CDS

• Millions still lack power (WSJ); New York Region Transit Tracker (WSJ), Blackouts Remain for 6.1 Million as Power Repairs Begin (Bloomberg)
• U.S. regulator seeks $470 million from Barclays (Reuters)
• J.P. Morgan Sues Whale's Ex-Boss (WSJ)
• London Frets Future as Financial Hub Outside Bank Union (Bloomberg)
• SNB now selling EUR: Swiss Central Bank Pulls Off Euro Sleight of Hand (WSJ)
• United Said to Study Biggest Airbus A350 to Replace Jumbos (Bloomberg)
• Draghi expands role in fight to save euro (FT)
• Panasonic Plunges by Daily Limit on Loss Forecast, CDS Soars (BusinessWeek)
• Italy risks economic ‘vicious circle’ (FT)
• Starbucks's European tax bill disappears down $100 million hole (Reuters)
• Bernanke Depression Guru Seeks Roosevelt Well-Being (Bloomberg)

It was a week ago when we first observed that the defense of 1400 in the ES at all costs must go on, or else the only thing that is keeping the market propped up - psychology (now with the AAPL euphoria long gone), would be gone as would all support. But once again, the overnight session has proven that, with a little help from its central banking friends, 1400 (and 1.2900 in the EURUSD) can be defended. This was in danger of being breached until China reported two PMI numbers: an official one which printed at 50.2, or modest expansion, and up from 49.8, magically right on top of expectations of 50.2, and the HSBC PMI, which also rose to 49.5, from 47.9: the 12th straight contraction print, but the highest number in 8 months. The market spin is naturally that this is an indication of a rebounding China. Sadly, just like in the US, this is merely pre-party congress data manipulation. The only thing that does matter out of China: whether or not the country will actually ease as opposed to doing day to day reverse repo injections. Without the former, the Chinese economy will not rebound, and will not lead to an improvement in corporate outlook for US tech stocks, period, the end.

”We now live in a world with fiat-based paper money being printed with impunity. There are no risk- free assets anymore, anywhere."

Since the rumors and news of the Sovereign CDS ban began in Europe (due to officially be in place next week), sovereign CDS spreads (and their gross and net exposure) have been crushed. This would seem like a good thing for all the standard CDS-haters and speculator-blamers who believe that Europe's problems were 'caused' by these mean credit traders; but bonds haven't followed. Bonds have rallied but this is more consequence of front-running Draghi's OMT than CDS compression. The concern is, should we see a risk flare, the CDS market (and its basis traders) will not be there this time as a natural buffer (or protection provider) this time. Exactly as we noted here, the unintended consequence of regulating away the CDS market will be higher costs of funds as real-money will be considerably more risk averse in an unhedgeable event risk market - and we are already seeing exactly this in Spain.

Wizened old market participants are often heard mumbling into their cups of green tea that "credit anticipates, and equity confirms" and so it is once again that the credit markets - fresh from the exuberance of endless technical flows, CLOs, and PIK-Toggles - has made a rather abrupt U-Turn in recent weeks. As Barclays points out, the ratio of High-Yield bond spreads to Investment-Grade bond spreads is its highest in three years as IG has been dragged lower by QEtc's impact on MBS and rotation up the spread spectrum. Typically, this kind of push would mean high-beta credit would outperform but far from it as cash bond markets have gapped out very recently. With call constraints (thanks to ZIRP) on high-yield bonds, the extreme price dislocation (given HY's inability to rally 'enough') will likely drag IG credit out - and that is a very crowded trade. Just one more unintended consequence from the Fed.

If you often wonder why ‘free market capitalism’ feels like it is failing despite universal assurances from economists and political pundits that it is working as intended, your intuition is correct. Free market capitalism has become a thing of the past. In truth free market capitalism has been replaced by something that is truly anti-free market and anti-capitalistic. The diversion operates in plain sight. Beginning sometime around 1970 the U.S. and most of the ‘free world’ have diverged from traditional “free market capitalism” to something different. Today the U.S. and much of the world’s economies are operating under what I call Monetary Fascism: a system where financial interests control the State for the advancement of the financial class. This is markedly different from traditional Fascism: a system where State and industry work together for the advancement of the State. Monetary Fascism was created and propagated through the Chicago School of Economics. Milton Friedman’s collective works constitute the foundation of Monetary Fascism. Today the financial and banking class enforces this ideology through the media and government with the same ruthlessness of the Church during the Dark Ages: to question is to be a heretic.   When asked in an interview what humanities’ future looked like, Eric Blair, better known as George Orwell, said “Imagine a boot smashing a human face forever.”

Puh… Why don’t we just wait for Apple? They might pitch a maxi iPhone 6? Or so…

Otherwise, rather Bad Karma day.

Flat start, bullish morning, refreshing afternoon. Nothing concrete or fundamental, so it’s a spiritual thing.

A mere nine years ago, California's governator uttered his now infamous words that his opponent's income tax loophole was wide enough to drive his Hummer through. Now in 2012, Bloomberg's Chart of the Day has found another glaringly wide 'loophole' in common financial wisdom. As Sebastian Boyd and Ye Xie note, Ireland and Kazakhstan both belong to the same BBB-rated S&P cohort and yet have debt/GDP loads of 106% and 11% respectively. While debt/GDP is not the sole arbiter of credit quality (ask the Americans) it seems the market is more than willing to effectively differentiate based on this as is clear from CDS levels; but the growing pile up of sovereign nations in this edge-of-the-cliff rating bucket suggests two things to us: 1) "The entire rating system is flawed" as Bloomberg notes; and 2) The self-destroying (or reflexive) nature of a non-investment grade rating shift is now seemingly totally politically motivated (as opposed to quantitatively defined) - perhaps nowhere better signaled than an unwillingness to downgrade Spain yet willingness to downgrade its regions. For your risk comprehending pleasure, we present - the BBBs!

