Rick Rieder

When Spanish bonds traded at yields above 7% last Summer, the world's central banks went into a whirlwind to proclaim that these levels did not represent reality (in spite of the depression-era style economic data the nation was spewing). Fast forward nine months, the data is worse and getting worserer but yields - through the guiding hand of Draghi, the self-referential buying of domestic banks, and the BoJ's risk-is-no-object reach for anything non-JPY denominated - have crushed to 4.3% pre-crisis levels. Meanwhile, a few thousand miles south, the nation of Rwanda is issuing its first international debt today at a 7% yield (to the Japanese we are sure) as over 90% of the world's sovereign bond markets are at or near all-time low yields. But, the smart money is leaving, as PIMCO notes, "this central bank-inspired rally has made the markets expensive... relative to fundamentals"

It has been well known for years that PIMCO's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Gross, the original bond king in charge of Allianz' $1+ trillion bond portfolio, has been a vocal critic of QE even in the face of his daily tweet barrage, which often recommends positions in complete contradiction to what said king opined on in his expansive monthly essays. What will come a great surprise, however, is that the "other" fund, which is just as big, is run by Wall Street's shadow king Larry Fink, and which has been advocating to go all in stocks for over a year (preferably using ETFs) interim drawdowns be damned (after all everyone by now should have an infinite balance sheet) - BlackRock - just went all out against QE.  As the FT reports, BlackRock's fixed income guru, formerly at Lehman Brothers, Rick Reider, "has called on the Federal Reserve to rein in its programme of quantitative easing, saying its bond-buying tactics are a “large and dull hammer” that have distorted markets and risk stoking inflation." Why, it is almost as if we wrote that... Oh wait, we did. Back in 2009.

Curious how in the New Normal a nation is brought to its untimely end without a single shot being fired? Dimos Dimosthenous, who has worked at the Bank of Cyprus for over 30 years, explains:

"That will be the end. Our jobs, our rights, our welfare funds will be lost and Cyprus will be destroyed."

In short: not with a bang, but a bailout.

Austerity is coming our way, it's just a matter in what manner and by how much, and whether it becomes an orderly or disorderly process. The fiscal cliff is really a bit of a ruse in that respect, but the key here is that years of fiscal profligacy is coming to an end and the Fed at this point, having used its bazookas, is now down to firecrackers. The economic outlook as such is completely muddled and along with that the prospect for any turnaround in corporate earnings... Once we get past the Fiscal Cliff we will confront the inherent inability of the Democrats and the GOP to embark on any grand bargain to blaze the trail for true fiscal reforms. The U.S. has not had a rewrite of its tax code since 1986, which was the year Microsoft went public and a decade prior to Al Gore's invention of the Internet. The tax system is massively inefficient and leads to a gross misallocation of resources that impedes economic progress — rewarding conspicuous consumption at the expense of savings and investment. It is the lingering uncertainty over the road to meaningful fiscal reform that is really the mot cause of the angst — the fiscal cliff is really a side show because who doesn't know that we are going to have a Khrushchev moment?

Earlier we asked some simple questions regarding BlackRock's sovereign debt exposure. Multi-trillion asset manager BlackRock responds:

• BLACKROCK RESPONDS TO QUESTIONS ON ITALIAN DEBT HOLDINGS
• BLACKROCK COMFORTABLE WITH INTERMEDIATE ITALIAN BONDS
• BLACKROCK ENCOURAGED POLICY MAKERS ADDRESSING CHALLENGES
• BLACKROCK CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER RIEDER COMMENTS IN A NOTE

Hopefully this response will satisfy the market and make it comfortable with BlackRock as an intermediate-term going concern. Then again clarifications such as this one by other Blackrock professionals, namely that the market is wrong, probably will not help:

• BLACKROCK'S ROVELLI: ITALY SPREADS DON'T REFLECT FUNDAMENTALS

So, what happens if the spreads do reflect fundamentals? Will Blackrock apply Mark to Market to its Italian holdings? And perhaps BLK can follow in Jefferies' footsteps and be so kind to break down it gross and net exposure for all to see? After all, there is nothing to hide among its "nominal exposures."

We repost this Monday article simply because it is now more topical than ever following today's 10-sigma cataclysm in Italian bonds, and again we ask: when will the market ask what Blackrock's gross or net Italian exposure is?

Why? Primarily because of this innocent statement by former R3 scion and former Lehmanite Rick Rieder, currently employed by the firm that ostensibly has more clout than even Goldman Sachs: BlackRock. From October 21 "BlackRock Inc. Chief Investment Officer Rick Rieder said the world’s biggest money manager remains a buyer of Italian government debt as European policy makers gather to address the region’s sovereign debt crisis. "Italy is attractive,” Rieder said during an interview on “InBusiness With Margaret Brennan” on Bloomberg Television. “As long as we are moving toward solutions, we think Italy is very reasonable at these levels. BlackRock, which manages about $3.66 trillion in assets, has also been buying debt issued by financial firms and high- yield bonds, Rieder said. As with the Italian bonds BlackRock has bought, the financial debt will benefit “as soon as you see stability,” Rieder said." Uh, Rick, you are marking to market right? Because Your P&L would be a 100% correlation to the following chart, which shows BTP prices since October 21.

Bloomberg reports that Larry Fink's BlackRock has taken over R3 Capital Management, a $1.5 billion credit hedge fund started by ex-Lehman corporate bond trading desk head Rick Rieder.