WILLIAM BLACK: THE EURO COULD COME UNDONE IN 3-4 YEARS

by ilene - December 28th, 2010 3:20 pm

Courtesy of CULLEN ROCHE, The Pragmatic Capitalist 

William Black of UMKC believes the Euro could unravel in the coming 3-4 years as the political tension continues to increase and ultimately creates a divide between the core and periphery.  Black says the economies on the periphery are likely to remain very weak and will lead to civil unrest and political overhaul.  In the end the strains will be too much for the region to overcome.

Black also discusses the imbalances in China and why the Chinese are likely to experience their own crisis in the coming years.  (Video here.)

Source: Bloomberg

Tags: Bailout, Banks, Ben Bernanke, CHINA, civil unrest, debt, Dollar, Economy, Equities, Euro, Politics, Stock Market, stocks, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, William Black

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AAII: BULLISH SENTIMENT HITS 6 YEAR HIGH

by ilene - December 24th, 2010 2:18 am

Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist

This morning’s AAII sentiment survey is consistent with just about every other sentiment reading of late – investors are wildly confident that stocks will be higher in the coming 6 months.  The optimism is almost near universal. The following chart tells the story of this bi-polar market.  On August 26th, just days before the market bottom, the bullish sentiment hit just 20.7% – no one thought stocks were set to rise.  Now, after a 20% rise in equities the consensus is uniformly positive.

Charles Rotblut of AAII elaborated on this morning’s results:

“Bullish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will rise over the next six months, rose 13.1 percentage points to 63.3% in the latest AAII Sentiment Survey. This is the highest level of optimism since November 18, 2004. This is also the 16th consecutive week that bullish sentiment has been above its historical average of 31%, the longest such streak since 2004.

Neutral sentiment, expectations that stock prices will remain essentially flat, declined 2.3 percentage points to 20.3%. This is a six-week low for neutral sentiment and the 20th consecutive week that neutral sentiment has been below its historical average of 31%.

Bearish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will fall over the next six months, fell 10.7 percentage points to 16.4%. This is the lowest level of pessimism since July 14, 2005. It is also the 11th time in the past 12 weeks that bearish sentiment has been below its historical average 30%.

The spread between bullish and bearish sentiment is currently at +46.9 points. This is the most positive bull-bear spread since April 15, 2004, when it reached +50.0 points. A wider differential was recorded on March 5, 2009, when the bull-bear spread fell to -51.4 points.

Bullish sentiment is more than two standard deviations from its historical mean, making it a statistical outlier. In simpler terms, bullish sentiment is running red hot. In fact, the current reading is the 18th highest since the survey started in 1987. Higher readings were recorded in 1987, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2004. Such high levels of optimism have been correlated with a decline in the S&P 500 over the proceeding 24 weeks, though the magnitude of the declines have varied.  A spreadsheet showing all of the survey’s historical data is attached.”

Source: AAII 

Tags: bullishness, Dollar, Economy, Equities, Federal Reserve, GDP, government, investor sentiment, Stock Market, Wall Street

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After Nearly Two Years Of Searching, TrimTabs Still Can’t Figure Out Who Is Buying Stocks

by ilene - December 23rd, 2010 6:05 pm

Courtesy of Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge 

A year after Charles Biderman’s provocative post first appeared on Zero Hedge, in which he asked just who is doing all the buying of stocks as the money was obviously not coming from retail investors (and came up with one very notable suggestion), today Maria Bartiromo invited the TrimTabs head once again (conveniently in CNBC’s lowest rated show, during Christmas Eve eve, at a time when perhaps 5 people would be watching) in an interview which disclosed that after more than a year of searching, Biderman still has no idea who actually buying. In response to Bartiromo’s question if the retail investor, who left after the flash crash (thank you SEC), Biderman responds what every Zero Hedger has known for 33 weeks: "Retail investors are not coming back to the US. Those investors that are investing are buying global equities and are buying commodities. We are seeing lots money going into commodity ETF funds: gold, silver…" and the even more unpleasant summation: "individuals have been selling, companies are net selling, insider selling and new offerings are swamping any  buyback and any cash M&A activity since QE 2 was announced. Pension funds and hedge funds don’t really have that much cash to invest. So what nobody’s asking is what happens when QE 2 stops: if the only buyer is the Fed, and the Fed stops buying, I don’t know what is going to happen...When I was on your show a year ago I was saying the same thing: we can’t figure out who is doing the buying it has to be the government, and people said I was nuts. Now the government is admitting it is rigging the market." Cue Bartiromo jaw dropping.

