Investors deaf to the screams of gold and cotton

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-22/investors-are-deaf-to-screams-of-gold-cotton-commentary-by-mark-gilbert.html

Irrelevant politics

http://dollarcollapse.com/articles/why-we%E2%80%99re-ungovernable/

So what’s happening? Just a few years — in some cases just a few months — after sweeping into office with promises of “change” and a quick clean-up of their predecessors’ messes, leaders of major democracies from across the political spectrum are in being swept right back out.

Did they turn out to be incompetent, or their policies wrong-headed? There’s hardly been enough time for either verdict. But if not that, what?

The answer, in a word, is debt. When an economy’s borrowing passes an historically identifiable point it loses the ability to navigate from crisis to solution. In the case of Europe, Japan, and the U.S., the range of choices has narrowed to only two, inflation and austerity, and neither are working.

When Europe tried inflation by promising to bail out the PIIGS countries, the euro collapsed, as the global markets correctly saw an oversupply of paper currency on the horizon. When it switched to austerity, workers across the continent saw their livelihoods threatened. Either way, the folks in charge get blamed and have a tough time holding their jobs.

Derivatives

Our government financial experts really are clueless. The over-expansion of leverage and derivatives of collateralized mortgages caused our financial crisis. Now the broke FDIC wants to collateralize bad loans from collapsed banks, package them, and sell the securities to the markets. Talk of financial reform is utterly worthless if the causes of credit bubbles are misunderstood.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/35055601

Bank of England warns of lower standard of living

One could argue the United Kingdom's finances are worse than the United States' debt-wise, but at least their central banker is honest about it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/7030904/Families-face-years-of-pain-says-Bank.html

Dennis Gartman on CNBC

Dennis Gartman, the respected commodities expert who pens the widely read "The Gartman Letter", and who can been seen on CNBC every day, called a top on gold at $930. When gold surged to $1050, he said he was still bearish on gold, yet he had reversed course on his own trade, and had gone long due to technical momentum (presumably after losing a ton of money shorting gold at $930). He also declared gold was in a "bubble"--even as he confessed he had gone long--and that he just didn't understand why gold had rallied so high and so fast. Today, in overseas trading, while America gluttons on turkey and dressing, gold is threatening $1200.

So this is a guy who can barely admit he was totally wrong on gold, costing followers millions of dollars, and now he can glibly declare gold is in "bubble" status--without even looking at the fundamentals of not just the recent rally, but of a DECADE-LONG BULL MARKET IN GOLD?

What about US Treasury bonds? The trillions of IOU's being issued by an insolvent government will come due at some point, and that is not a bubble? What if the creditors of that debt reject taking on that risk at yields of 3%, and demand 15% before even considering buying more Treasuries? What about that bubble? Rising interest rates will tank bond values, much like they did in the early 80's when inflation and deficit spending were out of control. Deficits are much worse today--in the trillions, with a "t".

And what if the US government itself defaults on its borrowings, unable to fund even the interest on that debt? What will happen to the asset values of hard commodities? How high could gold or oil climb in dollars?

Yes, the Fed's quantitative easing will yet again create asset bubbles. But as usual, the investing public will get fleeced again because the bankers are pointing at the wrong "bubble."

United Kingdom's fiscal troubles

The UK shares the same fiscal troubles as the United States: high deficits, huge debts, insolvency, high taxation, a low manufacturing base, high regulation, high unemployment, a deep recession, replacement of private sector debt with public debt, and bankrupt entitlement (social) programs.

Their government response has been equally similar: quantitative easing--or creation of money supply. And the results will be identical--a huge default--via inflation or outright default.

Here's an insightful Australian perspective on a British problem.

http://www.moneymorning.com.au/20091109/britain-death-economy.html

Warren Buffett on deficit spending

Warren Buffett, of Berkshire Hathaway fame, was recently the Charlie Rose talk show. Here is an exchange:

Charlie Rose: This question is asked frequently: Will at some point the deficit and the debt and the decline of the dollar get to a point that people who hold our debt will no longer want to buy and then we're in a crisis?

Warren Buffett: We cannot keep running fiscal deficits like we are currently without having a lot of consequences over time... If you are running a $1.4 trillion deficit, even if you are exporting $400 billion of I.O.U.s in effect to the rest of the world, that leaves another trillion. And you know, the domestic savers are not going to come up with a trillion... so these numbers are unsustainable over time, what we're doing. It is true, though, that if you keep flooding the world with your debt and people see your fiscal policies are sort of out of control, they're going to get less and less and less enthused about your debt. And then, one of two things happen. Either you keep paying more and more to roll over that debt or you start monetizing it like crazy...

