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You Stupid Fool (Bernanke)

Courtesy of Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker

Does anyone remember my ranting at Paulson when he was talking about his “Bazooka”?  Here is what I said:

This joins the list of other “dead wrong” statements you’ve made, of which I am keeping a running copy and sent them around on the 19th of July.

How many times do you get to be wrong as Treasury Secretary Hank before you resign in shame?

And now I must ask again – is that really a Bazooka in your pocket, or an empty launcher? I’m not the only one that’s curious you know; the bond market seems to think it smells like BS, and so does the stock market.

Fannie and Freddie collapsed, remember?

Paulson was proved - and rather quickly so - to be completely full of crap.

Bernanke’s comments today may have just provoked a dollar catastrophe – a collapse move that may have just begun.  Witness this chart:

The market took about 10 minutes to discern that Bernanke’s “concern” was BS, and now has pushed in the chips – “all in” – breaking key support below 75 – and still going.

The carry traders have redoubled their bets and obviously intend to force Bernanke to either put up or shut up.

The problem with Paulson’s claim is that when the market called the bluff he wound up sticking the taxpayer for up to $400 billion, of which more than $100 billion has now been dissipated.

It appears the FX market intends to force Bernanke (and Geithner) to either defend the dollar or allow it to collapse.  The violence of this move and the concurrent “ramp job” that accompanied it in the S&P 500 makes clear a few points though.

  • The “efficiency” of transmission between this move down and the move up in the stock market is lower than the previous moves have been, although the correlation remains intact.
  • The FX markets will press this bet incessantly as they did when Geithner last mouthed the “strong dollar” mantra.

The Fannie and Freddie game wound up bankrupting both firms and forcing the government to bail them out.

Who is going to bail out the United States Government if and when the FX markets and carry traders cause a disorderly collapse in the dollar?

Just as with Paulson’s idiocy I’ll bet not one person in Congress or The Administration will stand up and put a sock in Bernanke, despite the fact that we are again seeing the “ALL IN!” game when the person doing it is holding 2-7 off-suit.

But this post, if Bernanke has indeed provoked a collapse of the dollar, is one I will be printing as a full-page advertisement in USA Today – if there still is a USA Today, or for that matter any other national newspaper to which one can freely insert material, in a couple of years.

Barack Obama’s War Against Private Capital Formation

(This post originally appeared at the website of EuroPacificCapital)

As the unemployment rate crossed the double digit barrier for the first time since Michael Jackson learned to moonwalk, President Obama announced that he will convene a “jobs summit” to finally bring the problem under control. Using all the analytic skill that his administration can muster, the President is determined to figure out why so many people are losing their jobs and then formulate a solution. That’s a relief; for a while there, I thought we were in real trouble! In fact, the absolute last thing our economy needs is more federal government interference. If Obama really wants to know what’s behind entrenched joblessness, he should start by looking at the man in the mirror.

Obama is pursuing, with unprecedented vigor, the same policies that have for decades undermined our industrial base and yoked us to an unsustainable consumer/credit driven economy. This doubling down on Washington’s past failures is destroying jobs at an alarming rate. Today we learned that the September trade deficit surged by 18.2%, the largest gain in ten years. Much of the deficit resulted from Americans spending Cash-for-Clunkers stimulus money on imported cars – or “American” cars loaded to the sunroof with imported parts. In exchange for more domestic debt, we have succeeded only in creating foreign jobs.

An article in this week’s New York Times by veteran writer Louis Uchitelle confirmed a fact that I have been alleging for years. Uchitelle pointed out that foreign outsourcing of component manufacturing has led to consistent overstatement of U.S. GDP and productivity. The connection goes a long way to explain why we keep losing jobs even as GDP is apparently expanding.

As our economy becomes less competitive due to higher taxes, burdensome and uncertain regulations, and capital flight, more manufacturing and services will be outsourced to foreign firms. However, the flaw in GDP calculation allows the output of those foreign workers to be included in our domestic tally. Since we count the output but not the worker responsible for it, government statisticians attribute the gains to rising labor productivity. To them, it looks like companies are producing more goods with fewer workers.

