Friday 11 May 2012

Here We Go Again!


Baltic Dry Index. 1146  -10

LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

“It’s a complete tempest in a teapot. Every bank has a major portfolio. In those portfolios, you make investments that you think are wise, that offset your exposures. Obviously it’s a big portfolio, we’re a large company, and we try to run it – it’s sophisticated, obviously with complex things, but at the end of the day, that’s our job is to invest that portfolio wisely and intelligently over a long period of time to earn income and to offset other exposures we have.”

CEO Dimon April 13 2012.

Here we go again, with the world’s biggest derivatives gambling bank, dinning high on the hog with an implied too big to fail US taxpayer guarantee, making gigantic prop trading bets. Heads we win, tails you lose. Gambling or speculation if you prefer, has no business carrying a taxpayer guarantee against losses, has no business in banking. We must return banking to a business that if the bank fails, the losses stay with the owners and the reckless executives operating the bank. Bring back personal liability for top executives. Worryingly, CEO Dimon said that  the losses could easily get worse this quarter and beyond and that JPMC’s capital positions under Basel III will fall to 8.2% from 8.4% under the loss so far. That’s how it started for Northern Rock, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and MF Global.

"We finished the year, and we reported that we had $17 billion of cash sitting at the bank's parent company as a liquidity cushion. As the year has gone on, that liquidity cushion has been virtually unchanged."

Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz. March 12, 2008. Bust March 17, 2008.

May 10, 2012, 7:06 p.m. EDT

J.P. Morgan reveals surprise $2 billion trade loss

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is looking at a $2 billion trading loss that will eat into second-quarter results, pressuring shares of the bank after-hours Thursday.

----The losses stemmed from trades at the bank’s chief investment office, where a single trader -- dubbed the “London Whale” -- was reported to have taken large positions for the bank in credit-default swaps.
J.P. Morgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said in a surprise conference call after the market closed Thursday that the loss was a “big mistake” but that it did not violate the Volcker Rule

“These were egregious mistakes, they were self-inflicted,” Dimon said, adding that the losses could easily get worse this quarter and beyond.

Earlier in a regulatory filing late Thursday, J.P. Morgan said it had “significant” mark-to-market losses in its synthetic credit portfolio.

In the Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the bank said its synthetic credit portfolio had proved to be riskier and more volatile than expected. J.P. Morgan said losses have been partially offset from sales in the chief investment office’s available-for-sale securities portfolio.

J.P. Morgan Chase now expects to lose $800 million within the corporate/private equity segment, down from prior guidance of net income of $200 million.

Trader Bruno Iksil had earned the nickname “the London Whale” in recent months by selling huge amounts of credit-default swaps to hedge funds, a strategy that soured in recent weeks.
More

April 6, 2012, 1:19 p.m. ET

'London Whale' Rattles Debt Market

In recent weeks, hedge funds and other investors have been puzzled by unusual movements in some credit markets, and have been buzzing about the identity of a deep-pocketed trader dubbed "the London whale."
That trader, according to people familiar with the matter, is a low-profile, French-born J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. employee named Bruno Michel Iksil.

Mr. Iksil has taken large positions for the bank in insurance-like products called credit-default swaps. Lately, partly in reaction to market movements possibly resulting from Mr. Iksil's trades, some hedge funds and others have made heavy opposing bets, according to people close to the ...
More

Next, battle lines draw in Europe as France, supported by Italy, Spain, and Greece, take on Germany. In an all too telling sign of the relative strengths of the sides, it’s French President Hollande that’s summoned to Berlin just hours after his inauguration. Long gone is the era in Euroland when they ran up the French tricolour everyone had to salute twice. Stay long physical precious metals. When France and Germany clash in Europe, history records that currencies crash.

Francois Hollande threatens to block eurozone's new financial treaty

Francois Hollande has threatened to block the eurozone's new financial treaty unless Germany agrees to renegotiate its stringent austerity measures.

The new French president wants the treaty, seen as crucial to ensuring the survival of the single currency, to focus more on encouraging growth.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, on Thursday told France that there was no alternative to spending cuts and painful deficit cutting measures, warning that "growth through debt" would take Europe back to square one.

But Benoît Hamon, spokesman for Mr Hollande's Socialist Party, said that the "politics of austerity" was failing to improve the continent's financial crisis.

