The Decision Path For US Equities

These charts show two potential rising wedges on the US stock futures.

They are in a period of uncertainty after the long rally from the bottom of the financial crisis.

Dangerous Markets: Here Are Some Levels and Triggers to Watch

We typically do not get major market corrections in May. They tend to cluster in the Spring and the Fall.  By major correction I mean 15+%.

 

For example, in 1929 there was a 'market break' in March, and then the exchange shook it off and went on to have a bumpy summer of ups and downs with a final climb to a top in October.

 

Every market decline has its own specific course of events, but they do tend to have some things in common.  There is generally a build up of conditions that make it the right kind of market, and then some trigger event occurs to set things in motion.   It is much like what occurs in the build up to an avalanche, or a wildfire.

 

So we are talking about 'avalanche conditions.'  

 

That does seem to be a little counter-intuitive, because we seem to have markets that are almost sleep walking within ranges with short term algo-driven volatility.  These are very 'cynical markets.'  The masters of the universe believe that they are firmly in control.

 

Looking at the composition of this market and the economies, I see bubbles both in the US and especially in China, in bonds and in stocks.   

I see a paucity of liquidity of the right sorts, of determined investment money of the durable sort, and economies that are narrowing, with most of the discretionary money shoved well into the top tier of consumers and investors.

And the money is hot, compliments of the Fed, and the focus is for the most part short term.  I think my opinion of the Fed is well known by now to any regular readers, and the ECB is no better. 

So in surveying this mountain with its potentially dangerous conditions, one looks for potential trigger events.

Greece looms large. Despite the pooh-poohing and brinksmanship by both sides, a Greek failure could prove to be the underanticipated Lehman event that would set the cascade of dominos falling.

And then there are the many confrontational hotspots around the world, in the Mideast of course, in the South China Sea, and in the Ukraine among others.

What makes this particularly dangerous is the cavalier attitude of the neo-con chicken hawks towards military action, especially in some of the English speaking countries.

Two articles this morning brought this thinking into focus.  But I have been having this conversation off and on with some trading friends for the past few weeks, and I also noted in the beginning of the year some signs of trouble.  What 2000, 2008, and 2015 May Have In Common

 

The first, Shrinking Liquidity Exposes Markets to Crunch, sounds like a prelude to 'no one could have seen this coming.'

And the second from my friend Adam Taggart, For Heaven's Sake Hedge,  shows some of the other aspects that make markets dangerous.

 

I have not yet seen the classic 'crash patterns' on the charts that I have documented extensively over the years, but as I am saying, and I hope I am clear about this, I see dangerous market conditions that, given the right kind of trigger event, could unleash quite a bit of mispriced risk and concealed fragility.

 

I don't get into sentiment or contrarian indicators all that often, because from my experience they can be very much in the eye of the beholder.  But the tenor of the discussion on financial TV is especially disconnected from reality now, with a clueless bravado that is characteristic of a coming conflagration.

 

The discussion of the TPP this morning on Bloomberg and of gold on CNBC in particular were striking.

 

I am taking a defensive posture, not because I think we are going to crash the markets, since only mugs make those calls and bet on them with their own money.  Rather, I think we are seeing dangerous markets, with the danger exacerbated by the willful arrogance of the market masters and their money men.

 

I extend this watch to October, and will keep looking for changes.  I do not expect much to come of this.  This is just a caution, but given a trigger event of sufficient magnitude, this could become a problematic market even during the dog days of Summer.  Our leadership and financial management is just that bad, reckless and irresponsible.

 

One thing I learned, most painfully, is that the Fed can and will keep an obvious asset bubble going much longer than one might expect, given the lack of a major trigger event.  And they have absolutely demonstrated a disregard for the consequences from doing so several times in the past fifteen years.

 

So keep your eyes open, and take some modest precautions.

 

 

What 2000, 2008 and 2015 May Have In Common

'As a dog returns to its vomit, so the fool repeats their folly.'

Proverbs 26:11

 

And they do it about every seven or eight years, it seems, in the modern economic discipline of bubblenometry.

 

What hath the Fed wrought, and the crony accomplices to Wall Street in the Administration and Congress?

Back to the brink, again.  Crouching dangers, hidden risks.

 

Margin Debt as a percent of GDP is flashing a warning sign as shown in the first chart from Cross-Currents.net.

And the second chart shows that a second indicator could be seen in the stock market performance for the first three days of trading in January, in a chart from Kimblechartingsolutions.com.