The Federal Reserve Bank has been monetizing the debt since March, 2009, catalyzing a rally in equities, commodities, and bonds to a lesser extent. It keeps short-term interest rates artificially low, in an attempt to stimulate the economy. As it did in the early 2000's under former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, it also created a massive bubble in certain asset classes, namely the housing market and equities.

With government bailouts and buying of collaterized debt securities, toxic assets have been shifted from the private sector (banks) to the public sector (government agency and US Treasury debts). The mortgage problems haven't been solved--it just shifted to the FHA. And when the bubble in government securities bursts, foreign sovereign governments won't be there to pick up the pieces.

Video on the financial crisis...

and why we're not out of the woods yet.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/janet-tavakoli-why-meltdown-risk-now-greater-it-was-2007

German Chancellor bashes the US monetary policy

Merkel is the latest foreign leader to blast the Fed and US Treasury. According to Eric Roseman:

“Over the last 12 months we’ve witnessed one of the most stunning economic crashes in history…whereby bank balance sheet risk has been transferred from the private sector to government.”

“And, with the printing presses now on full blast, it’s no wonder investors – especially the Chinese – are growing nervous as Treasury prints bonds like there’s no tomorrow. Almost on a weekly basis Treasury is auctioning tens of billions of dollars of U.S. paper.”

“According to Bianco Research, the aggregate cost of the U.S. bail-out program is now estimated at $4.2 trillion dollars – larger than the inflation-adjusted cost of WW II.”

“Grant’s Interest Rate Observer pegs the current stimulus at roughly 30% of GDP, or gross domestic product. To put this monster into perspective, the total sum of all fiscal and monetary measures during the 12 previous U.S. economic downturns since 1929 comes to a mere 39% of GDP.”

“What’s truly alarming is not only the aggressive attempt to balloon credit but the failure of the Federal Reserve to mop-up excess Treasury sales… “

“Like Britain, Germany, Holland and Ireland among others, the United States has struggled to sell longer dated government bonds recently. The risk is growing that one or several sovereign issuers will fail to auction off debt; this has already happened four times in Germany since last October – a spectacular upset because Germany is the world’s second most liquid bond market and in my eyes a far stronger credit risk that any other nation – including the United States.”

“Government has swept this crisis under the rug.”

“We all better hope that investors don’t force government bond yields much higher…because it might result in another disaster as mortgage-backed securities, CDOs, mortgage rates, housing prices and other loans tied to intermediate term rates are forced higher. Consumers can’t handle high rates.”

“We are now in the latter stages of debt deflation – saved by government. World governments will eventually succeed in growing the economy again through the monetization of debt and ultimately will fail to arrest inflation as it develops again over the next 12-36 months.”

“The consequences of this policy action will be horrendous down the road for most assets, except gold, commodities and TIPS as another dollar and possibly, euro crisis, hits the fan.”

Why Monetary theory doesn't work.

According to Brian Bloom, author of Beyond Neanderthal:

The “theory” of the monetarists is that if you flood the market with money then people will continue to buy the same quantity of oil. The “reality” is that if there is less stock available (for whatever reason) and/or if there is a reduction of the rate at which people are replacing what they bought before, then an inflation of the money supply causes an inflation of prices.

Another problem to which the monetarists seem blind is that wages lag inflation. First price rises and then, in response to increasing difficulties being experienced by consumers to make ends meet whilst continuing to buy the same volume of goods, they hold out their hands for more wages. Employers – who are experiencing their own problems – don’t react immediately. Thus, in the short term, consumers have no option but to buy fewer goods and services. It follows that, in an economy where 66% of GDP is accounted for by consumer purchases, any extraordinary inflation of the money supply is virtually guaranteed to exacerbate a slowing velocity of money and a concomitant slowing rate of consumer purchases. At the extreme, if the authorities drop dollars from helicopters, all that they will achieve is that they will hasten the arrival of an Economic Depression. Perhaps the following example will make it crystal clear: Today, in Zimbabwe, a loaf of bread costs somewhere around half a billion dollars and the unemployment rate is around 80%. How many of the 80% unemployed do we think can access half a billion dollars? At the extreme, when you print too much money, the economy tanks.

