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$5 Trillion up in Smoke

POITOU, France – Pessimism is a sin against God, said money manager Charles Gave. It suggests ingratitude. And a lack of faith. After all, this is God’s world. What, not good enough for you?

That’s why we are always optimistic at the Diary. Things don’t always go the way we would like, but they always go the way they should. Yes, the world may be headed to Hell in a handcart… but it’s for its own damned good!

To Hell in a Handbasket Mild surprise down in hell at the timing, but as we all know, what needs to happen always happens – just never when it’s supposed to. Cartoon by Scott Hilburn

It is cold and snowy this morning. But we are crossing to the sunny side of the street today. Look how easy it is. About $6 trillion has been lost in the world’s stock markets so far this year. Well, boo-hoo! It was only “on paper” anyway.

Meanwhile, the New York Fed’s Empire State Manufacturing Survey – which takes the pulse of New York’s manufacturing industry – just hit its lowest level since the last recession. But what do factories make? Stuff… and do we really need more stuff?

New York City is also reporting retrenchment in its luxury real estate market. Prices are down for the last eight months in a row. To that, we say: It serves those rich SOBs on Wall Street right. They bought their digs with money they got from the Fed on super sweet terms. It’s a pleasure to see them take a loss.

You see what we mean? No matter how dreary the weather, you can always use your portfolio statements to start a cozy fire.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why We Need a Recession

January 20, 2016

Why We Need a Recession

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a recession is defined as a “significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months.” Often, this is understood as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth as measured by a country’s GDP.

Public opinion is generally quite simple in regard to recession: upswings are generally welcomed, recessions are to be avoided. The “Austrians” are however at odds with this general consensus — we regard recessions as healthy and necessary. Economic downturns only correct the aberrations and excesses of a boom. The benefits of recessions include:

Sclerotic structures in the labor market are broken up and labor costs decline.
Productivity and competitiveness increase.
Misallocations are corrected and unprofitable investments abandoned, written off, or liquidated.
Government mismanagement of the economy is exposed.
Investors and entrepreneurs who were taking too great risks suffer losses and prices adjust to reflect consumer preferences.
Recessions also allow a restructuring of production processes.

At the end of the corrective process, the foundation for a renewed upswing is more stable and healthy. We thus see deflationary corrections as a precondition for growth in prosperity that is sustainable in the long term. Ludwig von Mises understood this when he observed:

The return to monetary stability does not generate a crisis. It only brings to light the malinvestments and other mistakes that were made under the hallucination of the illusory prosperity created by the easy money.

Can the Government Save Face?

However, in addition to leading to true temporary hardship for the malinvestment-affected areas of the economy, an economic recession in the near future would represent a harsh loss of face for central bankers. Their controversial monetary policy measures were justified as an appropriate means to nurse the economy back to health. That is, their efforts to end or avoid helpful recessions were claimed to contribute to the eagerly awaited self-sustaining recovery.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bear Necessities

January 20, 2016

BEAR NECESSITIES

“At first sign of crisis, the ignorant don’t panic because they don’t know what’s going on. Then later they panic precisely because they don’t know what’s going on.”

– Jarod Kintz.

In a crisis, it helps to have good counsel. Investment strategist Mike Tyson is pretty good at summing up the problem:

“Everyone has a plan ‘til they get punched in the mouth.”

Or as the military strategist Helmuth von Moltke the Elder put it, somewhat more formally:

“No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.”

The enemy has been quick to show himself this year, in the form of a bear market, at least for stocks. This bear has so far been quick, and indiscriminate: the US; Europe; China; stock markets have fallen sharply, internationally. Investors, being human, have scrabbled in search of an explanatory narrative.

Some have blamed the Fed’s baby steps towards normalising interest rates (if a rise from 0% to 0.25% can cause this much investor concern, get a load of history). Some blame the collapse in the oil price. Last week we watched David Cronenberg’s 2012 thriller ‘Cosmopolis’, which has Robert Pattinson playing a 28-year-old hedge fund billionaire driving around town and losing his entire fortune in a single day due to the unexpected rise of the yuan. Other than getting the direction of the renminbi wrong, it could have been shot yesterday. (The film, like the financial markets of 2016, is largely unfathomable.)

But as CLSA’s Christopher Wood points out, perceptions of emerging markets, including China’s, are becoming increasingly divorced from reality. The oil collapse, for one, is a huge red herring. Asia in aggregate

“is a massive beneficiary of lower oil prices.. [and] Asia now represents 72% of the MSCI Global Emerging Markets Index.”