 

As the upper left corner of the second chart reminds us, these 'predictions' are forecasts, with a nod to life's school of probability. 

 

I will like to see what happens for the full month of January for a confirmation, before we start warming up the bear train for a trip downtown.   And let's not forget the bubble-making propensities of the keepers of the world's reserve currency, in the age of weaponized finance.   Triumphant exceptionalism does not wear a pauper's rags well, although it is perfectly acceptable dress for the trickle down underclass.

 

This will likely end badly, but timing is always problematic since these breakdowns most often involve a trigger event, or a black swan.  But the system is hardly robust, and so the risks are high.

 

But all in all, as George Takei would say, Oh my.

 

Related:   Margin Debt To GDP Highest in 85 Years

Chris Martenson: A Steep Stock Market Decline Is Coming - Ritholtz On Risk On/Risk Off

'Life is a school of probabilities.'

Walter Bagehot

...and the tuition is paid in their miscalculation, especially through unintended consequences.

I had this from Adam Taggart this morning.  This is in no way an endorsement of Chris' conclusion, since I am loathe to make predictions rather than forecasts.  But I respect his work, so I thought I would pass it along to see how it plays out.

Quite a bit of his analysis is correct and I cite him often.  I find this market to be 'thinly bought' with steady rises on fairly cynical buying, with declines that are steep and sharp.  

The fundamentals are very wobbly both in US but especially in Europe.  China is unstable and Japan is in transition.  Political leadership is bad to say the least.

So I would say that the right trigger event to a market correction is something that I can see playing out.  However I would add the caveat that the nature of the trigger event will shape that correction, especially in the inter-market relationships and actions.  This includes type of event and location.

Chris' scenario works well with a supply/price shock in energy, or a new sovereign financial failure in Europe.

It does not play out as well with a US based trigger event, a trade war, or some stronger erosion with confidence in the dollar reserve currency system, or a civil dislocation.  Odds-wise Europe and China are better bets for the locus of the next crisis than the US.

Will the next crisis spring from a private financial occurrence like a bank failure, or a sovereign failure?  Will the unholy Trinity of Fed-Banks-Government falter?  Or will it be more political than financial, although the two are remarkably intertwined in this corporatist world of ours.

Note the time frame which is reasonably broad enough to encompass any number of events.  I would add another month or two, although I would expect that the signs of trouble would be pretty apparent by August, even to the extent of a bubble like environment more obvious than today.

And of course we cannot dismiss the possibility that nothing dramatic will happen, and things will stumble along as they have been, from small crisis to ray of hope, and back.  But with increasing levels of background hysteria as I have said we would see.  This could get a bit ugly before it is over.

I do think the monied interests are looting, on a somewhat wider than normal scale, and some recent market action is the buying up of lifeboats at artificially low prices by given the appearance of normalcy. But really, who can say what will happen?  In a market where stocks trade on their own supply and demand like commodities, rather than their underying fundamentals, the very act of betting against such manipulation creates the opportunity for insiders to manipulate even more. And this applies to all financial paper assets, including highly leveraged paper commodities with serious real world consequences, as we had seen in Enron's egregious manipulation of the energy markets.

I am not faulting Chris' analysis in any way.  I am just loath to stick myself to a forecast of a less probable event, given the wide number of variables that can take the storm in this direction or that.   With regard to the intensity of the storm,  as the unknown aphorist once said:

"Great designs have linear consequences.  Bad designs have exponential consequences." 

Have I given you enough possibilities to effectively make no firm prediction, thereby stressing the need for portfolio diversity and flexibility? I hope so.  I would rather make money than be 'right,' except for the longest term wager of all, which too many neglect.

However I am on alert, and will try to get to know what to watch, and then watch it.

I have lost quite a bit of money underestimating the willingness of frightened men in positions of power to engage in financial shenanigans, outright fraud, and seemingly irrational support for the rationally unsustainable. And I hope never to forget that lesson.  Fiat is a powerful drug.

But there will be no sustained recovery until the financial system is reformed, and so we will continue on in a state of fragility, as so eloquently expounded upon by Taleb.

La voilà.

"Chris Martenson is issuing an official warning of a major stock market correction within the next few months. He's only done this once before in 2008.

He's seeing a convergence of both technical and fundamental data that are flashing oversized risks to the downside for asset prices, despite the Federal Reserve's money printing mania which is showing signs of hitting diminishing returns.

