Gross Domestic Product

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As anyone who has ever traded CDS (or any other OTC, non-exchange traded product) knows, when you have a short risk position, unless compliance tells you to and they rarely do as they have no idea what CDS is most of the time, you always mark the EOD price at the offer, and vice versa, on long risk positions, you always use the bid. That way the P&L always looks better. And for portfolios in which the DV01 is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (or much, much more if your name was Bruno Iksil), marking at either side of an illiquid market can result in tens if not hundreds of millions of unrealistic profits booked in advance, simply to make one's book look better, mostly for year end bonus purposes. Apparently JPM's soon to be fired Bruno Iksil was no stranger to this: as Bloomberg reports, JPM's CIO unit "was valuing some of its trades at  prices that differed from those of its investment bank, according to people familiar with the matter. The discrepancy between prices used by the chief investment office and JPMorgan’s credit-swaps dealer, the biggest in the U.S., may have obscured by hundreds of millions of dollars the magnitude of the loss before it was disclosed May 10, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to discuss the matter. "I’ve never run into anything like that,” said Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.’s Brad Hintz in New York. “That’s why you have a centralized accounting group that’s comparing marks” between different parts of the bank “to make sure you don’t have any outliers” .... Jamie Dimon's "tempest in a teapot" just became a fully-formed, perfect storm which suddenly threatens his very position, and could potentially lead to billions more in losses for his firm.

Last time we looked at Denmark it it was in the context of Luxor Capital which had some very ugly things to say about the Scandinavian country in "Rotten Contagion To Make Landfall In Denmark: CDS Set To Soar As Hedge Funds Target Country." Now, 6 months later, Moody's has finally gotten the memo: "Moody's Investors Service has today downgraded the ratings for nine Danish financial institutions and for one foreign subsidiary of a Danish group by one to three notches. The short-term ratings declined by one notch for six of these institutions. The rating outlooks for five banks affected by today's rating actions are stable, whereas the rating outlooks for two banks and for all three specialised lenders affected by today's rating actions are negative  The magnitude of some of today's downgrades reflects a range of concerns, including the risk that some institutions' concentrated loan books deteriorate amidst difficult domestic and European conditions, with adverse consequences on their ability to refinance maturing debt. The latter concern is exacerbated by structural changes in the terms of Danish covered bonds and the mix of underlying assets that lead to increased refinancing risk. While Moody's central scenario remains that financial institutions show some resilience to what will likely be a prolonged difficult environment - and the revised rating levels for most Danish financial institutions continue to reflect low risks to creditors - today's rating actions reflect the view that these risks have increased."

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The US may be closed today but Europe sure is open. And while the general sentiment may be one of modest optimism in light of four highly meaningless Greek polls which fluctuate with a ferocious error rate on a daily basis, now showing New Democracy in the lead (and soon to show something totally different - after all Syriza had a 4 point leads as recently as Friday according to one of the polls), pushing equity futures higher, Spain has so far failed to benefit from either this transitory spike in optimism driven by record number of EUR shorts forced to cover (more below), with its yields touching a fresh record overnight, the 10 year hitting 6.50% and 450 bps in the spread to bunds, while re-re-nationalized Bankia, now with explicit ECB support plunging nearly 30% only to make up some of the losses and trade down 20% at last check. An earlier 2 year bond auction out of Italy did not help: the country raised the maximum €3.5 billion in zero coupon bonds, however the OID was high enough to send the yield soaring to 4.037% average compared to 3.355% just a month ago, while the Bid to Cover dropped from 1.80 to 1.66. In summary: Europe is walking on the edge right now, and the only thing preventing it from imploding this morning is some short covering as well as a furious statement out of Germany, which has to understand that its precious ECB is now directly funding nationalized banks: something Merkel and BUBA's Weidmann have said in the past is dealbreaker.

