Testimony

We said to expect nothing from the Chairman today. We were right (and those "strategists" who said to look for a negative IOER announcement were dead wrong). And now, here is Goldman with its Humphrey Hawkins post-mortem.

Ben Bernanke will deliver the semiannual report on monetary policy to the Senate Banking Committee Tuesday. The market is hoping and praying that the Chairsatan will make it rain. He won't. In fact, as explained earlier, it is likely that Ben will say absolutely nothing of significance today and in a world in which only the H.4.1 matters, this is not going to be taken well by the market. Of course, if Benny does crack and promises to push the S&P to 1450 just in time for the re-election, all bets are off.

• Lieborgate fallout: Bank of England Governor Sir Mervyn King faces MPs (Telegraph)
• Yahoo's brand new CEO to seek maternity leave shortly (NYT)
• China’s Foreign Investment Drops 6.9% In June (Bloomberg)
• Falling property investment drives China H1 FDI drop (Reuters)
• German Court Delays Ruling on Fund (WSJ)
• Fed's George Says U.S. Growth May Not Exceed 2% in 2012 (Bloomberg)
• China Echoes 2009 Stimulus Planned Railway Spending Boost (Bloomberg)
• ZEW: Investor Outlook For German Econ At Six-Month Low (MNI)
• Fed Shifts Focus To Jobs As Unemployment Stalls Above 8% (Bloomberg)
• Goldman Builds Private Bank (WSJ) - lock in those deposits asap
• UniCredit, Intesa Among 13 Italian Banks Cut By Moody’s (Bloomberg)

When it comes to insight into what is on Ben Bernanke, nobody is quite as capable as the firm that runs not only the NY Fed, but virtually every other central bank in the world: Goldman Sachs. Below we present Jan Hatzius' thoughts on what to expect when Bernanke takes the stand at 10 am today when he delivers the first day of his semi-annual Humphrey Hawkins presentation to Congress. Many expect him to hint at more QE, and lately a tempest in a teapot (to use the parlance of our times) has erupted over the possibility that the Fed will lower IOER to 0 or even negative. Here is what Goldman has to say about that: "we do not expect an IOER cut at this time." In fact, Goldman is rather skeptical Bernanke will hit at much if anything, especially with bond yields already at record lows: after all, how much more frontrunning of the Fed's bond or MBS purchases is there? Instead look for much more grilling on the Fed's role in Lieborgate: congress is now realizing it is woefully behind its UK political cousins when it comes to reaping points from years of global Libor manipulation. More importantly, Maxine et al have finally finished all those "Libor for absolute corrupt idiots" books they ordered almost a month ago so they are truly prepared.

Just because there is already an overflow of confidence in the financial system, here comes the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee On Investigations with a 340 page report detailing how HSBC "exposed the U.S. financial system to a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing risks due to poor anti-money laundering (AML) controls." Of course, since HSBC is one of the world's largest banks, what it did was not in any way unique, and it is quite fair to say that every other bank has the same loose anti-money "laundering" provisions. What HSBC was likely most at fault for was not providing sufficient hush money to the appropriate powers in the highest US legislative administration. But at least tomorrow we will have yet another dog and pony show, accusing that HSBC did what the NAR does every single day. Because let's not forget that the National Association of Realtors lobbied for and received a waiver for anti-money laundering provision regulations: after all how else will US real estate remain at its current elevated levels if not for the drug, blood, and fraud money from various Russian, Chinese, and petrodollar kingpins, mafia bosses and otherwise rich people who need to launder their money in the US, in the process keeping Manhattan real estate in the stratosphere? But one can't possibly pursue the real truth if it just may impair the fair value of that backbone of honest, hard-working US society: still massively overpriced housing in a world in which those who need mortgages will never get them.

Maybe I'd have more followers if I tore a page out of the BI playbook, but I think I'd rather try to keep following ZH's lead and just try to write well, succinctly, and - if possible - with a bit of novelty.

The sharp losses in the gold mining sector Friday and last week could presage further weakness today but the higher weekly closes for gold and silver were constructive from a technical perspective.

After initial gains in Asia, gold fell early in Asian trading prior to recovering and then weakening again bang on 0800 GMT as Europe opened (see chart below).

Gold is higher in euro and Swiss franc terms but slightly lower in dollars and pounds.

Europe slipping into (light) ROff (and then out). Recurrent picture of Hard Core grinding tighter, Soft Core doubling down on that . Peripherals drifting wider with Italy eventually further off the 6% mark and Spain at 6.77%. Equities about unchanged after all.

BKO eventually closing on a historic -0.060% low.

Slow dragging day, if it wasn’t for the EUR jogging back and forth all the time. Something gotta move, I guess.

