GE, GECC's Rating May Be Cut by Moody's

* Moody's places GE's long-term credit ratings on review

* GE sees no 'major operational impacts' if downgraded

* Shares fall 5 pct after the closing bell


Reuters
Moody's says could cut GE's triple-A credit rating
By Scott Malone
Tue Jan 27, 2009 5:45pm EST

BOSTON, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Moody's Investors Service said on Tuesday it was reviewing General Electric Co's (GE.N) triple-A credit ratings, which could lead to a downgrade, and its shares fell as much as 5 percent in extended trade.

The move raises the risk that GE, which has a hefty finance business, could lose the long-term triple-A rating that has been a cornerstone of its GE Capital finance business.

On Monday, Standard & Poor's -- which has already warned that it could cut GE's triple-A rating -- said its view would not be affected by disappointing fourth quarter results, but warned it believed it would be "increasingly challenging" for GE Capital to meet its earnings targets.

The U.S. conglomerate has been working to reduce its reliance on GE Capital, as the credit crunch has hurt that unit over the past year and weighed on its earnings.

"Moody's is concerned that deepening global economic weakness could further compromise (GE Capital's) asset quality, potentially jeopardizing its ability to meet earnings objectives while also maintaining high earnings quality," the rating agency said. [ID:nWNA4886]

Many on Wall Street believe the world's largest maker of jet engines and electric turbines may have to sacrifice either the triple-A rating or its $1.24 per share annual dividend as it copes with falling profit in a brutal economy....

A Fresh Breeze of Reform Blows Through Foggy Bottom

"The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings... A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
John F. Kennedy

This is a change for the better, a step in the right direction.

"The way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable. And the way
to make government accountable is to make it transparent so that the American
people can know exactly what decisions are being made, how they're being made,
and whether their interests are being well served.

The directives I am
giving my administration today on how to interpret the Freedom of Information
Act will do just that. For a long time now, there's been too much secrecy in
this city. The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not
disclosing something to the American people then, it should not be disclosed.

That era is now over. Starting today, every agency and department should
know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to
withhold information but those who seek to make it known."

President
Barack H. Obama

Weekly and Daily Gold Charts

Gold is in a potential breakout formation with a minimum upside measuring objective of 1200. A consolidation here that does not violate 800 to the downside is within the bounds of this formation and will be considered a right shoulder.

Such a correction is not necessary to the formation.





Gold is still in a bull market. There will be corrections, some of them quite challenging. This is the very nature of a bull market, to shake the resolve of the bulls, and continually entice and confound the bears, who struggle to hold their pessimism from one line in the sand to the next.

Some day the bull market in gold will end. But not yet.

SP Futures Hourly Chart at 3:30 PM

The theme for this week is Fed Watch for Wednesday afternoon, and an advance look at 4Q GDP on Friday, with earnings before and after the bell all week.

The bulls are working that bottom formation and it will run if they get the breakout. Notice the failure of a similar pattern about a week ago.

This can go either way. It may not give a clear signal until after the FOMC decision, unless 'something happens.'

Is Money Supply a Relative Absolute?

There has been discussion over the weekend regarding an intriguing blog entry from friend Cassandra Inflation v. Deflation with regard to the Fed's monetization of debt. The principle assertion seems to be that if the Fed is merely replacing existing credit dollar for dollar as it is written off, then the result is not inflationary.

If the original wholesale money market borrowing and lending was not inflationary, then why should its substitute be inflationary? Indeed, the real question is whether the expansion of the Fed's balance sheet is keeping pace with the contraction of money market credit more generally. If not, then the consequence may be deflationary.

Implicit in this of course are two conditions. The first, that the level of wholesale borrowing and lending had not been and would have continued not to be inflationary, and secondly, that the expansion of the Fed's balance sheet is equivalent dollar for dollar with the debt it is said to be replacing.

These distinctions will be lost on most, but they are quite important, and we urge to reader not to gloss over them in preparing a rebuttal to support their bias du jour.

Let's consider an hypothesis someone put to us some time ago. They claimed that the appropriate rate of growth for any money supply is zero, which they considered 'neutral.'

To this we put the question, "If one holds the money supply static for a long period of time in a country whose population is growing at 10% per annum, and GDP is growing at 10% as well, is this a neutral money supply growth rate?

The answer of course is no. Money supply that remains static in a growth situation, whether one measures it in a ratio to economic growth or per capita, is obviously on a deflationary trend because supply is not growing at a rate equivalent to the increase in demand.

Seems obvious in this perspective right? We are not saying it is good or bad, appropriate or not. It is what it is, a growth in money supply that is lagging the growth in demand for money.

Conversely, if money supply is kept static in a country where the population is decreasing, and economic growth contracting, is it neutral? No it is inflationary, since the growth rate of money supply (zero) is greater than the growth rate of the demand for money, which is in decline presumably.

Now, one can imagine all sorts of possible scenarios as exceptions because there are lags in all economic cause and effect. To complicate matters there is no instantaneously correct rate of money supply growth without a context since reality is inherently in a state of flux.

However, though, it is clear that a static money supply is not necessarily neutral compared to the state of the growth of the money supply in a different economic context.

Secondly, we will postulate something we are not quite ready to prove yet, and that is that credit is not the same as money supply. We offer a piece instead that was blogged some time ago in which the various components of money supply are discussed.

Money Supply: a Primer

Its something to consider, and has received too little attention in our opinion.

If you have one thousand dollars in cash, in your pocket, is it completely equivalent to one thousand dollars worth of honey which you have at home in your pantry, in terms of its affect on inflation or deflation?

Forgiving the pun, the honey is decidedly less liquid than the cash.

What if you have one thousand dollars in cash, and another thousand is owed to you by an acquaintance in a distant city who promised to pay it back on demand the last time you spoke to them a year ago. Are those equivalent dollars?

Does it matter who is holding the money? What if the bulk of the money being added to to the economy is being given to gamblers in Las Vegas, rather than lets say farmers in Pennsylvania. Is there a difference in that money's effect on inflation or deflation? Yes there are few differences in the very long run, but sometimes the run becomes so long that it is irrelevant to the policy questions at hand.

This essay does not seek to provide answer to these questions at this time, since this is basis for a new perspective in economics. And unfortunately the discussion is premature. It is rather like a room full of well seasoned drunks, after a week long binge, gathering to attend a lecture on sober thought. We have so utterly lost the conception and relationship of value and risk that we must sober up a bit before we can even think about it once again.

Rather, the purpose of this essay is to cast doubt on the certainty that what we call money is always and everywhere equivalent in force and power and influence as an economic actor no matter where and how it is held.

Having said all that, it is obvious that the Money Supply as measured by the means at our disposal is growing at a rate more significant than economic growth, and that difference is now even greater as the economy slows and contracts. As an engineer and an operational business unit manager we always tend to fall back on what can be measured, what is real and knowable, when theory fails and the bosses are lost in flights of fancy.

The Fed is Monetizing Debt and Inflating the Money Supply

As water is added to the ecosphere, it flows and pools in many places. Money as water in the econosphere is evaporating through debt retirement, but perhaps not through debt destruction, or at least not in the same way. Someone must lose if a debt is written off right? What if that loss is booked at the Fed, and they realize that loss by simply 'making it go away' at least as far as the real economy is concerned? Is there a contraction in the money supply anywhere?

