Market Rallies on Bungled Stress Test News Release

 

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.

The Federal Reserve released its stress test results of 19 banks two days early yesterday. JP Morgan Chase forced its hand by making a public announcement that it had passed the test. Although the news was not particularly good, nor the results completely believable, U.S. stocks had their best day all year.

The Fed said on Tuesday that 15 of the 19 banks tested would have enough capital, even if they suffered a financial shock.  Citigroup (C), Ally Financial, SunTrust (STI) and MetLife (MET) failed the test. It should be considered shocking that any bank would fail a stress test after all the lavish government bailout and support programs that have funneled considerable amounts of money to them.  The U.S.  government had to semi-nationalize Citigroup and owned 27% of its stock by the time the Credit Crisis was over. Citi received approximately $45 billion in TARP funds alone and when it started paying them back, it got a $38 billion federal tax credit. And it still can't pass a stress test?

Of course, if Citi did pass a stress test, it might bring too much attention to the test's credibility. The Fed claims it set tough conditions and major banks complained that the tests were made too rigorous by considering a scenario where unemployment reached 13% and housing prices dropped 21% (presumably the Fed meant the official unemployment rate being 13% and not the actual rate). While these conditions sound tough, they aren't comprehensive, nor where the attention should be focused.

What prevented hundreds of U.S. banks from failing in 2008 and 2009 was a government willing to provide an effectively unlimited amount of money to keep them afloat.  The feds also propped up the housing market with minimal interest rates and mortgage relief programs and kept the unemployment rate (at least officially) out of double digits by running trillion dollar deficits. It should be expected that these policies will continue, so how could there be any risk to the U.S. banking system?

The policies themselves are creating the risk. Easy money is inflationary and always has been (and no, things will not be different this time). Inflation devalues financial assets and destabilizes banks.  The Fed however denies that inflation exists and that it will exist, so it is not politically tenable for it to do ever include any realistic inflation scenario in its bank stress tests.

Stress tests do not exactly have an unblemished record as is. The ECB tests in Europe passed Dexia bank with flying colors. Only three months later, it was in serious trouble and then it collapsed. Major Irish banks also passed the test, although Ireland itself had to be bailed out shortly thereafter to prevent its financial system from collapsing. Central bank stress tests are essentially public relations gambits meant to tell the public how good things are regardless of the actual state of affairs.

The release of the U.S. stress test also inadvertently revealed the true relationship between the Federal Reserve and the banking system that it supposedly regulates.  Even though the Fed was scheduled to release the stress test results after the market closed on Thursday, Jamie Diamond  announced that JP Morgan Chase (JPM) has passed the stress tests while the market was still open on Tuesday. He also stated that his bank would be raising its dividend and doing a stock buyback. Shortly thereafter, U.S. Bancorp (USB) and American Express (AXP) raised their dividends and announced stock buybacks. Wells Fargo (WFC) and BB&T (BBT) announced that they would be raising their dividend. 

Diamond's announcement forced the Fed's hand and it had to take emergency measures to move its own announcement up. The imbroglio was described by the mainstream media as a "miscommunication" between the Fed and Jamie Diamond. Oh really?  This is quite difficult to accept considering Jamie Diamond sits on the Board of Directors of the New York Fed. A more plausible scenario is that the big banks do what they want and the Fed follows their lead.  This nicely explains how the Credit Crisis came about in 2008 and why the banks will get into trouble once again.

The market rallied strongly on the news starting around 3:00PM with the Dow Jones industrials closing up more than 200 points. Anyone who knew that the accidental "miscommunication" was going to take place made a lot of money.


Disclosure: None

Daryl Montgomery
Author: "Inflation Investing - A Guide for the 2010s"
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. There is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

10 Reasons We Are in a Credit Crisis

 

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.

Yesterday's news was about a potential Greek default and it caused a global market selloff. Today,  hopes of preventing a Greek default are causing markets to rally. This alternating news flow is repeating over and over again. Investors should pay attention to the big picture however and not the noise of the day. The important thing to realize is that we are in a second global credit crisis.

Credit crises follow certain patterns, which include: recognition of overpriced financial assets, money flowing into safe havens, increased market volatility, rising costs for financial insurance, and various forms of government action to stop the problem. The specifics of the current credit crisis are below.

1. Government debt is being downgraded. This happened in Italy yesterday, the U.S. in early August and many times in Greece. This is the upfront recognition of the problem, which is almost always widespread public knowledge by the time it happens. In 2008, securitized debt containing subprime real estate loans was downgraded in mass, frequently from the triple A ratings that had previously been given.

2. Global money is flowing into safe haven U.S. treasuries. When yields hit lower levels than a previous credit crisis or all-time lows, this indicates this is happening on a mass scale. U.S. government two-year notes had a yield below 0.15% at one point this September 19th. During 2008, the two-year held above 0.60%. The ten-year yield has fallen below the 2.04% low in 2008 and below the all-time low of 1.95% in 1941.

3. Global money is flowing into safe haven currencies. In 2008, this was the U.S. dollar and the Japanese yen. In 2010, this is the Japanese yen, the Swiss franc, and gold (which needs to be thought of as a currency if it is to be analyzed correctly). The Swiss franc rallied so much that the Swiss stopped it from trading freely. The Japanese have also taken action to try to lower the value of the yen.

4. Stock market volatility has increased enormously. In 2008, there were a significant number of mini-crashes (a drop of 5% or more in one day). These were more common in the U.S. back then. Now they are more common in Germany, but they have been happening here as well. The flip side of mini-crashes is sudden sharp moves up in the market. These are also occurring.

5. Bank stocks are the focus of the big moves up and down in the stock market. U.S. banks and other financial stocks really got hit in 2008 -- a number of the companies themselves went under. This time it's European banks falling the hardest. One-day drops for some major EU and UK banks have been as high as 10%. Bank stocks aren't dropping that much in the U.S., but they are underperforming other sectors like technology.

6. Credit default swaps have hit record levels. Credit default swaps (CDSs) are bond insurance and they became a big news item in 2008 when they rose to unprecedented levels. While CDS rates for Greek sovereign debt have hit records and are rising for the other highly indebted EU countries, they have also hit records for some UK and EU banks in 2011 indicating a worse crisis than in 2008.

7. Major and ongoing bailouts are taking place. The EU had to bail out Greece in the spring of 2010 and then Ireland and Portugal. A second bailout for Greece had to be arranged this July, even though the first bailout was supposed to have taken care of Greece's debt problem. In 2008, the U.S. had TARP and arranged for failing banks to be taken over by stronger banks  (Bank America is now in trouble again because of the legacy loans from the banks it absorbed during this period). Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had to be nationalized. 