From Goldman: "Cutting the IOER rate down to zero could be harmful to market institutions. Chairman Bernanke made this argument himself in Q&A at the July 2010 Humphrey-Hawkins testimony: “The rationale for not going all the way to zero has been that we want the short-term money markets like the Federal funds market to continue to function in a reasonable way, because if rates go to zero, there will be no incentive for buying and selling Federal funds overnight money in the banking system. And if that market shuts down, people don’t operate in that market, it will be more difficult to manage short-term interest rates when the Federal Reserve begins to tighten policy at some point in the future.”

The reason for the ramp in risk as attributed by various buyside desks as to what recently has become the trademark of more hope, prayer and magic from Jefferies' (yes, Jefferies is driving the market for once, who wouldathunk it) David "SPOOS" Zervos, whose latest note that the Fed will follow the ECB and cut its overnight excess reserves rate to -0.25% has picked up some traction, and is causing a modest rise in risk markets. Here is the problem: the Fed will NOT do this, and certainly will not do this for months and months as not only would it destroy the US money market, general colalteral, unsecured and virtually every other overnight market instantaneously (and not even Ben is that dumb to trade a few trillion in private sector overnight funding for 10% in the S&P), but even as Zervos says this is nothing short of a thought experiment in what may happen: "Whether it happens or not is not the point. The issue is that we are not priced for it AT ALL." Correct David: they are unprepared because it will not happen. The Fed will do much more LSAP, and even that other flow-based lunacy, NGDP targeting, before it decides to blow up overnight markets (not to mention destroy the entire Primary Dealer risk analytics system all of which is based on positive flow from Reserves). Because if the Fed telegraphs it is ending the inflows from reserves experiment started 3 years ago, we better be having 4% GDP growth. Reality check: we have 1.1% Q2 annualized GDP. Finally, that whole ECB experiment with negative Deposit Rates led to... absolutely nothing... correction: it led to yet another plunge in Spanish and Italian yields: something the Fed is quite aware of.

Even with Citi reporting a miss on the top line of $18.6 billion (Exp. $19 billion), but a bottom line beat courtesy of more loan loss reserve releases amounting to $984 million, or 35% of the entire pretax net income number, sentiment has been very quiet this morning, with hardly any sharp moves, aside from the now usual leak in Spanish sovereign bonds, following Bloomberg's confirmation of the WSJ story that the ECB is willing to impair Senior bondholders, while Swiss nominal bonds continue to trade below 0.4% and the EURUSD drifts lower. Today's lethargy may be interrupted at 8:30 am when the Empire Manufacturing and Advance Retail Sales data are released, but unless we get another massive, and very convenient, EUR repatriation out of Europe at just the moment when the US market opens, we doubt much will happen today ahead of Bernanke's semi-annual congressional testimony tomorrow.

Via Goldman, here are the key economic events to look forward to in the coming relatively quiet week. And out of DB, we get a list of the key PIIGS bond auctions and bailout events in the immediate and near-term future.

• San Bernadino: Another Calif. city goes bankrupt (247)... It appears Hell's Angels don't pay municipal taxes after all
• Rajoy announces 65 Billion Euros Of Cuts To Fight Crisis (Bloomberg)... And Spaniards prepare to not pay taxes
• Spain pressed to inflict losses on savers (FT)... And Spaniards prepare to sue
• Spain to Cede Bank Control (WSJ)... And Spaniards prepare to protest
• Rate Scandal Stirs Scramble for Damages (NYT)... but who do you sue: the Fed?
• Paulson Ex-Lieutenant Caught in Fund's Slide (WSJ)
• ILO warns 4.5m jobs at risk in eurozone (FT)
• Global economic crunch confirmed every day: Airbus Scraps Target of 30 A380 Sales as Demand Dwindles (BBG)
• Same old: Finland says requires collateral from Spain for bank aid (Reuters)
• Cameron and Hollande clash on tax (FT)
• Wen Says Boosting Investment Now Key to Stabilizing China Growth (Bloomberg)

Last week the biggest point of contention in the testimony of Bob Diamond before the House of Commons Treasury Committee was who told him what, and when, with a special circle in hell saved for the BOE's Paul Tucker, who was alleged to have explicitly ordered Barclays to lower its fixing (which as was shown last week had a pretty dramatic impact on the bank's self-reported LIBOR rate). In a few short moments, Tucker himself will be in the hot chair, where an emphasis will be on the emails he sent to Bob Diamond which we presented previously, and whether he acted alone in "nudging" the bank to represent itself as strong than it otherwise would. Watch the full webcast of Tucker's testimony after the jump.