Reality

As we pointed out earlier today, today's latest deterioration in yet another overoptimistic assumption by the BEA, in the form of the balance of trade, means that the next GDP revision will likely be sub 1%, and may ostensibly drop to negative, confirming that the double dip, at least for NBER purposes, started sometime between April and June. Confirming our skepticism is JPM's Michael Feroli who now believes that real Q2 GDP is trending at a 1.1% rate, less than half the official 2.4%, which, as readers will recall was expected by a battery of Ph.D.-clad optimists to come out to 2.7%. Less than two weeks after the announcement, it becomes clear that the world's "smartest" economists were off by 60%. And we are confident this is not the end of the downward revisions.

Jim Quinn's has penned a good post on the "mother of all bubbles" in which he analyzes the impact of cheap credit and surging money supply on Chinese real estate, hot on the heels of recent Zero Hedge disclosure that nearly 65 million homes in China lie vacant. Using data from The Casey Report depicting the explosion in monetary aggregates, it is rather easy to see just where all the "excess" credit and easy money has gone. In many, if not all ways, the experience China is about to undergo with respect to its real estate bubble is comparable to that of the US, and simply the lack of an overlap of bubble peaks in 2007/8 is what helped China experience an all out economic rout, which due to how its socio-political structure is intertwined, may have well led to a domestic revolution and/or civil war. Yet the longer China avoids looking in the mirror, and continues to "feed the monkey" the worse off it will be when no amount of incremental cheap money can forestall the collapse. Which in itself is a very comparable predicament faced by our own administration and central bank. But before we present the Quinn article, we will take a brief detour into Michael Pettis' recent observations on the pitfalls association with a monetary heroin addiction.

Stocks continue to represent all the reality contained within the confines of the Byron Wien twilight zone. The decoupling between stocks and everything else is getting even more laughable than before (and it was damn funny then). A simple weekly chart shows that the divergence between stocks and bonds is worth about 35 ES points alone. Extend this three months back, and stocks are about 100 points rich. Throw in the carry trade (cause with no money from mutual funds, stock buyers would at least need the benefits of currency funding arbitrage, as otherwise the whole all too relevant question of just where the money comes from to buy up all these stocks may be asked by someone) and the EOD ramp, in turn, becomes painfully obvious. All in all, if one is trading stocks at this point, one deserves to lose it all. We reiterate our advice from last summer when the market went batshit for the first time: take your money, and go to Vegas. You have much better odds, you won't be frontrun by an Atari 2600 while playing craps, and if you lose it all at least your stay will be comped.

In a rare dose of realism, Reuters reports that the BOE's Monetary Policy Committee member Adam Posen said there is a distinct chance the UK economy could slip back into a recession. Not surprisingly, the BOE member said eurozone public sector cuts would add as a drag on the UK economy. He also added that he hopes the recovery would continue but it can not be guaranteed. As the BOE has demonstrated no problems in the past with activating money printing QE episodes, is this merely a preamble to yet another round of English quantitative easing? As was pointed out on Zero Hedge over the weekend, recent changes in excess reserves in the US have provided the implicit benefit of nearly $200 billion in new Fed money entering the pursuit of risky assets, and everyone knows that the ECB is now on crash course with Germany over its own most recent monetization regime. It should thus come as no surprise that the UK feels alone and will likely do all it can to pursue the same currency devaluation techniques that seem to be prevalent across the globe, and not be left too far behind.

The latest market trampoline action on horrendous consumer credit news should be sufficient to get every last sane person out of this illegal, yet fully government endorsed, backdoor gambling operation, or at least those that are stupid enough not to be trading with other people's money. Today marks the most recent long white candlestick on almost record low volume for a ramp day. Note the straight line higher immediately following the consumer credit collapse and the leak that QE2 is coming any minute. Our only question is how bad is the news coming this weekend for the primary dealers to need to surge the market so high on nothing. Well, that, and also we wonder if after the circus rang the closing bell on the Nasdaq two days ago, whether today the Sicilian mafia will be at the NYSE close.

House Democrat leader Steny Hoyer will today announce that the US will not pass a budget in 2010 as “It isn’t possible to debate and pass a realistic, long-term budget until we’ve considered the bipartisan commission’s deficit-reduction plan, which is expected in December." Yet "the House has never failed to pass an annual budget resolution since the current budget rules were put into place in 1974." The real reason of course is that the budget would indicate new and unprecedented trillions in deficits, which would wreak havoc on Democrat chances to contain their upcoming mid-term election loss to just "landslide" status, instead of what is increasingly shaping up as being more in the "apocalyptic" category. Those whose memory spans longer than 24 hours, will recall that Peter Orszag resigned yesterday. Something tells us these two events may be correlated. In the meantime, we are now convinced that realizing the hopelessness of its political situation, the administration and the Fed will now create the most ridiculous, unprecedented, destructive and historic market melt up in history to preserve any chances of demonstrating just how "effective" their market manipulation, pardon, economic resurgence efforts are. If you are short, be ready to have all your shares forcibly called in over the next 4 months. At least the humor of the situation is not lost on one person: House Republican leader John Boehner has taken out a page on his website to lampoon the tragicomedy that US economic and fiscal reality has become.

