Game Over Berlusconi? Italian Anti-Crisis Bill Fails

Europe's core, call it Germany, is now caught in a war of reverse attrition on three fronts: with Greece, with Italy, and as of today, with France. And unfortunately for the European monetary union, Europe, call it Germany, is losing. While the focus continues to be on G-Pap for the second day in a row following his shocking referendum announcement, the real diversion remains Italy, where the government is in as much of a state of chaos as that in Athens, and whose bonds, while not yet trading at Greek levels  (remember when the Greek 1 year hit 100% two months ago? Today it is at 225%... and tomorrow the two year will be at 100%), are far, far greater in amount, and the only thing preventing their collapse so far has been the ECB, whose monetizing assistance has been contingent on Italy passing and enforcing austerity measures to deal with its runaway debt to GDP of over 120%. Unfortunately, when BTPs open for trading in 7 hours, the ECB bid may not be there, or any bid for that matter, because as the WSJ reports, "Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday failed to issue growth-boosting measures demanded by European Union authorities ahead of the Group of 20 summit, raising further doubts about the government's willingness to pass economic reforms aimed at restoring investor confidence in the country." Now that the ejection of Greece is virtually certain, perhaps it would be a prudent idea for what little remains of the healthy European core to kick out all the stragglers before everything becomes infected, and before French bonds trade at yields indicative of a sub-IG credit, thus ending the myth of any European union for good?

Egan Jones Downgrades Jefferies On Concerns About Sovereign Exposure Amounting To 77% Of Equity

Because like with insolvent sovereigns and the law of communicating vessels, there rarely is just one cockroach.

FOMC meeting results: interest rates to remain at zero/ EFSF pulls 3 billion bond issue/Greece turmoil

Harvey Organ at Harvey Organ's - The Daily Gold and Silver Report - 4 hours ago

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen: Today we had the conclusion of the two day FOMC meeting and as expected, Bernanke left interest rates alone at 0%.  He said that the economy is picking up ( ???) but unemployment is a major concern.  As the stock markets have not gone into triple digit declines, he decided that "real QEIII" is not ready yet even though deficits this year should climb to 1.8

 

 

 

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Has Bernanke Lost His MInd?

Dave in Denver at The Golden Truth - 6 hours ago

I just saw this headline come across the tape: "Low interest rates benefit savers too: Bernanke." He goes on to explain that low interest rates are stimulating economic growth and savers won't get decent returns on their savings until the economy strengthens. Here's the LINK The dude lost me on that one. In fact, that has to be one of the most insanely idiotic statements I have ever heard - and everyone who heard and believed it is dumber for having done so. One of the exercises I try to do is, when someone says something that seems stupid on the surface, I try to intellectua... more » 

 

 

 

 

 

Fill Your Freezers...

Fallout From QE – Rising Meat Prices

November 2, 2011, at 1:14 pm
by Dan Norcini 

For more commentary from Trader Dan Norcini, make sure you check out his blog at http://traderdannorcini.blogspot.com

Dear CIGAs,

The talk today is of the subtle but significant shift in the FOMC in regards to another round of Quantitative Easing or QE. It appears the formerly hawkish dissenters from this madness have been brought in to heel with the Fed perhaps ramping up expecatations that they will act in some form as conditions worsen in Europe.
Signals are still unclear and there is a lot of conflicting information swirling in the financial air which is leading to further instability and volatility in our financial markets.
I find it less than honest that those advocating another dose of financial morphine into the system are pointing to the lack of inflation as a signal that the Fed could engage in further money creation without unduly impacting prices in general. My response to this is "Bullsh_t".
Take a look at the following charts of the two basic meat sources, cattle and hogs. The first is of April 2012 cattle. Look at what has happened to the price of cattle. While this is obviously terrific news for cattle ranchers, it is a signficant foreteller of what is going to happen to the price of beef next year. As a matter of fact it has already happened with wholesale beef prices rising to very lofty levels.
More…

 

 

 

 

Guest Post: MF Global Shines A Light On Monetarism's Incapacity To Enhance The Real Economy

The temptation to compare any financial institution’s failure to those that preceded the 2008 crisis and panic are reasonable. It is easy to classify MF Global as 2011’s “Lehman” event, just as it was to use the same term to describe Dexia a few weeks ago. The use of the term “this year’s Lehman” is somewhat misplaced simply because its users are looking for an event that kicks off another crisis or panic. Instead of using “Lehman” to describe a potential inflection point that propels the crisis into panic, it might be better to see MF Global as AIG. The comparison to AIG is not to say that MF Global was as interconnected, that its failure will be as devastating, or that it is the straw that breaks the European camel’s back. The urge to see the past in the present is historically valid, but it will never be exactly alike (Mark Twain had this right). Rather I think the comparison is useful in that AIG taught the wider world what was really rotten at the core of modern finance, namely hidden risks that were shockingly existential. MF Global’s failure importantly shows that none of the lessons have been heeded in the days since, providing a somewhat unique window into the real dangers that still lurk hidden in the shadows. More than that, though, MF Global demonstrates an obvious shortcoming of the financial system as it relates to the real economy.