He said the French president was determined to win a "trial of strength" over the new fiscal pact, which aims to impose tough budgetary discipline on the 25 European Union countries who have signed up.

"We want to renegotiate. Angela Merkel is defending her position but she cannot bypass the will of the French people," Mr Hamon said. "If nothing moves, the treaty will not be submitted for ratification."
Mrs Merkel delivered a blunt message of her own however, telling France and Greece not to abandon debt cutting policies in the wake of elections at the weekend that saw both countries turn against the path of austerity.

"The European sovereign debt crisis will not be beaten overnight, there is no magic bullet," she said. "Growth through structural reform is important and necessary. Growth through debt would throw us back to the beginning of the crisis."

Mr Hollande will meet Mrs Merkel for the first time since becoming French president next Tuesday when he travels to Germany just hours after his inauguration.

It’s too late for Germany to save the euro

Despite belated gestures from Berlin, the single currency cannot survive if and when Greece leaves it.

Greece’s motorcycling Marxist, Alexis Tsipras, makes an unlikely champion, with his commuter leathers and largely unrealistic Left-wing views, but he seems to be about the best of a bad bunch right now. As far as I can see, he’s the only member of the Greek political class who makes any kind of sense, albeit only marginally so and with one rather important deficiency.

Rightly, he’s rejected Berlin’s austerity programme as “barbaric” and counter-productive (though, incongruously, he rides to parliament on a German-made BMW), but he’s not yet managed to reconcile himself to the logical corollary of this analysis – that Greece must take back control of its own destiny by leaving the euro. As it is, the economy is condemned only to permanent depression.

Youth unemployment in Greece was yesterday revealed to have overtaken even that of Spain, at an almost unbelievable 53.8 per cent. This for an economy which, if it sticks to the programme, has a further 150,000 public sector jobs still to shed. Those who think that, with the requisite degree of structural reform, the private sector will automatically move in and fill the gap can forget it.

The banking system is insolvent, credit is plummeting, the flight of capital continues unabated and businesses are going bust in record numbers. As long as Greece remains in the euro, there is no plausible path back to growth.

Greeks May Hold $510 Billion Trump Card in Renegotiation

By John Glover - May 10, 2012 11:04 AM GMT
Greece’s next government may hold a trump card worth more than $510 billion if it heeds voters’ demands to renegotiate its bailout with the European Union.

The nation owes about 400 billion euros ($517 billion) to private bondholders, public bodies such as the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank, and other creditors, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. About 252 billion euros of that’s due to official organizations that used their status to avoid the losses suffered by ordinary bondholders when Greece restructured its debt two months ago.

----With Greece owing a sum roughly equal to Switzerland’s economy, the fallout for taxpayers could be calamitous if the country walks away.

“Greece has got some strong cards to persuade them to go easy on austerity,” said John Whittaker, an economist at Lancaster University Management School in England. “Everyone fears a Greek departure from the euro because they’ll lose money and lose political capital.”

The ECB also stands to lose much if Greece walks away from its obligations. First, the central bank bought about 50 billion euros of the government’s bonds to push down yields and help the nation retain access to the capital markets.

In addition, the ECB’s so-called Target2 system -- which tallies trade imbalances between the 17 national central banks using the single currency -- indicates that the Bank of Greece owes its counterparts 104 billion euros, according to Whittaker.

The Athens-based central bank has also issued 18 billion euros more banknotes than the size of its economy would indicate as Greeks tuck bills under their mattress or spirit them out of the country, Whittaker said.

That would bring Greece’s total liability to the ECB to 172 billion euros.

"The great merit of gold is precisely that it is scarce; that its quantity is limited by nature; that it is costly to discover, to mine, and to process; and that it cannot be created by political fiat or caprice."

Henry Hazlitt

At the Comex silver depositories Thursday final figures were: Registered 35.57 Moz, Eligible 104.90 Moz, Total 140.47 Moz.  

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Today we take a break from bent banksters, crooked politicians and great vampire squids. We even take a break from the Muppets who trade with Ebenezer Squid. Today it’s the MF Global of the violin world. Not just any old violins either, these violins were seriously old, until they weren’t.

 “The world is a place that’s gone from being flat to round to crooked.”

