Monetization

The Keynesians and Monetarists have fooled people with a clever sleight of hand. They have convinced people to look at prices (especially consumer prices) to understand what’s happening in the monetary system. Anyone who has ever been at a magic act performance is familiar with how sleight of hand often works. With a huge flourish of the cape, often accompanied by a loud sound, the right hand attracts all eyes in the audience. The left hand of the illusionist then quickly and subtly takes a rabbit out of a hat, or a dove out of someone’s pocket. Watching a performer is just harmless entertainment, and everyone knows that it’s just a series of clever tricks. In contrast, the monetary illusions created by central banks, and the evil acts they conceal, can cause serious pain and suffering. This is a topic that needs more exposure.

For anyone who still hasn't grasped the magnitude of the central planning intervention over the past four years, the following two charts should explain it all rather effectively. As the bottom chart shows, currently the central banks of the top three developed world entities: the Eurozone, the US and Japan have balance sheets that amount to roughly $8 trillion. This is more than double the combined total notional in 2007. More importantly, these banks assets (and by implication liabilities, as virtually none of them have any notable capital or equity) combined represent a whopping 25% of their host GDP, which just so happen are virtually all the countries that form the Developed world (with the exception of the UK). Which allows us to conclude several things. First, the rapid expansion in balance sheets was conducted primarily to monetize various assets, in the process lifting stock markets, but just as importantly, to find a natural buyer of sovereign paper (in the case of the Fed) and/or guarantee and backstop the existence of banks which could then in turn purchase sovereign debt on their own balance sheet (monetization once removed coupled with outright sterilized asset purchases as is the case of the ECB). And in this day and age of failed economic experiments when a dollar of debt buys just less than a dollar of GDP (there is a reason why the 100% debt/GDP barrier is so informative), it also means that central banks now implicitly account for up to 25% of developed world GDP!

Summary of the yawn-inducing minutes via Bloomberg:

• SEVERAL ON FOMC FAVORED CHANGE TO MID-2013 RATE VOW BEFORE LONG
• FOMC SAID GLOBAL FINANCIAL STRAINS POSE `SIGNIFICANT' RISK
• FED PLANS TO RELEASE OFFICIALS' FED FUNDS RATE FORECASTS (this is not news, and if the Fed is as accurate in "predicting" - note not setting - FF rates as it is in forecasting everything else, woe is us)
• FOMC MEMBERS SAW LONG-TERM INFLATION EXPECTATIONS AS STABLE
• FOMC MEMBERS SAW ECONOMY `EXPANDING AT A MODERATE RATE'
• FOMC MEMBERS SAID CONSUMER SPENDING `STRONGER THAN EXPECTED'
• MOST FOMC MEMBERS PREDICTED INFLATION WOULD `MODERATE'
• 'A NUMBER' OF FOMC MEMBERS SAW POSSIBLE NEED FOR MORE EASING

Following the release of its November fund statistics, Pimco's Total Return Fund has once again reaffirmed it is betting on imminent QE by the Fed in the form of MBS monetization, a trend it started two months ago as we pointed out. And with a record $60 billion short cash position, or 25% of the entire fund $242 billion AUM, they better be right this time (he did the same thing in Jan-Feb... that did not work out too well). It is amazing to consider that back in April, Gross was long $90 billion in cash: a $150 billion swing! The TRF's 43% holdings of MBS is an increase of 5% compared to October, the most since December 2010, but still just half of the 86% held in February 2009 in expectation sof MBS monetizations by the Fed as part of QE 1. Just as notable is the near record effective fund duration, which at 7.46 was the second highest ever, just a modest drop from the 7.58 in October. What is most curious is that Gross, for the first time as far as our records go, is completely out of the 0-3 year maturity range. Which makes sense: after all the Fed has telegraphed there will be no money made in that band of rates until mid-2013, a deadline which will likely soon be extended.

The consequences of excess debt are now facing the leaders of Europe head on, and a monumental decision must be made whether explicitly or implicitly. Excess debt leads to a long chain of D words: Deleveraging in an attempt to retire debt results in a depressed economy and declining asset prices. The depressed economy breeds private debt defaults that in turn produce distressed banks. The chain then runs through depositor flight from the banks, producing a financial crisis and in turn a devaluation of the currency as capital flees. When foreign goods become more expensive there is a declining standard of living as import prices rise faster than wages. Then in an effort to stop the government debt trap, there is a default on promised entitlements under an austerity program leading to the swift defeat of the political leaders. But ultimately there is a sovereign restructuring or a default of the government debt. Most, if not all, the D words are visiting Europe at the moment and its leaders are falling by the wayside. There is not a precise science that tells us when the debt trap begins the downward spiral that takes the ship down, but there are some rough guidelines. Reinhart and Rogoff (This Time is Different) have found to the extent one can generalize when a country’s debt-to-income ratio reaches the 90 percent level the ship of state begins to list and currently the OECD aggregate of 30-country gross debt-to-income ratio is 105 percent.

