By Ilene

The good news is that the number of new cases appears to be dropping off in most of the United States. More good news is that the swine flu vaccine appears to be reasonably safe, with no increases in serious events, including death, above the expected baseline rate. The not-so-good news is that a currently noted “peak,” in flu language, is temporary. Additional waves of increasing illness are expected.  Other bad news is that pediatric deaths from the swine flu are already considerably higher than in seasonal flus, and the numbers are expected to continue rising.

Estimated Statistics:

Update from the CDC, Weekly 2009 H1N1 Flu Media Briefing, Anne Schuchat, director of vaccination and respiratory disease at the C.D.C: 

these estimates will give a single number and then a range, a lower and upper estimate around each number….  So for April through October 17th, we estimate the 22 million people have become ill from pandemic influenza.  We estimate 98,000 people have been hospitalized so far through October 17th.  And the upper and lower estimates on hospitalizations are from 63,000 to 153,000. We estimate that 3,900 people have died so far in the first six months of the pandemic from this virus.  And the estimates there are from 2,500 up through 6,100 people having died so far.  We’ve been talking a lot about this pandemic being a younger person’s disease, that it’s disproportionately affecting children and young adults and relatively sparing the elderly, very different from seasonal flu… [In] children under 18, we estimate 8 million children have been ill with influenza, 36,000 hospitalized, and 540 children have died…

I do believe that the pediatric death toll from this pandemic will be extensive and much greater than what we see with seasonal flu…The numbers I’m giving are through the first six months through October. We have had a lot of disease since then and we’ll probably have a lot of disease going forward…

What does this look like compared to previous pandemics.  The estimates I’m giving you are the first six months.  This is April through the middle of October.  We have a long flu season ahead of us.  In typical seasonal flu we see disease from December to May, it’s only November.  So exactly what we will see as a full toll of illness from this pandemic is very difficult to say.  I can say, though, that what we’re seeing with this h1n1 virus is nowhere near the severity of the 1918 pandemic.  That caused much larger numbers six months in…

Number of cases declining in U.S.

The New York Times reports that according to the American College Health Association, “new cases of flu among college students have started to drop, hinting that this wave of the swine flu pandemic has peaked… The association does weekly surveys of more than 250 colleges and universities with a total of three million students, and new cases of flu in the week that ended on Friday dropped by 27 percent from the previous week. About 80,000 of the students have had flu symptoms, about 150 have been hospitalized and last week there were two deaths.” According to the LA Times only 3% of college students have been vaccinated.

The current wave of swine flu seems to have peaked in the U.S. However, Dr. Schuchat warns that “peaking” does not mean the flu is going away. Further waves of infection are typical of flu viruses. The spread of disease is also increasing in some regions, such as Hawaii, Maine, Canada, Norway, and Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. Signs That Swine Flu Wave Has Peaked in U.S., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Moreover, even if new infections decline, that will not instantly be reflected in hospitalization and deaths. (But see H1N1 deaths, hospitalizations slow in California.)  Dr. Lone Simonsen, a former C.D.C. epidemiologist, expects a third wave of infections in December or January. And according to Anne Schuchat, more H1N1 flu is circulating now compared to the height of usual flu seasons. “It is so early in the year to have this much disease. We don’t know if these declines will persist, what the slope will be, whether we’ll have a long decline or it will start to go up again.” Swine Flu Seen as Cresting (WSJ).

D222G Mutation

A mutation, called the D222G mutation has been found in three people in Norway.  The D222G mutation is on the receptor binding domain, and it allows the virus to penetrate further into the lungs. According to Geir Stene-Larsen, director of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, only three of Norway’s 70 tested samples had the mutation and it did not appear to be circulating. Rather, it may have arisen spontaneously in these cases.  NY Times, Signs That Swine Flu Has Peaked:

Asked about that, Dr. Schuchat said the same mutation had also been found in mild cases in several countries, and it did not make the virus resistant to vaccine or to treatment with drugs like Tamiflu. She said she did not want to “underplay” it, adding that “it’s too soon to say what this will mean long term.”

The D222G mutation allows the virus to bind to receptors on cells lining the lungs, which are slightly different from those in the nose and throat. Henry L. Niman, a flu tracker in Pittsburgh, has been warning for a week that D225G — the same mutation under a different numbering system — has been repeatedly found in Ukraine, which is in the grips of a severe outbreak and where surprising numbers of people have died with lung hemorrhages — the kind of pneumonia that can be caused by an immune system’s “cytokine storm” attacking a new virus.

According to the Washington Post, Norwegian scientists detect mutated form of swine flu,

“the Norwegian Institute of Public Health said the mutation “could possibly make the virus more prone to infect deeper in the airways and thus cause more severe disease,” and that ”there was no indication that the mutation would hinder the ability of the vaccine to protect people from becoming infected”…

The World Health Organization said viruses with a similar mutation had been detected in several other countries, including Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico, Ukraine and the United States. “No links between the small number of patients infected with the mutated virus have been found and the mutation does not appear to spread,”…

Several flu experts said that the mutation should not cause widespread alarm. “Influenza is a mutable virus, and changes are to be expected,” said Arnold S. Monto of the University of Michigan in an e-mail. “This is typical early in the spread of a pandemic virus.”

The Norway mutation may cause more severe disease by infecting deeper into the respiratory track.  However, viruses from numerous fatal cases have not shown this mutation and the significance of the Norway mutation needs to be further investigated. (Washington Post, WHO says swine flu samples from Ukraine showed no significant mutation, WHO investigating Norway swine flu mutations.)

Other mutations have also been found.  Bloomberg reported that “five patients at a hospital in Wales contracted swine flu that resisted treatment with Roche Holding AG’s Tamiflu, and three more infections are being analyzed… Four patients had resistance in a North Carolina hospital.”  This mutation may have spread to other patients.  “The infections in Wales may have passed from a person using Tamiflu to patients who haven’t taken the drug, raising the possibility that a hard-to-treat form of the disease may spread,…” Mutated Swine Flu Strains Block Drugs, Worsen Illness.  

Vaccine – evidence of safety

The World Health Organization reported that among the 65 million adults and children who received a swine flu vaccine since September, less than 30 died and less than 10 developed Guillain-Barre Syndrome. None of the deaths appeared to be associated with the vaccine. The findings so far indicate that the swine flu vaccine has a negligible risk for causing serious side effects, such as Guillain-Barre syndrome, and death.  See Safety of pandemic vaccines, Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 briefing note 16:

19 NOVEMBER 2009 | GENEVA — To date, WHO has received vaccination information from 16 of around 40 countries conducting national H1N1 pandemic vaccine campaigns. Based on information in these 16 countries, WHO estimates that around 80 million doses of pandemic vaccine have been distributed and around 65 million people have been vaccinated. National immunization campaigns began in Australia and the People’s Republic of China in late September.

Vaccination campaigns currently under way to protect populations from pandemic influenza are among the largest in the history of several countries, and numbers are growing daily. Given this scale of vaccine administration, at least some rare adverse reactions, not detectable during even large clinical trials, could occur, underscoring the need for rigorous monitoring of safety. Results to date are encouraging…

To date, fewer than ten suspected cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome have been reported in people who have received vaccine. These numbers are in line with normal background rates of this illness, as reported in a recent study…

A small number of deaths have occurred in people who have been vaccinated. All such deaths, reported to WHO, have been promptly investigated. Although some investigations are ongoing, results of completed investigations reported to WHO have ruled out a direct link to pandemic vaccine as the cause of death…

Previously, I suggested that the seasonal flu vaccine confers some protection against the swine flu.  There have been studies showing a protective effect, studies showing no effect and one study suggesting an increase in risk.  Weekly 2009 H1N1 Flu Media Briefing, Anne Schuchat.

