Figures don’t lie but Liars can figure

I think the most notable development this week was Thursday’s big release of global factory activity surveys. It wasn’t pretty. Overall, the JP Morgan Global Manufacturing PMI dropped for the third straight month and fell below the 50 level — the line of demarcation between growth or contraction in monthly factory activity — for the first time since recession was descending upon us back in early 2008. Scary stuff.

Although U.S. activity was buoyant (no doubt a remnant of the sentiment tailwinds enjoyed from the market rally in October), we cannot remain an island of tranquility as Asia and Europe fall into the abyss.

Here are the highlights (any reading under 50 indicates a drop in activity):

*Brazil PMI: 48.7 vs. 46.5 prior
*Ireland PMI: 48.5 vs. 50.1 prior
*Sweden PMI: 47.6 v. 49 estimated
*Norway PMI: 48.6 vs. 50.2 estimated
*Denmark PMI: 47.7 vs. 43.6 prior
*Poland PMI: 49.5 vs. 51.7 prior
*Spain PMI: 42.8 vs. 43.9 prior
*Swiss PMI: 44.8 vs. 46.6 estimated
*Czech PMI: 48.6 vs. 51.7 prior
*Italy PMI: 44 vs. 42.8 estimated
*France PMI: 47.3 vs. 47.6 estimated
*Germany PMI: 47.9
*Greece PMI: 40.9 vs. 40.5 prior
*South Korea PMI: 47.1 vs. 48 prior
*Taiwan PMI: 43.9 vs. 43.7 prior

And, now for the big boys:

*Eurozone PMI: 46.4 — lowest reading since recession ended in July 2009
*U.K. PMI: 47.6 vs. 47 estimated — lowest since June 2009
*China PMI: 49 vs. 49.8 estimated — lowest reading since February 2009
*China HSBC PMI: 47.7 vs. 51 prior — 32-month low

In addition to signs of economic weakness — which was enough for a Chinese vice finance minster to say the global economy faces a “worse situation” than in 2008 — there was evidence that the financial system remains under severe stress despite the freak out over Wednesday’s move by the Federal Reserve to lower dollar funding costs for foreign banks (which, as I discussed at the time, wasn’t really a game changer). The European Central Bank reported that eurozone banks borrowed nearly €9 billion in overnight emergency cash — up from €2.7 billion earlier this week. Not good.

Other signs of strain could be seen in the way German 12-month bill yields dropped below zero on Wednesday as European investors were willing to pay Berlin for the luxury of lending it money. The motivation is that, if you’re holding a big wad of euros, German short-term debt is one of the few “sure bets” left out there. It’s a sign of extreme risk aversion and fear.

Of course, the epicenter for all this is Europe.

Adding to concerns were comments this week from new ECB chief Mario Draghi that while downside risks to the economic outlook have increased, he cannot ride to Europe’s rescue by engaging in unmitigated money printing and bond buying; instead, it must adhere to its founding principles, including an inability to engage in monetary financing of government debts (exactly what the likes of Italy would love right now).

Draghi’s comments were akin to yelling “fire” in a crowded theater before announcing all the fire extinguishers are empty. Whoops.

According to the team at Capital Economics, based in London, the eurozone economy is on track to contract by 1% next year and by 2.5% in 2013, with risks to the downside for both forecasts. Recession will only deepen the budget deficits at the center of the eurozone debt crisis. The only way out is growth. And the only way the likes of Greece, Portugal, and Italy can restore growth is via massive currency depreciation and domestic inflation — something that’s not going to happen as long as they’re in the eurozone.

Sure, there will be distractions like Wednesday’s move by the Fed or additional stimulus measures out of places like China and Brazil. That’s just how the market gods like it. All the better to keep the masses confused and complacent as the fundamentals just get worse and worse.

To put it differently: When you look around the theater, everyone’s still focused on center stage blissfully unaware what’s happening around them. Turn around. The balcony level is in flames.

The Economy Is About To Get A Lot Worse – Anthony Mirhaydari, MSNBC

Most of you understand this.