The reality is that we are producing less with fewer workers. The added “productivity” comes from higher unemployment and larger trade deficits. This is a toxic formula that will have lethal economic consequences.

Don’t expect the brain trust at the President’s job summit to fret much about these details. That public relations stunt will likely ignore the root cause of the economic imbalances and instead stress the need for government spending on training and education, i.e. more public debt. The unemployed do not need government theatrics, they need actual jobs. But as long as the government props up failed companies, soaks up all available investment capital, discourages savings, punishes employers, and chases capital out of the country, jobs will continue to be lost.

To really fix the unemployment problem, the President must look past his peers in government and academia to understand how jobs are actually created. In the private sector, all individuals have a choice to either work for themselves or someone else. Since labor is far more productive when combined with capital (office equipment, machinery, business models, and intellectual capital), those who lack these assets themselves often choose to work for others who have sacrificed to accumulate them. This increased productivity is shared between the worker and the owner of capital, and both are better off.

However, for one person or company to choose to offer a job to another, there must be an incentive to do so, and they must have the necessary capital. In the first place, employers must commit to paying wages and benefits, comply with government mandates and regulations, and subject themselves to potential lawsuits from disgruntled employees. All of these costs must be measured against the extra profits an employer hopes to earn by hiring an additional worker.

If profit opportunities exist, jobs will be created. Otherwise, they will not. Of course, anything the government does to raise the cost of employment, such as a higher minimum wage, mandated heath care, or greater regulatory burdens, not only prevents new jobs from being created but also causes many that already exist to be destroyed. Anything that diminishes the profit potential of extra hiring will diminish the number of job opportunities that are created. Also, since it is after-tax profits against which employers measure risk, the higher the marginal rate of income tax, the less likely employers will be able to hire.

Finally, in order to hire workers, employers must have access to capital to expand operations. Anything the government does to discourage capital formation automatically diminishes job creation. By running the largest federal deficits in history, Barack Obama is diverting all available capital to the Treasury, and is in effect waging a war against private capital formation.

If the President’s summit truly intends to find the root cause of unemployment, his advisers don’t need Bureau of Labor statistics or complex modeling software, just the courage to drop their dogmatic belief in central planning and embrace the laws of economics.

Radar Play NLST

Netlist Demonstrates New HyperCloud Memory Modules at Supercomputing 09

Netlist is using industry standard servers, such as the HP ProLiant DL380, demonstrated in the following configurations:

  • 8GB and 16GB 2 vRank DDR3 RDIMM functionality
  • Three 2 vRank modules per channel
  • 1333 Mega Transfers per second (MT/s)
  • Interoperability with standard JEDEC DDR3 modules
  • Interoperability with different RDIMM capacities

“This technology maximizes server utilization with a simple plug-and-play memory module,” said Paul Duran, director of business development at Netlist. “HyperCloud enables high-performance cloud computing while reducing datacenter costs and increasing application performance.”

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Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke at Economic Club of NY

Here is a live video of Bernanke at the Economic Club of NY

Here is the CNBC feed.

Prepared Speech: On the Outlook for the Economy and Policy

How the economy will evolve in 2010 and beyond is less certain. On the one hand, those who see further weakness or even a relapse into recession next year point out that some of the sources of the recent pickup–including a reduced pace of inventory liquidation and limited-time policies such as the “cash for clunkers” program–are likely to provide only temporary support to the economy. On the other hand, those who are more optimistic point to indications of more fundamental improvements, including strengthening consumer spending outside of autos, a nascent recovery in home construction, continued stabilization in financial conditions, and stronger growth abroad.

My own view is that the recent pickup reflects more than purely temporary factors and that continued growth next year is likely. However, some important headwinds–in particular, constrained bank lending and a weak job market–likely will prevent the expansion from being as robust as we would hope.