There are all questions worth considering, and we will have much more data as the results of Mr. Bernanke's experiments produce additional data.

But one thing is certain in our minds, and that is certainty in this situation is an illusion. We do not think that even the Fed knows exactly what they are doing. Rather, they are feeling their way through uncharted waters, projecting perhaps a confidence, but this is primarily for effect, not as a genuine state of mind.

And based on first principles, deflation, while possible, is never a certainty in a fiat regime where there is a central monetary authority that holds the power to monetize debt. The only boundary on their power is the acceptability, or value, of the money they produce, and that is also known as inflation.

Obviously the Fed may do a poor job or an outstanding job of managing the nation's money supply and economy. We will not really know until after the fact given the lags in these sorts of machinations.

But what is different, what is dangerous, is that the Fed has grasped the reins of a highly complex system, that is now more global than at any time before, and is trying to pull it in a certain direction, without immediate feedback on what it is that is happening. The last five or six times in which the Fed has done this something 'unexpected' has occurred.

Another factor most do not consider which is of some importance is the potential for systemic reform in the economy that is the context for the actions of the money supply. Without serious financial reform we most likely will take spin on the wheel of boom and bust again, with a greater disparity of wealth and a greater loss of democratic freedoms.

Either state is possible, make no mistake, but the probability is highest that the loss of control will be an inflation, with the key metric being 'how bad' and 'how difficult to subdue once it is unleashed.' Why? Because inflation is the default condition of a fiat currency that becomes uncontrolled. Deflation requires a sustained effort for whatever reasons, generally policy error or a conflict in desired outcomes.

A softer, much more judgemental reason, is that those who are now telling us that inflation is not an issue are the very ones who have been acutely wrong, for whatever reason, since this crisis began, if not years before that. They speak their book, and shamelessly. But that is no determinant, merely a confirmation of sorts.

What concerns us most is that the Fed is quite confident, in their own words, that they know how to deal with inflation after Volcker. That reminds us too much of hubris, and the classical myth of Phaëton who confidently took the reins of the chariot of the Sun from the golden Apollo, and very nearly burned down the world in the process.

Bernanke's Gamble on the Dollar

There are several things of interest this week. The first and foremost is the Fed's FOMC two day meeting with their announcement on Wednesday at 2:15.

It is important despite the fact that rates are effectively at zero, and the Fed has declared for 'quantitative easing.'

How does the Fed intend to implement this quantitative easing? Another way to ask this is to say, "What is the next bubble?"

Quantitative easing implies market distortion, and traders will be keen to understand where and how that distortion will play, because they are still geared for supercharged returns in an environment where fewer and fewer opportunities exist.

The Treasuries seem like a safer place, because lower interest rates are to the economy's benefit. Foreign entities may not like the monetization aspect, but we wonder how many real 'investors' are left in the bonds? Most in there are domestic parties seeking safe havens with any sort of return, and foreign central banks supporting political and industrial agendas.

So the focus will be on the wording of the Fed's statement once again, looking for clues with regard to the Fed's easing implementation and potential distortions that provide market inefficiencies.


Bloomberg
Bernanke Risks "Very Unstable" Markets as He Weighs Buying Bonds
By Rich Miller
January 25, 2009 19:01 EST

Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his colleagues may try once again to cure the aftermath of a bubble in one kind of asset by overheating the market for another.

Fed policy makers meeting tomorrow and the day after are exploring the purchase of longer-dated Treasury securities in an effort to push up their price and bring down their yield. Behind the potential move: a desire to reduce long-term borrowing costs at a time when the Fed can’t lower short-term interest rates any further because they are effectively at zero.

The risk is that central bankers will end up distorting the Treasury market, triggering wild swings in prices -- and long-term interest rates -- as investors react to what they say and do. “It sets forth a speculative dynamic that is very unstable,” says William Poole, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington....

Inflated Prices

Recent history shows the economic danger of inflating asset prices. After a stock-market bubble burst in 2000, the Fed slashed interest rates to as low as 1 percent and in the process helped inflate the housing market. The collapse of that bubble is what eventually helped drive the U.S. into the current recession, the worst in a generation.

Faced with the danger of a deflationary decline in output, prices and wages, the Fed is considering steps to revive the moribund economy. On the table besides bond purchases: firming up a pledge to keep short-term interest rates low for an extended period and adopting some type of inflation target to underscore the Fed’s determination to avoid deflation.

The central bank has been buying long-term Treasury debt off and on for years as part of its day-to-day management of reserves in the banking system. Yet it has always gone out of its way to avoid influencing prices. What it’s discussing now, says former Fed Governor Laurence Meyer, is deliberately trying to push long rates below where they otherwise might be.

Fed Purchases

Bernanke raised this possibility in a speech on Dec. 1. While he didn’t specify what maturities the Fed might buy, in the past he has suggested that purchases might include securities with three- to six-year terms. (This is around the sweet spot for foreign Central Banks - Jesse)

Investors immediately took notice, with the yield on the 10-year note falling to 2.73 percent from 2.92 percent the day before. Yields fell further on Dec. 16, dropping to 2.26 percent from 2.51 percent the previous day, after the central bank’s policy-making Federal Open Market Committee said it was studying the issue....

Yields have since risen, with the 10-year note ending last week at 2.62 percent. Behind the reversal: expectations of massive fresh supplies of Treasuries as the government is forced to finance an $825 billion economic-stimulus package and a possible new bank-bailout plan. This week alone, the Treasury is scheduled to auction $135 billion worth of securities.

Jump in Yields

David Rosenberg, chief North American economist for Merrill Lynch in New York, says the jump in yields may prompt the Fed to go ahead with Treasury purchases.

This isn’t the first time Bernanke and the Fed have discussed buying longer-dated securities and ended up roiling the market. Bernanke touted the idea as a tool to fight deflation in speeches in November 2002 and May 2003.

Egged on by his comments -- and later remarks by then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan that the central bank needed to build a “firewall” against deflation -- many investors became convinced the central bank was poised to buy bonds. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 3.11 percent in June 2003 from 3.81 percent at the start of the year.

Traders quickly reversed course as it became clear the Fed had no such intentions, sending the 10-year Treasury yield soaring to 4.6 percent just three months later, on Sept. 2.

‘Miscommunication’

Poole, who was then at the St. Louis Fed, was critical at the time of what he called the central bank’s “miscommunication.” He now sees the Fed making the same mistake with its latest suggestions that it might buy longer- dated securities.

“If they do it, it’s going to be disruptive to the market,” says Poole, who is a contributor to Bloomberg News. “If they don’t do it, it will impair the Fed’s credibility and erode the confidence the market has in the statements that the Fed makes.”

Meyer, now vice chairman of St. Louis-based Macroeconomic Advisers, says the Fed should, and probably will, go ahead with purchases as a way to lower borrowing costs. “The story is stop talking and start buying,” he says.

Still, he notes that not everyone at the Fed is enthusiastic about the idea. One concern: Foreign central banks and sovereign-wealth funds, which are big holders of Treasuries, might cool to buying many more if they believe prices are artificially high. (The buyers of our debt now are supporting their own industrial policy we would hope. Any other reason borders on mismanagement of funds while anyone in their country is hungry or unemployed - Jesse)

Undermine the Dollar

That may undermine the dollar. “There’s no guarantee that international investors would switch to other dollar- denominated debt if flushed from the Treasury market,” says Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Tony Crescenzi, chief bond-market strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. in New York, says foreign investors might also get spooked if they conclude that the Fed is monetizing the government’s debt -- in effect, printing money -- by buying Treasuries. (They already are, and they already are - Jesse)

Bernanke himself, in his 2003 speech, said monetization of the debt risked faster inflation -- something bond investors, foreign or domestic, wouldn’t like.