This week was more spaced out with pessimism followed by Spain and equities ripping higher on  no news, at least nothing major nor new.

So we’ll dedicate the week to the Fab Fours’ song, which title’s abbreviation  has always been linked to substance abuse.

Just be careful when coming down…

Much is being made of the compression in Spanish bond spreads this week - the largest 3-day drop since Draghi's 'dream' speech. Four critical things come to mind: 1) increasing amounts of Spanish sovereign debt is now held by domestic banks, making the market less liquid (and far less transparent as any indication of 'reality'); 2) the ban on naked CDS (and Draghi's put) has created a hedging vacuum with CDS spreads collapsing and exposure slumping (technically dragging bond risk down); 3) Lower spreads reflexively mean lower probability of Rajoy saying "Si" - which is what is helping spreads compress (leaving event-risk high - as indicated by the outperformance of our legal arb trade); and perhaps most importantly 4) Recency bias is incredible - we have seen 100-plus percent rises in Spanish risk followed by 35-plus percent retracements a number of times and the current level of Spain risk is still above LTRO-inspired crisis levels. So let's not get all excited quite yet eh?

First “decent” Spanish auction in ages, decent being just normal, if not even boring. In absence of hard facts, outside the hypnosis trick “All will be well! Believe me…", I’d like to remain on the cautious side, though.

On EU decisisons, it could look like Good Cop / Bad Cop act, if it wasn’t clear that the players actually mean what they are saying.

Won't be EZ...

As overseas deposits continue to flood from the periphery (e.g. Italy -15.4% YoY in Aug), yet another European Summit is about to begin delivering headline after headline of baffle-'em-with-bullshit comments. As the market switches from rallying on conditional OMT-backed bailouts (that are not needed according to Rajoy and De Guindos), now it is rallying on a precautionary line of credit (with no apparent conditionality) that Katainen also adds is not needed because Spain doesn't need a bailout. It seems that a 'half pregnant' bailout for Spain is all that it takes as 10Y Spanish spreads dropped below 400bps for the first time in six months and while IBEX is lagging the sovereign's performance for now, it is also having a great week (up over 5%). Thanks to Moody's apparently gutless contingent investment-grade-but-on-the-verge-of-needing-a-sovereign-bailout decision, more rotation from foreign real money to domestic real money and fast money is slapping Spanish credit tighter in a hurry (5Y CDS 278bps and 10Y yield under 5.5%). Now if someone would just explain how any of this has solved the underlying insolvency issues, we'll be more than happy to play along.

The fact that the major credit indices have had to resort to 'imaginary credit' in order to generate an actionable market is perhaps the final nail in the coffin of the single-name CDS market in this cycle. An artificially low spread environment, forced their by massive technical flows thanks to central-bankers' financial repression has removed a natural buyer- and seller- from the market - reducing liquidity; and combined with Dodd-Frank and more regulation (higher capital reqs), dealers are also forced to delever risk books (reducing liquidity). But, there is one glaring reason why the single-name CDS market is dying; extremely high correlation. As Barclays notes, in a market where investors’ ears are, more than ever, finely tuned to the statements of politicians and central banks and the tail outcomes for the market, it makes sense for correlation to be high – at this stage, there should be little distinction between individual names – trading the level of systemic risk premia is the focus. And sure enough, index (systemic) volumes is rising as single-name (idiosyncratic risk) trading volumes and exposures are fading fast. So what brings it back?

With government bond markets increasingly manipulated directly via central-bank intervention - and becoming increasingly illiquid - the odd situation we find ourselves in once again is that CDS markets perhaps provide a 'cleaner' picture of where credit risk is actually being traded between market participants (hedgers or speculators). To wit, Bloomberg's ever-insightful Michael McDonough has noticed a significant divergence between market-implied perceptions of risk (CDS) and ratings-agencies perceptions among several nations. Most notably France and Italy (with Belgium close behind) appear considerably 'over-rated'. Italy's implied rating is equivalent to BB+ at S&P - well below its average rating of BBB+ and France's implied rating of A is around four notches below its composite rating. Spain also appears set for more pain as its market price implies a sub-investment grade rating is imminent.

While the recent revelations of multi-year LIBOR manipulation (but, but how was that possible: it involved thousands of people, operating for years, manipulating numbers - all the traditional reasons presented against conspiracy theory crackpots alleging that manipulation may be going on here, or there, or at the BLS, or somewhere), which we had said had been happening for the past 3 years, confirmed that the entire rate-based derivative market was a giant scam, at least one market spared from cartel whistleblower, i.e., insider, humiliation, was the commodities market. No longer. As the FT first reported, a Swiss trading office of Total Oil Trading sent a response letter to IOSCO (the International Organization of Securities Commissions), alleging that the same kinds of market "pricing" shennanigans that have been now exposed to have taken place over bottles of Bollinger, may have been pervasive in the crude market as well.