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Nov 052011

One of the things that I suspect has brought many of you to Naked Capitalism is the hard lesson that conventional wisdom in finance and economics has been very costly to ordinary citizens around the world. If you had believed the prevailing world view of early 2007, that markets were efficient and bad actors would of course be found out and shunned, that were were in the midst of a Great Moderation and could expect to enjoy continued prosperity, punctuated by shallow recessions, and that financial innovation was a boon and therefore to be encouraged, you had an ugly awakening. The global financial crisis imposed tremendous costs on investors and society at large, via unemployment, a housing bust, plunging tax revenues, cuts in government services and increasing political discord.

Yet no one in power before the crisis has been punished or even suffered much. In fact, 2009 and 2010 Wall Street bonuses exceeded the record levels of 2007. As former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson described in a May 2009 Atlantic article, the US instead suffered a quiet coup, with the top end of the financial services industry becoming more concentrated, more powerful, even more concentrated and more firmly in charge of the political apparatus.

Most of you understand this. It’s awfully hard not to notice that we have a two-tier system of justice, in which the major financial firms get to flout the law and violate their own contracts, yet are able to get their agreements enforced against seemingly everyone, from credit card, mortgage, and student debt borrowers to municipalities who entered into risk-laden swaps they didn’t understand to nations like Greece, where a clearly insolvent borrower cannot get a deep enough restructuring out of fear of triggering payouts on credit default swaps. But complexity, leverage, and opacity have been the big banks’ best friends in executing this program of looting. You’ve come here to get educated so you won’t be so easily taken next time.

So the lies that the elite financiers have peddled appeared to be free, when in fact, many of them were sold via clever messaging and lobbying.
Read the Rest…

At Naked Capitalism

The Rise of the Wrecking-Ball Right

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Jul 162011

One would have thought the last few years of mine disasters, exploding oil rigs, nuclear meltdowns, malfeasance on Wall Street, wildly-escalating costs of health insurance, rip-roaring CEO pay, and mass layoffs would have offered a singular opportunity to explain why the nation’s collective well-being requires a strong and effective government representing the interests of average people.

The Rise of the Wrecking-Ball Right

Depression? It depends who you talk to…

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May 012011

How can so many Americans believe that we’re in a depression, when the stock market and commodity prices have been booming?
Read the Rest…

Hey America, It’s Your Fault! How’s That For Change?

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Apr 092011

My comrade Jonah Goldberg compares America’s present situation to that of a plane with one engine out belching smoke. But, if anything, he understates the crisis. Air America doesn’t need a busted engine because it’s pre-programmed to crash.

Our biggest problem is Medicare and other “entitlements.” They’re the automatic pilot of Big Government. Whoever’s in the captain’s seat makes no difference. The flight is pre-programmed to hit the iceberg, if you’ll forgive me switching mass-transit metaphors in midstream.

For some reason, Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Harkin & Co. don’t seem to mind this. If you recall the smile on the face of the “automatic pilot” in “Airplane!” as he’s being inflated, that’s pretty much the Democrats’ attitude to binge-spending as a permanent fact of life.

Hey America, It’s Your Fault! How’s That For Change? – Mark Steyn, IBD

Riding the back of the Inflation Dragon

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Mar 192011

At the height of the housing bubble, hedge-fund manager Paul Singer was shorting subprime mortgages. By the spring of 2007, he was warning regulators on both sides of the Atlantic that the world was facing a major financial crisis.

They ignored him. Now the founder of Elliott Management says the biggest banks are headed for another credit meltdown. Among the likely triggers for the next crisis, Mr. Singer sees one leading candidate: Monetary policy “is extremely risky,” he says, “the risk being massive inflation.”

In some areas gas prices have reached $4 per gallon, and now Americans must brace themselves for higher grocery bills. This week the Labor Department reported that February wholesale food prices posted their sharpest increase since 1974. News like that has driven Mr. Singer to the history books: He treats visitors to his 5th Avenue office to a copy of a 1931 treatise on German currency debasement, Constantino Bresciani-Turroni’s “The Economics of Inflation.”