8. Central banks are buying bonds in the open market. The EU has been buying up Italian, Spanish, Irish and Portuguese bonds in order to hold down interest rates in those countries. As long as it has an infinite access to funds, this strategy will work. The Fed began buying U.S. debt instruments in the fall of 2008 during the Credit Crisis. 

9. Global coordinated central bank intervention took place last week. The need for global action is a consequence of the interconnectedness of the world financial system. A major problem in one region (in 2011 this is Europe, in 2008 it was the U.S.) will invariably spread everywhere. Central banks coordinate their activity to try to control the contagion. 

10. The global economy is turning down.  Problems in the financial system impact the real economy and they can turn a shallow downturn into a major one as has happened in 2008. Economic figures throughout the world have flattened and there are some warnings of a bigger drop to come (extremely low consumer confidence numbers for instance). GDP contraction in a number of regions will be the final confirmation that another global credit crisis has occurred. 

Disclosure: None

Daryl Montgomery
Author: "Inflation Investing - A Guide for the 2010s"
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. There is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

Risks of Market Contagion from a Greek Default

 

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.

While U.S. markets closed slightly up on Monday September 12th, panic reigned in Europe. The risks of a hard default by Greece reached 98% according to one model. Interest rates in Greece were spiraling out of control (the two-year government yield hit almost 70%) and credit default swaps on European sovereign and bank debt reached record levels again.

While Greece is a small economy and there are only two major countries --- France and Germany -- that hold substantial amounts of Greek government and corporate debt, this is only the very tip of the financial iceberg that threatens a titanic like sinking of world markets similar to what occurred during the 2008 Credit Crisis when Lehman Brothers collapsed. Problems in Greece are shared by two other small national economies, Ireland and Portugal, and by two much large economies, Spain and Italy. The Italian economy is roughly the size of the UK economy. It is too big to bail out. Can you imagine the UK defaulting and there being enough money available for an international rescue? If not, don't assume that problems with Italy can be fixed either. Spain is also too large to rescue.

Country defaults have implications well beyond their borders because large international banks have exposure to loans in them. In the global financial system, all large international banks are interconnected. Big banks such as Deutsche Bank, Société Générale, and Bank Paribas have substantial relationships with U.S. banks. The large banks are still in a weakened state from the 2008 crisis. This is showing up in British banks, which like the U.S. banks have limited exposure to Greek debt, and in Bank of America. Credit default swaps have reached record levels for some British banks and Bank of America's stock price keeps dropping.

The Greek default, and this will happen one way or the other at this point, will be similar to the demise of Lehman  in 2008. Contagion spread throughout the world financial system. In the U.S. the close to trillion dollar TARP program had to be instituted to hold up the banking system. In total, as much as $11 trillion in programs (the Federal Reserve alone had half a dozen major ones) had to be implemented to patch things up. The will for such an effort no longer exists, which will mute whatever response the authorities come up with will be delayed and muted. After Greece, something will have to be done with Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy. Those who think that the U.S. markets will be isolated from these events are at best engaging in wishful thinking and at worst are purposely misinforming the public.

Disclosure: None

Daryl Montgomery
Author: "Inflation Investing - A Guide for the 2010s"
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. There is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

Stocks Trying to Trade Against Negative News

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.


Stocks have been attempting a recovery in the last few days for technical reasons. While they have managed to hold up despite a wave of damaging economic reports, some weakness is showing up in today's trading. Nevertheless, the market's performance has been impressive.

The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average spent 18 days in a row trading either fully or partially below their simple 200-day moving averages. On Tuesday, they both managed to close above their respective 200-days and above the neckline of a possible double bottom. This was technically quite bullish. The S&P 500 fell below its 200-day for a while in morning trade today, which is a sign of weakness however. The Dow managed to hold at that line. The S&P has been trading below its simple 50-day moving average since May 5th and the Dow has been below its 50-day since the flash crash on May 6th. The 50-days for both indices are still above their 200-days. The 50-days falling below the 200-days would be a significant bear market signal. We are not there yet.

The news today did not indicate either a healthy economy or financial system. Weekly jobless claims increased 12,000 to 472,000. Anything around 400,000 or above is evidence of a recession. The Philadelphia Manufacturing Index dropped from 21.4 in April to 8.0 in May. It turns out that 90 banks missed their TARP payments on May 17th and many of them are trying to alter their repayment schedules. Spain managed to sell its full compliment of bonds in its auction, but had to pay very high rates to get them out the door. Spain looks like it will be the epicenter of the next crisis to erupt in the eurozone.

The future economic picture is not looking good. The most disturbing aspect of this is that government spending, the traditional Keynesian solution, just doesn't seem to be working this time. The U.S. federal government borrowed $1.42 trillion in fiscal year 2009 (ending on September 30th) to pump up the economy and the GDP during that time fell from $14.547 trillion to $14.178 trillion. This year the feds are on track to borrow $1.6 trillion. Will the GDP increase by $1.6 trillion?  It's not likely. In order to do so, it would have to be over $15.84 trillion by this September. The most recent figure is $14.60 trillion. So for every dollar of borrowing, we are not getting anywhere close to a dollar of GDP growth, but we do get more debt that we have to pay interest on from now until forever. In the long run this is a losing game. In the short run, things don't look so good either.

Disclosure: None

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

How Accounting Changes Created Wall Street's Good Earnings

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.


If you can't win under the existing rules of the game, simply change the rules. Wall Street firms were losing big money during the Credit Crisis, but not only did the federal government come to their rescue with truckloads of taxpayer money, but accounting rule changes were also instituted to make their financial position look much stronger. The much improved earnings for the banks and investment houses showing up today are the result of both and not an improved economy.

After a record earnings year in 2007, built on a highly leveraged sub-prime mortgage pyramid, things started to go terribly wrong on Wall Street in 2008. Mark to market accounting was forcing firms to value their sub-prime paper at fire sale prices. This was causing massive losses. Wall Street's friends in the federal government launched a massive counteroffensive, including TARP - the welfare for Wall Street banker's bill, approximately half a dozen new Fed policies that supported the market for Wall Street's junk paper, legislation to hold up the housing market to give underlying value to that paper, and a change in accounting rules that would allow the big banks to look like they were making money even if they weren't.

