Hungary

Curious how to trade those Goldman recommendations, such as today's uberbullish "strategic" call seeing nothing but blue skies all the way through 2015? Here is a quick reminder courtesy of your friendly FX wizard, Goldman's Tom Stolper. "On April 18 we recommended going long EUR/HUF. Our view has been that higher US yields would hurt a number of EM currencies (including the HUF). We also thought that ongoing monetary easing in Hungary would further compress interest rate differentials, leading to a gradual weakening in the currency. Although both macro drivers materialized, the HUF strengthened, contrary to our expectation.... we recommend closing the position with a potential 2.86% loss (including negative carry of about 32bp in total)."

Israel's 25bp cut in its policy rate earlier in the week was the 514th reduction worldwide since June 2007 (and Serbia this morning the 515th). As Bloomberg's Niraj Shah notes, Eastern European countries have made the biggest cuts this year as their economies struggle to grow. With the ECB's cut taking its 'real' rate to -0.7%, Belarus has cut borrowing costs by an impressive 500bps in 2013 (more than any other central bank) followed by Poland and Hungary. As we noted last week, it seems the Einsteinian repetition of failed actions is not a fool's errand, instead it appears the domain of the smartest people in the room - or simply fighting the hot money flow drivers with their own weapon (but as Bernanke told us - its not competitive devaluation if we all do it).

In the US, retail sales are expected to continue to slow in the headline, while retail sales ex autos, building materials, and gas should turn positive in April according to Wall Street analysts. Goldman remains below consensus for Thursday's Philadelphia Fed survey, forecasting a slight improvement on the previous month. The firm also expects the flash reading for Euro area Q1 GDP to come in slightly below consensus, consistent with a shallow contraction. We forecast German GDP will turn positive in Q1 after Q4 2012's negative reading. In Japan, GS sees Q1 GDP at 2.8% qoq ann., slightly above consensus, with stronger consumer spending the main driver. Among the central bank meetings this week, Russia, Chile, and Indonesia are expected to remain on hold, in line with consensus.

With equity valuations no longer levitating but in a different, 4th dimension altogether, and credit spreads compressing dramatically (and unreasonably)... It is in situations like these, when the crash comes, that the proverbial run for liquidity forces central banks to coordinate liquidity injections. However, something tells me that this time, the trick won’t work. Over almost a century, we have witnessed the slow and progressive destruction of the best global mechanism available to cooperate in the creation and allocation of resources. This process began with the loss of the ability to address flow imbalances (i.e. savings, trade). After the World Wars, it became clear that we had also lost the ability to address stock imbalances, and by 1971 we ensured that any price flexibility left to reset the system in the face of an adjustment would be wiped out too. From this moment, adjustments can only make way through a growing series of global systemic risk events with increasingly relevant consequences. Swaps, as a tool, will no longer be able to face the upcoming challenges. When this fact finally sets in, governments will be forced to resort directly to basic asset confiscation.

For 727 editions, and nearly 30 years, Bill Buckler, the "captain" of the free market-praising Privateer newsletter provided a welcome escape from a world overrun with "free-lunch" economists, "for-hire" politicians, "crony-capitalist" oligarchs, "heroin-addict" bankers, "the-solution-to-record-debt-is-more-record-debt" Keynesians, and all those other subclasses of that species which Einstein, or whoever, described so aptly in saying that they all expect a different, and happy, outcome when applying the same flawed methods over and over. And for 30 years, Buckler's steadfast determination and adherence to his arguments, beliefs, reasoning and ironclad logic brought him countless followers, all of whom are now able to see past the bread and circus facade of a world every day on the edge of political and social collapse. Sadly, all good things come to an end, and so does The Privateer. We are delighted to celebrate its illustrious memory by presenting to our readers the final, must read, issue of the newsletter which encapsulates the philosophy and ideology of its author - a man much respected and admired in the free market circles - and thirty years of objective, unbiased market and economic commentary, best of all.

Now that the absolutely irrelevant debate over the applicability of the 90% debt/GDP Reinhart and Rogoff hard cutoff for sovereign growth is supposedly over due to an excel mistake of the type that JPMorgan did at least once to misrepresent its VaR both internally and to public shareholders (which to a large group of supposedly people is equivalent to supporting the notion that a record debt global conflagration can only be resolved with even more debt), perhaps the debate can shift to another question: why despite all the bickering and complaints, Europe never actually engaged in austerity, in spending or debt cuts, and that the primary reason the people's plight in the periphery worsened in the past three years is nothing more or less than gross political and governing incompetence?