On CRE (added):

Demand for commercial property has dropped as the economy has weakened, leading to significant declines in property values, increased vacancy rates, and falling rents. These poor fundamentals have caused a sharp deterioration in the credit quality of CRE loans on banks’ books and of the loans that back commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS). Pressures may be particularly acute at smaller regional and community banks that entered the crisis with high concentrations of CRE loans. In response, banks have been reducing their exposure to these loans quite rapidly in recent months. Meanwhile, the market for securitizations backed by these loans remains all but closed. With nearly $500 billion of CRE loans scheduled to mature annually over the next few years, the performance of this sector depends critically on the ability of borrowers to refinance many of those loans. Especially if CMBS financing remains unavailable, banks will face the tough decision of whether to roll over maturing debt or to foreclose.

H/T Calculated Risk

S&P Outlook For The Week

Submitted by Nic Lenoir of ICAP..Hat Tip Zero Hedge

We had discussed last week that even though the S&P future was back around the tops for the year, we did not have enough elements to think the turn was right upon us as the price action and its fractal nature did not have the makings of a complete bullish impulse.

We are now starting to have some elements. Purists will realize we made the tops last week with only divergence on a 30-minute and 60-minute interval charts, which is historically only indicative of a short-term retracement. As can be seen on the 60-minute chart we had slight divergence on the 11th and we have been consolidating since in a wave 4. It is not clear whether wave 4 is completed just yet. Watch 1,095.50 for now. As long as this level is not violated we may be in the last leg up of the impulse started at 1,026, but if it violated expect a pull back towards 1,082/1,084 before we make new highs.

Picking out the top here might be tricky, standard extensions for the last move up range from 1,013 to 1,029 in the SPZ9 future. We will monitor closely the structure of the price action in order to refine the level we see for the possible top as I expect a subsequent sell-off of at least 50 tics once this last leg is complete. In fact I expect we will retest at least 1,033. It is very interesting to note that on the daily chart we have divergence in RSI, and very pronounced divergence on the MACD. As long as the pattern is not violated we should still expect a sizeable retracement down to 943 or 875 down the road.

On a separate note the Dax has violated the resistance I was observing, and I would watch closely weather we close above 5,762 or how we trade tomorrow as if today is confirmed we would go challenge the highs which would in turn imply the top in S&P will be closer to the higher end of the range mentioned hereabove.

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Mapping Unemployment – You Make The Call – Downloadable Spreadsheet

MISH

Last week in Mish Unemployment Projections Through 2020 I posted a chart and tables of what unemployment might look like in what is best described as an optimistic “muddle through” scenario with no recessions for another decade.

Still even with those optimistic projections I came up with this grim chart of unemployment projections.

Unemployment Scenario 1 Data

Click On Any Chart In This Post For Sharper Image

Downloadable Spreadsheet

Shortly after writing the above article, I received a call form John Mauldin asking if I would post the spreadsheet so people could make their own assumptions and projections about how fast the economy would add jobs.

I thought that was a good idea so I added an addendum to my post.

You can download the spreadsheet and change parameters for the monthly average number of jobs the economy will create, and the number of monthly jobs required just to keep up with the birthrate and immigration and the spreadsheet will produce a chart of what the unemployment rate will look like for your assumptions.

See the addendum in the above link for table usage notes and download instructions.

Mauldin’s Scenarios

John Mauldin and I did some playing around over the phone and he mapped out two additional scenarios, one of them a double dip scenario and the second an extremely optimistic scenario.

Let The Good Times Roll

You can see what John came up with in If This is Recovery…

What would it take to get back to 5% unemployment? I played with the spreadsheet and came up with the following numbers, which get us below 5% by 2020. I assume no recessions for the next ten years, and 2 million new jobs a year after 2011, which I start off with almost 1.5 million jobs. Of course, we have never done that, but let’s be optimistic.

And the graph below shows the unemployment numbers for the Good Times
Scenario.

Under John’s extremely optimistic jobs creation forecast, unemployment is still above 8% at the end of 2015. Please note that John is not calling for that to happen, instead we played around to see just what it would take to get unemployment to 5% by the end of 2020.

Also note the optimistic assumptions as to how many jobs it would take keep up with the birth rate and immigration. In 2013 we assumed we would only need 110,000 jobs to keep up with population growth, and only 80,000 jobs a month for 2016-2017, and then a mere 60,000 jobs a month all the way through 2020.