Citigroup's first quarter 2010 earnings report provides a good example of the better earnings through accounting chemistry approach. Many market observers maintained that Citi was insolvent during the Credit Crisis. The U.S. Treasury wound up buying 27% of Citigroup's shares to help keep the company afloat. In reaction to the Credit Crisis debacle, Citi set up a company, Citi Holdings, to isolate its questionable assets. That entity had losses of $5.49 billion in the first quarter of 2009. It only lost $876 million in the first quarter of this year. The difference improved Citigroup's earnings in Q1 2010 by $4.61 billion. Total earnings reported for Citi in the quarter were $4.43 billion, so it would have lost money without the boost from Citi Holdings. Nevertheless, mainstream media reports were aglow with Citi's great earning's recovery.

The change in accounting rules took place between September 2008 and April 2009. On September 30, 2008 the SEC and FASB, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, issued a joint announcement that stated that forced liquidations of securities, meaning subprime junk debt, were not indicative of fair value. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which was passed a few days later on October 3rd, codified this into law by allowing the SEC to suspend existing accounting rules if doing so was thought to be in the best interests of the public. In actuality, the 'best interests' being protected were the Wall Street's. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley stock price's hit bottom and began rallying the next month. On March 16, 2009, FASB proposed allowing companies to use more leeway in valuing their assets under "mark-to-market" accounting and this eased balance-sheet pressures on the big banks by letting them cross out the old bad numbers and start replacing them with much better looking new numbers. The overall stock market bottomed right around this date.

The accounting changes came too late to save Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers of course. Bear went under in March 2008 and the events surrounding its demise indicate that existing Wall Street accounting numbers already had a large fantasy component before the gutting of mark-to-market for subprime junk. Bear Stearns was trying to expedite a good first quarter earnings report before it collapsed. When the feds arranged for it to be bought by JP Morgan, they valued it at $2 a share. The book value for Bear Stearns was around $90. If people at the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department think that $90 really means $2 for a Wall Street company, the individual investor might want to take the hint. These people have a lot more information about what is really going on than you do. If they don't believe the numbers, why should you?

Disclosure: None applicable.

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

World Economic Leaders Need IQ Bailout

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.


There are few things investors can count on during our current era of financial turmoil. One of them is the unerring obliviousness and incompetence of the world's elected leaders and central banks. Somehow they both manage to find the highest cost, least effective solution for every Credit Crisis problem they try to solve. Moreover they usually don't bother to act until every dog in the street has been aware of the problem for some time. There was more than enough support for this view on both sides of the Atlantic today.

There was a summit meeting in the EU today, where the leaders of the 16-nation block struck a deal, at least in principle, on assisting Greece with its debt problems. No details of the rescue package were forthcoming, but there were suggestions of some form of loan program. This is enough to open up the Pandora's box of 'moral hazard', but probably won't be enough to fix the problem - at least not with the initial measures. The final cost for any help to Greece will be much more than early expectations and this will pale in comparison to the cost of future bailouts for other member states such as Spain and Italy.

The whole scenario currently taking place in the EU should seem vaguely familiar to Americans. The much maligned TARP bailout program was initially only supposed to be loans, so it wasn't really costing the taxpayers anything. A number of other bailout programs mushroomed around it and by some estimates reached $11 trillion in promised money (compared to $700 billion for TARP).  While it has been claimed that some TARP money was returned, it is not clear how much actually was. When Citibank announced it was paying back $20 billion (of the $45 billion it received), the U.S. government agreed to give it a $38 billion tax break. It's not clear how many similar deals were worked out to shift the burden from a loan program to a direct cost for the American taxpayer, who after all would have to pay extra taxes to make up for the federal government tax breaks given to the big banks.

While the EU leaders were busy sowing the seeds of future financial disaster for their currency union, the ever out of touch U.S. Fed chair Ben Bernanke was testifying on Capitol Hill about a proposed exit strategy from his easy money policy. As a reminder, Bernanke didn't realize that subprime loans would cause a problem, didn't realize the U.S. was in a recession months after it had begun, and didn't realize that not bailing out Lehman would lead to a possible collapse of the world financial system. Now he doesn't realize the recession and economic problems caused by the Credit Crisis are still not over.  At least he's consistent.

Those who think the U.S. economy is healthy only have to look at the state of the housing market. Almost one in three borrowers have mortgages that are for more than the value of their property. As of November 2009, 5.3% of U.S. home mortgages are three or more months behind in their payments. A year earlier in 2008, it was only 2.1%. In 2009, 2.8 million mortgage holders received a foreclosure notice. Current estimates are this number will rise as high as 3.5 million in 2010. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both nationalized by the U.S. government, have just announced that they will buy back troubled loans contained in securities they have sold to investors (this is a major bailout for the big money players, although the mainstream media did not report it as such). Last year, the Obama administration pledged to cover unlimited losses for both companies through 2012. Draining liquidity from an economy with these conditions in the housing market would send the U.S. into a major depression.

The U.S. experience in the Credit Crisis shows that once you start bailouts, there is potentially no end in sight for how many there will be, nor any limit to the final cost. The disaster precipitated by not bailing out Lehman Brothers also indicates that you must bail out everyone once you start the process. Of course, bailing out no one is the other option. Half and half measures don't work and produce the worst results at the greatest costs. The EU seems not to be aware of this lesson. Maybe they're getting their advice from Ben Bernanke?

Disclosure: No positions

NEXT: China Worries About Inflation, The EU Needs to Worry About Growth

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

The State of the Union for Investors

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.


We live in extraordinary times. The U.S. economy is at risk of veering toward a multi-year depressionary state or experiencing a massive bout of inflation. Based on president Obama's State of the Union address last night, investors should still be worrying about both possibilities.

The impact of the global Credit Crisis that began in 2007 has been deep and prolonged so far. It was met with extraordinary government action in terms of spending and in pumping liquidity into the financial system - both of which are inflationary in the long-term. Despite these efforts, economic recovery in the U.S. has been tepid and elusive so far. This has not stopped our leadership from taking credit for 'saving us from another depression' despite the lack of evidence to support this view. On a number of economic fronts, the situation has continued to deteriorate, but Washington continues to congratulate itself on its great performance. The State of the Union address with its almost uninterrupted applause for a long litany of meaningless political platitudes provides the perfect picture of just how out of touch Washington is and how oblivious they are to their record of failure.