He expects the fall in equity prices to happen within the May-September window.

This downdraft will be characterized by lots of volatility, formed by market routs and Fed-inspired rescues, alternating until some form of bottom is reached. Along the way there will likely be a flight for "safety" into the dollar and Treasury paper, but only during the first stage of this crisis.

Once a bottom is reached -- he expects anywhere from 40% to 60% lower than the current ~1500 level on the S&P 500 -- the process will begin to be dominated by rising government borrowing which will cause interest rates to begin to rise.

When that happens, expect capital to flee the paper market for hard assets. In particular, that's when the upwards price revolution in the gold and silver markets will kick into high gear."

Warning: Stocks Likely to Crater From Here

In a related vein, Barry Ritholtz has posted this very illustrative 'risk-on, risk-off' chart. As the 'risk-on' phase continues, the pricing of risk becomes increasing divergent from reality.

I would like to add the obvious that gold tends to move inverse to this, except when 'risk on' is being fomented by a general increase in liquidity that is causing most asset prices to rise. Then we have that odd phenomenon when gold and stocks move in a correlated manner. And similarly, when there is a general liquidation gold falls with stocks.

Gold often moves most strongly higher in a 'risk off' trade not driven by panic selling of everything, and moves lower in a 'risk on' trade driven by a mispricing of risk. I know that this may seem like thin beer, but it is what it is, and it explains why gold acts as a safe haven, but sometimes does not. Bonds have exhibited similarly odd behaviour.

As for stocks, it depends on the character of the market and the nature of the trigger event, to say whether we might have a crash, or just one hell of a correction, within some longer term trend.

So in other words, not all selling, like risk, is of the same character. You have to know the market behind the price, especially when price is used to mislead. If markets were rational and efficient, Wall Street would not have to cheat so much to win so often. Much financial innovation is merely engaged in the increasingly elaborate mispricing of risk in the service of fraudulent outcomes.

“Financial operations do not lend themselves to innovation. What is recurrently so described and celebrated is, without exception, a small variation on an established design ... The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

Politicians, like financiers, can make great personal progress towards power and wealth during new eras of innovation like supply side economics, privatization, globalization, and deregulation. What is particularly damaging is when the government, through monetary actions and/or regulatory inaction, extend and pretend if you will, supports this divergence between the promise, the risk, and the reality for its own ends.

The resulting reversion to the norm can have the impact of a thunderclap. So government becomes complicit in the control fraud which it abets, perhaps for certain policy ends, so that finally only those without conscience can abide it. And that is the genesis of the credibility trap, and the ascent of the careerists, and white collar sociopaths.

"All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds, rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to struggle for every breath I drew."

Charles Dickens

What Time Is the Next Crisis? - An Historic Warning From John Hussman

"The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events."

John Kenneth Galbraith

This is from John Hussman's latest weekly observations which you can read here.

In every instance he cites with which I am familiar, any concerns about the gross mispricing of risk were lightly dismissed, because 'the market says that everything is all right.'   As if the financial markets were some prescient, infallible instrument, and not overtaken by the manipulation of insiders and the monied interests. 

The 'rising market' kept most criticism of the policy errors in the growth of the credit bubble cowed and quiet, until the inevitable market break and crisis. That the financiers have not yet completely destroyed the global economy is not particularly reassuring, while they are still working at inscribing their arrogance, writ large on the pages of history, chapter by dreadful chapter.

Or more cynically one can conclude that yes, things are getting out of control, but we must keep dancing while the music is playing, and say nothing while the money is flowing in order to 'save the system,' while disabling the smoke alarms and stuffing one's pockets.

As long as the Fed can keep printing money and delivering it to the Banks and the one percent, and not to the real economy, through its purchases of their (fraudulently) mispriced financial assets, this could keep going, while maximizing the damage.  While it does give the financial engineers some feeling of control, it really does nothing constructive except to delay the essential reforms.

The combination of constructively applied stimulus and sweeping financial reform was the genius of Roosevelt, and the lack of it is the failure of Obama.

And the big correction might not even show up all that readily, in nominal terms at least, in the equity markets for some time, being papered over by a blizzard of new money.  And so that implies a crash in the bond markets, as we saw a few years after the Great Crash of 1929.  But they are getting better at the cover ups, so who can say.

The tail of financialization and leverage is still 'wagging the dog' of the real economy.   After reading the current thoughts in mainstream economics, and Modern Monetary Theory, it seems quite likely that history is about to deal out another hard lesson in real wealth and value.