Ukraine Update

H1N1 Update: Ukraine Swine Flu deaths are not a mutated version of H1N1

Great panic ensued after 16 swine flu deaths occured in a single day in Ukraine. This caused many scientists to wonder if the virus had mutated from its original form or was more similar to the Spanish Flu than Swine Flu.

However, after analyzing 34 samples, it is clear that the Ukrain swine flu deaths were just that: deaths due to H1N1, not a mutated version of the virus.

Flu deaths rise to 354, but Ukraine Health Officials plan to lift quarantine

The Ukraine virus, which is similar to the swine flu, according to the World Health Organization, has now claimed the lives of 354 people since the beginning of October. According to recent reports, the Ukraine government intends to lift the quarantines and other protective measures put in place to protect against the spread of the Ukraine flu… Government officials have stated that the situation has stabilized, and quarantines are no longer necessary. In addition, there may be some concern of quarantines interfering with the upcoming presidential elections.

In summary, the swine flu vaccine appears to be safe, the infection rates in most of the U.S. appear to be dropping off (though expected to resume), and the significance of the Norway mutation is unknown.  Investigations of the Norway mutation, and other mutations such as anti-viral resistance, are ongoing.

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Sound familiar?  (Hint:  Goldman’s Global Oil Scam Passes the 50 Madoff Mark!, and Oil Manipulation Info.) – Ilene

No One is Buying Real Gold, They’re Just Betting On Higher Gold Prices

Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker 

Mainstreet USA

This is a remarkable story.  I am not calling for either higher or lower gold prices as this is a forecast-free blog.  I will say that depending on how you interpret the facts, your outlook, bullish or bearish, may change.

The LA Times offers us an interesting look at the divergence between the activity of gold speculators and that of the buyers of real gold, be it coins or jewelry.  The data is based on the third quarter 2009 versus Q3 ‘08…

From the LA Times:

Data from the World Gold Council show that the surge in the metal’s price to record highs ($1,146.40 an ounce as of Friday) hasn’t been accompanied by record purchases of the real thing.

The council’s report put total global purchases of gold in the quarter that ended Sept. 30 at 800.3 metric tons, down 34% from the 1,205.6 tons bought in the third quarter of 2008.

Buying was down in the third quarter versus a year earlier in every major category of gold consumption, including jewelry (the biggest single source of demand), industrial use, coins and purchases by exchange-traded funds.

Now this can be a price-demand issue, higher prices for the raw material keeping buyers away at the retail level…

Gold bought as jewelry, for example, reached 673.3 tons in the third quarter of 2008, when gold’s price was mostly below $900 an ounce. In the third quarter of this year, with the price mostly above $900 and on its way to $1,009 by the quarter’s end, the amount of the metal bought as jewelry totaled 473.5 tons, down 30%.

Surprisingly, while the US Mint is continuing to produce, some major mints around the world are holding back:

Interestingly, the Austrian government mint is betting otherwise, at least in the near term: The mint, the world’s biggest producer of gold coins, recently said it planned to cut output by 32% in 2010, figuring that an improving global financial system will slash gold demand from investors.

An analyst from Kitco Metals is calling the rally in gold entirely speculative in the article.  At some point, either the real buyers of physical gold come in to chase these speculative bets or the spec guys see their castle made of clouds dissipate.

Either way, the action going into the end of the year will be interesting.

Sources:

Under Speculators’ Influence (LA Times)

This week, John Mauldin discusses our trash currency and the dollar carry trade. Could the dollar go bump in the night and jump up and bite you…? – Ilene

Where the Wild Things Are

Courtesy of John Mauldin, Thoughts from the Frontline

Where the Wild Things Are
It Is Not Just Japan
The Euro-Yen Cross and the Dollar Carry Trade
New York, London, and Switzerland

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!

–Old Scottish Prayer

Where the Wild Things Are is a beloved children’s book and now a beautiful movie. But in the investment world there are really scary wild things lurking about in the hidden recesses of the economic landscape. Today we look at one of the unintended consequences of the Federal Reserve’s low interest rate policy.

For quite some time, I have been arguing that we are faced with no good choices, not just in the US but in the entire "developed" world. I see a low-growth, Muddle Through world over the next years (with a double-dip recession just to liven things up). However, that does not mean that we will lack for volatility. Things could get volatile rather quickly. Let’s quickly set the background.

It Is Not Just Japan

Let’s look at today’s interest rate picture. Yesterday, we had the bizarre occurrence of banks actually paying the government to hold their cash. Three-month treasuries yield a miniscule 0.01% in interest. If you opt to buy a one-year bill you get all of 0.26%. You can see the entire spectrum below.

Look at the graph of the yield curve below. It is as steep as we have seen it in a long time. But that is almost the point. Banks are essentially getting free money. If you are a banker and can’t make money in this environment, you need to quit and find meaningful employment.

And that is part of the rationale that the Fed espouses with its low interest rate regime. Not only does it allow banks to repair their balance sheets, it also encourages investors to put money into riskier assets in order to get some return on their investments. Over $260 billion has gone into bond funds this year, and just $2.6 billion into stock funds. However, you have to balance that with the fact that some $400 billion has left money market funds paying less than 0.2%. So there is some movement to capture yield.

But is it just banks that are getting cheap money? And is encouraging investors to find riskier assets a sound policy? Maybe not.

The Euro-Yen Cross and the Dollar Carry Trade

I wrote a great deal in the past few years about the strong correlation of the euro-yen cross to stock markets all over the world in general. (The euro-yen cross is the exchange rate of the euro and the Japanese yen.) This was a proxy for the Japanese carry trade. The stock markets of the world rose and fell in synchronization with the yen versus the euro.

A currency carry trade is a strategy in which an investor sells a certain currency with a relatively low interest rate and uses the funds to purchase a different currency yielding a higher interest rate. A trader using this strategy attempts to capture the difference between the rates, which can often be substantial, depending on the amount of leverage used.

The Japanese drove their rates down to essentially zero in the 1990s. By early 2007, it was estimated that the yen carry trade was over $1 trillion. But when the world credit crisis hit, the world wanted dollars. They paid back the yen and bought dollars, driving the yen higher and killing the yen carry trade. Who wants to borrow in a currency that continues to rise, even if the costs are low? And often, large leverage was used, so small movements in the currency could destroy outsized amounts of capital.

But now, there are some who are beginning to ask whether there is a dollar carry trade. In the last nine months, the correlation between the dollar and the stock market has gone to about 90%. If the dollar rises, the stock markets and other risk assets tend to fall, and vice-versa. It would appear that investors and funds are borrowing cheap dollars on a short-term basis and investing in all sorts of risk assets. Not only have stock markets risen, but so have high-yield bonds, commodities, and so on.

We have seen the steepest rise in US stock markets coming out of a recession since the end of the last world war. The market is "discounting" a 5% GDP next year and a profit rebound beyond anything in past experience. Depending on the quarter, operating earnings are expected to rise by anywhere from 30-40%. P/E ratios are back at 23, well above the 17 we saw in the summer of 2007 (I am using 4^th quarter 2009 estimates so as to not have to take into account the disastrous 4^th quarter of last year.)

Worrying about a dollar carry trade is not just a preoccupation of my friends Nouriel Roubini or David Rosenberg or Frank Veneroso. Look as this story from Bloomberg:

China’s Liu Says U.S. Rates Cause Dollar Speculation

"Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) — The decline of the dollar and decisions in the U.S. not to raise interest rates have caused "huge" speculation in foreign exchange trading and seriously affected global asset prices, said Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission."

