Search results matching tag 'Ben Bernanke'

We Won't Get Fooled Again!

ChuckButler — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:26:36 GMT

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In This Issue..

* Bernanke digs out some old words...
* Risk on, Risk off...
* Brazil to have a different meeting outcome?
* Winter Olympics are in Canada...

And Now... Today's Pfennig!

We Won't Get Fooled Again!

Good day... And a Terrific Tuesday to you! What a ride on Mr. Toad (Bernanke's) Wild Ride yesterday for the currencies! Gold? Well, at one point in the day, Gold had shot up $24 on the day! It topped out at $1,142... The shiny metal then gave some back on profit taking, but Whew! Gold holders have got to love it! Those that keep waiting for a pull-back... Well, they might be still waiting when the cows come home...

Yesterday, we had a couple of Fed Heads talking, but the Big Kahuna, stood out, and moved the markets with his statements... Here's the skinny...

Big Ben was giving a speech, and said that "The Fed will monitor closely the currencies, and that the Fed's policies will ensure that the dollar is strong." Now, when he first uttered those words, the dollar got bought and the non-dollar currencies were sold... But then, a few of us had this feeling... It was a feeling that we had heard all this before... And there... In the archives, circa June 2008... Bernanke said, "In collaboration with our colleagues at the Treasury, we continue to carefully monitor developments in foreign exchange markets." Wait! We won't get fooled again!

In June 2008, his statements spooked the markets into believing the Fed was really going to do something to bolster the dollar... But when nothing came along, the dollar REALLY got sold until the financial meltdown of August 2008... I mean... What has the Fed done in the past 1 1/2 years to "bolster the dollar"? Near zero interest rates that will remain in place for longer than they should... Quantitative easing... A Bloated balance sheet of toxic bonds...

You could see the V-8 moments on traders' faces when they realized, yesterday, that all this had been said before, and nothing came of it, so... Meet the new boss... Same as the old boss... We Won't Get Fooled Again! No No!

So, then traders reversed their buying of the dollar and sent the dollar to the woodshed... You should have seen the reversal... It was amazing... The Big Dog, euro, went from 1.4970 to 1.4860, and then turned around to rise to 1.50! ... Now, overnight, there has been some renewed selling of the non-dollar currencies, and the euro is back to 1.4910... Crazy... But not as crazy as Big Ben spouting off about "monitoring the currencies"... Yeah, right... And what are you going to do about them when they get out of line, Big Ben? Get the ruler out? I'll tell you what he'll do... Nothing... Absolutely nothing!

Memo to Big Ben... Ahem... Am I on? Ok, long time listener, first time caller... Big Ben... Just what policies are you talking about that will keep the dollar strong? In the future, you might want to list them, so that people like that Chuck Butler, doesn't rip your comments to shreds for their lack of truth, and facts...

Non-voting Fed Head, Fisher, had this to say yesterday... "Our job is to maintain the purchasing power of the dollar, while fostering the conditions that enable the economy to grow without fanning inflation." Hmmm I would say that he's got that right... But, apparently, somewhere along the way, the part about "maintaining the purchasing power of the dollar" got lost, eh? I mean, since the Fed / cartel was formed in 1913, the dollar has lost 95% of its purchasing power... YIKES! Most people that did their jobs that badly would be fired/ let go... These guys have had almost 100 years to figure this out, and have failed miserably... And hey! Before I get accused of something (I'm always accused of something, with everything I say), Fed Head Fisher was the one that described the Fed Heads' job, not me!

OK... While I'm on this subject of being accused... I have been beating on the U.S. administration for 9 years, folks... I know I've really stepped it up with the step up of deficit spending by this administration, but, I chastised the previous administration beginning with their protectionism measures in 2000, and never let up, with their deficit spending... Someone even said I never talked about Cheney and his "Deficits Don't Matter"... WHAT? I've even repeated the same joke several times about the Deficits don't Matter crowd, and that they remind me of a guy standing on the Empire State Building, he decides to jump off, and as he passes the 56th floor, he says... "So far, so good!"

Yes, so far, so good, because he hadn't hit the concrete to go splat yet... And neither had the deficits crowd... But they will, and in fact, they are getting awfully close to the concrete right now!

Well... Enough of that... I just get so ticked off sometimes... I write, and write, and people say I didn't say this or that... Don't know what else to say... So, I'll go on...

The U.S. economy got a boost yesterday when Retail Sales grew at a faster rate than forecast, growing 1.4% in October, above the 0.9% rise projected by Wall Street. The jump came on rebounding demand for cars, a sign the economy kept recovering despite climbing unemployment. Aside from automobiles in October, other sales rose just 0.2%.

But... Are these numbers suspicious? Well, when you look at the previous month's revision, you have to question these numbers as well... September Retail Sales, which were reported as -1.5%, actually fell -2.3%... I wonder what this number's revision next month has in store...

Today, the data cupboard is stocked to the brim with data prints... Producer Price Index (PPI) prints along with two of my faves, Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization... And then the Big Kahuna of the day... The TIC's data... For those of you new to class, The TIC's data stands for Treasury International Capital... Or... Easier to understand... It's the fancy, schmancy name for Net Security Purchases by Foreigners... This is how we track, how well we're doing as a county at financing our ever expanding deficit...

I made a mistake yesterday when talking about the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and saying that if they didn't hike rates in December, that they would most likely come back in January at hike them... A reader pointed out to me that the RBA doesn't meet in January... OK... So, I guess I should have said that the RBA would hike at their next scheduled meeting!

Speaking of the RBA... They issued their latest meeting minutes, in which they sounded less hawkish than one would expect, since they raised rates at the same meeting... But this less hawkish tone, set off a round of Risk Aversion once again in the currency markets overnight... Risk on, Risk off, is reminding me of a Wayne and Garth street hockey game...

For, it's Risk on, one day, and Risk off the next day... So, while I find that the RBA minutes did set off this round of Risk off for the currencies, I don't see it having lasting power... Look for this all to fade, especially if we get a rogue data print in the U.S. today...

Late last week, I came across a story on the dollar that I totally forgot to talk about yesterday... So, here you go... Oh, by the way, strap yourself in for this one, and keep your arms and legs inside during the ride...

The German government's 5-person council of economic advisers issued a report that said, "After the massive global increase in U.S. dollar reserves in the past years, an "uncontrolled exit", especially in emerging economies from the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency is a possible trigger of instability in currency markets." The went on to say...

"Countries holding "high" dollar reserves should consider committing to selling their dollar holdings in a coordinated way over a longer period of time."

The folks over at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) think that Bernanke's speech yesterday, basically gave the green light for a further, slow, gradual decline of the dollar... And, quite frankly, that's what traders would prefer to see too, given that they don't like getting whipsawed day in and day out by the Risk on, Risk off game... When assets go to fast one way or the other, it just causes strong corrections, and people get hurt by the movements... But a slow, gradual decline I would think would be the preference of the U.S. Gov't... That way, no one notices... It's not like a bubble that grows and everyone notices it...

Speaking of bubbles... And if you're like me, when I type, or say bubbles, I immediately think of Big Al Greenspan... Well, you'll love this Fed Head statement about bubbles... Here's Fed Head Kohn... "Asset price bubbles can be spotted when they become extreme, efforts to spot bubbles may result in seeing more than there is."

Now that statement plays well with Big Al Greenspan, who always claimed that bubbles could not be spotted before they got out of hand... Basically, what these two are saying in different ways is that the Fed could spot them, but probably wouldn't like it, and wouldn't have much at their disposal to do about it, so they just turn away...

And speaking of such... Fed Head Yellen said last night that the "U.S. stock market is not overvalued"... That's all I'll say about that!

OK... Hopefully, you are still with me here, and reading... And you will recall me going on and on about China and their FX currency swap agreements and how that was a baby step toward gaining a wider use of the renminbi... Well... Yesterday, there was a story, that I think Ty told me about, that talks about China preparing to float the renminbi, testing it in Hong Kong... The Chinese government has been moving to allow banks in Hong Kong to issue bonds, hold deposits, and settle trade with the mainland -- all in renminbi.

However, don't look for this conversion to a floating currency to happen soon... Financial analysts believe it will not happen before 2020... It may come sooner... But I wouldn't get all lathered up that it happens in the next year!

One of the best performing currencies VS the dollar this year, has been the Brazilian real, with a greater than 30% gain, so far... There's been a shakeup at the Brazilian Central Bank, and there will be a few new members, with voting power at the next meeting on December 9th... I still don't think the Brazilian real interest rate will be moved at this meeting, but with the new members, they might want to make a "statement" about how hawkish they are... And on December 10th, Brazil will print their 3rd QTR GDP, which I would think would be quite strong... You would have to think that the Central Bank will have privy to this report before they meet on the 9th... And with the new members possibly wanting to make a statement, there's a whole new outlook for the Central Bank meeting...

You know... As we draw closer to the end of the year, the closer we get to the winter Olympics which will be held in Vancouver, B.C. (and Whistler!) Going back to the early days of the World Markets Division at the old Mark Twain Bank, here in St. Louis, we tracked currencies from countries that were holding the Olympics, noticing that there was always a rise in the host country's currency... If that were to hold it would benefit the Canadian dollar / loonie... Will it hold true for the Vancouver Olympics? We'll have to wait-n-see, eh? But really... Wouldn't it be worth a flyer, a shekel or two to see if it did hold true?

And then there was this... Were you confused by the GM announcements yesterday? I was... First there was an announcement that GM would be paying back some of the bailout money to the Government... But then later it was announced that GM posted a $1.5 Billion loss... Kind of difficult to pay someone back, when you're booking losses, eh? Strange announcements for sure...

OK, to recap, which I forgot to do yesterday! UGH! The currencies were whipsawed yesterday by comments by Big Ben Bernanke, that we've heard before! The RBA issued a not-so-hawkish minutes report that spooked the markets and it's Risk off today... Brazil might have a different outlook for their next meeting in December, and the winter Olympics are ready for Vancouver, will that mean a boost for the loonie?

Currencies today 11/17/09: American style: A$ .9270, kiwi .7440, C$ .9450, euro 1.49, sterling 1.6775, Swiss .9840, European style: rand 7.4660, krone 5.62, SEK 6.8775, forint 179, zloty 2.76, koruna 17.1450, RUB 28.77, yen 89.30, sing 1.3870, HKD 7.75, INR 46.30, China 6.8266, pesos 13.01, BRL 1.7160, dollar index 75.38, Oil $78.24, 10-year 3.35%, Silver $18.16, and Gold... $1,030

That's it for today... Well, the college basketball season began last night... My beloved Missouri Tigers start tonight. The Tigers basketball team surprised quite a few people with their run last spring, hopefully they can repeat that! Our little Christine's husband is a high school basketball coach. Christine says that once the season starts, she rarely sees husband, Matt... She loves basketball season! HA! My little, adorable granddaughter, Delaney Grace, was at the house when I came home yesterday, and she ran out of the house to jump in my arms to hug me! WOW! Sure is great to have a little one around! OK... Late again today, UGH! Better get going... I hope your Tuesday is Terrific!

Chuck Butler
President
EverBank World Markets
1-800-926-4922
1-314-647-3837

Just Desserts and Markets Being Silly Again

JohnMauldin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:17:00 GMT

My long time readers are familiar with Jeremy Grantham of GMO as I quote him a lot. He is one of the more brilliant and talented value managers (and I should mention very successful on behalf of his clients). He writes a quarterly letter which I regard as a must read. I have excerpted parts of his recent letter, where the chief investment strategist really takes the current financial system follies to task. Typical of his great writing and thinking is the quote from this week's Outside the Box selection:

"I can imagine the company representatives on the Titanic II design committee repeatedly pointing out that the Titanic I tragedy was a black swan event: utterly unpredictable and completely, emphatically, not caused by any failures of the ship's construction, of the company's policy, or of the captain's competence. "No one could have seen this coming," would have been their constant refrain. Their response would have been to spend their time pushing for more and improved lifeboats. In itself this is a good idea, and that is the trap: by working to mitigate the pain of the next catastrophe, we allow ourselves to downplay the real causes of the disaster and thereby invite another one. And so it is today with our efforts to redesign the financial system in order to reduce the number and severity of future crises."

You can get the full letter at www.gmo.com (You will have to register).

Your glad to be back home at least for a week,

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

Just Desserts and Markets Being Silly Again

by Jeremy Grantham

Just Desserts

I can't tell you how surprised, even embarrassed I was to get the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Yes, I had passed the dreaded chemistry A-level for 18-year-olds back in England in 1958. But did they realize it was my third attempt? And, yes, I will take this honor as encouragement to do some serious thinking on the topic. I will also invest the award to help save the planet. Perhaps that was really the Nobel Committee's sneaky motive, since there are regrettably no green awards yet. Still, all in all, it didn't seem deserved. And then it occurred to me. Isn't that the point these days: that rewards do not at all reflect our just desserts? Let's review some of the more obvious examples.

1. For Missing the Unmissable

Bernanke, the most passionate cheerleader of Greenspan's follies, is picked as his replacement, partly, it seems, for his belief that U.S. house prices would never decline and that at their peak in late 2005 they largely just reflected the unusual strength of the U.S. economy. As well as missing on his very own this 3-sigma (100-year) event in housing, he was completely clueless as to the potential disastrous interactions among lower house prices, new opaque financial instruments, heroically increased mortgages, lower lending standards, and internationally networked distribution. For these accumulated benefits to society, he was reappointed! So, yes, after the fashion of his mentor, he was lavish with help as the bubble burst. And how can we so quickly forget the very painful consequences of the previous lavishing after the 2000 bubble? Rewarding Bernanke is like reappointing the Titanic's captain for facilitating an orderly disembarkation of the sinking ship (let's pretend that happened) while ignoring the fact that he had charged recklessly through dark and dangerous waters.

