Bank of England

• More black smoke over Vatican: No decision on pope in second day (NBC)
• PBOC Chief Says China Should Be on ‘High Alert’ on Inflation (BBG) - just as predicted last fall
• California Seizes Guns as Owners Lose Right to Keep Arms (BBG)
• U.S. Tax Cheats Picked Off After Adviser Mails It In (BBG)
• In 2012, Samsung spent $401 million advertising its phones in the U.S. to Apple's $333 million (WSJ)
• Coca-Cola probed over mapping in China (FT) - accused of ‘illegally collecting classified information’
• Italy's Bond Sale Meets Tepid Demand (WSJ)
• U.S. Steps Up Alarm Over Cyberattacks (WSJ)
• Mugabe takes on Zimbabwe's Generation X (Reuters)
• Mars Rover Finds Conditions Once May Have Supported Life (BBG)
• Oil demand hit by China refinery outages (FT)
• Big Sugar Is Set for a Sweet Bailout (WSJ) DOA to buy 400,000 tons of sugar to stave off a wave of defaults by sugar processors
• Spectre of stagflation haunts UK (FT)
• As Republicans seek identity, conclave highlights divisions (Reuters)

Some have attributed the resurrection of the financial markets (or more appropriately the banks) from the March 2009 lows to the IASB/FASB changes to factual to fantasy accounting. The Telegraph reports today that from PIRC's and the Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee that while banker bonuses continue to rise (for now), 'hidden' losses among UK banks could total GBP60 Billion (USD 90 Billion). HSBC topped the list with GBP10.4 Billion in bad debts that have yet to be written off and while the 'accounting' bodies are suggesting they will address criticism of this farce, as one analyst notes, they "can still make unprofitable lending appear profitable." Regulators expect to hear plans from lenders on how they intend to fill these holes before the end of the month to coincide either with the FPC’s meeting on March 19 or a statement scheduled for March 27. While outright recaps are unlikely, banks are expected to restructure and set out plans to raise their capital levels over the next couple of years. More fantasy...

If there is one firm that would know what the arrival of a Goldmanite at the head of the BOE means for the GBP, and specifically EURGBP, it would be Goldman. Moments ago Goldman's Tom Stolper just poured more gas into the EURGBP "parity" fire, sending the EUR spiking. That said, the logical Stolper-contrarians in us say this is precisely the time to fade the relentless move higher in the EURGBP: history is on our side about 93% of the time. After all, Goldman's prop flow desk is now selling the pair to its clients. This is even as we said to short the GBP with both hands and feet in late November when Carney's appointment was announced: a move that has resulted in nearly a +1400 pip gain in the GBPUSD short. Oh well, time to take profits.

With their crackpot monetary ideas, central banks have been robbing Peter to pay Paul without knowing which one was which. And a problem here is this thing behavioral psychologists call self-attribution bias. It describes how when good things happen to people they think it’s because of something they did, but when bad things happen to them they think it’s because of something someone else did....  When we look around we can’t help feeling something similar is happening. The 99% blame the 1%; the 1% blame the 47%. In the aftermath of the Eurozone’s own credit bubbles, the Germans blame the Greeks. The Greeks round on the foreigners. The Catalans blame the Castilians. And as 25% of the Italian electorate vote for a professional comedian whose party slogan “vaff a” means roughly “f**k off ”, the Germans are repatriating their gold from New York and Paris. Meanwhile in China, that centrally planned mother of all credit inflations, popular anger is being directed at Japan, and this is before its own credit bubble chapter has fully played out. (The rising risk of war is something we are increasingly worried about…) Of course, everyone blames the bankers (“those to whom the system brings windfalls… become ‘profiteers’ who are the object of the hatred”).

The World Gold Council noted that central banks increased gold buying 17% to 534.6 tons last year.

Central banks are among the shrewd investors who buy gold bullion on dips. It was reported that South Korea bought 20 tonnes of gold last month rumoured to be below the $1,600/oz mark. This is the first purchase this year for South Korea, after they purchased 30 tonnes in 2012.  Previously they purchased in July 2012 at the same price levels.

• French unemployment rises again to highest since 1999 (Reuters)
• BoJ rejects call for monetary easing (FT)
• North Korea threatens pre-emptive nuclear strike against US (Guardian)
• Firms Race to Raise Cash (WSJ)
• Time Warner Will Split From Magazine Unit in Third Spinoff (BBG) - slideshows, kittens, "all you need to knows" coming to Time
• U.S. economy, world's engine, remains in "neutral": Fed's Fisher (Reuters)
• BOE Keeps QE on Hold as Officials Weigh More Radical Measures (BBG)
• Jobs start to go as US sequestration cuts in (FT)
• BofA Times an Options Trade Well  (WSJ)
• Congress Budget Cuts Damage U.S. Economy Without Aiding Outlook (BBG)
• Dell’s Crafted LBO Pitch Gets Messy as Investors Circle (BBG)
• Dell says Icahn opposes go-private deal (Reuters)
• Portugal Rating Outlook Raised to Stable by S&P on Budget Plan (BBG)
• China’s Richer-Than-Romney Lawmakers Reveal Reform Challenge (BBG)

Bankers have turned the paradigm of monetary truth upside down. People believe in fiat paper & digital money that is counterfeit and have always ended up in massive collapse to their intrinsic value of zero, and have zero belief in real money, like physical gold and silver, that has served civilizations as money and kept price indexes constant and stable for over 5,000 years.