"The continuous depreciation in the dollar, and the U.S. government’s indication, that in order to resume growth and maintain public confidence, it basically won’t raise interest rates for the coming 12 to 18 months, has led to massive dollar arbitrage speculation," he told reporters in Beijing today at the International Finance Forum.

"Liu said this has ’seriously affected global asset prices, fuelled speculation in stock and property markets, and created new, real and insurmountable risks to the recovery of the global economy, especially emerging-market economies.’

"His view echoes that of Donald Tsang, the chief executive of Hong Kong, who said the Federal Reserve’s policy of keeping interest rates near zero is fueling a wave of speculative capital that may cause the next global crisis."

"’I'm scared and leaders should look out,’ Tsang said in Singapore Nov. 13. ‘America is doing exactly what Japan did last time,’ he said, adding that Japan’s zero interest rate policy contributed to the 1997 Asian financial crisis and U.S. mortgage meltdown."

It is not just China. Brazil has moved to impose a tax (or tariff) on investment money coming into the country on a shorter-term basis, as they are worried about both a bubble in their markets and in their currency. Russia is openly considering similar policies.

I have been doing a lot of speaking in the last month. In almost every speech, I warn of the significant imbalance in the dollar. I walk to the very end of the stage to help illustrate that the world now has on a massive ABD trade. By that I mean Anything But Dollars. Everyone is now on the same side of the boat. They have borrowed dollars to buy other risk assets, assuming that the dollar, like the yen in the glory days of the yen carry trade, will continue to fall. Dollar bears are everywhere.

Explanations abound for why the dollar is a trash currency. [Is it] Fed policy, or the Obama administration’s willingness to run massive deficits, or the trade deficit or our health-care policy or (pick any number of issues). But I wonder.

Global trade collapsed last year and well into this year. Global trade was essentially done in dollars. If global trade is down 20% or more, then there is less need for companies in various countries to hold dollars and more need for local currency because of the crisis. Thus, after a rush to safety in the credit crisis, there is a rational selling of dollars by business.

Look at the above chart. Notice that the dollar is roughly where it was 20 years ago. And notice the recent jump during the credit crisis. We are not even back to where we were before the crisis.

What happens if world trade picks back up, as it appears to be doing? Admittedly, it is not a robust recovery as yet, but it is rising. That means more need for dollars. And dollars which are being borrowed (and probably leveraged!) on the assumption the dollar will continue to fall.

And I agree that, over time, the case for the dollar is not as good as I would like. But in the meantime, we could have one very vicious dollar rally, which would take equity markets down worldwide, along with other risk assets. Why? Because it would be a major short squeeze.

Barron’s just did a survey. It revealed that the bullish sentiment on stocks is quite high and almost everyone hates US treasuries (graph courtesy of David Rosenberg of Gluskin, Sheff)

Whenever sentiment gets too strong in one way or the other, it is usually setting up the markets for a rally in the despised asset. Mr. Market like to do whatever he can to cause the most pain to the largest number of people.

I am not predicting a near-term crash or imminent precipitous bear, although in this environment anything can happen. I am merely noting that there is an imbalance in the system. The longer this imbalance goes on, the more likely it is that it will end in tears. And the irony is that a recovering world economy could be the catalyst.

The Wild Things? They may be hiding in a portfolio near you. Just food for thought. Stay nimble.

New York, London, and Switzerland

I am going to hit the send button on what may be the shortest e-letter I have ever done. The travel is catching up with me and I need some rest.

I am looking forward to Thanksgiving next week. It may be my favorite holiday. Family, friends, food, and football. My usual pattern is to get up very early Thursday and start the prime slow-cooking, and then turn to the side dishes. It will be no different this year. My brother will bring the smoked turkeys, which he has down to an art form. And then there are the over-the-top wines I was so graciously given this past birthday by so many friends. I will bring a few of those bottles out….

Your "there’s no place like home" analyst,

John Mauldin

Sign up for more Mauldin here.>>

Disclaimer here.>>

Excellent post on the economy and saving it (or not) by Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns. (My yellow highlighting) – Ilene

Stop the madness now!

This is a post I just wrote over at Yves Smith’s site Naked Capitalism in response to a reader request. Marshall Auerback has already written a reply as well and I will post this later today.

A reader at Naked Capitalism asked us to respond to a recent article from the Christian Science Monitor asking Does US need a second stimulus to create jobs?

Marshall Auerback has already done some heavy lifting. He says emphatically yes. Now I want to take a crack at this. My short answer is no. But before I go into this, as an aside, I wanted to mention Marshall’s new smiling, happy picture up at the great blog New Deal 2.0 where he now writes.  Earlier, when Credit Writedowns was hosted at Blogger, he used a picture best described as a mug shot in his profile, but he has changed that one too (although he smiles there a little less). He thinks we haven’t noticed this sleight of hand.  Well I have! Once upon a time, Marshall wrote with a man I called all bearish, all the time this summer. Take a look at that post; you don’t see him smiling now do you? We have Lynn Parramore, New Deal 2.0’s editor to thank for making Marshall Auerback into an optimist.

Different policy choices

But all teasing aside, I do want to take the opposite side of this trade.  You see I too was a deficit hawk. And while I may have been backing fiscal stimulus, I have felt conflicted for doing so. Here’s how I see it. 

You have four options:

1. No stimulus. Let the chips fall where they may. Yves Smith calls this the ‘Mellonite liquidationist mode.’ The thinking here is that trying to avoid the inevitable bust only makes it that much larger. And the economic policies during recessions in 1991 and 2001 seem to bear that out. The Harding Recession of 1921 is commonly seen as gold standard response.
2. Monetary stimulus only. Quantitative easing mania. My understanding is this is what Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has been advocating.   The thinking here is that the flood of money and the low rates will eventually jump start the economy. No deficit spending needed.
3. Monetary and fiscal stimulus.  Full tilt Keynesian. This is the Krugman view. The thinking here is that one needs to credibly commit to higher inflation and close the output gap to avoid a deflationary spiral. If that is insufficient, then one needs to go full bore on fiscal stimulus aka deficit spending. And if that doesn’t work, subsidize jobs. The New Deal is commonly seen as the gold standard response.
4. Fiscal stimulus only. Deficit spending. I have been talking up this view. The thinking here is that we need to both close the output gap to prevent a deflationary spiral and revive private sector savings in order to promote deleveraging.

There is no magic bullet here.  We are living through a situation unique in time with few historical precedents. And there are a lot of competing ideas being tossed about. So policy makers are groping around, desperately seeking the holy grail of depression-busting economic policy.  In that regard, I don’t envy them. They are certainly going to make a lot of mistakes. It may seem at times that I don’t realize this given the harshness of my critiques, but I do.

Deficit hawks are misguided

However, there are some policies which could work and others which are flat out wrong.  One policy which is flat out wrong is the concept that we need to reduce deficit spending in order to avoid a double dip recession. This flies in the face of basic economics which says that more spending and less taxes equals greater demand and recovery/boom. More taxes and less spending equals less demand and recession/depression.

Now, it’s not as if we didn’t see this line of argument coming. As far back as November 2008, I heard the chatter (see my post here). So you knew this we-have-to-stop-or-we’ll be-bankrupt nonsense was coming. The problem is it’s just not true.  Here are a few data points:

• Private sector debt (incl. financial firms) was 292% of GDP as of Q2 but public sector debt (incl. state and local municipalities) was 67.2%. Who’s more indebted – the private sector by a factor of 4.
• Adding unfunded liabilities to any public debt number when talking about spiking treasury rates is inaccurate and artificially inflates the number. A lot of people do this to make the public debt scenario look worse. The issue at hand is whether a supply/demand imbalance in Treasury securities spikes interest rates. Unfunded liabilities have absolutely nothing to do with this.
• Cash and bonds are fungible. They are both obligations of the federal government to be repaid in full with a specific sum of fiat money. The Treasury could literally stop issuing government debt altogether and just start crediting accounts electronically to ‘fund’ its purchases. There is no operational constraint to government spending. The U.S. government is not going broke involuntarily. See my post here.

