Nationalization

The surge in the U.S. money supply in recent years has sent gold into a series of new record nominal highs.  Money supply surged again in 2011 sending gold to new record nominal highs. Money supply has grown again, by more than 35% on an annualized basis, and this is contributing to gold’s consolidation and strong gains in January.  The Federal Reserve's latest weekly money supply report from last Thursday shows seasonally adjusted M1 rose $13.2 billion to $2.233 trillion, while M2 rose $4.5 billion to $9.768 trillion.

Gold has followed the now familiar trading pattern of gains in Asia followed by weakness in Europe. While gold has fallen and is weaker in most currencies gold remains higher in euro terms due to euro weakness on the concern of a Greek default. Spot gold bounced back in Asian trading Monday as investors snatched up bargains after a 2% dip the previous session.  The Greek debt debacle is still supporting the price as a deal remains elusive. There continue to be concerns of a “Lehman moment” but markets remain fairly sanguine of a positive outcome despite the continual risk of a Greek default.  Gold remains an essential diversification as central banks keep money loose with record low interest rates and Asian powerhouses China and India still drive demand.  Silver has also fallen this morning. Barclays Capital, who have been quite bearish on silver in recent years, say that they are “expecting prices to rise in the next few sessions, along with gold, pegging silver's next resistance level at $35.70/oz and support near $33/oz.”

Quick, what country is the economic engine that will power world growth? If you answered "China," you're far from alone. But there's another country that deserves as much attention and better yet, is much friendlier to investment: India, home to 1.2 billion people. To electrify all those houses, power the industries that keep all those people employed, and fuel the vehicles that more and more Indians own, India's energy needs are shooting skyward. First question to consider: what kind of energy does India need? Just about every kind, really. India encompasses significant reserves of coal, oil, and gas, but each year it has to import more and more to meet its rapidly rising demand. Domestic production increases have been hampered by land disputes, interminably slow permitting, and government-regulated pricing mechanisms that discourage development. That's got to change if India wants to keep up, and its government knows it. Domestic supplies always come with better reliability, better prices, and other benefits that we can shorten into two words: energy security. So India is reaching out to foreign oil majors, quietly setting up deals to exchange stakes in giant, underexplored oil and gas fields for the technical expertise it needs to best develop these resources. These partnerships are working into place slowly. However, they show Delhi is serious about the welcome mat it rolled out in 2000, when it passed a policy that allows foreign companies to own 100% of any oil and gas assets they may want to acquire for exploration and development. And what we really like is that explorers are welcome in a democratic and reasonably friendly country that harbors none of the risk of asset nationalization that clings to other underexplored locales, like Venezuela.

That Commerzbank, effectively Germany most insolvent lender (after the bank that shall not be named because if it falls, so goes Europe) and the first international bank scrambling to demand Discount Window cash from the Fed not in 2008 but all the way back in 2007, is broke is no secret. The only question was when will the bank which is a pseudo-TBTF, be nationalized. According to Der Spiegel the time is rapidly approaching. Specifically, "Germany's government is preparing plans for a potential nationalization of Commerzbank AG, in case the Frankfurt-based lender isn't able to raise additionally needed capital, German magazine Der Spiegel reports Sunday, citing government sources. Germany will reactivate its bank bailout fund, SoFFin, to acquire additional shares in Commerzbank if the bank hasn't raised necessary capital by next summer, according to the report. Germany already took around a 25% stake in Commerzbank to keep it afloat during the financial crisis following its acquisition of Dresdner Bank. According to the report, it is assumed that the majority of new shares would fall to the government in the event of a capital increase for Commerzbank. Germany has ruled out taking over Commerzbank's Eurohypo public finance unit, which it is required to sell to fulfill a European Union restructuring mandate tied to its use of state aid, according to the report." And so the world's most undercapitalized banks as so often demonstrated by Zero Hedge continue dropping like domino. Below we recreate the most recent list of Tier 1 casualties (seen most recently when exposing Credit Agricole as one of Europe's most dire casualties of a USD funding shortage), or banks that have the lowest capitalization, and thus highest leverage ratios in the world. If we were betting people, we would say that Deutsche Bank (and Postbank), Credit Suisses and BNP may well be next...

As Peter Tchir, of TF Market Advisors,  observes in the note below, the inevitable as predicted by us a week ago, is about to become a reality. In light of the imminent nationalization of Belgium's biggest bank, it may be time to compress the CDS of Dexia, which also as suggested last week, should trade in line with Belgium, while Belgium itself blows up. The only risk to this trade is that ISDA actually does its job for once, and proclaims Dexia to have experienced a credit event - thus triggering the CDS. Alas, since this will set a very bad precedent for all the other banks due to be nationalized, we would tend to discount the possibility of this happening.