That is making some pretty optimistic assumptions about boomers retiring, no longer looking to work.

Of course, boomers might need to work and want to work, but be too discouraged to look for work. In that case, the effect would show up in U-6 unemployment not U-3 (the official unemployment rate) that the spreadsheet maps.

John also mapped a mild double-dip scenario, yet one in which the economy come roaring back immediately afterwards.

Inquiring minds will want to take a look at John’s assumptions and also to see he has to say about sales tax data.

Mildly Pessimistic Scenario

Let’s see what happens on a mildly pessimistic scenario. I will assume a mild-double dip, followed by reasonably strong growth, no additional recessions through 2020, but with a slightly less optimistic forecast on how many jobs are needed to keep up with birthrate and immigration.

Click On Any Chart In This Post For Sharper Image

For this scenario I assumed a mild double dip where 100,000 jobs a month would be lost, followed by job gains of 120,000, then 170,000, then 150,000 for three years before tapering off. I also decreased the participation rate (indirectly), by assuming the number of jobs needed to keep employment steady would drop a bit slower from 110,000 in 2013 to 70,000 in 2020.

Mildly Pessimistic Chart

Is that possibility so unrealistic? I think not, yet look at the result: Unemployment does not dip below 10% until 2020.

Please download the spreadsheet (available in the top link), read my assumptions, then factor in your own assumptions about job growth, outsourcing, productivity, stimulus plans, housing, etc., whatever you want and see for yourself just how hard it will be to get unemployment under 8%, let alone under 6%.

Remember back a decade or so ago when economists thought it was not possible to have unemployment below 7% without a lot of inflation. What if they were correct and the 5% we have had this decade was an outlier? Is that so farfetched?

If after playing around with the spreadsheet you come to the conclusion that we are going to have structurally high unemployment for a decade, I believe you have come to the right conclusion.


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Housing Starts and Vacant Units: No “V” Shaped Recovery

CalculatedRisk

On Friday I posted a graph showing the historical relationship between housing starts and the unemployment rate (repeated as the 2nd graph below). The graph shows that housing leads the economy both into and out of recessions, and the unemployment rate lags housing by about 12 to 18 months.

It appears that housing starts bottomed earlier this year, however I don’t think we will see a sharp recovery in housing this time – and I also think unemployment will remain high throughout 2010. As I noted in the earlier post, there is still a large overhang of vacant housing in the United States, and a sharp bounce back in housing starts is unlikely.

The following graph shows total housing starts and the percent vacant housing units (owner and rental) in the U.S. Note: this is a combined vacancy rate based on the Census Bureau vacancy rates for owner occupied and rental housing.

Housing Starts and Vacant Housing Units Click on graph for larger image in new window.

It is very unlikely that there will be a strong rebound in housing starts with a record number of vacant housing units.

The vacancy rate has continued to climb even after housing starts fell off a cliff. Initially this was because of a significant number of completions. Also some hidden inventory (like some 2nd homes) have become available for sale or for rent, and lately some households have probably doubled up because of tough economic times.

Note: the increase in the vacancy rate in the ’80s was due to several factors including demographics (baby boomers moving from renting to owning), and overbuilding of apartment units (part of S&L crisis).

Here is a repeat of the earlier graph:

Housing Starts and Unemployment Rate This graph shows single family housing starts and unemployment (inverted). (The first graph shows total housing starts)

You can see both the correlation and the lag. The lag is usually about 12 to 18 months, with peak correlation at a lag of 16 months for single unit starts. The 2001 recession was a business investment led recession, and the pattern didn’t hold.

This suggests unemployment might peak in Spring or Summer 2010. However, since I expect the housing recovery to be sluggish, I also expect unemployment to remain high throughout 2010.

ETF Commodity Trading Analysis & Charts

Commodities continue to perform well as the US dollar tests the October lows. If we step back and take a look at the weekly charts of the gold, silver, oil and natural gas ETFs we can get a better feel for what to expect in the coming week.

Trading commodity ETFs can be a very fun and profitable experience when done correctly. The first things I always analyze are the longer time-frame charts. This allows me to see past support and resistance levels and determine whether the investment is trending up, down or sideways.

