Kyle Bass On Rehypothecation And Other Keynesian Endgame Scenarios

If readers have the sense there has been a deluge of Kyle Bass reading (and viewing) materials on Zero Hedge in the past two weeks, it is because there has been: and why not - after all, unlike all other cheap talking heads, and know-nothing pundits who merely need a suit to make an appearance on one of the TV's financial comedy channels, Kyle has been consistent in the most important thing - telling the truth. Today, he took his resurgent popularity to CNBC which always knows which way the winds blow, and told David Faber more or less everything that Zero Hedge readers know already about Europe's collapse, on why the ECB will print but only after a default, and about the inevitable global debt restructuring. There was a twist: as most regulars here know, the key topic of the past week, of December, and potentially of 2011, is the limitless "fractional Prime Broker lending" of assets-cum-liabilities (and when it comes to the realization that one's gold itself may be rehypothecated, via GLD, it is no surprise why paper gold is plunging, with the expected delayed effect of slow comprehension) in an infinite loop of daisy chained counterparty exposure, also known as rehypothecation. Which is precisely what what Bass touches on 9 minutes 30 seconds into the interview when the discussion shifts to "shortening collateral chains." Must watch for everyone who enjoys not being lied to.

Euro Jumps As S&P Leaks It Has Not Leaked An Imminent French Downgrade

With speculation building up all morning that the French AAA rating will be momentarily gone, following a statement by France's Juppe that the loss of AAA would not be "cataclysmic", it was up to the S&P itself to leak the rumor which unleaked the previous rumor, and told the WSJ that it has not informed the French government of its rating intentions. The result: EURUSD soars by 40 pips on this absolute non-news, which does nothing but buy at best a 24 hours respite from the inevitable. Furthermore, the S&P has no statement at all if and how many Congressmen, and Nancy Pelosi of course, do know what S&P's intentions are and are already trading appropriately. We expect this momentary bump in risk to be unwound in seconds.

Full Faith And Credit?

Dave in Denver at The Golden Truth - 40 minutes ago

*As I see it, if you don’t own some physical gold and silver, you are going to be in a bad way as the impact of the MF Global collapse continues to ripple through the markets. All of us are facing some difficult times in the weeks and months ahead as this global financial bust plays itself out, but trying to contend with this fallout without owning physical gold and silver is like going into a war without any bullets. * - James Turk This current market "correction" in gold and silver is an absolute gift. I say "correction" because there is no doubt that the Fed/Wall Street is pi... more » 

 

 

 

 

Presenting Steve Cohen's Complete Unsealed Confidential Deposition Transcript

Over the past two days, Reuter's Matt Goldstein and Jennifer Ablan have been poring over a formerly confidential transcript of one Stevie (but don't call him that) Cohen, better known as the man who created "information arbitrage", the investor's "edge" and made expert networks very rich, if only briefly. For their extended series on the topic read here, here and here. And while they have done an admirable job of compiling the taste morsels so far, there is far more here than meets the eye so we open it up to our extended and very much erudite financial audience to find that one slip which the various AGs and DAs have been unable to isolate in years of alleged 'investigatoring'. As Goldstein says: "there is plenty of great and illuminating stuff in the 242 pages of deposition testimony Reuters obtained through a court motion to unseal documents in the civil lawsuit. As we noted in our story, Cohen is pressed at great length for his views on insider trading—he thinks the laws are “vague”. And as we highlighted in our blog, there’s even an amusing little feud between the lawyers over how the SAC Capital founder should addressed. Still, it makes you wonder what was said by Cohen in the more than 400 pages of deposition transcript that wasn’t unsealed. And we’d love to see Cohen on videotape as sometimes body language can be revealing." Perhaps a key point of focus is whether Stevie has himself received tips from the likes of Hank Paulson in the past about future government policy - something we know has already happened albeit with people closer to his Goldman Diaspora, a ring the former Gruntal trader never felt too comfortable with. Because it appears there certainly are hints in that regard, and if indeed proven that SAC was among the "preferential" funds of the administration in its market moving ways, then there would be no surprise why any attempts to find wrongdoing at SAC have so far been duds.

David Rosenberg Discusses The Market With Bob Farrell, Sees Europe's Liquidity Crisis Becoming Solvency In Q1 2012

For the first time in while, Gluskin Sheff's David Rosenberg recounts his always informative chat session with Bob Farrell and shares Farrell's perspectives on the market ("his range on the S&P 500 is 1,350 to the high side and 1,000 to the low side. He was emphatic that there is more downside risk than upside potential from here. His big change of view is that we have entered a cyclical bear phase within this secular downtrend (he sees the P/E multiple trough at 8x). Rosie also looks at Europe and defines the term that we have been warning against since May of 2010: "implementation risk" namely the virtual impossibility of getting 17 Eurozone countries (and 27 broader European countries as the UK just demonstrated) on the same page when everyone has a different culture, language, history and religion... oh, and not to mention animosity to everyone else. So yes: Europe in its current format is finished, but what will it look like in its next reincarnation? And why does he think the European liquidity crisis will become a full blown solvency crisis in Q1 2012? Read on to find out.

Desperately Seeking Santa

12 trading days to the end of the year (and 7 until Christmas), and something, or someone is missing... Who is it? Here is an artist's rendering courtesy of William Banzai.

Roubini Asks of ‘Goldbugs’ on Twitter “Where is 2,000?”

