hand, the truth is that summer months always see the biggest pricing gains, and following the May data revision, which rose at a revised rate of 0.97%, one may observe that the pricing increase has now peaked even according to delayed CS data, and has begun its traditional rolling over pattern. And a pattern it is. As the second chart below shows very clearly, housing is now merely in the dead cat bounce phase of a broad housing quadruple dip, each one having been facilitated by either Fed or ECB intervention. We give this one a few more months before it too resumes the downward trendline so very well known to Japanese homeowners, and falls in line with the data reported by the Census department.

We tried to bite our tongue; we ignored some of the sheer hypocrisy of Cleveland Fed's Sandra' oh Sandy' Pianalto (that QE2 was a definitive success in 2010 but now LSAPs require more analysis of costs and benefits); but when she started down the road of praising the US consumer for deleveraging we had enough. In the immortal words of John Travolta: "Sandy, can't you see, we're in misery" as while she notes consumers cutting back on credit card debt (due to forced bankruptcies we note), Consumer debt has only been higher on one month in history! Soaring auto loans and student debt should just be ignored? There is no deleveraging - Total US Consumer debt is 0.23% from its all-time high in mid-2008, and will with all likelihood break the record at the next data point. Meanwhile her speech, so full of careful-not-to-over-commits can be summed up by the world-cloud that shows the six words most prominent: 'Monetary Policy', 'Financial Conditions', and most importantly 'Credit Economy'. Here's the deal: Consumer Debt is Consumer Debt.

Another thesis regarding the housing market’s future path is that of a bounce and slog market. The theory focuses on the negative equity home owners and also the low inventory on the current market. This view point actually holds some solid ground. As of last count, there are over 11 million negative equity home owners in the US. This data is usually put out quarterly but with the stronger home price movement this summer, many will move out of the negative equity position. The theory proposes that many are not selling today simply because they cannot without bringing cash to the table. Out of the 11 million underwater home owners, how many would like to sell but simply do not because they would actually lose money on their sale? This is an interesting perspective on the underwater segment of the market. Yet the outcome is probably not as clean cut as one would expect.

Looking at the headline number in the just released New Home Sales data one would be left with the impression that the tepid "recovery" in housing may be chugging along: after all with a seasonally adjusted annualized 372,000 new homes sold in July, this was an improvement to the revised 359K in June (ignoring that the US housing market at best continues to drag along the bottom). This impression, however, promptly changes when one looks at the underlying data. The reality: the actual number of new homes sold in July was 34,000, the same as in June, and the lowest since March. Of this, a massive 3,000 (yes, three thousand) homes were sold in the Northeast in the entire month. Where things get worse is when one looks at the number of new homes for sale. At 142,000 (of which just 38,000 actually completed), this was the lowest number. EVER. And finally, to ruin all hopes that the housing bottom may mean an actual pricing bottom, the median new home price slid to $224,200, down from $229,100 in June, and the lowest since January, while the average home price declined from $266,900 to $263,200. This was the lowest average price posted so far in 2012.

Here come the facts!!! Warning, if you get your feelings hurt over hearing the truth, simply move on. You may have a couple of quarters lefft.

• Australian minister says resources boom is over (Reuters)
• China dismisses reports of lost gold reserves (China Daily) - so China really did lose 80 tons of gold.
• Inconceivable: Former JPM CEO and Chairman William B Harrison Jr come out "In Defense Of Big Banks"
• Qantas Cancels 787 Order After Posting Annual Net Loss (Bloomberg)
• EU Official Says Crisis is Eroding Influence (WSJ)
• Greece Faces New Pressure on Cuts (WSJ)
• Philippines' black market is China's golden connection (Reuters)
• Hollande government responds to criticism (FT)
• LG Display Starts Touch Screens Output Before New IPhone (Bloomberg)
• Greek Crisis Evasion to Fore as Merkel Hosts Hollande in Berlin (Bloomberg)
• Stakes rise as US warned of double-dip (FT)
• Brazil’s Richest Woman Unmasked With $13 Billion Fortune (Bloomberg)