There are three phrases the market never wants to hear. Ever. They are "contingency", "just in case", and "only." Alas, it just got all three of them in an article just released by French Le Figaro which, per Bloomberg, has disclosed that "France has been working for a number of days on a plan that would allow the state to take a stake in the country’s financial institutions if needed, Le Figaro reports, citing a source. The plan, the article continues, is being prepared “just in case” it’s needed and only 2 or 3 banks may be affected under plan." So, let's get this straight: France has scrambled to put together a nationalization plan to bail out just "2 or 3" banks, "if needed"... Uhhh, all we can say to this is, LEEEEEEEROOYYYYYYY JENKINS. Although the person we would most love to hear say it, is the person who until two months ago was the French minister of finance and currently head of the world's most irrelevant and disorganized organization.

On Friday, as pertains to Dexia, a name that suddenly everyone is talking about yet which nobody except for this blog covered back in May, we predicted that "We expect a partial or complete nationalization to be announced imminently, which in addition to all other side effects, would lead in a Bear Stearnsing of all accrued profit." Sure enough overnight we got the following announcement from the French and Belgian Finance ministers: "As part of the restructuring of Dexia, the Belgian and French, in conjunction with central banks will take all necessary measures to ensure the safety of depositors and creditors. To this end, they undertake to guarantee to bring their financing raised by Dexia." Translation: Partial nationalization. And with 5 year CDS ripping in a good 6-8 point upfront, bid at about 26 points at last check, down from 35 on Monday, getting out while the getting was good sure seems like a good idea. Alas, none of this will be any consolation to equity longs, whose value has just dropped over 20%, as this is nothing but a repeat of Bear Stearns. We repeat that at the end of the day, Dexia CDS will trade just wide of Belgian default risk, which we in turn expect to soar in the coming hours.

Back on Friday, when we closed out the Dexia long sub CDS trade, we said "We expect a partial or complete nationalization to be announced imminently, which in addition to all other side effects, would lead in a Bear Stearnsing of all accrued profit." Sure enough, here is the Sunday Times on the very topic... And while a nationalization of Dexia, which now appears a matter of hours if not days, will be bad for anyone still long the bank's CDS (it should trade down to pari with Belgium tomorrow, just as Bear CDS trades in line with JPM), it is pretty horrifying for SovX and Eurocore CDS in general, now that a bank which holds assets amounting to 180% of Belgium's GDP, is about to be nationalized by the very same country. Anyone who is still not long Belgium CDS, this is probably your last chance to get on that particular train. Of course, if one is waiting patiently in line at a Dexia ATM machine, one is forgiven.

Back on May 25, somewhere close to the irrelevant equity market's highs, when once again a little ahead of the market curve we suggested that Dexia would be the bank most impacted by the next round of Greek-induced risk flaring, we were banging the table on a long Dexia CDS SUB position. 5 Year subs were trading at 568 bps then. They are now 31/39 points upfront and every day for Dexia could be its last. Which is precisely why we are closing the trade: should Dexia go under it will drag all of Europe with it. We expect a partial or complete nationalization to be announced imminently, which in addition to all other side effects, would lead in a Bear Stearnsing of all accrued profit. With a 20% recovery rate on the CDS, the P&L on the trade is $3.6MM on $10MM notional. Not bad for a 4 month holding period.

Despite another round of unsubstantiated rumormongering by the FT yesterday (more on this in a second), investors in this morning's critical round of Italian bond issuance were nonplussed and demanded 10 pounds of flash with every bond, which in turn sent 5 year BTP yields to the highest since the introduction of the zEURo. If the purpose of the planted Debtwire/FT story was to make this auction attractive, one can only conclude that it failed. The result is yet another"Europe is Open" type market session, where everything is tumbling on Greek default and contagion fear, further stoked by a front-page WSJ story which says what we have been warning about every single day for the past 3 weeks (those pretty Libor charts that go from the lower left to the upper right are not just there to make the place pretty): namely that banks, in this case French mega institution BNP, no longer have access to dollar funding markets. The result: yet another increase in the actual 3M USD Libor rate, nearly the 40th day in a row, which in turn makes the dollar lock out even more painful. From the WSJ: ""We can no longer borrow dollars. U.S. money-market funds are not lending to us anymore," a bank executive for BNP Paribas, who declines to be named, told me last week. "Since we don't have access to dollars anymore, we're creating a market in euros. This is a first. . . . we hope it will work, otherwise the downward spiral will be hell. We will no longer be trusted at all and no one will lend to us anymore. He's not the only one worried. Société Générale has lost 22.5% of its value since the beginning of the summer. In early September, BNP released a statement—in English, which is highly unusual—explaining that it has abundant dollar liquidity and that BNP has nothing to worry about, unlike other banks. France's three biggest banks have been the subject of whisper campaigns about their solvency throughout the summer." It gets worse: "Now that the situation is bordering on catastrophe, analysts are suggesting that the government is set to start nationalizing France's banks. The banks have remained silent on the matter, and the government denies this talk." Well, whatever good will the FT tried to create with its rumors,the WSJ destroyed with its facts.