Some economists argue the Fed would help the economy more if it bought other types of debt. (Such as corporate bond - Jesse) Even after their recent rise, 10-year Treasury yields are still well below the 4.02 percent level at the start of last year....

Hawks at the Fed wouldn’t welcome such purchases. They are already uneasy that some of the central bank’s programs are effectively allocating credit to one part of the economy rather than others. Case in point: the Fed’s ongoing program to buy $500 billion of mortgage-backed securities, which Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, has called “credit policy” rather than monetary policy. (Its nice to see that someone else is noticing that the Fed has crossed the Rubicon from central bank to central economic planner in the worst sense of the description - Jesse)

US Treasury Department Official Allegedly Aided and Abetted Banking Fraud (Again)

Darrell Dochow earns $230,000 per year at Treasury in banking regulation. He reportedly gave Indymac some suggestions on cooking their books, and then allowed the exception to the rules to accomplish it. It appears to have been a blatant and obvious accounting fraud.

Mr. Dochow is also the official who presided over the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal. Having looked into Charles Keating's eyes and seeing him a good man, he reportedly overrode the protests and findings of fraud from the banking experts. After his S&L debacle he was apparently demoted, but brought back into a position of importance under the Bush Administration. All the details on this have not yet been made public.

Mr. Dochow is unlikely to do any prison time, but may lose his job. That is because this is 'criminal with a small c' according to this news report.

When this sort of behaviour becomes criminal with a 'capital C' and when people like Dochow find themselves on the business end of FBI probes and Justice Department indictments at least as serious as the one mounted against Eliot Spitzer and his hooker, we might make some approach to honesty and reform in this country.

Ok, Obama Administration, the buck is on your desk now. Time to take meaningful action to back up the rhetoric.


ABC News, New York
Government regulators aided IndyMac coverup, maybe others
By Brian Ross, Justin Rood, and Joseph Rhee
Friday, January 16, 2009

A brewing fraud scandal at the Treasury Department may be worse than officials originally thought.

Investigators probing how Treasury regulators allowed a bank to falsify financial records hiding its ill health have found at least three other instances of similar apparent fraud, sources tell ABC News.

In at least one instance, investigators say, banking regulators actually approached the bank with the suggestion of falsifying deposit dates to satisfy banking rules -- even if it disguised the bank's health to the public.

Treasury Department Inspector General Eric Thorson announced in November his office would probe how a Savings and Loan overseer allowed the IndyMac bank to essentially cook its books, making it appear in government filings that the bank had more deposits than it really did. But Thorson's aides now say IndyMac wasn't the only institution to get such cozy assistance from the official who should have been the cop on the beat.

The federal government took over IndyMac in July, after the bank's stock price plummeted to just pennies a share when it was revealed the bank had financial troubles due to defaulted mortgages and subprime loans, costing taxpayers over $9 billion.

Darrel Dochow, the West Coast regional director at the Office of Thrift Supervision who allowed IndyMac to backdate its deposits, has been removed from his position but he remains on the government payroll while the Inspector General's Office investigates the allegations against him. Investigators say Dochow, who reportedly earns $230,000 a year, allowed IndyMac to register an $18 million capital injection it received in May in a report describing the bank's financial condition in the end of March.

"They [IndyMac] were able to maintain their well-capitalized threshold and continue to use broker deposits to make loans," said Marla Freedman, an assistant inspector general at Treasury. "Basically, while the institution was having financial difficulty, it kept the public from knowing earlier than it otherwise should have or would have."

In order to backdate the filings, IndyMac sought and received permission from Dochow, according to Freedman.

"That struck us as very unusual," said Freedman. "Typically transactions are to be recorded in the period in which they occur, not afterwards. So it was very unusual."

One former regulator says Dochow's actions illustrate the cozy relationship between banks and government regulators.

"He did nothing to protect taxpayers in losses," former federal bank regulator William Black told ABC News. "Instead of correcting it [Dochow] made it worse by increasing the accounting fraud."

Meanwhile, IndyMac customers who lost their savings are demanding answers and are further infuriated after learning Dochow was also the regulator in 1989 who oversaw the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan, a scandal that sent its CEO Charles Keating to prison.

"He's the person who claimed that he looked into Charles Keating's eyes and knew that Keating was a good guy and therefore ignored all of the professional staff that told him that Keating was a fraud, and he produced the worst failure of the Savings and Loan Crisis at $3.4 billion. Now he's managed more than triple that," said Black, now an economics professor at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, Missouri.

Following the Lincoln scandal, Dochow was demoted and placed into a relatively obscure office, but later, inexplicably was brought back into the Office of Thrift Supervision.

Dochow declined to answer questions from ABC News.

After Ronnie Lopez was killed in Iraq, his mother Elaine invested the life insurance proceeds at IndyMac. She lost $37,000 of it.

"I was hysterical," she told ABC News. "I literally thought I was going to kill myself that day, because I felt so bad that I had let him down. I remember going to his grave and telling him "don't worry, I'm going to get that money back,' and I feel like he was saying, 'Hey, Mom, don't let them take that. I did the ultimate for that.'"

A group of angry investors has started a website, demanding answers on the extent of Dochow's actions.

"It's just the strife and anger," said IndyMac customer Lisa Marshall. "That this Dochow person is still employed. It's unbelievable, it's shocking."

While Dochow could end up losing his job, neither he nor his colleagues are expected to go to prison.

"This is criminal with the small 'c,'" said Black. "No one within the regulatory ranks may go to jail, but they have done the worst possible disservice to the taxpayers of America."

The Other US Border Fence - To Keep Your Wealth In

This is a special guest blog from a US ex-pat acquaintance who currently resides in central Europe. It represents the author's personal research and experience.

The Other US Border Fence

What most Americans don't realize is that construction of a legal fence to prevent US taxpayers from escaping from the IRS's controlled pastures is progressing on schedule. Congress has been expanding and strengthening this fence for decades, and the Heart Heroes Earning and Assistance Relief Act was only the latest nail in the soon to be tightly sealed coffin.

The US is the only country besides Libya that taxes the world wide income of it's non-resident citizens, and the HEART act has made expatriation much more difficult, and much more expensive.

Since the passage of HEART in June 17, 2008, any person seeking a green card, long term visa, or US citizenship should carefully consider whether they want to open their entire world wide finances to the IRS's thereafter eternally prying eyes, because of the Hotel California Problem.

Meanwhile, the IRS has been busy revising the 2001 Qualified Intermediary (QI) Agreement. A QI is a foreign financial institution that has agreed with the IRS to undertake certain U.S. withholding and reporting responsibilities and has agreed to audits by an external auditor. This is the agreement with the IRS that all international banks that allow accounts from US citizens have to sign.

The QI noose (er, agreement) will be tightened on December 31, 2009 in the following ways:

1) It forces the QI to identify parties responsible for QI enforcement to the auditors, and would open these parties to prosecution (a la Raoul Weil from UBS).

