Unemployment Benefits

The overhwelming majority of investors seem to believe that some compromise will be reached to resolve the looming fiscal drag, and as we noted here, this fact is more than priced into markets. As Barclays notes however, a big deal that encompasses entitlement and tax reform is very unlikely before year-end. Hence, if the ‘cliff’ is avoided, it will be because Congress extends all expiring provisions for some time while it works on a bigger deal. Such an 'extension/compromise' move would not reduce investor uncertainty if it were only for a few months; bond markets would simply start counting down to the new date. More importantly, the discussion about the fiscal cliff misses a broader point: the US will probably have significant fiscal tightening over the next decade that is a drag on medium-term growth. Yet more investors dismiss last year's reaction to the debt-ceiling debate - a 17% decline in 2 weeks - as any kind of precedent, claiming (falsely) that this was more due to European financial difficulties. We expect fiscal issues to be the defining drivers of the next several quarters and as BofAML notes, Washington's view of this 'process' as a 'slope' combined with the dangerously negative election campaign (which will need a 180-degree reversal for any compromise) means the likelihood of a Wile E. Coyote Moment is considerably higher than most expect.

With the market seemingly oblivious to the dismal reality of the fiscal-cliff (from a priced-in perspective) in the same way as equities trade at four-year highs while earnings are at three-year lows; it is perhaps useful to get a grasp of the maelstrom that awaits congress as they begin to tackle the fiscal-cliff on November 12. As we discussed here, the downside potential is considerable with complacency high and just as Goldman expects no real progress to be made until December (at the earliest), the market (i.e. a correction) may be the only lever to move our political elite from their respective higher ground. While talk will be of 'grand bargains', we, like Goldman, remain skeptical that any broad reform package will be completed and instead some short-term extension may be achieved. The following Q&A explains how that sausage could be made in all its gory detail. (e.g. Q: Can Congress actually put together a "grand bargain" fiscal agreement in the short time available? A: It is difficult to see how.)

The market appears convinced that it now has nothing to worry about when it comes to the fiscal cliff. After all, if all fails, Bernanke can just step in and fix it again. Oh wait, this is fiscal policy, and the impact of QE3 according to some is 0.75% of GDP. So to offset the 4% drop in GDP as a result of the Fiscal Cliff Bernanke would have to do over 5 more QEs just to kick the can that much longer. Turns out the market has quite a bit to worry about as Goldman's Jan Hatzius explains (and as we showed most recently here). To wit: "our worry about the size of the fiscal cliff has grown, as neither Democrats nor Republicans look inclined to budge on the issue of the expiring upper-income Bush tax cuts. This has increased the risk of at least a short-term hit from a temporary expiration of all of the fiscal cliff provisions, as well as a permanent expiration of the upper-income tax cuts and/or the availability of emergency unemployment benefits." This does not even touch on the just as sensitive topic of the debt ceiling, where if history is any precedent, Boehner will be expected to fold once more, only this time this is very much unlikely to happen. In other words, we are once again on the August 2011 precipice, where everything is priced in, and where politicians will do nothing until the market wakes them from their stupor by doing the only thing it knows how to do when it has to show who is in charge: plunge.

Just because millionaires are people too, and they too can apparently lose their jobs, we now learn courtesy of the Congressional Research Center, that in 2009, 2,362 Americans making over $1,000,000 in income (and just shy of a million people making over $200,000) collected unemployment benefits. The amount of money allocated to evil, evil millionaire benefits in 2009 was $20.8 million, amounting to $8,806 each for the year (out of a total of $83.5 billion, of which 90% went to those earning less than $100,000). Cue tar and feather fury because these evil, evil millionaires also dared to use a legal system that, at least so far, does not discriminate based on wealth or income level. Just as the US tax system allows everyone to use the same loopholes. Note that we said so far, because it may soon "not be fair."

Investors remain convinced, it would seem, that the fiscal cliff will not happen because our great-and-good politicians in Washington know full-well that the economic repercussions will be too great. Even though Ben's foot is to the floor, he has stated that monetary policy will be unable to offset the negative economic impact of the tax hikes and spending cuts. The prospect of agreement among a deeply polarized politik and just as Goldman expects, we worry that the S&P 500 will fall sharply following the election once investors finally recognize the serious possibility that the 'fiscal-cliff-problem' will not be solved in a smooth manner. In order to clarify that thinking, Bloomberg Brief has provided 12 charts on the timelines, impact, uncertainty, and possibilities surrounding this most obvious of risk events.

As we reported first thing this morning, Spain, while happy to receive the effect of plunging bond yields, most certainly does not want the cause - requesting the inevitable sovereign bailout. To paraphrase Italy's undersecretary of finance, Gianfranco Polillo: "There won’t be any nation that voluntarily, with a preemptive move, even if rationally justified, would go to an international body and say -- ‘I give up my national sovereignty." He is spot on. However, the one thing that will force countries to request a bailout is the inevitable outcome of soaring budget deficits: i.e., running out of cash (as calculated here previously, an event Spain has to certainly look forward to all else equal). Which simply means that sooner or later Mariano Rajoy will have to throw in the towel and push the red button, knowing full well it most certainly means the end of his administration, and very likely substantial social and political unrest for a country which already has 25% unemployment, all just to preserve the ability to fund its deficits, instead of biting the bullet and slashing public spending (and funding needs), which too would cause social unrest - hence no way out. But why would a bailout request result in unrest? Reuters finally brings us the details of what the Spanish bailout would entail, and they are not pretty: "Spain is considering freezing pensions and speeding up a planned rise in the retirement age as it races to cut spending and meet conditions of an expected international sovereign aid package, sources with knowledge of the matter said...The accelerated raising of the retirement age to 67 from 65, currently scheduled to take place over 15 years, is a done deal, the sources said. The elimination of an inflation-linked annual pension hike is still being considered."