2. The Other Teflon Men

Larry Summers, with a Financial Times bully pulpit, had done little bullying and blown no warning whistles of impending doom back in 2006 and 2007. And, famously, in earlier years as Treasury Secretary he had encouraged (I hope inadvertently) wild and reckless financial behavior by helping to beat back attempts to regulate some of the new and most dangerous instruments. Timothy Geithner, in turn, sat in the very engine room of the USS Disaster and helped steer her onto the rocks. And there are several others (discussed in the 4Q 2008 Letter). You know who you are. All promoted!

3. Misguided, Sometimes Idiotic Mortgage Borrowers

The more misguided or reckless the borrowers, the more determined the efforts to help them out, it appears, although it must be admitted these efforts had limited effect. In comparison, those who showed restraint and either underhoused themselves or rented received not even a hint of help. Quite the reverse: the money the more prudent potential buyers held back from housing received an artificially low rate. In effect, the prudent are subsidizing the very same banks that insisted on dancing off the cliff into Uncle Sam's arms or, rather, the arms of the taxpayers - many of whom rent.

4. Reckless Homebuilders

Having magnificently overbuilt for several years by any normal relationship to the population, we have decided to encourage even more homebuilding by giving new house buyers $8,000 each. This cash comes partly from the pockets of prudent renters once again. This gift is soon, perhaps, to be extended beyond first-time buyers (for whom everyone with a heart has a slight sympathy) to any buyers, which would be blatant vote-buying by Congress. So what else is new?

5. Over-spenders and Under-savers

To celebrate the overwhelming consensus among economists that U.S. individuals have been dangerously overconsuming for the last 15 years, we have decided to encourage consumption and penalize savers by maintaining the aforementioned artificially low rates, which beg everyone and sundry to borrow even more. The total debt to GDP ratio, which under our heroes Greenspan and Bernanke rose from 1.25x GDP to 3.25x (without even counting our Social Security and Medicare commitments), has continued to climb as growing government debt more than offsets falling consumer debt. Where, one wonders, does this end, and with how much grief?

6. Banks Too Big to Fail

Here we have adopted a particularly simple and comprehensible policy: make them bigger! Indeed, force them to be bigger. And whatever you do, don't have any serious Congressional conversation about breaking them up. (Leave that to a few journalists and commentators. Only pinkos read pink newspapers anyway!) This is not the first time that a cliché has triumphed. This one is: "You can't roll back the clock." (See this quarter's Special Topic: Lesson Not Learned: On Redesigning Our Current Financial System.)

7. Over-bonused Financial Types

Just look at Goldman's recent huge "profits," two-thirds of which went for bonuses. It is now estimated that this year's bonus pool will be plus or minus $23 billion, the largest ever. Less than a year ago, these same guys were on the edge of a run on the bank. They were saved only by "government" - the taxpayers' supposed agents - who decided to interfere with the formerly infallible workings of capitalism. Just as remarkably, it is now reported that remuneration for the entire banking industry may be approaching a new peak. "Well, we got rid of some of those pesky competitors, so now we can really make hay," you can almost hear Goldman and the others say. And as for the industry's concern about the widespread public dismay, even disgust, about excessive remuneration (and, I would add, plundering of the shareholders' rightful profits)? Fuhgeddaboudit! In the thin book of "lessons learned," this one, like most of our other examples, will not appear.

8. Overpaid Large Company CEOs

Even outside the financial system, there are many painfully obvious unjust desserts in the form of top management rewards. And most of the excessive rewards come out of the pockets of our clients and other stockholders, which is particularly galling. When I arrived in the States in 1964, the ratio of CEO pay to the average worker was variously reported to be between 20/1 and 40/1. This seemed perfectly respectable and had held for the previous 30 years. By 2006, this ratio had exploded to between 400/1 and 600/1, which can only be described as obscene. The results certainly don't suggest such high rewards: a) 10-year stock market returns are close to zero in real terms; and b) U.S. GDP growth has finally slipped below its 100-year trend of 3.5%. After deducting the effect of the rampant increase in the financial system, the growth in GDP ex-finance has fallen to 3.1% since 1982 and well below 3% since 2000, all measured to the end of 2007 to avoid the recent crisis. The corporate system, to be frank, seemed to run faster and more efficiently back in the 1960s before CEOs and financial types began to gobble up other people's lunches. I suppose I have done my share of gobbling. But, it still ain't right!

9. Holders of the Stocks of Ridiculously Overleveraged and Wounded Corporations

Yes, I admit this is part envy and part hindsight investment regret. But, really, our financial leaders so overstimulated the risk-taking environment that junky, weak, marginal companies and zombie banks produced a record outperformance (the best since 1933) of junk over the great blue chips. (Ouch!) In a world with less moral hazard, which would be a world of just, although painful desserts, scores of these should-be-dead companies would be. As it is, they live to compete against the companies that actually deserve to be survivors. Excessive bailouts are just not healthy for the long-term well-being of the economy.

10. The Well-managed U.S. Auto Industry

While firms in other industries fail and their workers look for new jobs, the auto industry is rewarded by direct subsidized loans, governmental arm-twisting of creditors forced to settle far below their legal rights, and direct subsidies for their products. All of this for their well-deserved ranking as the most short-sighted industry of the last 20 (40?) years, and one of the worst managed.

11. The World's Most Over-vehicled Country

We chew up a dangerously large amount of Middle Eastern oil (and oil desperately squeezed from Canadian tar sands), which is ruinous for our globalpolitical well-being (and ability to avoid war) and also not so good for an overheating world. So the answer must be to subsidize more car purchases, and when the subsidies run out, you can have all the fun again. Good long-term thinking!

12. Stock Options

This, of course, is the crème de la crème of unjust desserts. Recent practices have basically been a legalized way to abscond with the stockholders' equity. So if the stock price crashes, perhaps with considerable help from management, that's all right - just rewrite the options at the new low prices. There has been no serious attempt to match stock option rewards (or total financial rewards for that matter) to the building of long-term franchise value. Instead, the motto is: grab it now and run! You can fill in your own favorite anecdotes here - there are so many of them!

13. Finally, Just in Case You've Forgotten, We Have My Old Nemesis, Greenspan

Alan Greenspan receives the title of Maestro in the U.S. and is knighted by the Queen for thoroughly demolishing the integrity of the U.S. financial system. He overtly ignored the great threat of bubbles in asset classes and, in fact, encouraged them. He Ayn Rand-ishly facilitated the progressive dismantling of governmental restrictions on financial behavior, he deliberately kept real interest rates at zero for years, etc., etc., etc. You have heard it before. Now, remarkably, in his very old age he has become imbued with the spirit of Hyman Minsky: "Unless somebody can find a way to change human nature, we will have more crises." Now he finally gets it. Too late! In his merely old age, he ignored or abhorred Minsky, and consistently behaved as though markets were efficient and the players were honest and sensible at all times. But for all of the egg on his face, the Maestro continues to consult with the rich and famous, considerably to his financial advantage. In the good old days, he would have been set in the village stocks, and not the kind you buy and sell. And I would have been right there, Alan, with very ripe tomatoes.

The Last Hurrah and Markets Being Silly Again

The idea behind my forecast six months ago was that regardless of the fundamentals, there would be a sharp rally.¹ After a very large decline and a period of somewhat blind panic, it is simply the nature of the beast. Exhibit 1 shows my favorite example of a last hurrah after the first leg of the 1929 crash.

After the sharp decline in the fall of 1929, the S&P 500 rallied 46% from its low in November to the rally high of April 12, 1930. It then, of course, fell by over 80%. But on April 12 it was once again overpriced; it was down only 18% from its peak and was back to the level of June 1929. But what a difference there was in the outlook between June 1929 and April 1930! In June, the economic outlook was a candidate for the brightest in history with effectively no unemployment, 5% productivity, and over 16% year-over-year gain in industrial output. By April 1930, unemployment had doubled and industrial production had dropped from +16% to -9% in 5 months, which may be the world record in economic deterioration. Worse, in 1930 there was no extra liquidity flowing around and absolutely no moral hazard. "Liquidate the labor, liquidate the stocks, liquidate the farmers"² was their version. Yet the market rose 46%.

How could it do this in the face of a world going to hell? My theory is that the market always displayed a belief in a type of primitive market efficiency decades before the academics took it up. It is a belief that if the market once sold much higher, it must mean something. And in the case of 1930, hadn't Irving Fisher, arguably the greatest American economist of the century, said that the 1929 highs were completely justified and that it was the decline that was hysterical pessimism? Hadn't E.L. Smith also explained in his Common Stocks as Long Term Investments (1924) - a startling precursor to Jeremy Siegel's dangerous book Stocks for the Long Run (1994) - that stocks would always beat bonds by divine right? And there is always someone of the "Dow 36,000" persuasion higher prices in previous peaks must surely have meant something, and not merely have been unjustified bubbly bursts of enthusiasm and momentum.

Today there has been so much more varied encouragement for a rally than existed in 1930. The higher prices preceding this crash (that were far above both trend and fair value) had lasted for many years; from 1996 through 2001 and from 2003 through mid-2008. This time, we also saw history's greatest stimulus program, desperate bailouts, and clear promises of years of low rates. As mentioned six months ago, in the third year of the Presidential Cycle, a tiny fraction of the current level of moral hazard and easy money has done its typically great job of driving equity markets and speculation higher. In total, therefore, it should be no surprise to historians that this rally has handsomely beaten 46%, and would probably have done so whether the actual economic recovery was deemed a pleasant surprise or not. Looking at previous "last hurrahs," it should also have been expected that any rally this time would be tilted toward risk-taking and, the more stimulus and moral hazard, the bigger the tilt. I must say, though, that I never expected such an extreme tilt to risk-taking: it's practically a cliff! Never mess with the Fed, I guess. Although, looking at the record, these dramatic short-term resuscitations do seem to breed severe problems down the road. So, probably, we will continue to live in exciting times, which is not all bad in our business.

Lesson Not Learned: On Redesigning Our Current Financial System

I can imagine the company representatives on the Titanic II design committee repeatedly pointing out that the Titanic I tragedy was a black swan event: utterly unpredictable and completely, emphatically, not caused by any failures of the ship's construction, of the company's policy, or of the captain's competence. "No one could have seen this coming," would have been their constant refrain. Their response would have been to spend their time pushing for more and improved lifeboats. In itself this is a good idea, and that is the trap: by working to mitigate the pain of the next catastrophe, we allow ourselves to downplay the real causes of the disaster and thereby invite another one. And so it is today with our efforts to redesign the financial system in order to reduce the number and severity of future crises.

After a crisis, if you don't want to waste time on palliatives, you must begin with an open and frank admission of failure. The Titanic, for example, was just too big and therefore too complicated for the affordable technology of its day. Given White Star Line's unwillingness to spend, she was under-designed. The ship also suffered from agency problems: the passengers bore the risk of unnecessary speed and overconfidence in "too big to sink!" while the captain stood to be rewarded for breaking the speed record. No captain is ever rewarded for merely delivering his passengers alive. Greenspan, nearly 100 years later in his short-lived "irrational exuberance" phase, did not enjoy being metaphysically slapped by the Senate Subcommittee for threatening the then speedy progress of the economy. What is needed in this typical type of agency problem is for the agent on those rare occasions when it really matters, whether a ship's captain or a Fed boss, to stop boot licking and say, "No, this is wrong. It is just too risky. I won't go along."

We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to effect genuine change given that the general public is disgusted with the financial system and none too pleased with Congress. I have no idea why the current administration, which came in on a promise of change, for heaven's sake, is so determined to protect the status quo of the financial system at the expense of already weary taxpayers who are promised only somewhat better lifeboats.

It is obvious to most that there was a more or less complete failure of our private financial system and its public overseers. The regulatory leaders in particular were all far too captured and cozy in their dealings with reckless and greedy financial enterprises. Congress also failed in its role. For example, it did not rise to the occasion to limit the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. Nor did it encourage the regulation of new financial instruments. Quite the reverse, as exemplified by the sorry tale of CFTC Chairman Brooksley Born's fight to regulate credit default swaps.

But, at least now, Congress seems to realize the problem: the current financial system is too large and complicated for the ordinary people attempting to control it. Even Barney Frank, were he on his death bed, might admit this; and most members of Congress know that they hardly understand the financial system at all. Many of the banks individually are both too big and so complicated that none of their own bosses clearly understand their own complexity and risk taking. The recent boom and the ensuing crisis are a wonderfully scientific experiment with definitive results that we are all trying to ignore. And, except for bankers, who have Congress in an iron grip, we all want and need a profound change. We all want smaller, simpler banks that are not too big to fail. And we can and should arrange it!

Step 1 should be to ban or spin off that part of the trading of the bank's own money that has become an aggressive hedge fund. Proprietary trading by banks has become by degrees over recent years an egregious conflict of interest with their clients. Most if not all banks that prop trade now gather information from their institutional clients and exploit it. In complete contrast, 30 years ago, Goldman Sachs, for example, would never, ever have traded against its clients. How quaint that scrupulousness now seems. Indeed, from, say, 1935 to 1980, any banker who suggested such behavior would have been fired as both unprincipled and a threat to the partners' money. I, for one, saw Goldman in my early days as a surprisingly ethical firm, at worst "long-term greedy." (This steady loss of the old partnership ethic is typically underplayed in descriptions of Goldman.) Today, Goldman represents a potential hedge fund trade as being attractive precisely because they themselves have already chosen to do it. These days, all - or almost all - large banks do proprietary trading that is pure hedge fund in nature. Indeed the largest bank, Citi (owned by us taxpayers), is gearing up to substantially increase its aggressive prop trading as I write. ("No, no, we're not!")