We will present the following quick note Bloomberg without any commentary because it could well come from any post we ourselves could have written.

ECB Governing Council member Yves Mersch said that monetizing government debts "is tantamount to inflation" and "not feasible." To use inflation to lower the fiscal burden "would reduce incentives for governments" to tackle their debt burdens and "would raise the risks of even higher future inflation and greater output volatility. Uncontrollable wage-price spirals would be likely." Mersch said in a speech in Frankfurt today. He also added that you can not make the ECB as a "lender of last resort for governments" and that governments must live up to own responsibilities.

And scene.

Anyone who actually read Daniel Tarullo's speech yesterday setting the stage for a new round of MBS monetization would be forgiven to expect a major drop in mortgage rates. After all the Fed board member said, "by increasing demand for MBS, such a program should reduce the effective yield on those MBS, which in turn should put downward pressure on mortgage rates." There is no way he can be wrong, after all he is a Fed member (although no Ph.D., instead he has an uber-valuable J.D.). And there is no way the market can not be pricing in what is now obvious. So how does the 10 Year UST- 30 Year mortgage spread look like this morning post the "pricing in" - well it is tighter. By a whopping 0.04%! Surely this epic move in spreads will be the catalyst that unleashes hundreds of billions in refinancing activity and pushes the value of the US mortgage market higher by trillions of dollars. Or not. As the second chart below demonstrates, Operation Twist, whose purpose incidentally was just what Tarullo is suggesting less than 2 months after QE3 Lite came on the scene, has now been a total disaster. As the Mortgage Brokers' Association reported on Wednesday, the MBA mortgage applications index was down 15% in the week ended Oct. 14. This was the year's biggest decline! Worse, the refi index was down a massive 17% in the week! What does this mean? Well, that we have reached a point where prevailing rates on Mortgages have absolutely no impact on either refis or home prices at this point: anyone who could have refied, has already done so, probably many times over. Everyone else is simply not eligible. But yes, MBS monetization will sure help... all those banks that have loaded up on MBS in anticipation of just this (like Bill Gross as we first speculated back on October 11) to sell them right back to the US taxpayer. And, of course, all those who have been wisely stocking up on precious metals in anticipation of just this latest episode of Fed idiocy. Remember: as we have been saying since day 1: the Fed knows only one thing. To Print. And it will. Over and over and over.

When we first reported on Bill Gross' massive surge in duration and accelerated purchase of Mortgage Backed Securities a week ago, we said, "That's either what is called betting one's farm on Operation Twist, or, betting one's farm that the next thing to be purchased by the Fed in QE3 or QE4 depending on how one keeps count, will be Mortgage Backed Securities." It was the letter. Confirmation that Bill once again frontran the Fed comes courtesy of Daniel Tarullo who in a speech at Columbia University, talking about the labor market of all things, just said the following: "I believe we should move back up toward the top of the list of options the large-scale purchase of additional mortgage-backed securities (MBS), something the FOMC first did in November 2008 and then in greater amounts beginning in March 2009 in order to provide more support to mortgage lending and housing markets." And there you go: watch as the market rips on the expectation that the US will bail out China all over again. Oh wait, at this point China couldn't care less what happens to the GSEs stack. So unfortunately as can be expected, this is nothing but yet another bailout of US banks, which lately have been buying up MBS like crazy (Gross is not the only one with the hotline), and expecting to flip right back to Brian Sack: after all something has to be done to save the poor things from a total pancaking of the Treasury curve.

By now every Zero Hedge reader should be familiar with the two step process that is supposed to rescue Europe. First, the ECB will do more of the same whereby its SMP program will purchase billions in bonds, this time Italian and Spanish (after it already tried the same with Greek, Irish and Portuguese bonds) for temporary stabilization. Then, the EFSF will take over, and acquire up to the entire outstanding debt of all the PIIGS and whoever else afterward, with Germany ultimately footing the bill following the French downgrade from AAA which would make it an ineligible funder (and, hence, shortly thereafter: a drain). Well, the ECB is already pregnant to the tune of €74 billion. And shortly, this number will likely double, and taper out there in advance of the EFSF launch in 2 months. Yet as Bloomberg's Michael McDonough demonstrates, the current ECB intervention has been nothing short of an abysmal disaster, with the ECB spending the abovementioned amount only to see average 10 Year peripheral rates double over the same time period. Alas, this is precisely what the chart will show once the SMP resumes and another €150 billion in worthless Italian and Spanish bonds is purchased (yes, none of our Centrally Planned leaders still get that IT.IS.ALL.ABOUT.CASH.FLOWS.... and far more importantly the lack thereof). Net result, spreads will likely double yet again, at which point Germany will say enough as the risk of cumulative 100% loss becomes non-trivial and the potential loss of up to 133% of its GDP forces Germany to close the curtains on the euro experiment. So prepare for a rip in bond yields tomorrow morning as the ECB goes hog-wild in secondary markets, only to be followed by a bleed wider in spreads first slowly, and then very, very fast.