In his speech last night, president Obama emphasized that jobs creation would be the focus of his administration this year. For those with short memories, this was also stated as the prime focus of the White House in January 2009. The U.S. unemployment rate was 7.2% at that time and the claim was that if congress didn't pass the proposed $845 billion stimulus package, unemployment would reach double digits by the end of the year. Democrats said they emphasized government spending over tax relief in the bill because that was the best and fastest way to create jobs. Well, congress passed Obama's package, really a massive giveaway to a number of special interests, and the unemployment rate was 10.0% at the end of the year.  Based on their own criteria, the White House's 2009 attempt at job creation was a complete failure and a big waste of taxpayer dollars. For some reason this wasn't mentioned in the president's upbeat speech.

By this point, I don't think anyone should expect an honest appraisal from the White House on any aspect of the administration's performance. Obama made a number of negative references in his speech to the much derided Wall Street bailout program, TARP. He stated that it was "about as popular as a root canal" and it was something which "I hated". What was left unstated was that while he was a presidential candidate Obama made phone calls to round up Democratic support for the bill and this was instrumental in passing it and one of the first acts of his administration in 2009 was to get congress to release the second $350 billion allocated in the bill so it could be spent. Imagine what he would have done if he had liked TARP.

Deficit reduction was another item highlighted in the State of the Union speech. Perhaps this was meant as the comic relief - I don't know. Apparently this will start in the 2011 budget. Obama stated that he had already found $20 billion in inefficient programs in next year's budget and would pore over it "line by line" to find even more. The 2011 budget hasn't been released yet, but the budget deficit for the 2010 budget (starting on October 1, 2009) is now estimated to be $1.35 trillion. A savings of $20 billion would reduce the current deficit by less than 1.5% and lower it to only $1.33 trillion. Doesn't exactly look like a big dent in profligate government spending does it?  While this is completely meaningless, Obama also claimed that if his health care program was passed it would result in a trillion dollar reduction in the budget deficit (over a many year period, but that wasn't emphasized). A big spending government program leading to deficit reduction?  Yeah, that can happen. Any investor who believes this should stop investing immediately because you are probably buying stock in the Brooklyn Bridge.

Despite the claims coming from Washington, the recession is not over. The White House, congress, and even the Federal Reserve seem incapable of recognizing this because it would be an admission of failure on their part. At some point it will be recognized however because the American public will insist on it (the message from the surprise upset in the Massachusetts senate race seems to have eluded the White House so far). Modern democracies will always eventually err on the side of more government spending. As we have seen in the last year, this doesn't necessarily solve the problem of a bad economy and thus it is still possible for an intractable depression to take hold. Too much government spending does eventually lead to the problem of excessive government debt though and at some point the debt becomes so high that it is impossible to pay off. That's when intractable inflation shows up. Historically, the worst economic disasters take place when government is most oblivious to these unfolding problems. In that case, Americans have a lot to worry about. President Obama stated more than once in his speech last night "I don't quit". Based on his first year in office, he should have said, "I don't listen".

Disclosure: Not applicable.

NEXT: The Twilight of Ben Bernanke

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

Consumers Lack Confidence, They Also Lack Credit

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.


Before the Credit Crisis began, consumer spending made up 72% of U.S. GDP.  The current economic numbers indicate that there is little chance that this part of the economy will be recovering any time soon. Consumers have neither the desire to spend, nor the availability of funds to make it possible.

The Conference Board's consumer confidence numbers for January came in at 55.9. The historic average is 95 and somewhere around 90 is considered the dividing point between bad and good. While it is true that the current number is better than the depression level all-time low of 25.3 in February 2009, the readings have been range bound between around 50 since last June. The numbers indicate quite clearly that consumers are in no mood to shop. Even if they were, where would they get the money? 

The dismal job picture with 10% unemployment (not including discouraged workers and people forced to work part-time, which brings the U.S. unemployment number to the 17% to 20% level) is only one reason that consumers won't spend. The latest figures from November 2009 indicate that consumer credit was falling at an 8.5% annual rate. Revolving credit (much of which is credit card debt) was falling at an 18.5% annual rate. The big banks that took TARP money with the understanding that they would increase lending have increasingly cut consumers off.

The lack of consumer spending would have had more serious impact on U.S. GDP figures if large increases in government spending hadn't taken up the slack. Government subsidies have held up the housing and the auto markets, but this is completely artificial and produces only an illusion of economic recovery, rather than the real thing. Investors should keep in mind that no sustainable U.S. economic recovery is possible without the participation of the consumer. Otherwise, no matter how good the GDP numbers are in any given quarter, the improvement will only be temporary.

Disclosure: None

NEXT: Home Sales Fall Expectedly

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer,New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

The Case Against Reappointing Ben Bernanke

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.


Economics is one of the few professions where incompetence is regularly rewarded. The attempt to keep Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve for a second term is one of the most glaring examples of this practice - and one that will have serious negative repercussions for the United States going forward.

When president Obama announced that he was reappointing Bernanke last August, the reason he gave was that 'Bernanke prevented another depression'. This sound bite has been mindlessly repeated by politicians - senate leader Harry Reid most recently - and economically challenged media commentators ever since. Until the U.S. economy returns to its pre-Credit Crisis state, we will not know whether or not that we have been saved from another depression. There is more than enough evidence to indicate that we haven't been - double digit unemployment, bank loan portfolios that continue to deteriorate, rising bankruptcies and bank failures, lack of lending by the banks, and a housing market that only functions because of numerous government programs that prop it up are just a few reasons why this claim is wrong. Obama would not be the first U.S. president to prematurely call the end to a depression, Herbert Hoover did so in June 1930 when he told the press that the Great Depression was over - it was almost three years before the bottom and at least another decade before that was indeed the case.

One thing that will be pointed to as evidence of recovery will be good GDP numbers later this week - estimates are as high as 6% annualized growth for the fourth quarter of 2009.  If GDP numbers were calculated in a way that measured actual economic growth this would indeed be encouraging. Unfortunately, they are not. U.S. GDP figures for 2008 were positive even though it is universally recognized that the U.S. was in a severe recession the entire year - this is a theoretical impossibility, yet no one talks about it. The lesson of Japan in the 1990s and 2000s warns against using GDP figures as evidence that an economic crisis is over. Japan had quarters of over 10% annualized GDP growth. They were 'saved' from a depression as many as seven times (depends on how you count) in the last two decades. Their economy has nevertheless continued a long, slow leak since 1990 and bigger problems are likely in the next decade, which will be the third one after their crisis began. In reality, Japan extended its depression over a very long period of time; none of its government's actions prevented it.

