Japan

Let’s pretend the US is a company...

Yesterday, while we were listening to the Chairsatan(^© Bill Gross), we made the following semi-serious realtime translation of Bernank's presentation to the sycophants' club: "Let me explain it to you: 9% unemployment: NFLX $300; 8%
unemployment: NFLX $500; 6% unemployment: NFLX $1000. Kapishe?" And while we were mostly joking in our correct interpretation of the Fed's massively wrong understanding of causality between the market and the economy, Nicholas Colas of BNY today took a comparable idea and analyzed what the level of the S&P should be for unemployment to get to a Fed acceptable level based on empirial data. We quote: "By our analysis of the last forty years of history for the S&P 500 and unemployment rates, in order to get to the Fed’s 8% target in 2012, the U.S. equity market needs to climb another 35% in 2011, putting the S&P 500 at 1755. That’s not our price target, but it just may be the Fed’s." Since this is most likely the entire "sophisticated" plan laid bare of one Iosif Vissarionovich Bernank, expect to see a complete elimination of volume as the mutual fund cartel continues with the never-sell collusion, and the only incremental buying is PDs with taxpayer money and HFTs' bid-bias fully compensated by rebates for providing the PDs with the "liquidity" they need to send stocks up another 350 points. Luckily, few if any care what the joke that is the stock market actually does.

Despite Treasury being a few post-SFP weeks from stealing Mubarak's M.A.D. spotlight, TBAC minutes reveal just how it will crowd out the private sector permanently (Sack-Frost makes debut appearance).

Jim Rogers, in his latest interview, cuts right to the chase: "I don't own many equities, because I don't know what is going to happen in the world economy. I expect more currency turmoil, more social unrest, more governments collapsing. So I am investing in currencies and commodities rather than stocks." Pretty much like everyone else, as we have been suggesting for quite a while. Rogers snaps at the trademark CNBC question of what he would be investing in: "I have been explaining to everybody on CNBC for a year and half or two now that food prices are going to go through the roof, they're going to explode. We have serious shortage of everything developing, including shortages of farmers... The average age of farmers in one major agricultural state is 58 years old. In 10 years it will be 68 years old. In parts of Japan they have no farmers... It takes 7 years for a coffee tree to mature. Orange trees, palm trees: you don't just suddenly snap your fingers and suddenly get some more palm oil. All of this takes time." So all those who believe that the surge in people rushing to fill the ag arbitrage holes will produce immediate results, may need to wait 3-7 years, dependant on access to manure.

Love them or hate them, only the most self-deluded can claim that the NIA, and its predictions, have been incorrect so far in this monetary 'printing' cycle. Sure they may have an agenda, and yes, Gen Ben may one day pull his money (if he is willing to see the S&P plunge to 666 and well below, so not really), which would kill all commodities, and certainly gold, in their tracks, but focusing solely on their message will have spared many massive real (not nominal) losses as surging commodity prices dwarf the modest pick up in stocks. Today's note from the NIA, while unpleasant, looks at the disastrous long-term consequences of the Chairman's monetary policy, and concludes rightfully so, that absent a diametric shift, which after today's press meeting may well require a revolution as the creature appears to be well on its way to QE3, 4 and so on, what is happening in Egypt is a preview of what will happen in the US in a few short year. Furthermore, the NIA's prediction that rice is up, up and away is in line with what Zero Hedge has been claiming since October (link). Also as a reminder, and as David Tepper just confirmed today, the realization that Rubber is the third and last R-bubble is starting to percolate...

The garlic eaters don’t want to repay their debts, and the beer drinkers don’t want to lend them any more money. That pretty much sums up the financial tensions that exist within Europe right now. Time to Short the Euro.

Not all debt is the same, so it would seem. Expect runs on Ireland, Greece and Portugal way before Japan despite the fact Japan has twice the debt as a proportion of GDP!

