default

Is it ethical for the American homeowner whose mortgage has been securitized to default, even If they are not financially distressed? First, consider it is unlikely that marketable, fee simple, insurable title can be obtained as a result of fulfilling the obligations of the related promissory note. On the contrary the titles to some 60 million homes in America are badly clouded. Secondly, encouraging investment in an asset class that has been artificially inflated, then deliberately destroying the price of the asset, as part of a separate profit making scheme is unethical, and any agreement based on this type of fraud is grounds to consider the original debt instrument used in the agreement null and void. Fortunately these grounds are unnecessary, as increasingly US courts are ruling that these mortgages are already invalid for numerous other reasons.

Spot gold and silver prices rose slightly again this morning after hitting a one-month high yesterday as equity markets internationally came under selling pressure. The Moody's downgrade of Greece and worryingly poor US economic data again pushed investors to seek the safe haven of bullion. Gold reached new record nominal highs in sterling yesterday (£945.62/oz) as the pound fell on concerns about the UK economy. The supply situation in the silver market gets more interesting by the day. Registered COMEX silver inventories have fallen to multiyear lows at 29,631,268 ounces. In the last 5 days they fell from 32,132,903 ounces to Tuesday’s holdings of 29,631,268 ounces. As can be seen in the table below registered silver inventories fell every single day last week leading to a sharp fall of 8.4% in 5 days. Registered silver inventories are down a sharp 38.5% in just two weeks – from 41,044,280 to 29,631,268. The possibility of an attempted cornering of the silver market through buying and taking delivery of physical bullion remains real. However it would be very difficult to corner the silver market due to the very small nature of the silver bullion market. A COMEX default remains a risk as does a massive short squeeze which could see silver surge as it did in the 1970s and again recently leading to silver targeting the inflation adjusted record high of $140/oz.

And to think they cut it from 3% to 2.5% just a week ago. Michael Feroli, take it away: "When we revised down our estimate of Q2 GDP growth last week to 2.5% we noted that the risks to this quarter were still to the downside. Given the hard activity data we've received since then -- particularly the auto sales and construction report -- it looks like those downside risks are being realized, and we are lowering our Q2 projection to 2.0%. Even with this revision we'd assess the risks as still a little to the downside. Most of our downward revision in Q2 is located in consumer spending, where we think growth this quarter is tracking close to 1.5%. If our new estimate for Q2 is realized, GDP growth relative to a year-ago would be only 2.4%, implying almost no closing of the output gap over the past year -- an abysmal performance given that the output gap is arguably greater than 5% of potential GDP, or less arguably, that there are still almost 14 million unemployed workers. Our forecast implicitly assumes the debt ceiling issue is resolved in a manner which does not see a technical default of the US Treasury. Of course if that assumption were not to hold all cards would be off the table and we almost certainly have to pencil in a much more severe downgrade to our growth forecast. Our Fed call is unchanged and continues to look for a first hike in 1Q13."

Next up: Greece begins criminal proceedings against the rating agency for character defamantion and libel (or is that slander?). Also, Belgium is next. Yet most importantly, there is no mention in the downgrade if the "Vienna plan" currently contemplated, or the latest zany "debt rolling" proposal constitutes an Event Of Default, meaning the market will have even more uncertaintly to grapple with. From Moody's "The main triggers for today's downgrade are as follows: 1. The increased risk that Greece will fail to stabilise its debt position, without a debt restructuring, in light of (1) the ever-increasing scale of the implementation challenges facing the government, (2) the country's highly uncertain growth prospects and (3) a track record of underperformance against budget consolidation targets. 2. The increased likelihood that Greece's supporters (the IMF, ECB and the EU Commission, together known as the "Troika") will, at some point in the future, require the participation of private creditors in a debt restructuring as a precondition for funding support. Taken together, these risks imply at least an even chance of default over the rating horizon. Moody's points out that, over five-year investment horizons, around 50% of Caa1-rated sovereigns, non-financial corporate and financial institutions have consistently met their debt service requirements on a timely basis, while around 50% have defaulted."