The defect in the 'saving from depression' argument is an implicit assumption that the economy has two states like a light switch, on and off, instead of an infinite number of possible outcomes. Many of those outcomes involve inflation and hyperinflation. There is no discussion of the negative consequences of Bernanke's actions among his supporters - and all economic policy actions have side effects, many of which can be extremely undesirable. Bernanke himself wrote his PhD thesis on Fed policy errors during the 1930s and demonstrated that restrictive Fed monetary policy led to the debacle. He also came to the conclusion that doing the opposite would fix the problem. If the economy was as simple as a light switch it would. In a complex system, this is not the case. Doing the opposite may simply lead to a different disastrous outcome.

Bernanke also didn't show understanding of the impending problems within the financial system, nor did he react quickly. As late as June 2007, Bernanke was assuring people that there would be no problem with subprime loans. In July the problem blew up. As late as the spring of 2008, the Fed was releasing statements that they were hopeful they would still be able to prevent a recession. The recession had already begun in December 2007, but the Fed was unaware of it. In September 2008, Lehman was allowed to fail with the subsequent excuse being given that no one was interested in buying it. Only days later AIG was nationalized when no one would buy it. The Lehman failure set off a general global financial collapse. Bernanke is now claiming credit from 'saving' the system from this collapse with his quick action. As one commentator astutely observed, this is like an arsonist wanting credit for putting out a fire that he had started.

Bernanke was originally appointed by George Bush and is one of the key economic actors along with the current Treasury secretary Tim Geithner from the Bush administration. While on one hand president Obama constantly criticizes Bush economic policies and how much damage they have caused, on the other he has gone out of his way to keep the Bush economic team mostly in place. This is reminiscent of Obama's newfound criticism of irresponsible giveaways to the big banks. For those who don't recall, the TARP bill originally failed in its first congressional vote. Presidential candidate Obama was instrumental in rounding up enough Democratic votes to get it passed on a second try. Now, Bush deserves the blame.

Bernanke's appointment runs out on January 31st. The slow-moving senate has yet to get around to voting on it. While Bernanke has had his detractors in congress, they became energized after the surprise upset in the Massachusetts special senate election last week that indicated quite clearly that American voters are angry about how the economy has been handled. Senators up for reelection in November (only one-third of the total) particularly began to have second thoughts, as indeed they should. Support for Bernanke may come back to haunt them in the future even more than support for the ill-fated health care bill. Bernanke is almost guaranteed to win the vote to reappoint him however. The White House is leaning heavily on Democratic senators to support him and hoping that the public isn't paying too much attention. Voters tend to notice though when they don't have a job.

Disclosure: None

NEXT: Consumers Lack Confidence, They Also Lack Credit

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer, New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

U.S. Plays Shell Game with Bailout Money

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.

Citibank is planning on paying back $20 billion of the $45 billion in TARP funds that it received last year. In exchange for the $20 billion in repayment, the U.S. government is giving it $38 billion in tax credits. So of course Citi is actually receiving an additional $18 billion in bailout money, but this is being delivered indirectly and not through an official bailout program. For once, and this happens only on the rarest of occasions, one of the U.S. governments behind the scenes funding scams has been revealed. Investors should assume that this is only the tip of a very huge iceberg that includes changes in accounting rules that have allowed the big banks to unjustifiably report rosy income numbers, off-balance sheet items in the federal budget, slight of hand reporting of who is actually buying U.S. treasuries, and doctored government economic statistics.

Citi's motivation for paying back the $20 billion of TARP funding is to remove executive pay limits imposed on TARP recipients. To make it happen, American taxpayers will have to pay higher taxes to make up for the lost $38 billion in government revenue and have less disposable income so rich Wall Street bankers can get higher salaries. The other $25 billion Citi received from the government doesn't count for the pay restrictions because it was converted to a 34% equity stake in the bank. Citi is a partially nationalized company. Citi is issuing new stock at $3.15 to pay off the $20 billion and this is therefore diluting the equity stake of existing shareholders. The stock offering was poorly received however. This is not surprising. What is surpising is that anyone would buy it. Citi traded as low as 97 cents last year, a price level the U.S. market reserves for impending bankruptcies.

The Federal Reserve said in its post-meeting statement on December 16th that it expects to wind down several emergency lending programs that are set to expire next year. TARP was supposed to expire this year, but it was extended another year when the time came. Even if the programs are closed down, the recent Citi incident indicates that the bailouts won't be reduced, but merely shifted elsewhere in the hopes of misleading the public about what is really going on.

Fed chair Bernanke said last month that " we'll be showing the taxpayers fairly significant extra income" when discussing the bailout programs (read that statement very carefully). What he meant was that money would be showing up on the Fed's books. He didn't claim that the taxpayers would be receiving those gains. It should be kept in mind that the Fed is only a quasi-governmental organization (claims that is completely private are overstatements). The Fed was funded by the big U.S. banks originally, who still hold stock in it and have seats on its regional boards of directors. These banks receive yearly dividend payments from the Fed for their investments. If the Fed is making money, the big banks will be the beneficiary, not the American public.

Bernanke failed to see the Credit Crisis coming and then when it blew up, he used it as an opportunity for a Fed power grab and a chance to loot the U.S. Treasury and transfer taxpayer money to Wall Street firms. This sterling record has caused Time Magazine to just name him person of the year. Bernanke joins previous illustrious winners, such as Adolf Hitler (1938) and Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942). The notice of the award was conveniently released the day before the U.S. senate banking committee was to vote on Bernanke's reconfirmation. Bernanke was of course confirmed by the panel.

Disclosure: No positions in Citibank.

NEXT: Gold Rally Still Holding Up

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer,New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

Is the Gold Correction Over?

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.

Our Video Related to this Blog:

Gold has had a sharp sell-off that has took it down over $100 in four trading days from December 3rd to the 8th. The rally that began in early October took spot gold up $200 from the breakout point of $1025 to a high of $1226. Approximately 50% of that was lost by the afternoon of December 8th in New York Globex trading. The $1125 level was tested again the next evening at 2AM New York time in Hong Kong trading. A 50% drop is a key Fibonacci retracement for rallies and a common place where counter moves stop. The next Fibonacci support level would be around $1100 for spot gold if the $1125 level doesn't hold.