So the narrative on oil is probably wrong, at least as regards most Asian economies, including Japan’s.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Another Reason Why the Middle Class and the Velocity of Money Are in Terminal Decline

January 20, 2016

Another Reason Why the Middle Class and the Velocity of Money Are in Terminal Decline

This has three extremely negative consequences.

In response to a recent post on the structural decline in the velocity of money, correspondent Mike Fasano described a key dynamic in both the decline of money velocity and the middle class.

“There is another reason for falling velocity. People like me who have saved all their lives realize that they their savings (no matter how much) will never throw off enough money to allow retirement, unless I live off principal. This is especially so since one can reasonably expect social security to phased out, indexed out or dropped altogether. Accordingly, I realize that when I get to the point when I can no longer work, I’ll be living off capital and not interest. This is an incentive to keep working and not to spend.”

Thank you, Mike, for highlighting the devastating long-term impact of the Federal Reserve’s zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP): with the real (i.e. adjusted for inflation) return on savings near zero (or even negative, for those who have to pay soaring rents, healthcare insurance premiums, college tuition, etc.), those saving for retirement are losing the Red Queen’s Race: no matter how much they save, the income will be too paltry to support retirement.

This has three extremely negative consequences. Those seeking a return above zero are forced to put their savings at risk in boom-and-bust markets that tend to reward only those who get into the bubble expansion early and exit early.

These boom-and-bust markets tend to savage the assets of the middle class when they blow up, but do little to rebuild these assets in the bubble expansion phase, as prudent investors who were burned in the previous bubble bust shun risk assets.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Fed’s Phony Boom Is Becoming a Real Bust …

January 19, 2016

The Fed’s Phony Boom Is Becoming a Real Bust …

No More Juice

Friday’s 391-point drop in the Dow – a nearly 2.5% fall – ended the worst 10-day start to a year in U.S. market history.

The average stock in the S&P 1500 – which includes about 90% of all stocks in listed in the U.S. – is now down more than 26% from its high. The standard definition of a bear market is a sustained fall of 20% or more from recent highs.

bear The bear got loose somehow. Who let him out? Photo credit: Lukas Holas

“Woeful earnings,” suggested MarketWatch as a cause. Another guess: “The stock market is freaking out over Trump and Sanders.” Barron’s was closer to the real source of the plunge: “Without Fed’s Juice, Market Suffers Withdrawal Pains.”

In 1971, phony fiat money replaced the old gold-backed dollar… and money that came “out of nothing” replaced real savings. At first, inflation rates rose. No one trusted the new fiat dollar. But then, incoming Fed chairman Paul Volcker showed the world that the U.S. could manage its currency in a responsible way.

Consumer price inflation fell, along with interest rates. Debt increased. And gradually, every Middlesex village and farm has become dependent on more and more bank credit.

The dot-com bubble blew up in 2000. The mortgage finance bubble blew up in 2007. Now, it looks as though another bubble is deflating…

DJIA, daily – there’s not enough juice left to keep all the bubble balls in the air… – click to enlarge.

Booze Binge

In 2008, the Fed cut rates all the way down to the “zero bound” to try to keep the jig going. But after seven years of its emergency zero-interest-rate policy (ZIRP), it became obvious that something had to be done to get back to “normal.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Bank Counterparty Risk Soars After Energy MTM Debacle

January 17, 2016

US Bank Counterparty Risk Soars After Energy MTM Debacle

A few dots are starting to be connected now that we have exposed the debacle of The Fed’s decision to allow banks to mark-to-unicorn their energy loans. “Something” was wrong in recent weeks as the TED-Spread surged (implying rising counterparty uncertainty among banks) and then the last week – since The Fed’s alleged meeting with banks – has seen financial credit and stocks crash.

Coincidence? We don’t think so. In the week since The Fed gave the nod to banks to hide losses on energy loans, credit risk has spiked and stocks tumbled…

It is clear banks are hedging against one another’s systemic risk.

Simply put, it’s 2008 all-over-again as “when in doubt, sell ’em all” is back for the US financial system. When you know/question one bank (or some banks) is not transparent in their loan losses (and implicitly their capital ratios) then contagion (and collateral chains) tells any good fiduciary to sell them all – and the banks themselves will enable a vicious circle as they hedge.

And of course, the unintended consequence of The Fed’s decision to enable cheating in the banks’ energy loans is a surge in financial system instability as banks and the price of oil now become systemically more coupled.

