Global Economic Collapse For Dummies

Forget the complicated flowcharts, scenarios, and government-banking-system reacharounds, the global economic collapse has never been so easy to comprehend...

Apocalypse Europe: The Smell Of Draghi's Eau De Napalm

As we look forward to tomorrow's scorched-earth policy-fest from Draghi-et-al., Jefferies' David Zervos, in his typically understated manner, notes "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. We are back in the kill zone - Apocalypse Europe." There will be no more strategizing, no more war games, no more speeches imploring the politicians to act. This is the real deal - a full scale European led global financial crisis that requires immediate and aggressive response from the only entities with the authority to act in the world financial "theatre". We should all keep in mind that the Europeans have not been able to generate an effective response to their debt/deflation crisis as of yet, and of course it is having global consequences. This is why we are here again looking into the deflationary abyss. The ECB was only set up with a price stability mandate, and its leaders are hence much more constrained than Federal Reserve officials. Simply put, the European armies were not set up with effective weapons.

Spain is in ‘total emergency’, the EU in total denial

By Janet Daley, The Telegraph:
I’ve never actually heard the term “total emergency” before, at least not in the context of global economics. It sounds like the title of a disaster movie. When it is uttered in sober tones by the elder statesman of an advanced democracy to describe his country’s financial condition, the effect is rather startling.
The man who delivered this apocalyptic judgment, former Spanish prime minister Felipe González, being a socialist, might be expected to detest austerity programmes that require cuts to government spending. But there seemed to be few disinterested observers of Spain’s economy prepared to quibble with his assessment.
Read More @ Telegraph.co.uk

Germany Ruling CDU Rejects Direct Spanish Bank Aid

Just when Spain thought that by admitting it is broke, Germany would finally turn a blind eye and let it have whatever money it requested directly at the bank level, instead of boosting its sovereign leverage even more, thus putting it at risk of long, long overdue Moody's and Fitch downgrades, here comes the Germany, adding insult to humiliation. From the FT: "The parliamentary leadership of Germany’s ruling Christian Democrats – the majority party in Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition government – has flatly rejected the use of eurozone rescue funds to recapitalise Spanish banks directly. Instead they called on the Spanish government on Tuesday to decide urgently whether it will seek money from the €440bn European Financial Stability Facility according to the fund’s normal rules, requiring agreement on a proper rescue programme negotiated with its European partners." In other words Germany has laid out the choice: bail out your banks with our help, and be downgraded, pushing Spanish sovereign yields into the 7%+ range, or do nothing, and prepare to hand out an infinite amount of Spiderman beach towels.

Low Volume Melt-Ups Resume

Cash and Futures S&P 500 managed to close back above the 200DMA after a dismally low-volume melt-up supported by a reversion to fair-value in HYG but diverging from most other asset classes. Having pulled away from Treasuries, Gold, and the USD, stocks (led by financials) roamed higher on lower and lower comparable volumes to manage their best gain in a week with a generally low average trade size overall. Credit markets were quiet and reluctant to follow stocks but were reracked up (though IG underperformed HY's exuberance). However, the pop in JNK and HYG dragged them from the quite notably cheap levels they were at up to their intrinsic value and they anchored there (so not really a confirming strong rally). HY and HYG are in line also. Oil and Copper dropped early and then leaked back higher for the rest of the day as Silver and Gold end close to unch for the week - with the USD also close to unch as EURUSD round-tripped its gains from yesterday. Treasuries lagged the move in stocks but leaked higher in yield also in the afternoon - except notably 5Y which outperformed (reminding us of the 7Y outperformance aberration yesterday) as we suspect end-of-Twist is being priced in. After the day-session close, ES limped back towards VWAP on heavier volume and average trade size but didn't make it as we note VIX fell back below 25% (down 1.25 vols today) ending the day a little rich still to equity/credit fair-value. Lots of rumor-driven knee-jerks today but once the momentum had set in for stocks, we limped along to crack that 200DMA giving hope before Draghi's reality check tomorrow - though we note that ES stopped almost perfectly at Friday's closing VWAP (as did the major financials).