2) Allow the auditor to probe non-US bank accounts to see if they have characteristics of a US citizen controlled account. This would surely violate Swiss bank secrecy laws.

3) Requires Audit oversight and review by a US auditor.

These three points dramatically increase the costs for smaller banks to have US account holders and maintain status as a QI. This new QI agreement is forcing numerous Swiss banks to refuse to open new bank accounts for US citizens, and it is also forcing these banks to chase away their current US constomers. As we know UBS has left 19,000 US customers in a pinch and is forcing them to find new banks. No bank in Switzerland will accept these accused "tax fugatives" any more. It has long been impossible for a US citizen to legally open an account with any of Europe's discount brokers like Swissquotes or Internaxx, and now US citizens are having to search for financial services in a rapidy drying up pool of international offerers.

On January 15, the Taskforce on Financial Integrity and Economic Development met in Washington. Under the guise of chasing tax evaders and cracking down on tax havens, we will soon see new measures that will further restrict your financial freedom. Americans just don't understand the benefits of financial privacy, and the IRS and Congress have been working for years to convince citizens that this right to privacy is trivial compared to the necessity of taxing all wealth of people holding US citizenship papers wherever it may be held.

Some think that "high net worth individuals" will be the low hanging fruit for the tax collectors in the looming budgetary crisis. These not-sufficiently-rich-to-bribe-a-congressman-or-hire-a-team-of-lawyers type people have been corralled by the IRS, and when the time comes they will be easy picking.

United Kingdom and the British Pound Are in Serious Trouble

The United Kingdom has been in trouble for some time, and a great deal of it is due to the actions of self-serving financiers and elites which are leading the much photographed general populace into debt peonage, a modern day form of serfdom.

There are several ways out of this dilemma, if the Brits have the political will, but it will not be easy as they do not have the world's reserve currency at their disposal. Gordon Brown is not the type of leader that they will require, as he is inherently part of the problem.

It is an interesting speculation to consider that the bravehearts of Scotland may choose once again to go their own way, and to repair the carnage caused them by the Royal Bank of Scotland among others.

(Postscript: It is not clear that the UK GDP situation is all that dissimilar from the US situation based on the numbers, and we will know more about this at the end of the upcoming week when the US reports 4Q GDP. The point of this essay is that the UK is in a poorer position to deal with the problem and this blogger tends to agree, for some slightly different reasons.)


UK Telegraph
Britain on the brink of an economic depression, say experts
By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor
8:22AM GMT 24 Jan 2009

Britain is heading for economic depression for the first time since the 1930s, economists have warned.

Families must brace themselves for a slump of far greater severity and longevity than the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s, they warned. They said the current crisis will be of a scale to rival the biggest peace-time crisis in modern history — the Great Depression.

The warning was delivered by economists and politicians after the Office for National Statistics revealed that the economy shrank by 1.5 per cent in the final three months of 2008 alone.

The contraction follows a 0.6 per cent fall in gross domestic product (GDP) — the most comprehensive measure of Britain’s wealth generation — during the previous three months. This means Britain fulfils the criteria for a technical recession — two successive quarters of negative output.

The news sent the pound sliding to its lowest level since 1985. Sterling dropped more than three quarters of a cent to $1.3688 as investors speculated that the Bank of England may be forced to cut interest rates towards zero in response to the recession.

John McFall, the Labour chairman of the Treasury select committee, sounded a more optimistic note. He said: "We know that 2009 is going to be really tough for many people. There is a determination in Britain and across Europe to keep people in work, to avoid unemployment, so people’s contribution will not be lost."

Confirmation that the economy has entered recession capped a week in which Gordon Brown was forced to announce a new £350 billion bank rescue plan. Unemployment has almost reached two million. President Barack Obama discussed the financial crisis with the Prime Minister on the telephone yesterday, his first call to a European leader.

The fall in GDP is the sharpest since 1980, when Britain was mired in its most severe post-war recession. The news is an embarrassment for Mr Brown, who pledged as Chancellor not to return Britain to "boom and bust".

Britain is likely to suffer more than other economies due to its heavy reliance on the financial services sector, which has all but imploded in the wake of the economic crisis, experts said.

Others raised the spectre of an outright economic depression, often defined by experts as a peak-to-trough economic contraction of 10 per cent. Aside from the demobilisation periods following the First and Second World Wars, this kind of contraction has never taken place — not even in the 1930s’ Great Depression.

Roger Bootle, the managing director of Capital Economics, said: "I think there’s a very good chance this recession will be the worst since the 1930s. I suspect the economy could shrink by 6 per cent from last year to the end of next year — and that might not be the end.

The plight facing Britain is uncannily similar to the 1930s, since prices of many assets —from shares to house prices — are falling at record rates, but the value of the debt against which they are held remains unchanged.

This “debt deflation” is among the most painful of all economic phenomena, since it means the amount families owe increases each year even if they borrow no more.

Albert Edwards, a strategist at Société Générale, likened the British economy to a Ponzi scheme — a fraudulent debt mountain like that allegedly used by the New York hedge fund manager Bernard Madoff.

“What I find amazing is that people aren’t really nailing Gordon Brown and [Bank of England Governor] Mervyn King for this,” he said. “At least in the US they had the excuse of the arrival of sub-prime — a new sector of the market. We didn’t really have anything similar but we ended up with a bigger national Ponzi scheme than the US.”

Tension on the Tape

There is a link to the McClellan Oscillator from StockCharts among the daily charts presented in the Chart Updates section on the sidebar to the left.

It is worth looking at more closely, as we are now at a key juncture according to several measures, and are obviously winding up for a sharp move.

The bias in the odds is to the downside, but a wise trader remains open to possibilities of a trend change here, as support is building around 800 on the SP. A breakdown could move quickly if optimism turns to ashes.

The January Barometer to Date

US Dollar Long Term Chart with Commitments of Traders

The theme for this year, besides a collapsing credit bubble, will be the contest for the reserve currency to the world. The dollar currently wears the crown, but is looking a bit haggard after years of rough trade.

The euro, while looking like a perky runner up candidate at times, is failing the talent contest. The Swiss franc was nicked for soliciting to perform inflatio and was disqualified from the hard currency club on grounds of capital turpitude.

The yen is the dollar's homely BFF so its a local favorite primarily with mom and dad. Everyone knows the Renminbi moves in a very exclusive and private circle of admirers, preferring not to leave the house, much less wear a revealing bikini for the judges.

Hence the advance of that purest of beauties, gold.

SP Futures Hourly Chart at 3:30 PM

All scenarios are still on the table.

Trendline has moderated a bit, making a more symmetrical triangle pattern that has not yet resolved either way. Guilty until proven innocent.

Keep one eye on the VIX. There is a choppy tension on the tape.

A good indicator of stock market price dislocations is often referred to by traders as "tension on the tape." What they are actually referring to is a type of volatility that moves the market in rapid intraday extremes or very tight trading ranges. As we have seen recently, the market can open up or down 50-100 points or more and then seemingly reverse instantly to the same extent.

Big data out next week with an FOMC meeting (jawbone opportunity), Chicago PMI, and Q4 Advance GDP on Friday. The figures are always revised and economists expect -5.2% so be wary of a 'better-than-expected' print.

Merrill Lynch Execs Paid Themselves $15 Billion on $21.5 Billion in Losses in 2008

No wonder John Thain was sacked. On the surface it appears that he and his management were 'hiding' or at best unaware of enormous losses that were only revealed after they were purchased by the Bank of America, and the recipient of enormous amounts of government funds.