Referendum Day To Decide Greek's Future Is 12/4

UPDATE: ES -5pts, EUR -25pips *MERKEL SAYS EU PREPARED FOR ANY OUTCOME IN GREECE REFERENDUM
Just headlines, via Bloomberg, for now as Juncker and Sarkozy play good-cop / bad-cop:

*SARKOZY SAYS REFERENDUM WILL DECIDE GREECE'S EURO FUTURE
*SARKOZY SAYS REFERENDUM WILL BE AROUND DEC. 4 OR DEC. 5
*SARKOZY SAYS CAN'T HAVE 'PROLONGED PERIOD OF UNCERTAINTY'
*SARKOZY SAYS 'WE ARE READY TO AID GREECE'
*SARKOZY SAYS GREECE WON'T GET `SINGLE CENT' WITHOUT ENACTMENT
*JUNCKER SAYS AID PAYMENT DEPENDS ON GREEK VOTE
*GREECE HAS `LOST 8 BILLION. THAT IS A PITY,' JUNCKER SAYS

Initial reaction is ES selling off 3-4pts and very slight downtick in EUR

 

 

 

 

Citi: "The Bear Market Rally Is Behind Us; We Anticipate A Move To 1,000-1,015"

While we are the last to put much weight in the predictive power of technical analysis, lately it has become all too clear that the only thing more worthless than technicals is fundamentals. Which unfortunately means that with the lowest common denominator (and marginal price setter) in the market being robots, in turn programmed by 20 year old math Ph.Ds who only know charts, it may be time to revise our skepticism. Enter Citigroup's Tom Fitzpatrick, who together with Goldman's John Noyce, are the two best sellsiders in this particular field. In short, neither has much good to sayl in fact when it comes to near-term bearish sentiment, it will be hard to find someone as pessimistic as Fitzpatrick, even among the Janjuahs and Rosenbergs of the world. Citi's conclusion from a just released note should be enough to scare anyone who believes that the bear market rally started just about a month ago will persist: "While we respect the October monthly close on the S&P 500, we did not close above the 12 month moving average...we believe the bear market rally is behind us and anticipate a move towards the 1,000-1,015 target over the weeks and months ahead." And while charts will never be a good guide as to what words may come out of G-Pip's mouth next, with so much market action these days being purely backward looking, we would urge caution.

Citi: "The Bear Market Rally Is Behind Us; We Anticipate A Move To 1,000-1,015"

While we are the last to put much weight in the predictive power of technical analysis, lately it has become all too clear that the only thing more worthless than technicals is fundamentals. Which unfortunately means that with the lowest common denominator (and marginal price setter) in the market being robots, in turn programmed by 20 year old math Ph.Ds who only know charts, it may be time to revise our skepticism. Enter Citigroup's Tom Fitzpatrick, who together with Goldman's John Noyce, are the two best sellsiders in this particular field. In short, neither has much good to sayl in fact when it comes to near-term bearish sentiment, it will be hard to find someone as pessimistic as Fitzpatrick, even among the Janjuahs and Rosenbergs of the world. Citi's conclusion from a just released note should be enough to scare anyone who believes that the bear market rally started just about a month ago will persist: "While we respect the October monthly close on the S&P 500, we did not close above the 12 month moving average...we believe the bear market rally is behind us and anticipate a move towards the 1,000-1,015 target over the weeks and months ahead." And while charts will never be a good guide as to what words may come out of G-Pip's mouth next, with so much market action these days being purely backward looking, we would urge caution.

MF Global Client Theft Estimate Doubled To $1.5 Billion?

