Posted by Ray on April 7, 2010 under Main | 
I am a bear and that should not surprise anyone at this stage of the game, but I have long positions and individual holdings. Just because I think the market is going to tank that does not mean I am opposed to being long. However, I am long very specific items and not, generally, long U.S. stocks except for a few biotech’s, tobacco and some defensive names. I am long fixed income and have been for some time, high yield and emerging market debt has been very good so far with about a 5% blended return YTD, not bad for bonds, but my real winning positions are Russia, Africa-Middle East and Poland, up between 8 and 11% YTD.
I guess I am saying that even a bear can be long and in my case I had sought international, yield and strong dividends. One might say my positions are boring, but boring means consistent and low standard deviation. Investors should be embrace boring yet they are not as they pile into AIG (that was, evidently, a short squeeze today) and other very low quality stocks. Typically, when you see crap catching a strong bid that should signal a top to the market, but we are in a continued melt up still so I just take the dash for trash stocks as a warning sign that things are probably about to change. I think the change is not going to be triggered by the Fed either.
What is interesting, even though I think he is bluffing, is the Great Hoenig from the Fed has “put the market on notice” about excessive risk. What that means will be realized soon enough, but I am convinced that interest rates are not going to be raised anytime soon. What Fed Chairman would raise rates with prices falling and unemployment pushing 10%? It is not going to happen. There is zero money velocity, no wage inflation, no significant rise in the PPI or CPI, and deflation is written all over the place, credit contracted again(!), which is very deflationary. All of that means rates are staying right where they are. Although they may raise the discount rate again, big deal.
The risk is not from the Fed at all. A simply look at the front page of any newspaper in the finance world will tell you were the risk is coming from, Europe. Greece to be precise, but I see Greece as one simple cog in a very broken machine known as the EU. Greece may have significant funding issues starting right about know as Germany is giving them a cold shoulder and, supposedly, are cutting them off from easy liquidity, as they should. In response to this lack of liquidity Greece’s bond yields spiked above 7% which will guarantee a default if they cannot get cheap money to borrow. The other broken cogs in the wheel are Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland. If Greece falls so will the rest of the PIGS and that will bring the Euro down and could trigger a run on the currency, we saw this story before in 1997 in Asia I believe.
The very reason the Euro is selling off is why I own and have advocated owning gold, silver, palladium and platinum as currency uncertainty means the value of these commodities will rise. Look at today as the dollar gained value gold and silver continued to break higher, that is not supposed to happen. The reason for the rise in metal prices is because of Greece and that issue seems to have some people concerned enough to run to hard assets. Can a European default really be a problem for the U.S? You bet. Consider that French, German and every other European bank owns some form of PIGS debt and U.S. banks hold European bank debt as well. Just remember, sub-prime brought down the mortgage market and sub-prime was tiny in comparison to the overall mortgage market, the same lessons apply here.
On top of the new debt problems, foreign banks if the PIGS default, U.S. banks are still holding all the same toxic assets as before. Another shock from bad debt could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and as I said yesterday the government and the Fed are out of ammo. On top of the European issues, California was downgraded and about $1T in more sub-prime debt was downgraded. As hard as I tried today I could not find any good news out there. You also have to remember that the credit (bond) market is where all the smart money is so when they see trouble that means bad news could be just around the corner for stocks.
The bottom line is that earnings might be good for 1Q10 although I think top line revenue will be weak, but that might be meaningless as sovereign debt is rearing its ugly head again. There is no harm in going long equities, but with such a huge rally and shaky fundamentals I do not think it is wise to marry this market or have zero shorts. This melt up could very well be coming to an end as stocks cannot go up forever and there are serious problems out there that are completely unresolved and are not priced into this market. If these problems get priced into the market I can assure you the Dow will not even be close to 11,000.
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Tags: bailout, crap, credit crisis, deflation, dividends, excessive risk, fed chairman, federal reserve, greece, hoenig, housing crisis, money velocity, quality stocks, recession, short squeeze, wage inflation
Posted by Ray on August 25, 2009 under Main, The Federal Reserve |
The markets and economists are thrilled with the reappointment of Ben, but is this just another case of irrational exuberance? I think so. His policies are too similar to Greenspan and he made some very horrible mistakes which will eventually cost us. However, I will concede he did do some things right and because of this I think you can make a case of or against Ben being our Fed Chariman. However, the one thing that bothered me about Obama’s speech today was his consistent reference to an independent Fed, more on that later.
What Ben did wrong
Starting in 2003 Ben had been a strong supporter of cheap money and endorsed Greenspan’s policies, which earned Ben the nickname Helicopter Ben. There is no way anyone, who takes a rational look at the policies of the Federal Reserve in the early 2000’s, can say no one could have foreseen the problems we have today. Time and again lose money policy has created bubbles, this is no surprise, and this last bubble was the bubble of all bubbles which the Fed is completely responsible for.