Mad Magazine.

 Ending on a Sour Note How the World's Top Stradivarius Dealer Misplayed

By Carsten Holm 05/10/2012

Dietmar Machold was the world's most successful dealer of Stradivari instruments -- and probably a fraud. Many instruments have disappeared, while creditors are demanding €100 million that is owed to them. Once a high society favorite who lived in a castle, Machold now awaits trial in a Vienna prison.

The gentlemen from the Bremen Sparkasse savings bank have gathered around a table holding two icons of Western culture, violins by the godfather of violin-making, Antonio Stradivari. They are 294 and 325 years old, respectively, and they have a combined value of €5.2 million ($6.8 million).

Or so the gentlemen from the bank believe.

They have invited violinmaker Roger Hargrave, 64, from the nearby town of Schwanewede in Lower Saxony, to join them. He glances at the instruments and quickly delivers his devastating verdict: "These are not Stradivaris." When Hargrave thinks about the meeting early last year, he remembers that the Bremen bankers were "completely shocked -- there was no oxygen left in the room." One of then, he says, urged him to exercise discretion. "They were extremely embarrassed to have fallen for such a huge scam."

It was their longstanding client Dietmar Machold, 62, who had given them the two violins as collateral for a loan in the millions. The businessman, who had lived in Bremen for many years, had a good reputation. His business had been in the family for five generations, and after moving from Bremen to Vienna, he had risen to the top of the industry worldwide.

Machold was the Stradivarius man. There are still about 600 violins, 60 cellos and 12 violas from the famous workshop in Cremona, Italy in existence today, and Machold has held about half of these instruments in his hands. His reputation was so stellar that he was permitted to prepare the appraisals himself for the two Stradivarius instruments given to the Bremen bank as collateral, and he has also appeared in court as an expert witness.

But Machold will appear in court in a different role -- as a defendant -- presumably this summer. The Vienna public prosecutor's office has charged him with embezzlement, bankruptcy fraud and grand commercial fraud. The prosecutors received 46 criminal complaints from Australia, the United States, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, where he is accused of the loss of valuable instruments.

For months, Austrian investigators and 72-year-old Jörg Beirer, the administrator in the bankruptcy proceedings, have been trying to shed light on Machold's business dealings. Their efforts have pieced together a picture of a businessman who was probably cash-strapped for years and sold violins he had taken in commission for millions -- often failing to pass on the proceeds to the instruments' owners or to banks, allegedly using the money to pay off other debts instead.

The investigators and the administrator have discovered how Machold went about his fraudulent activities, but also how the banks made it easy for him. No one noticed when he used the same violin as collateral for loans with two different financial institutions.

Last April, the gentlemen from Bremen Sparkasse, who are now unwilling to comment on the incident, citing bank secrecy regulations, finally realized that the violins in their safe were more or less worthless. The bankers had Hamburg forestry expert Micha Beuting examine the alleged Stradivari instruments. If they had been genuine, the trees used to make them would have to have been felled before 1737, the year of Antonio Stradivari's death.

In his report, Beuting noted that based on the growth rings, the trees had been cut down decades after Stradivari's death -- probably in the northern Alps or the Bavarian Forest, but clearly not in the southern Alps, where the spruce trees Stradivari used to make his violins grew.

More

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-case-of-disgraced-stradivari-dealer-dietmar-machold-a-832274.html

“Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.”

Edmund Burke

Another weekend and will Greece quietly place the order to start printing the new Drachma? Though the kindness of northern strangers released another 4.2 billion euro to Greece to pay some of its bills and repay some sovereign debt, these “kindly northerners” held back into June another billion that had been promised for earlier austerity. Two can play at that game it seems to me. It also seems to me that it is only a matter of time until Greece exits the euro but stays in the European Union biding its time for revenge. The euro now only works for Germany, but for how much longer is the question. Have a great weekend everyone. Here in the spring like Thames Valley, I am living through the wettest drought I’ve ever seen!

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April:
DJIA: +89 Down. NASDAQ: +97 Down. SP500: +63 Down. All three indicators remain down but downward momentum is stalling.

To continue reading subscribe to the LIR at Currency Countdown.
http://www.proedgenet.com/Subscribe/Subscription.php?id=LIR2

No comments:

Post a Comment