Freddie Mac

• Obama prepares for chilly talks with Putin over Syria (Reuters)
• G8 opens amid dispute on Syria arms (FT)
• Economists Blame Fed for Higher Bond Yields (WSJ) - wait... what? Isn't the "stronger economy" to blame?
• What a novel concept - In the Czech Republic, a spying scandal has forced the PM to resign (BBG)
• Rigged-Benchmark Probes Proliferate From Singapore to UK (BBG)
• Economists Wary as Fed's Next Forecast Looms  (Hilsenleak)
• Banks Balk at New Rules for Small Loans (WSJ)
• Sporadic clashes in Turkey as Erdogan asserts authority (Reuters)

The Bank of England's Andrew Haldane is not a man to mince his words (see here and here) but perhaps the excess truthiness in his latest testimony to British MPs may have many questioning his ability as a central-banker (unable to lie when it is required). "Let's be clear. We've intentionally blown the biggest government bond bubble in history," Haldane said. "We need to be vigilant to the consequences of that bubble deflating more quickly than [we] might otherwise have wanted." As Canadian Carney steps into the BoE head shoes, it seems Haldane has some (indirect) advice there also, as The Guardian reports his comments that the committee had not been "entirely free" of political interference during the crisis; and that he hoped to "improve decision-making," in a less hierarchical, more diverse, somewhat humbler organization." The "biggest risk to global financial stability... would be a disorderly reversion in the yields of government bonds globally." he said, adding that there had been "shades of that" in recent weeks.

• Citigroup Facing $7 Billion Currency Hit on Dollar, Peabody Says (BBG)
• World has 10 years of shale oil, reports US (FT)
• ECB prepares to defend monetary policy in German court (FT)
• European Stocks Sink to Seven-Week Low as Treasuries Fall (BBG)
• Fitch warns on risks from shadow banking in China (Reuters)
• Obama administration to drop limits on morning-after pill (Reuters)
• ACLU asks spy court to release secret rulings in response to leaks (MSNBC)
• SEC Nets Win in 'Naked Short' Case (WSJ)
• SoftBank Raises Offer for Sprint to $21.6 Billion (WSJ)
• Chinese rocket launch marks giant leap towards space station (FT)

The short but profitable tale of how 483,000 private individual have "top secret" access to the nation's most non-public information begins in 2001. "After 9/11, intelligence budgets were increased, new people needed to be hired, it was a lot easier to go to the private sector and get people off the shelf," and sure enough firms like Booz Allen Hamilton - still two-thirds owned by the deeply-tied-to-international-governments investment firm The Carlyle Group - took full advantage of Congress' desire to shrink federal agencies and their budgets by enabling outside consultants (already primed with their $4,000 cost 'security clearances') to fulfill the needs of an ever-more-encroaching-on-privacy administration.

In a confirmation that the S&P is starting to get worried about the drones surrounding the McGraw Hill building resulting from the ongoing litigation with Eric Holder's Department of Injustice, not to mention a reminder that US downgrades always happen after hours, while upgrades must hit before the market opens, Standard & Poors just upgraded the Standard & Poors 500 the US outlook from Negative to Stable. On what "receding fiscal risks" did the S&P raise its assessment of the US - the fact that the US is now at its debt limit, that there is no imminent resolution to the credit issue, or the 105% and rising debt/GDP - read on to find out. And of course, the countdown until the S&P wristslap settlement with the DOJ is announced begins now, as does the upgrade watch by Buffett's controlled Moody's of the US to AAAA++++.

The fact of the matter is, QE policies are really not so different from how central banks functioned back in the “old-normal” days of the earlier 2000s. They still just bought an asset and paid for it by increasing the money supply. One critical difference is that in order to increase the money supply by as much as they did, the central banks of the world had to change the scope of assets they were willing to buy. Herein lays the rub. By expanding its range of acceptable assets, the Fed created a market for these assets that did not exist. As a result it maintained their prices above which the market deemed necessary to clear – an essential occurrence in market economies. Instead, by expanding its asset purchases through quantitative easing policies, the effects we see are unreasonable prices among some financial assets, and a housing sector unable to sell its unsold inventory.

How Another Housing Bubble Was Blown … And Why

All traders walking in today, have just one question in their minds: "will today be lucky 21?" or the 21st consecutive Tuesday in which the Dow Jones has closed green.