As for the simple math of where the money is actually going:

"Money flows come out of income, take home pay of everybody plus money that came from real estate is down about $1 trillion a year. It peaked in the 3rd quarter of 2008, at $7 trillion, that’s take home pay for everybody who pays taxes plus the money that came from real estate. It has now bottomed at $5.9 trillion. We are still down $1.1 trillion in money that people have to spend each year, that 16%. And some of the money that is leaving equity markets we think is going to pay bills."

…

Tags: Banks, debt, Dollar, Economy, Equities, Goldman Sachs, Oil, Stock Market, the Federal Reserve, TrimTabs, Wall Street

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John Williams Discusses The Reasons For The Upcoming Dollar Dump

by ilene - December 19th, 2010 2:46 am

Courtesy of Tyler Durden

Lately, anywhere we look, there seems to be a pattern emerging: those economic thinkers who actually construct and run their own macro models (not the glorified powerpoint presenter variety) and actually do independent analysis and tracing of the money flow, instead of relying on Wall Street forecasts that have as much credibility as a Moody’s home price hockey stick from 2006, almost inevitably end up having a very dire outlook on the economy. One such person is and has pretty much always been Shadowstats‘ John Williams, whose "shadow" economic recreation puts the BLS data fudging dilettantes to shame. That said any reader of Zero Hedge who has been with us for more than a few weeks, knows all too well our eagerness to ridicule the increasingly more incoherent lies coming out of the US department of truth, so no surprise there. Yet another aspect over which there is much agreement is that no matter how one slices the data, the outcome for the US currency is a very grim one. Which is why Williams over the past several years has become a major fan of the shiny metal. Below we recreate portions of his latest observations on the upcoming currency collapse, courtesy of King World News.

John Williams today was dispatching information regarding gold, silver, M3, nearby massive selling of dollars and inflation.  Here is a portion from his commentary, “Despite November 9th’s historic high gold price of $1,421.00 per troy ounce (London afternoon fix) and the multi-decade high silver price of $30.50 per troy ounce (London fix) on December 7th, gold and silver prices have yet to approach their historic high levels, adjusted for inflation.”

Real Money Supply M3:  The signal of the still unfolding double-dip recession, based on annual contraction in the real (inflation-adjusted) broad money supply (M3), continues and is graphed (above).  Based on today’s CPI-U report and the latest estimate on the November SGS-Ongoing M3 Estimate, that annual contraction in November 2010 was 4.0%, narrower than October’s 4.5% contraction, and May’s post-World War II record annual decline of 7.9%.

Incidentally, if there is one thing we disagree with John on is that the broadest aggregate (M3 for Williams, Shadow Banking for Zero Hedge) is declining. That said, an expansion in the most critical broad money signal is merely the missing piece of the puzzle that we…

Tags: asset classes, BLS, Currencies, Dollar, John Williams, Shadow banking, Wall Street

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Post Mortem for the World’s Reserve Currency

by ilene - December 15th, 2010 2:34 pm

This is a thoughtful analysis by Mike Whitney showing what a financial mess we’re in – the proverbial rock and a hard place scenario. – Ilene 

Post Mortem for the World’s Reserve Currency

Courtesy of MIKE WHITNEY, originally published at CounterPunch and Global Research

Paul Volcker is worried about the future of the dollar and for good reason. The Fed has initiated a program (Quantitative Easing) that presages an end to Bretton Woods 2 and replaces it with different system altogether. Naturally, that’s made trading partners pretty nervous. Despite the unfairness of the present system--where export-dependent countries recycle capital to US markets to sustain demand—most nations would rather stick with the "devil they know", then venture into the unknown.  But US allies weren’t consulted on the matter.  The Fed unilaterally decided that the only way to fight deflation and high unemployment in the US, was by weakening the dollar and making US exports more competitive. Hence QE2.