Weekly Commentary: Cracks at the Core of the Core

January 17, 2016

Weekly Commentary: Cracks at the Core of the Core

January 15 – Bloomberg (Matthew Boesler): “The U.S. economy should continue to grow faster than its potential this year, supporting further interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve, New York Fed President William C. Dudley said. ‘In terms of the economic outlook, the situation does not appear to have changed much” since the Fed’s Dec. 15-16 meeting, Dudley said, in remarks prepared for a speech Friday… He added that he continues ‘to expect that the economy will expand at a pace slightly above its long-term trend in 2016,’ and said future rate increases would depend on incoming economic data.”

January 15 – Reuters (Ann Saphir): “The stock market’s swoon does not change the economic outlook and is merely market participants trying to make sense of global developments, San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President John Williams told reporters… ‘As the Fed is moving gradually through a process of normalization it’s not surprising that we are not going to be at the peak stock prices’ of last year, Williams said. So far swings in stock market prices have not fundamentally changed his expectation for moderate economic growth, he said.”

The world has changed significantly – perhaps profoundly – over recent weeks. The Shanghai Composite has dropped 17.4% over the past month (Shenzhen down 21%). Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was down 8.2% over the past month, with Hang Seng Financials sinking 11.9%. WTI crude is down 26% since December 15th. Over this period, the GSCI Commodities Index sank 12.2%. The Mexican peso has declined almost 7% in a month, the Russian ruble 10% and the South African rand 12%. A Friday headline from the Financial Times: “Emerging market stocks retreat to lowest since 09.”

Trouble at the “Periphery” has definitely taken a troubling turn for the worse. Hope that things were on an uptrend has confronted the reality that things are rapidly getting much worse.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Just Happened With OIL?

January 17, 2016

What Just Happened With OIL?

Yesterday, we reported exclusively how the Dallas Fed is pulling strings behind the scenes to conceal the fallout from the oil market crash. As Dark-Bid.com’s Daniel Drew notes, by suspending mark-to-market on energy loans and distorting the accounting, they are postponing the inevitable as long as possible. The current situation is eerily reminiscent to the heyday of the mortgage market in 2007, when mortgage defaults started to pick up, and yet the credit default swaps that tracked them continued to decline, bringing losses to those brave enough to trade against the crowd.

Amidst the market chaos on Friday, a trader brought something strange to my attention. He asked me exactly what the hell was going on with this ETN he was watching. I took a closer look and was baffled. It took me awhile to put the pieces together. Then when I saw the story about mark-to-market being suspended, it all made sense.

Here is the daily premium for the last 6 months on the Barclays iPath ETN that tracks oil:

Initially, Dark-Bid.com’s Daniel Drew thought this was merely a sign of retail desperation. As they faced devastating losses on their oil stocks, small investors turned to products like oil ETNs as they tried to grasp the elusive oil profits their financial adviser promised them a year ago. Oblivious to the cruel mechanics of ETNs, they piled in head first, in spite of the soaring premium to fair value. After all, Larry Fink is making the rounds to convince the small investor that ETFs are indeed safer than mutual funds. Because nothing says “safe” like buying an ETN that is 36% above its fair value.

Sure, there are differences between ETFs and ETNs, particularly regarding their solvency in the event of an issuer default, but the premium/discount problem plagues ETFs and ETNs alike. Nonetheless, widely trusted retail sources of investment information perpetuate the myth that ETNs do not have tracking errors.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Mid-East Massacre: Qatar Crashes, Saudi Stocks Plunge Most Since Black Monday

January 17, 2016

Mid-East Massacre: Qatar Crashes, Saudi Stocks Plunge Most Since Black Monday

Broad middle-east and african stock markets crashed over 5%, erasing any gains back to November 2008 as the carnage from last week continues. From Kuwait (-4.3%) to Qatar (-8%) it was a bloodbath as Saudi Arabia Tadawul Index plunged 5.4% – the most since Black Monday (now down over 50% from their 2014 highs). These losses are far in excess of US ‘catch-up’ moves and suggest a dark cloud over Asia this evening.

It’s been a bloodbath in the Middle-East since the year began…

Africa/Middle-East Stocks crashed 5%…

Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul Index is down 5.4% on the day – the worst since August’s collapse and has lost over 50% since its exuberant peak in 2014…

Kuwait down over 4% to 2009 lows…

But Qatar was carnaged… (down over 8%)

Makes you wonder where all that hot-money from The Fed flowed eh?

The Fed’s Stunning Admission Of What Happens Next

January 17, 2016

The Fed’s Stunning Admission Of What Happens Next

Following an epic global stock rout, one which has wiped out trillions in market capitalization, it has rapidly become a consensus view (even by staunch Fed supporters such as the Nikkei Times) that the Fed committed a gross policy mistake by hiking rates on December 16, so much so that this week none other than former Fed president Kocherlakota openly mocked the Fed’s credibility when he pointed out the near record plunge in forward breakevens suggesting the market has called the Fed’s bluff on rising inflation.