The real issue with deficits causing a double-dip has to do with inflation and overheating. If inflation increases because the economy begins to overheat, interest rates spike and the Fed raises rates to choke off inflation. That’s not going to happen any time soon – although it may be a problem down the line.  The issue at hand now is deflation not inflation. At least Morgan Stanley understands this when they take a deficit hawk position.

And as for the Chinese, they are not going to pull the plug on Treasuries unless they want to tank their export boom. The reason they must buy Treasuries is the dollar peg; they must re-invest in U.S.-based assets in order to prevent their currency from appreciating. This has caused a huge rise in their U.S. dollar reserves. If they changed the peg, their currency would almost certainly rise and this would choke off exports.

No more stimulus, just jobs

I have said my piece about the need for stimulus in the past. So I won’t repeat it here. If you are interested, see my December 2008 posts “Confessions of an Austrian economist,” “What does Mises say about trying to stimulate the economy out of recession,” and “A brief philosophical argument about the role of government.”

But, on the whole, I look at long-term deficits in a dubious light. There are practical constraints to deficit spending – and they lead to inflation, currency depreciation and lower standards of living. This is not national bankruptcy, but it is what Murray Rothbard called default by inflation and it makes you and me less well off.

This, of course, is over the long-run. In the short run, it is the spectre of a deflationary spiral we care about. Stimulus was important to stop this. I said in February that Obama was making a big mistake with his stimulus measures.

My view here is that Obama is forging a middle path that leads to a dead-end. The stimulus is not nearly enough by half to get the job done. The proposed deficit reduction measures for 2013 are outright scary as they risk repeating a mistake from the 1930s. And the banking sector and mortgage plans, both of which I failed to mention, are dubious half-measures as well. One needs to act aggressively and proactively or not at all.

If you are going to deficit spend you need to do it in a big way. You need to stop the deflationary spiral.  That means hitting the reset button by promoting private sector savings and deleveraging and purging all built-up malinvestments. The risk in addressing the situation this way, of course, is replacing the imperfect invisible hand of markets with the imperfect hand of politicians and legislative fiat.

This is a risk I no longer see as worth taking. I have bailout and deficit fatigue just like most Americans. It is abundantly clear that this Administration has absolutely zero intention of purging any malinvestment or promoting any deleveraging. All they want to do is continue business as usual and go back to the asset-based economy that caused this mess. This is why we have seen bailout after bailout coupled with easy money. It makes for record profits on Wall Street but it does nothing for the unemployed.

Moreover, the political process in the U.S. is such that any stimulus money will be diverted to pet projects and used to pay off political constituents. While this may increase aggregate demand, it does so at the risk of serious social unrest as the outrage will certainly spill over into populism.

So I say no to a second (third) stimulus package.  What the President needs to focus on is jobs. The reason Obama’s poll numbers are shrinking is because he now owns this economy.  And people are not benefitting from this fake recovery.  They are angry at the bailouts and distrustful of government – and with good reason.

Cut payroll taxes, subsidize job creation, divert some military spending to direct job creation by ending the foreign wars. But stop the madness.

Time Lapse Unemployment Visualization

Courtesy of Mish

Is America Finally Starting to Stand Up To Wall Street?

Courtesy of Washington’s Blog

Are the American people finally starting to stand up to Wall Street?

Shareholder Revolt

Some of Goldman Sach’s biggest shareholders are demanding that executive compensation be reduced. As the Wall Street Journal notes:

Their complaints in private conversations with the company and at analyst meetings show how anger over its big-money culture is spilling into the ranks of investors who typically shy away from debates over Wall Street pay.

Protests

There were the protests outside of the Bankers Association meeting in Chicago. See this, this, this, this, this and this.

If you don’t think that more – bigger – protests are coming, you haven’t been paying attention.

Debtor’s Revolt

Debtors are revolting against exorbitant interest rates and fees and other aggressive tactics by the too big to fail banks. See this, this, and this.

Congresswoman Kaptur advises her constituents facing foreclosure to demand that the original mortgage papers be produced. She says that – if the bank can’t produce the mortgage papers – then the homeowner can stay in the house.

Portfolio manager and investment advisor Marshall Auerback argues that a debtor’s revolt would be a good thing.

And even popular personal finance advisor Suze Orman is highlighting the debtors revolt phenomenon on her national tv show.

Congress Is Starting to Get the Message

The American people are shouting so loud at their congress members and Senators, that even some of the most pro-Wall Street congressman are starting to get it.

For example, the Congressional Black Caucus has been hearing so much about how congress is failing to address the crisis of unemployment from their constituents, that the CBC delayed Barney Frank’s proposed financial reform.

The House Financial Services Committee received so many phone calls from constituents that it approved the Ron Paul/Alan Grayson bill to audit the Fed and defeated the trojan horse alternate bill written by Mel Watt. Indeed, I have heard from congressional sources that the only calls to support the Watt alternate bill were from the Fed itself. And see this.

The Committee also approved Congressman Grayson’s bill to rein in foreign currency swaps.

Both Geithner and Summers are coming under increasing pressure to resign due to their being in bed with Wall Street.

Even Bernanke’s re-appointment is no longer certain.

And Obama’s approval ratings have now dipped below 50%, largely due to his mishandling of the economic crisis.

As Congressman Peter DeFazio notes:

There were a lot of Democrats who were "upset and nervous with" the handling of the economy by the administration.

"It is pretty embarrassing for a Democratic administration and a Democratic Congress to be identified with total attention to Wall Street and nothing for Main Street and jobs," he said. "There are a lot of Democrats who… want to see something more effective done to create employment."

DeFazio insisted that President Obama and, by extension, the Democratic Party were hampered by Geithner’s policies for economic recovery. He pointed to the inability of the administration to spur small business lending and the lack of effective TARP oversight as particularly egregious examples of mismanagement. More than anything else, the Oregon Democrat deemed it untenable for the president to continue employing his current economic team given the taint of Wall Street that clings to many of those advisers.

"I have had a number of people say to me, ‘I feel the same way you do but I’m not going to say it.’ People are worried it will rub off on the president who still enjoys popularity," he said. "I tell them I still support the president. I just think he is being poorly served by his economic team."

"The truth of the matter," DeFazio added, "is that we have not changed the way the money is being used. It is not being used for the purpose it was supposed to be used for. We are not creating jobs and we have not aggressively taken on the culture of Wall Street"…

One of his chief concerns was that the president appeared enamored with the lords of finance. "The administration has, thus far, not threaded the needle here," he said. "They have taken care of Wall Street but not the rest of the country."

Are the American people are finally starting to awaken?

We’ve been down this road before
Shown worse devils to the door

Throw off our chains of slavery
Now is the time to set ourselves free
And reclaim our liberty …

They bought the politicians and the news
They’ve got all the weapons (which they like to use)

But they are few and we’re billions strong
We are the giant … been sleeping for too long
Time to wake up and sing our victory song
- The Voice

The elites hate to acknowledge it, but when large numbers of ordinary people are moved to action, it changes the narrow political world where the elites call the shots. Inside accounts reveal the extent to which Johnson and Nixon’s conduct of the Vietnam War was constrained by the huge anti-war movement. It was the civil rights movement, not compelling arguments, that convinced members of Congress to end legal racial discrimination.
- PhD Economist Dean Baker

Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.
- Sivananda

The power of an aroused public is unbeatable.
- Dr. Helen Caldicott

The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.
-Ferdinand Foch

In times of danger large groups rise to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, courage and sacrifice . . . Mankind will be refashioned and history rewritten when this law is understood and obeyed.
-Helen Keller

You let one ant stand up to us – then they all might stand up. Those puny little ants outnumber us a 100 to one. And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life.
- Hopper (a grasshopper who is the leader of the gang of thugs who are stealing from the other bugs, speaking to fellow grasshoppers in the Disney/Pixar movie A Bug’s Life)

Here are a couple articles from Elliott Wave International on bank safety, credit expansion and the FDIC. – Ilene  

The FDIC Anesthesia Is Wearing Off

Courtesy of Robert Prechter of Elliott Wave International

The following article is an excerpt from Robert Prechter’s Elliott Wave Theorist. For more information from Robert Prechter on bank safety, download his free report, Discover the Top 100 Safest U.S. Banks.