Other technical considerations necessitated spot gold's drop to at least the $1125 level. GLD, the largest gold ETF, had a gap on its chart just above the $110 level (it represents one-tenth of an ounce of gold and it trades at a slight discount to the spot price). That gap got filled on Tuesday. It is very common for price to trade down to the bottom of a gap, so this move was not unexpected. GLD then bounced off its 30-day simple moving average. It slightly pierced the 50 RSI level, something it also did in its last sell-off. The 50 level should be acting as support. Only a few trading days previously GLD was overbought on the RSI on the daily charts and this condition was mostly resolved on Friday, December 4th in only one day of trading. GLD was also overbought on the weekly RSI and this is also now mostly resolved, but it looks like a few weeks of back-and-fill sideways trading will still be necessary.

While sharp corrections are unnerving to investors, they are common in strong bull markets. The bigger picture is still very positive for gold and for silver. Not only is there no technical damage on the daily charts, GLD is on a buy signal on both the weekly (intermediate-term) and the monthly charts (longer-term) and so is SLV, the major silver ETF. When in doubt, investors should always consult longer term charts for guidance and remember that in bull markets, pull-backs are opportunities for buying.

When contemplating what to do in a sell-off during a rally, investors should also ask themselves if any important negative major changes are taking place. For the moment, the answer to that is no for gold. Are governments going to stop their super easy money policies or budget-busting stimulus plans? Don't hold your breath. Just yesterday both the U.S. and Japan both announced new stimulus plans. Just today, the U.S. announced that the TARP program would be extended to October 2010. The proverbial government printing presses are still in 24-7 operation and will be for some time. Gold investors will be one the prime beneficiaries of these policy moves.

Disclosure: Long gold and silver

NEXT: The Common Roots of Hyperinflation

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer,New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21


This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

Bank Bankruptcy Bonanza

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.

Our Video Related to this Blog:

CIT filed for bankruptcy in New York on Sunday. This is the fourth biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history, just behind number three General Motors (Lehman Brothers was number one). The CIT bankruptcy filing followed nine bank failures on Friday, which coincidentally involved the 4th largest bank failure this year. The FDIC Insurance fund which pays off depositors of failed banks is itself bankrupt. CIT itself is a bank holding company and became one last year in order to TARP funds. It will not be countered as a failed bank since it is expected to come out of bankruptcy.

The amount of money the government put into CIT was a small $2.3 billion (compared to $45 billion put directly into Citibank). CIT was not deemed too big to fail. It has actually been on the verge of collapse for several months now and almost went under in July. Lots of parties have been holding it up, including Goldman Sachs, with temporary measures since then - and for good reason. CIT is the largest loan provider for small and medium sized business in the U.S and 300,000 retail outlets are at least partially dependent on it for their merchandise. Imagine the impact on the holiday shopping season (goods are already at the stores by this point) if CIT had failed in the summer? The U.S. economy would have taken a major hit since retailing is its largest industry.

The federal government's indifference to CIT puts the lie to Bernanke, Paulson and Geithner's claims that the TARP government bailout money was to restore lending and support the economy. The biggest U.S. lender to small and medium size businesses has been allowed to fail. Before the failure, its was drastically cutting its loans to try and stay afloat. CIT lent $11.3 billion in the first half of 2008, but only $4.4 billion in the first half of 2009. While this was taking place the large banks, who got copious amounts of TARP money to increase lending, were cutting consumer credit sharply. So the U.S. has moved toward an economy where only big businesses and the rich are supplied with adequate credit (a third-world model). There is no way an actual economic recovery can take place given this situation.

Of course the government will probably come up with a plan for the CIT post-bankruptcy. I imagine a Cash Loans for Clunker Businesses program where huge amounts of money are lent to insolvent subprime businesses that don't have a chance of every making any money (businesses with Washington connections will be at the top of the list and get 99% of the funding). Bernanke is probably starting up the printing presses right now to pay for it. Just as a reminder, Bernanke claims he and the other central bankers 'saved' the financial system last year and he has been heralded by Obama for preventing another depression. With 115 bank failures this year and counting, a major financial company bankruptcy, and an insolvent FDIC bank insurance fund, the financial system isn't looking so 'saved' lately. Well, at least we've got the stock market, which just had its best seven month performance since 1933 . Hey, wasn't that during the Great Depression?

NEXT: Markets Roller Coaster Ride Powered by Media Hype

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer,New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21


This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

What Earnings Are Telling Us

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.

Our Video Related to this Blog:

In general, company earnings are coming in ahead of extremely lowered expectations this quarter. This is a typical Wall Street game of setting the bar low enough so things look good, no matter how bad they are. The big success stories this quarter are technology firms, such as Intel, Apple, Yahoo and Sandisk. Tech earnings are cyclical however and the big traders tend to sell when earnings look the best. It is not clear yet if we are at that point his quarter. The large majority of tech company earnings come from outside the U.S. and their business picking up says more about the state of the economy in East Asia than it does about the U.S. economy.

In contrast to tech, banks are in increasingly bad shape, even in the cases where they are reporting good earnings. Wells Fargo's earnings were out today. Well Fargo said credit losses rose to $5.1 billion, up from $2 billion a year ago and $4.4 billion in the second quarter. Even though this is the bank's core business, it reported a profit of 56 cents per share last quarter, higher than the 49 cents reported a year ago. Wells is the fourth largest bank in the U.S. The pattern of deteriorating loan portfolios was also seen in Bank of America, Citigroup, and JP Morgan. Loan losses also increased in the second quarter. These numbers don't indicate that U.S. consumers and businesses are in good financial shape, nor that any economic recovery is taking place.

As for the the banking system having been saved, we will have to wait to see what happens when the unlimited flow of federal funds is cut off. TARP is supposed to expire at the end of this year. Today, however, President Obama is going to announce a $5 billion program to bail out community banks. Obama will tout the new program as funding to help these banks increase loans. TARP was supposed to accomplish this goal as well. Available U.S. consumer credit has taken a nosedive in the last year since TARP was implemented. There is obviously no lie too outrageous that Washington won't keep repeating it and the U.S. mainstream media won't print it.

It should also be kept in mind that many large cap firms other than tech get a lot of their earnings overseas. As the dollar falls, earnings made in other currencies increase proportionately. Once again this is not an indication of any U.S. economic recovery, but of U.S. economic weakness. The falling dollar is at least finally getting some coverage in the financial press. Business Week had a story on it in its latest issue. This is going to continue to be a big story for many years to come.

NEXT: Dance of the Declining Dollar Continues

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer,New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21


This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

Bank Earnings Reveal True State of Economy

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.