Courtesy of the IEA which earlier loudly announced 'No More SPR Releases' (although like the ECB earlier announced it would not accept defaulted Greek debt as collateral only to reneg, this is total bullshit), and another massive taxpayer funded iteration of EFSF monetization-infused moral hazard, crude is back to $100. Since the EFSF will very soon be expanded to over $1 trillion and since this is nothing less than Europe's version of QE, and paradrops money that just like the Fed's own daily POMOs will ultimately find its way into the market, as holders of toxic Greek debt shift their assets into risk holdings, we expect crude to surge to $110, then $120, then $130 and so forth until another global depression has to be called in. And, naturally, the same with every other hard asset that can not be diluted.

It appears not only Bill Gross is insane enough to realize that direct monetization = inevitable interest rate hike. Slowly, even the central banks are starting to gravitate toward this conclusion.  From The just released minutes by the BOJ: "One member -- referring to some recent views that the Bank should underwrite JGBs to fund restoration and rebuilding -- expressed the opinion that such an action might initially seem to work well, but lessons drawn from history showed that it would eventually result in severe inflation and thereby inflict substantial damage on people's living situation. This member continued that the Bank needed to keep working to gain the wider public's understanding on this point. In relation to this, a few members expressed the view that, if confidence in the currency were impaired due to underwriting of JGBs by the Bank as the central bank, this might lead to a rise in long-term interest rates or instability in financial markets, and hamper the smooth issuance of JGBs." Something tells us this "member" was not Bernanke (aside from the obvious reason that Benny is a gaijin). And where else, we wonder, have we seen this: an initial boost which fades away, leaving just concerns about runaway inflation. Is it possible that the dissident BOJ member can come to one or more FOMC meetings and actually give our clowns a first person perspective of how this whole "deflation battle" goes down 30 years in.

Busy day with quite a bit on the economic front: if Gallup is right March retail sales will be weaker than expected. Other key events include the JOLTS survey, business inventories, a Treasury auction and the inverse - POMO; and last Obama is presenting at noon his deficit reduction plan.

Recently there has been a meme spreading in the internet that the Fed does not really need to do QE3 as the central bank can maintain bid interest at sufficiently high levels by merely rolling and extending maturing debt, a form of QE Lite Version 2, where the Fed's balance sheet is kept constant even as MBS are prepaid and Treasuries mature. The argument goes that based on some "logic" and lots of estimates it is "reasonable" to assume that $750 billion in MBS prepays and Treasury maturities will depart the Fed's balance sheet and need to be repurchased in the open market in keeping with a pro forma QE Lite V2.0 mandate. This is false. Here's why.

Hugh Hendry proposes a very simple thought experiment to all those (apparently the Fed) who believe that QE2 can end: who will drive global growth if the suddenly marginal economy, that would be the US for some ungodly reason, contracts, which it already is, and will do so even more once rates start rising. Sorry, but unlike last time China is not here to pick up the slack. And it appears that China will not be stepping in to fill the growth void, read inflation, (read Jasmine revolution) which can only lead to more social unrest.

Starting to get doubts about QE3? Don't tell that to the official Chinese rating agency Dagong, who in traditional uber-pragmatic fashion, has the following summary observation on US monetary policy, and any imaginary changes thereto: "The second round quantitative easing policy ongoing in the United States can not change its weak domestic demand in the short term. In fact, it can only lower the interest rate of US Treasuries so as to maintain stable interest rate in the capital market in the long term, playing the indirect role of clearing some obstacles for a stable recovery. However, the plan of purchasing 600 billion US dollar Treasury bonds can not realize its predicted goal; and therefore, the United States will hardly change its predetermined monetary policy in 2011." What does this mean for China and the rest of the world: "The continuous implementation of such unconventional monetary policy in the United States will lead to the escalation of world credit war and inflict greater losses for related parties in the world credit system." Any questions?