Let’s take a look at gold, silver, oil and natural gas.

GLD ETF – Weekly Chart
The weekly trend is crucial for understanding the power behind price movements. We can see that the GLD ETF is in a strong up-trend and that price closed at the high on Friday which is a strong sign. I would expect to see gold continue higher on Monday because of this strong momentum.

We can see that over the past 2 years GLD has formed a large cup & handle pattern which is very bullish. A breakout above the handle will trigger investors to buy gold
as a long term investment and that is what we are seeing now.

ETF Trading GLDETF Trading GLD

GLD ETF – Daily Chart for Trading the Trend
Using GLD as an example, the trend has been up for several months on the weekly chart. So we know buying low and selling high is the proper strategy for this investment. The weekly chart above shows this.

Buy Signal for GLD – Using the daily chart we focus on buying pullbacks when the price is near a support level and reverses back up.

Profit Taking – I am not a greedy trader so I take profits after a nice run in prices. For GLD a nice short term run is 2-5%. So once I reach that level I start tightening my stops and trend lines to lock in some gains. I do this by selling part of my positions – generally between 25-50%. I let the balance of the position run with the market providing more wiggle room for GLD to mature.

GLD ETF Pivot LowGLD ETF Pivot Low

SLV ETF – Weekly Chart
SLV has yet to breakout above the 2008 high. But the chart is still very strong. If we see the price move above the $17.50 level I expect buyers are going to jump in and push prices up to the $20 level.

SLV ETF TradingSLV ETF Trading

USO Fund – Weekly Chart
The USO fund continues to look bullish as it consolidates the breakout with volume getting lighter. We could see a bounce this week and if we do I will be watching for a low risk entry setup.

Oil ETF TradingOil ETF Trading

UNG Fund – Weekly Chart
UNG continues to trend down and under perform the market. The last time UNG dropped to this level we had a nice bounce generating a 30% move in 3 weeks. But I don’t think that will happen this time. The price has been sliding lower slowly on light volume. This type of price action is not as predictable when compared to others. I will wait for a proper setup before buying an oversold bounce or shorting after a bounce.

Gas ETF TradingGas ETF Trading

Commodity ETF Trading Conclusion:
The weekly charts don’t lie. Trade with the underlying weekly trend and you will put the odds in your favor. I use the daily chart and 30 minute intraday charts for timing my trades as those time frames have proven to be very accurate with commodity ETF investments.

WE continue to be hold our golden rocket stocks and GLD fund. If the market co-operates this week we could get some trading signals for both Canadian and US ETF funds.

If you would like to receive my Free Gold Trading Newsletter

Chris Vermeulen

Pot Meet Kettle: China Blasts Bernanke For Promoting Another Asset Bubble Via Dollar Carry Trade

Zero Hedge

The dollar carry debate just got serious. Because when the biggest blower of liquidity-driven asset bubbles, promoter of casino markets, distributor of made up economic results, goal-seeked GDP data, erector of ghost towns and various other imaginary economic artifacts (i.e., China) accuses you (or in this case Ben Bernanke) of creating a “huge dollar carry trade” which is posing a “threat to the global economic recovery” you know we are past the pleasantries stage. Whether the accusation coming out of China’s chief banking regulator is a preemptive bargaining chip to prevent discussion of renminbi appreciation (as discussed yesterday) or an objective realization that the global asset bubble inflation is occurring purely on the backs of whatever is left of US savers, which can only continue so long, the bottom line is that China is taking a direct stab at the extremely myopic American strategy to print at least one dollar for each dollar on the asset side of banks’ balance sheets. One thing is for sure: when the soon-to-be-biggest world economy sees right through the only trick left in the Fed’s hat, the time to unwind the carry trade is approaching.

From the FT:

The US Federal Reserve is fuelling “speculative investments” and endangering global recovery through loose monetary policy, a senior Chinese official warned on Sunday just hours before President Barack Obama arrived in China for his first visit.
Liu Mingkang, China’s chief banking regulator, said that the combination of a weak dollar and low interest rates had encouraged a “huge carry trade” that was having a “massive impact on global asset prices”.

