Monetization

European unemployment hits a new record high. China's see-saw taper no taper talk. And the beginning of US Housing Bust 2.0

Moments ago the Treasury released its marketable borrowing estimates for Fiscal Q1 and Q2: it revealed that funding needs for the October-December quarter declined from $230 billion to $204 billion, while the Q1 funding needs set at $356 billion, in line with last year's number. And yet, the Treasury also announced that despite a lower funding need in the current quarter, it would proceed with issuing $32 billion more in net Treasurys, or $266 billion, than previously estimated. Why? To push the quarter end cash balance from $80 billion to $140 billion at December 31, 2013. This is the highest quarter-ending cash balance since 2010. Why is the Treasury scrambling to build up cash ahead of calendar 2014? Simple: as is well-known, the debt ceiling drama comes back with a vengeance in late January and early February, and this one promises to be just as theatrical and protracted as all prior ones.

In a stunning series of lies, damned lies, and twisted statistics, the Fed's Jim Bullard unleashed a torrent of self-agrandizing comfort-speak on CNBC this morning. From his comment that "bubbles, such as housing and dot-com, were blindingly obvious at the time," despite Bernanke's (and Greenspan's) insistence at the time that they were not to his comments about the size of Fed Treasury holdings (and monetization) as being "average" based on some statistic, the Fed president gave himself one more out as he admonished:

*BULLARD SAYS FED DOESN'T WANT TO SUPPORT 'FISCAL RECKLESSNESS'

Oh no, you'd never want to do that... With an administration lying to the American people's face over Obamacare and now the even more powerful Fed incapable of the truth, what hope is there that anyone gets out of this debacle in tact.

Nearly one year into the Japan's grandest ever monetization experiment, the "wealth effect" engine is starting to sputter: after soaring into the triple digits due to the BOJ's massive monetary base expansion, the USDJPY has been flatlining at best, and in reality declining, which has also dragged the Nikkei lower dropping nearly 3% overnight and is well off its all time USDJPY defined highs. But aside for the wealth effect for the richest 1%, it is not exactly fair to say that the BOJ has done nothing for the vast majority of the population. Indeed, as the overnight CPI data confirmed, food and energy inflation continues to soar "thanks" to the far weaker yen, even if inflation for non-energy and food items rose by exactly 0.0% in September. Oh, it has done something else too: that most important "inflation", so critical to ultimately success for Abenomics - wages - is not only non-existant, in reality wages continue to decline: Japanese labor compensation has been sliding for nearly one and a half years!

Following last week's last two day panic buying driven not by data (since in the US it has been delayed until late October and November, and elsewhere in the world it is just getting worse) but by the catalyst that the US isn't going to default (yes, that's all that is needed to push the S&P to all time highs) and just hopes that the tapering - that horrifying prospect of the Fed reducing its monthly monetization by $15 billion from $85 to $70 billion in line with the decline in the US deficit - will be delayed until March or June 2014 because, you see, the Fed isn't sure how the economy is doing, it makes no sense to even comment on the market. Squeezes, momentum ignitions, rumors about what Messers Bernanke and Yellen had for breakfast, Goldman's 2015 S&P forecast of 2100: that's the lunacy that passes for market moving factors. News, and reality, have long since been put in the dust. Just keep an eye on flashing read headlines, and try to buy (remember: anyone caught selling by the NSA is guaranteed a lifetime of annual IRS audits) ahead of the algos. That's what Bernanke's centrally-planned "market" has devolved to.

Five years after the "recovery" began, the Fed continues to monetize more debt as part of QE3 than at any time in history, and certainly more than during QE1, Twist, and QE2, as can be seen on the chart below (remember: all that matters is the flow, as we noted well over a year ago, and as even the Fed has finally realized).Why is this important? Because as even the Treasury has now admitted, the Fed's daily liquidity injections are all that matters. Of note: in the just completed week, the Fed's balance sheet increased by over $50 billion (again, in one week), by $100 billion in the past month, and by just shy of $1 trillion in the past year. Incidentally, this is "money" that continues to not make its way into the economy, and every single "reserve" dollar created by the Fed in exchange for monetization, is used by banks to ramp asset prices to now daily record levels.

Yellen is yet another academic with no banking or business experience what-so-ever. This makes three in a row (Greenspan, Bernanke, and now Yellen). The results speak for themselves.