I am ambivalent to the exact timing since I cannot know it.    And so if another year passes and 'nothing happens' I may not be cheered by it while the fundamentals like median wage continue to deteriorate.  This is the mechanism in which bubbles develop, and we have seen more of them than most, and with increasingly intensity.

But I am more confident that the punchline to this comedy, if it continues unabated, will be the devaluation of the currency and at least a de facto default on the debt which can take several forms. And the usual yahoos will rise up and seek power, promising an hysterical people to take away their pain, while inflicting it on 'the others.'

"Present market conditions now match 6 other instances in history: August 1929 (followed by the 85% market decline of the Great Depression), November 1972 (followed by a market plunge in excess of 50%), August 1987 (followed by a market crash in excess of 30%), March 2000 (followed by a market plunge in excess of 50%), May 2007 (followed by a market plunge in excess of 50%), and January 2011 (followed by a market decline limited to just under 20% as a result of central bank intervention). These conditions represent a syndrome of overvalued, overbought, overbullish, rising yield conditions that has emerged near the most significant market peaks – and preceded the most severe market declines – in history:

1. S&P 500 Index overvalued, with the Shiller P/E (S&P 500 divided by the 10-year average of inflation-adjusted earnings) greater than 18. The present multiple is actually 22.6.
2. S&P 500 Index overbought, with the index more than 7% above its 52-week smoothing, at least 50% above its 4-year low, and within 3% of its upper Bollinger bands (2 standard deviations above the 20-period moving average) at daily, weekly, and monthly resolutions. Presently, the S&P 500 is either at or slightly through each of those bands.
3. Investor sentiment overbullish (Investors Intelligence), with the 2-week average of advisory bulls greater than 52% and bearishness below 28%. The most recent weekly figures were 54.3% vs. 22.3%. The sentiment figures we use for 1929 are imputed using the extent and volatility of prior market movements, which explains a significant amount of variation in investor sentiment over time.
4. Yields rising, with the 10-year Treasury yield higher than 6 months earlier.

The blue bars in the chart below identify historical points since 1970 corresponding to these conditions.

Unfettered Capitalism and the Great Crash of 1929

“The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practiced.

The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not...

When the modern corporation acquires power over markets, power in the community, power over the state and power over belief, it is a political instrument, different in degree but not in kind from the state itself. To hold otherwise — to deny the political character of the modern corporation — is not merely to avoid the reality. It is to disguise the reality.

The victims of that disguise are those we instruct in error. The beneficiaries are the institutions whose power we so disguise. Let there be no question: economics, so long as it is thus taught, becomes, however unconsciously, a part of the arrangement by which the citizen or student is kept from seeing how he or she is, or will be, governed...

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

"To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society.

For the alleged commodity "labor power" cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting also the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar commodity. In disposing of a man's labor power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity "man" attached to that tag.

Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation.

Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed...

Undoubtedly, labor, land, and money markets are essential to a market economy. But no society could stand the effects of such a system of crude fictions even for the shortest stretch of time unless its human and natural substance, as well as its business organization, was protected against the ravages of this satanic mill."

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, 1944

Time to Get Defensive

It will not be surpising to see US equities pullback 2 to 3 percent from here, and then push higher to a new rally high near the end of August. This will help to pull in the public money as the insiders continue to sell, distributing their stock and taking their gains.

But from what we are seeing, September and October look to be particularly 'risky' months this year, and now might be a good time to become more defensive in those accounts that are not agile, like 401k's.

What is 'defensive?' Cash is good, and short term government bonds of less than 2 years duration. No need to get fancy if you are an investor.

This is not a prediction or a recommendation. This is what we are doing for ourselves and some friends.

If the market can hold support through November, then we will reconsider.

2008 Was the Third Worst Year for US Stocks Since 1896

1931 was the worst, but notice that 1930 was not far behind.

Black Swan Dive: Life On the Tails

The worst case scenario is if the Dollar, Bond, and Equities start going down together as the world repudiates the US Dollar Reserve Currency and Credit Bubble.

This is not a probable scenario.

The last time it happened was in 1933 in the trough of the Great Depression.

But we may have the opportunity to see something as once-in-a-lifetime and memorable as John Law's Banque Générale and the Mississipi Bubble.

Let's hope the Federal Reserve can reach deeper in its pockets for a better class of tricks than just front running the dollar and the bonds until they fall over.