Our Video Related to this Blog:

Consumer spending represented 72% of the U.S. economy before the Credit Crisis hit. During the 2000s, that spending was fueled by easy credit and free money thanks to Federal Reserve and legislative policy. The borrowing binge hid a deteriorating economy for years and alternative economic statistics indicate that the U.S. has really been in a recession almost the entire last nine years. The bill has now come due and it is going to take many years to pay it off. The economy can not have a sustainable recovery under such circumstances no matter how many times Ben Bernanke and mainstream economists say this is happening. Wishing just doesn't make it so.

Bernanke has repeatedly told the world how he and the other central bankers saved the financial system from disaster (modesty along with good reality perception are not his strong points). It would be more accurate to state that they postponed disaster with their actions. It addition to an almost unlimited amount of money pumped into the global financial system (much of it freshly off the proverbial printing press), the U.S. changed its accounting rules on the toxic debt held by the big banks so massive losses could suddenly disappear into thin air. Big bank earnings rose spectacularly last quarter as a result. This blog pointed out at that time that losses for the lending operations - the reason banks are in business - were deteriorating however. This deterioration was being hidden by big 'gains' in bank's trading operations (thanks to the change in accounting rules). Those losses have continued to grow this quarter and for many banks are now outpacing the phantom gains from accounting tricks.

The two biggest U.S. banks at the beginning of the Credit Crisis were Citigroup and Bank of America. Last quarter Citi lost 27 cents per share versus a 61 cents loss in Q3 in 2008. Citi had $8 billion in net credit losses and increased its net loan loss reserves by $802 million between July and September. Bank of America lost 26 cents in Q3 versus a gain of 39 cents a year ago. Bank of America's credit losses last quarter were almost $10 billion ( a billion higher than in Q2) and it added a whopping $2.1 billion to its loan loss reserves. Credit card losses for Bank of America were $1.04 billion last quarter versus only $167 million a year earlier.Supposed 'gains' from trading operations kept the top line numbers from being much worse.

Does this look like a banking system that has been saved? Does this look like what would happen in a recovering economy? If the government took back the $45 billion in TARP funds from Citigroup would it be in business the next day? If not, it is insolvent. Ditto for Bank of America. As long as these banks (and others) are in the too big to fail category, money printing is going to be necessary to pay for the continued bailouts that they'll need. Government largess is the reason the stocks of these banks have not collapsed back to last years levels. The same can be said for the stock market overall.

NEXT: Big Bust on Wall Street

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer,New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

Recovery? Don't Bank on It

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. In addition to the term helicopter economics, we have also coined the term, helicopternomics, to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government and to update the old-fashioned term wheelbarrow economics.

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As of Friday, 98 U.S. banks have failed this year and the FDIC Deposit Insurance fund is on the brink of insolvency. The fund now covers only 0.22% of U.S. bank deposits, whereas a 1.15% minimum is mandated by law. At the end of second quarter 416 banks were on the FDIC's troubled list (this number should be updated in about another month), so the steady drip of money leaking out of the fund could turn into a torrent. Commercial loan defaults are the current crisis hitting the system and this problem has just begun. While you may be surprised that this could be happening after Fed Chair Ben Bernanke has repeatedly told us that the banking system was saved last year, a government report released today indicated that the public had been lied to about just this very subject.

A special inspector general investigating the handling of the bank rescue program TARP in the fall of 2008 found that then Treasury Secretary Paulson and other officials falsely claimed that the first 9 institutions getting funds were sound. Paulson specifically stated, "These are healthy institutions ...". At the time, Merrill Lynch was actually collapsing. Citibank and Bank of America subsequently required significant additional funds to stay afloat. The report was criticized by Assistant Treasury Secretary Herbert Allison Jr., who now heads the bailout program for the government. Allison maintains that any critique of the announcements made a year ago should take into consideration the unprecedented circumstances facing financial regulators at the time. In other words, the government feels that it is justified in blatantly lying to the public if a crisis is taking place. Let me repeat that: the government feels that it is justified in blatantly lying to the public if a crisis is taking place. Let me follow that up by pointing out that there is both a credit and economic crisis still taking place.

The FDIC itself has given us more than enough reason to think the U.S. banking system has not actually been rescued. Other than the domino like collapse of smaller and midsized banks that is now occuring, the FDIC's figures state that in aggregate U.S banks lost $3.7 billion in the second quarter, even though almost every large U.S. bank reported major profits. Of course the major banks have received massive injections of government aid, while the smaller banks have not. This is a move afoot to try to inject TARP funds into smaller banks to prevent defaults on a mass scale.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, what is taking place in the U.S. now is very similar to what took place in Japan in the 1990s. Japan had a banking system dominated by a small number of large institutions. The first 9 recipients of TARP funds controlled 75% of the assets in the U.S. banking system. In both cases, banks were allowed to become so large that a failure of even one of them endangered the entire financial system. Japan has propped up its banking system for two decades now and the cost has been an economy unable to grow unless there is government stimulus. Personally, I am waiting to see what the U.S. government is going to do to rev up the economy next quarter now that the Cash for Clunkers program has expired.

NEXT: Gold! Record High Knocking on Heaven's Door

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer,New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

CFTC Kills Off DXO

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. In addition to the term helicopter economics, we have also coined the term, helicopternomics, to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government and to update the old-fashioned term wheelbarrow economics.

Our Video Related to this Blog:

DXO no longer exists. Deutsche Bank announced on September 1st that it would redeem all shares after the market closed on September 9th. DXO was started in June 2008 and had $600 million in assets. It was a investment vehicle that offered hundreds of thousands of small investors a leveraged oil play. Many members of the New York Investing meetup bought it in March and sold it in June of this year and made a 165% profit on this trade. We will not be able to do so again in the future.

The CFTC (Commodities Futures Trading Commission) has been holding hearings this summer to investigate 'speculation' in the oil market. It has specifically targeted ETFs and ETNs in this regard. Deutsche Bank did not directly mention the CFTC in its announcement but said this redemption is the result of “limitations imposed by the exchange” causing a “regulatory event”. How much behind the scenes pressure was put on Deutsche Bank is not known. Deutsche Bank is a holder of U.S. mortgage debt. While it doesn't seem to be on the list of TARP recipients, it did receive approximately $11.8 billion from AIG as a result of the government's nationalization of the company. It can also be assumed that Deutsche Bank benefits from other Fed programs that take junky assets off bank's books and replaces them with higher quality bonds. When the government 'owns you', you are likely to give it what it wants.