GBPUSD (Cable) just cracked back below 1.50 and is trading at its lowest since July 2010 as The FT reports that it appears George Osborne (British Chancellor) is paving the way for Mark Carney (Bank of England governor) to follow the so-called 'Merkel-Draghi wager' that Europe is dangerously betting on. Instead of following business secretary Vince Cable's proposal of a new program of spending on schools, roads and housing – funded by extra borrowing - Osborne will use his Budget on March 20 to reinforce his message of “fiscal conservatism and monetary activism” by clarifying how the government intends to use monetary policy to get the economy growing again. Treasury officials are discussing proposals to change the remit of the bank - which could include giving the monetary policy committee greater time to bring inflation back to the 2 per cent target, giving the BoE a Federal Reserve-style dual mandate to target both employment and inflation, and even targeting cash spending in the economy rather than inflation. It would appear our short Cable trade continues to do well as Carney's arrival heralds more aggression in the global currency wars.

In official testimony before Congress in December 1912, just three months before his death, J.P. Morgan stated quite plainly: "[Credit] is not the money itself. Money is gold, and nothing else." Of course, this testimony came only 253 days before H.R. 7837, better known as the Federal Reserve Act, was introduced on the floor of Congress. The Federal Reserve Act went on to become law and pave the way for the perpetual fraud of fiat currency which underpins our modern financial system. And if unbacked paper currency isn't bad enough, we award dictatorial control of the money supply to a tiny handful of people, and then simply trust them to be good guys. Owning gold is the same as voting against this system, turning your paper currency into something that they cannot inflate or conjure out of thin air. Yet there's one problem.

Doubleline's Jeff Gundlach must not be a GETCO algo because unlike the algorithmic programs who are all that's left of traders in this policy farce of a manipulated market and who are programmed to BTFD especially when there is a massive stop hunt program about to be unleashed on 10-20 ES contracts, he is not buying stocks. Instead the bond manager has closed his July 2012 call when he called the top in Treasurys, and told Reuters that he has bought "more long-term Treasuries in the last month" than in the last four years." And this coming form the so-called new "bond king." Gundlach said he started buying benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes in the last month after yields popped above 2 percent, because he sees value there relative to other asset classes, including stocks, which he said are "overbought."

In the upcoming week the key focus on the data side will be on US payrolls, which are expected to be broadly unchanged and the services PMIs globally, including the non-manufacturing ISM in the US. Broadly speaking, global services PMIs are expected to remain relatively close to last month's readings. And the same is true for US payrolls and the unemployment rate. On the policy side there is long lost with policy meetings but we and consensus expect no change in any of these: RBA, BoJ, Malaysia, Indonesia, ECB, Poland, BoE, BoC, Brazil, Mexico.  Notable macro issues will be the ongoing bailout of Cyprus, the reiteration of the OMT's conditionality in the aftermath of Grillo's and Berlusconi's surge from behind in Italy. China's sudden hawkishness, the BOE announcement and transition to a Goldman vassal state, and finally the now traditional daily jawboning out of the BOJ.

No, American Banks DON'T Need to Be Big to Compete with Bigger Foreign Rivals

• Wal-Mart's Sales Problem—And America's (WSJ)
• Investors fret that Italy may undermine ECB backstop (Reuters)
• Monti Government Mulls Delaying Monte Paschi Bailout (BBG)
• Norway Faces Liquidity Shock in Record Redemption (BBG)
• ECB's Praet Says Accommodative Policy Could Lose Effectiveness (BBG)
• EU Chiefs Tell Italy There’s No Alternative to Austerity (BBG)
• New Spate of Acrimony in congress As Cuts Loom (WSJ)
• BOE's Tucker hints at radical growth moves (FT)
• Kuroda Seen Getting DPJ Vote for BOJ, Iwata May Be Opposed (BBG)
• Russian Banks Look to Yuan Bond Market (WSJ)
• Dagong warns about rising debt (China Daily)
• Italy Election Impasse Negative for Credit Rating, Moody’s Says (BBG)

In many Western industrialized nations, debt has overwhelmed or is about to overwhelm the economy's debt-servicing capacity. In the run-up to a debt crisis, bad debt tends to move to the next higher level and may ultimately accumulate in the central bank's balance sheet, provided the economy has its own currency. Many observers assume that, once bad debt is purchased by the central bank, the debt crisis is solved for good; that central banks have unlimited wealth at their disposal, or can print unlimited wealth into existence.

However, central banks can only create liquidity, not wealth. If printing money were equivalent to creating wealth, then mankind would not have to get up early on Monday morning. Only a solvent central bank can halt hyperinflation. The longer governments run large deficits, the longer central banks continue to monetize them, and the longer their balance sheets grow, the higher the potential for enormous losses and thus hyperinflation.

Necessary preconditions for hyperinflation are a quasi-bankrupt government whose debt is monetized by a central bank with insufficient assets. One way or another, owning physical gold is the safest and most effective way of insuring against hyperinflation.

Traders read the headlines. They know how the price “should” react to news, and they begin buying. For a while, the prophecy fulfills itself. But then what happens next? It may take an hour or a month, but sooner or later some of the new buyers begin to sell.

Speculators can drive the price quite far in either direction, in the short term. But it is the hoarders and arbitrageurs who drive the price in the long term.