But that means that the US will be battling for the same export market as everyone else, which will inevitably shrink global demand for goods and services.  This is a major change in the Fed’s policy and there’s a good chance it will backfire. Here’s the deal: If US markets no longer provide sufficient demand for foreign exports, then there will be less incentive to trade in dollars. Thus, QE poses a real threat to the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency.   

Here’s what Volcker said:  “The growing sense around much of the world is that we have lost both relative economic strength and more important, we have lost a coherent successful governing model to be emulated by the rest of the world. Instead, we’re faced with broken financial markets, underperformance of our economy and a fractious political climate…..The  question is whether the exceptional role of the dollar can be maintained." 

This is a good summary of the problems facing the dollar. Notice that Volcker did not invoke the doomsday scenario that one hears so often on the Internet, that China, which has more than $1 trillion in US Treasuries and dollar-backed assets, will one day pull the plug on the USA and send the dollar plunging.  While that’s technically possible, it’s not going to happen. China has no intention of crashing the dollar and thrusting its own economy into a long-term slump.  In fact, China has…

Tags: Bailout, Banks, Ben Bernanke, CHINA, debt, deflation, DIA, Dollar, Economy, Federal Reserve, Financial Crisis, government, Obama, Politics, Recession, Recovery, Stock Market, stocks, the Federal Reserve, unemployment, Wall Street

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Why America’s Two Economies Continue to Drift Apart, and What Washington Isn’t Doing About It

by ilene - December 14th, 2010 8:00 pm

Courtesy of Robert Reich

America’s two economies are getting wider apart.

The Big Money economy is booming. According to a new Commerce Department report, third-quarter profits of American businesses rose at an annual record-breaking $1.659 trillion – besting even the boom year of 2006 (in nominal dollars). Profits have soared for seven consecutive quarters now, matching or beating their fastest pace in history.

Executive pay is linked to profits, so top pay is soaring as well.

Higher profits are also translating into the nice gains in the stock market, which is a boon to everyone with lots of financial assets.

And Wall Street is back. Bonuses on the Street are expected to rise about 5 percent this year, according to a survey by compensation consultants Johnson Associates Inc.

But nothing is trickling down to the Average Worker economy. Job growth is still anemic. At October’s rate of only 50,000 new private-sector jobs, unemployment won’t get down to pre-recession levels for twenty years. And almost half of October’s new jobs were in temporary help.

Meanwhile, the median wage is barely rising, adjusted for inflation. And the value of the major asset of most Americans – their homes – continues to drop.

Why are America’s two economies going in opposite directions? Two reasons.

First, big profits are coming from overseas sales of goods and services made abroad, not here. The world’s fastest-growing markets are China and India, whose inhabitants are eager to buy “American” products, and just as eager to work for the American companies that sell them. The U.S. market is barely moving.

Increasingly, American corporations are able to extract healthy gains from their global operations without adding much in the United States except executive talent.

Second, American businesses are boosting productivity by having U.S. employees do more work for less pay. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, between the third quarter of 2009 and the third quarter of 2010, productivity rose 2.5 percent, output increased 4.1 percent, the number of hours worked was up 1.6 percent, and unit labor costs dropped by 1.9 percent.

In other words, American workers are losing even more bargaining power as a sizeable chunk of corporate profit goes into software and digital equipment that can do what people used to do – but more cheaply.

So what is Washington doing about all this?