In summary, dear reader, if you have a robust engine powering a robust vehicle which, in turn, is pulling your 5 ton load then, by depressing the accelerator (increasing the money supply) the car will easily negotiate the next hill. But if the vintage economic vehicle is not sufficiently robust – which is what we are now facing – then you want to be very circumspect about increasing the money supply. This is one of those times when implementing monetary theory will be counterproductive. What will likely happen under these circumstances – as an example – is that the oil price will rise to $150 a barrel. Then, when it collapses again because people can’t afford to pay $4 a gallon for gasoline because wages lag inflation, what you will be faced with is a fall in demand and a consumer who has been burned. And we all know that “a burned child dreads the fire”. If you offer the consumer a box of matches after he has been burned, he will run a mile in the opposite direction. Printing yet more money in today’s environment will not give rise to the desired outcome.

Time to face reality

Just like when Obama won the general election and equities tanked, the Inauguration rally many expected failed to materialized. The correct interpretation is that while Main Street hopes Obama will save the day, the smart money says his stimulative policies will fail. Artificially propping up insolvent industries may be populist, but history shows it is counterproductive in a failing economy. And history always show contrarians eventually are proved correct in predicting inflection points by going against the consensus. Even though Obama is riding a huge wave of popularity, the consensus is always proven wrong. If billion dollar deficits are bad, then trillion dollar deficits are supposed to be good?

The silver lining (or more correctly, the gold and silver lining) is that my investment theses are still intact: the US Dollar is continually being debased due to profligate credit and quantitative easing--in a desperate attempt to save the economy from further decline. But in doing so, we mortgage our future, dampening growth with high taxes, lower corporate earnings, and lower purchasing power. Interest rates have nowhere to go but up from here, while hard assets such as gold and silver will be one of the few safe havens from financial and economic turmoil. Healthcare seems to be the only other recession-resistant industry. Markets don't move up or down in a straight line, so we will experience corrections against the prevailing trend, but these trends are already paying off, so any pauses will be opportunities for me to add to my already profitable positions. In other words, I don't know how gold prices will move tomorrow, but I do know 2 years from now, a debased US Dollar almost guarantees gold will move substantially higher.

Today, despite general public optimism, equities tanked again, led by distrust in financials and their ability to get their arms around their huge portfolio losses. The disturbing fact is that the economy can't grow without a healthy banking industry, with high reserve ratios and solid balance sheets. With unemployment soaring, lending ground to a halt, and loan defaults rising, banks are in a pickle to stay solvent themselves.

Meanwhile, the price of gold surged, while yields on 30-year Treasury bonds rose (hence, our short T-bond position). All trends are behaving as I predicted, even tho I was unsure of the timing, whether the big moves start tomorrow, next month, next year. One could argue that gold has been in a secular bull market since 2001, when it was trading at $257/oz, due to the aforementioned dollar debasing. In the same vein, gold has tripled in 8 years: the sad corollary is that the US Dollar has been devalued by two-thirds. Mathematically, when you create obscene distortions in financial vehicles, you will experience painful regressions to the mean--in laymen's terms, you've created a bubble that will eventually burst. This massive credit expansion and deficit spending has been especially toxic, and now the Federal government thinks extending more credit will somehow magically cause our economy to resuscitate itself.

Today was a great day for many reasons, and shows that we have evolved as a country. But financially, it also means we have sealed our fate economically, and that we should expect another decade of negative wealth and disinvestment.

Oversold

Even tho I think financials have terrible fundamentals (too much toxic debt), I flipped Citigroup today for a one-day round trip profit of 20%. Regional banks should do okay, as they didn't leverage up on sub-prime mortgage-backed securities, like the big money center banks. But the landscape has changed for partially nationalized banks like JPMorgan Chase, B of A, Citi, and Goldman Sachs. So even tho I went against my investment principles, I repeated my flip of Morgan Stanley last quarter, doubling my money on that trade. The panic selling of Citi shares created an oversold condition, so I pounced. Probably not smart, but I'd rather be lucky than good.

I also nibbled at oil at $34/barrel with the ETF DXO, which leverages crude oil moves. No one is bullish on oil, so my contrarian instincts compelled me to dive in. This is a short-term trade for me, and if oil moves to my favor, I'll take profits. If oil keeps declining, I'll again go against my principles, sitting on it for however many months or years it takes for oil to rebound--I won't put in any stop losses. Oil is still in a secular bull market, so time is on my side.

