Baltic Dry Index. 1651 +15
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
"Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion,
which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac’s talents didn’t extend to
investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, “I can
calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.” If he had not
been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover
the Fourth Law of Motion: For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion
increases."
Warren Buffett. 2005.
It’s QE
forever, forever, or so the complacent stock markets think. President Obama now
has no choice but to nominate the pushover, “jobs champion,” Janet Yellen to
become the next Chairman at the Federal Reserve. That in turn means more QE
forever, a weak dollar, and risk on again, in everything from oil to gold to
copper. The stock market and bond bubbles get a new lease on life to grow
bigger. Summers over, it’s spring again. What could possibly go wrong?
Any sudden event which creates a great demand for actual cash
may cause, and will tend to cause, a panic in a country where cash is much
economised, and where debts payable on demand are large. In such a country an
immense credit rests on a small cash reserve, and an unexpected and large
diminution of that reserve may easily break up and shatter very much, if not
the whole, of that credit.
Walter
Bagehot. Lombard Street. 1873.
Jobs champion Janet Yellen leads Fed race as Larry Summers forced out
Global markets are euphoric over the defeat of Larry Summers, blocked by Senate Democrats from taking over the US Federal Reserve. His ties to Wall Street doomed him.
Yields on
10-year US Treasuries plummeted, cutting borrowing costs worldwide. The US
dollar slumped. Stock markets soared in Asia and Europe as investors embraced
“risk”, from copper to the Australian dollar. Such is the potency of Summers'
name.
The
assumption is that President Barack Obama will have to turn to the “dovish” Janet
Yellen to replace Ben Bernanke at the helm of the Fed, still the world’s
monetary hegemon. This will ensure looser money for longer, or so the argument
goes. The Fed will be slower to wind down quantitative easing (QE), a tapering
process likely to begin this week.
The White
House has until now been talking down Mrs Yellen in a clumsy whispering
campaign, but has backed itself into corner - the monetary equivalent of the
Syrian crisis. It has no other front-runner. “It’s really hard to see how Obama
can justify not picking Janet Yellen at this point. Nobody else is as
qualified; any other choice would look like spite,” said Princeton professor
Paul Krugman.
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Bill Gross: ‘Go with Yellen’ in stock and bond markets
September 16, 2013, 4:32 PM
Pimco bond guru Bill Gross says it’s no surprise bonds and equities are applauding Lawrence Summers’s decision to drop
out of contention for the top Fed job. leaving Vice Chair Janet
Yellen as the top contender.As the old market cliche has it, investors hate uncertainty. And while it wasn’t clear exactly what a Summers-led Fed would mean for policy given the former Treasury secretary’s wariness over the side effects of quantitative easing, Yellen’s dovish policy leanings are well known, Gross told CNBC in an interview Monday.
“I would say in the bond market go with Yellen and in the stock market go with Yellen with a capital ‘D’, and that capital ‘D’ [stands for] ‘dove,’” Gross said.
The man known as the Bond King said Yellen’s nomination isn’t a slam dunk, but added he thinks it would be difficult for Obama to weigh a new candidate at this stage.
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http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2013/09/16/bill-gross-go-with-yellen-in-stock-and-bond-markets/
But the market may be mis-reading Mrs Yellen as a
dove. When push comes to shove early next year, our markets may come to rue the
day it became risk on again. With QE already failing to bring much extra bang
to the party, Mrs Yellen might just kick over the table holding the punch bowl.
And so today and tomorrow, it’s the turn of “loose
lips” Bernanke to try to wriggle out of his Wall Street Journal “taper” leak of
last May. The Great Vampire Squid spin is now that Mr Market has already
factored in modest tapering later this year. All news is good news, they now
say. Maybe. But to this old dinosaur commodities trader, scaling back from 85
billion a month of new free money, to 70 billion a month of new free money,
still leaves some Fedster cronies out some 15 billion a month. Someone somewhere
has to go cold turkey and it usually unexpectedly shows up where it does the
most damage.
“You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes
out."
Warren Buffett.
In other news, repeat after me, taper or not, there is no European
crisis anymore. According to Der Spiegel, what Europe needs now is “a European
Obama.” I rest the case for UKIP, and exit from the inmate run asylum known as
the EUSSR.
This ailing continent needs newer and better politicians. But where could we find them? There is no sign of a European Obama or anything remotely like him.