And yes, China can return the favor of monetary criticism, especially when the Kettle (and especially its central bank) is the entity that taught not only the Pot but every other kitchen appliance in the fiat monetary system how to get out of each and every patch of sour economic conditions: print, print, print.

Mr Liu’s unusually blunt remarks underscore how China – the largest US creditor because of its massive holdings of Treasury bonds – has become a trenchant critic of monetary and fiscal policy in the US.

Yet as pointed out earlier, this is merely a lot of mutual blame which will likely end up nowhere fast, at least not before the imbalances in the monetary system become all too strong and scuttle the entire money printing structure.

However, Mr Liu’s criticism of the Fed comes as China’s own monetary policy is attracting growing scrutiny at home. Critics say the massive expansion in bank loans this year could cause asset price bubbles and inflation.

The biggest winner out of all this (as we have claimed from day one): companies that make weapons-grade amounts of ink cartridges for currency printers.

Bair: “Bank Bailout NOT a good thing”; Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp (PBGC) Bailout Coming

Courtesy of Mish

Yesterday I stated FHA Bailout By Taxpayers On The Way. The FHA denies a bailout is coming.

Please consider Inside the FHA’s financial audit, with David Stevens, FHA commissioner and CNBC’s Diana Olick.

The Term Bailout Does Not Apply

David Stevens: “Bailout is a term widely used with financial institutions. FHA is a government agency so let’s just be clear. …. FHA does not operate under the same context as a typical financial institution. So the term bailout really just does not apply technically

Lovely

Given that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are institutionalized, I guess the term bailout technically no longer applies to them either.

This is good news because it means no bailout will be needed for PBGC either.

Bair calls U.S. bank bailout “not a good thing”

Inquiring minds note that Bair says U.S. bank bailout “not a good thing”

Leading U.S. bank regulator Sheila Bair said on Friday that the government’s capital injections into the largest banks was “probably not a good thing.”Bair, the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, said the billions of dollars of capital infusions last year had a terrible impact on public perception of the financial industry and government regulators.

“I think at the time it sounded like the right thing to do and, again, it was part of an international effort, but I just see all the problems it’s created,” Bair said during an interview with PBS NewsHour. “I think we would have tried to dissuade Treasury from making these capital investments.”

Public outcry followed the investments, which largely came to be referenced as government bailouts. Lawmakers raced to attach more conditions, such as restrictions on compensation, to the capital injections.

“It’s had a terrible, terrible impact on public attitudes toward the financial system, toward the regulatory community,” Bair said. “It’s created all sorts of issues about government ownership of these institutions, what happens if they get in trouble again.”

PBGC $22 Billion In The Hole

Inquiring minds are reading the PBGC Annual Management Report for Fiscal Year 2009

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) ended fiscal year 2009 with an overall deficit of $22 billion, according to the agency’s Annual Management Report submitted to Congress today. The result compares with the $11.2 billion deficit recorded at the previous fiscal year-end on September 30, 2008.In an interim report to Congress in May, the agency showed a record deficit of $33.5 billion, based on unaudited numbers at the fiscal year mid-point on March 31.

The main factors for the year-over-year decline in the single-employer program’s net position included a $10.6 billion charge due to an unfavorable change in interest factors, $4.2 billion in losses from completed and probable terminations, a $3.9 billion charge due to passage of time, and $383 million of administrative and other expenses.

The Passage Of Time

Please note that $3.9 billion of the deficit is due to “passage of time“. You can’t make this stuff up, it’s too bizarre.

Also note that the deficit was $35 billion in March. Hmmm. Guess what happens if the stock market goes down again.

Finally note that a “$10.6 billion charge due to an unfavorable change in interest factors.” Think 0% interest rates has anything to do with this?

Calculated Risk says “With companies moving away from defined benefit plans, there will be fewer companies paying for insurance in the future – and the ‘long-term solution’ will probably involve some sort of bailout.”

Clearly Calculated Risk is not thinking technically, and neither am I. A huge bailout is coming and the next market decline will exacerbate the losses.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock