Morgan Stanley

That Lieborgate is about to spill over and take down many more banks is well known: as previously reported that the world's biggest bank Deutsche Bank, has become a rat for the Liebor prosecution having turned sides. The reason: "Under the leniency programs of the EU, companies may get total immunity from fines or a reduction of fines which the anti-trust authorities would have otherwise imposed on them if they hand over evidence on anti-competitive agreements or those involved in a concerted practice." However, just like in the case of Barclays (with Diamond), JPM (with Bruno Iksil), UBS (with Kweku) and Goldman (with Fabrice Tourre), there always is a scapegoat. Today we find just who that scapegoat is. From Bloomberg: "Regulators are investigating the possible roles of Michael Zrihen at Credit Agricole, Didier Sander at HSBC and Christian Bittar at Deutsche Bank, the person said on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. The names of the banks and traders were reported earlier today by the Financial Times." Of course, as so very often happens, the link between the investigated firm, and the person in question no longer exists - after all what better brute way to tie up loose ends, than to fire the person in question at some point in the past: "Michael Golden, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank, confirmed that Bittar left the bank last year and declined to comment on the investigation." And since neither Bloomberg, nor the earlier FT article have any discussion of just where Mr. Bittar ended up, knowing quite well there is very likely a full-scale investigation forming into his Libor transgressions. The first place we went to, naturally, was LinkedIn, not because we expected to find his profile there: very few higher echelon bankers actually post their resumes on LinkedIn, but because we were fairly confident that the very useful function of seeing whose other profiles had been looked at in the context of even a "fake" Bittar, would provide us with clues. Sure enough that's precisely what happened.

The can has been kicked. The austerity has been implemented. The revenues have fallen. And as we see in the chart below, the pace of local government distress is accelerating. As has been made so clear in the past, defaults cluster; and sure enough it is starting, as tensions between unions and city managers become irreconcilable.

Just under two years ago, when we mocked then Morgan Stanley's analyst Jim Caron's call for a surge in long-dated yields on the back of an improvement in the economy (not something more realistic like the Fed losing all control of the TSY curve), we penned "Visualizing The Past Of The Treasury Yield Curve, And Deconstructing The Great Confusion Surrounding Its Future" in which we said that contrary to pervasive expectations of a bull steepener, the treasury curve would continue flattening more and more, until the whole thing would become one big pancake. Today, we have decided to revisit that post: in short - Jim Caron was fired by Morgan Stanley as head of rates following 3 consecutive years of bad calls starting in 2009 (only to be rehired in June as a Portfolio Manager... oops), while our view that sooner or later the 2s30s will be 0 bps is over one third complete.

Not very, I presume. Until shareholders see real dollars flowing back to the extent that dividends can be materially boosted, keep hope alive...

Just as we noted here, the analyst estimates for the potential impact of Libor (litigation and regulatory) liabilities have begun. Morgan Stanley sees up to a 17% hit to 2012 EPS (from $420 to $847 million per bank) in a worst case from just regulatory costs, and a further 6.8% potential hit to 2013 EPS if the top-down $400 million average per banks losses from litigation are taken on one year (considerably more if the bottom-up numbers of more than $1 billion are included). They see LIBOR risk in three parts: regulatory fines (we est median 7-12% hit to ‘12 EPS; litigation risk (7% EPS hit over 2 yrs); and less certainty on forward earnings. There are a plethora of assumptions - as one would expect - but the ranges of potential regulatory fine and litigation risk are very large though the MS analysts make the greater point that the LIBOR 'fixing' broadens investor support for more transparency in fixed income trading in addition to fixed income clearing leaving the threat of thinner margins as another investor concern.

By now, it seems clear that the US earnings season will be softer than was forecast a couple of months ago. In fact, there was more negative guidance during the second quarter than any time in this cycle and Morgan Stanley, like us, believes these soft results and weaker guidance are not fully discounted into a QE-hungry market. Lower oil, a stronger dollar (e.g. a one-standard deviation appreciation in the US Dollar against a basket of currencies decreases expected S&P 500 earnings by 2.6%), lower 10-year yields and a preponderance of evidence of lighter growth from economically sensitive companies are reasons for a lower view of Q2 EPS than we previously expected as UBS notes the 'official' US Q2 reporting season kicks off in earnest today with Alcoa followed by over 3,000 global companies reporting in the next two months. At the sector and stock level UBS sees particular risk around some of the higher rated areas such as consumer staples and consumer discretionary, where relative multiples are high and expectations are demanding and while they see consensus estimates for 2012 global EPS growth have been falling - at 9.7%, they remain too high given the Eurozone crisis / policy response; deteriorating global macro data; and the corporate profit cycle - and in that order of importance.

Fed Chairman Bernanke should be impeached if he does not restore Fed surveillance over primary dealers immediately.

