BIS

"We see upside surprise risks on gold and silver in the years ahead," is how UBS commodity strategy team begins a deep dive into a multi-factor valuation perspective of the precious metals. The key to their expectation, intriguingly, that new regulation will put substantial pressure on banks to deleverage – raising the onus on the Fed to reflate much harder in 2014 than markets are pricing in. In this view UBS commodity team is also more cautious on US macro...

As we observed four hours ealier, the EURJPY-implied futures open suggested an immediate 15 points of downside. Sure enough, ES has just opened for trading some 15 points lower to start. Where it ends the overnight session, however, now that the NY Fed and BIS trading desks have both been called in for an emergency overnight session, is a different matter entirely.

• A U.S. Default Seen as Catastrophe Dwarfing Lehman’s Fall (BBG)
• Software, Design Defects Cripple Health-Care Website (WSJ)
• Gunmen kill 5 Egyptian soldiers near Suez Canal, 2 people die in blast (Reuters); Egypt death toll rises to 53, streets now calm (Reuters)
• Three retailers sell Apple iPhone 5C for $50 or less (Sun Sentinel)
• New American Economy Leaves Behind World Consumer (BBG)
• Dow's Exiles Often Have Last Laugh (WSJ)
• Macy's Puts China Online-Expansion Effort on Hold Amid Economic Slowdown (WSJ)
• Gold Befuddles Bernanke as Central Banks’ Losses at $545 Billion (BBG) - just ask the BIS gold selling team: they are unbefuffdled
• Markit Group Said to Avoid U.S. Antitrust Claims as EU Proceeds (BBG) - being owned by the banks has benefits
• Paulson leads charge into Greek banks (FT) - and scene for the Greek banking sector

Plowed $2 trillion of their Japanese deposit base into investments overseas then wondered why the economy at home languished

The froth is back. As we noted yesterday, corporate leverage has never been higher - higher now than when the Fed warned of froth, and as the BIS (following their "party's over" rant 3 months ago) former chief economist now warns, "this looks like to me like 2007 all over again, but even worse." The share of "leveraged loans" or extreme forms of credit risk, used by the poorest corporate borrowers, has soared to an all-time high of 45% - 10 percentage points higher than at the peak of the crisis in 2007. As The Telegraph reports, ex-BIS Chief Economist William White exclaims, "All the previous imbalances are still there. Total public and private debt levels are 30pc higher as a share of GDP in the advanced economies than they were then, and we have added a whole new problem with bubbles in emerging markets that are ending in a boom-bust cycle." Crucially, the BIS warns, nobody knows how far global borrowing costs will rise as the Fed tightens or “how disorderly the process might be... the challenge is to be prepared." This means, in their view, "avoiding the tempatation to believe the market will remain liquid under stress - the illusion of liquidity."

Even if one correctly predicts what the FOMC does next week, getting the direction right for dollar is a different matter.  The markets are anticipatory in nature and the effect often takes place before the cause.  

The number 10. From time immemorial it has been a fascination for people around the world, in every culture and in every civilization.

A week ago we discussed the claims that the UK government showed "breath-taking laxity" in allowing the sales of chemicals capable of being used to make nerve agents such as Sarin to Syria. It may come as a surprise to no one but last night the UK government admitted for the first time that  - under a clear breach of international protocol - it issued five export licenses to two companies between July 2004 and May 2010. As The Daily Mail uncovered, these sales were made at a time when Assad was strongly suspected to be stockpiling the chemical weapons that are now at the hub of an international crisis. As one leading MP noted, "the government has some very serious questions to answer." The UK firms delivered sodium fluoride to a Syrian cosmetics company for what they claim were legitimate purposes; but intelligence experts believe President Assad’s regime uses such companies to divert chemicals into its weapons program. Last night the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills refused to answer questions regarding how much sodium fluoride was bought and sold – or which companies were involved, but as former foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind exclaimed, "in the case of these licenses being awarded to sell sodium fluoride to Syria it sounds as if some serious errors were made."

Even as the Indian capital outflows and current account exodus may be threatening to shut down the economy altogether (except for the three oil companies that received a last ditch USD infusion from the RBI yesterday), the central bank is planning and strategizing. And it appears to have come up with more of precisely the same that has led it to its current unprecedented predicament: prevent the population from converting their wealth into hard money, i.e., gold. But while the government's attempts to impose capital controls on gold purchases have been well documented, the latest foray is just a headspinner. Reuters reports that India is now considering a "radical plan to direct commercial banks to buy gold from ordinary citizens and divert it to precious metal refiners in an attempt to curb imports and take some heat off the plunging currency." Here we can safely assume that the commercial banks will pay for the gold in... Rupees which just hit an all time low?

Minutes after ramping above the critical $1,400 level, gold has been slammed lower instantaneously, twice in the last hour, as a result of a rumored trade originating at the BIS (and specifically the desk of our old friend Benoit Gilson) slamming down the entire bid stack in a desperate case of "banging the open", giving up gold's gains from Friday's close...

One of the most published academics on gold in the world is Dr Brian Lucey of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and he and another academic who has frequently covered the gold market, Dr Constantin Gurdgiev have just this week had an excellent research paper on gold published.

They have researched the gold market, along with Dr Cetin Ciner of the University of North Carolina and their paper,  ‘Hedges and safe havens: An examination of stocks, bonds, gold, oil and exchange rates’ finds that gold is a hedge against US dollar and British pound risk due to “its monetary asset role.”

It appears the market may need to resurrect the implode-o-meter as surging mortgage rates and plunging mortgage applications are (unsurprisingly) taking their toll on the mis-allocated surge in mortgage lenders that 'market' signals encouraged. The latest, as Boston.com reports, is 1-800-East-West Mortgage which has largely suspended operations and laid off its workforce. "As rates rose, a number of people just went to the sidelines," the CEO said. The market, he added, "went into a drought." And yet, homebuilders (again unsurprisingly) remain as 'hopeful' as they have been since 2005 that all will be well.

How would America ever survive without the central planners in the Obama administration and at the Federal Reserve?  What in the world would we do if there was no income tax and no IRS?  Could the U.S. economy possibly keep from collapsing under such circumstances?  The mainstream media would have us believe that unless we have someone "to pull the levers" our economy would descend into utter chaos, but the truth is that the best period of economic growth in U.S. history occurred during a time when there was no income tax and no Federal Reserve. We never needed a central bank, we never needed the IRS and we never needed an income tax.  America would be doing just fine without any of them. But instead, America chose to go down the path of collectivization and central planning, and now we are heading toward the biggest economic disaster in the history of mankind.

In May 22 testimony to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke issued another of many similar positive interpretations of central bank policy. Yet again, he continued to argue that quantitative easing has decreased long-term interest rates and produced other benefits. The Fed's polices have not produced the much-promised re-acceleration in economic growth. The standard of living - defined as median household income - has fallen back to the level of 1995. The best approach would be for the Fed to recognize the failure of QE and end the program immediately, thereby allowing price distortions in the markets to correct themselves. By ending the illusion that the Fed can take constructive actions, this might even serve to force federal government leaders to deal with the growing fiscal policy imbalances. Otherwise, debt levels will continue to build and serve to further limit the potential for economic growth.

First it was the TBAC's May presentation "Availability of High Quality Collateral" piggybacking on reasoning presented previously by Credit Suisse. Then JPM's resident "flow and liquidity" expert Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou rang the bell on regulatory changes to shadow banking and how they would impact the repo market and collateral availability (and transformation) in an adverse fashion. Now, it is the turn of Barclays' own repo chief Joseph Abate to highlight a topic we have discussed since 2009: the ongoing contraction in quality collateral as a result of transformations in shadow banking and the Fed's extraction of quality collateral from traditional liquidity conduits (i.e., QE's monetization of bonds). To wit: "Several recent regulatory proposals will increase the pressure on banks to reduce assets that carry low risk weights. Repurchase agreements are a large source of banks’ low-risk assets, and we expect banks to reduce their matched book operations in response to these proposals."