And to make matters worse, they continued to pay themselves huge salaries and bonuses for the year despite those losses.

It will be interesting to see if there is any meaningful investigation of this. We doubt it very much. The Democratic leadership have shown themselves to be a lot of noise and little meaningful action so far, and almost all the Republicans are outrageous hypocrites. Such is the state of the deep capture of the government.

The problem with Wall Street is that there is reward without commensurate risk, pervasive fraud and the misstatement of numbers without the appropriate discovery and deterrence, and a lack of responsible accountability and disclosure to the American people.

Any 'solutions' from the government that fail to address these fundamental problems are not only doomed to failure, but probably represent a looting of public funds by powerful special interests.

If you are holding US dollars and financial assets you are paying for this with an indirect tax on your wealth.


The Wall Street Journal
Merrill paid employee bonuses before sale to Bank of America
LiveMint.com
Thu, Jan 22 2009. 5:30 PM IST

Despite Merrill reporting a massive loss of $21.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, the report noted that the company had “set aside $15 billion for 2008 compensation

London: Collapsed banking entity Merrill Lynch accelerated the payment of bonuses to employees just days before closing its acquisition by the Bank of America, says a media report.

“Merrill Lynch took the unusual step of accelerating bonus payments by a month last year, doling out billions of dollars to employees just three days before the closing of its sale to Bank of America,” the Financial Times has reported.

The daily pointed out that the timing is notable because the money was paid as Merrill’s losses were mounting and Ken Lewis, BofA’s Chief Executive, was seeking additional funds from the government’s troubled asset recovery programme to help close the deal.

Last week, the US Federal government had pumped in another $20 billion into Bank of America mainly to absorb losses incurred from the buyout of Merrill.

This is in addition to $25 billion which it ploughed each into Bank of America and Merrill last year, respectively.

Despite Merrill reporting a massive loss of $21.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, the report noted that the company had “set aside $15 billion for 2008 compensation, a sum that was only 6% lower than the total in 2007, when the investment bank’s losses were smaller”.

“The bulk of 15 billion dollars compensation was paid out as salary and benefits throughout the course of the year,” the report said. Further, attributing to a person familiar with the matter, the report said that an estimated $3 to $4 billion dollars was paid out in bonuses in December.

Merrill and the Bank of America shareholders had approved the takeover on 5 December. “Three days later, Merrill’s compensation committee approved the bonuses, which were paid on 29 December,” it added.

SP Futures Hourly Chart at 3:30 PM Update

The SP failed at overhead support today, and is now winding withing a symmetrical triangle within the downtrend.

The news of Microsoft layoffs dampened the bubbly froth over AAPL overnight.

The market at this point is guilty until proven innocent and so we continue to ride our hedge to the much shorter side after the failure at 844.

We're not riding a pure short because the bulls keep trying to find a footing and we have not seen the failure yet at 805. We'll also look for confirmation on techs.

Gold and silver are consolidating gains as the T Bond shows continued weakness.

Google out with earnings after the bell. Keep an eye out for the GE news and outlook tomorrow morning.

John Thain: Sacked! or Sach'd?

As reported earlier by Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, it has recently been revealed that Merrill Lynch and John Thain accelerated the payment of substantial executive bonuses just prior to the company's crash, and their acquisition by BofA.

Merril Lynch: Infamia!

Perhaps the disclosure of substantial undisclosed losses was the last straw (18 billion versus 2 billion expected). You can take big bonuses, but not with big losses, unless you are at the-former-investment-bank-which-must-not-be-named, whose SIV is the Federal Reserve.

Bloomberg
Ex-Merrill Lynch CEO Thain Agrees to Leave Bank of America
By Josh Fineman and David Mildenberg

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Former Merrill Lynch & Co. Chief Executive Officer John Thain agreed to leave Bank of America Corp., a spokesman said.

Thain, who in September negotiated the sale of Merrill with Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis, “agreed his situation was not working out and that he should resign,” said Robert Stickler, a Bank of America spokesman, in an e-mail.

Trading chief Tom Montag will also leave the firm, CNBC reported.

Thain, 53, lost his job after Merrill’s unexpectedly large $15.4 billion fourth-quarter loss forced Bank of America to return to the U.S. government for a new funding package. Thain this year spent $1.2 million to redecorate his office at New York-based Merrill, CNBC reported today.

Thain had headed Bank of America’s wealth management and corporate and investment banking divisions. Senior Merrill executives Robert McCann and Greg Fleming resigned less than a week after the transaction was completed on Jan. 1.

A Sad Day for the Swiss Franc

"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." 6 November 2008 Le Café Américain

We warned some time ago that the Swiss franc, long a beacon of monetary stability through the world, has been horribly compromised by a central bank with policies little different from those of the Fed, and other central banks using competitive devaluation to promote industrial policy.

If you are a Swiss exporter or a Bank you might be content.

If you are Swiss and you wish to preserve your wealth, buy gold.

"…the national bank will continue to act decisively to fight the impact of the economic contraction… a central bank can always increase the absolute amount of its own currency in circulation... the national bank could sell Swiss francs against other currencies without limits. In an extreme case, it could commit itself to buying foreign currencies at a fixed rate."
Philipp Hildebrand, Vice Chairman, Swiss National Bank

Hildebrand Says SNB Can Intervene in Franc Market
By Joshua Gallu and Simone Meier

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Swiss National Bank Vice-President Philipp Hildebrand said policy makers are prepared to intervene in currency markets at fixed exchange rates if necessary to prevent a “renewed appreciation” of the franc...

The franc has risen around 6 percent against the euro since October as the global financial crisis forced the Swiss central bank to cut its benchmark rate by 225 basis points, taking it to 0.5 percent. That’s smothering inflation and hurting exports, which make up more than half of Swiss gross domestic product. (And the other half is dominated by banks which are largely insolvent through mismanagement and various forms of fraud - Jesse)

“With short-term rates of practically zero, the SNB can’t prevent a further appreciation in the Swiss franc through a rate cut,” Hildebrand said in a speech in St. Gallen, Switzerland late yesterday. “The SNB is able to sell unlimited Swiss francs versus another currency. In an extreme case, it can commit itself at the same time to buying unlimited currencies at a fixed- exchange rate.”

The franc dropped after the remarks and extended its decline today. As of 7:51 a.m. in Zurich, it was at 1.5093 per euro from 1.5022 yesterday. It reached a record high of 1.4315 versus the euro on Oct. 27. Against the dollar, the franc was at 1.1562, having fallen late yesterday to 1.1616, the weakest since Dec. 15.

“The central bank can and will continue to provide liquidity, as much and for as long as needed,” Hildebrand said. “The SNB will continue to act in a decisive way in order to counter the effects of the economic contraction.”

Merrill Lynch: Infamia!

Apologies for the lapse into Italian, but it is a remnant of my childhood. My father had a remarkable talent for expressing strong emotion in this language as in no other way.

Until serious reforms are made in the banking system, and the accounts are squared with those who brought us to this misfortune, there can be no recovery, and no sustained return to individual liberty.

So, what would we like to do about this latest outrage?


Merrill Execs Pay Selves Bonuses Ahead of Schedule (and
Before BofA Closing)
Naked Capitalism

Playing fast and loose seems to be the theme of the evening... now we have the eleventh hour stealing of the silver by Merrill's top executives as one of the firm's final acts.

Let us remember the fact set: Merrill managed to get Bank of America to agree to buy it in September, elbowing aside Lehman. The deal is subject to shareholder approval, however. BofA, realizing it has acquired a garbage barge, threatens to scuttle the deal unless Uncle Sam lends a helping hand. Negotiations proceed behind closed doors (and neither Merrill nor BofA shareholders are told prior to the shareholder vote that BofA has agreed to do the deal subject to some form of government support).

Now we learn that after it was evident that the US taxpayer was going to subsidize the Merrill acquisition, the Merrill compensation committee accelerated bonus payments by a month to make sure they were paid out before the BofA deal closed.

Efforts are being made to minimize the amount involved (it is claimed to be only $3-$4 billion, but the fact is amounts were reserved in prior quarters that are excessive in light of full year performance. So the fact that some of the amounts were allowed for in previous quarters is misleading).

Were Merrill bankrupt, the bonus payments could be deemed fraudulent conveyance and clawed back. But we don't do either financial firm bankruptcies or clawbacks in this country...

Is Gold and the Balance of Power Shifting from the West to the East?

Here is an interesting set of charts, and a unique conclusion to match, from Moneyweek.

As we recall, the folks at GATA have been showing this sort of market analysis for some time now, to a cooler reception than a Madoff whistleblower at the Chris Cox retirement party.

We'd be open to hearing of other serious interpretations of this phenomenon. But be forewarned; to say it is just nonsense is, well, nonsense. It is a statistically valid hypothesis, albeit an unexplained and a bit odd, at least for the moment.

Can a money machine really exist in free and efficient markets? Economic theory says it cannot, that it must be due to some flaw or inefficiency, or an artificial scheme such as the regular returns from the Madoff Fund.

We might agree with the surmise that it involves the steady selling of leased gold from the West into the gold markets, but that could only be confirmed by an audit, and an admission from some large central bank that they have been obligating increasingly large amounts of their inventory into the public markets in a previously undisclosed manner.

The transaction costs are a problem if you are standing at the retail counter, we fear, so don't get any ideas about playing this trade. Its a sinecure for the big boys only, who can take advantage of market inefficiencies by trading in large, ever increasing volumes, like the whiz kids at LTCM did until they blew their trade book up.

Oddly enough, the data from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency report on Derivates shows that only two banks, JPM and HSBC, are holding almost $124,000,000,000 in gold derivatives between them, approximately 98% of all gold derivatives in the world.

At $850 per ounce, that represents about 145,882,353 ounces of gold.

As the tides of monetary bubbles recede, curiosities are turning up on the beach every day.

MoneyWeek
Gold is shifting from West to East – along with the balance of power
By Dominic Frisby
Jan 21, 2009

Twice a day – at 10:30AM and 3PM - the price of gold is set on the London market by the five members of the London Gold Pool (HSBC, SocGen, Deutsche Bank, Scotia-Mocata and Barclays). This is known as the London fix and it's used as the benchmark to price gold, gold products and derivatives in markets around the world.

I've been looking at some charts and an astonishing pattern has become apparent. It's a pattern which, if you'd traded it methodically, would have earned you 1% a week over a period of 24 years. That compounds to a staggering 24,720,000%!

What is this spectacular strategy? Read on…

The astonishing pattern in London gold fixing

The strategy is really quite simple. You buy gold at the London PM fix (3PM), as the American markets have just opened for trading, and you sell your gold the following morning at the London AM fix (10:30AM), as the Asian markets are closing.

My thanks, as always, to Tom Fischer of Herriot Watt University for the charts below. The first demonstrates the weekly 1% gain that would have been yours since 1985 (the green line).



...What is more astonishing is how this pattern has accelerated since 2007. Sell gold in the morning, buy it back in the afternoon, and a cool 1.78% weekly profit will be yours:


Why would anyone want to manipulate the gold price?

What other free market shows such a consistent behaviour over time? Unless, of course, it's not a free market and the invisible hand of Big Brother is getting involved. Many of you will have read about manipulation of the gold price, and heard that there is a deliberate conspiracy to suppress the price of gold....

Rest of the story at MoneyWeek

SP Futures Hourly Chart at 3:30

The Nasdaq is in a similar pattern.

Note the long end of the Treasuries was down again as money came out looking for βeta. Quite often it comes out looking for risk and is consumed on these technical bounces. The dollar eased as well, and the yen is moving. We like our thought that the Pound is heading for parity with the euro, and may be with the dollar before Buck takes a dive.

We were net long for the day, but are flattening out and taking some profits, including a big Long Bond short, into the close, leaving a slight edge on to the short side of financials and long tech.

Dollar down gold up but nothing of substance. Watch to see if any of these moves extend. We're believers in the January full month indicator so obviously the action this week is important.

We may break out, so be aware of the resistance. We could see a short squeeze if we do.

AAPL and EBAY after the close. They may give us a better read on tech, now that IBM has become an accounting black box.

The word for the day is: FROSTY. Let the market show us the way short term.

The Geithner Nomination: The Wrong Man for the Job

"Summers was his mentor, but other sources call him a Rubin protégé."

The questions and testimony in the Tim Geithner nomination hearings this morning are interesting.

The topics discussed early on are billions more needed for the banks (or else), and reform is badly needed to control the deficit.

And of course the need to restore 'confidence.' Confidence is a touchstone word like 911. Fear and security. The carrot and the stick.

The reforms discussed were reducing Social Security and Medicaid, and lowering corporate income taxes.

It is the banks that have caused the current deficit problems, and banking reform was never even breached as a topic.

Now, having worked in the political circles, we know that there is little of substance to be discussed seriously at a nomination hearing such as this. Senators float out ideas important to their backers, and the nominee agrees that there is a problem, and that they will be open to those ideas.

But we thought it was interesting.

By the way, Geithner did avoid some substantial taxes, and in a most egregious way. Not only that, but once he found out that he had erred, he did not make good on prior errors, until he became the nominee.

This is not a 'reform' candidate. This is a Mr. Fixit, a son of TARP, a three page proposal presented under duress.

Tim Geithner is primarily a political operative with a grounding in international economics. He is not a banker, a financier. Yes, he held the important post of NY Fed Chief, and he made a botch of it. If anything he would be more of an asset at State, but not in the key role at Treasury. Is the Obama bench this weak that they had to resort to a tainted nominee as their first choice?

This is a vignette about what is wrong in this country: democracy is under continuing assault by corporatism.

It is also amusing to watch the Republican senators, still flush from a long orgy of deficit spending, favoritism, no-bid contracts, lies and corruption, to be newly born as the vestal virgins of thrift and public virtue.

Tim Geithner was widely traveled as a child, living overseas with his father who was an administrator fo the Ford Foundation. He attended Dartmouth College, graduating with a A.B. in government and Asian studies in 1983. He earned an M.A. in international economics and East Asian studies from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in 1985. He has studied Chinese and Japanese.

After completing his studies, Geithner worked for Kissinger and Associates in Washington, D.C., for three years and then joined the International Affairs division of the U.S. Treasury Department in 1988. He went on to serve as an attache at the US Embassy in Tokyo. He was deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy (1995–1996), senior deputy assistant secretary for international affairs (1996-1997), assistant secretary for international affairs (1997–1998).He was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs (1998–2001) under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. Summers was his mentor, but other sources call him a Rubin protégé.

