Commercial Paper

Blogger Ben’s work is already done. In his very first substantive post as a civilian he gave away all the secrets of the monetary temple. The Bernank actually refuted the case for modern central banking in one blog. The truth is the real world of capitalism is far, far too complex and dynamic to be measured and assessed with the exactitude implied by Bernanke’s gobbledygook. In fact, what his purported necessity for choosing a rate “somewhere” actually involves is the age old problem of socialist calculation.

Bankers who took up their business in the Square Mile of London’s banking heart could smell the Eurodollars in the air. As Anthony Sampson wrote, “Young British bankers and their foreign counterparts began to earn higher salaries than other bankers. Skyscrapers shot up by the old classic architecture near St. Paul’s Cathedral. Far Eastern and Arabic banks appeared, as did Mercedes and Cadillacs to cart bankers around the thin London streets.” The Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries needed dollars for trade but wanted to avoid adverse US policy by not keeping or borrowing money in the United States. So they stuck funds in the London offices of British and American banks, causing the City of London to grow as a banking center and recoup some prewar financial glory.

"Today, if you own an asset, say stocks or a home, and it went up in price, you do not perceive it as permanent. You fear it could go back down and you spend none of that money. You are not going to alter your investment decisions or your business decisions. That is why the QE-programs did not work. The goal of the Fed was to push up asset prices. With that in mind, they do not want asset prices to go down because they think it will create a reverse wealth effect. QE has been all about pushing up markets and they are not going to throw that to the wind.... By pushing up asset prices ECB president Draghi is going to make the same mistake as the Fed."

Just what are the Swiss up to...

*SWISS FINANCE MINISTER WANTS NEW MINIMUM EXCHANGE RATE: HZ

A confidential paper signed by Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, discussed in government last week, said that new minimum exchange rate should be "considered," Handelszeitung reports in a prerelease of an article to be published Thursday.

...but it's different this time.

One sign would be for non-energy junk bonds to begin dropping in price. That would mean large holders are exiting from all junk bonds, not just those companies affected by low oil prices.
Another sign would be sudden drops in share prices for banks or insurance companies that hold small amounts of energy-related bonds or bank loans, a clue that some market participants think they have derivative exposure.
A third sign to look for would be the rumors or news that the big, investment-grade energy companies are having trouble renewing their Commercial Paper, bank loans or maturing bonds (the Exxon-Mobils and Shells of the world).

You thought gold was "only" for wealth preservation? You ain't seen nothing yet.

As its recent 10-K confirmed, AAPL's domestic cash - the amount of cash available for such corporate transactions as dividends and buybacks - had dropped to just $18.1 billion (and that is including the several billion in commercial paper issued in fiscal Q4), the lowest domestic cash hoard since March 2010, a time when AAPL's offshore cash was a tiny $24 billion compared to the near record $137 billion last quarter!  So knowing full well that a buyback a day keep the Icahnator away, AAPL, urgently looking to refill its domestic cash since its offshore cash remains untouchable (absent being taxed on its repatriation), did the only thing it could do: prepare to issue more bonds, which is what we forecast would happen a few weeks ago, and what the WSJ overnight confirmed is already in progress.

FOMC stops buying securities in the open market and the world falls apart, right? WOW. Are you folk’s economists, traders, or just a bit naive?

Central banks are printing rules almost as fast as they’re printing money. The consequences of these fast-multiplying directives — complicated, long-winded, and sometimes self-contradictory — is one topic at hand. Manipulated interest rates is a second. Distortion and mispricing of stocks, bonds, and currencies is a third. Skipping to the conclusion of this essay, Jim Grant is worried: "The more they tried, the less they succeeded. The less they succeeded, the more they tried. There is no 'exit.'"

QE has finally come to an end, but public comprehension of the immense fraud it embodied has not even started. In stopping QE after a massive spree of monetization, the Fed is actually taking a tiny step toward liberating the interest rate and re-establishing honest finance. But don’t bother to inform our monetary politburo. As soon as the current massive financial bubble begins to burst, it will doubtless invent some new excuse to resume central bank balance sheet expansion and therefore fraudulent finance. But this time may be different. Perhaps even the central banks have reached the limits of credibility - that is, their own equivalent of peak debt.

There was a time when one couldn't get Bernanke to shut up: whether it was swearing to Congress how the Fed is not monetizing debt, explaining to Ron Paul that gold is nothing but "tradition", or otherwise issuing one after another after another debt monetizing quantitative easing program in hopes that "this time" the trickle down from the record high stock market would finally unleash central-planning utopia, Bernanke's verbal insight was in a state of constant deflation. However, ever since his departure from the marble halls of the Marriner Eccles building, suddenly Bernanke's insight has hyperinflated to the tune of some $250,000 per hour of Bernanke's time (time during which he says such profound insights as "No Rate Normalization During My Lifetime"). So without further ado, and without having to fork over a ridiculous quarter of a million dollars, here is what the Chairsatan really said...

Last Wednesday the markets plunged on a vague recognition that the central bank promoted recovery story might not be on the level. But that tremor didn’t last long. Right on cue the next day, one of the very dimmest Fed heads - James Dullard of St Louis - mumbled incoherently about a possible QE extension, causing the robo-traders to erupt with buy orders. And its no different anywhere else in the central bank besotted financial markets around the world. Everywhere state action, not business enterprise, is believed to be the source of wealth creation - at least the stock market’s paper wealth version and even if for just a few more hours or days. The job of the monetary politburo is apparently to sift noise out of the in-coming data noise - even when it is a feedback loop from the Fed’s own manipulation and interventions.

With the AAPL EPS whisper number pointing to an EPS somewhere about 10-15 cents above the EPS consensus of 1.30, moments ago AAPL did not disappoint and reported Q4 EPS of $1.42, a solid 12 cent beat to expectations, a comparable beat to the top line beat, with $42.12 billion in revenue, also well above the $39.9 Bn estimate. The gross margin of 38% was right on top of expectations. In terms of product breakdown, AAPL sold 39.3 million iPhones, above the 38 million expected, with Mac unit sales of 5.52 million also above the 4.84 million expected, with only iPad sales of 12.3 million missing the 13.0 million estimate.

Straight-forward discussion about the investment climate and the week ahead.  Light on hyperbole, heavy on analysis.