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The business cycle ought to be thought of as a series of discrete phases, each one quite distinct from the other, rather than as a smooth and uninterrupted process through time. This is how Goldman Sachs describes what is a compelling view of the dynamics of macro acceleration-and-deceleration and expansion-and-contraction and how these separate phases of their so-called 'swirlogram' can be mapped into asset class performance. This means that unlike traditional business cycle momentum jockeys and the extrapolating 'rulers' of the world, trade positioning should depend not only on the current state of the cycle but also on the near-term phase transition. As the cycle turns, so do assets; economic acceleration serves as an early indicator of looming shifts. Hence, vigilance in monitoring the business cycle with an eye towards identifying cyclical turning points is instrumental to a disciplined investment process. These lessons are timely too. Back in March, the business cycle peaked. The GLI shifted from the Expansion phase to the Slowdown phase; growth remained positive but acceleration turned negative. More ominously, April GLI growth was quite modest, with downward revisions to the last few months of data too. If the current downbeat data trajectory is extended, current GLI readings may prove to be overly optimistic. And should acceleration remains negative (which today's Philly Fed will drive), there is not much of a growth buffer to prevent the cycle from slipping into the Contraction phase, where the message for asset markets is clear and sobering.

Just As I Warned Of JPM's Exposure, Those Other Warnings Will Come To Pass As Well. I pull stuff out of my analytical archives and low and behold, who do I find?

India is known for its historically high per capita demand for gold, particularly before festivals and the wedding season, which peaks in the months of October to December. With more than ¼ of the entire global world market for the metal, the country has long been leading world demand, though fellow BRIC member China is catching up. But recent developments in India have gold bugs stirring – protests, boycotts, and a proposal for a tax on the sale on gold jewelry has severely dampened demand ahead of one of the most lucrative festivals in the country. And with global gold prices down more than 10% since their February high of $1,787.75, there seems to be good reason to worry. While acceleration in gold prices and Indian GDP seem to link up as do Indian demand and global GDP growth, increases in demand have little correlation to gold price growth. Similarly, rampant inflation has almost no role in stifling demand for the metal. If these correlations - and the seasonal performance patterns - hold true in 2012, gold investors might be able to sleep a little easier. While none of this guarantees that gold will experience some kind of meteoric rise to $2k, especially given all the other factors that contribute to prices, Nic Colas, of ConvergEx, thinks it’s safe to say that the supposed softening demand in India shouldn’t be too concerning. The US has bought 42% less gold than it did in 2006. So when it comes to declining gold prices, don’t jump to blame India. After all, it isn’t even wedding season yet...

Most informed people are familiar with the concept of Peak Oil, but fewer are aware that we’re also entering the era of Peak Government. The central misconception of Peak Oil -- that it’s not about “running out of oil,” it’s about running out of cheap, easy-to-access oil -- can also be applied to Peak Government: It’s not about government disappearing, it’s about government shrinking. Central government -- the Central State -- has been in the expansion mode for so long that the process of contracting government is completely alien to the nation, to those who work for the State, and to those who are dependent on the State. Thus we have little recent historical experience of Peak Government and few if any conceptual guideposts to help us understand this contraction. Peak Government is not a reflection of government services or the millions of individuals who work in government; it is a reflection of four key systemic forces that drove State expansion are now either declining or reversing.

The unsurprising and yet depressingly real budget data from California today should shock no-one and CNBC's Rick Santelli provides the most succinct and even more saddening reality check on the situation this morning as he points out the $15.7 billion shortfall and how cuts and compromise will fill that gap. His sane response to the implicit rise in taxation that this compromise realistically requires will mean - happy feet as Californians leave the state. His rant is one of the best but a little later in the day, the problem appears to be on its way to being fixed by none other than the hoody-in-chief himself. According to Bloomberg, Facebook Inc.’s initial public offering likely will account for 20 percent of California’s personal income growth this calendar year, the state fiscal analyst said. The state expects personal income to grow 4.9 percent in 2012. If the Facebook IPO were excluded, that would total 4.0 percent, the agency said. Money paid to company executives, investors and insiders would equal 1 percent of all personal income in 2012, the agency said. So two things come to mind: 1) we sure hope there are more mega-IPOs due next year to fund CALI's shortfall or we may have to pull the 'transitory' or unsustainable card out of the drawer; and 2) how will all those Facebook employees (and the corporation itself) feel when they start facing higher taxes (as Saverin just pre-emptively did?). Will they follow Santelli's happy feet out of the state? In the meantime, it would appear that the Facebook IPO is just the snake-oil medication that everyone needs - how could the IPO go wrong?