Der Spiegel
Merkel’s FDP Ally Begs for Her Party’s Votes in Survival Fight
By Leon Mangasarian - Sep 16, 2013 11:00 PM GMT
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Free Democratic coalition partners are
begging her party for help to ensure their survival in this weekend’s national
ballot. FDP leader Philipp Roesler called on backers of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union to split their ballot and give the second vote to his party on Sept. 22. Germans cast two votes: the first for a candidate in their constituency, and the second to determine the share of seats each party gets in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag.
“Roesler’s move is a ridiculous sign of weakness,” Friedrich Thelen, founder of Thelen-Consult, a Berlin-based business advisory group, said in a telephone interview. “The FDP can’t go around begging for gift votes from another party.”
The gambit underscores the Free Democrats’ struggle for their very existence in Sunday’s election, a fight that risks undermining Merkel’s bid to repeat her current coalition and forcing her into an alliance with the main opposition Social Democrats.
---- She snubbed Roesler’s plea during a campaign rally yesterday in Lower Saxony. Her party lost the state to the SPD and Greens in January after Christian Democratic voters gave their second ballot to the FDP in a failed bid to keep the coalition led by CDU Prime Minister David McAllister.
“We have no votes to give away,” Merkel told the rally in the town of Duderstadt. “We’ll fight for every vote in Lower Saxony and in Germany,” she said. “Both votes for the CDU, that’s our slogan.”
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European Car Sales Resume Slide in August as VW Tumbles
By Mathieu Rosemain - Sep 17, 2013 7:00 AM GMT
European car sales resumed declining in August as record joblessness caused
by a recession in the euro region contributed to falling demand at Volkswagen AG (VOW), PSA
Peugeot Citroen (UG) and Fiat SpA. (F) Registrations fell 4.9 percent to 686,957 vehicles from 722,458 cars a year earlier, the Brussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, or ACEA, said today in a statement. The drop contrasted with 4.9 percent growth in July. Eight-month sales declined 5.2 percent to 8.14 million autos.
The economy of the 17 countries using the euro emerged from a record six-quarter recession in the three months through June. Aftereffects such as a jobless rate in the area that held at 12.1 percent in July led auto-industry executives at the International Motor Show in Frankfurt a week ago to stick to predictions of a sixth consecutive annual car-market contraction in 2013. Eight-month sales in the European Union were the lowest since records began in 1990, the ACEA said.
---- Four of Europe’s five biggest automotive markets shrank last month. Deliveries in top-ranked Germany dropped 5.5 percent to 214,044 vehicles. That compared with a 2.1 percent increase in July. The U.K. market, the region’s second biggest, expanded 11 percent to 65,937 cars in August.
European sales by Volkswagen, the region’s largest carmaker, posted an 11 percent drop in sales last month, dragged down by a 17 percent plunge at the namesake VW brand. The Audi division, the world’s second-largest maker of upscale vehicles, sold 6.4 percent fewer cars in Europe.
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Air France Regional Bases Said to Face Cuts as Competition Bites
By Andrea Rothman - Sep 17, 2013 12:01 AM GMT
Air France-KLM Group is reviewing provincial bases in southern France created just
a year ago as Europe’s
biggest airline grapples with losses that caught it by surprise, two people
familiar with the matter said. The airline is considering a reduction in frequencies to some destinations, and shutting routes with the biggest losses outright, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the considerations aren’t public. Air France (AF) is also reviewing prices, the people said. Frederic Gagey, chief executive officer of the French unit, will present his strategy to the central employee committee tomorrow, they said.
The domestic overhaul is part of a broader restructuring under new CEO Alexandre de Juniac that aims to trim the cargo business and overhaul operations at home and in Europe that have lost money for years. Air France announced plans in June to cut 2,600 job through voluntary departures, joining western European rivals that are also slashing thousands of positions as competition from low-cost carriers intensifies.
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But, in fact, in the South Sea Bubble, which has always been
remembered, the form was the same, only a little more extravagant; the
companies in that mania were for objects such as these:' "Wrecks to
be fished for on the Irish Coast—Insurance of Horses and other Cattle (two
millions)—Insurance of Losses by Servants—To make Salt Water Fresh—For building
of Hospitals for Bastard Children—For building of Ships against Pirates—For
making of Oil from Sun-flower Seeds—For improving of Malt Liquors—For recovery
of Seamen's Wages—For extracting of Silver from Lead—For the transmuting of
Quicksilver into a malleable and fine Metal—For making of Iron with
Pit-coal—For importing a Number of large Jack Asses from Spain For trading in
Human Hair—For fatting of Hogs—For a Wheel of Perpetual Motion." But the
most strange of all, perhaps, was "For an Undertaking which shall in due
time be revealed."
