Bank of America

The bond bubble today is over $100 trillion. When you include the derivatives that trade based on bonds it’s more like $500 TRILLION. And it’s growing by trillions of dollars every month (the US issued $1 trillion in new debt in the last 8 weeks alone).

• Ruble Sinks to 80 a Dollar Defying Surprise Russia Rate Increase (BBG)
• Oil slumps near $59 for first time since 2009 on oversupply (Reuters)
• Oil sinks, Russian moves fail to quell nerves (Reuters)
• Fed Seen Looking Past Low Inflation to Drop ‘Considerable Time (BBG)
• Students Among Dead as Pakistan Gunmen Kill 126 at Army School (BBG)
• Repsol to buy Talisman Energy for $13 billion (Reuters)
• Indonesia’s Rupiah Erases Decline After Central Bank Intervenes (BBG)
• Anti-Islam Rally Grows as Immigrant Backlash Hits Europe (BBG)
• Saudi Arabia is playing chicken with its oil (Reuters)

While most Americans are busy Christmas shopping and making preparations for trips to see family, Congress remains hard at work doing what it does best. Giving gifts to Wall Street and trampling on citizens’ civil liberties.

Did you know that 65 percent of all children in the United States live in a home that receives aid from the federal government?  We live at a time when child poverty in America is exploding. But as bad as things are for the children of America right now, they are only going to get worse. In the years ahead may we all have great compassion for these victims of our incredibly foolish economic mistakes.

If prices fall any further (and what’s going to stop them?), it would seem that most of the entire shale edifice must of necessity crumble to the ground. And that will cause an absolute earthquake in the financial world, because someone supplied the loans the whole thing leans on. An enormous amount of investors have been chasing high yield, including many institutional investors, and they’re about to get burned something bad. We might well be looking at the development of a story much bigger than just oil.

Oil is not just something that is refined into fuel--it is capital, collateral, debt and risk. In other words, it is intrinsically financial. Simply put, the sharp drop in oil revenues has knocked over a line of financial dominoes whose end is not yet in sight.

The central banks are now out of dry powder - impaled on the zero-bound. That means any resort to a massive new round of money printing can not be disguised as an effort to “stimulate” the macro-economy by temporarily driving interest rates to “extraordinarily” low levels. They are already there. Instead, a Bernanke style balance sheet explosion like that which stopped the financial meltdown in the fall and winter of 2008-2009 will be seen for exactly what it is—-an exercise in pure monetary desperation and quackery. So duck and cover. This storm could be a monster.

The Department of Treasury is spending $200,000 on survival kits for all of its employees who oversee the federal banking system, according to a new solicitation. As FreeBeacon reports, survival kits will be delivered to every major bank in the United States and includes a solar blanket, food bar, water-purification tablets, and dust mask (among other things). The question, obviously, is just what do they know that the rest of us don't?

Are much lower oil prices good news for the U.S. economy?  Only if you like collapsing capital expenditures, rising unemployment and a potential financial implosion on Wall Street.

"...What is clear is that the world has become addicted to central bank stimulus. Bank of America said 56pc of global GDP is currently supported by zero interest rates, and so are 83pc of the free-floating equities on global bourses. Half of all government bonds in the world yield less that 1pc. Roughly 1.4bn people are experiencing negative rates in one form or another. These are astonishing figures, evidence of a 1930s-style depression, albeit one that is still contained. Nobody knows what will happen as the Fed tries break out of the stimulus trap, including Fed officials themselves."

From Bank of America: "The chart shows that around €400bn of Eurozone government debt and bills in our bond indices currently have negative yields.... In the topsy-turvy world of negative rates in Europe, it will seem as if credit is becoming the new government debt in places."

Alongside the just announced revenue warning, Citi's CEO Corbat also announced yet another $2.7 billion in legal, related charges in 4Q, as well as another $800 million in repositioning expenses. This simply means that for yet another quarter Citi will be charged with billions in recurring, non-one time "one-time, non-recurring" charges which will be dutifully added back to non-GAAP EPS by analysts at all the other banks (whose criminal employers are now engaged in the same racket with the US government). But what it really means is that it cost Citi some $3.5 billion to keep its employees out of jail for yet another 3 months.

Back in June, the world was speechless when Goldman's head of the ECB, Mario Draghi, stunned the world when he took Bernanke's ZIRP and raised him one better by announcing the ECB would send deposit rates into negative territory, in the process launching the Neutron bomb known as N(egative)IRP and pushing European monetary policy into the "twilight zone", forcing savers to pay (!) for the privilege of keeping the product of their labor in the form of fiat currency instead of invested in a global ponzi scheme built on capital market so broken even the BIS can no longer contain its shocked amazement. Well, the US economy may be "decoupling" (just as it did right before Lehman) and one pundit after another are once again (incorrectly) predicting that the Fed may raise rates, but when it comes to the true "value" of money, US banks have just shown that when it comes to spread between reality and the economic outlook, the schism has never been deeper.

Enter US NIRP.

We doubt anyone will find it one bit surprising that as Bank of America observes in its latest weekly hedge fund monitor, "S&P500 longs increase to six month high" with all equities bought. And alongside that, and confirming that the short squeeze in the Treasury market will continue indefinitely, "10-yr contracts were sold at a strong pace to increase net short positioning to largest in six months." Why? Because that imminent economic recovery which everyone has been betting on since the second half of 2013 is just not coming, seasonally adjusted low-paying temp, retail, teacher and secretary jobs notwithstanding.

• Welcome to the recovery:
  • Euro zone warning hits stocks, currency as oil plumbs depths (Reuters)
  • Japan GDP Worse Than Initially Reported (WSJ)
  • China trade data well below expectations (BBC)
  • German industrial production frustrates forecasts (FT)
• Oil Extends Retreat With European Stocks as Dollar Gains (BBG)
• California police, protesters clash again after 'chokehold' death (Reuters)
• Ruble’s Rout Is Tale of Failed Threats, Missteps (BBG), not to be confused with "Yen's Rout Is Tale Of Keynesian Success, Prosperity"
• Uber banned from operating in Indian capital after driver rape (Reuters)