We suspect, when we look back on Europe some months from now, that we will see; a love affair gone badly due to conditions beyond anyone’s control and a separation that, while bound in great sadness, is what the Fates have determined for the actors in this grand drama. Extending the unreality, foillowing news that Greece will - as expected - hold new elections, today the new French President and the German Chancellor will meet for the first time. They will issue a statement promising cooperation, a brighter Europe, some vision of a grand alliance and an eternal pledge for the spirit of unity between the French and the German people. Believe none of it. The Germans are already targeting Vichy as the new place of government in France and there is an active search underway to find the decedents of Marshal Petain. There was an armistice between Germany and France in 1940 and there may be a new one announced today but the new one, like the old one, will be a short lived affair as the goals of France and the goals of Germany could not be further apart.

While our earlier discussion of the implications of Greece's exit from the Euro are critical reading to comprehend the real-time game of chicken occurring in front of our eyes, JPMorgan's somewhat more quantifiable estimates of the costs and contagion, given the results of the Greek election have raised market expectations of an exit of Greece from the Euro, also provide key indicators and flows that should be monitored. Identifying what has gone wrong with Greece's co-called 'adjustment' program, they go on to identify key transmission mechanisms to Spain and Italy, how it could potentially improve (Marshall-Plan-esque) and most critically, given the exponentially growing TARGET2 balances, if and when Germany throws in the towel. Immediate (cross-border claims) losses are estimate at around EUR400 billion, but the EUR1.4 trillion of Italian and EUR1.6 trillion of Spanish bank domestic deposits is the elephant in the room which a Greek exit and the introduction of capital controls by Greece has the potential to destabilize.

Germany is interested in the EU as a political entity, NOT the Euro as a currency. With that in mind, as well as Merkel’s recent political struggle, the stage is set for a possible exit from the Euro on the part of Germany.

All you need to read and some more.

The ECB seems to be quite happy to comment on Greece, and most of the comments seem to say that Greece isn’t doing their part.  Well, what about the ECB?  What have they been doing for Greece?  So far, not very much and I think they need to start to play nicely with their holdings.  If the ECB just plays nicely, at no cost to the ECB, the situation in Greece would improve quickly and dramatically.  The ECB must go from being a lender of last retort to a bona fide contributor to Greece and a true lender of last resort. Maybe the ECB should “Ask not what Greece can do for you, but what you can do for Greece”?

That China has finally given up on Europe is no news (granted, however, it will make it more complicated for various European newspaper to make up articles alleging China will bail out Europe now that this is no longer the case): after all even the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund has finally learned its lesson, and having been burned enough times, has made it quite clear it will have nothing to do with Europe's insolvent periphery. China, which has already lost enough money on Europe, has now decided to do the same. From Bloomberg: "China Investment Corp. has stopped buying European government debt because of an economic crisis on the continent, though it continues to look for new investments there, said CIC President Gao Xiqing. “What is happening in Europe right now is of course of concern,” Gao said yesterday in an interview in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during the World Economic Forum on Africa. “We still have our people looking at opportunities in Europe, even though we don’t want to buy any government bonds.” Sorry Europe: you had your chance. As for where China will invest its capital in the future? Why the one continent so far untouched by globalization, and which has the most debt capacity of all...