Mr. Singer—who launched Elliott in 1977 and has delivered a 14.3% compound annual return (compared to the S&P 500′s 10.9%)—is not comparing today’s Federal Reserve to the Reichsbank of the early 1920s. Rather, he’s once again warning financial regulators. This time the message is: Don’t take for granted investor faith in a major currency.

Hedge-fund manager Paul Singer recognized the risks of subprime mortgages and bet against them. Now he warns that monetary policy could cripple American banks again.

Inflation: A Catalyst of the Next Financial Crisis? – James Freeman, WSJ

If 2008 was the year of the financial crisis, and 2009 the year of the recession, then 2010 was the year of unemployment. The good news is that things are starting to look up, if modestly. The number of workers making initial unemployment claims—a good indicator of where the unemployment rate is heading—fell to its lowest level since July 2008 this week. Employers have started filling more available positions. And economists expect December’s unemployment rate, to be released next week, to be lower than last month’s.But none of this changes the fact that, by most yardsticks, 2010 was the worst year for jobs since the Great Depression. The year’s average unemployment rate will clock in at about 9.7 percent—higher than last year’s 9.3 percent and tied for the highest annual rate since the government started keeping official counts in 1948. For all of 2010, in any given month, about 15 million Americans—the population of New England—were looking for work. And, really, in any given month, more needed work. Underemployment—that’s the “official unemployed,” plus people in part-time or temporary positions looking for full-time work, plus people discouraged from the labor market and no longer looking—totaled as many as 25 million.

And the recession has not meant just more joblessness. It has also meant longer joblessness. The average length of a spell of unemployment now sits at 30 weeks, after hitting a high of 35 weeks in July. About 6.3 million people, 42 percent of all unemployed Americans, have been out of work for more than six months. And more than 1 million have exhausted their unemployment benefits. They’re called 99ers. (The term, coined this year, refers to the maximum weeks of benefits in the states with the highest unemployment rates.) There are about 1.6 million of them, according to the Department of Labor. And they raise the question: What happens when unemployment insurance ends?

One nation, under fraud

A State of Distress, Banks - Crisis Discussion, Business Legal Issues, Devaluation, Figures don't lie but Liars can figure, Foreclosure Law, Insolvency, Integrity and Responsibility, Is The Market Rally Real?, Lending Crisis, Mortgages No Responses »

Oct 172010

Tomorrow, a bank—not your bank, but any bank—could evict you from your home. Even if you didn’t know the bank was foreclosing. Even if your mortgage is paid off. Even if you never had a mortgage to begin with. Even if the bank doesn’t hold a single piece of paper that you signed. And major banks not only know this fact, but have spent millions of dollars to defend it in court. Why? The answer starts with a Jacksonville homeowner named Patrick Jeffs.

In 2007, Deutsche Bank sued Jeffs for his home, which is a necessary step in the process of foreclosing on a homeowner in the state of Florida. Curiously, despite the fact that he immediately hired a law firm to defend his property when he found out about the foreclosure, neither Jeffs nor his attorneys were at the trial. That’s because it had already happened. Deutsche won by default because Jeffs wasn’t able to travel backwards in time to attend, even though the trial featured a signed affidavit indicating that he had been served his court summons.

The only problem with the summons Jeffs supposedly received was that it had been conjured out of thin air.

One nation, under fraud Joseph Tauke, The Daily Caller

Does It Make Sense to Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act?

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Feb 202010

In the present system, the more unrestricted the banks are, the more money they can generate “out of thin air,” and the more damage they can inflict upon the wealth-generation process. FULL ARTICLE by Frank Shostak

Sic transit America?

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Jan 162010

Flagging: a US sailor stands on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington

If a week is a long time in politics, a decade is starting to look like an age in geopolitics. Comparing the America that began the 21st century with the America of today is to witness a country that has in some ways quite radically altered its view of itself and its relationship to the world.

In short, the metallic rust of decline has crept into the American soul. “You could argue that the first decade of the 21st century was the last decade of the American century,” says David Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official and student of US foreign policy. “We are now entering the multipolar century.”