Certainly anything is possible, but it does appear as though the US Long Bond is hitting a 'high note' of improbable valuation unless the world accepts a single currency dollar regime.

Comparison of 1928-32 and 2007-11

There are important differences in the nature of the declines. The current series looks like a bear market in the form of 1973-4 whereas 1929-32 was much more precipitous. This may be attributed to the extraordinary actions of the FED and Treasury. However, this may only soften the blow and not the outcome, most likely adjusted for inflation.




The Intraday Volatility matches up nicely so far as we have aligned them Peak to Peak without regard to pricing. It will be in the market action going forward where the model will be assessed here.

Euro/Yen and the US Equity Markets Bubble: A Monetary Phenomenon

Here is an interesting comparison which we believe has some validity in that the credit and asset bubble
was significantly a Yen and Dollar, and possibly a Renminbi, monetary phenomenon.

The broadly manipulated currency markets in a fiat regime are the tail wagging the dog of the world economy.

The ultimate question might be who, if anyone, is doing the wagging?

Just to keep it interesting, and to drive home the point that these relationships are rarely simple and straightforward,
this chart shows the sharp decline in the euro/dollar cross with the decline of US financial assets.
We think we have previously shown a tight correlation between US asset values held by European banks and the eurodollar.
There may also be some 'flight to home currency' phenomenon amongst US investors.

Worst Fifteen Dow Days in Percentage Decline

This Bear Market Is One for the Record Books Part II

Here is a chart of the major bear markets since 1900 that shows the impact of the Great Crash of 1929 as a solitary event, and then again as the prelude included in the bear market of the Great Depression of 1929 - 1932.

We were bothered a little on the first version of this chart that the Great Crash did not show its full impact. Imagine the decline we have seen over the past year, but with more intensity, occurring in less than two months!




Special thanks to our friend Elvis_Knows for the chart update, and for all his many contributions and charts over the past year.

The US Stock Markets Have Now Declined More than 50% - Intermediate Target Hit Today

Remember this chart from October?



Here's another view of the big picture.

Tech Is No Safe Haven in This Recession

Bloomberg
Qualcomm Shuts Down Hiring After `Dramatic' Order Contraction
By Ian King

Nov. 12 - Qualcomm Inc. Chief Executive Officer Paul Jacobs said he's stopped hiring and is eliminating some research projects after a ``dramatic'' contraction in chip orders from mobile-phone makers.

``We have basically shut off our new hiring growth,'' Jacobs said in an interview in New York today. ``Before it was, `let's let a thousand flowers bloom,' now we're going to do a bit of pruning. We've shut down some projects.''

Jacobs, who heads the biggest maker of mobile-phone chips, said orders dropped off in October because handset manufacturers cut back on their stockpiles of unused parts, a reduction that will last for about two quarters. Consumer demand for mobile phones with Qualcomm chips is holding up, he said. (Holding up what? Bonuses? - Jesse)

``The end market, while it's slowing a little bit, isn't that dramatic,'' said Jacobs, 46. Still, there is ``some uncertainty'' in the company's earnings projections. (If the manufacturers are slashing production you can bet their channels are stuff and crying "enough" - Jesse)

Revenue this quarter may fall as much as 6 percent from a year earlier, the first decline in seven years, Qualcomm said last week. Annual sales increased 22 percent on average in the past six years as Qualcomm benefited from increasing use of its chips in mobile phones that provide high-speed Internet access...

Thinking the Unthinkable: Are the Markets Warning of a US Debt Default?

As we have previously stated, right now the US is on the path to a devaluation and a selective default on its debt and currency. No one can say 'how and when' with certainty. But surely it seems probable that there is a stop and a stumble in the growth of this mother of credit bubbles somewhere ahead.

Perhaps it may be more credible if one reads a similar speculation in the financial magazine Barron's.

Some have suggested that devaluation no longer has meaning, preferring depreciation. Why? Because what would one devalue the dollar against, as it is tied to no external standard? The Dollar is its own standard as the reserve currency of the word.

A bit of a technical nuance perhaps, a holdover from when money was related to independent stores of value. But we think the dollar can be devalued against the expectation of the marketplace that the growth of the money supply will keep pace with the net productive output of the US, and real relative purchasing power, and represent a store of value with some small variance for inflation.

It is always a mistake to assume that there are no external standards, no dissenting views, that things are merely what we say they are and should be, for everyone.