The Face of Corporatist Hypocrisy

As a guy who is living in a taxpayer-funded villa after his bank-insurance-derivatives-hedge fund-ponzi company blew up, we know Benmosche is a hypocrite. In my view, management should be held personally liable a long time before taxpayers. That’s right, I believe in personal responsibility and that means no hiding behind limited liability and bailouts, no matter how “systemically important” you claim to be. But let’s set aside disgust at government for first setting up this scenario via Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and then in 2008 throwing money at hypocritical grifters like Benmosche.
Is he wrong about social security and medical services?

Spain Warns Market Access Being Shut, Calls For EU Action On Bank Recap

Eric De Groot at Eric De Groot - 30 minutes ago

The calls for liquidity will be answered soon. Headline: Spain Warns Market Access Being Shut, Calls For EU Action On Bank Recap By David Roman MADRID--Spain Tuesday urged euro-zone partners to act faster to help support its enfeebled banks, with Budget Minister Cristobal Montoro saying that the government has effectively lost access to capital markets because of steep risk premiums demanded... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] 

 

Puzzled About QE? Watch the Adjusted Monetary Base

Jon Corzine And George Zimmerman Should Have A Lot In Common...

Dave in Denver at The Golden Truth - 2 hours ago

*To be a “sophisticate” in the 21st century requires the same ability that has been required in almost all the previous ones. It requires the ability to shut one’s eyes and one’s mind to anything one does not want to see or think about. The more glaring the contradiction between what is said and what is done becomes, the harder it is to remain sophisticated. The tragedy here is that the only alternative - that of becoming independent - is looked upon as more terrifying than to go on pretending to be deaf, dumb and blind. One has to be all three to maintain the ridiculous notion tha... more »

 

 

Are Stocks In a New Bear Market?

Full-time jobs are getting harder to find

Eric De Groot at Eric De Groot - 4 hours ago

The Great Recession which has become the socially acceptable description of yet another Depression continues to wreck havoc on families across America. Part-time rather than full-time jobs in the lower-paying, service-producing sector is becoming the norm to make ends meet (chart). Chart: Good-Producing (GP), Manufacturing (MFG), and Service-Producing (SP) Sector As % of Nonfarm Payrolls... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] 

 

Should the U.S. be borrowing more?

Eric De Groot at Eric De Groot - 5 hours ago

Should junkies be allowed to buy drugs? No, but they as long as there's a profit motive, expect that they will. Don't bother asking if the United States should, the real question is how much longer will market forces allow them to borrow. The sovereign debt crisis, currently contained to the world's periphery, will come home to roost at the center when wolf pack runs out of the easy... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Facebook Keeps On Sinking...

In keeping with our long history of noting every handle change in Failbook, we just passed into the $25 range (heavy volume came throuygh as we touched $25.88). With a post-IPO VWAP at $34.85, that's a 25% drop from the average trade alone and volume remains active (over 30mm shares today). Calls are slightly ahead of Puts today but Open Interest remains biased to 6:5 in favor of Puts.

Goldman On Housing's False Dawn

Recent housing data have been generally been encouraging. However, the large number of residential properties that are "underwater"—meaning the borrower owes more on the mortgage than the property is worth—casts a long shadow on the sustainability of the housing recovery. Goldman estimates that approximately 10 million properties are currently underwater. Although this number has not changed much during the past three years, there is much divergence across the nation: California, Michigan, and Arizona, for example, experienced significant improvement, while Georgia, Utah, and Missouri saw many more properties falling underwater during this period. Given that there are 3 million first-lien mortgages that have LTVs of 125% or above as of April 2012, whether or not a large fraction of these mortgages will default in the near future has important implications for the housing market recovery.