Tim Geithner: Too Close to Goldman Sachs to Be Treasury Secretary, Critic Says
by Aaron Task
Jan 21, 2009 12:22pm EST

Tim Geithner apologized for not paying his taxes and some Republicans criticized his involvement in the TARP program at today's hearing, but Barack Obama's nominee for Treasury Secretary appears on track for confirmation.

Congress is "all in a panic" and "really clueless" about this all-important member of Obama's cabinet, says Christopher Whalen, managing director and co-founder of Institutional Risk Analytics. "I'm just not sure Tim Geithner is the guy we should have driving the bus."

Beyond his tax gaffe, which will mainly serve to politically weaken Obama's pick, Whalen says Geithner is the wrong many for the job because of his decision-making as President of the New York Fed.

"I believe Tim Geithner only represents part of Wall Street - Goldman Sachs," he says, suggesting Goldman was the "primary beneficiary of the AIG bailout" and notes Goldman alum Stephen Friedman serves on the board of the NY Fed. (Hank Paulson and Robert Rubin, with whom Geithner had frequent meetings in the past year, are also Goldman alum.)...

How's Your Confidence In US Business?

Not very strong, apparently, if you are a CEO of a US business, as measured by the folks at the Conference Board.

Perhaps they should survey the Chief Market Strategists appearing on the extended infomercials that pass for financial news reporting in the States instead.

State Street Bank: Hammered

Today is an especially interesting day.

US equities, led by the financials, are getting absolutely hammered, the longer Treasury bonds are down, dollar and gold and oil are up. The dollar strength may be more of a sign of euro weakness.

Royal Bank of Scotland and State Street Bank seem to have shaken up the confidence of the Asian and Mideast investors, and pehaps the continental Europeans.

We'll know more as the week progresses.


Bloomberg
State Street Falls Most Since 1984 on Bond Losses
By Christopher Condon

Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- State Street Corp., the world’s largest money manager for institutions, fell the most since 1984 in New York trading after unrealized bond losses almost doubled and analysts said the company may have to raise capital.

Unrealized losses on State Street’s fixed-income investments rose to $6.3 billion at Dec. 31 from $3.3 billion at Sept. 30, the result of falling values throughout the credit markets, the company said today in a statement. State Street also incurred $528 million in costs to prop up money funds and write down the value of investments on its portfolio...

Unrealized losses on assets held in conduits increased to $3.6 billion from $2.2 billion. The filing also revealed that the company had purchased $2.5 billion securities from the stable-asset funds...

State Street said that the net asset value of another group of unregistered funds had fallen as low as 91 cents a share on Dec. 31. These funds, which invest cash collateral that State Street customers receive in return for lending out their securities, also seek to maintain a net asset value of $1 a share, though they are not required to do so.

The average value of these funds at Dec. 31 was 95.5 cents a share, State Street said in the filing, with a substantial portion of the decline occurring during the fourth quarter. Total assets in the affected funds have fallen to $113 billion on Dec. 31, from $178 billion a year earlier.

State Street has continued to sell and redeem shares of these funds at $1 a share, it said in the filing. The funds can wait until the securities mature and they receive full face value from the borrower, rather than selling the holdings in the market at a loss.

The Jan. 16 filing said that continuing to sell and redeem shares at $1 may prevent State Street from passing on the losses later to shareholders if the value of the securities in the fund don’t recover.

The company also set aside $200 million to cover losses stemming from indemnification obligations on $1 billion in repurchase agreements that State Street clients purchased from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The investment bank filed for bankruptcy protection Sept. 15.

Strong Gold, Strong Dollar

"Because the Dollar Index (DX) is an outmoded and artificial measure of dollar strength, containing nothing to account for the Chinese renminbi for example, it may not be a true reflection of the progress of this inflation."
The Fed Is Monetizing Debt and Inflating the Money Supply

A number of people have remarked about the strong dollar and strong upmove in gold today. It does seem counterintuitive.

The euro is weak because of the solvency situtations in Ireland and Spain. This is taking the euro down and the dollar higher.

At the same time there is a flight to safety occurring into gold, but not into commodities in general.

It is not a flight from inflation, it is a flight from risk to relative safety. At least for today.

But by the way, keep an eye on the Treasuries, particularly the longer end of the curve, as we have previously advised.

There is 'the tell.'

Some Thoughts on the Debt Disaster in the US and UK and Possible Alternatives

This is a rather important essay in that it nicely frames up the problem that we face, and the constraints on the remedies at our disposal.

We will be speaking more about that in the near term, but for now here is a framework by which to understand the boundaries, the 'lay of the land.'

The key point is that the debt to GDP ratio has become unsustainable. The way to correct this is to lower it to a level that is manageable and to work it down.

It will likely require a combination of inflation and debt reduction by bankruptcies and writedowns in order to restore the economy to something which can be used to achieve a balance.

Liquidationism is a trap because it reduces GDP and cripples the productive economy as it reduces debt. It is similar to poisoning a patient to treat an infection. It is favored only by those who believe that they can insulate themselves and profit by it.

Without serious systemic reforms, any remedies will not obtain traction, merely provide a new step function for a repetition of the cycle of debt expansion, as was done in the series of credit bubbles under Alan Greenspan and Bush-Clinton.

The impact will be felt around the globe because of the interconnectedness of the world economy and finance, but the heart of the problem is in the US and the UK.


Economic Times
US and UK on brink of debt disaster
20 Jan, 2009, 0419 hrs IST

LONDON: The United States and the United Kingdom stand on the brink of the largest debt crisis in history.

While both governments experiment with quantitative easing, bad banks to absorb non-performing loans, and state guarantees to restart bank lending, the only real way out is some combination of widespread corporate default, debt write-downs and inflation to reduce the burden of debt to more manageable levels. Everything else is window-dressing. (Quantitative easing, bad banks, and state guarantees are the instruments of inflation. The amount of inflation that the West can manage will greatly affect the amount of these more draconian measures - Jesse)

To understand the scale of the problem, and why it leaves so few options for policymakers, which shows the growth in the real economy (measured by nominal GDP) and the financial sector (measured by total credit market instruments outstanding) since 1952.

In 1952, the United States was emerging from the Second World War and the conflict in Korea with a strong economy, and fairly low debt, split between a relatively large government debt (amounting to 68 percent of GDP) and a relatively small private sector one (just 60 percent of GDP).

Over the next 23 years, the volume of debt increased, but the rise was broadly in line with growth in the rest of the economy, so the overall ratio of total debts to GDP changed little, from 128 percent in 1952 to 155 percent in 1975.

The only real change was in the composition. Private debts increased (7.8 times) more rapidly than public ones (1.5 times). As a result, there was a marked shift in the debt stock from public debt (just 37 percent of GDP in 1975) toward private sector obligations (117 percent). But this was not unusual. It should be seen as a return to more normal patterns of debt issuance after the wartime period in which the government commandeered resources for the war effort and rationed borrowing by the private sector.

From the 1970s onward, however, the economy has undergone two profound structural shifts. First, the economy as a whole has become much more indebted. Output rose eight times between 1975 and 2007. But the total volume of debt rose a staggering 20 times, more than twice as fast. The total debt-to-GDP ratio surged from 155 percent to 355 percent.