The standard is the 'full faith and credit of the United States.' And if that confidence is broken, the reversion to fundamental 'external' values may be impressive.

Unthinkable? Every currency that has ever been has eventually been destroyed and undergone a transformation. Even the US dollar has undergone evolutions and incarnations.

But few things are inevitable. The world may choose to create a one world currency, under the control of the Fed and the Central Banks, which is a prelude to One World Government. This would be one way to extend the existence of a fiat regime. Kill off all the alternatives, by force. A regime of the will to last a thousand years.

In the short term we may again see rallies in the bonds and dollar because of a flight to quality and a short squeeze on dollars, particularly in Europe. This is due to lags in the effects of a credit cycle decline on its various components.

Demand for dollars spikes in a flight to quality and debt payment squeezes such as that being experienced by some European banks, and then declines more slowly than the supply of dollars can ramp up in a declining credit cycle, leading to a 'liquidity crunch.'

This is particularly confusing to most casual thinking on economics. It helps if you really think about what a dollar represents, what money really is, to someone outside the system holding 'real goods' for sale.

At some point the ramp up of dollars meets and exceeds demand, and the cycle of inflation begins again. If the situation is particularly dire, the currency may be devalued to speed its supply as the US did in 1933. But without a new Bretton Woods type currency fix an inflation alone is much more likely.

As an aside, we think the Europeans should declare a force majeure and allow all non-euro debts, even in private contracts, to be settled in euros as part of a formal rejection of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency.

But these are all exogenous developments. For now, within a degree of probability, the US is on the road to a significant failure of its currency and debt, most likely through a nasty bout of inflation, selective bankruptcies, and ultimately the reissue of a new currency.

Searching for relative safe havens of value for wealth, as it had been in the 1970's, may be the premiere investment theme for the rest of this decade, and some part of the next.

Barron's
UP AND DOWN WALL STREET DAILY
Uncle Sam's Credit Line Running Out?
By RANDALL W. FORSYTH
NOVEMBER 11, 2008

The yield curve and credit default swaps tell the same story: the U.S. can't borrow trillions without paying a price.

WHAT ONCE WAS UNTHINKABLE has come to pass this year: massive bailouts by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, with the extension of billions of the taxpayers' and the central bank's credit in so many new and untested schemes that you can't tell your acronyms or abbreviations without a scorecard.

Even more unbelievable is that some of the recipients of staggering sums are coming back for a second round. Or that the queue of petitioners grows by the day.

But what happens if the requests begin to strain the credit line of the world's most creditworthy borrower, the U.S. government itself? Unthinkable?

American International Group which originally had to borrow what was a stunning $85 billion from the Fed to keep it from cratering in September, upped the total Sunday to $150 billion.

Monday, Fannie Mae reported a $29 billion third-quarter loss, far in excess of forecasts, raising the specter that the mortgage giant may need more money after the Treasury pledged to inject $100 billion in preferred stock financing in September.

Meanwhile, American Express received Fed approval to convert to a bank holding company, joining the likes of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, that have a direct pipeline to borrow from the Fed or the Treasury's TARP, the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Fund.

And, of course, Detroit is looking for a credit line from Washington. General Motors (GM) Friday warned it could run out of cash next year without a government loan. GM plunged another 23% Monday, to 3.36, as several analysts helpfully recommended selling shares of the beleaguered automaker that already had lost more than 85% of their value.

Visiting the White House Monday, President-elect Obama pressed President Bush to support emergency aid for GM and other automakers. The prospect for federal aid for GM ironically weighed on its shares as one bearish analyst said the price of the bailout could be a wipeout of common holders.

Be that as it may, it's all adding up. If the late Sen. Everett Dirkson were around today, he might comment that a trillion here, a trillion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

Trillions are no hyperbole. The Treasury is set to borrow $550 billion in the current quarter alone and $368 billion in the first quarter of 2009. "Near-term pressures on Treasury finances are much more intense than we had thought," Goldman Sachs economists commented when the government announced its borrowing projections last week.

It may finally be catching up with Uncle Sam. That's what the yield curve may be whispering. But some economists are too deaf, or dumb, to get it.

The yield curve simply is the graph of Treasury yields of increasing maturities, starting from one-month bills to 30-year bonds. The slope of the line typically is ascending -- positive in math terms -- because investors would want more to tie up their money for longer periods, all else being equal. Which it never is.