If you think this through, there is only one ethical thing for the maiden to do: toss the spiked sugary drink in the face of the predator and deliver a swift, hard kick between his legs "where it counts." Greece should respond to this planned predation with complete and total default: not a "haircut" or "extended terms," a complete and total refusal to pay any of the debt. We are constantly warned that the resulting collapse of the "too big to fail" banks would trigger a global implosion. That is false; life would go on after the predators declared bankruptcy and were liquidated. What the predators fear most is an awareness that any disruption in normal life would be brief and relatively painless compared to the vast suffering imposed to render them their pound of flesh.

Every day there is at least one headline about how catastrophic a Greek default would be. These headlines aren’t coming from the doom and gloom crowd, they are coming from senior government officials throughout Europe. There is great concern that a Greek default would hurt European banks. The potential domino effect to other countries scares these senior officials. If these fears are valid, then some senior bankers should be fired immediately because they have wasted the opportunity to reduce their exposures with reasonable losses. Banks have had ample opportunity to cut their exposure to Greece. The original bailout and the announcement of EFSF gave these banks an incredible chance to get out of their Greek debt with manageable losses...If banks didn’t massively reduce exposure when they had these windows of opportunity, and the EU is busy negotiating to save these same banks, someone needs to be fired. It is mind boggling that banks were either so afraid of taking a reasonable loss or so greedy that they thought they could do better that they kept these exposures. It had to have been clear to everyone at the banks how bad it could get, the only prudent, not even smart, just prudent, action was to cut exposures. Even if you missed the May rally which was the best opportunity to get out, how could you sit through the summer fear and not sell heavily into the October rally? Any explanation involves either stupidity, negligence, or complete faith in the government to bail you out.

Gold and silver are lower today with profit taking, Chinese bond buying and increased risk appetite being cited for the price falls. Reports of China buying Eurozone government debt may have led to a rise in the euro and equities. However, the scale of sovereign debt risk internationally is such that even significant and ongoing Chinese buying would be unlikely to contain the crisis. While most of the focus has been on Greece and Eurozone sovereign debt issues, the not insignificant risk posed by a U.S. sovereign debt crisis increases by the day. The risk of a US default continues to rise which can be seen in the sharply increased cost to insure U.S. sovereign debt. The squabbling between Democrats and Republicans last week as the U.S. debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion was being reached did not help sentiment towards U.S. debt. Nor did former Soros’ partner Stanley Druckenmiller, the billionaire former-hedge fund manager and legendary investor, comment in the Wall Street Journal that the Federal Reserve’s bond purchases are a fraud and a “Ponzi scheme”. He advocated a U.S. default or a technical default, saying “"technical default would be horrible, but I don't think it's going to be the end of the world. It's not going to be catastrophic."

You’d think that the world’s largest economy (and home of the world’s reserve currency) exceeding its debt limits would be big time news. But we’ve yet to hear a peep about it from the mainstream financial media. It’s even stranger that we haven’t heard mention of the fact that the US is in fact RAIDING pension funds to continue to fund its debt.

Greece says it will not default because it has made a perfectly circular argument against default, and we all know that Circular Reasoning Works Because Circular Reasoning Works Because...
Greece is Guaranteed to Default. It's shouldn't even be up for debate since it is simple math: 2+2=4, not 3. I've laid it all out for you below, complete with the requisite advanced mathematical formulae (2+2...)

