Italy

As Americans, we live in two worlds; the world of mainstream fantasy, and the world of day-to-day reality right outside our front doors.  One disappears the moment we shut off our television.  The other, does not…   When dealing with the economy, it is the foundation blocks that remain when the proverbial house of cards flutters away in the wind, and these basic roots are what we should be most concerned about.  While much of what we see in terms of economic news is awash in a sticky gray cloud of disinformation and uneducated opinion, there are still certain constants that we can always rely on to give us a sense of our general financial environment.  Two of these constants are supply and demand.  Central banks like the private Federal Reserve may have the ability to flood markets with fiat liquidity to skew indexes and stocks, and our government certainly has the ability to interpret employment numbers in such a way as to paint the rosiest picture possible, but ultimately, these entities cannot artificially manipulate the public into a state of demand when they are, for all intents and purposes, dead broke. 

We are in “The Lull” which has been caused by the injection of capital by the Fed and by the ECB. This is exactly, exactly, what took place I remind you during the weeks after the subprime mess exploded. Massive injections of capital, run-ups in equities, compression in bonds, higher prices for commodities and then the reversal of course took place. When easing ends then the course back tracks and I predict a re-do of this in the coming months. It will not take some trigger event, though there may well be one, to cause this; just the easy money being placed and no more manufactured money to follow.

“As the well runs dry the throat parches and dehydration begins.”

-The Wizard

Back in October, when Greece was rewarded with further bond haircuts for progressively missing its economic targets, even after having gotten caught on at least one occasion making its economy appear worse than it was, we said that it is only a matter of time before "Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy will promptly commence sabotaging their economies (just like Greece) simply to get the same debt Blue Light special as Greece." In the aftermath of this statement, we got the Irish and the Portuguese proceeding to slowly but surely do just that. Today, it was Spain's turn to make it 3 out of 4 after as Reuters noted so appropriately, "Spain defies Brussels on deficit target" clarifying that "Spain set itself a softer budget target for 2012 on Friday than originally agreed under the euro zone's austerity drive, putting a question mark over the credibility of the European Union's new fiscal pact. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy insisted he was acting within EU guidelines because the plan was still to hit the European Union public deficit goal of 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013." That Italy is sure to follow is absolutely guaranteed, however just because the ECB is now indirectly monetizing BTPs the true impact will be delayed far more, and instead of taking prompt steps to remedy the situation, the European complacency will be accentuated by the fact that bond yields are very low, and supposedly indicates the true state of the economy. No. All it indicates is the conversion of future inflation (courtesy of €1 trillion in new money in the past 3 months) for a very temporary respite before all hell ultimately breaks loose as countries pretend everything is ok as bond yields are pushed artificially low. And in doing nothing, the fundamentals in the economy only get worse and worse. Germany knows this very well, and the Economist explains the reaction to Spain's surprising statement today perfectly...

Deception.

All you need to read.

So, yesterday it was revealed that both Goldman and JPM had about 145 billion of “gross” notional outstanding on CDS related to the PIIGS. That means they each had roughly 145 billion of purchases and sales. They spoke about various netting agreements that makes the real number lower. They also mentioned with collateral and on a mark to market basis, the real exposure is far lower. Fine, though I wonder why they don’t execute the “master” netting and get the gross notionals down? Wouldn’t that help the system? If these were cleared or on an exchange, all they would have a single net exposure for each country. The collateral and netting would be handled at the central clearing or exchange. Wouldn’t that be simpler? Safer? The e-mini S&P future contract seems to be able to trade that way just fine, and it is more volatile than CDS on most days. Italian CDS is in 25 bps today – seems like a lot, but the up-front payment to buy or sell Italian CDS has changed by less than 1%.

• China’s Holdings of Treasuries Dropped in ’11 (BusinessWeek)
• Bundesbank at Odds With ECB Over Loans (FT)
• Euro zone puts Greece's efforts under microscope (Reuters)
• Bank of America Considers a Revamp That Would Affect Millions of Customers (WSJ)
• In Days Leading Up to MF Global's Collapse, $165 Million Transfer OK'd in a Flash (WSJ)
• Greece Approves Welfare Cuts for 2nd Bailout (Bloomberg)
• Irish Minister Pushes to Cut Bail-Out Cost (FT)
• China to Support Tech Sectors (China Daily)
• Spanish Bond Yields Fall in Debt Auction After ECB (Reuters)
• China to Expand Cross-Border RMB Businesses (China Daily)

Everyone and their mum knows by now that Italian bonds have rallied since the first LTRO and we are told that this is symptomatic of 'improvement'. While we hate to steal the jam from that doughnut, we note Peter Tchir's interesting chart showing how focused the strength is in the short-end of the bond curve (which we know is thanks to the ECB's SMP program preference and the LTRO skew) but more notably the significantly less ebullient performance of the less manipulated and more fast-money, mark-to-market reality CDS market as we suspect, like him, the CDS is pricing in the longer-term subordination and termed out insolvency risk much more clearly than the illiquid bond market does, and perhaps bears closer scrutiny for a sense of what real risk sentiment really looks like.