Perhaps the single greatest reason for the unbridled expansion of credit over the past 50 years is the existence of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, another government-sponsored enterprise created by Congress. The coming rush of bank failures is an outcome made inevitable the very day that Congress created the FDIC. The reason is that the creation of the FDIC allowed savers to believe that their deposits at banks are “insured” against loss.

But the FDIC is not really an insurance company. No enterprise, absent fraud, could possibly insure all the banking deposits in a nation. Nor does the FDIC do so, despite its claims. The FDIC is like AIG, the company that sold too many credit-default swaps. It contracted for more insurance than it could pay upon. Because depositors believe the sticker on the door of the bank, they have abdicated their responsibility to make sure that their banks’ officers handle their deposits prudently. This abdication allowed banks to lend with impunity for decades until they became saturated with unpayable debts.

Today, most banks are insolvent, and the FDIC is broke. This condition is deflationary for three reasons: (1) Banks are coming to realize that the FDIC cannot bail them out in a systemic crisis, so they have become highly conservative in their lending policies, as described above. (2) The main way that the FDIC gets its money is to dun marginally healthy banks for more “premiums” (meaning transfer payments) to bail out their disastrously run competitors. The more money the FDIC sucks out of marginally healthy banks, the less money those banks have on hand to lend, which is deflationary. (3) The banks that have to cough up all this money will become more impoverished at the margin, so banks that otherwise might have survived a credit crunch will be thrown even closer to the brink of failure. This is another deflationary risk.

A friend of mine whose family owns a bank told me that the FDIC recently raised its 6-month assessment from $17,000 to $600,000. In the FDIC’s latest announcement, it is considering requiring banks to pre-pay three years’ worth of “premiums,” i.e. triple the normal annual fee in a single year. It will be a miracle if the money lasts through 2010. When these funds are gone, the FDIC will have two more options: to issue its own bonds and pressure banks to buy them; and to tap its “credit line” of up to half a trillion dollars with the U.S. Treasury. It’s the same old solution: take on more new debt to back up failing old debt. More debt will not cure the debt crisis.

Meanwhile, the FDIC is contributing to the deflationary trend. It has “tightened rules on required capital levels,” which forces banks’ loan ratios to fall; and it has “extended its extra monitoring of new banks from the first three years of operation to seven years” (AJC, 11/19), meaning that banks will now have to wait four additional years before they can go crazy with loans.

For more information from Robert Prechter on bank safety, download his free report, Discover the Top 100 Safest U.S. Banks. You’ll learn how to find a safe bank, the critical difference between lending and banking, tips on international banking, and more.

More than 130 banks will have failed by the end of 2009. Is Your Bank Safe?

By Gary Grimes, courtesy of Elliott Wave International

Please understand that this article is about more than safeguarding your money; it’s about saving you headache and heartache. It’s about giving you peace of mind.

Before I explain, please allow me to ask a few questions:

• Have you given much thought about the money in your banking accounts lately? Do you know if it’s safe?
• Have you thought about what might happen if your bank fails?
• Did you know you could be left in the lurch for days, weeks, even months before you get your money back from the FDIC?
• What happens if the FDIC can’t cover your funds?
• How do you find a safe bank to protect your deposits right now?

I hope you’ve given these questions some serious thought.

I have to be honest: These questions were about the farthest things from my mind until about a year ago, when I downloaded the free "Safe Banks" report from my colleagues at Elliott Wave International. At first, the report scared me: I thought, "Oh My Gosh! I could lose all of my money if my bank fails. What would I do?"

But as I read on, I figured out that the report was not only about making my money safe; it was about giving me peace of mind.

If you’ve read any of the following news items, perhaps you understand the fear of learning your money might not be safe. Here’s a recent story from Bloomberg:

Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) — In May, the FDIC said it was projecting $70 billion of losses during the next five years due to bank failures. The agency said it expects most of those collapses to occur in 2009 and 2010.

The FDIC’s problem is that it didn’t collect enough revenue over the years to cover today’s losses. The blame lies partly with Congress. Until the law was changed in 2006, the FDIC was barred from charging premiums to banks that it classified as well-capitalized and well-managed. Consequently, the vast majority of banks weren’t paying anything for deposit insurance.

Of course, we now know it means nothing when the FDIC or any other regulator labels a bank “well-capitalized.” Most banks that failed during this crisis were considered well-capitalized just before their failure.

By the end of 2009, more than 130 banks will have failed. Most depositors will have little clue their bank was even at risk. Worse yet, the string-pullers in Washington are doing everything in their power to hide information about the safety of your bank from you.

So far, the FDIC has had enough money to cover insured depositors. But that money is quickly running out.

Just last week, the FDIC voted to mandate early payment of insurance premiums to help cover at-risk banks. But only time will tell if this move will provide the funds needed in the years ahead. Here’s what the Associated Press reported on Thursday, Nov. 12:

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. banks will prepay about $45 billion in premiums to replenish a federal deposit insurance fund now in the red, under a plan adopted Thursday by federal regulators.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. board voted to mandate the early payments of premiums for 2010 through 2012. Amid the struggling economy and rising loan defaults, 120 banks have failed so far this year, costing the insurance fund more than $28 billion.

Worse yet, three more banks failed the very next day, Friday, Nov. 13.

This is a very real problem and a direct threat to your money. It’s more important now than ever to personally ensure the safety of your bank. The free 10-page "Safe Banks" report can help. It includes the very latest bank safety ratings from the third quarter of 2009 to help you prepare for what’s still to come this year and next.

Inside the revealing free report, you’ll discover:

• The 100 Safest U.S. Banks (2 for each state)
• Where your money goes after you make a deposit
• How your fractional-reserve bank works
• What risks you might be taking by relying on the FDIC’s guarantee

Please protect your money. Download the free 10-page "Safe Banks" report: Learn more about the "Safe Banks" report, and download it for free here.

Gary Grimes focuses on mass psychology, U.S. stocks and the U.S. economy. Gary has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Auburn University in Auburn, AL, where he was first turned on to the Austrian School of economics by way of the world-famous Mises Institute. His study of classical liberalism eventually led him to discover the Elliott Wave Principle and Robert Prechter’s theory of socionomics.

Robert Prechter, Chartered Market Technician, is the world’s foremost expert on and proponent of the deflationary scenario. Prechter is the founder and CEO of Elliott Wave International, author of Wall Street best-sellers Conquer the Crash and Elliott Wave Principle and editor of The Elliott Wave Theorist monthly market letter since 1979.

More free material from EWI:

Friday: Dell Misses, Is Goldman Sachs Stupid or Evil?

By Phil at Phil’s Stock World

Largest U.S. refiner Valero now permanently shutting capacity

Courtesy of Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns

Valero Energy has just announced it is shutting down its Delaware City Refinery.  This is a major news announcement because refiners should be seen as a canary in the coalmine for end-user demand and Valero is one company in the oil patch which has been loath to cut workers to improve the bottom line. This announcement is an indicator that, despite a technical recovery, the economy still has major obstacles to overcome.