Some insiders have argued that we should not worry about prop trading because they claim it did not play an important part in the recent crisis. I think this is completely wrong for it misses the very big picture. Prop trading can easily introduce an aggressive hedge-fund type mentality into the very hearts of what ideally should be conservative, prudent - even boring - banks. This hedge fund mentality became a dominant organizing principle, particularly with respect to compensation practices. It encouraged personal aspirations over corporate goals and invited bonus-directed behavior at the clients' expense and ultimately, as we have seen, at the taxpayers' expense to rid itself of this problem. All Congress has to overcome is the lobbying power and campaign contributions of the finance industry itself, which I admit is no small feat. In a bank with a hedge fund heart, you can't reasonably expect ethical or non-greedy behavior, and you haven't seen it.

Of course, commercial and investment banks need to invest their own capital. They probably should have the right to do genuine hedging against investments that flow naturally from their banking business. As for the rest, they could easily be required either to limit the leverage used on prop desk trading or to be restricted to investing in government paper and, at the very least, play by the same rules as other hedge funds. What they certainly should insurance, as is now the case.

In the early 1930s, following the famous Pecora hearings, the conflict of interest between the management of other people's money as fiduciary and the business of dealing and underwriting in securities was considered so inimical to the public interest that Congress almost compelled separation of proprietary trading and client trading. Close, but no cigar. Instead, Glass-Steagall made the probably less useful step of separating commercial and investment banking. Unfortunately, they left intact the obvious conflict between the banks' managing their own money and simultaneously that of their clients. We now have a unique opportunity to revisit this matter.

(As we ponder the problem of prop trading, let us consider Goldman's stunning $3 billion second quarter profit. It appeared to be almost all hedge fund trading. Be aware also that this $3 billion is net of about $6 billion reserved for future bonuses. Goldman's CEO had, in fact, the interesting job of deciding how much of this $9 billion profit would be arbitrarily awarded to shareholders. [In this case, one-third. Could be worse!] This means that they extracted every penny of $9 billion from a fragile financial system. "Good for them," you may say, and they indeed are very smart. But surely they should not have been insured against failure by us taxpayers! Remember, they are now also a commercial bank yet very, very little of their $9 billion came from making loans. Three months later their bonus pool for the year is estimated to be a new record at $29 billion. And the whole banking industry is back to a new record for remuneration. How resilient! How remarkable! How basically undesirable for our economy!)

In Step 2, the Justice Department, together with Congressional and other advisors, should be invited to develop a special set of rules for the banking industry that recognizes the moral hazard of "too big to fail." If really too big to fail, banks should be divided by Justice into manageable, smaller pieces that can indeed be allowed to fail. With these two steps and possibly with an intelligent son of Glass-Steagall, the deed would be done! Regulators would have a fighting chance of being able to regulate, unlike their recent woeful past. If an angel appeared, waved his wings and, lo, it was so, almost every single Congressman would sigh with relief.

The separation of commercial banking from investment banking is not as vital as the removal of prop desk complicated enterprises both smaller and simpler, which characteristics I for one believe are probably essential if we are to avoid further disasters. So what is the problem? The argument against all major changes, without at least some of which we will soon surely be back in another crisis, is always the same. "Oh, you can't roll back the clock." But, even repeated twice before every breakfast, it is not persuasive. Why exactly can't you roll back the clock? We did it once before and, although it was very imperfect and probably missed the central point of conflict of interest, it still produced an improved system that was successful enough for 50 years. In general, countries with simpler and less aggressive banks have had much less pain in the recent crisis while we were pawning the Crown Jewels - sorry, the Federal Jewels - to bail out aggressive bankers who were out of their depth in the new complexities.

Step by step, even as the complexity grew, our regulatory leaders enabled systemic risk to grow. They continued to push the boundaries for banks by allowing more leverage, new instruments, and less control. The details are familiar. All this was done in the name of untrammeled, unfettered capitalism, and almost all of it was a bad idea.

"Oh!" say the bankers, "If we become smaller and simpler and more regulated, the world will end and all serious banking will go to London, Switzerland, Bali Hai, or wherever." Well, good for those other places. If that means they will have knee-buckling, economy cracking, taxpayer-impoverishing meltdowns every 15 years and we will be left looking like a boring back water, that sounds fine to me. Remember, just like our investment management branch of the financial system, banking creates nothing of itself. It merely facilitates the functioning of the real world.

Yes, of course every country needs a basic financial system to function effectively with letters of credit, deposits, and check writing facilities, etc. But as you move beyond that it is worth remembering that every valued job created by financial complexity is paid for by the rest of the real economy, and talent is displaced from real production, as symbolized by all of the nuclear physicists on prop trading desks. Viewed from the perspective of the long-term well-being of the whole economy, the drastic expansion of the U.S. financial system as a percentage of total GDP in the last 20 years has been a drain on the health and cost structure of the balance of the real economy. To illustrate this point, in 1965 the financial sector of the economy took up 3% of the GDP pie. The 1960s were probably the high water mark (or one of them) of America's capitalism. They clearly had adequate financial tools. Innovation could obviously have occurred continuously in all aspects of finance, without necessarily moving its share of the economy materially over 3%. Yet by 2007 the share had risen to 7.5% of GDP!

The financial world was reaching into the GDP pie and taking an unnecessary extra 4%. Every year! This extra rent is enough to lower the savings and investment potential of the rest of the economy. And it shows. As mentioned earlier, the growth rate of the GDP had been 3.5% a year for a hundred years. It had proven to be remarkably robust. Even the Great Depression bounced off it, and soon GDP growth was back on the original trend as if the Depression had never occurred. But after 1965, the growth of the non-financial slice, formerly 3.4%, slowed to 3.2%. After 1982 it dropped to 3.1% and after 2000 fell to well under 3%, all measured to the end of 2007, before the recent troubles. These are big declines. It is as if a runner has a growing and already heavy blood sucker on him that is, not surprisingly, slowing him down. In the short term, I realize that job creation in the financial industry looked like a growth driver, as did the surge in financial profits (which we now realize were ludicrously overstated). But in the long term, like a sugar high, this stimulus was temporary and unhealthy.

The financial system was growing because it could. The more complex and confusing new financial instruments became the more "help" ordinary citizens needed from the experts. The agents' interests were totally unaligned with the principle/clients' interests. This makes a mockery of "rational expectations" and the Efficient Market Hypothesis, which assumes (totally unproven, as usual) equivalent and perfect knowledge on both sides of all transactions. At the extreme, this great advantage in knowledge and information held by the financial agents has the agents receiving all the rewards, according to the recent work³ by my former partner, Paul Woolley, and his colleagues at the Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality. (With a great name like that their job is half done before they start.)

The second problem, right on the heels of the too-big-and complicated issue, is that of inadequate public oversight. Even with existing institutions, we would have avoided most of the recent pain, borne by taxpayers, if we had had better public leadership. Yes, the public bodies had flaws, but the individuals running the shop had far bigger flaws. Greenspan, with arguably the most important job in the world, simply did not believe in interfering with capitalism at all. His regulatory colleagues such as Bernanke and Geithner fell into line without any challenges. And Congress, strongly influenced by the financial industry, or merely misguided, or often both, facilitated the approach that capitalism in general and banking in particular would do just fine if left entirely alone. It was a very expensive error. Does anyone think we would have run off the cliff with even one change - Volcker at the Fed? I, for one, am confident that we would have done far less badly.

Behind this weakness in the recent cast of characters is a systemic (suddenly the trendiest word in the English language) weakness in our method of job selection. How can Greenspan, with his long-established record of failure as a professional economist, have resurfaced as the Fed boss? With no record of success in any important job, he gets one of the world's two most important jobs! Now we have to decide how much more decision-making power to give to the Fed - an institution with a 25-year proven record of failure. How can we separate the logical neatness of institutional design from our recent proven inability to pick effective, principled leaders with strong backbones?

It is a conundrum: too many regulatory agencies and you have too many opportunities for financial interests to shop around for regulatory bargains and to find and exploit the ambiguous seams between them. Too few agencies and we run the risk of my worst nightmare: waking up and finding Alan Greenspan with twice the authority!

At the least we must recognize the improbability of acquiring great leaders and that our financial system must be simple and robust enough to withstand the worst efforts from time to time of poor or even bad leadership. A simpler, more manageable financial system is much more than a luxury. Without it we shall surely fail again. And it looks as if we are bound and determined to bend once again to the will (and the money) of the financial lobby, which is encouraged by the unexpected conservatism of the current administration's "Teflon" men. They seem terrified to make any substantial changes. And the one person with the character to make tough changes - Paul Volker - is window dressing, exactly as I suggested in January. A sad, wasted opportunity!

Summary

Yes, this was a profound failure of our financial system.
The public leadership was inadequate, especially in dealing with unexpected events that often, like the housing bubble breaking, should have been expected.
Of course, we should make a more determined effort to do a more effective job of leadership selection. But excellence in leadership will often be elusive.
Equally obvious, we could make a hundred improvements to the lifeboats. Most would be modest beneficial improvements, but in the long run they would be almost completely irrelevant and, worse, they might kid us into thinking we were doing something useful!
But all of the above points fail to recognize the main problem: the system has become too big and complicated for even much-improved leaders to handle. Why should we be confident that we will find such improved leaders? For, even in an administration directed to "change," Obama and his advisors fell back on the same cast of characters who allowed, even facilitated, the development of the current crisis. Reappointing Bernanke! What a wasted opportunity to get a "son of Volker" type. (Or should that be "grandson of Volker?")
The size of the financial system continues to grow and shows every sign of being out of control. As it grows, it becomes a bigger drain on the rest of the economy and slows it down.
The only long-term hope of avoiding major recurrent crises is to make our financial system simpler, the units small enough that they can be allowed to fail, and, above all, to remove the intrinsically conflicted and dangerously risk-seeking hedge fund heart from the banking system. The rest is window dressing and wishful thinking.
The concept of rational expectations - the belief in the natural efficiency of capitalism - is wrong, and is the root cause of our problems. Hyman Minsky, on the other hand, was right; he argued that the natural outcome of ordinary people interacting is to make occasional financial crises "well nigh inevitable." Crises are desperately hard to avoid. We must give ourselves a chance by making the job of dealing with them much, much easier.
All in all we are likely to have learned little, or rather to act, through lack of character, as if we have learned nothing. In doing so we are probably condemning ourselves to another serious financial crisis in the not too- distant future.

PS: As quite often happens, since I write painfully slowly (even without extra tick-borne delays), a professional slipped in with a great column that gets to the heart of this matter. Please read John Kay in the Financial Times of July 9. It is short and persuasive. "Our banks are beyond the control of mere mortals" - now, that's what I call a title!

Footnotes:

1 Erratum: Last quarter I cast mild aspersions on Finanz und Wirtschaft by suggesting that I had not precisely said that the S&P would scoot rapidly up to 1100; I remembered it more as between 1000 to 1100. Never mess with a Swiss journalist: this one duly pointed out that his tape of April 1 confirmed his accuracy. Either way, here we are, more or less (at 1098 on October 19).

2 Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury, 1931.

3 Biais, Bruno; Rochet, Jean-Charles; and Woolley, Paul. Rents, Learning and Risk in the Financial Sector and other Innovative Industries. September, 2009. Working Paper Series 2009, The Paul Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality.

http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/paulWoolleyCentre/news/RentsLearningAndRisk.htm

Currency Manipulation – Has It Helped Your Net Worth?

JohnMcClure — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:08:00 GMT

Discussion on the Hill
Dollar Crisis Averted, But at What Cost?
The Cost of Global Dollar Reliance
A Year After TARP -- Was It Necessary?
Attaboy Jack!

In this letter, we are going to spend some time digging into the recent volatility of the U.S. dollar. In case you haven't noticed, the U.S. dollar roared back in 2008 only to resume its free fall in 2009. There are advantages and disadvantages to having a strong/weak dollar and some passionate arguments for/against various dollar policies. Historically, every great power in history has used a weak dollar to inflate their way out of paying off large amounts of debt.

Below is a recent discussion between Chairman Bernanke and Congress on the use of currency swaps as an apparent tool of the Fed to manipulate the currency market. It appears that the recent financial crisis and the fact that the U.S. dollar is the reserve currency of the world, gave the Fed a perfect opportunity to have its cake and eat it too. The recent drop and increased volatility in the U.S. dollar may mean that the Fed got more than it bargained for.

Question?
If you are invested in the S&P 500 in 2009 and it goes up 15% in value and at the same time the U.S. Dollar drops 16% in value, has your global net worth increased?

"Swap" Discussion on the Hill

A hearing in Congress on July 21, 2009 provided a unique insight into the Federal Reserve's actions at the beginning of the credit crisis. Here is a noteworthy exchange between Congressman Alan Grayson (D - Florida) and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke.

Grayson:
"Chairman Bernanke, I'm looking at the report you handed out this morning... There's a table on page 26 [of your report] that consists of [the Federal Reserve] balance sheet and one of your entries called central bank liquidity [currency] swaps shows an increase from 2007 from $24 billion to $553 billion ...by the end of 2008. What's that?"

Bernanke:
"Those are swaps (derivatives) done with foreign central banks, many [of which] are short dollars and [that would have had to] come into our markets looking for dollars, drive up interest rates and create volatility in our markets. What we have done... [is to] swap dollars for currencies [of 14 central banks']; they take the dollars and lend it out to banks to bring down interest rates in those jurisdictions." (What he didn't say was that such action also helped keep US interest rates down.)