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Steve Liesman's Modest Proposal: America Must Bail Out Europe

Yesterday, the progressive "think-tankers" from the CEPR first voiced the idea that it is time for America to finally come to the aid of Europe, because you see, the liberals, ever so generous with other peoples' money, have had enough of a sinking financial system brought to its knees by the intersection of a financial system perpetually bailed out at the taxpayers' expense, and a insolvent global welfare state, and just wish it was all back to where it was a decade ago, where everyone lived in perpetual bliss and stupidity. We truly hope Messrs Baker and Weisbrot lead by example and dispose of all their net worth, by dispatching it in Europe's direction, post haste: after all, anything less would be just seem so very hypocritical. Today, to nobody's shock at all, the "think tank" is joined by everyone's favorite TV hobby economist: Steve Liesman, who in an op-ed on CNBC writes: "It’s time to change the narrative and for the United States to step up and abandon its policies of praising Europe’s incremental progress, gently prompting it to action and insisting that it be a Euro only solution... The US should lead the world in creating a large pot of money available to the Europeans to recapitalize their banks. A $2 or $3 trillion fund should get the market’s attention." It should Steve. And just like in the case of CEPR, we hope you can lead the US by creating a large pot of all your money that you would send to Spain and Greece first. Then everyone promises to follow in your so very generous footsteps.

What Do Those Super Smart Stocks Know Again?

It's one of those days again. Stocks have decoupled in their inimitable way as hope springs eternal of LTRO3, EFSF, or a friendly-Fed...

Here Come Today's Rumors

What would a day be without recycling of tired and expired rumors out of Europe. Sure enough:

• EFSF PROVISIONAL CREDIT LINE COMPROMISE BETWEEN MADRID AND  BERLIN
  
• EFSF is to prepare a credit line for Spain in the case of need - Dow Jones
• EFSF provisional credit line for Spain is one option according to a German newspaper

Ah, the good old EFSF, which was last summer's magical bailout mechanism which with 3-4 turns of leverage, would bring the total to €1 trillion... until the realization that there is nothing to lever, as nobody (except for Japan occasionally) wanted to put any money in it. Oh well: the rumor is good to get stocks into the green for at least a few minutes.

Europe Treads Water Awaiting UK's Return To Reality

For the second day-in-a-row, European volumes are light with stocks and credit generally trading sideways in a tight range. European credit spreads are illiquid (and mostly just reracked by skeleton desks in mainland Europe) as sovereign CDS are generally closed completely (we've seen very few runs). Optically, much is being made of the 4th day in a row of compression in Spanish and Italian bond yields - which is ironic given the Spanish comments on being shut-out of the markets and their pending auction this week - but as we pointed out last week, the lack of CDS discipline being enforced (with London shut) as basis traders and financials-versus-sovereign trades become the marginal drivers of demand for sovereign debt. Do not believe that the markets of the last two days in Europe represent anything but marginal flow - tomorrow's return of the credit market will be the test of where reality is really perceived by market participants. EURUSD weakness today, reverting to unch from Friday and the deterioration in EUR-USD basis swaps is all you need to know on where liquidity is. Clearly the LTRO3 trade is being placed in financials-sovereigns-land, we only hope they are not disappointed.

Presenting The European Deus Ex Machina

We are delighted to present to the world the Deus ex Machina that Europe has been searching for in the past 2 years. Courtesy of Michael Belkin, here is the Uncollateralized BWCGTFBCWT Obligation, Series 17.01, also known as the solution to all of Europe's problems.

Der Elefant In Das Room: Germany - The Ultimate Doomsday Presentation

Two months ago, Carmel Asset Management came out with what we dubbed "Spain: The Ultimate Doomsday Presentation." Since that day Spanish yields have exploded, the domestic (and global) stock market has collapsed, and as of hours ago, Spain for the first time requested an official bail out from its European partners. But Spain was easy - only Nobel prize winning economists and TV anchors could not foresee the final outcome for the country. Today, we redirect our attention to real elephant in the room: Germany. Recall that it was right here on Zero Hedge where we warned, just under a year ago, that "the cost of the euro not plunging today as a result of the ECB not proceeding with outright monetization, is that Germany is now the ultimate backstopper of all of Europe's risk... Germany has directly onboarded the risk associated with terminal failure of this latest and riskiest "bailout" plan and in doing so may have jeopardized anywhere between 32% and 56% of its entire annual economic output. One wonders if the risk of runaway inflation is worth offsetting the risk of a plunge into the worst depression in the nation's history?" Simply said: Germany's opportunity cost to preserving the status quo right now, is at a cost of hundreds of billions in the future, yet even that pales to the cost of letting it all fall apart. But this was a year ago, and out of headlines means out of mind. Today, we are happy to remind readers of just this dilemma, once again courtesy of Carmel. If their predictive ability is gauged by the response in the Spanish market (and economy), Germany should be worried. Very worried.