Whether it was Captain America's roadshow or Uncle-Sam 'wanting' your help, the US always seemed to maintain some semblance of class when propagandizing its citizens into buying its government bonds. Whether for patriotic or xenophobic reasons, it appeared to work. Japan, though, with its increasingly desperate demographic situation, deficits, downgrades, and well, general malaise of Koo/Keynesian-stuffed economic stagnation has turned to the next best thing - the all-girl band AKB48. As The Telegraph notes today, the all-female pop group will headline a summer campaign for "reconstruction bonds" aimed at financing projects in regions hammered by last year's quake-tsunami disaster. The debt campaign will see AKB48 - comprising about 90 performers, ranging in age from early teens to mid-20s - joined by sumo wrestling's champion Hakuho and female football star Homare Sawa, Japan's Jiji press agency reported. The group's bubblegum pop and synchronized dancing has proved a huge hit with young girls. Perhaps more disturbingly (and why Japan chose them maybe?) - running the gamut from girl-next-door to sultry temptress, the band also has a substantial male following - many of whom are older - who support a vast merchandising industry. Japan has the industrialized world's worst public debt, amounting to more than twice its gross domestic product - topping hard-hit eurozone countries including Greece, which have drawn fire from foreign investors over their fiscal management. All of this makes us wonder - Forget AKB48, how long until AK47 in musical, or primarily otherwise, format is used to encourage lending to sovereigns all around the "developed" world?

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Just when we though that nobody would take advantage of the cover provided by the epic flame out of the FaceBomb IPO and the ongoing market crash, here comes Spain. Because there is nothing quite like a little Friday night action following a market drubbing and an "IPO for the people" shock in which to sneak the news that, oops, sorry, we were lying about all that austerity. Because while it came as a surprise to the market back in December when Spain announced it would post a 2011 budget deficit of 8.5% instead of the previously promised 6%, the market will hardly be impressed that Spain actually overspent by another €4.2 billion, to a brand new total of €95.5 billion of 8.9% of GDP. So Monday now has two things to look forward to: the Spanish bond margin hike on one hand courtesy of LCH.Clearnet earlier, and the fact that despite spending even more than expected, GDP growth has disappointed and the country is now officially in a double dip. Hardly what the country with the record wide CDS needs right now.

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There was little good news out of Europe overnight, when several key countries (Germany, France, Greece and Portugal) reported their Q1 GDP, but what good news did come, namely that Germany avoided a double dip, with Q1 GDP printing at 0.5% on expectations of a 0.1% move, has for now saved the EURUSD and the futures. Why the growth: according to the German statistics office, net trade drove 1Q growth (thank you weaker EUR); domestic consumption rose in 1Q while investment declined in 1Q. The sellside community was quick: "Germany’s 1Q numbers show how EMU’s biggest economy is weathering debt crisis", Newedge said in a note. Then there was everyone else: Italian GDP contracted by 0.8%, more than consensus of 0.7%, the most in 3 years. Broadly, the Eurozone GDP avoided a technical recession with GDP printing at 0.0% on estimates of -0.2%. But as the PMI vs GDP chart below shows, this razor thin escape will hardly be repeated in Q2. Greek GDP declined by 6.2%, Portugal down by 0.1%, Holland down -0.2%, and so on. The well known split in Europe between Germany and everyone else continues, and just as we pointed out yesterday for the US: any "decoupling" is always temporary, and eventually catches up with the decouplee. Finally, proving that not all is well even in Germany, the ZEW Investor Confidence for May printed at nearly half expectations of 19, or 10.8, and down from 23.4.

Many, if not most, people would agree with the general use of subsidies in a vertical equity fashion, or the efficient redistribution of wealth for a common social purpose: social justice to provide shelter for those who need it. It is subsidies in housing designed to support a political and not a socioeconomic purpose that bother me. Subsidies as they continue to exist in the US in housing follow in this category – much in exclusivity these days to the subsidies in other developed nations the world over, at least in quantifiable terms.

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You may think only European countries have VAT (value-added taxes), but America has one, too--it's just hidden in the sprawling "healthcare" system, i.e. sickcare. A value-added tax (VAT) is a broad-based consumption tax designed to raise tax revenues from across the entire economy. Since it's in everything you buy, you can't escape paying it unless you go to another country without a VAT. While the U.S. doesn't have an official VAT, it has an unofficial one that we all end up paying for indirectly: the 8% difference between what we pay for our bloated, fraud-ridden healthcare system and what our global competitors pay for their universal-care healthcare systems.