Grayson:
"We looked at one of the arrangements, [one of which was] $9 billion for New Zealand, which works out to $3,000 per person [New Zealand resident]. Wouldn't it have been better to extend that kind of credit to Americans?"

Bernanke:
"...we are extending that kind of credit to Americans."

Grayson:
"...look at the next page which shows... a 20% increase in the nominal USD exchange rate at exactly the same time that you were handing out a half a trillion dollars to foreigners. Do you think that is a coincidence?"

Bernanke:
"... [Pause]...Yes."

It's an interesting question, despite how Bernanke answered it. Action contradicts his answer but in his defense, strengthening the dollar was probably not the goal of the Federal Reserve in taking this action - it was an unintended consequence.

Dollar Crisis Averted, But at What Cost?

In August, September and October, the US Dollar Index (USDX) appreciated 21% after falling 24% from late 2005 into early 2008. But if taming volatility was a motivator for the Federal Open Market Committee to sell swaps as Mr. Bernanke claimed, the strategy failed abysmally. The dollar shot up from 72 in early August 2008, before peaking at 90 in March 2009, after which it then lost 16%.

And the aftermath isn't pretty. The dollar is still falling and recently broke key support at 75, and there is little on the horizon to indicate that this trend will change anytime soon, especially given the moves by foreign central banks to shift away from the dollar (see articles in Related Reading below). Can anyone blame them? Current Federal Reserve and government policies and responses have been anything but dollar positive.

This month, the Bank of International Settlement (BIS) published a paper that attempted to answer this and other questions surrounding central bank actions entitled "The US Dollar Shortage in Global Banking and the International [read: Federal Reserve] Policy Response."

The paper wasted no time in getting down to brass tacks and asked some probing questions of its own.

The global financial crisis has shown just how unstable banks' sources of funding can become. Throughout the crisis, but particularly following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, many banks faced severe difficulties securing short-term US dollar funding. In response, central banks around the world adopted extraordinary policy measures, including international swap arrangements with the US Federal Reserve, to enable them to provide US dollars to commercial banks in their respective jurisdictions. What caused this global shortage of US dollars? Which banking systems have been most affected? How could a shortage develop so quickly after dollar liquidity had been viewed as plentiful?

In a nutshell, when the crisis hit the dollar a shortage was the result caused from a trend that had become popular with foreign banks of taking increasingly larger US dollar positions, thereby creating significant short dollar positions among foreign banks. In Europe's case, "[the] banks' need for short-term US dollar funding was substantial at the onset of the [credit] crisis, at least $1.0 -$1.2 trillion by mid-2007."

And that was just Europe.

The Cost of Global Dollar Reliance

The origins of the US dollar shortage during the crisis are linked to the expansion since 2000 in banks' international balance sheets. The outstanding stock of banks' foreign claims grew from $10 trillion at the beginning of 2000 to $34 trillion by end-2007, a significant expansion even when scaled by global economic activity (Figure 1, left panel). The year-on-year growth in foreign claims approached 30% by mid-2007, up from around 10% in 2001. This acceleration took place during a period of financial innovation, which included the emergence of structured finance, the spread of "universal banking", which combines commercial and investment banking and proprietary trading activities, and significant growth in the hedge fund industry to which banks offer prime brokerage and other services.

So how big was the risk of the credit crisis on these foreign dollar positions?

Were all liabilities to non-banks treated as short-term funding, the upper-bound estimate would be $6.5 trillion.

Many of these dollar short positions held by foreign banks was the result of participation in complex derivatives in a market that had grown to around $600 trillion. This short-term funding liability was little more than one percent of the derivative total.

Figure 1

And it is this amount and potentially more that the Federal Reserve was attempting to cover in the action taken by the FOMC. In other words, the Federal Reserve became the buyer of last resort in an effort to avert further crises with the taxpayer, ultimately being on the hook for the tab!

The BIS paper highlighted just how little was known about the structure and complexities of international bank balance sheets and their dependence on one another thanks to financial globalization. It also exposed the risks that grew from this trend and growing use of foreign exchange swaps and other derivatives.

When the credit crisis hit and Lehman Brothers collapsed, short-term currency funding sources were seriously compromised, which many believe required that a buyer of last resort step into the fray. These problems became most acute in smaller countries like Iceland, that had become heavily reliant on complex derivatives and foreign banks to provide a funding backstop in case something went wrong. And in 2008, that is exactly what happened.

But what happens when the next crisis strikes? Will the Federal Reserve be ready and able to again act as buyer of last resort and provide necessary liquidity? And who assumes the risks of this action? As we have learned in the past year, it will be the US taxpayer.

This was just one event in a series of events that were part of a larger global crisis that some experts would have us believe threatened our financial system.

A Year After TARP - Was It Necessary?

Another quickly improvised solution to the 2008 crisis was the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), introduced by Secretary Treasurer Hank Paulson in September 2008. Without it, we were told, the financial fabric of our country would have been irrevocably torn with untold consequences. Given this supposed threat, Congress quickly approved TARP on October 3, 2008.

A year after TARP, what has it accomplished? A paper by Florida State University Professor Randall Holcombe published recently sought to address this question.

Figure 2 - Chart from the Federal Reserve showing the effect of TARP, a reduction in commercial and industrial bank lending by commercial banks, which is the opposite of the intention (we were told at the time) of the program. Based on the amount of money spent to date, this chart should make you sick to your stomach.

So what risks did the credit crisis pose based on these foreign dollar positions?

In his opinion, TARP was neither necessary nor has it worked (see Figure 2).

To look at the first question, consider what TARP was designed to do. Secretary Paulson said interbank lending had dried up because banks had toxic assets (mortgage-backed securities) clogging their portfolios. Because nobody knew what they were worth, banks were uncertain of the financial security of other banks. This uncertainty caused a reluctance to lend and prompted the financial markets to lock up.

The solution, Paulson argued, was to approve TARP and use $700 billion to buy the toxic assets. Replacing the assets with Treasury securities would fortify bank balance sheets and interbank lending would resume.

Dr. Holcombe pulls no punches in his synopsis.

It is easy to say the program wasn't necessary, despite Paulson's arguments, because the TARP money wasn't used to buy toxic assets. TARP money was instead used to buy preferred stock in banks, shoring up their balance sheets by giving the federal government part ownership of the banks.

Nine of the largest banks were forced to issue stock to the Treasury, paid for with TARP money, even though several of the banks tried to opt out. Secretary Paulson said that if some of the big banks participated and others didn't, it would identify their varying levels of weakness, which Paulson believed was undesirable.

Instead of buying up toxic assets, the TARP money was used to partially nationalize the banking industry. It was also used for a federal takeover of AIG (after it was initially rescued by the Fed) and the bailout of Chrysler and General Motors.

He admits that without this sizable taxpayer infusion some banks would have failed, but he believes that wouldn't have been so bad.

When firms take risks, they must balance the potential profits from success against the potential losses from failure, and the TARP support removes the last part of that balancing act. There may have been some dislocations in the short run from bank failures, but in the long run allowing them to go under preserves the incentive structure that fuels a market economy. Banks are financial intermediaries that match up borrowers and lenders. When a bank goes under, it does not reduce the amount of money available to borrowers, or prevent savers from providing money that can be lent. Other financial intermediaries are available to borrowers and lenders to replace the activities that failed banks would have performed.

We contacted Professor Holcombe this week to discuss his article with him. His comments provide an excellent TARP overview and epilog.

As to the stimulus package and bailouts, they are both counterproductive. As the economy now enters a recovery, the "stimulus" spending will divert resources from the private sector into government spending, which will slow the recovery.

In hindsight we can see the folly of the auto industry bailout. The justification was to give them a source of temporary funding so they could avoid bankruptcy, but they went into bankruptcy anyway. Now, GM is 61% owned by the federal government, which will make it harder for the company to survive long-term than if it had just gone through a regular bankruptcy proceeding last December rather than getting its first distribution of bailout money.

His comment that stimulus spending "will divert resources from the private sector (and real jobs creator) into government spending, which will slow recovery" is significant. That is exactly what happened during the Great Depression with FDR's New Deal (and other programs). It has also proven to be true as a result of the official response from the Japanese government following the breaking of its asset bubble in 1990 over the last two decades in Japan.

The huge difference in the economies of the U.S. in the 1930s and Japan in the 1990s is that complex derivative ticking time-bombs did not exist at the time, which will make the next crisis far more "interesting."

Definitions

Currency Swap
A currency swap is a financial derivative and an arrangement in which two parties exchange specific amounts of different currencies initially and a series of interest payments on the initial cash flows are exchanged. Often, one party will pay a fixed interest rate, while another will pay a floating exchange rate (though there may also be fixed-fixed and floating-floating arrangements). At the maturity of the swap, the principal amounts are exchanged back. Unlike an interest rate swap, the principal and interest are both exchanged in full in a currency swap. http://www.investorwords.com/1244/currency_swap.html

Derivatives
Warren Buffett describes them as "financial weapons of mass destruction" for good reason. A derivative is a financial contract whose value is derived from the performance of underlying market factors, such as interest rates, currency exchange rates, and commodity/equity prices. Derivative transactions include a wide assortment of financial contracts including structured debt obligations and deposits, swaps, futures, options, caps, floors, collars, forwards and various combinations thereof.

Related Stories and Links:

Alan Grayson and Ben Bernanke Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0NYBTkE1yQ

US Dollar Shortage in Global Banking and the International Policy Response
http://www.bis.org/publ/work291.pdf?noframes=1

How the Federal Reserve Bailed Out the World
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-federal-reserve-bailed-out-world

A Year After TARP: $700 Billion Down the Drain - Holcombe
http://blog.mises.org/archives/010873.asp

Economist - Down with the Dollar, Why the Dollar Is Falling
http://ow.ly/15W3ht

Dollar to Hit 50 Yen, Cease as Reserve
http://ow.ly/v6hS

Russia Ready to Abandon Dollar in Oil, Gas Trade with China
http://ow.ly/v5Ru

Iran Joins List of Nations in Moving Away from the Dollar...
http://ow.ly/v5QZ

Attaboy Jack!

I put my dad on a plane back to Tennessee on Monday after enjoying another successful bird hunting trip with him. We had great weather, which made for incredible hunting. We recapped the entire experience with friends and family, while enjoying incredible southern cuisine. My new hunting dog Jack made it all possible by exceeding my wildest expectations and performing like an experienced dog well beyond his years. I owe a special thanks to my good friend Brian King for helping me plan a special pheasant and chukkar hunt for us on his ranch.

On our last day, I took my oldest daughter Sarah so she could share this special time with her Papaw. Below is a picture of Sarah and me as we stop for a rest.

I don't think I could have wiped that smile off her face.

My dad and I have been going on this hunt for 12 years and it seems like I enjoy each hunt more than the last. My father turns 70 in March and I know our bird hunting days are numbered, so I am blessed to spend this special time with my dad. For next year, I am in the planning stages of a two-week hunt across Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota. If you are a bird hunter and can help me plan some stops along the way, I would welcome your call.

Working to grow your wealth,

John M. McClure
President & CEO
ProfitScore Capital Management, Inc.

P.S. If you would like to hire us to help you navigate this difficult bear market, below are three ways to contact us:

Complete our Private Client Group request form by clicking here http://profitscore.com/insight.aspx and submitting your contact information. (This is the most preferred method.)
Call us directly at (800) 731-5690.
Simply send us an email to info @ profitscore.com.

Someone will contact you within 24 hours of receiving your information.

G-7 To Discuss Currencies?

ChuckButler — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:23:00 GMT

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In This Issue..

* The ball is in the dollar's court today...
* Aussie is unable to hold 14-month high...
* China and Eurozone print stronger PMI's
* Chock-full-o-data today...

And Now... Today's Pfennig!

G-7 To Discuss Currencies?

Good day... Welcome to October! And a Tub Thumpin' Thursday to you! No real reason to get Tub Thumpin', but I thought why not? The non-dollar currencies have given back their gains made yesterday to the dollar, in a game of what seems to be, give and take... A tennis match with the dollar, one day the ball is in the dollar's court, and the next day it's not! Really, kind of giving me a rash, watching this... I want some direction here!

So... When I turned on all my screens this morning, and then waited about 20 minutes for the new programs to be installed on them that the IT people left for the next time the computer started up... Hmmm, where was I? Oh! I was talking about when I first saw the currencies this morning... I saw that the euro had fallen back to 1.4560... And of course wanted to find out why...

Well, it seems that the G-7 Finance Ministers are going to meet this week, and there is already some discussion that the euro's rise will be discussed... OK... Currencies traders took this to mean that these mental giants in the G-7 will do something to stem the rise of the euro... Of course, the G-7 Fin Mins might just be discussing how impressive the euro's gains have been VS the dollar this year! HA!

This plays well with the thought I had and shared with you the other day, regarding Central Bankers from Japan and the Eurozone propping up the dollar... Trust me folks, these guys are smart puppies, and can see the writing on the wall for the dollar, just like you, me and the guy down the street that cuts his grass early in the morning... The last thing they want to happen is for everyone to get the idea that these Central Bankers won't prop up the dollar, for if that were to happen, it would spring open Pandora's Box of currency disasters for the dollar!

The Eurozone did receive some strong data this morning.... The latest Eurozone PMI printed. Eurozone PMI is just like here in the U.S. it's a measurement of the manufacturing activity. But only in the Eurozone it takes in all 16 member countries. This activity is then put into an index so that it can be easily monitored. And just like here in the U.S. the line in the sand of whether manufacturing is contracting or expanding is 50...

