Free Money

And, as expected, it's not happy. The punchline:

The central bank is to become subordinate to finance ministers in crisis-stricken countries. In Draghi's homeland Italy, such a situation was the norm for decades -- and the result was chronic inflation. Now, he is accepting a repeat of history. On the short term, it will create relief in the debt crisis. On the long term, vengeance will be bitter."

Some odds and ends, plus a very scary report on China

The catalyst for the major turnaround in markets last week was comments from ECB President Draghi that he was prepared to do whatever it takes to preserve the Euro and ensure monetary policy transmission. While this is nothing more than stating his mandate (and that water is wet), the focus on 'transmission' caught the attention of many and Barclays provides a succinct flowchart of just where those transmission channels are broken. However, with SMP empirically a losing proposition for sovereign spreads, LTROs having had no impact on loans to non-financial corporates, and rate cuts not reaching the peripheral economies (and in fact signaling further divergence); it seems that short of full-scale LSAP (which JPM thinks will need to be a minimum EUR600bn to be in any way effective), whatever Draghi says will be a disappointment and perhaps that explains the weakness in European sovereigns this week as exuberance fades (or is the game to implicitly weaken the EUR to regain competitiveness).

The Fed is promising once again to pound nails with the only tools in its toolbox, a saw and a chisel. The "nails" the Fed is trying to pound down are unemployment and deflation. Needless to say, whacking these big nails with a handsaw and a chisel is completely useless: they can't get the job done. The Fed claims all sorts of supernatural powers to sink nails at will--"unconventional monetary policy," quantitative easing, money dropped from helicopters and so on. But all it really has are two tools which have no positive effect on unemployment or the real economy.

1. The Fed can manipulate interest rates to near-zero
2. The Fed can shove "free money" to the banks

That's it. That's all the tools the Fed has in its toolbox. Let's consider what these tools accomplish in the real world.

As many observers have noted, you can expand the money supply but if that money ends up stashed as bank reserves, it never enters the real economy, nor does it flow into household earnings. The velocity of that "dead money" is near-zero. M2 declined in the housing bubble as the velocity of money skyrocketed: everyone was pulling money out of housing equity via HELOCs (home equity lines of credit) and spending the "free money" on cruises, furniture, big-screen TVs, boats, fine dining, etc. The recipients of that spending also borrowed and spent as if the "free money" would never end. If M2 expansion is the only thing propping up an artificial market, what happens to the stock market rally as M2 rolls over?

With a few hours until BoE's Paul Tucker takes the stand, the venerable institution has finally acquiesced to the Freedom of Information Act request from British MP John Mann and released all copies of emails and transcripts of telephone conversations between Tucker and Bob Diamond between 10/1/08 and 11/30/08. The emails make for some fascinating reading when one considers the sources of the conversation. The thrust of the discussion is Tucker's concern at UK Libor rates being considerably higher than US - especially as US rates were dropping; Tucker's 'shock' at the cost of funding for Barclays' government-guaranteed debt; and finally the explanation/admission for why the BoE's liquidity hosepipe was not fixing the solvency problem in British banks - a lack of eligible collateral. Smoking gun maybe; nail in the coffin of independent Central Banks for sure; hangings in the streets - we are not so sure.

You can already see the collateral damage stemming from anemia in LIeBORgate banks... Capital Account's Lauren Lyster stimulates the conversation.

Nothing short of the improper taking of private property against the will of the owner?

Print, print, print as they may, central bankers will make no leeway until the true problem falls sway... ©2009-2012 the Lyrical Reggie Reg...

Potential employers have to respond to the incentives and disincentives that exist in today's world, and those do not favor conventional permanent employees. We know you're hard-working, motivated, tech-savvy and willing to learn. The reason we can't hire you has nothing to do with your work ethic or skills; it's the high-cost of the Status Quo, and the many perverse consequences of maintaining a failing Status Quo. The sad truth is that it's costly and risky to hire anyone to do anything, and "bankable projects" that might generate profit/require more labor are few and far between. The economy is different now, and wishing it were unchanged from 30 years ago won't reverse the clock. We have to respond to the incentives and disincentives that exist in today's world, and those do not favor conventional permanent employees except in sectors that are largely walled off from the market economy: government, healthcare, etc. But these moated sectors cannot remain isolated from the deflationary market economy forever.

