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While a week ago, when gold was $1600/ounce the self-funded component (read gold sale) of the Cypriot bailout amounted to just over 10 tons of gold, as of today's price and EURUSD rate, Cyprus would now have to sell 12 tons of gold to cover the gap, if it were to hit the sell button today (assuming a price of $1385/ounce and a 1.315 EURUSD exchange rate). As far as we know, Cyprus hasn't sold one ounce yet. But what if gold keeps tumbling as it has in the past three days? Well, the problem as most know, is that as of March based on IMF data, Cyprus only has 13.9 metric tons of "excess" (as the EC defined it) gold. This means one can extrapolate below what price Cyrpus is out of luck and the proposed European Commission bailout fails as one of the key self-funded elements simply will not have enough cash to fill the €400 MM hold.  That price for gold, once again assuming a 1.315 EURUSD, is roughly $1175/ounce. So if the coordinated selling (straight to Goldman's traders) were to continue, and gold did plunge to the threshold price, or even drop into triple digit territory, and Cyprus simply did not have enough gold to sell, what then?

When news hit the tape in February of 2007 that TXU would be acquired by a consortium of PE firms including KKR, TPG and Goldman, for the mind-boggling price of $45 billion, to this day the biggest LBO in history, there were those who were morbidly excited about the future as money was flowing freely, bonuses would hit a record, and there was only upside, and then there were those who knew this was the can't miss top-tick indicator of the beginning of the end. The latters ones turned out to be right. And not only because a year later the entire financial system imploded and only a $25 trillion global coordinated bailout prevented the collapse of the western way of life as we know it, but because now six years later, in the worst kept secret of Wall Street of the past month, TXU, now known as Energy Futures Holdings, is on the verge of the ultimate humiliation for private equity investors: Chapter 11, and a complete wipe out of not only the equity but major impairment of the debt holders as well.

A Roundup of Opinions

Former Soros' Japan advisor Fujimaki takes center stage: “The volatility in the JGB market as well as the fact that there is large selling represent fear among investors,” Fujimaki said. “They are early signs of a larger selloff and we should continue to monitor the moves in the long-term bonds.” Fujimaki said he recently bought put options for Japanese government bonds of various maturities, without elaborating. He continues to hold real estate in Japan and options granting the right to sell the yen against the greenback expiring in less than five years. He also holds assets in U.S. dollars and currencies of other developed nations. "Japan’s finance is sinking into the ocean,” Fujimaki said. “There’s no escape from a market crash in the future when you have such enormous debt.”  “By expanding the monetary base to 270 trillion yen, the BOJ is making a huge bet which I think it will ultimately lose,” Fujimaki said in an interview in Tokyo on April 11. “Kuroda’s QE announcement is declaring double suicide with the government. The BOJ will have to share the country’s fate and default together. Shirakawa did more than enough and he had good reasons to not do any more,” said Fujimaki. “There will be tremendous side effects from monetary stimulus. QE doesn’t work and has no exit... Things may look rosy for now as stocks rise, but should we see hyper-inflation, JGBs will see a huge selloff, leading to a stock market crash,” said Fujimaki, adding that he sold “almost all” of his Japanese stock holdings some time ago.

There were many casualties following Friday's 4% gold rout, but none were hurt more than one-time hedge fund idol John Paulson, who according to estimates, lost more than $300 million of his own money in one day. Per Bloomberg: "Paulson has roughly $9.5 billion invested across his hedge funds, of which about 85 percent is invested in gold share classes. Gold dropped 4.1 percent today, shaving about $328 million from his net worth on this bet alone." This is merely the latest insult to what has otherwise been a 3 year-long injury for Paulson and his few remaining investors, whose very inappropriately named Advantage Plus is among the bottom 10 hedge funds for the third year in a row. Yet despite being a one-hit wonder thanks to one lucrative idea (long ABX CDS) generated by one of his former employees (Pelegrini), Paulson still has been lucky enough to somehow amass a $10 billion personal fortune which can have a $300 million downswing in one day, even if it is in an asset class which eventually will go only one way - up. Unless, of course, like so many other fly by night billionaires, Paulson too hasn't somehow managed to lever up all his equity into numerous other downstream ventures, and where a $300 million blow up leads to margin calls and other terminal liquidity outcomes.

In the past six years the Post Office has lost $41 BILLION and they have a cumulative deficit of $36 billion.
The Post Office will lose another $10 to $15 billion this fiscal year.
They have $15 billion of debt on their balance sheet, with $9.5 billion payable in the next 9 months.
$33.9 Billion of payments for pension and health benefits for retirees, all due within the next 5 years.
$25 billion for workers compensation and sick leave payments.