Eurozone PMI rose for the 5 straight month, but remained under 50, posting a 49.3 in September... But the trend is manufacturing's friend here, I would think, as it has risen steadily for the past 5 months.

Let's talk about something other than the Eurozone... The other day, I was interviewed by Reuters about dollar / yen. I told them that the Japanese yen did not have the fundamentals to support an 88 figure, which it had hit on two occasions in the past week. Well... The Japanese Tankan report, which takes the pulse of the economic activity in Japan, backed up what I had said earlier, when it reported that "Japanese companies plan to deepen investment cuts as profits slump, inhibiting the recovery from the nation's worst postwar recession."

Speaking of interviews... I did a quick one in a chat room at DTI, which is an investment education company. This quick interview was just a "teaser" for a full fledged 30 minutes of "Chuck speak" that will happen next Monday at 1:30 CT... It will be a power point presentation that comes across on your computer, with me talking over it... Sounds like it will be tre' cool... If you want to find out more click here... http://www.dtitrader.com/trading_education_MMM_everbank.htm

With the euro backing off this morning, the rest of the non-dollar currencies are doing the same. Aussie and kiwi have not been able to hold onto gains they made yesterday, and the rest of the currencies just fall in line. You know what I always say when this happens don't you? That's right... It gives everyone an opportunity to buy at cheaper levels than yesterday!

The other day, after the S&P/CaseShiller Home Price Index number printed and showed a month-to-month rise in home prices, I thought to myself, is this really something that can catch hold and continue to rise? I then began to put together a list of the "risks" to continued Home Price increases... The list as I have it:

1. 1.5 million homes on the dockets for foreclosure
2. 10% unemployment, with 39% unemployed for more than 6 months...
3. The potential stock market correction
4. The end of the 8% tax credit for first time home buyers, (that son, Andrew took advantage of this summer!)

Long Time Friend... Ed Bonawitz, agreed the list and added that if we just look at how the auto industry fell back into an abyss after the cash for clunkers program ended, imagine what the end of the 8% tax credit program will do...

I was talking with a customer yesterday that has traveled quite a bit over the years, and had businesses in China and Indonesia, etc. I asked him the question that everyone asks me all the time, regarding China's data... When I'm asked whether this is good data or not, I usually reply that I don't live there, so I have no other choice but to take it as printed... But, my customer, told me that he believed that, for instance, if China printed a 10% GDP, that it's probably inflated by 50%! YIKES!

So, with that in mind, China printed their PMI for September last night, and, according to the Chinese, it rose .3% to 54.3%... Again, a number for a PMI above 50 indicates expansion... So... Even if the Chinese inflated the data, their manufacturing sector would still be performing in an expansion mode...

And... What's good for the goose (China) is good for the gander (Australia)! I told you earlier that the Aussie dollar (A$) was not able to hold it's gains made yesterday that brought the A$ to .8859, a 14-month high for the currency. China is now on holiday for the next week, so the A$ will have to find some traction from other areas... So, it's not out of the realm of possibilities that the A$ drifts in the next week...

I see where Big Ben Bernanke will be giving some prepared remarks to lawmakers this morning about the need for strong consumer protection of financial services... Hmmm... This makes me laugh, and laugh hard! Isn't this kind of like the fox telling the farmer the need to secure the hen house after it's been raided?

I mean, the Fed had the control, the supervisory power, to protect consumers from the lending practices that went on but did they? NO! They turned their heads and looked the other way, while the mortgage mess grew and grew... Just like a child... If you look the other way when they misbehave, then the misbehaving will get worse, and worse...

Seems Big Ben was a little upset a couple of months ago, when it was proposed that there would be a new Consumer Protection Agency... He felt like the Fed was being knocked down a notch, and he criticized the proposal... I doubt he'll go down that road again, as I'm certain, he received a "memo" from the powers to be, which told him to shut his trap and go with the President's plan...

The data cupboard today yields the U.S. version of PMI, which we changed to ISM a few years ago... The ISM in the U.S. went back above 50 in August, and is expected to have gained a bit in September. This is good news for the economy... But one has to wonder about what happens after the all the build up for the cars for clunkers program filters through... But, with the dollar much weaker than 6 months ago, manufacturing certainly gets a lift.

We'll also see Personal Income and Spending, which unfortunately has shifted back to the days of us spending more than we make... Didn't we learn anything? It's Thursday, so the Weekly Initial Jobless Claims will print... And then rounding out the data today are reports on Vehicle Sales, and Pending Home Sales... So a very busy day at the data cupboard!

OK... Before I go to the recap and the currency round-up, I just had a thought about today's actions in the currencies VS the dollar. The Asian and European sessions sold the currencies and bought dollars... When the NY guys and girls arrive and see what has happened overnight, I suspect we'll see more selling, as they will have orders to fill... So... The cheaper levels could be still to come today...

Then there was this... Bank of America's CEO Ken Lewis announced his retirement... I find this to be somewhat strange... Very strange indeed...

To recap... The ball is back in the dollar's court today, as G-7 gets set to meet this weekend and maybe discuss the euro's rise... Japan's Tankan supports my belief that there are no fundamentals that support a yen at 88, and the Eurozone posts its 5th consecutive gain in manufacturing...

Currencies today 10/1/09: A$ .8790, kiwi .7210, C$ .9315, euro 1.4555, sterling 1.5990, Swiss .9590, rand 7.6645, krone 5.80, SEK 6.99, forint 185.65, zloty 2.9050, koruna 17.45, RUB 30.09, yen 90, sing 1.4125, HKD 7.75, INR 47.76, China 6.8265, pesos 13.55, BRL 1.7665, dollar index 77.10, Oil $70.10, 10-year 3.30%, Silver $16.61, and Gold... $1,005.25

That's it for today... Got my car back last night, glad for that! It's Thursday, so it must be raining! I'm still waiting for the real Cardinals to start playing baseball again! So, the 3rd QTR just ended... That means colder weather is ahead of us, and not that I'm going to begin complaining about cold weather now, but I will remind everyone that I've gotta go where it's warm! I bet your NFL team is better than ours! The lambs, I mean the Rams, are really bad... But, they are our team, and having a bad team is better than having no team, which we all experienced when the Big Red (football Cardinals) left for Arizona in 1989... OK... I woke up 15 minutes before my alarm was to go off this morning, as if, I needed to wake up any earlier! UGH! I'm going to hit send, and hope you have a Tub Thumpin' Thursday!

Chuck Butler
President
EverBank World Markets
1-800-926-4922
1-314-647-3837

Oops, Did I Say That Out Loud?

ChuckButler — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:36:53 GMT

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In This Issue..

* A Wild and Wacky Wednesday...
* FOMC leave stimulus and QE in place...
* Will G-20 try to throw cold water on commodities?
* GATA receives a letter from the Fed...

And Now... Today's Pfennig!

Oops, Did I Say That Out Loud?

Good day... And a Thunderin' Thursday to you! It's Thundering and raining here, so I felt that naming today a "Thunderin' Thursday" was bang on! We had a wild and wacky Wednesday yesterday, with the Fed Heads playing the part of the court jester... And... I want to know, right here, right now, why the media isn't blasting Fed Head Honcho Big Ben Bernanke! I'll tell you why they should be, in a minute...

OK... As I said, we had a wild and wacky Wednesday yesterday, as the non-dollar currencies went for a spin on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, with Big Ben Bernanke in the role of Mr. Toad! HA! That makes me chuckle! Here's the skinny, and what everyone should be up in arms about...

The FOMC meeting concluded with interest rates remaining at near zero... But what happened next was, well, exactly as I said it would happen, but we'll get back to that in a minute... What I'm talking about here is that the Big Ben's band of merry men announced that the U.S. economy's return to growth was insufficient to withdraw stimulus, and that quantitative easing would remain until March next year... WHAT!

HEY BIG BEN! I read in the Financial Times the other day, yes, the Financial Times, that you said the recession was likely over! I also read in another publication that you said basically the same thing... So! If what you told these fine publications is true... Why then do we need stimulus in place along with Quantitative Easing until next March? You could almost hear Big Ben saying... "Oops, did I say that out loud?" HA!

Doesn't that just tick you off? Big Ben and the President going around telling people that it's all clear and consumers can come out now and resume their spending, only to find out it was nothing but "feel good" stuff... Yes, stuff to make us "feel good"... So we would take our eye off the ball... But not me! You can't fool a wiley old veteran like me, right Jack Milner? I'm not falling for that change-up... And it ticks me off that they thought I was so stupid to fall for that!

Ok... Let's take a trip back to Monday of this week, when I was trying to explain why the dollar had reversed the negativity toward it... I said this in the Pfennig on Monday... "Seriously though, the markets are of the belief that the Fed will keep rates near zero, but will announce that they will begin to remove stimulus, as Head Fed Honcho, Big Ben Bernanke, believes the recession is over...

I think this is wishful thinking on the markets' part, as I really don't see the Fed Heads doing anything, but talking about doing this, that and the other thing. You see, the Fed Heads know all too well that the Commercial Real Estate problems are just beginning and with Unemployment."

I've been more right about what the Fed Heads were going to do, for the last 2 years, than Big Ben!

OK... So, here's where the wild and wacky comes in... The non-dollar currencies were hanging around on a corner trading in a tight range, when the announcement of further stimulus and Quantitative Easing was made... You should have seen the non-dollar currencies begin to run up VS the dollar... It was crazy, I mean in a manner of minutes the euro traded from 1.4765, to 1.4850, and Gold? It was soaring too! But then it was one of those a-ha minutes, and no, I'm not talking about the 80's group singing Take Me On! No, it was one of those head slapping moments when you say... Wow, I could have had a V-8!

Basically, investors figured out that by leaving the stimulus in place longer than originally planned, the Cartel, I mean the Fed, is confirming that the U.S. economic recovery isn't nearly as robust as Big Ben and his compatriots have led everyone to believe. Stock markets fell, and the Treasury rates rose.

With the stocks backing off, the risk assets of currencies and precious metals backed off VS the dollar... And, we ended the day, where we started it... A wild and wacky Wednesday for sure!

The overnight markets were very confused as to what direction they should take... So, as I turn on the screens this morning, the euro is 1.4775, and Gold is $1,014... About the same as yesterday morning... If you weren't around for the spin on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, then you would think... "How boring these currencies and metals are"... HA!

The thing that keeps haunting me here with yesterday's stock sell off... Could it be the next leg down that I keep warning you about? Could yesterday's sell off be the harbinger of more selling? We'll have to keep an eye on this, folks... If we see 3 or 4 days of consecutive selling, it could very well be the indication that the next leg down is here...

Well... The other day I mentioned that the dollar could very well be the last man standing when it comes to near zero interest rates, and that could lead to the dollar becoming the next funding currency for the Carry Trade...

Ty brought to my attention this fact that plays quite well with that thought... For the 1st time since 1933, 3 month LIBOR rates in the U.S. (.28563) are lower than Japanese Yen 3 month LIBOR rates (.34875)

And one wonders why, the dollar is getting beaten like a rented mule? (no animals were hurt!)

A reader called in yesterday and wanted to know what I thought regarding... how a new SDR would affect the currencies. (Specifically NOK, AUS, BRL, CHF)

Well... That's a tough one! Because if we do end up with a new SDR, no one knows what the makeup of that SDR will be... So, I can't say how it would affect any currency until we begin down that road to a new SDR... If the current makeup of an SDR is used, then euro, yen, sterling and dollars would benefit... But one has to think that if things come to pass and we start down that road of a new SDR (Special Drawing Rights) that the makeup would be quite different, and could possibly even have some Gold as a component!

So... Sorry, I can't really answer the question, because it's an unknown... I hope my beautiful bride reads this part, as she usually only reads the first and last paragraphs, because she always contends that if I don't know the answer to a question that I just make something up... See, dear? I said I couldn't answer the question!

Ok... G-20 begins today... Look for these knuckleheads to take a toughened stance on speculation, with Oil in mind... I think that all they will do is make things tough for the Commodity Currencies of Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and Norway... There's also an outside chance that these knuckleheads will attempt to do something to limit the rise in currencies VS the dollar... In other words, prop up the dollar... I'm not convinced they could do that, and I am convinced they shouldn't do that!

Speaking of Norway... The Norges Bank (Norway's Central Bank) did as I thought they would with rates, and what I hoped they would do with their statement... Here's the skinny... The Norges Bank left rates unchanged... But... Said after the rate announcement that "they were CONSIDERING a rate hike"... The Norwegian krone went on a moon shot immediately after that statement.

In the race between Norway and Australia as to which will be the first to hike rates, Norway takes the lead, with that announcement yesterday... But, it really doesn't matter, as no one will get the checkered flag or anything... The thing that makes the difference is that the yield differentials to the U.S. will begin to grow wider... And that, my friends, will go a long way toward currency strength for the currency that rewards investors with higher yields!

Speaking of Australia... The Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) semi-annual Financial Stability Review gave a generally clean bill of health to the banking system and noted sentiment among households and business had improved considerably in recent months... But... The RBA went on to caution that it was not strong enough yet... Which then puts the Aussie rate hike forecast further behind Norway's...

In New Zealand overnight... It's been a good week o' data for the Kiwis... Last night, it was the latest Consumer Confidence Index which jumped to a 4 - year high of 120.3 (previous reading was 106)! WOW! So... The highest Consumer Confidence in 4 years! This news helped kiwi to remain above 72-cents... Even with the risk assets sell off...

In Germany this morning... The Business Climate Index, as reported by the think tank IFO, disappointed a bit, as it came in (91.3) lower than forecast (92), but... The 91.3 marked the 6th consecutive monthly increase for the data... So, the trend is still in place...