As we have discussed extensively, and noted this morning specifically, the LTRO is stigmatizing credit markets in Europe, no matter what European leaders or bank CEOs tell you. European credit and equity markets dropped dramatically post LTRO 2 and accelerated on Bernanke's lack of monetary exuberance. Financials underperformed but most notably, subordinated credit spreads widened significantly more than seniors holding at yesterday's wide levels. The Stigma trade is occurring in single-name credit also with the spread between LTRO and non-LTRO banks widening once again after compressing for a few days but it is the Senior-Sub spread decompression that is the liquid trade for European bank's implicit subordination for now (as the entire capital structure of LTRO banks just became subordinated at best and more levered and subordinated at worst). The EUR tumbled over 100pips towards 1.3350 as the USD rallied back to the week's highs. Silver (and Gold) crashed into the European close (down over 7% on the day at one point) while Treasuries sold off and European sovereigns leaked wider (except Portugal which crashed and Italy which compressed modestly). Quite a day.

The following people are paid to have an opinion, whether right or wrong, so it is our job to listen to them. Supposedly. Reuters summarizes the professionals kneejerk reaction to the LTRO 2. Because when it comes to explaining why Europe's banks are not only not deleveraging but increasing leverage while paying an incremental 75 bps on up to €700 billion in deposits soon to be handed over to the ECB, one needs all the favorable spin one can muster.

As US markets hit their all time highs, there is nothing but bad news in EU sovereign land. What does it take for people to understand that equities have detached from fundamentals & the macro outlook?

Haven't learned a thing. 

While the gold standard may no longer exist, nations and international organizations still have 30,877 metric tons of bullion reserves, valued at about $1.77 trillion. The dollar has been the world’s reserve currency since the U.S. and allies agreed at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference to peg it to a rate of $35 per ounce of gold. It remained the most- traded legal tender after global currencies began freely floating in the early 1970s. The greenback dropped 12 percent against a basket of six major currencies since March 2009. The U.K. suspended the gold standard in 1931, Chatham House said. “Greater discipline on financial markets might have been helpful in inhibiting the reckless banking and excessive debt accumulation of the past decade,” the task force said. “However, with the onset of the global crisis, had gold had a more formal role to play, the rigidity it imposes might also have been a handicap when a more flexible policy response was required.” “For gold to play a more formal role in the international monetary system, it would be imperative for it neither to hamper the system’s performance nor to create unacceptable constraints on national economic policies,” the task force said.  Gold may “continue playing a significant role in the international monetary system, serving as a valuable hedge and safe haven, particularly in times when tail risks predominate.”

Banking privacy is dead. Completely, totally dead. Murdered, really. The US government is the assailant, and FATCA is the murder weapon. We’ve talked about this a few times before– FATCA is the heinously insidiously piece of legislation that the Honorable Barrack Hussein Obama passed into law in 2010 as part of the “Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act”. There were no hiring incentives, and there was no restoration of employment. But any vestiges of banking privacy were destroyed. In brief, FATCA has two key concepts. First, it requires an additional (and completely unnecessary) layer of reporting from all US taxpayers who have ‘foreign financial accounts’ at ‘foreign financial institutions.’ Though as we have discussed before, both of these critical terms are ridiculously and flagrantly ambiguous, putting the onus entirely on the taxpayer. The second key issue is that FATCA puts a burden on ALL foreign financial institutions worldwide to enter into an information-sharing agreement with the IRS; this essentially obliges every bank on the planet to submit reports and customers’ private data to the IRS.  Such provisions are absolutely, 100% impossible. And it’s becoming clear that FATCA was passed with no intention of being enforceable. It’s inconceivable that every institution on the planet could enter into an agreement. And it’s inconceivable that every institution on the planet could possibly know whether every other institution has entered into the agreement. The only thing FATCA has accomplished is scaring the living daylights out of non-US banks. So much so that foreign banks have approached their governments to ask for help.

But coincidentally, the ECB’s next Long Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO) is set for February 29...