Making the tax code more progressive so more Americans reap…

Tags: American workers, bankers, big money, bonuses, corporation, Economy, Finance, Robert Reich, Tax cuts, Wall Street, wealth

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Goldman’s $430 Target, Screaming Buy On Apple At Its All Time High Is In Direct Contravention To Reggie Middleton’s Logic – Who’s Right? Well, Who Has Been More Right In The Past?

by ilene - December 14th, 2010 1:14 pm

Courtesy of Reggie Middleton, posted at Zero Hedge and originally posted at Reggie’s BoomBustBlog

Goldman has recently issued a strong buy recommendation on Apple, offering a $430 price target. I have been on record many times stating that Apples will be facing the toughest competition of its existence since Microsoft nearly put them out of business. This, of course, appears to be in direct contravention to the Goldman Sachs call which just happened to come out the day Apple hits its all time high. Being that Apple has more than its fair share of fans who ignore common sense, this is enough to set the stock on fire. The question still remains though, “Is Goldman right?” Goldman very well could be right, but not for the reasons most retail investors believe. Despite overwhelming evidence plus plain old history to the contrary, many investors and mainstream media outlets still take the sell side of Wall Street at their word. Sell side analysts are marketing arms for the brokerage sales force, the investment banking sales force and the traders who move inventory in and out of their respective banks. What they are not are wealth and strategy advisers for retail and institutional investors. Their historical performance clearly illustrates this, thus their is not need to take this entrepreneurial investor and blogger’s word for it. Well, for those of you who either don’t know of me or don’t know of Goldman, here’s a quick recap of Reggie Middleton vs. Goldman Sachs:

Who was more accurate concerning Google? Google’s 3rd Quarter Operating Results: The Foregone Conclusion That Was Amazingly Unanticipated by the Street!!! Monday, November 8th, 2010

Who was more accurate concerning Lehman Brothers, the Ivy league, ivory tower boys doing God’s work or that blogger with the smart ass mouth from Brooklyn?

Please click the graph to enlarge to print quality size.

As a matter of fact, who was more accurate during the ENTIRE Asset Securitization and Credit Crisis of the last three years?  We believe Reggie Middleton and his team at the BoomBust bests ALL of Wall Street’s sell side research:…

Tags: AAPL, Android, Apple, brokerage sales force, Goldman Sachs, Google, investment banks, investors, iOS, IPhone, Reggie Middleton, retail investors, smart phone, Steve Wozniack, Wall Street

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Trillions In Secret Fed Bailouts

by ilene - December 9th, 2010 6:40 pm

Michael Snyder writes of the "Trillions In Secret Fed Bailouts For Global Corporations And Foreign Banks – Has The Federal Reserve Become A Completely Unaccountable Global Bailout Machine?"

Courtesy of Michael Snyder at Economic Collapse

Has the Federal Reserve become the Central Bank of the World?  That is what some members of Congress are asking after the Federal Reserve revealed the details of 21,000 transactions stretching from December 2007 to July 2010 that totaled more than $3 trillion on Wednesday.  Most of these transactions involved giant loans that were nearly interest-free from the Federal Reserve to some of the largest banks, financial institutions and corporations all over the world. 

In fact, it turns out that foreign banks and foreign corporations received a very large share of these bailouts.  So has the Federal Reserve now become a completely unaccountable global bailout machine?  Sadly, the truth is that we would have never learned the details of these bailouts if Congress had not forced this information out of the Fed.  So what other kinds of jaw-dropping details would be revealed by a full audit of the Federal Reserve?

It is important to try to understand exactly what went on here.  Banks and corporations from all over the globe were allowed to borrow gigantic piles of money essentially for free.  Yes, when you are getting interest rates such as 0.25 percent, the money is essentially free.  These loans were not available to everyone.  You or I could not have run over to the Federal Reserve and walked away with tens of billions of dollars in loans that were nearly interest-free.  Rather, it was only the megabanks and megacorporations that are friendly with the Federal Reserve that were able to take advantage of these bailouts.

In this way, the Federal Reserve is now essentially acting like some kind of financial god.  They decide who survives and who fails.  Dozens and dozens and dozens of small to mid-size U.S. banks are failing, but the Federal Reserve does not seem to have much compassion for them.  It is only when the "too big to fail" establishment banks are in trouble that the Federal Reserve starts handing out gigantic sacks of nearly interest-free cash.

Just think about it.  Which financial institution do you think is in a better competitive position – one that must survive on its own, or

…

Tags: Bailout, Banks, Ben Bernanke, Economy, Federal Reserve, Financial Crisis, Goldman Sachs, government, Jobs, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street

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Wrong Planet

by ilene - December 7th, 2010 10:54 pm

Courtesy of Michael Panzner

Recent national polls have found that:

• Nearly 80% of Americans believe the U.S. remains mired in a recession
• Unemployment is the most important problem facing this country
• Half of those who live here do not have a financial safety net
• And, nearly 50% of those surveyed planned to buy fewer gifts this holiday season.