All of this happened before JPM cut its Q4 GDP estimate from 1.0% to 0.1% in the quarter in which Yellen hiked.

To be sure, the dramatic reaction and outcome following the Fed’s “error” rate hike was predicted on this website on many occasions, most recently two weeks prior to the rate hike in “This Is What Happened The Last Time The Fed Hiked While The U.S. Was In Recession” when we demonstrated what would happen once the Fed unleashed the “Ghost of 1937.”

As we pointed out in early December, conveniently we have a great historical primer of what happened the last time the Fed hiked at a time when it misread the US economy, which was also at or below stall speed, and the Fed incorrectly assumed it was growing.

We are talking of course, about the infamous RRR-hike of 1936-1937, which took place smack in the middle of the Great Recession.

Here is what happened then, as we described previously in June.

[No episode is more comparable to what is about to happen] than what happened in the US in 1937, smack in the middle of the Great Depression.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Citadel Is Breached: Congress Taps the Fed for Infrastructure Funding

January 17, 2016

The Citadel Is Breached: Congress Taps the Fed for Infrastructure Funding

In a landmark infrastructure bill passed in December, Congress finally penetrated the Fed’s “independence” by tapping its reserves and bank dividends for infrastructure funding.

The bill was a start. But some experts, including Congressional candidate Tim Canova, say Congress should go further and authorize funds to be issued for infrastructure directly.

For at least a decade, think tanks, commissions and other stakeholders have fought to get Congress to address the staggering backlog of maintenance, upkeep and improvements required to bring the nation’s infrastructure into the 21^st century. Countries with less in the way of assets have overtaken the US in innovation and efficiency, while our dysfunctional Congress has battled endlessly over the fiscal cliff, tax reform, entitlement reform, and deficit reduction.

Both houses and both political parties agree that something must be done, but they have been unable to agree on where to find the funds. Republicans aren’t willing to raise taxes on the rich, and Democrats aren’t willing to cut social services for the poor.

In December 2015, however, a compromise was finally reached. On December 4, the last day the Department of Transportation was authorized to cut checks for highway and transit projects, President Obama signed a 1,300-page $305-billion transportation infrastructure bill that renewed existing highway and transit programs. According to America’s civil engineers, the sum was not nearly enough for all the work that needs to be done. But the bill was nevertheless considered a landmark achievement, because Congress has not been able to agree on how to fund a long-term highway and transit bill since 2005.

That was one of its landmark achievements. Less publicized was where Congress would get the money: largely from the Federal Reserve and Wall Street megabanks. The deal was summarized in a December 1^st Bloomberg article titled “Highway Bill Compromise Would Take Money from US Banks”:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Austrians get (some) mainstream credibility

January 16, 2016

Austrians get (some) mainstream credibility

Well, well: who would have believed it. First the Bank for International Settlements comes out with a paper that links credit booms to the boom-bust business cycle, then Britain’s Adam Smith Institute publishes a paper by Anthony Evans that recommends the Bank of England should ditch its powers over monetary policy and move towards free banking.

Admittedly, the BIS paper hides its argument behind a mixture of statistical and mathematical analysis, and seems unaware of Austrian Business Cycle Theory, there being no mention of it, or even of Hayek. Is this ignorance, or a reluctance to be associated with loony free-marketeers? Not being a conspiracy theorist, I suspect ignorance.

The Adam Smith Institute’s paper is not so shy, and includes both “sound money” and “Austrian” in the title, though the first comment on the web version of the press release says talking about “Austrian” proposals is unhelpful. So prejudice against Austrian economics is still unfortunately alive and well, even though its conclusions are becoming less so. The Adam Smith Institute actually does some very good work debunking the mainstream neo-classical economics prevalent today, and is to be congratulated for publishing Evans’s paper.

The BIS paper will be the more influential of the two in policy circles, and this is not the first time the BIS has questioned the macroeconomic assumptions behind the actions of the major central banks. The BIS is regarded as the central bankers’ central bank, so just as we lesser mortals look up to the Fed, ECB, BoE or BoJ in the hope they know what they are doing, they presumably take note of the BIS. One wonders if the Fed’s new policy of raising interest rates was influenced by the BIS’s view that zero rates are not delivering a Keynesian recovery, and might only intensify the boom-bust syndrome.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Deflation Monster Has Arrived

January 16, 2016

Lukiyanova Natalia / frenta/Shutterstock

The Deflation Monster Has Arrived

And it sure looks angry

As we’ve been warning for quite a while (too long for my taste): the world’s grand experiment with debt has come to an end. And it’s now unraveling.

