Marla Singer

Our veterans were an important part of the internal control mechanism that all unorganized groups develop as a matter of instinct and survival. Natural leaders emerge and are respected not just for their inherent authority, but because of their common sense approach and fairness even to those they oppose. Thus form and function develops out of chaos and the community coalesces.

In Chapter 3 of this continuing examination of our collective insanity, we begin to unfold the dynamics of the public lie, our often unconscious defense of the public lie, setting up our personal psychic firewalls, the Stockholm syndrome and the dynamics of the family when dealing with the addicted/abuser, Mother Nature’s nose candy, how we can break the conditioning and then reinforce the changed behavior.

One of the central tenants of Farcism as a doctrine is the promotion and use of layers of opacity and complexity to empower regulators via their ability to mitigate red tape and compliance costs and to conceal this power under a cloak of (for example) promoting the "American Dream of Home Ownership."  It will be seen that Farcism has imbued the halls of regulatory power, particularly in financial services, for decades.  Zero Hedge readers are invited to opine on the impact this realization has on prospects for a financial reform bill that puts more power in the hands of these parties.

In this connection, back in November of last year we explored the nuances of the "foreign regulatory capital" credit default swap portfolio of the besieged Financial Products group at AIG.  We pointed out that $172 billion in notional exposure (well, it seemed like a big number for a potential loss before Fannie Mae actually lost $145 billion in eleven consecutive quarterly losses, wiping out its combined profits for the prior 35 years and still leaving about $80 billion in red ink to spare) remained outstanding, that deteriorating credit markets may force AIG to recognize additional losses on the portfolio, but that AIG expected the swaps mostly to be terminated by the first quarter of 2010 (please please please please?).  We also noted that the implicit backing of the Federal Reserve might be one of the key (only?) elements permitting these swaps to perform their desired function: permitting European banks to reduce their regulatory capital requirements (read: boost their leverage).

This is Part III of a multi-part series on global rise of Farcism.  Part I, "The Silver Curtain" can be viewed here. Part II "On the Pensioning of Roman Veterans" can be viewed here.

By Marla Singer and Geoffrey Batt

In September of 2008 the Reserve Primary Fund, loaded with exposure to Lehman Brothers debt, faced massive withdrawals and promptly "broke the buck."  (Slipped below $1.00/share NAV).  The result was a cascade of credit crunches for major corporations dependent on commercial paper for not just their near term financing, but their day to day operations.  Firms like Honeywell, General Electric, 3M, Boeing and WalMart were gripped in what might even be called a destructive co-dependent relationship with the short term cash available in the commercial paper market.  Particularly in an environment of low interest rates, money market funds desperate for yield are ravenous lenders to these large cap firms that divert their cash elsewhere and use the commercial paper market to make up the difference.  The constant "roll risk" means that any seizing up of the commercial paper market could deliver sudden and unexpected defaults by the country's largest and most respected firms.

Having now returned from extended sick leave and coming to you from within her digitally wired ISOPORT™ (the CDC approved portable, negative pressure isolation enclosure in which she now resides full-time) Marla Singer is pleased to share with you:

- A small but finite risk of exposure to plague in the form of multi-drug resistant Streptococcus Pneumoniae

- The lingering side effects of ongoing and massive doses of vancomycin and linezoli (including altered taste perception- brown sugar Pop Tarts™ now taste like foie gras to her, though cornflakes apparently remain as bland as ever)

- A large supply of Laudanum painstakingly hoarded from the 19th century medical facilities in which she was imprisoned housed and soon to be available for resale through the Zero Hedge Store (Act now! Supplies are limited!)

- A (hopefully) temporary loss of speech (induced by repeated intubation)

- Advanced, multi-lingual electronic speech synthesizer with integrated wheelchair (one beep for "yes," two beeps for "no")

- Several advance copies of her new book: The Complete Guide to Defrauding ObamaCare (with an introduction by Dick Fuld)

Oh, and

- 12 hours of Radio Zero (brought to you by the complete lack of circadian rhythm long hospital stays apparently induce)

Join us around... well, around now.

Connection details: http://radio.cl.zerohedge.com

Or just connect direct: http://72.13.86.66:8000/listen.pls

Fleckenstein, Roubini, Rogoff, Eichengreen all sound off on the European debacle and more on the big, fat Greek swap.