Combine that with reports like the following, which reveals just how bad things still are in a key segment of the economy, and all I can say is: what planet are the bulls on?

"At Least 3 More Years of Housing Troubles Seen" (Reuters)

The housing market will remain depressed, with record high foreclosure levels, rising mortgage rates and a glut of distressed properties dampening the market for years to come, industry experts predicted on Tuesday.

"We don’t see a full market recovery until 2014," said Rick Sharga of RealtyTrac, a foreclosure marketplace and tracking service. He said that he expected more than 3 million homeowners to receive foreclosure notices in 2010, with more than 1 million homes being seized by banks before the end of the year.

Both of those numbers are records and expected to go even higher, as $300 billion in adjustable rate loans reset and foreclosures that had been held up by the robo-signing scandal work through the process. That should make the first quarter of 2011 even uglier than the fourth quarter of 2010, he said.

There have been allegations banks used so-called robo-signers to sign hundreds of foreclosure documents a day without proper legal review.

Mortgage rates will start to rise in 2011, further dampening demand and limiting affordability, said Pete Flint, chief executive of Trulia.com, a real estate search and research website. "Nationally, prices will decline between 5 percent and 7 percent, with most of the decline occurring in the first half of next year," he said.

Interest rates on 30-year fixed rate loans will creep up to 5 percent, and that alone will add $120 per month to the typical mortgage payment on a $400,000 loan, Flint said in a joint news conference.

The two firms released a survey showing a marked deterioration in consumers’ views of the housing market, too. Almost half — 48 percent — said they’d consider walking away from their homes and their mortgages if they were underwater on their loans. That’s up…

Tags: debt, deflation, Dollar, Economy, Housing Market, inflation, Stock Market, stocks, unemployment, Wall Street

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2&3, 3&4 or 4&5? That is the Question.

by Zero Hedge - December 4th, 2010 10:00 am

Courtesy of Bruce Krasting

Published at Zero Hedge

I think this day chart of the 30 year says it all. After the very stinky NFP numbers the bond made a predictable jump higher. But it wasn’t long after that the air started leaking out and the bond closed on the lows.

Why the stinky price action when we get a big miss on NFP number? QE and the talk of stimulus done it. The numbers were so bad that by 9:30 talking heads and pundits concluded that the tax cuts were coming and we might just get a break on Social Security payroll deductions any day. Forget about restraining QE-2; the talk went straight into high gear with the only question; “How big might QE-3 be?”

So with that gibberish in mind bonds headed to the crapper while gold set new highs. The confirm that QE is now driving bonds lower came late in the day when there was a convenient leak of a Sunday TV appearance by Ben B. The only quote leaked was: “We might do more”. Stocks liked that talk and ended up; while the bonds ratcheted down another notch.

I am pleased that the market has made the connection that more QE and more stimulus is bad for bonds. The market is the only discipline left that may slow the insanity creeping over D.C. When market forces turn on the “New Monetarism” and shut the door on the insanity, the policies will change. Until they get hit hard over the head the Fed will continue to print. We are getting closer by the day. Consider this graph of the long bond since QE-2 was announced:

Long rates have backed up by 40 bp in just the past month. The exact opposite reaction that ‘the Bernank’ wants. How deflationary is this increase in interest rates? Mildly so. My guess is that the impact of rising rates exactly offsets the stimulative benefit of keeping short rates at historic lows. Yes, more debt is financed short term than long, but a back up in mortgage rates and the increase in long term fixed rate capital for municipalities and corporations will offset any benefits from ZIRP.

On the question(s): “Will interest rates fall from the current levels of ~3% for ten-year

…

Tags: Banks, Ben Bernanke, bonds, debt, deflation, Dollar, Economy, Equities, Financial Crisis, inflation, Stock Market, stocks, the Federal Reserve, unemployment, Wall Street

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