Kyle Bass

From Kyle Bass / Dylan Grice prognostications on Japan as poster-boy for the end-results of a desperate central bank / government cabal to Richard Koo's perception of the land of the rising sun as a great example of how to get out of a depressionary funk, no one can argue with the facts that Japan's debt situation and total lack of financial flexibility is a ticking debt-bomb (with a fuse varying from 3 months to infinity given market participants' pricing implications). McKinsey provides some clarifying perspective on the Lessons from Japan today suggesting the country provides a 'cautionary tale for economies today'. Noting that neither the public nor the private sectors made the structural changed that would enable growth (a theme often discussed here) with public debt having grown steadily as economic stimulus efforts continue. But, as they note, the price - two decades of slow growth - has been high, and the final resolution of Japan's enormous public debt has yet to come.

Anyone wondering why FSLR just jumped, it is because as was just made known, David Einhorn's Greenlight has decided to close its FSLR position, after bleeding that particular corpse dry. "Our largest winner by far was our short of First Solar (FSLR) which fell from $130.14 to $33.76 paper share and was the worst performing stock in the S&P 500." Einhorn also announces that he was among the "evil" hedge funds who dared to provide market clearing transparency and buy CDS on insolvent European governments: "We also did well investing in various credit default swaps on European sovereign debt." As for losers, Einhorn and Kyle Bass can commiserate: "For the second year in a row, our biggest loss came from positions designed to capitalize on eventual weakening of the Yen." He summarizes the global economic environment as follows: "The global environment is very complicated. On the one hand the Federal Reserve has taken a much-needed break from quantitative easing (at least for the moment). Accordingly, inflation in oil and food has abated, providing relief to the US economy. Bearish forecasts that the US was headed back into recession proved wrong for the third time since the end of the last recession. On the other hand, Asia appears to be in much worse shape than it was at this time last year and could be a drag on the world economy going forward. Very few people trust any of the economic data coming out of China, making it difficult to gauge the situation there. Some of the smartest people we know have very dim views. The Chinese have been a leading growth engine for the last two decades and are largely credit with leading the world out of the recession in 2009. A change in their economic circumstances could really upend things." Yet the best thing is his summary of the current investing climate in our utterly and hopelessly reactionary broken markets.

If you ever happen to acquire an inclination for being the subject of disrepute and ridicule I highly recommend endorsing the conceit alluded to in the title. Apparently this issue is ‘so obvious’ that even gold bugs and government officials can reach common ground via the contention that I’m deluded. My folly — if you will — is to maintain that dollar debasement can be bullish for the dollar vis-à-vis other currencies at present. Since this long-standing conviction of ours is once again being corroborated by price action in the currency markets I thought I’d attempt to convince you that I’m not completely crazy. Here I outline why dollar debasement is bullish for the dollar against other fiat currencies in this environment.

Continuing our tradition of listing what according to Zero Hedge readers were the key news events of the year for the third year in a row (2009 and 2010 can be found here and here), we present, as is now customary, the most popular posts of the year as determined by the number of page views, or said otherwise - by the readers themselves. So without further ado, here are this year's top 20.

Kyle Bass presented us with a preview of what to expect in his monthly letter in a David Faber interview yesterday; today he delivers the full monty with his extended analysis of "shortening collateral chains" in his latest investor letter - a topic that we have been discussing broadly ever since we starting focusing on Shadow Banking two years ago (and why, as we have been pounding the table, it is the central bankers' primary prerogative to offset the collapse in the shadow banking system more than anything), and narrowly, since the realization of how tenuous the rehypothecation system is. The below analysis leads Bass to come to the one logical conclusion: "As European leaders press forward with failed attempt after failed attempt to suppress borrowing costs, control spending, reduce deficits and prop up what the markets have already told us is a broken monetary system, the data tells us that the citizens of the most troubled and profligate nations are losing confidence in the Euro dream. Trust has been lost, confidence in the system is being lost, and the ultimate consequence of this break down - sovereign defaults —are imminent. We continue to move ever closer to a great restructuring of sovereign debt."

If readers have the sense there has been a deluge of Kyle Bass reading (and viewing) materials on Zero Hedge in the past two weeks, it is because there has been: and why not - after all, unlike all other cheap talking heads, and know-nothing pundits who merely need a suit to make an appearance on one of the TV's financial comedy channels, Kyle has been consistent in the most important thing - telling the truth. Today, he took his resurgent popularity to CNBC which always knows which way the winds blow, and told David Faber more or less everything that Zero Hedge readers know already about Europe's collapse, on why the ECB will print but only after a default, and about the inevitable global debt restructuring. There was a twist: as most regulars here know, the key topic of the past week, of December, and potentially of 2011, is the limitless "fractional Prime Broker lending" of assets-cum-liabilities (and when it comes to the realization that one's gold itself may be rehypothecated, via GLD, it is no surprise why paper gold is plunging, with the expected delayed effect of slow comprehension) in an infinite loop of daisy chained counterparty exposure, also known as rehypothecation. Which is precisely what what Bass touches on 9 minutes 30 seconds into the interview when the discussion shifts to "shortening collateral chains." Must watch for everyone who enjoys not being lied to.