Some terrific insight from Rosie on the future:

• Deflation: own income-generating securities, which include dividend yield and dividend growth.
• Corporate balance sheet strength and liquidity: own corporate bonds with liquidity, marginal refinancing needs and stable cash flows.
• Intense volatility: invest in classic hedge funds — true long-short strategies that preserve capital and minimize fluctuations in the portfolio.
• Ongoing sovereign credit concerns and recurring rounds of currency depreciation: ensure the portfolio has a core holding in precious metals (gold and silver). These are effective hedges against lingering concerns over the stability of the global monetary system.

In Chapter 4 we look at the concept of control and how fear is used to control us while we use fear to control ourselves. We learn we make reality fresh every day and we examine the dynamic of apathy. For those of us who come up short, we learn it’s not what you have but how you use it and we visit with the Nailman, who explains that there's no trying, just doing.

Thanks to our very own printing-historian hybrid, Ben Bernanke, all people who wish to understand the direction in which the economy is headed are now experts on the Great Depression. Yet more and more pundits claim that the true historical analog to our current tumultuous times are not the days after 1929, but the period between 1919 and 1923 in post WW I Germany, also known as th Weimar Republic. Attached is a summary presentation on the three critical pathways that shaped Germany in the interregnum, and set it off on a course to the Second World War. These three avenues were i)the infamous hyperinflation and associated meltdown, which even now is causing so much consternation for German politicians dealing with a suddenly printer-happy ECB, ii) the French invasion of the Ruhr, and iii) and the failed Munich Beerhall Putsch. As many see QE as a precursor to i) above, and ii) is currently playing out in various parts of the world to a lesser or greater extent, the question remains when will some disgruntled citizen rise out of the disenfranchised masses and replicate the so far missing iii). With recent developments within the tea party movement, and with the administration's plunging popularity rating, it is not a far stretch to see all three core Weimar "factors" replicated in our own back yard with a 90 year delay.

It may take a while, but the fictitious valuations of CRE REITs will eventually come to reflect what is actually going on in the actual physical real estate world. It may be like matter meets anti-matter, investment banking secondary offering meets bricks and mortar reality. After all, the antics in Germany and greater Europe are not doing anything to actually help the debt markets.
I think I feel another "I told'ja so" coming on...

Bondholders to be re-paid with unicorn rainbows; EU objects, claiming withdrawal requires ratification by two-thirds of European Parliament or 10% of European populace.

"There is nothing but politics that says that Greece can make it through this process. Although politics includes compromise when it is working, the breakdown of politics is war. Usually the war implied in this famous aphorism would be between states, but in this case it would be between the people and the government that has failed them. The Greek government can’t follow the current course. On the issue of ‘internal devaluation,’ the European political elites are way out of touch with their people: almost no one will stand for it. The political maze we are entering might have many twists and turns with distorting mirrors, but money is money and its powerful logic will win in the end. No matter how many speeches and new regulations are made, the Greek economy will continue to deteriorate, dragging down the rest of Europe far more powerfully than its 3% implies. Please let the Greeks out and please restructure the euro, or drop the whole idea. If you don’t, the future will not be pretty." - John Taylor, FX Concepts

A detailed overview of the current state of charge-offs, delinquencies and (yes) improvements in the mortgage industry - and most importantly what can be discerned from these trends...

When psychologists evaluate human behavior, one of the most prevalent observations regarding any activity is the all too often flawed basis of perceived versus realistic outcomes that dictates our every action. As imperfect creatures, we tend to construct theories that conform with our worldview, which are subsequently reinforced by our confidence (or lack thereof) in the future. This is true in any discipline: finance, politics, gambling, mating, etc. There is hardly a better example of this than the very basis of modern economic theory where assumptions about the validity of fiat currencies determine the actions of central banks, which in turn spill over into every aspect of modern society . Yet what if the very basis of core assumptions is wrong? What if every activity exhibited by humans in the post gold-standard world has a flawed assumption at its core? Austrian economists have, of course, claimed this for ages, usually seeing their efforts conclude with a dead-end as the attempt to change the status quo hits the brick wall of quadrillions of (arguably worthless) pieces of paper which dictate the status quo. However, with the recent turn for the worse, courtesy of sovereign bail outs (as confused as they may be) could the day of reckoning be fast approaching? With each passing the day an affirmative answer seems closer at hand. Today SocGen's Dylan Grice shares his perspectives on popular delusions, and why these may soon be coming to an abrupt end.