That's right folks - MORE FREE MONEY! This is just what Egypt needs, I guess. Europe too

I am not an economist, but as a strategist I believe there is a case for a multi-year period of weak growth in the US, which could be magnified by an EM slowdown as the EM bloc diverges policy to deal with its own domestic positive output gaps, domestic inflation problems and domestic asset bubbles. The obvious problem is that the US has an excess debt problem and a central bank that seeks to solve asset bubbles that burst by creating new asset bubbles. This policy has been proved a failure. Remember that debt does not equal wealth, that asset bubbles do not equal wealth, that more liquidity does not equal money but instead equals more debt, and that liquidity does not equal capital.

Recently, BOE head Mervyn King came out with a very surprising warning to his compatriots, accompanied with an apology that our own Ben Bernanke will never offer, namely: "I sympathise completely with savers and those who behaved prudently
now find themselves among the biggest losers from this crisis." Of course, the US central bank believes it has completed its third mandate job now that the US stock market, not to mention commodities, are starting to be reminiscent of the parabolic phase of the Harare stock market. But back in Europe, even as the EURUSD is surging (killing the dollar, and the primary driver behind US stocks) now that it is accepted that the continent will proceed with its latest full on ponzi scheme and have the EFSF acquire insolvent bonds, even as the ECB proceeds to raise rates, things are getting worse. This is precisely what King warned about in a speech that not surprisingly got absolutely no coverage in the US. Luckily, here is Simon Black's take on the very surprising speech by King which confirmed that the only beneficiaries of Bernanke's policies continue to be the top 1% that make up the financial oligarchy.... as always.

Google's Android is now the undisputed top selling mobile OS in the world, unseating Research in Motion's Blackberry, Apple's iOS and Nokia's Symbian/MeeGo in record time. Being that Android is essentially a front end to Google's cloud services and apps, does this mean that Google now has (or soon will have) more application reach than Microsoft - the world's largest software company? Pretty good performance for a search engine, eh?

Treasury yields are "blinking red", but the Fed keeps acting like nothing's wrong. What's the deal?

So, why do we make bullish bets when it looks like the New World Order is hanging by a thread?

With all the hoopla over Egypt some have forgotten that this is merely a geopolitical event (one of those that absolutely nobody, with a few exceptions, was talking about less a month ago, so in many ways this is a mainstream media black swan which once again exposes the entire punditry for the pseudo-sophist hacks they are), and that the actual mines embedded within the financial system continue to float just below the surface. Below we present the five key fat tail concerns that keep SocGen strategist Dylan Grice up at night, which happen to be: i) long-term deflation, ii) a bond market blow-up, iii) a Chinese hard-landing, iv) an inflation pick-up, and v) an Emerging Markets bubble. Far more importantly, Grice provides the most comprehensive basket of trades to put on as a hedge against all five of these, while also pocketing a premium associated with simple market beta in a world in which the Central Banks continue to successfully defy gravity and economic cycles. For all those who continue to trade as brainless lemmings, seeking comfort in numbers, no matter how wrong the "numbers" of the groupthink herd are, we urge you to establish at least some of the recommended trades in advance of what will inevitably be a greater crash than anything the markets experienced during the depths of the 2008 near-cataclysm.

This week's key themes presented by Goldman's David Kostin: "The weak fiscal condition of federal, state and local governments, and corporate tax reform dominated our discussions this week with hedge fund and mutual fund portfolio managers. So far, 207 firms in the S&P 500 have reported 4Q results (55% of total cap). 45% of companies reporting have beat consensus earnings estimates by more than one standard deviation (above the historical average of 41%) and 9% have missed estimates (vs. average of 14%). The average EPS surprise has been nearly 10%, above the 4% historical average. Excluding Financials, there are fewer positive surprises (44%) and fewer negative surprises (6%)." For now Kostin is still sticking to his 1,500 forecast: "The S&P 500 rose 1.5% this week. Industrials was the best-performing sector (+3.0%) while Consumer Staples was the worst-performing sector (-0.5%). We expect the S&P 500 to rise to 1500 in 12 months (+15%)." We give this forecast three months max. After all, the path for QE3 must be paved with good intentions. And the kicker: "We expect a  combination of 8% sales growth and 30 bp of net margin expansion to 8.8% will combine to boost EPS by 14% to $96 per share." Ongoing margin expansion as most companies are prewarning about maring collapses... This is beyond painful.