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Before even taking into account the aftermath of the “unexpected” NFP result, it has been amazing to see over these past few months the number of experts, especially those that reside solely within the “science” of economics, proclaiming a successful engineering of the long sought-after recovery.  That this has been the third such claim in as many years is lost in the noise of confusing “headwinds” that are somehow beyond the control of those that now control most everything within the financial arena.  Stock speculators are beneficial components to the healthy financial transmission mechanism into the real economy (even when all they are supposed to do is provide liquidity 20,000 times per second), but anybody that dares speculate in the far more vital energy sector (or any real commodity) is the pure incarnation of evil.  That these two apparently disconnected speculative classes are really one and the same shows just how obtuse (not always intentionally) economists and the pandering classes really are.

The one sentence that may change everything: "...we have found some evidence that at the very long end of the yield curve, where Operation Twist is concentrated, it may be not just the stock of securities held by the Fed but also the ongoing flow of purchases that matters for yields..."

Earlier today we listened with bemused fascination as Blythe Masters explained to CNBC how JPMorgan's trading business is "about assisting clients in executing, managing, their risks and ensuring access to capital so they can make the kind of large long-term investments that are needed in the long run to expand the supply of commodities." You know - provide liquidity. Like the High Freaks. We were even ready to believe it, especially when Blythe conveniently added that JPM has a "matched book" meaning no net prop exposure, since the opposite would indicate breach of the Volcker Rule. ...And then we read this: "A JPMorgan Chase & Co. trader of derivatives linked to the financial health of corporations has amassed positions so large that he’s driving price moves in the multi-trillion dollar market, according to traders outside the firm." Say what? A JPMorgan trader has a prop (not flow, not client, not non-discretionary) position so big it is moving the entire market? And we are talking hundreds of billions of CDS notional. But... that would mean everything Blythe said is one big lie... It would also mean that JPMorgan is blatantly and without any regard for legislation, ignoring the Volcker rule, which arrived in the aftermath of Merrill Lynch doing precisely this with various CDO and credit indexes, and "moving the market" only to blow itself up and cost taxpayers billions when the bets all LTCMed. But wait, it gets better: "In some cases, [the trader] is believed to have “broken” the index -- Wall Street lingo for the market dysfunction that occurs when a price gap opens up between the index and its underlying constituents." So JPMorgan is now privately accused of "breaking" the CDS Index market, courtesy of its second to none economy of scale and fear no reprisal for any and all actions, and in the process causing untold losses to, you guessed it, its clients, but when it comes to allegations of massive manipulation in the precious metals market, why Blythe will tell you it is all about "assisting clients in executing, managing, their risks." Which client would that be - Lehman, or MFGlobal? Perhaps it is time for a follow up interview, Ms Masters to clarify some of these outstanding points?

Report: China Surpassed U.S. in 2010

In what could be one of the better deals encountered on Ebay, one can submit a winning bid for none other than the country of Greece, currently going for the modest price of $1,550 (although with 6 more days left in the auction, there is a small chance Goldman will outbid and use it as LTRO 3 collateral). Of course, since the country is worth much less than the debt (all 7 subordinated classes of it) any new equity buyer would assume, this is a trick auction: our advice - settle for nothing less than getting paid as much as possible for "buying" the country.

Two weeks ago we noted that all those banks that 'invested' in Spanish and Italian 'Sarkozy' carry-trades post LTRO2 are now under-water on their positions (on a MtM basis). The last week or so has seen this situation deteriorate rather rapidly with Spanish yields now backed up all the way to mid-November levels (and notably Spanish equities below their November lows) removing all the LTRO-exuberance leaving all Spanish banks under-water on their carry trades (should they ever have to MtM). At the same time, the critical aspect of LTRO (that is reliquifying tha banks to avoid the credit contraction vicious cycle that was beginning) has also failed. LTRO-encumbered banks now trade with a credit spread on senior unsecured (but now hugely subordinated) paper of 305bps on average (compared to non-LTRO-encumbered banks trading at 180bps on average) - back up near January's worst levels and almost entirely removing any of the tail-risk-reduction expectations that LTRO was supposed to provide. As Peter Tchir notes, there are two types of credit losses - default/restructuring (Greece and soon to be Portugal/Spain et al.) and bad positioning (or forced selling as risk becomes too much to bear - Spanish Govt/Financial credit) - these two sources of self-fulfilling pain are mounting once again. The simple truth is that without endless and infinite LTRO (or printing) funding for banks there is not enough demand for Europe's peripheral junk (as the Spanish auction highlighted) and the lack of performing collateral means the next stage will be outright printing (as opposed to a veiled repo loan) and that fact is beginning to creep into US financials as systemic contagion spreads.

Liquidity never solves issues of solvency and the time that it buys is generally of a relatively short duration. After the $1.3 trillion loan by the ECB to the European banks which helped drive up the prices for European sovereigns what do we now find as the liquidity ebbs? Yesterday’s Spanish auction was abysmal and the French auction today did not go too well with rising yields and less demand. The austerity measures are driving Europe into a worsening recession and the financial positions of Spain and Italy are deteriorating even as new measures are put into place. In fact there are only two ways out of the European mess which are growth, not happening, and Inflation which may be the ultimate strategy employed by the EU and the ECB if the construct holds to the point of changing strategies which is surely no outlier event.