Business Wire reports:

Valero Energy Corporation (NYSE: VLO) announced today it intends to permanently shut down its Delaware City refinery due to financial losses caused by very poor economic conditions, significant capital spending requirements and high operating costs. The shutdown will affect approximately 550 employees at the plant.

Valero notified refinery employees today of the impending shutdown, and will immediately begin negotiations with the refinery’s unions regarding the effects of the plant closure and the employees’ severance packages. A safe and orderly shutdown of the refinery will commence immediately. Valero remains committed to its marketing businesses in the Northeast and will continue to reliably supply its customers, partially through higher throughput rates at the company’s other refineries.

“The decision to permanently close the Delaware City refinery was a very difficult one,” said Valero Chairman and CEO Bill Klesse. “We have spent the last year diligently trying to avoid this situation, and I have worked closely with Gov. Markell in an effort to find a different outcome. Earlier this fall, we shut down the gasifier and coking operations in an attempt to improve reliability and financial performance, but the refinery’s profitability did not improve enough. Additionally, we have sought a buyer for the refinery, but feasible opportunities have not materialized. At this point, we have exhausted all viable options.

“We realize that the decision to close the refinery affects many employees, their families, and the community. We are thankful to our employees for their service, and we will treat them fairly during this difficult period.”

In the fourth quarter of 2009, the company expects to report a pre-tax charge of approximately $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion, or $2.00 to $2.15 per share after taxes, related primarily to asset impairment, employee severance and other shutdown costs. The company estimates the cash portion of the pre-tax charge will be in the range of $125 million to $150 million. The current and historical financial results of the affected operations will be shown as discontinued operations in the company’s financial statements.

The new CEO Bill Klesse came to Valero via Ultramar Diamond Shamrock (UDS), which Valero acquired at the top of the market in 2001. So, company ethos may be different than under Bill Greehey who was very committed to community. And Delaware City is an old Getty/Shell-Motiva oil refinery and a legacy asset of Blackstone-controlled Premcor, the company run by former Tosco head and Salomon Brothers commodities trader Tom O’Malley. So, it was not core to Valero’s operations. Valero already cut staff there in September. And the Shell-Motiva JV had serious operating difficulties with the asset before offloading it to Premcor.

Nevertheless, this was a refinery which has been upgraded significantly to process less expensive heavy, sour crude oil. The fact that Valero is laying off workers and shuttering the entire site tells you that the situation is bad. They are saying in effect “we cannot continue to operate at a loss through this business cycle.” If Valero can’t make money, no oil refiner can.

I see this in a macro context as a sign of cyclically weak end-user demand.  I do think peak oil is for real but the world is awash in oil and oil products right now.  Witness the recent post by FT Alphaville’s Izabella Kaminska, which points to a glut of distillate entering the season of high distillate demand:

We feel it’s Olivier Jakob at Petromatrix who really expressed the matter best on Friday. As he wrote (emphasis FT Alphaville’s):

As per our Tuesday ad hoc note on floating stocks; on a crude equivalent basis all of the OPEC and half of the IEA estimated oil demand growth for 2010 is already parked at anchor in floating stocks and these idled cargoes filled with oil are getting more and more attention.

By the end of the winter there is likely to be as much distillates afloat as in the total US at the end of winter 2007 and we expect that it will be more and more difficult for some of the Wall Street commodity banks to avoid mentioning the subject and to continue to hide the floating storage fill-up as “demand from emerging economies”.

The ICE Gasoil contango is currently widening and this will not work towards the reduction of these floating stocks. In an environment of spare refining capacity the only solver to the growing floating stocks of Distillates is a sharp reduction in OPEC supplies [ahem…Daily Mail], but only lower prices would trigger that.

The only answer that we see to GOD (Glut of Distillate) is a flat price correction sharp enough to force more OPEC supply cuts. Starting 2010 with WTI at 80+$/bbl and a contango in a low demand environment there will not be much returns to be expected from commodities by some of the largest financial institutions; hence with the evidence of the GOD being harder and harder to hide we would not be surprised if in a few weeks some of the Wall Street commodity banks start to change their tune and start to publicize the GOD. A flat price correction would anyway be needed in the first quarter to allow a repositioning from the large financial players at better entry levels.

Which, of course, doesn’t mean banks have been hoarding oil in a bid to drive the prices up. It means, if anything, they’ve been too slow to acknowledge the extent of the oversupply in the market and degree of muted demand, as well as depended too much on the idea that economic recovery will help spur demand by the year’s end.

Meanwhile, as Jakob states, the solution to the glut lies in Opec shut-ins — not more output.

The fact that oil is trading at $80 a barrel in this climate should tell you that it is trading more as a financial asset than on supply/demand imbalances. Is this why Warren Buffett is buying yet more oil assets? Watch refining margins; they are telling indicators.

Disclosure: I have owned owned shares and call options in Valero and other refiners for a number of years, but I sold all positions in 2007.

Steve Meyers: A Rolling Top in US Stocks

Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain

Equities are floating on thin volumes and thick liquidity.

It may float further, and await any event to end this rolling top and spark selling that could be quite impressive.

But for now stocks are range bound, within a mild uptrend.

Here is Steve Meyers view.

I really enjoy Nic Cage’s work (such as Leaving Las Vegas, one of the most depressing movies ever) and wish him the best… Ilene

How Nicolas Cage Spent His Way To The Poorhouse

Courtesy of Clusterstock, by Vince Veneziani

Nicolas Cage is a big movie star with an even bigger name.

A member of the famous Coppola family, Cage spent lavishly over the years, accumulating 9 Rolls Royces, 30 motorcycles, exotic pets, multiple luxury vehicles, a castle, and homes throughout the world. It’s no wonder he’s now being hunted by the IRS for tax evasion – he’s broke!

Currently, Cage owes $6.5 million in back taxes and is being sued by former business manager Samuel Levin.

Click here to see how Cage spent his money>>>

See Also:

Nicolas Cage Blames Money Manager for “Financial Ruin”

And it’s not like high-school graduates who can’t afford college have JOBS waiting for them…. – Ilene

California Students Protest 32% Tuition Hike; State Budget Gridlock II Coming; Massive Deficits In San Francisco

Courtesy of Mish

Why T-Bill Yields Just Returned To Crisis Levels

Courtesy of Vincent Fernando at Clusterstock

In case you missed it, treasury bill yields went negative yesterday (to -0.03%) which means investors were willing to lose money in order to own them. This is a very rare occurrence.

Even simply keeping cash under your pillow would earn a higher return, in either an inflationary or deflationary environment. So negative yields, no matter how small, clearly don’t make any investment sense.

When this happened back during the end of last year, Post-Lehman, one potential reason was that institutional investors were so panicked that they simply wanted to protect the value of their capital as much as possible. The only way to do that within their scope of options was to buy U.S. treasury bills, even if they had to accept a small negative return.

Yet investors certainly aren’t as panicked as they were last year. So what’s going on this time?

The FT (via FTAlphaville) ‘The growing appetite for short-term government debt reflects an effort by banks to present pristine year-end balance sheets to regulators and investors – a practice known as “window dressing” on Wall Street, analysts said.’

And…

Across The Curve: Typically as the year end approaches clients tend to unwind profitable trades and reduce balance sheet. I think that some of that deleveraging process has created new piles of cash and that money needs a place to park.

Others are preparing to beautify their balance sheet by having some pristine government paper on the books over year end. Some of that trade has begun as investors purchase paper which will carry them into 2010.