Walter Bagehot. Lombard Street. 1873.
At the Comex silver depositories Monday final figures were: Registered 42.29 Moz,
Eligible 118.44 Moz, Total 160.73 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
In banksterland, in “the tempest in a teapot,” the “London
Whale” it seems, is about to sing for his supper and take a walk, canning two JPM
European sardines in the process. Whatever happened to honour among thieves? No word yet if the New York “tempest in a
teapot” American Whale will be held to account for misleading the market. But
there again, it our new lawless age, walking, singing and dancing “Whales” are
becoming commonplace. JPM seems to this old markets watcher, to be unduly hasty
to reach a settlement by September 30th.
A large Bank is exactly the place where a vain and shallow person in authority, if he be a man of gravity and method, as such men often are, may do infinite evil in no long time, and before he is detected. If he is lucky enough to begin at a time of expansion in trade, he is nearly sure not to be found out till the time of contraction has arrived, and then very large figures will be required to reckon the evil he has done.
Walter Bagehot. Lombard Street. 1873
Ex-JPMorgan Employees Indicted Over $6.2 Billion Loss
By Patricia Hurtado - Sep 17, 2013 5:01 AM GMT
Two former JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) traders were
indicted for engaging in a scheme to hide trading losses that eventually
surpassed $6.2 billion on wrong-way derivatives bets last year. Javier Martin-Artajo, who oversaw trading strategy for the synthetic portfolio at the bank’s chief investment office in London, and Julien Grout, a trader who worked for him, were named in a federal indictment, which was unsealed yesterday in federal court in Manhattan. The U.S. first announced charges against the men in August.
Both were charged in yesterday’s indictment with five criminal counts, including conspiracy, securities fraud, filing false books and records, wire fraud and making false filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The pair, along with unnamed co-conspirators, are accused of engaging in a scheme to manipulate and inflate the value of position markings in the synthetic credit portfolio, or SCP.
The two “manipulated and inflated the value of position markings in the Synthetic Credit Portfolio in order to achieve specific daily and month-end profit and loss objectives,” the U.S. alleged in the indictment. “In other words, they artificially increased the marked value of securities in order to hide the true extent of significant losses in that trading portfolio.”
JPMorgan
has agreed to pay at least $750 million to resolve U.S. and U.K. regulatory
probes of its record trading loss, people with knowledge of the negotiations
said. The bank is seeking to settle as many inquiries as possible before the
third quarter ends Sept. 30, the people said, asking not to be identified
because the talks are private.
---- Martin-Artajo and Grout were named in criminal complaints filed by prosecutors in the office of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on Aug. 14 that charged them with four separate counts of conspiracy, falsifying books and records, wire fraud, false filings with the SEC. Yesterday’s indictment adds the securities fraud charge, which carries a maximum term of 20 years in prison.
The U.S. said that at its most profitable point in 2009, the SCP produced more than $1 billion in revenue for JPMorgan.
Bruno Iksil, the Frenchman at the center of the case who became known as the London Whale because his portfolio was so large, wasn’t named in yesterday’s filing. He signed a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. in June, Bharara said last month. Iksil has pledged to cooperate with prosecutors as part of the deal with the U.S.
---- Prosecutors seek forfeiture from both Martin-Artajo and Grout for any illegally obtained proceeds they earned in the scheme as well as the salaries JPMorgan paid them during the time they committed the alleged crimes.
Bharara has urged both men to surrender to U.S. authorities to face charges that they hid the bank’s trading losses on derivatives. Lawyers for Grout, who is a French citizen, have said he’s in France.
Martin-Artajo was released from police custody in Spain after telling a Madrid court that he opposed attempts by U.S. prosecutors to extradite him to face prosecution in New York.
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"I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful
that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will."
Warren Buffett.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished August:
DJIA: +162 Down.
NASDAQ: +189 Up. SP500: +194 Down. Two red
flags. Only the “stock market for the next hundred years,” remains optimistic.
But will Benny and the boys really cut the stock market’s throat?
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