If they expect yields to rise in the future, they'll want a bigger premium to commit to longer maturities. Otherwise, they'd rather stay short and wait for more generous yields later on. Conversely, if they think rates will fall, investors will want to lock in today's yields for a longer period.

The Treasury yield curve -- from two to 10 years, which is how the bond market tracks it -- has rarely been steeper. The spread is up to 250 basis points (2.5 percentage points, a level matched only in the past quarter century in 2002 and 1992, at the trough of economic cycles.

Based on a simplistic reading of that history and the Cliff Notes version of theory, one economist whose main area of expertise is to get quoted by reporters even less knowledgeable than he, asserts such a steep yield curve typically reflects investors' anticipation of economic recovery. (LOL, nicely phrased - Jesse)

Never mind that the yield curve has steepened as the economy has worsened and prospects for recovery have diminished. Like the Bourbons, the French royal family up to the Revolution, he learns nothing and forgets nothing.

As with so much other things, something else is happening this year.

The steepening of the Treasury yield curve has been accompanied by an increase in the cost of insuring against default by the U.S. Treasury. It may come as a shock, but there are credit default swaps on the U.S. government and they have become more expensive -- in tandem with an increase in the spread between two- and 10-year notes.

This link has been brought to light by Tim Backshall, the chief analyst of Credit Derivatives Research. The attraction of investors to the short end of the Treasury market is "juxtaposed with the massive oversupply and inflationary expectations of the longer end," he writes.

Backshall is not alone in this dire assessment. Scott Minerd, the chief investment officer for fixed income at Guggenheim Partners, a Los

Angeles money manager, estimates that total Treasury borrowing for fiscal 2009 will total $1.5 trillion-$2 trillion. That was based on $700 billion for TARP, a $500 billion-$750 billion "cyclical deficit," an additional $500 billion stimulus program and some uncertain amount for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Minerd doubts that private savings in the U.S. and foreign purchases of Treasury debt will be sufficient to meet those government cash. That leaves the Fed to take up the slack; that is, monetization of the debt.

However it comes about, Backshall's charts of the yield curve and the spread on U.S. Treasury CDS paint a dramatic picture. Both the yield spread and the cost of insuring debt moved up sharply together starting in September.

Let's recall what happened that month: the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac bailouts, the AIG bailout and the Lehman Brothers failure. The two lines continued their parallel ascent with the announcement and ultimate passage of the TARP last month. And evidence mounted of an accelerating slide in growth.

Cutting through the technical jargon, the yield curve and the credit-default swaps market both indicate the markets are exacting a greater cost to lend to Uncle Sam. And it's not because of anticipated recovery, which would reduce, not increase, the cost of insuring Treasury debt against default.

All of which suggests America's credit line has its limits.

At the beginning of the Clinton Administration in the early 1990s, adviser James Carville was stunned at the power the bond market had over the government. If he came back, Carville said he would want to come back as the bond market so he could scare everybody.

President-elect Obama may come to think Clinton had it easy by comparison.

Marc Faber Sees Bankruptcy for the US

MINA
Swiss Finance Guru sees bankruptcy for the U.S
Thursday, 06 November 2008


Swiss financial guru Marc Faber tells swissinfo he sees hard times ahead for the world's stock exchanges and even state bankruptcy for the United States.

He also believes that stock exchanges will stay at low levels for a long time.

Faber, otherwise known as Dr Doom for his contrarian views on the economy, has lived in Asia for the past 35 years.

He is a jack-of-all-trades: investment adviser, financier, best-selling author and the compiler of a monthly economic publication called The Gloom Boom and Doom Report.

Faber sits on various boards of directors and investment committees.

swissinfo: You prophesied the stock market crash of 1987 and the Asia crisis and became a celebrity as a result. Did you see this crisis coming too?

Marc Faber: It was quite clear we had a credit bubble. I had been warning about that for years and not only in the mortgage sector. But what surprised even me was that [US insurer] AIG would almost disappear and that UBS shares would fall under $17.20.

swissinfo: How did it come to such a situation?

M.F.: A credit bubble has been growing for 25 years. We've seen, in particular over the past seven years, an unbelievable credit growth, which fuelled economic development. Then there were structural changes in the economy, for example the sinking saving ratios that have had an effect on consumption and growth rates.

The situation worsened in 2001 in the United States when the central bank lowered the interest rate from 6.5 per cent to an unheard of one per cent in 2003. This ultra-expansive monetary policy led to a credit growth that was five times higher than growth of the economy. A bubble growth and later the crash were the logical consequences.

swissinfo: Have we reached rock bottom?