And it's good to be the yen, eh? I mean, recently, we've seen yen rally when the other currencies rally VS the dollar... And before that, we've seen yen rally along with the dollar... Last night, yen rallied alongside the dollar, and is trading with a 90 handle this morning...

And then there was this... The Federal Reserve System has disclosed to the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. (GATA) that it has gold swap arrangements with foreign banks that it does not want the public to know about. WOW! This is a BIG DEAL folks, as the Fed as recently as 2001 (Big Al Greenspan) denied that these swap arrangements existed...

GATA believes that this letter suggests that the Fed is indeed very much involved in the surreptitious international central bank manipulation of the gold price particularly and the currency markets generally.

So guess what I think regarding the Fed now? That Ron Paul's bill to audit the Fed needs to get on a roll! Remember, it comes before a committee tomorrow, I believe, where it will be decided to forward the bill on or kill it... So, call your representative and tell them you believe they should back Ron Paul's bill to audit the Fed! I've got a bag full of names to call these guys at the cartel, I mean Fed... But, those are verbally used only... Nothing in writing... Hey! This is a family safe letter!

OK... So, to recap... The Fed is leaving stimulus in place along with Quantitative Easing until next March. So much for Big Ben, and the President's claim that the recession is over, eh? The currencies rallied at first on the Fed's announcement, but later realized the rot on the economy's vine has been exposed by the Fed, and then the currencies sold off VS the dollar to end the day unchanged...

Currencies today 9/24/09: .8745, kiwi .7235, C$ .93, euro 1.4775, sterling 1.6220, Swiss .9770, rand 7.3850, krone 5.7630, SEK 6.8380, forint 183.15, zloty 2.82, koruna 17.04, RUB 29.99, yen 90.60, sing 1.4110, HKD 7.75, INR 48.03, China 6.8273, pesos 13.37, BRL 1.7980, dollar index 76.25, Oil $68.36, 10-year 3.41%, Silver $16.81, and Gold... $1,014.10

That's it for today... Cardinals missed a chance to clinch last night, but the magic number falls to 1... Today, our colleague, Don Ries, celebrates his birthday... Don and I have worked together, off and on since 1989... He's our "Bond Daddy"! Or, I guess I should say "Bond Granddaddy"! We had a MarketSafe CD mature this week. It was a 3 year CD in the AIG / Dow Jones Commodity Index, and it returned a little less than 2%... Which isn't anything to write home about, but, as I tell people these days, "it's better to have a return of capital than a return on capital! We're going to extend the BRIC MarketSafe to another funding date in November, but that will be the last funding for that CD. The BRIC has been quite popular, I must say... I have 3 hours of Continuing Education on the docket this morning... This is my 3 broker licenses... Oh boy! Talk about brain death! OK... I've got to get this out the door... I hope everyone arrives to work dry, as it's a Thunderin' Thursday!

Chuck Butler
President
EverBank World Markets
1-800-926-4922
1-314-647-3837

Retail Sales Soar!

ChuckButler — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:20:00 GMT

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In This Issue..

* Currencies rally on Retail Sales!
* China likes investments in Canada...
* Big Ben the "inflation fighter"...
* Gold climbs to $1,018!

And Now... Today's Pfennig!

Retail Sales Soar!

Good day... And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Good news for me this morning, the pain in my left knee has subsided... Now, If I could just get that swelling to go down, I'd be in tall cotton! This has been quite the ordeal on the old Pfennig writer, and one that I will be glad to put in the rear view mirror!

Well... When I turned on the currency screens this morning, the euro was trading with a 1.47 handle! WOW! It just skipped to my Lou right through the 1.46 handle, eh? It began yesterday afternoon, the dollar was getting sold on the news of a strong Retail Sales figure, more on that in a minute, and the euro was edging up the 1.46 ladder... The move to get it past 1.47 came in the overnight markets... Now, having gotten you all lathered up about 1.47, I have to say that since I turned on the currency screens, the euro has lost ground back to 1.4688, but still... That's quite an impressive move from yesterday morning, eh?

OK... The issue with the Retail Sales figure causing dollar weakness is a time honored tradition... NOT! Well, it is if you only count the last 9 months... But traditionally, a figure like the one that printed yesterday, would have attracted buyers for the dollar, not the opposite that occurred... Here's the skinny, as I see it...

Retail Sales for August were quite strong, and showed signs that the move was more than the Cash for Clunkers program, and Back to School buying... There are quite a few people/ economists/ analysts out there now jumping on the President's bandwagon that the recession is over based on this report... For those of you at home keeping score, Retail Sales for August printed at +2.7%!

Does one Retail Sales report that's being trumped up with a Government Deficit Spending program, and Back to School buying really tell us that the recession is over? Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? HA! (from Animal House, I know very well the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor)... You know, it kind of ruins the funny line when you have to make disclaimers... But... I've had people send me emails before telling me, that I should know better that the Germans didn't bomb Pearl Harbor!

OK, I went off on a tangent there, eh? Any way... I wonder if all those people wearing the President endorsed end of the recession rose colored glasses ever stopped to wonder if gas purchases might have helped trump up this figure? Well, I did, you knew I would! And I found that rising gasoline prices sent service station receipts up 5.1% in the month. If we had journalists like we used to have, they would have known to go look at the rising gas price component of the report, since just last week the Trade Deficit jumped by 16% in one month due to rising oil prices!

So... With Retail Sales shooting toward the moon, the dollar selling increased... Because, if the thought here (and not my thought!) is that if Retail Sales are jumping again, it must mean the U.S. Consumer is buying again, and that will help kick the global recession in the rear, and the risk takers come out of the walls, the U.S. Treasury "safe haven" buyers sell to get out of their losses, and they all go to better investments... It may be what they think, to be better... Stocks... But for the most part, these investors seek out higher yielding or better income potential investments... And you won't find those on the Big Board... You won't find them at the local bond house... You'll only find them abroad, in foreign deposit rates, and foreign bond yields...

Now... That everyone is all lathered up about this euphoria going on in the markets... I'm still keeping a light on for a HUGE stock market sell off, which would adversely affect the values of all these risk assets that risk takers have been going into... Commodities, currencies, stocks would all be affected...

However, if that HUGE sell off never comes... Who wants to stand in front of the bus that has Gold above $1,000 and the euro posting a nearly 17% gains since March 1st... But that's nothing folks! The New Zealand dollar (kiwi) has gained 44% since March 1st... The list of currency gains since March 1st is amazing... Simply amazing... Here's a sample... Aussie dollars +38%, Norway +23%, loonies +21%, and so on... So, now you see the bus that I'm talking about!

Big Ben Bernanke had this to say yesterday... "Even though from a technical perspective the recession is very likely over at this point, it's still going to feel like a very weak economy for some time." He also said that he "may have to accept a slow recovery and high unemployment as the price for defending my inflation fighting credentials."

Ok.. Excuse me for a minute, I have to go in the other room and either laugh my rear off or, throw up! Big Ben has "inflation fighting credentials"? Since when? And just where is he hiding these credentials? Or... Maybe his description of "inflation fighting credentials" is different from mine! Hmmm... I shake my head in disgust...

Speaking of the Fed and inflation... My good friend, David Galland, who writes an absolutely fabulous daily letter regarding the goings on in the world called "Casey's Daily Dispatch", and can be found here: http://www.caseyresearch.com/casey-services/free-publications/caseys-daily-dispatch/ , had this to say yesterday regarding this subject of the Fed and inflation...

"Reason Magazine is one of the few magazines I read with any regularity. In the current edition, they had a couple of items that I thought were especially interesting. Ironic, actually.

The first was about a comic book the Fed has published discussing inflation, as well as defending its autonomy. You can view it by following the link below. What you should find interesting is that they make several clear mistakes in describing inflation - for instance, by saying that if the price of oil goes up, that causes inflation. And on the very first page, they state that "The dictionary defines inflation as a substantial and continuing rise in the general price level."

But that is not what the dictionary says - every entry I checked always includes ". related to an increase in the volume of money," or words to that effect. Kind of scary, when the organization charged with fighting inflation doesn't actually know what it is.

You can read the comic yourself here, straight off the New York Fed's website. http://ia301540.us.archive.org/2/items/gov.frb.ny.comic.inflation/gov.frb.ny.comic.inflation.pdf

OK... I'm back now... I saw a report last night that showed the results of a survey that showed the Chinese are very interested in investing in Canada... It was reported that China sees energy, natural resources, agriculture and biotechnology as the most promising areas of Canada's economy... Hmmm... Isn't that the same things I've listed over the years? (well minus the biotechnology) Any way... The report also showed China having interest in the U.S. and Australia...

Money flow is a very important thing to watch in the investment world... And if money is going to be flowing into Canada and Australia from China, that will be good for those countries and their respective currencies. As far as the U.S. is concerned... Forgetaboutit! Remember when China wanted to buy that oil company in California a couple of years ago? I doubt that China will want to get dragged through a mile of broken glass and razor blades again!

Yesterday, I told you about the dollar denominated bonds being issued by Germany, and how I viewed it as a green light from Big Ben Bernanke for other countries to take over the destruction of the dollar, that the Fed has carried the flag for since 1913... I told you I had another frightening thing that I would bring to you this morning... So with no further delay...

The Chinese government has told Chinese companies they do not have to honor derivatives and commodity futures contracts made with Western financial institutions. Ruh-Roh...

This appears to be one of those things that passes in the night, and then one day smacks us right between the eyes, and we say, "Where did that come from?" Well... If came from the Chinese Gov't that told Chinese companies that they did not have to honor derivatives and commodity futures contracts made with Western financial institutions... That's where!

Ok, I can hear you saying, How can they do that, Chuck? Well... When you're a 200 pound gorilla, you can sit where you want, and you can do what you want! China is taking the stance that you come get us, if you think you were wronged!

What does this do to the institutions that wrote these contracts with China, Chuck? Well... That's the cheese that binds folks... It's going to hurt... And it's going to hurt bad... But, nobody really knows just how many or how much risk is out there... But, if one day you wake up and hear on the news that the financial markets here are melting down once again, you'll be able to say... Ahhh, it must be that Chinese announcement that Chuck talked about!

Big Al Greenspan was back in the news last night... First, I want to quiz you on something...
Who said, "In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value."

Well... You'll never guess who, so I might as well tell you, but when you hear it you'll bust a gut, given the whole low interest rate, high money supply environment he created at the Fed... It was..... Drum roll please... Alan Greenspan, from an article written in 1966 entitled "Gold and Economic Freedom"

Any way... Big Al was back in the news, and said that he's worried that lawmakers will hamper the Fed's efforts to rein in its monetary stimulus, and that inflation might "swamp" the bond market. See, how Big Al is sticking up for the Fed, and putting down the groundwork now, to blame lawmakers when inflation is soaring on the other side of the recession?

Big Al is dastardly... I wouldn't be surprised to see a Commie flag nailed to the wall of his garage! HA! Long time readers know my dislike for this guy as a Fed Head, and how he might now have paved the road to this mess we've been in, but he laid the foundation!

OK... The data cupboard will yield a boat load of data today, and it will interesting to see how the dollar reacts to it... Leading off for the data cupboard today is the stupid CPI data for August... Batting second is the Current Account Deficit, and in the all important third position in the batting order we have The Tic Flows, batting clean-up is Chuck's faves Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization... WOW! What a line-up! A Murderer's Row for data if you will!

Since no one but me and my friends over at the Daily Reckoning and 5-minute Forecast, seem to care about the Deficits, the markets will probably wax over the Current Account Deficit... And I don't care about CPI... So that brings us the TIC Flows for July, and I'm fearful that this data will be harmful to our future... And the experts are forecasting a bump up in Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, which would indicate a stronger economy, and given what we saw yesterday with the stronger Retail Sales, one would think that a bump up in Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization would be bad for the dollar...

Finally... Someone with some brains! I was beginning to think that these guys were all kin to the scarecrow! Yesterday, I told you about how the new governing party in Japan is calling for increased currency intervention... Well, finally someone that understands! Japanese Finance Minister, Fujii, said that he is "against intervention if their moves are gradual, and that I don't think they are fluctuating rapidly now."

It looks like currency traders in the overnight markets were paying attention, and immediately began buying up Japanese yen... The yen is pushing the envelope once again to a sub 90 level... And that! Would be a very good thing for yen holders!

While I'm on "feel good stories"... I might as well mention that Gold has finally made a strong move above $1,000, moving to $1,018 as I write! Silver is kicking tail and taking names later too, with a strong move to $17.35! The Retail Sales data in the U.S. yesterday kicked off a new phase of "inflation protection buying"

OK... To recap today... Retail Sales in the U.S. were very strong, setting off a new wave of dollar selling, to currencies and precious metals. China likes Canada and Australia, and China tells their companies not to honor derivative contracts with Western institutions. And we have a boat load of data to get through today in the U.S.

Currencies today 9/16: A$ .8720, kiwi .7135, C$ .9365, euro 1.4680, sterling 1.6525, Swiss .9665, rand 7.3625, krone 5.8615, SEK 6.9070, forint 184, zloty 2.8240, koruna 17.27, RUB 30.61, yen 90.30, sing 1.4120, HKD 7.75, INR 48.24, China 6.8260, pesos 13.24, BRL 1.8030, dollar index 76.30, Oil $70.75, 10-year 3.40%, Silver $17.35, and Gold... $1,017.50

That's it for today... I just looked up and noticed I was running late with the Pfennig this morning. UGH! So, I guess it's good that I don't have a lot to talk about here... I was going to the day game today... But had to back out because of the problem with my knee... But now the pain is subsiding... I wonder if there's still a ticket... Nah... I gave it away! Go Cards! As a part of the hockey Blues web site, they have a picture of Chris Gaffney's son, Brendan! He's a star! Chris has taken Brendan to hockey games since he could barely see over the side boards. When the games were on TV, you could watch Brendan running back and forth in his space, as Chris has ticket along the glass! Ok... Enough... Time to roll, April Showers is here, and that means I'm late! I sure hope your Wednesday is Wonderful!