The Greek bankruptcy, pardon, sovereign liability management exercise, pardon reprofiling, is once again front and center in the news this morning, after Moody's had some words of caution about a broad spillover effect in Europe should Greece file. From Reuters: "A Greek debt default would hurt other peripheral euro zone states and could push Portugal and Ireland into junk territory, Moody's said on Tuesday, warning it would classify most forms of restructuring as a default.  "A Greek default would be highly destabilising and would have implications for the creditworthiness of issuers across Europe," Moody's Investors Service's chief credit officer in the region, Alastair Wilson, told Reuters in a telephone interview. "This would result in more highly polarised credit worthiness and ratings among euro zone sovereigns, with the stronger countries retaining very high ratings and the weaker countries struggling to remain in investment grade." And yet a Greek bankruptcy seems increasingly more inevitable after a brand new fissure has now appeared in the government, after the chief opposition, New Democracy, party leader Antonis Samaras said he would oppose the latest round of austerity which, nonetheless, must pass in order for Greece to not run out of funds in 2 months, as we previously reported, and finally set off the dominoes. While the political bickering will likely hit fever pitch, and result in new and increasingly more violent protests in Athens, it is likely that austerity will pass as western banks are licking their chops at acquiring Greek "privatized" assets, at least when it comes to infrastructure and real estate, banks not so much, at below cost prices.

Last week David Stockman was on Tom Keene, making the usual media rounds (sometimes we marvel at his patience and endurance), as one of the few voices of fiscal prudence available to TV producers who seek to hold a balanced debate on the topic of US insolvency. Today, Reagan's budget director was again on Bloomberg TV explaining the reality of the situation to Matt Miller for the nth time (by now even a 2 year old will understand the cul-de-sac facing the US), although presenting a new spin on the situation, namely that we have gotten to a point where both parties are implicitly pushing for a US default, while though their inability to reach a political compromise, blaming each other for this inevitable outcome. "The real problem is the de facto policy of both parties is default. When the Republicans say no tax increases, they're saying we want the U.S. government to default. Because there isn't enough political will in this country to solve the problem even halfway on spending cuts. When the Democrats say you can't touch Social Security, when you have Obama sponsoring a war budget for defense that is even bigger than Bush, then I say the policy of the White House is default as well...That is the question that really needs to be understood better and appraised by the bond market. Both parties are advocating default even as they point the finger at each other."

The presumed default catastrophe driven by an inability to increase debt is precisely why it shouldn't be increased.

And for today's second most surreal piece of news (the first being that Osama was a fan of RedTube and Adult Friend Finder, whose stock tumbled 25% after its IPO on news that such a loyal customer is now dead), we turn to Reuters which brings us news of a "report" by centrist think tank Third Wave, due out on Monday, which finds that "the United States could plunge back into recession if inaction in Washington forced a debt default, according to a new analysis that arrives as the country reaches the legal limits of its borrowing authority....Some 640,000 U.S. jobs would vanish, the housing market's woes would deepen, stocks would fall and lending activity would tighten if the country were unable to pay its bills, according to a report by the centrist think tank Third Way due out on Monday." And yes, first Dow Jones and now Reuters confirms what we have been warning all this week, namely that "the Treasury Department is expected to hit its $14.3 trillion borrowing limit on Monday, making it unable to access the bond markets again. Lawmakers from both parties say they won't approve a further increase in borrowing authority without steps to keep debt under control." Yet back to the topic at hand: which is that someone actually paid money to discover what will happen to America when it filed for bankruptcy. If this was a paper out of the San Fran Fed we understand, but private industry? If there is one margin hike we approve of it is for the CME to hike the margin to 1000% cash in trivial common sense BS.

It's about damn time... "The best way to stop an investigation is to become one of the investigators" 4closureFraud 2010

Gold and silver continue to rebound from their sell offs as Euro zone periphery worries intensify with real risks of defaults and possible contagion. Gold has risen from €1,010/oz to over €1,057/oz since Friday. The long period of correction and consolidation may soon see a break out above resistance at record nominal highs of €1,072/oz - less than 1.5% below the current price. The recent strength of the euro looks set to end as sovereign debt risks come to the fore again. This will likely see the euro fall versus most currencies and especially against gold. There has been the usual misinformed and non evidence based assertions that the gold and silver markets were ‘bubbles’ and that they have burst. The same simplistic assertions were made after the sharp price corrections seen in 2008 and were proven badly wrong.