Self-doubt tarnishes Brand America

Unintended Consequences

Analysis & Commentary, Figures don't lie but Liars can figure, The Consequences of Greed, We Need Open Derivative Models No Responses »

Oct 172009

Before I knew anything about the finance industry, if someone had thrown out the name “Blackrock” I would have conjured up a scene from the Wild West, a cattle rancher hiring a gunslinger to roust out the sheep farmers and take control of the town. But now, of course, I know that BlackRock is a financial behemoth with $1.5 trillion in assets under management — soon to be over $2 trillion due to its purchase of Barclay’s asset management business. But of more note than its asset footprint is the mantle BlackRock is gradually assuming as the arbiter of value.

BlackRock won a set of contracts to provide analytics for the New York Fed’s trillion dollar mortgage-backed purchase program. Now, BlackRock may end up with an NAIC contract to analyze the mortgage-backed securities in insurers’ portfolios.

I do not mean to diminish BlackRock’s laudable role in assisting in many ways with the financial crisis – coming forward when a number of other large firms demurred. But as one contract is piled on another, their models will become the standard for pricing mortgages, complex derivatives and structured products. Unlike the money management business, which is competitive and relatively transparent, this is a monopoly ready for the making. A monopoly because the more institutions, industry associations and regulatory bodies that employ their services, the more they become the de facto standard. Over time, auditors, clients and equity holders – perhaps even regulators – will start saying, “Well, it is nice to see what your internal models have to say about your portfolio value, but we want your portfolio benchmarked using the BlackRock model.” A BlackRock seal of approval; BlackRock, the JD Powers of portfolio quality.

Here are the problems with this:

First, of course, is the well-known issue of allowing a private enterprise to have monopoly control of a utility – in this case a de facto replacement of the rating agencies (not a bad thing in itself) by putting one firm in the position of providing the benchmark pricing of financial products. Second, there are natural conflicts of interest given that BlackRock is also the asset manager for the New York Fed’s Maiden Lane portfolios and has raised over half a billion in private capital to purchase legacy securities as part of PPIP. (Though I should add that BlackRock is aware of this issue and has stated the firm has strict internal controls preventing any valuation services from being gamed by its investment arm. Which should make us all feel a lot better).

But the most critical problem is that its approach is at variance with the broadly held view that we need to have transparency in the derivatives markets because, unlike, say, RiskMetrics, BlackRock does not share the specifications of the models it employs. We don’t really know what these models are doing. Valuations based on a black-box BlackRock model, or, for that matter, anyone else’s black box model, do not get us the transparency we need. I don’t care what a trading desk uses for its decision making, but when it comes to valuations that carry beyond the firm, we need to be able to see and critique the models that are being used. If a model is to become a standard, if it is going to be used for regulatory or other benchmarking purposes, it should be transparent and subject to peer review.

Which gets to a simple point: If we want to go down the path of standardized valuation and comparability in these complex portfolios, we need open derivatives models. One thing we should have learned from the rating agency debacle is that even if we put aside the issues of monopoly power and conflict of interest, we cannot stop with having the proprietor of such models say, “Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

Originally published at Rick Bookstaber’s Blog

I guess the government can say anything…and most people believe it!

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Oct 172009

Washington Post Crashed-and-Burned-and-Smoking Watch: …[The Washington Posts's] Fred Hiatt this morning:

Re-Stimulating. Unemployment is bad. More fiscal debt might be worse: At 9.8 percent, the unemployment rate is higher than it has been since it hit 10.1 percent in June 1983. Since the recession began 21 months ago, the economy has shed nearly 7 million jobs. Whole industries — cars, housing, finance — have been devastated and may never recover fully. Nevertheless, White House economists reported in September that “employment is estimated to be between 600,000 and 1.1 million higher than it would otherwise have been” because of the Obama administration’s stimulus plan and other government policies, especially the Fed’s monetary expansion. While no one can prove or disprove that — much less apportion credit between fiscal and monetary policy — basic economics suggests that things might have been even worse if the government had done nothing…

It does not necessarily follow, however, that the economy needs more stimulus now. Government has managed to blunt the recession, but at a cost — a higher national debt burden, which future Americans must pay off by working harder and saving more than they otherwise would have…

