Wells Fargo

I have to hand it to the Central Planners.  They are good.  Really, really good.  Of course, they are battling a crippled opponent considering so much of America consists of lobotomized sheeple, but nevertheless to be able to steal so much from many people with such blatant and simplistic methods and not be widely discovered is an act of devious brilliance.  The reason I say this now is because ever since last fall TPTB have changed tactics and totally taken over the markets and with it shoved many people into what is best described as a trance.  The people know something is very wrong.  They know they are getting poorer; that life is getting harder, yet the television and the markets have cloaked a blanket of sedation upon their minds.

When they see you as a chicken breast, you know your vote matters little and your life even less.

Overall, EverBank is showing good current performance, but some of the asset quality factors and trends that I see are of concern for the future.

Size of Banks Killing Economy … But Giant Banks Have Only Gotten Bigger Since Financial “Reform” Enacted

All you need to read and more.

The extent of Obama’s duplicity continues to grow apace. And yes — it’s duplicity. If you can’t or won’t fulfil a promise, don’t make it. From Bloomberg: "Two years after President Barack Obama vowed to eliminate the danger of financial institutions becoming “too big to fail,” the nation’s largest banks are bigger than they were before the credit crisis." And the hilarious (or perhaps soul-destroying) thing? The size of the banks isn’t even the major issue. AIG didn’t have to be bailed out because of its size; AIG was bailed out because of its interconnectivity. If AIG went down, it would have taken down assets on balance sheets of a great deal more firms, thus perhaps triggering even more failures. So the issue is not size, but systemic interconnectivity. And yes — that too is rising, measured in terms of gross OTC derivatives exposure, as well as the size of the shadow banking system (i.e. pseudo-money created not by lending but by securitisation) — which sits, slumbering, a $35 trillion wall of inflationary liquidity ready to crash down on the global dollar economy.

Of the twenty-five largest banks in the world there is only one that does not need to raise additional capital to de-lever to a 20x leverage and a 5% of Tangible Capital Ratio and that is Citigroup which has a current leverage of just 13 times and I also point out that Wells Fargo with a 14 times leverage needs a minor amount of capital to accomplish these goals. At the far other end of this scale is Deutsche Bank which is levered 62 times and would need a massive amount of new capital and tremendous shrinkage to accomplish these goals. The assets of DB are also equivalent to the entire GDP of Germany so that the bank could devour the country if Deutsche Bank were to hit the wall. Then the most leverage can be found at Credit Agricole at 66 times which would also swamp France, given its size, if asset values continue to decline or if Spain or Italy need to be bailed out and the contagion worsens.

While equity trading last March trading was affected by the excess volatility arising from the Fukushima explosions a year earlier, and the Japan earthquake induced volatility in general, today's monthly volume update by the NYSE shows that no matter what the reason for the volume collapse, toplines for banks and traders will suffer, on both a Y/Y as well as sequential basis. Per the NYSE: "European and U.S. Cash ADV Down 13% and 24% Year-over-Year.... NYSE Euronext European cash products ADV of 1.6 million transactions in March 2012 decreased 12.7% compared to March 2011, but increased 0.5% compared to February 2012. NYSE Euronext U.S. cash products handled ADV in March 2012 decreased 23.6% to 1.8 billion shares compared to March 2011 and decreased 0.6% from February 2012." An even bigger year-over-year collapse took place in the one product which everyone thinks is taking the place of individual stock trading: the synthetic CDOs known as ETFs: "NYSE Euronext U.S. matched exchange-traded funds ADV (included in volumes for Tape B and Tape C) of 222 million shares in March 2012 decreased 29.3% compared to March 2011, but increased 4.1% compared to February 2012. In the first quarter of 2012, NYSE Euronext U.S. matched exchange-traded funds ADV of 221 million shares was 21.8% below prior year levels." The YoY collapse in trading volumes for derivatives was less compared to cash, but the sequential drop from February 2012 was even more pronounced: "NYSE Euronext global derivatives ADV in March 2012 of 8.1 million contracts decreased 11.5% compared to March 2011 and decreased 15.4% from February 2012 levels." We can only hope that banks have found some innovative ways of compensating for this collapse in overall market participation, such as traditional revenue pathways like underwriting and advisory fees, as well as lending and arbing the carry trade. Alas, as the following Bloomberg piece points out, this will hardly be the case, as Zero Hedge has warned previously.