That the market can be stupid long enough to make anyone seem like a fool is well-known and appreciated by all (even if the final fate of centrally planned markets is even better known by all). What apparently is not known by those who are self-professed trading experts, is that flipflopping like a windsock in a hurricane, with the comic regularity of a Goldman FX advisor who shall remain nameless hell bent on skewering what little clients one has left, only makes one look like a complete and utter buffoon. And yet this is precisely what "one of the best gold traders" CNBC knows does over and over and over, to the point where not only does nobody give any credibility to the utterances from said expert's mouth, but it makes the entire venue into sheer unadulterated, laugh out loud stand up comedy (even more so than normal). And while we do not grasp how CNBC's producers consistently invite said individual to dig ever deeper holes for himself, the other perspective is quite clear: after all each contributor makes $200 per CNBC appearance. In the case of the abovementioned gold expert, we can see how this is a make or break cash infusion.

Uncle Sam's bills of almost $4tn per year relative to his income of just over $2tn means that he does what most American's do - he borrows money - and it is this simple fact that underpins the reasoning that there is no painless way out of the mountain of debt that we have amassed over the last few decades. While none of this is new, the straightforward nature of this video's message makes it hard to argue, from anything other than an ivory tower, that this supposed self-sustaining print-and/or-borrow-fest can go on forever. Paying off your mortgage with your credit card remains the clearest analogy of what is occurring and while the Mutually Assured Destruction case is made again and again for why the analogous credit-card-providers will never halt our limit, it seems increasingly clear that the fiat money fiasco has switched regimes to chaos rather than the apparent nominal calmness of the great moderation.

Earlier today, we remarked on the story of a 77-year old Greek, now identified as Dimitris Christoulas, who at around 9 am took his life in the middle of Athens' central Syntagma Square with a bullet to his head. His full suicide note has been released. The note, presented below, ends in a solemn call to arms to "hang the traitors of this country."

Unlike yesterday's modest manufacturing ISM beat, today's follow up March Services ISM is out at 56.0, reverting back to the Schrodinger theme so prevalent these days, missing the consensus of 56.8, and down from 57.3 in February, posting the first sequential decline since September 2011, and the first miss to expectations in 4 months. The core New Orders indicator was down from 61.2 to 58.8, still above 50 for 32 consecutive months. The backlog of new orders also dropped from 54.5 to 52.5 Amusingly, despite every energy commodity surging, the Prices index in March somehow posted a miraculous drop from 68.4 to 33.9. The only series that was contracting, and unchanged at 49.5, was supplier deliveries, even as inventories increased once again, from 53.4 to 54.0. And if the ADP report was enough to give traders a headache whether or not more QE is coming, today's final economic data point, refutes the latest jobs strength ahead of the NFP, once again leaving everyone into the dark as to the Chairman's true intentions.

Everyone's favorite stock pitchman, Bob Pisani, who lately apparently has the capacity to learn just one line and just regurgitate it ad nauseam, was on CNBC earlier screaming how gold is down because the US is so much better than the world, when in reality gold is once again being sold to fund early margin calls (yes, institutionals are that levered right now). As for the US decoupling story, which time after time is dragged out, only to be shelved once the impact of trillions in liquidity fades, and which is never different this time, here is none other than Bank of America explaining to the likes of Pisani why "the US economy is likely to prove a faulty engine of global growth." Read - no decoupling, despite what the market may be trying to say. And yes, the market, and especially the Russell 2000 is never the economy.

Having been an onlooker of the recent tiff between Paul Krugman and Steve Keen, I was very eager to see what Mr. Keen had to say in tonight's LSE public lecture on "Banks Versus the Economy." Observing how Keen had quarreled with Krugman and effectively ate his lunch, I thought he would bring a lot to the table. I was wrong. Keen had raised the (very interesting) issue about how neoclassical economists and their models fail to recognize the role of banks in the economy.

Six centuries ago, when London and Paris were irrelevant, plague-infested backwaters, and New York City wasn’t even on the map, the greatest city in the world was Nanjing– the capital of the Great Ming. At the time, Nanjing was not only the most populous city on the planet, it was also the pinnacle of civilization. Art, science, technology, and commerce flourished in the Ming Dynasty’s liberalized economy, which constituted a full 31% of global GDP at the time. (By comparison, the US economy is roughly 25% of global GDP today…) Taxes were low, the currency was strong, and overseas trade thrived. For a time, Nanjing truly was the center of the world. Over the next several hundred years, the tide shifted. The Ming Dynasty fell, and power was transferred further west to the Ottoman Empire, and eventually to Europe which had finally emerged from the Dark Ages as the most advanced civilization on Earth... This phenomenon has lasted for several hundred years now… but as history has shown repeatedly, power centers frequently shift. The world is now witnessing yet another transition of power, this time from west to east, as the US-led western hierarchy suffocates within its own debt-laden Keynesian fiat bubble.