Second, almost all this extra debt has come from the private sector. Despite acres of newsprint devoted to the federal budget deficit over the last thirty years, public debt at all levels has risen only 11.5 times since 1975. This is slightly faster than the eight-fold increase in nominal GDP over the same period, but government debt has still only risen from 37 percent of GDP to 52 percent.

Instead, the real debt explosion has come from the private sector. Private debt outstanding has risen an enormous 22 times, three times faster than the economy as a whole, and fast enough to take the ratio of private debt to GDP from 117 percent to 303 percent in a little over thirty years.

For the most part, policymakers have been comfortable with rising private debt levels. Officials have cited a wide range of reasons why the economy can safely operate with much higher levels of debt than before, including improvements in macroeconomic management that have muted the business cycle and led to lower inflation and interest rates. But there is a suspicion that tolerance for private rather than public sector debt simply reflected an ideological preference.

THE DEBT MOUNTAIN

The data makes clear the rise in private sector debt had become unsustainable. In the 1960s and 1970s, total debt was rising at roughly the same rate as nominal GDP. By 2000-2007, total debt was rising almost twice as fast as output, with the rapid issuance all coming from the private sector, as well as state and local governments.

This created a dangerous interdependence between GDP growth (which could only be sustained by massive borrowing and rapid increases in the volume of debt) and the debt stock (which could only be serviced if the economy continued its swift and uninterrupted expansion).

The resulting debt was only sustainable so long as economic conditions remained extremely favorable. The sheer volume of private-sector obligations the economy was carrying implied an increasing vulnerability to any shock that changed the terms on which financing was available, or altered the underlying GDP cash flows.

The proximate trigger of the debt crisis was the deterioration in lending standards and rise in default rates on subprime mortgage loans. But the widening divergence revealed in the charts suggests a crisis had become inevitable sooner or later. If not subprime lending, there would have been some other trigger.

WRONGHEADED POLICIES

The charts strongly suggest the necessary condition for resolving the debt crisis is a reduction in the outstanding volume of debt, an increase in nominal GDP, or some combination of the two, to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio to a more sustainable level.

From this perspective, it is clear many of the existing policies being pursued in the United States and the United Kingdom will not resolve the crisis because they do not lower the debt ratio.

In particular, having governments buy distressed assets from the banks, or provide loan guarantees, is not an effective solution. It does not reduce the volume of debt, or force recognition of losses. It merely re-denominates private sector obligations to be met by households and firms as public ones to be met by the taxpayer.

This type of debt swap would make sense if the problem was liquidity rather than solvency. But in current circumstances, taxpayers are being asked to shoulder some or all of the cost of defaults, rather than provide a temporarily liquidity bridge.

In some ways, government is better placed to absorb losses than individual banks and investors, because it can spread them across a larger base of taxpayers. But in the current crisis, the volume of debts that potentially need to be refinanced is so large it will stretch even the tax and debt-raising resources of the state, and risks crowding out other spending.

Trying to cut debt by reducing consumption and investment, lowering wages, boosting saving and paying down debt out of current income is unlikely to be effective either. The resulting retrenchment would lead to sharp falls in both real output and the price level, depressing nominal GDP. Government retrenchment simply intensified the depression during the early 1930s. Private sector retrenchment and wage cuts will do the same in the 2000s.

BANKRUPTCY OR INFLATION

The solution must be some combination of policies to reduce the level of debt or raise nominal GDP. The simplest way to reduce debt is through bankruptcy, in which some or all of debts are deemed unrecoverable and are simply extinguished, ceasing to exist.

Bankruptcy would ensure the cost of resolving the debt crisis falls where it belongs. Investor portfolios and pension funds would take a severe but one-time hit. Healthy businesses would survive, minus the encumbrance of debt.

But widespread bankruptcies are probably socially and politically unacceptable. The alternative is some mechanism for refinancing debt on terms which are more favorable to borrowers (replacing short term debt at higher rates with longer-dated paper at lower ones).

The final option is to raise nominal GDP so it becomes easier to finance debt payments from augmented cashflow. But counter-cyclical policies to sustain GDP will not be enough. Governments in both the United States and the United Kingdom need to raise nominal GDP and debt-service capacity, not simply sustain it.

There is not much government can do to accelerate the real rate of growth. The remaining option is to tolerate, even encourage, a faster rate of inflation to improve debt-service capacity. Even more than debt nationalization, inflation is the ultimate way to spread the costs of debt workout across the widest possible section of the population.

The need to work down real debt and boost cash flow provides the motive, while the massive liquidity injections into the financial system provide the means. The stage is set for a long period of slow growth as debts are worked down and a rise in inflation in the medium term.

Murkiness in the NYMEX Pits As the Banks Hoard Oil

"Morgan Stanley hired an oil tanker to store crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico, joining Citigroup Inc. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc in trying to profit from the contango, two shipbrokers said in reports earlier today."

There is a sharp contango in the near months in the NYMEX oil pit, and it will get sharper as the attempts to suppress the price near term, most likely to punish Russia, Venezuela and Iran, falter. Then it will flatten as market adjusts prices to normalcy.

Let's see if Bloomberg gives us a more coherent update. But its funny that Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and probably other banks are buying oil now to store in tankers and deliver later when the paper chase falters. Nice use of the bailout money. Why lend when you can speculate on market inefficiency which you help to create?

Bloomberg
Goldman Sees ‘Swift, Violent’ Oil Rally Later in Year
By Grant Smith

Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. commodity analyst Jeffrey Currie said he expects a “swift and violent rebound” in energy prices in the second half of the year.

Oil prices may have reached their lowest point already, after falling to $32.40 in mid-December, and are expected to rise to $65 by the end of this year, the analyst said. There is scope for a “new bull market” in oil, Currie said. (The December '09 futures are trading around there already - Jesse)

World oil demand is likely to fall by about 1.6 million barrels a day this year, the Goldman analyst said today at a conference in London. That’s bigger than the reduction expected by the International Energy Agency, which last week forecast a decrease of about 500,000 barrels a day, or 0.6 percent, this year.

A recent tactic of using supertankers to store crude oil to take advantage of higher prices later this year is “difficult” to profit from and is “near the end of this process” anyway, the Goldman analyst said. (We can only use the NYMEX 'front month' to punish Iran, Venezuela, and Russia for so long - Jesse)

New York crude futures for delivery in December, trading near $56 a barrel, currently cost some $15 a barrel more than March futures, a market situation known as contango, where prices are higher for later delivery. (This is poorly worded at best - Jesse)

The contango is likely to flatten as supply cuts by OPEC and other producers take effect, reducing the availability of oil for immediate delivery, Currie said. (Contango is when the future months are higher in price. This is the case for the futures. But December delivery, according to this article, is in backwardation, where true 'spot' is higher than paper prices, and a sure sign of price manipulation. - Jesse)

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries started another round of supply cutbacks at the start of this month. The group’s compliance with its overall efforts to cut production will probably peak at 75 percent, or a reduction of about 3 million barrels a day out of an announced aim of 4.2 million barrels a day, Goldman Sachs said.

In several steps, 10 OPEC members have pledged to reduce production to 24.845 million barrels a day, a cut of 4.2 million barrels a day from September’s level.

Morgan Stanley hired an oil tanker to store crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico, joining Citigroup Inc. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc in trying to profit from the contango, two shipbrokers said in reports earlier today.