It is interesting that the CFTC is concentrating its efforts on 'speculation' from investment entities that are used by small investors. Like the SEC, it hears no evil and sees no evil when it comes to the large players. For years there have been two large banks that have held large short positions in Silver futures (and Deutsche Bank may be one of those banks). It took years of complaints before the CFTC agreed to investigate, just as the SEC continually ignored complaints about Bernie Madoff and his obvious $65 billion Ponzi scheme. So far, the CFTC has found nothing, just as the SEC never at any point found any wrongdoing on Madoff's part (his Ponzi scheme collapsed on its own accord). If the federal government wanted to limit speculation in the commodities market it could easily have done so, by forcing Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to close down their commodity trading operations. Federal law prohibits banks from speculating in commodities and both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley became banks in 2008. The government gave both firms a special five-year dispensation however. If you are a big player, you don't have to worry about 'the rules'.

The government's action in the energy market should be seen for what it is - an attempt at imposing price controls on oil and gas. Price controls never work and almost always lead to shortages and much higher prices. ETFs will not disappear either as a result of the CFTC's action, but will turn into closed-end funds. There will be an attempt to launch more of them. Each one will be smaller, less liquid and have a much higher expense ratio. More will move to overseas markets that are less restrictive. While it is just oil and gas this summer, expect other markets (particularly agricultural) to be affected in the future.

NEXT: The Cash From Clunk-Heads Program

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer,New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

Inconsistencies of the Economic 'Recovery'

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. In addition to the term helicopter economics, we have also coined the term, helicopternomics, to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government and to update the old-fashioned term wheelbarrow economics.

Our Video Related to this Blog:

What created the Credit Crisis and the current 20 month recession (the longest since World War II) was the collapse in price of all the worthless real estate paper the was issued during the bubble years. As this blog mentioned yesterday, this problem has recently gotten 'better' because the accounting rules that determine the value this paper were changed. While playing make-believe is appropriate for five year old children, it's not a good idea for running financial system and just leads to bigger disasters later on.

The support for the real estate 'recovery' is thin to say the least. U.S. house prices supposedly went up during the last three months. This occurred even though home loans are hard to get and U.S. wages and salaries were down 4.7% year over year in June. This was the largest drop since records began in 1960. Employment is also down. As was mentioned last Friday, the unemployment rate dropped by 0.1% because a large number of people left the labor force. No matter how you look at it fewer people have a job. So who are these people who are paying higher prices for houses and what banks are lending them the money? All in all is seems highly unlikely that house prices could actually be going up given such conditions. If not, this set of numbers wouldn't be the only ones that have been altered recently to make them look better.

The other inconsistency in the real estate is getting better is that this was a drag on the big banks and brokers earnings in the second quarter. Many of them were increasing loan loss provisions. Fannie Mae, whose business is purely real estate related, illustrates the current state of affairs quite clearly. Fannie Mae lost $14.8 billion in the second quarter. Provisions for credit losses were $18.8 billion. The company stated in its earnings "We are experiencing increases in delinquency and default rates for our entire guaranty book of business, including on loans with fewer risk layers."In other words, all types of loans are going down the tubes including the prime ones. Total non-performing loans increased to $171 billion in the second quarter. They were up from $149.9 billion in the first quarter of this year and that was up from $119.2 billion in the last quarter of 2008. Well, that certainly looks like a recovery pattern, doesn't it?

Fannie Mae has requested an additional $10.7 billion from the U.S. Treasury to keep afloat. That it can get by this quarter with only an additional $10.7 billion cash infusion from the government seems optimistic. The company is essentially a bottomless pit for bailout funds. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's criteria for non-performing loans were changed around the beginning of the Credit Crisis to make it more difficult for a loan to be considered non-performing. Even with this fantasy, things still are getting worse. Somehow reality always seems to always get in the way of the government's best plans.

NEXT: More on the Real Estate 'Recovery'

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer,New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.

Dollar Watch; Bad Earnings are Good; Natural Gas

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. In addition to the term helicopter economics, we have also coined the term, helicopternomics, to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government and to update the old-fashioned term wheelbarrow economics.

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While no one was watching, the U.S. dollar got awfully close to its break down point yesterday. The low for the trade-weighted dollar index ETF DXY was 78.58. A drop below 78.33 would be technically negative. Meanwhile, earnings season will be winding down soon and so far the picture is dismal overall and even worse for the financials. You would never know it though, from the mainstream media reports which have been glowing and gushing with good earnings news. Many commodities have started to rally again, with natural gas still being very under priced.

Almost without exception, the large financial companies have had dismal earnings in their banking business, which continues to erode. Trading and accounting gimmicks have made the top line numbers look rosy however. Massive money gifts from the federal government don't hurt either. Imagine if someone deposited $45 billion into your bank account. You would look a lot more financially sound as well. Wells Fargo is out with earnings this morning, with quarterly profit up 47%! Looks good on the surface, although acquiring the giant albatross Wachovia was responsible for much of this. Within the report was the statement, "the bank expects credit losses and nonperforming assets to increase". It is also generally acknowledged that Wells Fargo needs to raise more capital. Even the 'see no evil' government stress test found that it had a $13.7 billion capital shortfall. But hey, earnings are great, except in the bank's banking business of course. For some reason, I think this doesn't make any sense.

Natural gas has been getting a lot of press in the last few days. UNG the natural gas ETF is awaiting approval from the SEC to issue more shares. They already made 300 million additional shares available on May 6th. The CFTC is trying to limit UNG's role in the natural gas market based on excessive speculation driving up prices even though natural gas is trading at a multi-year low. Seems to be rather contradictory. Media reports are filled with commentary from traders and 'experts' about how you should stay away from this market. They rarely if ever point out that natural gas tends to hit some type of low in July. I have yet to see any discussion of the production costs for natural gas and whether the price has fallen below this level. There is every reason to believe this is the case. The number of active U.S. rigs pumping natural gas has fallen to a seven year low of 665 from a peak of 1606 last September 12th. When the market cost gets too close to the production cost for a commodity, production shuts down and this is clearly happening with natural gas.

The dollar will either bounce soon or fall below its break down point and the powers that be will try to then save it. Note that once again that the stock market has been rallying when the dollar has been dropping. Will a government induced dollar rally cause the opposite? We will have to wait and see.

NEXT: Bernanke and Natural Gas

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer,New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21


This posting is editorial opinion. Like all other postings for this blog, there is no intention to endorse the purchase or sale of any security.