headlines

In today's consequence-less world - where only the poor are punished - news that a top official at a controversial U.S. export finance agency deleted text messages sent within days of the 2014 midterm elections after a watchdog group filed an open records request for the messages, will come as no surprise whatsoever. The 'excuse' given by Ex-Im Bank's chief of staff Scott Schloegel  - because as we saw yesterday, there is no accountability - he "deleted, by mistake, the messages on my phone for the period in question." Most transparent administration ever...

Following meetings with EU officials and then with IMF chief Christine Lagarde and ECB chief Mario Draghi on Wednesday evening, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras is back at it on Thursday, in a frantic attempt to salvage a deal with creditors. He'll need to win over EU finance chiefs (who are collectively losing their will to keep Greece in the currency bloc) and the IMF as the EU summit kicks off in Brussels.

The Bundesbank's Jens Weidmann unleashed a litany of cticisim on the Eurosystem (read the ECB) when he said that Greek banks should not continue to buy the short-term debt of their government, which is then repoed back to the ECB in exchange for precious cash. "The Eurosystem must not provide bridge financing to Greece even in anticipation of later disbursements," said Weidmann, who also sits on the European Central Bank's Governing Council, which approves such funding to Greece. "When banks without access to the markets buy debt of a sovereign which is likewise locked out of the market, taking recourse to ELA raises serious monetary financing concerns," he said in a speech to be delivered at a conference in Frankfurt.

Chaos reigns, with contradictory headlines pushing and pulling futures in any one direction, only for the next headline to undo the previous one. And only headline scanning frontrunning algos have any chance of trading any of this...

For around 500 years, war (and the deaths from them) were pretty consistently awful. Then as we entered the 20th century the military and civilian death rate soared as the world fought through two world wars. Since then, despite the headlines, deaths and wars have tailed off dramatically... until the last decade that is - which has seen the trend change significantly. With Soros among the many worried about World War 3, we suspect the current dip will be nothing but a positive outlier in history.

And it started off all so well: the market, blissfully ignoring what we wrote just yesterday in Why The IMF Will Reject The Latest Greek Proposal In Just Two Numbers, was in full blown levitation mode overnight when it sent Japanese stocks to their highest close since 1996 (pre dot com) and with the Chinese central bank doing its best to keep levitating local stocks away from the abyss, pushing the SHCOMP up another 2.5%. Euro Stoxx 50 went from flat to down 1% and is bouncing. As BBG's Richard Breslow adds, predictably, the market is taking this as a ploy, not an end game. Of course, this is precisely the "Bear Stearns is fine" conventional wisdom that Cramer was spewing days before Bear failed because nobody could fathom how anyone can conceive of a worst case scenario. Only it isn't nobody: we reported before of a Goldman's "Conspiracy Theory" Stunner: A Greek Default Is Precisely What The ECB Wants. 

FOMC Voting member Jerome Powell has spooked markets this morning (though a glance at stocks impotence would not tell you that) with his comments that a "September rate hike is now 50-50," and that "The Fed would like to test a rate rise as soon as September." FX markets are turmoiling with the USD surging and bond markets are seeing Bunds/TSYs sold aggressively. Stocks shrugged in their "huh?" way initially but tumbled as Powell confirms 'mechanical'-sounding 1% rise per year in rates if the economy continues to grow as expected.

Before taking a look at Europe, an update on China. Just a few short hours ago, when looking at the bursting of the Chinese bubble where stocks were down between 3% and 5% across the board in the first post-holiday trading session after the worst week in 7 years, we said that "without assistance (levitation) from the same PBOC that just clamped down on liquidity, the China bubble has burst." And then as if by request, minutes later we got, drumroll, levitation and the stickiest stick-save by the PBOC seen in months, when the Shanghai Composite staged an unprecedented 7% surge from the lows to close 2.2% higher after tumbling as much as 5% earlier in the session. And just like that, faith in the "wealth effect" is preserved.

Stock markets in the US and Europe are in for a correction, while the euro is set to rise, according to Saxo Bank’s Chief Economist Steen Jakobsen, nomatter what happens between Greece and its creditors. Steen also looks at the impact a rate hike from the US Federal Reserve would have on USD and what currencies could gain once the Fed decides to move on rates, noting that "the consensus has it wrong on the timing of US rate hike," as the credit cycle topped in June 2014. He believes that commodities and metals in particular offer opportunities for investors.

While the politicians do what politicians will do (i.e. lie when it "becomes serious"), those who have a predisposition towards pragmatism are indicating that Monday's 'emergency' Greek summit is nothing but a media spectacle that will produce nothing in the way of concrete results and is likely only good for giving the algos a few headlines to chase.

The market has shaken off Friday’s Greece jitters and has convinced itself a deal remains the base case, or indeed the only case. Even with capital controls as an interim step, the argument goes, such a harsh reality will bring compromise. This argument is proffered by those who think Greece is being “difficult” Another argument says the EU and IMF know that a Greece default is a bad thing, perhaps a really bad thing (despite all the protesting to the contrary) and will see their way to a deal. If only Greece would give them a face-saving way to pull it off

today is Friday taken to the n^th degree, with the markets having already declared if not victory then the death of all Greek "contagion" leverage, following news that a new Greek proposal was sent yesterday (which as we summarized does not include any of the demanded by the Troika pension cuts), ignoring news that Greece had again sent Belgium the wrong proposal which the market has taken as a sign of capitulation by Tsipras, and as a result futures are surging higher by nearly 1%, the German DAX is up a whopping 3.1%, on track for the biggest one day gain in three years, Greek stocks up over 8%, German and US Treasurys sliding while Greek and peripheral bonds are surging.

How can it be implied that the markets are too fragile to deal with an unexpected raise of interest rates to (gasp) 1/4 of 1%, if all the “data” we were told (or sold) has been showing signs of all this “improvement?” The question still remains: How does any Ivory Tower prognosticator, or Wall Street talking head, square all these circles? Simple – they don’t. They just act as if it they didn’t or won’t happen. Or, just continue to act as if we’re too dumb to answer. This is complacency, idiocy, and more – all turned up to 11!

The situation in Greece has very little to do with politics or economics. Instead it is entirely focused on just one thing.