The latest confirmation that the US consumer is rapidly retrenching ahead of the great unknown which is the US fiscal cliff was the just released data on Personal Spending and Income, both of which came in as expected, at 0.0% and 0.2% over the prior month. This was the lowest rate of increase in the Personal Spending rate since June 2011, when spending posted a -0.2% decline. This was to be expected considering the ongoing contraction on the income side: "Private wage and salary disbursements increased $1.1 billion in May, compared with an increase of $5.3 billion in April.  Goods-producing industries' payrolls decreased $7.0 billion, in contrast to an increase of $5.6 billion; manufacturing payrolls decreased $4.5 billion, in contrast to an increase of $3.2 billion." The collapse in manufacturing wages was somewhat offset by gains in services: "Services-producing industries' payrolls increased $8.3 billion, in contrast to a decrease of $0.4 billion.  Government wage and salary disbursements increased $0.3 billion, compared with an increase of $0.4 billion." And for the best indication of just how consumers feel about the economy, one just needs to look at the savings rate: at 3.9%, this was the highest savings rate since January as any free money enters not the economy, but bank checking accounts and counterparty risk-free mattresses.

In simple terms, Germany may be willing to prop up the EU, but only if its demands are met. The track record for the PIIGS in terms of meeting demands is abysmal. Moreover, implementing such measures takes months if not years. Given that Spain’s ten-year is back over 7% and Italy is now begging informally for a bailout, the EU doesn’t have that time.

For the past six months we have extensively discussed the topics of asset depletion, aging and encumbrance in Europe - a theme that has become quite poignant in recent days, culminating with the ECB once again been "forced" to expand the universe of eligible collateral confirming that credible, money-good European assets have all but run out. We have also argued that a key culprit for this asset quality deterioration has been none other than central banks, whose ruinous ZIRP policies have forced companies to hoard cash, but not to reinvest in their businesses and renew their asset bases, in the form of CapEx spending, but merely to have dry powder to hand out as dividends in order to retain shareholders who now demand substantial dividend sweeteners in a time when stocks are the new "fixed income." Yet while historically we have focused on Europe whose plight is more than anything a result of dwindling cash inflows from declining assets even as cash outflow producing liabilities stay the same or increase, the "asset" problem is starting to shift to the US. And as everyone who has taken finance knows, when CapEx goes, revenues promptly follow. Needless to say, at a time when still near record corporate revenues and profit margins are all that is supporting the US stock market from joining its global brethren in tumbling, this will soon be a very popular point of discussion in the mainstream media... in about 3-6 months.

Europe also allows for sovereign debt to be counted as risk-free assets and not marked-to-market. Many nations, Spain is one example, allow for Real Estate loans, mortgages and even commercial loans to be carried at face value as a matter of financial engineering. I think it is a bad joke but the bite has come. This occurs when the loans no longer pay and the revenues are no longer present no matter how you carry them on your books. Then, if the banks try to off-load the properties they have assumed they take losses which are real losses and have to be accounted for on the books or they are securitized and placed as collateral at the ECB which then hides the problem for a while but not indefinitely and the “indefinite” has run out of time which is why any number of banks are calling “Uncle” and why the sovereign nation nations are crying “Uncle” and trying to deflect their problems first back to the ECB and then to find some new scheme so that the country does not fall victim to the Men in Black. All fine, all dandy, but, once again, the central issues are not dealt with and all of the schemes like all of the King’s men and horses cannot put Humpty back together again.

Humpty has fallen off the wall.

We're like a sprawling family bickering over the inheritance: we'll keep arguing over who deserves what until the inheritance is gone. That will trigger one final outburst of finger-pointing, resentment and betrayal, and then we'll go do something else to get by. The "solution" is thus collapse. This model has been very effectively explored in The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon. The basic idea is that when the carrying costs of the society exceed its output, the whole contraption collapses. The political adjunct to this systemic implosion is that the productive people just stop supporting the Status Quo because it's become too burdensome. The calculus of self-interest shifts from supporting the bloated, marginal-return Status Quo to abandoning it. 
So the root problem is the system, human nature, blah blah blah. There are no "solutions" that can fix those defaults. The "solution" is collapse, as only collapse will force everyone to go do something more sustainable to get by.