Schadenfreude Is a German Word

We seem to get the daily barrage of messages and soundbites out of Germany demanding that countries stick to existing plans and that “austerity” is the only way forward.  Germany continues to love to point the finger at the other countries and accuse them of borrowing too much and that these countries need to suck it up and pay what they owe.  For now we will ignore the fact that Germany itself was one of the first countries to break the Maastricht Treaty. What Germany seems to be forgetting is that they jeopardized their own credit quality (as we first pointed out here).  With bunds at record lows, this may not be obvious, but for the past 2 years, Germany has been throwing around guarantees and commitments like they meant nothing.  We have argued since the beginning that all these guarantees were dangerous.  Guarantees are more dangerous than CDS since it is truly impossible to figure out how much debt has been guaranteed or how likely the guarantees are to be honored. Germany is the ultimate backstop and seems to have forgotten that debt exists in two states - Debt is either Repaid or It Isn’t! No wonder Josef Ackermann came out in favor of more support for Europe.  He has the good sense to see how bad this is - from EFSF/ESM support to bank losses to TARGET2 imbalances, it's just not pretty at all.

Beijing Alone Has 50% More Vacant Housing Than The US

Putting some housing things into perspective. From the (less than credible) NAR: "Total housing inventory at the end of April rose 9.5 percent to 2.54 million existing homes available for sale"... And on the other side of the world: "The Beijing Public Security Bureau Population Administration Department said yesterday that vacant houses are 3.812 million."

US Non-Manufacturing ISM Beats Modestly As Employment Index Tumbles To Year Lows

There was a little for everyone in the latest "baffle them with bullshit" economic data report: while the Services ISM popped modestly from the prior 53.5 to 53.7, on expectations of a slight decline to 53.4, something which in itself is bad because it is good, and makes prospects of more outright QE less of a slamdunk, the all important employment index tumbled from 54.2 to 50.8, the lowest print of the Year, and the largest two month slide in the Employment index since March of 2009. Finaly, with half of the Manufacturing ISM indices in contraction territory already, we finally got the first sub-50 print in the Services ISM as well, with the Prices component declining from 53.6 to 49.8: a/k/a contraction, and the biggest 3 month drop in prices paid since December 2008, and the lowest since July 2009.

Guest Post: "Monetary Easing" Fixes Nothing

Stripped of acronyms and pseudo-economics, Central banks have one lever: monetary easing. Whatever the name offered for creating money electronically and suppressing interest rates, it boils down to making money abundant and cheap to borrow, at least for banks and other favored players, such as buyers of homes using 3% down-payment FHA mortgages. The problem is that easy money doesn't fix what's broken. Incentivizing debt and leverage does nothing to reduce leverage or debt, and incentivizing speculation does not reduce household debt loads or increase household incomes. And without improving household incomes, you have a recessionary economy held aloft by unsustainably profligate Federal borrowing and spending.
Is this a "solution"? No. Is this sustainable? No.

European Funding Chaos Resumes

With much of Europe's credit trading parents to the unruly equity trading children still on vacation, it is still clear that Europe's liquidity situation remains as critical as ever. 2-year EUR-USD basis swaps have pushed to new post-LTRO record lows (its costs more now than in the last five months to create USD funding from EUR for a two-year term). With performing collateral in short-supply and a world awaiting the ECB to save the day, it seems odd that basis-swaps would be bleeding worse unless the reality is that the ECB is not about to put on its cape of invincibility. European Banks are nothing but desperate to lock in term funding at these premia and while hope prevails, it would seem the banks are indeed preparing for the worst.

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