All else is irrelevant.

Between Fairholme's back-up-the-truck in GSE Preferreds (demanding his fair share of the dividend), the crazy oscillations in the common stock of FNMA, and the ongoing debacle of what to with the government's implicit ownership of the US mortgage business, tonight's news from Bloomberg - that a bipartisan group of U.S. senators is putting the final touches on a plan to liquidate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (FMCC) and replace them with a government reinsurer of mortgage securities behind private capital - is hardly surprising. Details are few and far between except to note that the proposed legislation, which could be introduced this month, would require private financiers to take a first-loss position. The new entity, to be named the Federal Mortgage Insurance Corp (or FEDMAGIC), would seek private financing to continue existing efforts to help small lenders issue securities. The 'old entity' - where existing equity and debtholders would seemingly reside would contain the existing MBS portfolio and be put in run-down mode. The following from BofAML provides a possible primer and pitfalls (we think the endgame is very unlikely to be positive for holders of the capital structure below subordinated debt) of this approach.

Fractional reserve banking is unlike most other businesses. It's not just because its product is money. It's because banks can manufacture their product out of thin air. Under the bygone rules of free market capitalism, only one thing kept banks from creating an infinite amount of money, and that was fear of failure. Periodic bank failures remind depositors of the connection between risk and reward. What is not widely appreciated is that the ensuing government bailouts allowed an underlying shadow banking system to not only survive but grow even larger. To the frustration of Keynesians, and despite an unprecedented Quantitative Easing (QE) by the Federal Reserve, conventional commercial banks have broken with custom and have amassed almost $2 trillion in excess reserves they are reluctant to lend as they scramble to digest all the bad loans still on their books. So most of the money manufactured today is actually being created by the shadow banks. But shadow banks do not generally make commercial loans. Rather, they use the money they manufacture to fund proprietary trading operations in repos and derivatives. No one knows when the bubble will pop, but when it does a donnybrook is going to break out over that thin wedge of collateral whose ownership is spread across counterparties around the world, each looking for relief from their own judges, politicians, bureaucrats, and taxpayers.

"... equity markets were quick to shrug off the uncertainty and extended their gains as investors expected poor fundamentals to be followed by further policy easing."

• South China Sea tension mounts near Filipino shipwreck (Reuters)
• OECD cuts economic forecasts as eurozone drags on growth (FT)
• Switzerland frees banks to settle U.S. tax evasion cases (Reuters)
• U.S. Says Firm Laundered Billions (WSJ)... no, it's not HSBC, also: Free Corzine!
• Ardent conservative Bachmann to not seek re-election to Congress (Reuters)
• Russia faults U.S. over 'odious' Syria rights resolution (Reuters)

Everyone seems to have an opinion on asset valuation these days, even commentators who are normally quiet about such matters.  Some are seeing asset price bubbles, others are just on the lookout for bubbles, and still others wonder what all the fuss is about. Simply put, our financial markets weren’t (and still aren’t) structured to be efficient, and consistently rational behavior is a pipe dream, history shows over and over that the idea of a stable equilibrium is deeply flawed. Policies focused on the short-term tend to exacerbate that cycle, as we saw when decades of stabilization policies and moral hazard exploded in the Global Financial Crisis. Maybe if macroeconomics were rooted in the reality of a perpetual cycle - where expansions eventually lead to recessions (stability breeds instability) and then back to expansions - we would see more economists and policymakers balancing near-term benefits against long-term costs. Or, another way of saying the same thing is that mainstream economists should pay more attention to Austrians and others who’ve long rejected core assumptions that are consistently proven wrong.

Through most of the 20th century, America led something of a charmed life, at least when compared with the disasters endured by almost every other major country. We became the richest and most powerful nation on earth, partly due to our own achievements and partly due to the mistakes of others. The public interpreted these decades of American power and prosperity as validation of our system of government and national leadership, and the technological effectiveness of our domestic propaganda machinery - our own American Pravda - has heightened this effect. Author James Bovard has described our society as an “attention deficit democracy,” and the speed with which important events are forgotten once the media loses interest might surprise George Orwell.

My guess is that in 2-3 years most folks in the country are going to hate Obamacare, but it it will be impossible to get rid of by then.