Chuck Butler
President
EverBank World Markets
1-800-926-4922
1-314-647-3837

Bernanke sticks to his script...

ChuckButler — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:19:15 GMT

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In This Issue..

* Bernanke sticks to the script...
* Pound sterling comes under pressure...
* China starts shopping for assets...
* BRIC MarketSafe lights up the phones...

And Now... Today's Pfennig!

Bernanke sticks to his script...

Good day... We had a very busy day on the desk yesterday, as our newest MarketSafe offering, based on the BRIC currencies, is making the phones ring off the hook. But while we were busy, the currency traders had another slow day as the dollar just drifted throughout the day. The return chart for the last 24 hours shows only one currency made more than a .5% move vs. the US$; and that was the South African Rand which increased .75%.

The markets were watching Ben Bernanke's congressional testimony through most of the day, but those waiting for a surprise were disappointed. Bernanke stuck to the script which he had laid out the day before in the Wall Street Journal, and the members of the House Financial Services Committee couldn't get him to commit to any 'new' stimulus programs. Bernanke said the economy is showing "tentative signs of stabilization" but the central bank intends to continue to maintain its "highly accommodative" monetary policy for "an extended period". He indicated that the Fed stands ready to tighten policy, but only after the economic recovery takes hold and pressures holding down inflation diminish.

The Fed Chairman also reiterated his desire to keep the Fed independent from additional congressional oversight. As Chuck reported a while back, 275 legislators sponsored a bill to repeal the immunity of the central bank from audits of monetary policy. Bernanke said the bill would "open a Pandora's box" for Congress's Government Accountability Office to probe monetary policy. While I don't necessarily think the folks in Congress are any more adept at handling the financial crisis (more on that later), I am a fan of opening up the books and letting the 'owners of the government', (the taxpayers) see just what all of their taxes are being spent on. Again, I'm not advocating that the Fed should seek congressional approval for every move they make, but I do think an after the fact audit is a good thing. I just get the feeling Bernanke and his pals are trying to hide something.

When pushed about this bill to audit the Fed, Bernanke pushed back at Congress and told them they need to cut the 'unsustainable' budget deficits. The Senate took a somewhat symbolic step toward this yesterday, by killing the F22 Raptor fighter jet program. If you hadn't been following this, it is an excellent example of how spending can spiral out of control. Back in April, Defense Secretary Robert Gates decided, with President Obama's backing, to scrap the program once it had delivered the 187 F-22s already in production. F-22 supporters in Congress ignored what the military wanted, and went ahead and budgeted another 2 billion dollars to continue production. I know 2 billion is next to nothing with the trillions that we have been talking about, but every little bit counts. If the US Government is going to get spending under control, they have to start somewhere; and killing a program that creates a plane that the military says they don't need, and don't want is a good first step.

Budget deficits aren't the exclusive problem of the US. The Pound Sterling has been coming under some selling pressure lately as the UK budget deficit swelled to a record $21.4 billion in June. This was the largest monthly budget deficit ever recorded, and is increasing pressure on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to commit to a credible plan to cut spending. Recent data coming out of the UK doesn't paint a pretty picture of the economy. Yesterday data showed that UK house price declines will persist until 2012, and another report predicted gross domestic product will keep falling until the final quarter of this year. BOE policy makers voted unanimously to maintain their asset purchase program in July, another sign that they still feel the UK economy is on shaky ground.

While the BOE and the Fed continue to use their reserves to purchase their own debt, China announced it would be looking to use its huge stash of cash to make purchase assets which have a bit more intrinsic value. A story in the FT yesterday stated that Beijing will use its foreign exchange reserves, the largest in the world, to support and accelerate overseas expansion and acquisitions by Chinese companies, according to Wen Jiabao, the country's premier.

In an interview published in state-controlled media, the chairman of China Development Bank said Chinese outbound investment would accelerate but should focus on resource-rich developing economies. "Everyone is saying we should go to the western markets to scoop up [underpriced assets]," said Chen Yuan. "I think we should not go to America's Wall Street, but should look more to places with natural and energy resources."

This is a shot across the bow for the US, and a huge boost to countries which are commodity rich, including Australia, Brazil, and Africa. This is further evidence that China is looking to slow its purchases of US treasuries, and reduce its reliance on the US dollar as its reserve currency. Investments will focus not on monetary instruments, but on physical assets in resource rich developing economies.

This may account for some of the increase we saw in the South African rand yesterday. The South African rand is now the best performing currency vs. the US$ in 2009, with an increase of over 22.5%. The news will also benefit the Brazilian real which recently climbed to the highest in more than nine months as stronger earnings and higher metal prices bolstered the outlook for Latin America's largest economy. The Brazilian real is the number two performer year to date vs. the US$, with an increase of approx. 21.5%. Anyone want to guess at #3 on the list?

It is the Australian dollar which has gained just over 15% vs. the US$ in 2009. Australia's economy is performing better than expected, with GDP rising .4% in the first quarter, helped by consumer spending and increased commodity exports. Policy makers have left interest rates unchanged two weeks ago for a third month, but the bias seems to be shifting toward tightening rates. Australia could end up being the first of the major economies to start raising rates again, which would be a big boost for this currency.

The Bank of Canada will announce their rate policy today, and are expected to leave rates unchanged. Commodity price rebounds have helped push the Canadian dollar higher, and the loonie's strength could threaten Canada's nascent recovery. The big boss, Frank Trotter traveled out to Vancouver to join Chuck yesterday, and had this to report after his plane landed:

"Making the approach into Vancouver has always been a treat. This time, for my first time ever we landed to the west - drifting down down along the Fraser River Valley with Ranier on the left and the Olympic Peninsula in the distance affording a great view out to Vancouver Island across the straights. Once down I jumped in the cab and headed for the Agora Financial 'Decade of Reckoning' Conference.

"So are you guys picking up down south?" I was jolted out of my observation of the heavy traffic at 2pm. "Haven't hit bottom yet I suspect" I replied to the cabby with an understatement. He told me that business was down, but okay. That restaurants were not full but they weren't closing. That work continues for this winter's Olympics, but everyone wonders if people will have money to travel. I'll check in after hearing what some of the experts say at the conference over the next couple days; until then this is a pretty decent place to build a gulch."

I look forward to sharing both Frank and Chuck's views from the big Agora Financial Conference up in beautiful Vancouver.

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, or new BRIC MarketSafe CD is proving to be extremely popular with investors. One reason is the tremendous upside potential of these 4 emerging market currencies without any downside risk. It also gives investors the opportunity to invest into the Russian ruble, a currency which we are not able to offer in any other investment. The ruble has shown some good strength vs. the US$ recently, gaining over 2% in the past 5 days. The ruble has rallied 16 percent in five months, as oil prices have climbed. While recent moves have been excellent, the Russian ruble continues to be a very volatile currency. The only way I would suggest individuals invest into this currency is with the downside protection provided by our MarketSafe CD.

Currencies today 7/22/09: A$ .8158, kiwi .6566, C$ .9064, euro 1.4216, sterling 1.6447, Swiss .9371, rand 7.7793, krone 6.2904, SEK 7.609, forint 191.15, zloty 2.9993, koruna 18.1720, yen 94.43, sing 1.4430, HKD 7.750, INR 48.5225, China 6.8313, pesos 13.286, BRL 1.8980, dollar index 78.897, Oil $64.80, 10-year 3.48%, Silver $13.475, and Gold... $947.40

That's it for today... And for me the rest of the week. I am heading out to San Diego tomorrow morning for a family reunion. Mike Meyer will be Pfilling in for me and Chuck for the next two mornings. The phone calls are already starting up again this morning, so I'll hit the send button and log into the phones. Hope everyone has a wonderful Wednesday!

Chris Gaffney, CFA
Vice President
EverBank World Markets
1-800-926-4922
1-314-647-3837

US leading indicators push higher...

ChuckButler — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:48:06 GMT

...But First, A Word From Our Sponsor...
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* 4 BRIC currencies: Brazilian real, Russian ruble, Indian rupee, Chinese renminbi
* High upside potential
* No market risk to deposited principal
* Low $1,500 minimum deposit

In This Issue..

* US leading indicators push higher...
* Labor department admits errors...
* Ben Bernanke heads to the hill...
* PIMCO suggests buying emerging markets...

And Now... Today's Pfennig!

US leading indicators push higher...

Good day... A quiet trading day to start the week off yesterday. As I turn on the computers this morning the dollar index is trading right at the level it was yesterday morning. The currencies were up a bit through most of Monday's trading day, but the dollar came back in Asian trading leaving us right about back where we started.

The only data released yesterday was the index of US leading indicators which rose slightly in June for a third consecutive month. The numbers gave a bit of hope for all of the bulls, with many exclaiming that the US economy has turned a corner and the recession has ended. I am not so sure, as rising unemployment and continued weakness in the housing market will likely hold any recovery back.

Aaron Stevenson sent me a story he read on CNNMoney.com yesterday which highlighted the labor problems here in the US. The article states that more than 650,000 Americans will have used up all of their unemployment benefits by September, and the Labor Department is expecting the problem to accelerate. "In the next few weeks, the victims of the mass layoffs that happened six months ago - when the pace of layoffs was at its zenith - will start running out of their basic benefits. A total of 4.4 million people are expected to face this fate - or 65% of the entire filing population. And while they may have up to another year of unemployment insurance benefits - thanks to the confusing patchwork of extensions that were enacted last summer - they will soon be unaccounted for in government unemployment reports."

As Chuck has continually pointed out, the Labor Department doesn't track anyone who has been unemployed more than 26 weeks, and has no plans to adjust the way the report claims (even though they know they are under-reporting the actual unemployment rate!). As a result, the weekly jobs data will probably start showing declines in continuing filers later this year. But these declines won't be because of an improved job market, but instead will be because many of these filers will be falling off the Labor Department's radar.

Even the director of the White House's National Economic Council, Mr. Lawrence Summers, isn't feeling so rosy about the prospects for recovery. "I don't feel there's a basis for predicting that income growth is going to resume in the near term," Summers said in an interview yesterday. So while the US economy may not be sinking any more, Summers doesn't believe the economy will be able to quickly pull itself back up from the deepest recession in a half a century. "The pace of growth next year I think is very much in doubt, and difficult to predict, and will depend crucially on our effectiveness in implementing the programs that have been legislated and the kind of confidence that's provided by what Congress is able to do in crucial areas like health care and financial regulation and energy," Summers said.

The focus today will shift to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke who will be giving his semiannual monetary policy testimony to Congress today. The markets are looking for Bernanke to map out an 'exit strategy' for the loose money policies which have been enacted over the past few years. Bernanke gave a sneak preview of his testimony in an opinion piece which he wrote for the Wall Street Journal yesterday. "When the economic outlook requires us to do so," the central bank will employ a series of tools to tighten policy, Bernanke said in the piece. He outlined five different ways the central bank will be able to prevent the record reserves that banks have accumulated from causing money supply and inflation to surge.

I don't doubt that Bernanke and the Fed have the means to pull liquidity out of the system. What I question is if they will have the cojones to use these methods when the time is right. In order to stem inflation, the Fed will be required to start tightening policy just as the economy is starting to recover. If they tighten too early, they could squash the recovery, and if they wait too long, inflation could spiral out of control. History has shown that the FOMC is typically late in their move to tighten.

And the likelihood of an anemic recovery heightens the risk that the Fed will be late in reacting. The recovery will be weak compared with historic recoveries from recession. I just can't imagine Bernanke stepping up and pushing rates higher in the face of a weak economic recovery. But we will see what he has to say to congress today. His testimony could be good for the dollar, if he is able to convince the markets that he and his compatriots will step up to the plate and keep inflation at bay. Again, I just don't believe he has the fortitude to time his move correctly.

Chuck sent me a note after reading a great piece by the Mogambo Monday.. The Mogambo doesn't think Bernanke will be able to rein in inflation, and believes investors should protect themselves by purchasing gold:

"And if you don't think that gold will shoot up when inflation starts roaring like that, then you are obviously new at this investing business and you haven't had time to look at what happened to the price of gold when it was $35 an ounce in 1970 and over $800 an ounce by 1980 when the inflation (from the vast expansions of the money supply needed to simultaneously finance the War on Poverty and the War in Vietnam) was rising along this same parabolic ride."

I love how you always know exactly where the Mogambo stands on things! I can't argue with his logic and agree that gold is a good hedge against rising inflation which I'm sure we will see on the other side of this recession/depression. Every investor should have a portion of their overall investment portfolio dedicated to precious metals, and our unallocated metal select accounts are one of the most efficient ways I know of to hold gold.

Speaking of the precious metal, gold held above $950 an ounce overnight, and seems to be on a fairly sharp upward path. Gold has gained just over $45 in the past two weeks and looks set to test resistance levels around $960. If it can push through these levels, the next resistance would be around $985. And just think what the price will do once we start seeing signs of inflation creeping back into the global economy.