Even former Fed Governor is calling out the Fed

Former Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis William Poole as soon on Bloomberg TV:

"The Fed has been encouraging the bond market to think the Fed is going to be in there supporting Treasury Bond yields. That can't be because the implications of that commitment are too simply horrendous to think about."


http://www.bloomberg.com/avp/avp.htm?clipSRC=mms://media2.bloomberg.com/cache/vhuS.o9XrC7E.asf

He's basically blasting his former colleagues for lack of transparency on their unprecedented balance sheet blow out. He also criticizes them on mistakenly (or deceptively) trying to artificially suppress interest rates, thus hoodwinking bond buyers into stepping up and continuing to purchase US Treasuries. There's been a dearth of buyers since last September--no buyers equals higher interest rates to attract said buyers. Hence, bond prices will reverse and melt down, much like the mortgage-backed securities market.

The US government is now the debtor of last resort, and when investors stop drinking at the trough, there will be nobody to sell our massive trillion-dollar debt to. When interest rates spike to attract reticent demand, the interest on said debt will choke our country for decades, if not generations.

Poole's colleague in the dual interview, a former member of the (Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), even goes so far as to say the recent actions by the Fed are unconstitutional.

Ludwig von Mises--why you should know him

The great Austrian School Economist, Ludwig von Mises wrote, "There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The question is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."

In other words, Mises, unlike the followers of economist John Maynard Keynes, is of the opinion that governments (and central banks) should stop trying to interfere with market forces. Government intervention via fiscal and monetary policy cannot "control" markets, and cannot prevent booms or busts--they occur naturally, and hence, should be allowed to run their course. All intervention will do is compound and exacerbate said credit expansions and subsequent busts. In other words, they not only create bubbles--they make them bigger, and when they pop, they create bigger busts.

Obama, as bright and insightful as he is, is naturally bending to human nature--the consensus is to solve this huge private, corporation, and institutional debt crisis by replacing it with much larger government debt. In other words, we are compounding a billion dollar debt problem into a trillion dollar debt problem.

While stimulative short-term (public and private works, for instance), it is detrimental long-term, as our generation and future generations are saddled with huge debts and high taxation. Despite cosmetic rhetoric, we are merely deferring out debts into the future, letting them compound at an alarming rate.

The resulting inflation reduces that debt amount into the future, but inflation also punishes savers and investors. Eventually, investors will demand higher rates of return. The combination of capital flooding the markets, and said capital chasing fewer resources (commodities, crops, oil, basic metals, and precious metals), will also cause interest rates to rise.

Inflation is the furthest worry of policymakers and the general public right now, but it will eventually rear its ugly head.

In the immortal words of the recently mortal Milton Friedman: "Inflation is taxation without legislation."

What happened?

The stock market, and pretty much every other assets are plummeting due to hedge fund, mutual fund, and private equity firm redemptions. Investors are bailing out, so these funds have to sell assets--any good assets to raise cash. They can't sell the bad assets because no one wants them. So they are unloading good assets at low prices--that's why value players are salivating, but they keep getting burned because assets at cheap prices are getting hammered and getting even cheaper. This tug of war between bottom fishers and forced asset sellers is what's causing the high volatility. Overall, tho, the sellers are winning, as they are panic selling in droves, swamping any brave buyers. Eventually, these buyers lose out (at least in the short term), as even the savviest value buyers are seeing their entry points as being too early and too high, despite metrics that suggest they are good buys. Ultimately, over the long-term, these value buyers will be proven correct, but for now, guys like Buffett and Soros have seen their positions drop by more than 10-20%, despite buying assets that have already dropped more than 50% already.

For example, if a solid company's share price has already dropped 80%, it may seem cheap. It may be, but that doesn't preclude it from dropping another 50%. Let's say a stock is at $100 last year during its peak. It is now at $20. A Buffett buys at that price, thinking he's getting it at a bargain. He may be right (based on projected earnings growth, or more correctly, discounted cash flow), but that doesn't mean the stock won't drop to 10 before bottoming out, say next year. Ultimately, if the stock is worth $50 a share, Buffett may ultimately win out (he usually does), but only if he has a long-term view. While he may be annoyed, and since he's got plenty of cash, he can wait it out.

Realize that the fixed-income market dwarfs the equities (stock market)--that's why the subprime mortgage debt bomb obligerated everything around its wake. I wrote a quick email to some folks recently:

"That's not entirely correct. Derivatives allowed investment banks to transfer that risk to shareholders and get it off their books. When default rates on sub prime mortgages reached inevitably high rates, the credit default swaps (CDS) blew up, as they insured the sketchy collaterized debt obligations (CDO).