On the heels of last Thursday’s Fed announcement, there has been much commentary on the whys and wherefores of a new quantitative easing (the so-called QE3). Rather than re-hashing well-covered ground, I want to instead discuss the potential effects and unintended consequences of this policy and how it may impact the investment landscape going forward. Suffice it to say that the Fed had its reasons. QE3 evidences a belief in the so-called “wealth-effect” – the idea that one will spend more if he/she feels wealthier – and the Fed also believes it can contain any negative consequences. However, others would argue that it’s another shot across the bow of our foreign lenders that we are willing to engage full-out in a currency war as this policy clearly weakens the U.S. dollar. Because the Fed has embarked on a path with little historical precedent – where a central bank has signaled the intent to expand its balance sheet as much as it needs to – we are all now part of an experimental economy.

Over the past several months (and years) we have been warning that the ongoing collapse in trading volumes, in part due to the lack of faith in capital markets that now have all the integrity of a rigged Vegas casino from the 1960s, in part due to investors' need to monetize assets in a world in which wages simply refuse to keep up with prices, will have not only irreversible implications on the shape of market structure, but also substantial consequences when it comes to the layout of modern banks, and associated up and downstream variables, such a jobs, real estate, support professions, municipal taxes and much more. Nowhere is this more evident (for now at least) than in the massive corporate reorganization taking place at Nomura's American division, which among many other things is about to lose its brand new $270 million trading floor even before a single trader set foot in it.

In November 2008, President Barack Obama won the popular election for President by 9.5 million votes.  A burgeoning financial crisis and weakening economy helped his candidacy at the time, but four years on the sluggish pace of economic recovery is a headwind to his re-election.  Consider, for example, that there are currently 12.8 million people unemployed in the U.S., or that an estimated 8 million adults entered the SNAP (Food Stamp) program since November 2008 (total increase in enrollment: 15.6 million).  Presidential elections are won in the Electoral College, of course, so in today’s note ConvergEx's Nick Colas parses out this employment/food security economic stress for the key “Battleground” states.

Seven of the 8 swing states this election year are more economically stressed than the national average in terms of unemployment and/or food stamps, while 2 of the 3 states “leaning” toward Obama are worse off than the national average.  Romney, behind in the electoral vote count by most analysts’ figures, theoretically stands to gain from a weak national economy, but he’ll have to earn the vote of an estimated 4 million Americans in 14 key battleground states to have a shot at the White House.

Some must read observations on the dangerous path down which American society is headed.

It's quiet out there, quieter than usual. Perhaps this is because Merkel is in Canada today and so hasn't had a chance to crash any dreams of magic money trees yet. The EURUSD however did drop preemptively without any news and touched on 3 day lows moments ago under 1.2280, forcing DraghiFX and his long EURUSD call to pay another margin call. Eventwise, in Europe Spain continues to pretend it does not exist, with its bond yields quietly sliding lower even as the country's economy continues to deteriorate, on expectations that Rajoy will ask for a bailout, when in fact the lower yields go, the more unlikely this event is. Of course, all that needs to happen for the deer in headlight market to snap out of its trance is a reminder of just how broke Spain is before it does need a bailout. In the meantime, Spain is extending unemployment benefits. More importantly, it seems that the Chinese slowdown is about to hit Germany like a brick wall: Hamburg - Europe’s second-largest container harbor - reported its first quarterly decline in container volumes in nine quarter. And now the recession is really coming to Germany.

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney's selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his running mate has generated renewed interest in the House-passed budget resolution that Ryan authored. Ryan's budget outline would reduce the deficit more quickly and impose more fiscal restraint than the President's budget proposal. However, as Goldman notes. while both proposals would increase revenues due to the scheduled expiration of the payroll tax cut at year end, the President's would raise income taxes as well. Rep. Ryan's plan, on the other hand, would cut spending sharply in 2013 and 2014, even though it assumes a one-year delay in the spending cuts under the "sequester" set to take effect at year-end. If the President wins reelection and/or Democrats hold their majority in the Senate, a bipartisan compromise would be necessary to enact fiscal reforms. This has been difficult to achieve over the last year or so and we expect compromise to be even tougher. We continue to believe that the economic effects of allowing the fiscal cliff to take effect in full will be the greatest motivation for members of Congress to reach an agreement.

All you need to know about the fiscal cliff which will savage the US economy in under 5 months, unless Congress finds a way to compromise at a time when animosity and polarization in congress is the worst it has ever been in history.

Every now and then we prefer to sit back and let some of the smartest money speak, especially when said smart money agrees with us. In this case, we hand the podium over to none other than Paul Singer's Elliott Management, which after starting with $1.3 million in 1977 was at $19.8 billion most recently. No expert networks, no high frequency trading, no "information arbitrage", no crony capitalism and pseudo monopolies of scale, and most certainly no bailouts: Singer did it all the old fashioned way: by picking undervalued assets and watching them appreciate. The timing is opportune because while Elliott has much to say about virtually everything in their latest 20 pages Q2 letter, it is the billionaire's sentiment vis-a-vis US Treasury debt that may be most critical, and may be the catalyst that resulted in today's abysmal 10 Year bond auction. To wit: "long-term government debt of the U.S., U.K., Europe and Japan probably will be the worst-performing asset class over the next ten to twenty years. We make this recommendation to our friends: if you own such debt, sell it now. You’ve had a great ride, don’t press your luck. From here it is basically all risk, with very little reward." There is little that can be misinterpreted in the bolded statement. And while many have taken the other side of the Fed over the past 3 years, few have dared to stand against Paul Singer because if there is one person whose opinion matters above most, certainly above that of the Chairsatan, it is his.