How much further might gold fall? Market momentum is a powerful force and therefore further weakness is quite possible.  Support is at the 200 day moving average at $1,619/oz. Below that is the psychological level of $1,600 per ounce and the 250 day moving average of $1,571/oz. Price resistance was seen at the $1,570/oz level between late April and July 2011 (see chart) and this level could become support as is often the case in bull markets. It is important to note that gold’s falls have been primarily dollar related and gold has fallen by a lot less in pound and in euro terms. Most analysts of the gold market remain of the view that this is another correction and that the medium and long term uptrend will continue due to significant investment, store of wealth and central bank demand due to geopolitical, macroeconomic, systemic and monetary risk. One analyst who appears to have a very different view regarding gold is world renowned economist Nouriel Roubini.  The Chairman of Roubini Global Economics has again taken to Twitter to engage in some name calling and to appear to question gold’s recent price action and whether gold may reach $2,000/oz.

Commodity Unwind Continues As Global Liquidity Scramble Accelerates

As pointed out earlier, the short term USD-funding liquidity ruse instituted two weeks ago by the New York Fed has now all expired, which means global banks are progressively selling all residual winners left having dumping US safe haven securities (a big reason why the EUR has plunged is there is no more repatriation of USD-denominated assets by European, well, French banks). Enter the commodity space. As the following color-coded chart demonstrates, "stuff" is being offloaded by the boatload to procure cash in expectation of yet another day of "rip your face off" margin calls. Which naturally is to be expected - with collateral negligible, those who sell hard assets first sell best. Yet at the end of the day, all it does is provide an ever better entry point for those who have the means to institute hedges against the next step which will will occur shortly: yet another global liquidity tsunami courtesy of the central banks, because that is all they know and all they can.

Art Cashin On The "Rumormonger Convention" And Why Traders Have Put Santa's Picture On A Milk Carton

With fundamentals, technicals, and now even headlines out of Europe largely irrelevant, it only leaves one market-moving thing: rumors. And yesterday was a terrific example of precisely this. Art Cashin does a "rumor by rumor" expose of the key "events", however unfactual, that moved stocks yesterday. If history is any indication, and it is, today will likely see the rumor brigade unleashed all over again shortly.

Is The SEC Investigating Netflix?

While Netflix has quite often been in the news these days, typically in connection with some spurious take out rumor or another, most likely spread by infamous flip flopping longs largely underwater on the name, there could be other, more sinister news lurking underneath the surface. As Disclosure Insight, an organization that among other activities submits FOIA requests to various regulators and compiles the data to expose companies that may have undisclosed regulatory proceedings against them, the SEC just may be investigating the fallen from grace and zero barrier of entry video steaming company (for which the imminent USPS bankruptcy will be merely the finally nail in the coffin).

RIP Fed Dollar Swap Intervention: Central Bank Liquidity Injection Half Life Two Weeks

As noted two weeks ago when predicting the efficiency and duration of the latest global coordinated USD liquidity injection, we had a sinking feeling the Fed action would have a very brief time span. Sure enough, judging by the action in two critical FX liquidity indicators - the 3M and 1 Y basis swap indicators, the dollar shortage is baaaaack... only this time, very paradoxically, with implied infinite backstopping from the Fed: if even that factor no longer has an influence on the market's perception of liquidity risk we are in very deep trouble. Which of course is to be expected: the gross synthetic dollar short back in 2007 was $6.5 trillion. Add a few years of ZIRP to this, where the USD is also the funding currency of the world, and one can see why the global USD short position currently is in the double digit trillions. So just how will the Fed backstop $10+ trillion in explicit USD shorts? We can't wait to find out.

Abysmal Liquidity And Other Things to Watch

It is only December 14th. We are all so exhausted it may feel later than that, but the reality is it is only December 14th. The market is providing liquidity like it is 3 pm on December 31st. So no, it is not normal. It also seems that the new spread is adopted by all the dealers. As far as I can tell, there is no entrepreneurial trader out there trying to make a name for him or herself by providing tighter execution levels. That would be typical. So no, this isn’t a normal behavior for this time of year. If CDX Indices were cleared, or better yet, exchange traded, they could continue to trade with tight bid/offer spreads. S&P futures continue to trade actively and e-minis had an exceptionally busy day yesterday. It is at times like this, that the failure to get CDX indices on exchanges (or even properly cleared) is most felt by the market.

Goldman Now Selling Groupon To Clients Whom It Tells To "Buy" With A $29 Limit

As has been demonstrated time and time again, anyone wishing to make money should allign themselves with Goldman's flow desk, which by definition does the opposite of what Goldman's clients are doing. The most recent indication of this came last Friday when Goldman told clients to sell buy European banks to entertaining results. Today, we get the latest Stolpering, following Goldman's all too glaringly obvious initiaition of Groupon with a "buy" and a $29 price target. From the reprt: "We are initiating coverage on Groupon with a Buy rating and a $29 12-month target. We view Groupon as the key to unlocking the massive local advertising market with which the Internet has long struggled. We believe the size of the addressable market (conservatively the $100 bn local advertising market, but potentially over $10 trillion in global advertising, goods, and services markets), new business models like Groupon Now! in mobile, and the advantages of scale more than offset the considerable risks from competition, margin pressure, and deal fatigue." That's sufficient, we get it...

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