Thus this time around it appears there is simply too much money that wants to sit tight and look respectable come year-end. Which means that we shouldn’t read too much from the negative T-Bill yield and this will eventually rebound back to at least 0%, once the year-end regulatory dance comes to an end.

At the end of this article, I posted Mark Mitchell’s answers to a few questions I had after reading this article. His answers should help in understanding the complex mechanism of how CDS pricing manipulation would work to the market’s detriment. – Ilene

The Markit Group: A Black-Box Company that Devastated Markets

Courtesy of Mark Mitchell at Deep Capture

Although much attention has been directed at the contribution made by credit default swaps  to the financial crisis, most discussion has focused on the companies, such as American International Group (AIG), that posted big losses because they sold these instruments without sufficient due diligence.

Another line of inquiry has not been pursued, however, though it is of equal, and perhaps greater, significance. That line of inquiry concerns the way in which the prices of credit default swaps effect the perceived value of all forms of debt — corporate bonds, commercial mortgages, home mortgages, and collateralized debt obligations — and as a result, the ability of hedge funds manipulators to use credit default swaps in bear raids on public companies.

If short sellers can manipulate the price of credit default swaps, they can disrupt those companies whose debt is insured by the credit default swaps whose prices are manipulated.  The game plan runs as follows: find a company that relies on a layer of debt that is both permanent, and which rolls over frequently (most financial firms fit this description). Short sell that company’s stock. Then manipulate the price of the CDS upwards, preferably into a spike, as you spread the news of the skyrocketing CDS price (perhaps with the cooperation of compliant journalists at, say, CNBC).

Because the CDS is, in essence, an insurance policy on the debt of the company, the spiking CDS pricing will cause the company’s lenders to panic and cut off access to credit. As this happens, the company’s stock will nosedive, thereby cutting off access to equity capital. Thus suddenly deprived of credit and equity, the firm collapses, and the hedge fund collects on its short bets.

Moreover, credit default swap prices are the primary inputs for important indices (such as the CMBX and the ABX) measuring the movement of the overall market for commercial and home mortgages.  In the months leading up to the financial crisis of 2008, short sellers pointed to these indices in order to argue  that investment banks – most notably Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers – had overvalued the mortgage debt and property on their books. Meanwhile, several hedge funds made billions in profits betting that those indexes would drop.

It should therefore be a matter of some concern that credit default swap “prices” and the indexes derived from them are determined almost entirely by a little company with zero transparency and, it appears probable, a high exposure to influence from market manipulators. The company is called Markit Group, whose owners include investment banks Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and JP Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), and there is every reason to believe that its CDS-driven indices (the CMBX, the ABX, and several others) are inaccurate, while the credit default swap “prices” that they publish and which rock the market are in fact  nowhere close to the prices at which credit default swaps actually trade.

Last year, the media reported that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo had sent subpoenas to Markit Group as part of an investigation into possible manipulation of credit default swap prices by short sellers. This investigation, like Mr. Cuomo’s other investigations into market manipulation, have yielded no prosecutions.

The Department of Justice is reportedly investigating Markit Group for anti-trust violations. This investigation (which is reportedly focused on how Markit Group packages and sells its information) seems to acknowledge that Market Group has near-monopolistic control of information about credit default swap prices. However, if the press reports are correct, the DOJ has not considered the possible appeal of this monopolistic control to market manipulators.

Meanwhile, Henry Hu, the director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s division of risk, has said that it has been nearly impossible for the SEC to conduct investigations into any matter concerning credit default swaps because the commission does not have access to any data on the trading of CDSs. In itself, this is a shocking admission.  It is all the more shocking when one considers that the necessary data exists and might be in the hands of The Markit Group – a black box company based in London.

A thorough investigation of Markit Group is urgently required.

Here is what we know so far:

• Markit Group was co-founded by Rony Grushka, Lance Uggla, and Kevin Gould. Prior to founding Markit Group, Mr. Grushka’s main line of business was investing in Bulgarian property developments. He recently resigned from the board of Orchid Developments Group, an Israeli-invested company based in Sophia, Bulgaria. Messrs. Uggla and Gould formerly worked for Toronto-Dominion Bank in Canada.

• Markit Group’s founders also include four hedge funds. However, Markit Group refuses to disclose the names of those hedge funds. In response to an inquiry, a Markit Group spokesman said it was “corporate policy” to keep the names of the hedge funds secret, but he would not say why Markit Group had such a policy. It seems worth knowing whether those hedge funds have any influence over Markit Group’s published information or indexes, and whether those hedge funds are trading on that information. It would also be worth knowing whether those hedge funds or affiliated hedge funds have engaged in short selling of public companies whose debt and stock prices were profoundly affected by the information that Markit Group published.

• Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), JP Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) and several other investment banks also have ownership stakes in Markit Group. The investment banks received their stakes in exchange for providing trading data to Markit Group. It would be worth knowing whether these investment banks engaged in short selling ahead of Markit Group’s published indexes and price quotations.

• Markit Group is secretive about how it creates its indexes. In early 2008, The Wall Street Journal noted that the CMBX simply “doesn’t make sense” and that Markit Group’s indexes “might be exaggerating the amount of distress” in the home and commercial mortgage markets. In 2008, the average prediction for defaults on commercial mortgages was 2%. The CMBX implied that the default rate could be four times that level.

• When short seller David Einhorn initiated his famous public attack on Lehman Brothers, one of his central arguments was that the CMBX (the index that was likely “exaggerating the amount of distress”) proved that Lehman had overvalued the commercial mortgages on its books.

• In March 2008, the Commercial Mortgage Securities Association sent a letter to Markit Group asking it disclose basic information about how the CMBX index is created and its daily trading volume. “The volatility in the CMBX index, caused by short sellers, distorts the true picture of the value of commercial-mortgage-backed securities,” the group said in a statement.

• Markit Group is equally secretive about how it derives its “prices” for credit default swaps. A spokesman for the company spent close to one hour talking to Deep Capture. He did his job well and sounded like he was trying to be helpful. But he told us as little as possible.

• However, in the course of this conversation, we did learn that Markit Group’s “prices” are not actual, traded prices. They are mere quotations. The Markit Group has what it calls “contributors” – hedge funds and broker-dealers that provide it with information. Markit Group has a grand total of 22 “contributors.” Deep Capture asked Markit Group’s spokesman for the names of these “contributors.” The spokesman said he would try to find out the names and call back later. He never called back.

• The 22 “contributors” provide Markit Group with quotations, and these quotations become the Markit Group’s “price.” In other words, the “contributors” can quote any price for a CDS that they choose, regardless of whether anyone is actually willing to buy the CDS at that price. Markit Group looks at these quotations. Then it somehow decides which quotations make the most sense. Then it publishes information that purports to represent the actual market price of that CDS. This process is certainly unscientific. And it is ripe for abuse.

• Consider, for example, the Markit Group “price” for CDSs insuring the debt of company X.  The Markit Group price strongly suggests that company X is going to default on its debt in the immediate future. Short sellers eagerly point to the Markit Group CDS “price” as evidence that company X is doomed. Panic ensues, and suddenly, company X really is doomed. But the fact is, nobody ever bought a company X CDS at the price quoted by Markit Group. Rather, that panic-inducing “price” was, in effect, pulled out of a hat. Who pulled it out of a hat? That is matter of immense importance. There are two possible scenarios:

• The first possible scenario is that the 22 “contributors” report their quotations in good faith. They should be sending the actual traded price, not just a quotation, but assume they are just doing what was asked of them. From these quotations, Markit Group somehow decides what the “price” should be. It is possible that this decision is based on some secret formula (which would be worrisome); or it is possible that Markit Group executives sit around a table debating what the price should be and take a shot in the dark (which would be even more worrisome); or it is possible that Markit Group deliberately chooses the most horrifying price possible in order to assist the short sellers who are affiliated with its owners (which would be a matter for the authorities).