Even as we hear rumblings that the MF fire is spreading, and the associated auditor of the now infamous former Primary Dealer is about to get in serious hot water, the bankrupt company itself continues to dig itself an ever deeper grave. Because according to a just filed motion by the MF Global liquidating trustee, it seems that the gross criminal activity by the company may have been orders of magnitude bigger than anyone has expected. To wit: "As a result of the apparent segregation violations and the suspension of clearing privileges, more than 150,000 customer accounts essentially were frozen on October 31, 2011, of which more than 50,000 accounts were regulated commodities customer accounts. The CME estimates that MFGI’s current segregated funds requirement is approximately $5.45 billion. Moreover, the total amount of MFGI customer segregated funds on deposit at the CME is approximately $2.5 billion, and the clearing-level segregated collateral is approximately $1.5 billion or approximately 60 percent of the MFGI customer segregated funds on deposit at the CME." Doing some quick inverse addition and we get a (w)hole of $5.45 less $2.5 less $1.5 or $1.45 billion. In other words, the theft by MF Global was not stealing hunderds of millions form its customers: it has stolen a whopping $1.5 billion! For those confused, this is not a rogue loss of $1.5 billion, something which was enough to send UBS' Kweku to prison. This is outright theft resulting from illegally commingled accounts. Our only question is will $1.5 billion in theft be enough for the first real perp walk of an Obama-friendly Wall Street executive?

And In The Meantime Back In Reality

As the market marinades in the latest confusing Bernanke Q&A aftermath, we get two very disturbing headlines. The first:

• China’s Zhu Says ‘Too Soon’ to Discuss Further EFSF Purchases
  
• While there are proposals to revamp the European Financial Stability Facility, “there’s no concrete plans yet so it’s too early to talk about further investments in these tools,” Zhu Guangyao, Vice Finance Minister, told reporters in Cannes today.

This goes hand in hand with the disaster that was the overnight news on the EFSF pulling a meager €3 billion bond auction. If you gave us Jefferies' rolodex, we could probably raise more for a bankrupt MF Global in ten minutes (kinda like what they did). Oh well, so much for Europe.
And in other news, and confirming what we have been saying over the past two weeks, namely that foreigners are dumping US bonds to shore up emergency balance sheet capital, we get the following confirmation from Dow Jones:

• IIF Sees Euro-Zone Banks Selling Govt Bonds To Meet Capital Targets

That's right: government.



 

 

Mortgage Spreads Decompress But QE3 Divergences Start To Get Priced In

UPDATE: The dollar is starting to drift back higher - diverging from stocks
UPDATE 2: Added Chart to show TSYs  at low yields of day, dollar rallying, and still ES near highs of day
As Bernanke was asked for the umpteenth time on LSAP and more specifically MBS purchases, the initial modest compression in mortgage spreads reversed and widened. However, TSYs and stocks diverged very notably as we suspect an initial kneejerk reaction to QE3 saw both being bought (and the USD weaken)...how long the half-life in this divergence?

Fed Slashes Economic Outlook, Raises Inflation And Unemployment Rate Projection

FED OFFICIALS SEE 2011 GDP 1.6%-1.7% VS 2.7%-2.9%
FED OFFICIALS SEE 2012 GDP 2.5%-2.9% VS 3.3%-3.7%
FED OFFICIALS SEE LONGER-RUN GDP 2.4%-2.7% VS 2.5%-2.8%
FED OFFICIALS SEE 2011 UNEMPLOYMENT 9.0%-9.1% VS 8.6%-8.9%
FED OFFICIALS SEE 2012 JOBLESS ESTIMATE 8.5%-8.7% VS 7.8%-8.2%
FED OFFICIALS SEE 2013 JOBLESS ESTIMATE 7.8%-8.2% VS 7.0%-7.5%
FED OFFICIALS SEE LONGER-RUN JOBLESS 5.2%-6.0% VS 5.2%-5.6%

Guest Post: Boots On The Ground In Fukushima, Japan

I had to come see for myself. What does the worst radiation and natural disaster in history look like? Chaos. Devastation. Cataclysm. Right? Actually… none of the above. Fukushima and the surrounding prefecture is as quaint and picturesque as ever. Eight months on, there are hardly any signs of a nuclear accident or major earthquake, at least on the surface. I was half-expecting the town to have a permanent decontamination facility… with radiation detectors as far as the eye can see, and legions of workers in biohazard suits. After all, this town of nearly 300,000 is now the world’s largest dirty bomb. But riding through the surrounding area and walking around the streets today, Fukushima looks like any other small(ish) town. Schools, temples, shops, and restaurants… everything is normal. In fact, it’s almost eerily normal, like something out of an old Hitchcock film.

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