GAAP

Rejoice: the second cold war appears to be over (after Russia skillfully annexed Crimea). How do we know? The following clip of Obama and Putin chatting has been released, by the official account of the French president no less. No blows were exchanged. Surely this in itself is enough to push the VIX to the upper (or middle, or lower) single digits and send the S&P to just about 20x 2014 GAAP P/E...

Q1 2014 was the first negative EBITDA quarter for Elizabeth Arden since before Lehman (June 2008) and worst quarterly EBITDA loss for the company since Q3 2001... and the rest of the data was terrible:

*ELIZABETH ARDEN 3Q SALES $210.8M, EST. $255.7M; 3Q ADJ. LOSS/SHR 84C, EST. BREAK-EVEN

The reason... come on you can guess... "an unprecedented number of weather-related store closures in our North America business during the quarter."

Some people are either born or nurtured into a time warp and never seem to escape. That’s Janet Yellen’s apparent problem with the “bathtub economics” of the 1960s neo-Keynesians. As has now been apparent for decades, the Great Inflation of the 1970s was a live fire drill that proved Keynesian activism doesn’t work. That particular historic trauma showed that “full employment” and “potential GDP” were imaginary figments from scribblers in Ivy League economics departments—not something that is targetable by the fiscal and monetary authorities or even measureable in a free market economy. Even more crucially, the double digit inflation, faltering growth and repetitive boom and bust macro-cycles of the 1970s and early 1980s proved in spades that interventionist manipulations designed to achieve so-called “full-employment” actually did the opposite—that is, they only amplified economic instability and underperformance as the decade wore on.

While Tesla's financial results will hardly be much discussed by either the bulls or bears who follow the company - because it is one of the last remaining "story" stocks - and most will instead focus on the fact that Tesla sold 6,457 Model S cars in the quarter, down 6% from the 6,892 sold in Q4 2013, and the first sequential sales decline since 2012 (Is Tesla about to be Twittered?), here are, for the purists, the only three charts that matter.

Just weeks after the Fed signed off on CCAR and ackowledged how great the US banking system is, Bank of America (after being slapped with another $13bn RMBS suit demand) has ackowledged things are not quite as risy as they appeared.

BOFA HAD INCORRECT ADJUSTMENT ON TREATMENT OF SOME NOTES; BOFA SUSPENDS CAPITAL ACTION PLAN ON CHANGE IN CAPITAL RATIOS
BAC SEES REVISED CAPITAL ACTIONS LESS THAN PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED; BAC WILL ENGAGE THIRD PARTY TO REVIEW PROCESSES

So no buyback boost... no dividend boost... The question now is - how do we (or The Fed) trust any of the numbers?

By the magic of pure accounting gimmickry, one-off tom-foolery, non-GAAP shenanigans, and the sterling work of its now-retiring CFO; Facebook has 'managed' to produce twice as much non-GAAP net income as GAAP net income in the last 2 years...

• Q1 revenue $2.5 billion, beats expectations of $2.36 billion
• Q1 revenue from advertising $2.27 billion
• Q1 EPS $0.34, beat expectations of $0.24
• Free cash flow - Free cash flow for the first quarter of 2014 was $922 million.
• Capital expenditures - Capital expenditures for the first quarter of 2014 were $363 million.
• Cash and marketable securities - Cash and marketable securities were $12.63 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2014.
• Monthly active users (MAUs) were 1.28 billion as of March 31, 2014, an increase of 15% year-over-year. Unclear how many of these are bots originating out of Egypt and India.

So much for the infallible Mr. Dimon.

Moments ago, JPM reported Q1 earnings which missed across the board, driven by the now traditional double whammy of collapsing mortgage revenues - the lifeblood of any old normal bank - and fixed income trading revenues  - the lifeblood of new normal banks. Specifically, JPM reported revenues of $23.9 billion, well below the expected $24.5 billion, matched by a reported earnings miss of $1.28, down from $1.59 a quarter ago (and down $0.02 from Q4, 2014), also missing consensus estimates of $1.38. The breakdown was as follows.

This is just getting embarrassing.

The Fed and the other major central banks have been planting time bombs all over the global financial system for years, but especially since their post-crisis money printing spree incepted in the fall of 2008.  Now comes a new leader to the Eccles Building who is not only bubble-blind like her two predecessors, but is also apparently bubble-mute. Janet Yellen is pleased to speak of financial bubbles as a “misalignment of asset prices,” and professes not to espy any on the horizon. Actually, the Fed’s bubble blindness stems from even worse than servility. The problem is an irredeemably flawed monetary doctrine that tracks, targets and aims to goose Keynesian GDP flows using the crude tools of central banking. Not surprisingly, therefore, our monetary central planners are always, well, surprised, when financial fire storms break-out. Even now, after more than a half-dozen collapses since the Greenspan era of Bubble Finance incepted in 1987, they don’t recognize that it is they who are carrying what amounts to monetary gas cans.

The Fed’s serial bubble machine has not only bestowed massive speculative windfalls on the 1%, but it has also fostered a noxious culture of plunder and entitlement in the gambling casinos of Wall Street. After each thundering sell-off during the bust phase, crony capitalist gamblers have been gifted with ill-gotten windfalls during the Fed’s subsequent maniacal money printing spree.  In this context comes Bruce Berkowitz “scolding” and firing “salvos” at Washington from the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

In summary: non-GAAP P/E of 259x, and GAAP P/E of Div/0, as GAAP Market Cap/Sales is a "conservative" 12.4x. Good luck with that growth. You are going to need it.

Three days ago it was S&P that opened the can of Puerto Rico junk worms. Moments ago it was Moody's turn to downgrade the General Obligation rating of the Commonwealth from Baa3 to Ba2, aka junk status. We note this just in case someone is confused what the catalyst was that just sent stock to a new intraday high in the aftermath of today's disappointing jobs number which until this moment barely managed to push the S&P higher by 1%. From the report: "While some economic indicators point to a preliminary stabilization, we do not see evidence of economic growth sufficient to reverse the commonwealth's negative financial trends. Without an economic revival, the commonwealth will face difficult decisions in coming years, as its debt and pension costs rise. The negative outlook signals the remaining challenges facing the commonwealth."

So much for the infinite growth story?

What is the difference between GAAP and Non-GAAP Net Income? Only about 109% if you are Facebook.