Two key factors that appear to be contributing to the rapid move in overnight silver (and subsequent jump to pare half its losses) is i) the fact that Bolivia, despite being in a cash crunch has for the time being yielded to miner demands and has put its nationalization plans (as discussed previously here) on hold, and ii) there has been a dramatic bout of selling coming out of nowhere, despite the PM complex having opened very well bid earlier on, in what appears a coordinate effort to nuke silver exclusively.

Two weeks ago the precious metals space was closely following the fate of Sumitomo's San Cristobal mine, where a long strike had paralyzed work at the world's third largest producer of silver and sixth-largest producer of zinc. While the strike was eventually resolved with concession to the domestic workers, a far more troubling report from Bolivian daily La-Razon states that Bolivia's president Evo Morales is now planning on expropriating zinc, silver and tin mines sold off by previous governments. Bloomberg reports that "Morales will announce a decree May 1 to “dismantle the privatization model,” said Nicolas Fernandez, a spokesman for state mining company Corp. Minera de Bolivia, known as Comibol. "The government is recovering all the privatized companies,” Fernandez said today in a telephone interview from La Paz. “When the decision is taken, Comibol will be ready to manage these mines.”" Among the contracts to be affected are those with Glencore International AG, Pan American Silver Corp., and most importantly, Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp., which is operator of the San Bartolome mine: the world's largest pure silver mine. Notably San Bartolome and Sumitomo's San Cristobal "account for about 83% of the nearly 1.1M tons of fine silver Bolivia produced in 2009, according to Mining Ministry data" according to The Gold Report. If indeed this news is proven true, and we will know for sure in 16 days, looks for the price of silver to spike considering about 1.33 million kilograms of silver was produced in Bolivia 2009, according to the U.S. Geological Survey: an amount which will likely fall off a cliff following the utter chaos that is unexpected nationalization.

As reported earlier on Zero Hedge, the next step for TEPCO is most likely nationalization. While this is likely great for bondholders (if an American bailout model is consumed where there is no creditor impairment), it is not that hot for shareholders, who may lose most/all of their investment. Not surprisingly, we have just heard from Reuters that TEPCO shares are now suspended following the earlier nationalization reports: "Tokyo Electric shares were untraded due to a glut
of sell orders at 626 yen, down 10 percent from Monday's close. The
stock has lost 70 percent since the earthquake and tsunami." And so, the rules change in the middle of the game once again. Only this time it was visible from a mile away. In the meantime, those who are long TEPCO puts may experience a Chinese reverse-merger fraud moment, as the stock gets a T-12 halt and reopens sometime in 3 years on the Pink Sheets. And, incidentally, those who are long are some of the biggest financial entities in Japan including  Dai Ichi Life Insurance, Nippon Life Insurance, Tokyo Metropolitan, Mizuho, Sumitomo, Bank of Tokyo.

Update: first market post news: 300-350; 100 bps tighter.

Per Yomiuri, TEPCO may be up for nationalization, precisely as we had predicted, due to the insurmountable amount of accrued liabilities from the Fukushima disaster which would bury a standalone company. And just as we rode the CDS on the way up from 90 to 460, so now is the time to assume there will be no credit risk whatsoever, now that TEPCO is the first ever non-bank Japanese TBTF. Time to bail as central planning is about to branch out.

During the live hearing, Bill Gross stated the obvious: private players in the MBS space will never participate as long as long as the government accepts zero down payments. Of course, he is absolutely correct - the only entity stupid enough to gamble with its seemingly endless resources in such a manner is the US government. And in doing so, it continues to widen the schism between public and private interests, and makes the return of private businesses in this most important segment of US credit markets an impossibility. In fact, Gross urged a move one step further, with the full nationalization of the GSEs - as the GSEs are nationalized now in all but writing, this would be logical. Alas, the fact that US Debt to GDP would jump from 90% to 140% may make this proposal a little difficult to implement.