So far futures are broadly unchanged, following the release of a Chinese trade report which while showing a resumption in the trade surplus, on expectations of further trade deficit in March, showed it was primarily due to a slide in imports, not so much a rise up in exports, a fact which impacted the Aussie dollar subsequently. We already noted that in conjunction with the BOJ, this means that Asia's central banks will likely hold off on further easing, and defer to the Chairman, especially with food inflation in China still prevalent. Aside from that the traditional European weakness is back, where April Sentic Investors Confidence slid to -14.7 on expectations of -9.1: to be expected from a meaningless market-coincident indicator. Keep a close eye on PIIGS bonds where whack a mole is now firmly back as the LTRO benefit is long forgotten, 3 month half life and all that.

With the story of Bruno Iksil refusing to be swept under the rug (for now), we had the urge to show just how his position stacks up in comparison to the CDS holdings for all the bank holding companies tracked by the Office of the Currency Comptroller. Recall: "Iksil may have built a position totaling as much as $100 billion in contracts in one index, according to the market participants, who said they based their estimates on the trades and price movements they witnessed as well as their understanding of the size and structure of the markets." We used a log scale index although even in simple linear terms the story is quite straightforward: we are not sure what is worse - that one trader may have amassed a CDS position (with an associated VaR that is in the billions) which is greater than the combined holdings of all except for 6 banks (and is greater than the combined CDS exposure of a Wells Fargo among others), or that the top 5 banks together account for 96.5% of all CDS holdings? One thing we are certain of, is that JPMorgan's $71 trillion in assorted derivatives is all purely for hedging purposes. After all Dick Bove just said so.

Unfortunately, nobody in the Treasury seems to want to deal with the mess at Ally Financial before Election Day.  But the question is whether Ally can wait until then.

Back in 2006, contrary to conventional wisdom, many financial professionals were well aware of the subprime bubble, and that the trajectory of home prices was unsustainable. However, because there was no way to know just when it would pop, few if any dared to bet against the herd (those who did, and did so early despite all odds, made greater than 100-1 returns). Fast forward to today, when the most comparable to subprime, cheap credit-induced bubble, is that of student loans (for extended literature on why the non-dischargeable student loan bubble will "create a generation of wage slavery" read this and much of the easily accessible literature on the topic elsewhere) which have now surpassed $1 trillion in notional. Yet oddly enough, just like in the case of the subprime bubble, so in the ongoing expansion of the credit bubble manifested in this case by student loans, we have an early warning that the party is almost over, coming from the most unexpected of sources: JPMorgan.

When Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf sleeps, he dreams -- like all good bankers -- about numbers.  He probably doesn't dream about the number 600 -- the number of foreclosure packages signed each day by his robosigners.  He probably doesn't dream about 14,420 -- the number of conveyance claims fraudulently submitted to HUD in exchange for $1.7 billion from the FHA [Inspector General report.] And, he almost certainly doesn't dream about his share of laughably small $25 billion penalty he and his fellow bankers might pay to slough off legal liability for the millions of Americans they've helped make homeless (don't know why they're bellyaching...they're all getting $2,000!) No, I imagine the number he fixates on is 35 -- the third rail around which his stock seems to go into spasms every time it gets close.   I'm exaggerating, of course; it's only happened three of the last four times since November 2007.  The other time, in September '08, the stock soared right through 35 to nearly 45 -- before plunging to 7.80 six months later. Stumpf might be dreaming about 35 a lot this week, as the stock's edging toward that buzzing rail yet again.  And, darn it, did the SEC have to pick this week to file that subpoena to compel him to hand over the documents he promised in regards to a $60 billion fraud investigation?  Now, with earnings coming up in a couple of weeks?

That idiocy is job requirement for the bulk of sell-side "bankers" has long been known. That Bloomberg wishes to glorify it by making Wells Fargo's prediction of S&P 3700 by 2022 its "chart of the day", however, is absolutely ridiculous, and certainly qualifies for the WTF moment of the day.

Reflections from the top.