The topic of Goldman frontrunning clients using its prop desk, which has long bothered Zero Hedge, and which in the past received Goldman's vehement refutation, seems to have resurfaced, and to have proven our initial speculations correct. Jane Lattin, assistant to Thomas Mazarakis, head of fundamental strategies, sent out an email to clients earlier, notifying them that the firm in the past has traded ahead of them in its Fundamental Strategies Group, aka its Prop Trading desk, which is, by definition, frontrunning: "The Fundamental Strategies Group is a group of cross-capital structure desk analysts employed by our Securities Divisions to assist our traders. They develop Trading Ideas in conjunction with traders. We may trade, and may have existing positions, based on Trading Ideas before we have discussed those Trading Ideas with you. We may continue to act on Trading Ideas, and may trade out of any position, based on Trading Ideas, at any time after we have discussed them with you. We will also discuss Trading Ideas with other clients, both before and after we have discussed them with you." This answers our repeated queries from July as to whether Goldman is legally front-running its clients for its own prop positions.

Zero Hedge readers will miss out if they fail to carefully study Matt Taibbi's piece on Fannie, Freddie, and the mortgage bubble (as well as a number of other tangential but critically important topics).  Mr. Taibbi makes much of being delicate with me over what he sees as our disagreement on the issues, but I think he mistakes a few (and generally minor) differences in our conclusions for a real divide on the facts.  We are, as near as I can tell, in pretty violent agreement on the substance of the argument: The present exploding bubble is the result of mis and malfeasance on all sides.

Marla S. did a piece today about the Agencies that got me thinking. The story of the Battle Ship USS Fannie Mac and the terrible accident that occurred.

As you may or may not know, Zero Hedge is in the process of developing a number of premium offerings for 2010. One of these is "Cf., The Journal of Irreverent Attacks on Conventional Wisdom, Entrenched Dogma and Sacred Cows." For your reading pleasure, and to act as a preview of premium things to come, we attach Volume I, Issue I entitled "The Dionysian Rites of Henry Kissinger's CIA and the Iranian Revolution of 2010."

Like a buzzing mosquito inside the netting over your bed, wings on the heavy Mustique air, humming a small pinhole of bright light through the dark veil of your dreams of unbridled success, we have been annoyed by the constant propensity of even learned economists to measure the performance of equity markets in nominal terms. "Worst decade for stocks since [horrific period marker]!" is only the most egregious (not necessarily the most common) offender in this respect. In truth, we have long failed to see the logic of measuring performance in nominal terms (our sporadic gold denominated S&P 500 posts are a good example).

In the wake of the crumbling of certain sandcastles in the sky, sovereign wealth funds in the middle east have baited our analytic gaze over the last month or so. It takes very little, therefore, to prompt us to take careful notice now just about whenever one is mentioned. Today, the Kuwait Investment Authority (hereinafter the "KIA") and its brutal body-blow to Citi demand our attention.

Perhaps you might not expect to find much interesting in data published by the Central Bank of Iraq.  In fact, it is a treasure trove of interesting mysteries right smack in the middle of the nexus between international economic relations and nation building.  For example: Between October 22nd and October 29th of this year Iraq's central bank appears to have acquired IQD 1.874 trillion ($1.6 billion) in "Gold and SDRs," adding to their existing stash of IQD 726 billion (or about $620.5 million).  This wouldn't normally be unusual.  SDR's are often the unit of choice for countries accepting loans from the IMF, for example.  But after just a little bit of digging, one thing seems pretty apparent: they ain't SDRs.  Around this time gold peaked at $1061 an ounce.  If it was, in fact, gold that Iraq bought, that's around 1.5 million ounces (or more depending on the actual clearing price).

In light of an especially noteworthy Full Moon, both gold bugs and those who are particularly 'in tune' with the waves of collective social mood (akin to social tuning forks) ought to remain extra cranky for an additional few days. 02:28:xx, Wednesday morning (12.2.09), marked a Full Moon; we at Fibozachi always reference time in EST, which is universal 'market time' while everything else is just ‘noise,’ though apparently there is something other than just dead 401(k) money scattered across mutual fund sub-accounts domiciled in Manhattan/ Boston (equities), Chicago (commodities) and Newport Beach (bonds).

Buried in the depths of page 26 of the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program's (SIGTARP's) November 17, 2009 report "Factors Affecting Efforts to Limit Payments to AIG Counterparties" hidden in footnotes 33 and 34 is something of a mystery. It might be the beginning of an interconnected financial chain involving Dubai, the Federal Reserve, AIG, Basel I, Eastern Europe and even Switzerland and which, even if it doesn't worry you, probably should. Or it might be nothing at all.