These CDS's are basically contracts which insured these mortgages against default--in this case, highly-risky subprime mortgages to marginal borrowers. The problem was that insurers like AIG didn't charge enough premium to insure these mortgages, as everybody assumed California real estate prices would always go up, and that few borrowers would actually default. With home prices/income ratios above 10, this assumption was unsustainable. And because these derivatives were highly-leveraged ($1 could control $40 or $100 due to Wall Steet's repackaging of said debt), if those assumptions turned sour just a little bit, whatever little equity put up as collateral disappeared. And once the selling of assets to unwind from those positions began, the vicious spiral just fed upon itself, as everybody had to de-leverage from their overly leveraged positions. It became a Category 5 game of hot potato, and the investors (hedge funds, pensions, institutional money) got burned, while chasing the high yields during good times.

Wall St. did a great job of selling this "AAA" paper as non-risky, when they were extremely speculative. The ratings agencies were unknowing perpetrators of this shell game. Wall St. repackaged these @#@% loans, and the ratings agencies gave it their blessing as low-risk, investment-grade securities. What compounded the problem is that some of this paper was created without even any mortgages to back them.

Derivatives by definition use leverage. It can be useful for hedging strategies, but hedge funds didn't use them as hedges--they used them as levers to squeeze out more returns. When the bets turned against them, they had to sell assets to raise cash as investors headed for the exits. This de-levering is causing markets to tumble.

I could go on ad nauseum, but I think you get the picture. I don't worry about what happened--I was able to avoid most of the roadkill, as I was out of the market in June. I am concerned about what's going to happen next, and I'm afraid the worst is ahead of us. We are going to see a carnage unseen since the Great Depression, as the unwinding of positions is not over yet--not even close. Thankfully, I've got a strategy in place for me and my clients which will enable us to not only survive this crisis, but also profit handsomely from it.

Without going into details, it does involve certain currency plays, financial institutions here and abroad, and various asset plays, including equities (surprisingly). More shoes will drop, and there will be bigger shocks and bank failures, some unfathomable only a few months ago. I predicted GM would be insolvent as far back as two years ago when people thought I was crazy (all documented in my blog). Last month, CNBC splashed it on their headlines, and now CNN has it on theirs.

I can send you a link to my blog, as well as what to Google. I will not do the research for you, but I will point you in the right direction. I will tell you the strategies will not be mainstream or conventional, but then again, conventional hasn't worked, has it?

I will give you this thought in case you think I am ringing alarm bells unnecessarily. Everybody is bitching and moaning about a $700 billion bail out (which is less than $1 trillion). Recall I mentioned CDS's as basically insurance--only they were labeled by Wall St. as "swaps" in order to avoid regulation (insurance contracts are heavily regulated, and you can't pile leverage on them). They were creating these insurance contracts with no regulation, and hence, no reserves to cover them. Guess how many swaps were written, and how big the derivatives market is? Some are predicting over $500 trillion! (A definitive number is difficult to calculate since these products were so complex, were sold so many times, and generally not transparent). In other words, there's no bailout that will mitigate this deleveraging. The current band aid will only prolong the process, but the perfect storm will come down upon us--soon."

As an edit: we've lost $10 trillion in equities market capitalization (net worth) in the last two months. That figure will seem minuscule when these derivatives blow up in our faces, and when Paulson et. al will no longer be able to hide it from the public. Read his past comments over the past year and a half. You will see he has hoodwinked us all along.

The next shoe to drop...

We've seen the subprime mortgage crisis spill over to the whole residential mortgage industry, causing property values to plummet in many regions. Collateral debt obligations and credit default swaps turned sour have caused a further erosion of asset values and balance sheets across the globe. This has caused a run on several investment and commercial banks, most notably Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual, respectively. This cascaded over to the stock market, leading to breath-taking declines across all sectors, including industries in hard assets, like oil, natural gas, gold, and the other minerals and commodities. While the Fed dropped its funds rate to 1.0%, and the Treasury turns on the money spigot, we anticipate future inflation. However, due to massive investor redemptions at hedge funds and now mutual funds in an effort to raise cash, individuals and institutions alike are scrambling to de-lever their precarious financial conditions. Deflation--not inflation, is the current concern. The R word (recession) is not a question of if, but how deep and for how long.

So the worst is over and the unknowns are out on the table, right? Wrong. Just as many teaser residential loans have been re-setting, causing a barrage of foreclosures, the commercial real estate market, which has held up relatively well up to this point, is now in real danger of falling off the precipice as well. As companies announce massive layoffs, and as consumers hunker down to save for a rainy day, companies have lowered earnings projections (hence, shares of equities have plummeted). These conditions will be disastrous for commercial real estate values, which are ultra-sensitive to economic conditions. Expect more bankruptcies, vacancies, and foreclosures in the commercial real estate space.