When you’ve got a guy like Senator John McCain who says “The battlefield is the United States of America,” it tells you that almost nothing is safe in the Land of the Free. Whatever remains of civil liberties is going to feel the full brunt of the state’s boot heel.

An attempt to look ahead at the drivers of the capital markets in the week ahead.

First CNN, then AP, now Reuters: the entire media is increasingly starting to look like amateur hour. Unless, of course, Soros is like Osama, and had several "reincarnated" body doubles, with the original specimen long gone. Here is our suggestion for another prepared article: "Today after XX centuries of monetizing debt, the Emperor of the Galactic Central Bank, Gaius Maximus Printius Bernankius the DCLXVI^th, ended QE in the year of the alien invasion, XXXXX. Bread costs XXXXXXXXXXX."

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

– Benjamin Franklin

In most cases, Mr. Franklin's statement would be correct. However, as you will see below, there are some countries in the world where you can be certain you won't pay taxes. With the year 2013 marking the 100th anniversary of the income tax and the Federal Reserve in the US (two of the most powerful tools the government uses to extract wealth), we thought it would be useful to look at when Tax Freedom Day occurs across the world to gain some perspective. Tax Freedom Day (TFD) is the day of the year that the average person has in theory earned enough money to pay his or her annual tax bill.

The debate about the usefulness of sovereign credit default swaps (SCDS) intensified with the outbreak of sovereign debt stress in the euro area. SCDS can be used to protect investors against losses on sovereign debt arising from so-called credit events such as default or debt restructuring. With the growing influence of SCDS, questions arose about whether speculative use of SCDS contracts could be destabilizing - and this caused regulators to ban non-hedge-related protection buying. The prohibition is based on the view that, in extreme market conditions, such short selling could push sovereign bond prices into a downward spiral, which would lead to disorderly markets and systemic risks, and hence sharply raise the issuance costs of the underlying sovereigns. The IMF's empirical results do not support many of the negative perceptions about SCDS. In particular, spreads of both SCDS and sovereign bonds reflect economic fundamentals, and other relevant market factors, in a similar fashion. Relative to bond spreads, SCDS spreads tend to reveal new information more rapidly during periods of stress, admittedly with overshoots one way or the other. Given the current apparent 'stability' in many nations' bond market spreads, the chart below suggests an alternative way of judging what the credit market thinks - the volume of protection bid - and in this case some interesting names emerge.

Disparities, bailouts, and a slow-motion blowup.

Here is a short quiz for you. Ready?

• What’s the current situation with Lindsay Lohan’s rehab?
• Who won the latest “Dancing With the Stars”?
• Name five celebrities with “baby bumps.”
• Explain how the Cypriot banking crisis could impact the European economy.

If you answered the first three questions but are clueless on the fourth, you’re in good company. Estimates are that up to half the population in America is ignorant about the situation in Cyprus. Oh sure, they hear snippets on the evening news, but since it’s far away and happening to other people, they don’t worry about it. There are many people who just can’t “see” anything wrong with our country. People continue to cling to the notion that our leaders are working for us, not for themselves. So people sit on their butts watching “American Idol” or reading about celebrity baby bumps. Can the U.S. economy crash? Nah. It can’t happen here.

Why has the Euro-zone fallen back into recession, and why can't it shake of its seemingly never-ending crisis? Is there light at the end of the tunnel - or is that an approaching train? A walk through the Euro-zone with charts of macro-economic data reveals the crisis is far from over. Instead, most trends are pointing towards further deterioration - facts as opposed to the hope and anecdote that we are bombarded with on a daily basis. While perusing these charts, consider EU President Barroso's comments just today that, "the worst of the crisis is over." You decide.

• Cardinals head to conclave to elect pope for troubled Church (Reuters)
• Hyperinflation 'Unthinkable' Even With Bold Easing: Abe (Nikkei)
• Ryan Plan Revives '12 Election Issues (WSJ)
• Italy 1-yr debt costs highest since Dec after downgrade (Reuters)
• Republicans to unveil $4.6tn of cuts (FT) - Obama set to dismiss Ryan plan to balance budget within decade
• CIA Ramps Up Role in Iraq (WSJ)
• Hollande Hostility Fuels Charm Offensive to Show He’s No Sarkozy (BBG)
• SEC testing customized punishments (Reuters)
• Judge Cans Soda Ban  (WSJ)
• Hungary Lawmakers Rebuff EU, U.S. (WSJ)
• Even Berlusconi Can’t Slow Bulls Boosting Euro View (BBG) - luckily the consensus is never wrong
• Funding for Lending ‘put on steroids’ (FT)
• Investigators Narrow Focus in Dreamliner Probe (WSJ)
• With new group, Obama team seeks answer to Karl Rove (Reuters)