• Euro zone fragmenting faster than EU can act (Reuters)
• Wall Streeters Lose $2 Billion in 401(k) Bet on Own Firms (Bloomberg)
• Eurozone crisis will last for 20 years (FT)
• Chuckie Evans: "Please suh, can I have some moah" (Reuters)
• Quote stuffing and book sales: Amazon ‘robo-pricing’ sparks fears (FT)
• Situation in Egypt getting worse by the minute: Egypt parliament set to meet, defying army (Reuters)
• Chinese goalseek-o-tron speaks: China’s inflation eased to a 29-month low (Bloomberg)
• A contrarian view: "Barclays and the BoE have probably saved the financial system" (FT)
• Flawed analysis: Dealers Declining Bernanke Twist Invitation (BBG) - Actually as shown here, ST Bond holdings have soared as dealers buy what Fed sells: more here
• Obama team targets Romney over taxes, Republicans cry foul (Reuters)
• And all shall be well: Brussels to act over Libor scandal (FT)
• Bank of England's Tucker to testify on rate rigging row (Reuters)

In a follow-up to last week's deep dive on the end of the US CapEx boom (and the possibility that the Fed is out of bullets) and the growing hope once again that the US can remain the 'decoupled' least syphilitic-hooker-in-a-whorehouse, we thought it useful (given this week's somewhat disappointing reversion to reality in macro data and markets) to highlight four clear un-decoupling indications. From Economic Surprise Index similarities between Europe and the US, to record negative pre-announcements and fading US CapEx growth rates, the reversion in US manufacturing and new orders data to Europe's (and Asia's) sad reality is not going to be 'saved' by the supposed housing recovery - as we noted here earlier. With credit and FX markets already signaling a hope-less market, we wonder how long before stocks catch-down (and the 'De-Cuppers' smell the napalm).

Beware: "Allocated" Gold May Not Really Be There

The median estimate for tomorrow's all-important report is a +100k change in non-farm payrolls (up from last month's +69k) with Stone & McCarthy topping the table at +165k and Jason Schenker of Presitge Economics all doom-and-gloom at +35k. Everyone's favorite permabull-coz-of-QE3-advocate, Joe LaVorgna, is a more negative-than-consensus +75k and Hatzius et al. at Goldman just notched it up to +125k; but we focus on what Morgan Stanley's David Greenlaw has to say as they appear to have the best handle on just how significant an impact the weather has had on job growth data. Most importantly, given the Fed's admitted focus on the labor market, this is the last employment report before the End-of-July FOMC fireworks. There is a chance that the FOMC could conceivably take further action at the next meeting if Friday’s report is disappointing, but given that this is a divided FOMC which appears to be resigned to the status quo, the bar to such action seems relatively high at this point.

Financial magazine Euromoney, which in addition to being a subscription-based publication appears to also rely on bank advertising, has just held its 2012 Awards for Excellence dinner event. And in the "you can't make this up" category we have Barclays winning the Best Global Debt House, Best Investment Bank, And Best Global Flow House Of The Year Awards. Specifically we learn that "the bank’s commitment to the US is exemplified by the addition of another global senior manager to the country – Tom Kalaris is now going to be splitting his time between New York and London as executive chairman of the Americas as well as overseeing wealth management. Jerry del Missier, who has overseen the corporate and investment bank through its Lehman integration and was recently appointed COO of the Barclays group, says the bank is well positioned. "We came out of the crisis in a stronger strategic position and that has allowed us to continue to win market share and build our franchise. Keep in mind that the US is the largest investment banking, wealth management, credit card and investment management market in the world, and in terms of fee share will remain the most dynamic economy in the world for many years. As a strong global, universal bank operating in a competitive environment that is undergoing significant retrenchment, we like our position." That said, with the Chairman, CEO and COO all now fired, just who was it who accepted the various award: the firm's LIBOR setting team? And if so, were they drinking Bollinger at the dinner?

Three weeks ago, before Lieborgate broke and the world finally understood what so many had been warning about for so long, we noted something else: that not only was LIBOR manipulated and fudged daily between 2005 and 2008, but as the chart in the attached post shows, it has been gamed every single day in 2012 as well. More importantly, we noted something else - the transition at the top of the British Bankers Association: the organization responsible for compiling LIBOR submissions from member banks, and reporting what the daily Libor fixing is. Because in the second week of June, the BBA's new head became... the former head of lobbying for none other than Morgan Stanley, Anthony Browne, a firm which itself was just caught red-handed manipulating rating agency "independent ratings" to benefit its bottom line (and which itself miraculous was downgraded by less than what the market expected in order to allow it to avoid several billion in collateral calls). And what did Anthony do at Morgan Stanley until June 12: he was head of Government relations for Morgan Stanley for Europe, Middle East and Africa and was previously an economic and business adviser to London Mayor Boris Johnson.  That's right - "head of government relations" for a rather prominent TBTF bank, being put in charge of daily Libor fixing. But everyone is shocked, shocked, that gambling has been going on here for years.

The FDIC decided to wait with its dose of pre-holiday humor until after the Barclays fixing for today's market close turned out to be spot on. And by that we mean that official release of the US banks' "living will" statements, which as far as we know is about the most worthless exercise ever conducted, and about the dumbest thing to be conceived by that very undynamic duo of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. Because last we checked, the treatment of living wills in bankruptcy court, where all these firms will end up eventually anyway, is... non-existent. But the real fun is when one actually reads this indicative statement from Citigroup: "Citi is today a fundamentally different institution than it was before the crisis." And that's where we stopped. Because it is banks wasting their time (and taxpayer bailout money) on gibberish like this instead of analyzing the risk inherent in their prop positions that guarantees the next CIO-like blow up will not be just $5 billion but far, far more, and will certainly prove that living wills when one has to equitize tens of billions in unsecured debt are worth exactly didely squat.

Local Governments Which Entered Into Interest Rate Swaps Got Scalped