Just in the two weeks since the start of 2016, the US equity markets are down almost 10%. Their worst start to the year in history. Many other markets across the world are suffering worse.

If you watched stock prices today, you likely had flashbacks to the financial crisis of 2008. At one point the Dow was down over 500 points, the S&P cracked below key support at 1,900, and the price of oil dropped below $30/barrel. Scared investors are wondering: What the heck is happening? Many are also fearfully asking: Are we re-entering another crisis?

Sadly, we think so. While there may be a market rescue that provide some relief in the near term, looking at the next few years, we will experience this as a time of unprecedented financial market turmoil, political upheaval and social unrest. The losses will be staggering. Markets are going to crash, wealth will be transferred from the unwary to the well-connected, and life for most people will get harder as measured against the recent past.

It’s nothing personal; it’s just math. This is simply the way things go when a prolonged series of very bad decisions have been made. Not by you or me, mind you. Most of the bad decisions that will haunt our future were made by the Federal Reserve in its ridiculous attempts to sustain the unsustainable.

The Cost Of Bad Decisions

In spiritual terms, it is said that everything happens for a reason. When it comes to the Fed, however, I’m afraid that a less inspiring saying applies:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Let The Bail-Ins Begin

January 16, 2016

Let The Bail-Ins Begin

Portugal is starting to bail-in banks. The fascinating aspect that nobody seems to see is that this is a total failure of socialism. The U.S. Federal Reserve was formed in 1913, with the shareholders being the banks, to provide the cash needed to prevent bank failures. To stimulate the economy when the banks could not or would not lend, the Fed was supposed to buy CORPORATE notes. Then World War I came and the politicians ordered the Fed to buy government bonds. Of course, they never returned the Fed to its original purpose.

FDR usurped the Fed, placed it in Washington, and instituted a single national interest rate; each of the branches maintained a different interest rate to attract capital when there were shortages in one district. So it was common to see rates differ around the country based upon the local economic conditions. FDR also created the FDIC because the Fed failed to function during the Great Depression. The creation of the FDIC was sparked by bankers who were willing to let a New York bank fail in 1930 that happened to be named THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. Bank runs began nationwide as people assumed that this Bank of the United States was the government or Federal Reserve. The Bank of the United States was a Jewish banks and the other bankers wanted it to fail to get its business. When it was settled, the Bank of the United States eventually paid out 92 cents on the dollar.

Note: The blue tags show the start of when that issue was used in the index and do not reflect the date relative to the chart. Upon that issue date, the bond expired.

Then, for World War II, FDR ordered the Fed to support the U.S. bond market at PAR. Therefore, bonds rose during the war because of this support ordered by FDR.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

With

Amazon And The Fantastic FANGs——A Bubblicious Breakfast Of Unicorns And Slippery Accounting

January 16, 2016

Amazon And The Fantastic FANGs——A Bubblicious Breakfast Of Unicorns And Slippery Accounting

At year end we posted a rant about the “Brobdingnagian” bubble embedded in Amazon’s market cap. On December 29th it was valued at $325 billion and had gained $180 billion or 55% of that towering figure in just the previous 12 months.

Self-evidently this was a flashing red warning signal that the end of the third great central bank fueled financial bubble of his century was near. AMZN and its three other FANG amigos had accounted for a $530 billion gain in market cap while the other 496 stocks in the S&P 500 had declined by an even larger amount.

That is, the apparently flat S&P 500 index of 2015 was hiding an incipient bear—–owing to a market narrowing action like none before. Compared to the Fabulous FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google), the early 1970s Nifty Fifty of stock market lore paled into insignificance.

After the worst start to a year in history, some of the air has now been let out of the bubble. Amazon’s market cap is now down by $53 billion or 16% and the story has been roughly the same for the rest of the FANGs.

After Wednesday’s plunge, Goggle is now also down by $52 billion or 10%; Facebook is lower by $33 billion or 10%; and Netflix is off by $6 billion or 11%. In all, the FANGs have given back in eight trading days about $144 billion or 28% of their madcap gains during 2015.

AMZN Market Cap data by YCharts

Call that a start, but in the great scheme of things it doesn’t amount to much. Consider the case of Amazon. Its PE multiple on LTM net income of $328 million has dropped from 985X all the way to…….well, 829X!

Likewise, it’s now valued at 97X its $2.8 billion of LTM free cash flow compared to 117X at year end.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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