The Fed has also become more of a market appeaser than the organization that is supposed to manage our money supply. What I mean is that the Fed adjusts interest rates based on what the market wants, versus what it should actually do. The economy and the markets are totally different and have to be managed differently. Going back to the 1990’s the Fed has been increasing liquidity and doing everything it could to increase credit to everyone, whether they deserved it or not. The Fed cannot create credit, but it can make money so cheap that banks can afford credit losses and that is exactly what happened until cheap credit made its way to mortgages.
A perfect example of how the Fed is more accommodating to the markets than the real economy is when the Fed started raising interest rates in the 2003 area companies like Ford came out crying. The Ford CEO said interest rates need to be lower so they can sell more cars at zero interest rates. What happened, rates leveled out for a time when they should have been much higher. In fact, one can argue that the Fed raises and lowers rates at the wrong time frequently. There are countless other examples, but clearly the Fed is more interested in keeping securitized loans going instead of the old fashioned types of loans that actually stay on the books of banks.
In 2007 Ben said that sub-prime is contained and that there is no problem with the mortgage market, Cramer said the same thing in July of 2007, just practicing full disclosure. However, in August of 2007 the Fed knew there was a problem and started putting hundreds of billions into the overnight market. Either he lied to us or he just felt as though adding liquidity at that level was just a good thing. Regardless, August of 07 Ben should have been adding special liquidity features then, but he waited. In fact, he continued to lie to the American public about the real problems we faced. They knew then the problems that we had, I knew then, but Ben either ignored them or thought he knew better. Perhaps it was a political move to show how good the Federal Reserve is for the economy when they fixed the very problem they caused.
Now we have a $2 trillion dollar Fed balance sheet, expected to grow to $4 trillion, and the Fed is now playing all sorts of games. For example, they moved many of the troubled securities from private banks to, essentially, the government’s balance sheet. We also see some more strange events, like a nice ‘other contract’ section to their balance sheet which, presumably, is some sort of derivative product they have taken on. The question is, if these are derivatives what happens to our country if they blow up?
Finally, we have the monetization of debt that the Fed had started with its quantitative easing program. Monetization of debt is the worst thing a country can do and is a signal that they do not believe others will buy their debt so they buy it themselves. This will eventually create inflation, but in the meantime it destroys the country’s currency, look at the DXY for an example of this. The Fed has also started playing games here as well with having primary dealers sell them new issue treasuries from the last few auctions we had. This artificially boosts demand and keeps the market happy, but, again, is terrible for the currency and a sign that other countries are considering cutting us off.
A case for Ben
He came in and created several innovative programs to fix the mess that they caused. There is no doubt that TALF and other programs have helped improve the economy. I cannot take that away from Ben, but would we have even needed to be saved if the Fed had acted responsibly over the last 20 years? I think you know the answer to that question. However, the Fed did step up with these innovative programs and zero interest rates, but this is likely to create more problems in the future.
Frankly, other than the innovative programs he started there really is no case for him to have a job. There is one exception to that statement, with Ben we know what we are getting and he might be able to know when to stop the programs he started. If we got a Larry Summers, thank God we didn’t, we would have no idea what his policies would be. The unknown is a major problem which is why, in my opinion, Obama is keeping Ben. Since Obama is already moving drastically away from traditional policies if he threw another unknown into the mix he could have a major issue if things blew up. Ben was a safe option for Obama. The reappointment comes on the heels that the Obama administration still has no clue how bad things were, or are, in the economy and that they cannot do math correctly with the projected deficit error that they made earlier in the year.
What I think
I think Ben should have been fired and the Fed needs to be rolled into the treasury department, it is really that simple. Keep all of the governors the Fed has, but if they are a government organization then they would actually be held accountable for their actions. That, of course, would never happen, but I like to think that it could. The Fed has outlived its usefulness and has caused all of the booms and busts we have ever had, why do you think we had the Great Depression in the 1930’s and not in 1907?
Frankly, we will never really know what the Federal Reserve is up to because they do not show anyone their books. The ‘other contract’ column for example, what is it and what risk does the Fed hold on its balance sheet? We don’t know because they do not and will not open their books. When asked who received TARP funds the Fed refused to divulge who got what because it would ‘jeopardize the firs reputation’ or some nonsense like that, that is about to change as the Fed lost the FOIA lawsuit Bloomberg filed.
The point is we know very little about this very privately owned organization that controls our money. Rolling up the Fed under the Treasury Department makes perfect sense because we will know everything that is being done and banks will have the lender of last resort. This is the 21st century and we are still under the 20th century monetary policies which is absurd.
As a nation we can no longer continue creating credit bubbles and have a monetary policy that has caused the dollar to lose 95% of its value since 1971. I am not saying a gold standard or anything like that, but how about a monetary policy that does not cost us any interest to print any money. The problems with the Fed will continue and, perhaps, get worse if Obama gets his way and grants this private organization more control over the financial system. Why would you give a failed organization more power? I guess this is what we get when we elect lawyers to represent us.
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