Back on May 14, when the S&P was at 1651 or 50 points lower, and when David Tepper made his first book-talking, semi-annual CNBC appearance in which he "blessed the market and awaited the manufacturing renaissance", he made two points about the taper: it's bullish no matter what, namely its removal would mean the economy is improving (we now know it isn't thanks to the Fed and Q4 GDP estimates which are rapidly sliding to 2% or lower), while a taper staying put would mean the Fed would continue pumping stocks higher artificially indefinitely. Today, he did a repeat appearance, in which in addition to the usual market pumping rhetoric, everyone was most interested in how he would spin the recent stunner by the Fed which effectively made the taper a 2014 event. His take: "The Fed won't taper for a long time... So that's definitely sort of going to be a push-up to markets." Couldn't have said it better: but to paraphrase - Taper is bullish no matter what; No Taper is bullish-er.

There is no safe haven, Marc Faber tells Bloomberg TV's Tom Keene, "The best you can hope for is that you have a diversified portfolio of different assets and that they don't all collapse at the same time." Bank deposits are no longer safe; money and treasury bills are not 100% safe; and equities in the US are relatively expensive by any valuation metric. However, at around $1250, gold is a buy, Faber adds on the basis of the ongoing monetization of debt globally. The debt ceiling debacle will lead to the Fed stepping up to directly fund the government (something it already implicitly does but mainstream media prefer not to consider). Faber clarifies the idiocy of the discussions, "both parties want to spend, it's just on different things," with "the idiocies of government" having grown way too large, wasting money everywhere... the Democrats are "buying votes" and the Republicans funding the military complex. The debt-ceiling is merely a symptom of the problem, Faber concludes, that "government has grown disproportionately large and that retards economic growth."

Contrary to the all "rose-colored glasses" reports by the Fed released in the past year, which constantly talked up the "economic recovery" only to punk everyone - economists and market participants alike - when it stunned markets with its no taper announcement in September, over fears what this would do to the economy, the Federal Advisory Council's view on things is decidedly less "rosy."

With Janet Yellen now confirmed as Bernanke Mark 2, it is time to recall that in addition to a new Chairman, four of the Fed's voting members will also rotate. And while below is the latest preview of the voting FOMC members (previously 2011 and 2012) ranked by Reuters in terms of their dovishness and hawiskness, the reality is that the peripheral Fed presidents (here we focus on the Hawks obviously) are nothing but figureheads whose only function is to be roundly ignored if and when they dissent with the new Chairman.

Gold may not be money, but the proceeds from selling it sure is, at least to the IMF, which moments ago announced that it has received government approval to "transfer the profits from gold sales low-income countries." Reuters reports that "The International Monetary Fund has received approval from its member nations to transfer the profits from gold sales conducted a few years ago to a fund to help low-income nations, IMF chief Christine Lagarde said on Thursday. "We have just reached the threshold of enough approval from our membership to transfer the existing gold profit to meet the financing needs of our low-income countries," she said at a news briefing opening the fall meetings of the IMF and World Bank." What was left unsaid is that the bailout needs of the high-income countries, once the debt crsisis comes back with a vengeance as it always does - which as the Keynesian uberminds have demonstrated can only be "solved" with more debt, more monetization, and more pent up inflation - will make sure that gold prices jump right back to new highs at which point the IMF can sell another batch of gold to fund the "poor countries" again, and so on, repeating the process until all fiath is extinguished, or until the IMF runs out of gold, whichever comes first.

What if the Treasury were to go over the X date (date beyond which the Treasury cannot honor all its payments) without the debt ceiling being raised? As BofAML notes, the Treasury estimates the X date to be October 17, though they believe that the Treasury may have enough cash and incoming tax receipts to last a few more days. In either case, the date is not too far out. Market concerns over possible postponed payment have been rising as indicated by the performance of October and November bills. What are the options of for the Treasury?

This chart from Citi's Matt King pretty much sums it up.

If there is one day the Fed's trading desk actually did want futures lower, if only for purely optical purposes and to at least suggest that the government, and not the Fed, is still in charge of the US, it is the day when the US government - for the first time in 17 years - has shut down. They certainly did not want the S&P to be up nearly 0.5% mere hours after Congress and the presidency confirmed to the world that in a world in which "the Chairman gets to work", a functioning government is completely irrelevant. Yet this is precisely what is going on. What is making matters worse is that on the other side of the world, Japan also finally announced the well-telegraphed sales tax increase to8%, offset by a JPY5 trillion yen "stimulus" which however Japan said, much to the Chagrin of Mrs. Watanabe and a 100 pip overnight plunge in the USDJPY, would be funded not with more new bond issuance (and thus without new "wealth effect" generating monetization). It is unclear just how it will be funded but since increasingly more global fiscal and monetary policy is based on science fiction we know better than to ask.