In a double-whammy of downbeat dystopian discussions, GMO and Kyle Bass are active on the inevitability of Europe's demise. Perhaps that is too strong but the two are focused directly, in separate pieces, on the huge need for capital and the dire dearth of it available. GMO's central focus on the direct capital needs of the European banking system in the case of a recovery (but under Basel III) and under stress scenarios. Dismissing the EBA's efforts, and recognizing that the problem is capital/solvency (if there were more, the market would not be worrying about liquidity and deposit flight), their 'neutron bomb' scenario where sovereign debt is recognized as a 'risky asset' (which seems more than plausible to us), the capital needs are almost EUR300bn with Spanish and French banks dominant but Italian and German banks are close behind. As Kyle Bass notes "There is no savior large enough with a magic potion of capital to stave off this unfortunate conclusion to the global debt super cycle.". This leads to only a bad and worse outcome for Europe, as the cataclysm plays out because the banks do have an alternative to raising capital – shrink the balance sheet. Deleveraging is already going on in a number of countries, with loan-to-deposit ratios dropping in recent months in Portugal, Spain, and Italy. This reduces the capital needs of banks, but fairly quickly starts to cut into the muscle of the financial system. The banks have little alternative but to keep holding sovereign debt in the short term, since it is the collateral for their borrowing needs. And as we have been so vociferously explaining recently, should they be forced to delver even more, and sell reduce these sovereign assets, then the daisy-chain effect of de-hypothecation on shadow banking will not end well for anyone.

Unlike the broad consensus of prognosticators who feel the road for the US is a decade or more, Bass sees a three-to-five year window for a credible solution to the debt saturation or else kicking the can will cease to have any impact. The reason for the proximity is the acceleration of what happens in Europe and Japan with that respective chronology his central view - which he sees as critical in understanding for every money manager. In this extended interview at AmeriCatalyst, he points to the optimistic self-deception biases that leave people unable to comprehend the scenarios as they either lead to a really bad outcome or a nominally bad outcome.

Using the Lehman moment as an example, Bass explains how we have been conditioned to believe there is always a backstop or savior...now those backstops at a corporate and sovereign level (central banks and the IMF for example) are being called into question in their roles (being seen for what they are - as just promises) and it is the chasm between what we want to believe and what does happen that is enormous and leaves the extreme volatility, risk-on/risk-off market the way it is. Reiterating how critical the psychology of today's situation, Bass goes on to debunk the optimism of globalization (at least for the Western world), destroy the myth of a 50% greek writedown solution, Japanese xenophobia and savings losses, structural versus cyclical implications for US equity deterioration, why you should never trust what government says, the US decifit and housing issues, increasing global debt saturation and how this tearing at the social fabric of the world will lead to - war.

In his latest letter to LPs, Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital Management, offers his tell-tale clarity on what may lie ahead for Europe and Japan. With his over-arching thesis of debt saturation becoming more plain to see around every corner, Bass bundles the simple (and somewhat unarguable) facts of quantitative analysis with a qualitative perspective on the cruel self-deception that we all see and read every day about Europe.

Whether it is Kahneman's "availability heuristic" (wherein participants assess the probability of an event based on whether relevant examples are cognitively "available"), the Pavlovian pro-cyclicality of thought, or the extraordinary delusions of groupthink, investors in today’s sovereign debt markets can't seem to envision the consequences of a default.

His Japanese scenario is no less convicted, as we have discussed a number of times, with the accelerant of this debt-bomb being the very-same European debacle and his time-frame for this is set to begin in the next few months.

Another noteworthy Kyle Bass moment as he discusses debt sustainability among major global sovereign nations. Simply and proficiently, the hedge fund manager describes how a dwindling current account surplus in Japan, US welfare economics, and the peripheral-to-core European stressors are all Madoff-like and unsustainable. Switching from broad-brush terms to the idiosyncratic complexities of each region, Bass offers his inimitable take - in a mere six minutes - on how the status quo is quivering under its own self-deception. His rightful conclusions remain extremely worrisome and should be required reading/watching for every central banker and politician trying to keep the dream alive.