Ummm…

So far the stimulus spendout has been some $160 billion. The midpoint estimate by Christy Romer and company is that GDP is now 1% higher than it would have been otherwise. That higher level of production and employment than we would have seen otherwise is going to lead to the collection of an extra $80 billion in tax revenues. That means that the net effect of the $160 billion we have pushed out the door has been to raise the national debt by $80 billion. The Treasury can now borrow through its TIPS program for 20 years at an interest rate of 2% plus inflation. That means that taxes in the future have to be higher by $1.6 billion per year–by $5 per person per year.

Thus the stimulus package so far:

Incur an extra forward-looking tax burden per person of 1.3 cents per day…
Get an extra 800,000 people productively at work–and get all the stuff they make and do–this year…

That looks like a very good deal: buying an extra productive job for an American today at a cost of $2000 per year in higher taxes looking forward–particularly when you think that some of those extra jobs build up our productive capacity to make us richer in the future as well.

The stimulus arithmetic suggests we should be doing more of it. The benefit-cost ratio at current stimulus spending levels is very good…

But nobody on Fred Hiatt’s staff realized this. For nobody on Fred Hiatt’s staff thinks that doing any arithmetic is part of their job description. Indeed, nobody on Fred Hiatt’s staff is capable of doing any arithmetic at all.

Investment Future

401(k) Issues, Analysis & Commentary, Back to the basics, Bond Market, Devaluation, Dollar Musings, Figures don't lie but Liars can figure, Investment Portfolios No Responses »

Oct 102009

The Future of Investing
FT writers join major world figures in examining the implications of the credit crunch on our investment system.

Rushing to the Exits?

Analysis & Commentary, Cash Flow, Coming Social Unrest, Coup d'etat in America, Deflation-Inflation-Stagflation, Devaluation, Even the Terminator Can't Help California, Figures don't lie but Liars can figure, If I Only Knew It Was This Easy!, Let's Call What It Is - DEPRESSION No Responses »

Oct 032009

Bottom Line. The Fed is moving toward the exit as they look toward the conclusion of their securities purchases programs. But it is not clear that such a move is justified by their own forecasts or the inflation/wage/employment data. There may be an internal fear they have gone too far, a fear that the hawks can exploit. To be sure, I see no reason to expect the Fed will raise rates for a long time. And the Fed maintains it policy flexibility, claiming to be ready to revive asset purchases should economic or financial conditions justify. But I now suspect the bar for renewed expansion of Fed accommodation may be much higher than I had anticipated. And that the dominant push for expansion would have to come from financial market conditions, while they would be willing to tolerate persistently high unemployment rates so long as U. Michigan inflation expectations say elevated, regardless of the actual inflation data.

At Tim Duy’s Fed Watch

It’s Unemployment, Stupid!

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Sep 212009

Pittsburgh protesters demand G20 do more for jobs
Forbes
“We’re not going to accept a jobless recovery,” said Larry Adams, a postal worker who came from Jersey City, New Jersey, for the protest. …

Growing Again

Analysis & Commentary, Figures don't lie but Liars can figure No Responses »

Sep 132009

Official industrial production figures for July suggested strongly that the economy is on course for growth in the third quarter. The 0.5% rise in industrial production between June and July left it 0.9% higher than its second quarter average, suggesting a significant relapse would be needed in August and September not to produce quarterly growth.

Manufacturing output rose by 0.8% between June and July and also looks set for quarterly growth, in line with the surveys. Note that these are the Office for National Statistics’ calculations of the monthly changes – when you work them out on the basis of the index numbers, the results are slightly different. More details here.

New Jersey CFO

The evidence is building that global growth has stalled. And it’s about to get much worse.

The Rise of the Wrecking-Ball Right

The Rise of the Wrecking-Ball Right

Hey America, It’s Your Fault! How’s That For Change?

One nation, under fraud

Does It Make Sense to Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act?

Unintended Consequences

I guess the government can say anything…and most people believe it!

Investment Future

Growing Again

Analysis & Commentary