One element of the President's budget is a sham.

Update, and sure enough: PANICOS DEMETRIADES SAYS CYPRUS CENTRAL BANK INDEPENDENCE UNDER ATTACK. As a reminder, Panicos hold the now obsolete position of head of the Cyprus Central Bank.

As was noted two days ago (so certainly not the news catalyst for today's gold sell off as some are trying to make it appear) as part of its bailout expansion by 35%, Cyprus announced, then refuted, then re-admitted, it would need to fund a portion of the incremental €7 billion in cash demands by selling €400 million, or nearly all 13.9 tons, of its central bank gold. Today, we learn that this demand came from none other than the head of the ECB Mario Draghi. Bloomberg reports: "European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said the profits of any gold sales by the Cypriot central bank must be used to cover losses it may sustain from emergency loans to Cypriot commercial banks."

Think the 75% plunge in BitCoin values in two days has crushed all former supporters of the virtual currency (which truth be told is only back to levels from a month ago)? Wrong. As the NYT reports, a very unexpected supporting genepool (split into two identical halves) has emerged in the shape of two names previously linked to yet another pre-bubble frenzy name, FaceBook: Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (collectively, the "Winklevii"). Following stints as Olympic rowers, Simpsons characters, and antagonistic Facebook litigants, the two 31 year-old identical twins are now indirect investors in the latest "currency" craze, whose heyday may well have come and gone, courtesy of owning a whopping 1% stake in all of the entire outstanding supply of BitCoin which at last count was worth $1.3 billion (if maybe a little less now).

Given that the Fed and the BoJ has our back (and will add a further $1.75tn or so to their balance sheets by 2013 year-end), we should expect US equity prices to rise to infinity and beyond. As one smart chap on the television noted, "stocks won't go down again," but given expectations for earnings in 2013 (which include the remarkable hockey-stick in Q4 - which surely would only occur if things were strong enough to warrant the Fed pulling back in a reflexive vicious circle), the S&P 500 will trade at a rather expensive 19.5x P/E at end-2013 (which we are sure we will be told is still cheap).

Explains the political motivation for slamming the account holders in Cypriot banks.

While the Fed's spoksperson has reassured us that none of the 100 or so people who received the somewhat hawkish Fed minutes prematurely (right-time, wrong date) yesterday traded on that information, coincidental trading behavior appears to tell a different story. The inexorable rise seemed to halt almost instantly as the Minutes were released and read by humans this time driving the S&P down 6 points into the close...

Now is the time to think about how you would live your life if your real value was appreciated and fairly compensated.

Bitcoin has been all the rage lately. The stuff, or lack thereof, runs on peer-to-peer technology, is fully decentralized, has no patents, and is open source. Currently, there are almost 11 million bitcoin units in existence and the maximum amount of bitcoin units that will ever be created by the logic of its design are 21 million. While bitcoins are designed so that they cannot be hyperinflated in name, they certainly can be hyperinflated in substance. There is no doubt that bitcoin is a spontaneous answer to the monetary instability that we see all around us today. On one side of the pond people are worried about the glorified currency peg known as the Euro and on the other about the amount of damage that Bernanke is willing to inflict upon the world’s reserve currency. However, let us not become so enamored of an innovative stateless solution that we forget Austrian economics and hitch libertarianism’s wagon to something heading for a crash.

Herbalife (NYSE: HLF) today announced that KPMG LLP notified Herbalife on April 8, 2013 that KPMG was resigning, effective immediately, as Herbalife's independent accountant. KPMG stated it had concluded it was not independent because of alleged insider trading in Herbalife's securities by one of KPMG’s former partners who, until April 5, 2013, was the KPMG engagement partner on Herbalife's audit. KPMG advised the Company it resigned as Herbalife's independent accountant solely due to the impairment of KPMG's independence resulting from its now former partner’s alleged unlawful activities and not for any reason related to Herbalife's financial statements, its accounting practices, the integrity of Herbalife's management or for any other reason....at no point during the three fiscal years ended December 31, 2012 and the subsequent interim period through April 8, 2013 were there any (1) disagreements with KPMG on any matter of accounting principles or practices, financial statement disclosure or auditing scope or procedures, which disagreement(s), if not resolved to the satisfaction of KPMG, would have caused it to make reference to the subject matter of the disagreement(s) in connection with its reports, or (2) “reportable events” as such term is defined in Item 304(a)(1)(v) of Regulation S-K.