When back in May 2010 Greece was bailed out for the first time, the corrupt authorities and the conflicted media said this is the beginning of a new beginning, and soon everything would be fixed. Nothing has been fixed and everything has gotten far worse. Back then we were among the few to point out that the "bailout" was a travesty and that you can't fix an excess debt problem with more debt, yet that has been precisely the methodology of every bailout ever since the first. Unfortunately, the world is caught in a Keynesian paradigm where this is the only recourse to kick the can, unfortunately the strength of every kick is getting weaker and weaker until one day, the can refuses to move, and it is game over. Looking back at this historic period which sealed the fate of the Keynesian system, nobody has caught the paradoxes of the current broken economic and financial model better than Kyle "Nickels" Bass. Below, for everyone's must read pleasure, we once again present his May 11, 2010 letter titled "The Pattern is Set ? Betting the Bank on a Keynesian Free Lunch" which fuses everything that has happened in Europe since then on the fiscal side, and is about to happen on the monetary one. "From now on, it seems everything will be deemed to be a liquidity crisis that will be met with more "bail?outs" and debt financed spending. This will eventually break traction in a violent way and facilitate severe inflation or even hyperinflation. The one thing the EU taught us this weekend is that paper money will be worth less (maybe much less) in the future." And indeed it will, because more than anything, money is increasingly and rightfully seen as the symbol of the free lunch that Keynesian economics promises, after that "just one final debt hit." Is there much or any hope? Not really, but being prepared while watching the inferno blazes get higher and higher is the best we can all do.

If the abridged summary from BBC's Hardtalk interview with Kyle Bass that we published yesterday was not enough for those seeking sense, truth, and direction, then (as promised) the full 24'30" interview will quench that desire. Reflecting on the similarities of his subprime perspective, he provides a crucial context for the debt-laden world of sovereign debt that he is now hedging. Shrugging off the somewhat snarky 'nefarious short-sellers' angle of questioning (and insuring the uninsured prod), he simply and elegantly points out how massively asymmetric the European sovereign debt bet was, how the asymmetry in Europe has largely disappeared now, and all the asymmetry now lies in Japan. From the 14-minute mark, Bass describes the demographic disaster, destroys the savings myth of the land of the rising sun, and brings into focus how Italy's rapid demise should be a forewarning for the debt-servicing needs of Japan. Ending up on the Fed's printing and the need for guns and gold, there's a little here for everyone!

"Buying gold is just buying a put against the idiocy of the political cycle. It's That Simple"

Anyone needing a quick summary of the main tension lines in Europe as they currently stand can probably not do any better than the attached 3 minute explanation by Kyle Bass. And while he just participated in a far longer Q&A with BBC's Hardtalk program, which we will bring to you shortly, the attached video explains more in 150 seconds than a full day of watching the financial funny channel from basic cable. In a nutshell: Europe is about to see trillions in debt written down (the only mathematical explanation which makes sense, as presented for the n^th time earlier by Charles Hugh Smith), the "profligate idiot" spenders of Southern Europe are not going to be bailed out by Germany, which has decided it has had enough of the "Mexican standoff" within the Eurozone, and will not be held by the short hairs any longer. And as for the quote that captures the total and utter chaos in Europe: "they have a German pope and an Italian central banker." Nuf said.

For some actually relevant news, instead of market kneejerk reaction comments, we turn to the WSJ, whose Nick Timiraos points out an important inflection point, namely that Kyle Bass, one of the best hedge fund managers of his generations, may have turned moderately bullish on housing. To wit "A closely followed hedge fund manager known for correctly betting on the housing market’s collapse four years ago purchased a small stake in the nation’s largest mortgage insurance company in a bet that the housing market has neared bottom. J. Kyle Bass, portfolio manager at Dallas-based Hayman Capital Management LP, bought the 4.9% stake in MGIC Investment Corp, according to federal filings. He said on Monday the bet reflected his view that the housing market’s losses had largely been absorbed. “You can see that the pig has moved through the python in terms of U.S. housing losses,” he said. Shares of MGIC are about 10.2% higher in Monday afternoon trading, to $2.82." The Heyman Capital filing can be found here.

Michael Lewis' latest compilation of Vanity Fair articles into book format, Boomerang, is the usual entertaining romp around those back and front waters of the world that are currently on the verge of bankruptcy: from Greece, to Ireland, to Germany and, of course, to California. The premise at its core is an interview that the former Salomon bond salesman had with investing wunderkind Kyle Bass several years back which inspired to him to ask what it is that the Texan saw three years ago that so few others, due to a permafrosty cognitive bias or what have you, could (i.e., that the world is bankrupt and getting much worse). Oh, did we say wunderkind? We meant billionaire. Because unlike that other "anti-Midas" who only piggybacked on the good ideas, while blowing up LPs when left to his own non-Goldman Sachs facilitated devices, Bass actually could always see the big picture for what it is. So courtesy of Lewis' latest book, here are three pieces of advice from Bass to people everywhere, which will surely bring the fanatically jealous anti-gold crew to accusations that Bass made his billions from buying and reselling tinfoil hats.