Overnight we got some good news on Italian industrial production. Well, get ready to scrap them as according to Italian Trade Union Confindustria, and validating the collapse as predicted by PMI indicators, Italy's Q2 GDP is now expected to shrink more than 1% in Q2: the worst print since 2009, cementing the country's "double dip", and that real-time industrial output in April, now that LTRO has fizzled, is expected to fall 0.6%. None of this should come as a surprise to anyone: after all the only way the periphery can rise is if it crashes hard enough to force the ECB to intervene again. Finally, the country that is next in line after Spain to nationalize its banks, need some pretext after all. Complete economic collapse will surely make stockholders, of other countries' banks at least, happy, as their Italian counterparty risk will soon be footed by the Italian taxpayers themselves.

The Immortal Bard must have been referencing Madrid when penning these lines or, if not, would likely approve of their application this morning. The nationalization of Bankia, the third largest bank in Spain, is not some isolated event that is singular and alone in nature regardless of the expected dampening and muted words and phrases issued by the Spanish government. The cancer has been identified but not isolated and you may be assured that it remains in the lymph nodes of the two major banks in Spain. Fortunately, during America’s financial crisis, many of the sub-prime mortgages were securitized and no longer resided on the balance sheets of the American banks. In the case of Spain we find not only the majority of the mortgages resident at the Spanish banks but we find an added dimension which is a huge amount of money lent to Real Estate developers which is impaired and still on the books of the Spanish banks. Further, in my opinion, none of these loans have been accurately accounted for and they are being carried at whimsical valuations by the banks or pledged as collateral at the ECB where the Spanish bank funding jumped 50% in one month and now stands at $294 billion. Following the bouncing ball; there is now so much encumbrance of assets between pledged collateral and covered bond sales that the actual worth of the two major Spanish banks is now someplace between “not much” and “De minimis” should the situation deteriorate to the point of impairment.

Two weeks ago, we showed that when it comes to parabolic charts, Europe sure has a variety to choose from. Yet none are quite as parabolic as the chart enabling it all: the Bundesbank's TARGET2 claims toward the rest of the Eurosystem, or as we have repeatedly explained (and as Jens Wiedmann confirmed), the sunk cost that Germany will have to foot once the Euro experiment ends, and the EMU falls apart.. which judging by recent developments in Greece, and now Spain, could be as soon as in a few weeks. The number as of April 30? €644,182,010,456.05, which is exactly 25% of German GDP, and an increase of €28.6 billion in April and €181 billion in 2012 alone! Putting this number in perspective, imagine that the Fed had "assets" totalling $3.85 trillion that everyone knew are totally worthless, and meant that it would have to print a like amount in fresh money as replacement "capital" when D-Day came. This "money" represents a receivable that the Bundesbank will never, repeat never, get back, once Greece exits the Eurozone, and sets a precedent for all the other insolvent European countries, leading to the end of the European monetary experiment. It also means that the asset base backing the liability side of the Bundesbank will soon get obliterated. So the real question is: do German taxpayers feel like sinking costs which will never be repaid, and which serve merely to preserve the myth of viable German export markets, thereby keeping the illusion that the German intra-Eurozone export industry is alive and well, while in the process obliterating the balance sheet of their far more prudent central bank? Or will the German population say "genug" and force the Bundesbank to stop funding the current account deficit ways that it has been enabling for years? The choice is theirs. Just don't come crying to the Fed when this number is 100% of GDP and everything falls apart.

By mainstream media accounts, the presidential election in France and parliamentary elections in Greece on May 6 were overwhelming verdicts against “austerity” measures being implemented in Europe. There is only one problem. It is a lie. First off, austerity was never really tried. Not really. In France for example, according to Eurostat, annual expenditures have actually increased from €1.095 trillion to €1.118 trillion in 2011. In fact spending has increased every single year for the past decade. The debt there increased too from €1.932 trillion €1.987 trillion last year, just as it did every year before. Real “austere”. The French spent more, and they borrowed more. The deficit in France did decrease by about €34 billion in 2011, but that was largely because of a €56.6 billion surge in tax revenues. Again, there were no spending cuts. Zero. Yet incoming socialist president François Hollande claimed after his victory over Nicolas Sarkozy that he would bring an end to this mythical austerity: “We will bring back Europe on a track for jobs, growth and the future… We’re no longer doomed to austerity.” This is just a willful, purposeful distortion. What the heck is he talking about? Certainly not France.