• The second possible scenario is that Markit Group acts in good faith (if not scientifically), but one or more of the 22 “contributors” or their affiliates has an interest in seeing company X fail. If just one of those “contributors” sends in an astronomically high quotation, that could be enough. Markit Group factors the absurd quotation into its posted “price” and it suddenly becomes possible to convince the world that company X is about to default on its debt.  Panic ensues, the firm’s layer of debt dries up, the stock price plunges, and perhaps the “contributor” or its affiliate make a lot of money.

• As Deep Capture understands it, CDS quotations suggested by the 22 “contributors” also help determine the movement of the CMBX and ABX indexes. The movement of these indexes did serious damage to the American economy in multiple ways. The  indexes prompted write downs at most of the major banks and mortgage companies. They were ammunition for short sellers, like David Einhorn, who claimed that companies had cooked their books by not writing down to the rock bottom prices suggested by the Markit Group indexes. They helped precipitate the decline in prices of mortgage securities, and contributed mightily to the panic that spread across the markets.  A lot of people made a lot of money as result of those indexes moving downward. So, it is rather important to know more about how those indexes are formulated, and if they can be driven by the same people who are making directional bets on their movements.

Conclusion: Ten years ago, there was no such thing as a credit default swap. Six years ago, a very small number of investors traded credit default swaps as hedges against the long-shot possibility of corporate defaults. Nobody looked to credit default swaps as reliable indicators of corporate well-being.

Then, suddenly, there were over $60 trillion in credit default swaps outstanding. That is, over the course of a few years, somebody had made over $60 trillion (many times the gross domestic product) in long shot bets that borrowers would default on their debt. As this derivative risk marbled through the system, the trading in credit default swaps was completely opaque. Nobody knew who bought them, who sold them, or at what price.

But starting in 2001, we knew the “prices” of CDSs. We knew the “prices” because two Canadians, a developer of Bulgarian real estate, and four mysterious hedge funds had founded a small, black-box company in London. That company, the Markit Group, achieved near-monopolistic power to publicize the “prices” through its magic process of aggregating quotation information provided by 22 hedge funds and broker-dealers who could well have been betting on the downstream effects of sudden price changes.

These “prices” were not prices in any meaningful sense of the term.  But, suddenly, these “prices” became perhaps the single most important indicator of corporate well-being. Assuming that those four hedge funds and the 22 “contributors” (or hedge funds affiliated with them) bet against public companies, it seems more than possible that short-sellers got to run the craps table, call the dice, and place bets, all at the same time.

So perhaps it is not surprising that a lot of long-shot rolls paid off quite nicely.

Mark Mitchell is a reporter for DeepCapture.com. He previously worked as an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal in Europe, a business correspondent for Time magazine in Asia, and as an assistant managing editor responsible for the Columbia Journalism Review’s online critique of business journalism. He holds an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. Email: mitch0033@gmail.com

***** 
 
Ilene: Are you saying the CDSs were quoted too high but the indices of them too low?  How are the CDSs related/or how should they be related to the indices?
 
Mark: CDSs are essentially insurance against the risk of default on debt. CDS prices are factored into the indices, which measure the price of subprime mortgage securities (ABX), commercial mortgage securities (CMBX) and other kinds of debt instruments. So when CDS prices increase, the indices presumably drop. 
 
Ilene: Could Markit’s numbers have been somewhat accurate, even though not based on actual buy and sell information regarding real trades?  What if they did not over-state weakness but were correct about it?
 
Mark:  There is a lack of transparency in how they formulate those "prices," raising questions as to why they were always astronomically high (in the case of CDSs) or low (in the case of their indices). The market is supposed to determine prices, not short sellers and a single black box company.
 
There are two questions. 1) How, exactly, does Markit formulate its indices? Nobody knows. 2) How does Markit calculate CDS prices? Answer: it doesn’t. It takes random quotations (rather than actual purchase prices) from 22 contributors and in some unknown fashion it picks a price.
 
Separately, there is the question of CDSs insuring debt of individual public companies. If the CDS price increases, short sellers suggest the company is expected to default on its debt. How do we know the actual CDS price to insure debt of, say, Company X?. Answer: we don’t. The actual traded prices are unknown. But Markit Group publishes a price. How does Markit Group determine its published price? Answer: Nobody really knows, except to say that Markit gets quotations (not actual market prices) from 22 contributors who can provide any price they want.
 
The property market would probably have crashed anyway. But if Markit’s published quotations and indices were not skewed, mortgage backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, and the investment banks might not have crashed as catastrophically as they did.
 
Hope that helps.  

SocGen: Prepare Yourself For The Worst Case Scenario!

See Also:

12 Places To Go If The World Goes To Hell

SocGen Analyst: Our Governments Are Insolvent, Gold To $6,300! (GLD)

SocGen Tells Clients: Here’s How To Bet On Total Global Collapse

Whoops: Stocks Now 20%+ Overvalued

Courtesy of Henry Blodget at Clusterstock

Felix Salmon: Henry Blodget Should Be Banned From The Industry

Courtesy of Henry Blodget at Clusterstock

And Felix’s article:  Kicked out of finance, and into journalism

Short Term T Bills Go Negative

Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain  

Kass: The Quant Bubble

Courtesy of Jan-Martin Feddersen at Immobilienblasen

Source:  Kass: The Quant Bubble

Happily, Jesse’s back at the Cafe, health restored quickly via a nice bottle of 2009 Noveau beaujolais. - Ilene

The Partnership Between Wall Street and the Government Will Continue Until the System Collapses

Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain 

“Hindsight is a wonderful thing,” said Timothy W. Long, the chief bank examiner for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. “At the height of the economic boom, to take an aggressive supervisory approach and tell people to stop lending is hard to do.” Post Mortems Reveal Obvious Risks at Banks, NY Times

Well, the boom is over, so what about now?

The current notional value of derivatives on US commercial banks’ balance sheets is $203 trillion. 97% of these ($196 trillion) sit on FIVE banks’ balance sheets, according to a recent report from that very same Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

It is obvious from this report that Goldman Sachs is by no means a bank, and deserves no consideration as such. It is a hedge fund. In general, Wall Street is out of control.

[click on table to enlarge]

Today’s testimony by Timmy Geithner in front of the US Congress is interesting to watch. It serves to reinforce my opinion that the Administration is incompetent, caught in old solutions and the status quo, and that the Republican alternative is morally and intellectually bankrupt, given to demagoguery, and owned by a similar but slightly different set of special interests.

Most of the congress are indifferent to the interests of the American people as a whole, whether through self interest or mere cravenness, despite their occasional histrionics for the cameras. It is remarkable how they can act as outraged bystanders, when they have long been at the heart of the corruption and decline. It is their job to manage the government. They have classic American CEO amnesia and ‘incredible denial.’

The key to a general reform has long been campaign finance reform and a reduction of lobbying payments and campaign contributions as soft bribes to Congress. As the banks cannot regulate and reform themselves, at least according to John Mack’s recent advice to the American people, so the Congress and the federal government seem incapable of reforming and managing themselves. If one does it, they all want to do it, and in some ways they must to be competitive, if the administration of justice creates selective exceptions.

And too many in the States are yearning for a strong leader, someone who will tell them what to do. A great man, who will exercise authority with a directness and little or no discussion. Someone who will ‘put things right.’ The primary question seems to be less policy than fashion, whether to wear brown shirts or black, and whether torchlight is too ‘retro.’

On a brighter note, the Noveau beaujolais for 2009 is rather nice, dry almost to a fault, but not too tannic. A little more ‘fruitiness’ would have been a highlight.