M.F.: I think we're near it. But I also think we'll stick at this low point for a long time. Anyone who thinks that everything will soon be rosy again is naive. It's quite possible that worldwide stock exchanges will experience a similar development to that witnessed in Japan over the past two decades [the Nikkei index has fallen from 39,000 points to under 8,000].

Japan also shows that the large amount of money injected to stimulate the markets didn't have the desired effect – but it did produce huge holes in the state coffers.

swissinfo: You are known for swimming against the tide of conventional wisdom. But you are right in line with the prevailing pessimism.

M.F.: Not quite. I'm even more pessimistic than most (laughs). Look at it like this, between 1980 and 2007 people saved from their capital gains and not their income, as their income was spent. That was fine while property and shares increased in value every year. Today these people are highly indebted and are only beginning to save more by putting the brake on their consumption.

That's how every economy goes to the dogs – with or without injection of capital by governments. With the best of wills, I do not see a single catalyst that could lead to a new bull market in the world. At the moment, everything has gone down the drain.

swissinfo: How does the present crisis differ from previous ones?

M.F.: In the past few years everything went up – shares, commodities, consumer goods, real estate values, art and even bonds. Such a combination is extremely unusual. We saw the biggest investment bubble in the history of humanity. The current situation is possibly worse than the global economic crisis of 1929. And that is thanks to Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke [the former and current US Federal Reserve Board chairmen]. These two gentlemen must account for massive errors.

swissinfo: Governments are offering guarantees and are pumping thousands of billions into the markets. Is that a mistake?

M.F.: Yes. The losses are there and someone has to bear them. There are two possibilities. Banks go under and the stakeholders are left with nothing, as is the case with Lehman Brothers, or governments pump money into the financial system so that the incompetent financial clowns in Bahnhofstrasse [Zurich's financial centre] and Wall Street can continue to eat in fancy restaurants.

I am clearly in favour of the first because the consequences of these state interventions are massive budget deficits. To finance these, governments have to acquire money. For that they have to borrow money, which makes state debt and interest payments soar. US economists have come to the conclusion from the trends that there will be a US state bankruptcy. (That's not a very widely held view Herr Faber, and we're feeling a little isolated in that view - for now - Jesse)

swissinfo: Do you share that view?

M.F.: One hundred per cent. The US government will in future have new debts of at least $1,000 billion (SFr1,165 billion). That's on top of the current state debt of $10,000 billion. And that doesn't take into account state programmes to stimulate the economy. The government will have no other choice than to print money, which in the long term will lead to inflation.

swissinfo: How do you see the near future?

M.F.: More positively. The markets are totally undervalued so I reckon on a short-term recovery of easily 20 to 30 per cent. (LOL. Stocks are absolutely not undervalued, but a technical bounce of 20% is very possible. There was a 60% bounce after the Great Crash of 1929, before the markets turned lower again, eventually giving up 89% of their peak values into the market bottom of 1933. Bear markets often get 20-30% short covering rallies before starting a next leg down. This is what makes them so difficult to trade. You cannot hold anything, which is how most investors have been conditioned by the preceding bull market. The use of leverage is deadly for core positions. - Jesse)

swissinfo: When?

M.F.: In the next two to three weeks. (After we make a bottom. Use that rally to discard any remaining dollar financial holdings and get liquid, buy gold and silver. - Jesse)

swissinfo: That's not exactly very much in view of the massive losses.

M.F.: No. If you drop a tennis ball with only a little air in it, it doesn't bounce very high!

swissinfo: Are you calling into question the concept of making money from shares?

M.F.: No. The idea is still valid but you have to be realistic. Adjusted for inflation and with a long-term perspective you could earn on average three per cent with US shares. The long-term promises of eight per cent made by bankers and pseudo investment advisers to lure their customers are absolute rubbish. (Can't fault that logic - Jesse)

swissinfo: It looked for a long time as though Switzerland would get away with just a black eye. What is your view? (What the Swiss government and central bank have done to their economy and finances is a disgrace. We hold no Swiss francs any longer. The Swiss people have been treated badly. - Jesse)

M.F.: The export industry will be extremely hard hit. People in Switzerland will have to accustom themselves to bankruptcies, particularly in the machine industry (They will devalue the franc inevitably. The savings of the people will be destroyed. The Swiss bank has sold off its gold. The large banks are functionally insolvent. Shameful - Jesse)