So the dollar will likely move up today as long as Bernanke can 'deliver the goods' in his testimony to congress. But if the dollar does rally, I would take advantage and look at the move as an opportunity to purchase currencies at better levels. Some of the largest, and smartest investors are looking to do the same, and share our believe that Bernanke will be unable to turn the liquidity pump off in a timely fashion. PIMCO, the manager of the world's biggest bond fund, said it is looking to buy the Brazilian real as the dollar slumps and growth in emerging economies outpaces that of developed nations. According to a report published by PIMCO, investors should buy emerging market currencies to protect themselves against the risk that US policy makers will allow the dollar to slide should they lack the skill to "drain the system of emergency liquidity at the appropriate time." The report goes on to say "In light of an expected long-run erosion in the value of the US dollar, Pimco will look to take positions in select emerging market currencies that we believe have the most compelling appreciation potential."

Want to take a position in the emerging markets without the risk? Why not look at our new BRIC MarketSafe CD. It combines Brazil, India, Russia, and China into a 3 year CD which is protected against any downside risk. I think we came up with a real winner on our newest MarketSafe!

Currencies today 7/21/09: A$ .8132, kiwi .6548, C$ .9040, euro 1.4217, sterling 1.641, Swiss .9362, rand 7.8703, krone 6.2998, SEK 7.685, forint 191.68, zloty 2.9982, koruna 18.1561, yen 94.20, sing 1.4419, HKD 7.750, INR 48.4337, China 6.8305, pesos 13.2694, BRL 1.8987, dollar index 78.923, Oil $64.16, 10-year 3.61%, Silver $13.555, and Gold... $947.85

That's it for today... It is food day here today, as we celebrate everyone with July birthdays. The crew is coming in with food galore; Krispy Kremes, Cake, and every imaginable form of dip n chips. It is going to be a real challenge for me to stick to my diet today (but I guess I can have a free day every once in a while right!?!?) Hope everyone has a Terrific Tuesday, mine is sure shaping up to be one!

Chris Gaffney, CFA
Vice President
EverBank World Markets
1-800-926-4922
1-314-647-3837

Should the Fed be Responsibly Irresponsible?

JohnMauldin — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:44:00 GMT

This week I offer two short essays for your reading pleasure in Outside the Box. The first is from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writing in the London Telegraph. He gives some more specifics about the situation in Europe I wrote about this weekend.

He ends with the following sober quote: "My awful fear is that we will do exactly the opposite, incubating yet another crisis this autumn, to which we will respond with yet further spending. This is the road to ruin." This is a must read.

And the second piece? Last week in Outside the Box we looked at an "Austrian" (economic) view of the inflation/deflation debate from my friends at Hoisington. This week we look at the 180 degree opposite with Keynesian aficionado Paul McCulley, who argues that the Fed should be Responsibly Irresponsible and target higher inflation. This essay has brought some rather heated arguments in print and from some of the people who will be with Paul and me at the annual Maine fishing trip. And you can bet I will put them all together with a little wine to see how the argument ensues. I will report back.

And Paul ends with a great and what is a quite controversial line, "Yes, as Bernanke intoned, there are no free lunches. But no lunch doesn't work for me. Or the American people. While it is true, as Keynes intoned, that we are all dead in the long run, I see no reason to die young from orthodoxy-imposed anorexia."

And finally, this one last note on European banks: "European banks including Societe Generale SA and BNP Paribas SA hold almost $200 billion in guarantees sold by New York-based AIG allowing the lenders to reduce the capital required for loss reserves." (Bloomberg). Want to think about the US taxpayer paying to bail out Europeans banks? Think that might be a tad controversial? This could be explosive.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

Fiscal ruin of the Western world beckons

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

For a glimpse of what awaits Britain, Europe, and America as budget deficits spiral to war-time levels, look at what is happening to the Irish welfare state.

Events have already forced Premier Brian Cowen to carry out the harshest assault yet seen on the public services of a modern Western state. He has passed two emergency budgets to stop the deficit soaring to 15pc of GDP. They have not been enough. The expert An Bord Snip report said last week that Dublin must cut deeper, or risk a disastrous debt compound trap.

A further 17,000 state jobs must go (equal to 1.25m in the US), though unemployment is already 12pc and heading for 16pc next year.

Education must be cut 8pc. Scores of rural schools must close, and 6,900 teachers must go....Nobody is spared. Social welfare payments must be cut 5pc, child benefit by 20pc. The Garda (police), already smarting from a 7pc pay cut, may have to buy their own uniforms. Hospital visits could cost £107 a day, etc, etc....

No doubt Ireland has been the victim of a savagely tight monetary policy – given its specific needs. But the deeper truth is that Britain, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the US, and Japan are in varying states of fiscal ruin, and those tipping into demographic decline (unlike young Ireland) have an underlying cancer that is even more deadly. The West cannot support its gold-plated state structures from an aging workforce and depleted tax base.

As the International Monetary Fund made clear last week, Britain is lucky that markets have not yet imposed a "penalty interest" on British Gilts, given the trajectory of UK national debt – now vaulting towards 100pc of GDP – and the scandalous refusal of this Government to map out any path back to solvency.

"The UK has been getting the benefit of the doubt, both in the Government bond market and also the foreign exchange market. This benefit of the doubt is not going to last forever," said the Fund.

France and Italy have been less abject, but they began with higher borrowing needs. Italy's debt is expected to reach the danger level of 120pc next year, according to leaked Treasury documents. France's debt will near 90pc next year if President Nicolas Sarkozy goes ahead with his "Grand Emprunt", a fiscal blitz masquerading as investment.

There was a case for an emergency boost last winter to cushion the blow as global industry crashed. That moment has passed. While I agree with Nomura's Richard Koo that the US, Britain, and Europe risk a deflationary slump along the lines of Japan's Lost Decade (two decades really), I am ever more wary of his calls for Keynesian spending a l'outrance.

Such policies have crippled Japan. A string of make-work stimulus plans – famously building bridges to nowhere in Hokkaido e_SEmD has ensured that the day of reckoning will be worse, when it comes. The IMF says Japan's gross public debt will reach 240pc of GDP by 2014 e_SEmD beyond the point of recovery for a nation with a contracting workforce. Sooner or later, Japan's bond market will blow up.

Error One was to permit a bubble in the 1980s. Error Two was to wait a decade before opting for monetary "shock and awe" through quantitative easing.

The US Federal Reserve has moved faster but already seems to think the job is done. "Quantitative tightening" has begun. Its balance sheet has contracted by almost $200bn (£122bn) from the peak. The M2 money supply has stagnated since January. The Fed is talking of "exit strategies".

Is this a replay of mid-2008 when the Fed lost its nerve, bristling over criticism that it had cut rates too low (then 2pc)? Remember what happened. Fed hawks in Dallas, St Louis, and Atlanta talked of rate rises. That had consequences. Markets tightened in anticipation, and arguably triggered the collapse of Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie and Freddie that autumn.

The Fed's doctrine – New Keynesian Synthesis – has let it down time and again in this long saga, and there is scant evidence that Fed officials recognise the fact. As for the European Central Bank, it has let private loan growth contract this summer.
The imperative for the debt-bloated West is to cut spending systematically for year after year, off-setting the deflationary effect with monetary stimulus. This is the only mix that can save us.

My awful fear is that we will do exactly the opposite, incubating yet another crisis this autumn, to which we will respond with yet further spending. This is the road to ruin.

What If?

By Paul McCulley, Managing Director, PIMCO

The whole world, it seems, is wrapped around the axle about exit strategies from putatively unsustainable policies: (1) the Fed's bloated balance sheet, with some $800 billion of excess reserves sloshing 'round the banking system, in the context of an effective zero Fed funds rate; and (2) the Treasury's huge budget deficit, unprecedented in peace time and set to stay huge, implying a Treasury debt/GDP ratio approaching 100% within a decade's time.

For some, usually with Monetarist roots, this combination of policies is a classic brew for a major bout of inflation (eventually, it is always stressed). For others, usually with Austrian tendencies, this policy brew is a deflationary force, as it will provoke foreign investors to flee both the dollar and Treasuries, driving up real interest rates, pole axing any revival in risk asset prices, themselves backed by the fruits of bubble-driven mal-investment. And, I'm quite sure, there are some with a foot in both camps.

So it's not easy to actually define conventional, or consensus, wisdom. In fact, many of my Keynesian brethren seem to be struggling with what to do, arguing against any further near-term fiscal stimulus, or at least unless enacted simultaneously with long-term fiscal restraint. Indeed, I recently publicly uttered something along these lines, though I hedged myself by saying long-term fiscal responsibility rather than restraint (responsibility is in the eye of the beholder, while restraint is more categorical).

In any event, there does not seem to be any serious consensus as to how the policy mix should be adjusted, if at all, despite clear and present evidence of massive unemployment and underemployment, which is putting downward pressure on nominal personal income (the product of fewer jobs, fewer hours and decelerating wages, almost to the zero line). This is not the stuff of a self-sustaining revival in aggregate demand. Thus, my tentative conclusion is that maybe the consensus professional economist view is that America should simply accept that it's going to have its version of Japan's lost decade, the Calvinist aftermath of the preceding sin of booming growth on the back of ever-increasing leverage and mal-investment.

But if that sobering view is indeed the new consensus, shame on my profession! There is another way. And, irony of ironies, it is not a new way, but rather an old way, one defined by no less than Paul Krugman in 1998 and Ben Bernanke in 2003, when lecturing Japan about what to do. I have enormous respect for the intellectual horsepower of both men, and what they preached back then deserves a re-preaching, even if I'm the humble preacher that must take the pulpit.

Krugman in May 1998

In a delightfully wonkish paper,¹ using the enormous horsepower of the IS-LM (investment savings-liquidity preference money supply equilibrium) framework, he made a powerful case for what Japan should do to bootstrap itself out of the deflationary swamp. I'll spare you the wonkish part and cut to his commonsensical conclusion.

In the midst of deflation in the context of a liquidity trap, with the central bank's policy rate pinned at zero, it is not enough for the central bank to print money, accommodating massive fiscal policy stimulus, he argued. Not that this is not a necessary policy action. It is. But it is not sufficient, Krugman pounded the table, because if the public believes that the central bank will, in the future, un-print the money – in today's jargon, implement an exit strategy from money printing – then the printed money will simply be hoarded, rather than spent, because deflationary expectations will remain entrenched.

To get the public to spend the money, Krugman argued, the central bank should make clear that the printed money will remain printed, shifting deflationary expectations to inflationary expectations. In his famous conclusion, actually advice to the Bank of Japan, Krugman declared (his italics, not mine):

"The way to make monetary policy effective is for the central bank to credibly promise to be irresponsible – to make a persuasive case that it will permit inflation to occur, thereby producing the negative real interest rates the economy needs."

In a follow-up (similarly wonkish) paper² in 1999, Professor Krugman refined his argument, stressing that the core of his thesis could be implemented through a credible inflation target that was appreciably higher than the prevailing negative inflation rate in Japan. Thus, he was not so much arguing that the Bank of Japan should act irresponsibly, but rather act irresponsibly relative to orthodox, conventional thinking, which itself was irresponsible, in that it emphasized the need for an eventual exit strategy from liquidity trap-motivated money printing.

To get out of the trap, he emphasized, the central bank needed to radically change expectations to the notion that there was no exit strategy, at least until inflation was appreciably higher – not just inflation expectations, but inflation itself. Only then would the commitment to higher inflation be credible, with the central bank not just talking the reflationary talk, but walking the reflationary walk, turning deflationary swamp water into reflationary wine.

Naturally, the Bank of Japan didn't listen to Krugman at the time; orthodoxy is as orthodoxy does. In March 2001, however, the Bank of Japan did serve up a small beer from the Krugman still, adopting Quantitative Easing (QE), re-enforcing its zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) with an explicit target for massive creation of excess reserves, committing to retaining that policy until the year-over-year core CPI moved above zero on a "stable" basis. A very small beer indeed.

But to its credit, the Bank of Japan tiptoed the reflationary walk, sticking with QE for five years, exiting in March 2006, after the year-over-year core CPI had turned positive in November 2005. A small beer is better than no beer.

Bernanke in May 2003

Professor Bernanke became Fed Governor Bernanke the prior year, making his most famous speech in November 2002, "Making Sure 'It' Doesn't Happen Here,"³ detailing the Fed's anti-deflationary toolbox. That's the speech that the markets are using as a roadmap for Chairman Bernanke's present anti-deflation policy path (it's actually been quite a good roadmap!). But a speech in May 2003, "Some Thoughts on Monetary Policy in Japan,"⁴ is equally important, I think, because it provides a roadmap for what the Fed might do if present anti-deflation policies prove to be inadequate to the task.

The speech is not quite as wonkish as Krugman's May 1998 missive, but is still robustly analytical. Perhaps that's why my profession and the media do not give it the attention it deserves. But Mr. Bernanke's speech does have strong Occam's Razor conclusions, and they are eerily the same as Krugman's, perhaps even stronger.

No, Mr. Bernanke did not advocate to the Bank of Japan that it credibly commit to acting irresponsibly, Krugman's clever turn of phrase. In fact, as noted above, Krugman didn't really, either; he simply wanted the Bank of Japan to act responsibly, which would be deemed irresponsible in the context of orthodox thinking. Both men know how to think outside the proverbial box!

At the time, Mr. Bernanke was a table-thumping advocate for the Fed to adopt an explicit inflation target. But in Japan, he upped that analytical ante by advocating that the Bank of Japan adopt a price level target, not an inflation target.

And there is a huge difference. An inflation target "forgives" past deflation (or below inflation target) sins. In contrast, a price level target does not forgive those sins, but rather demands that the central bank atone for them by explicitly pursuing sufficient inflation to restore the price level to a plateau that would have been achieved if those sins had not been committed. More specifically, he advocated that the Bank of Japan should (his italics, not mine):

"... announce its intention to restore the price level (as measured by some standard index of prices, such as the consumer price index excluding fresh food) to the value it would have reached if, instead of the deflation of the past five years, a moderate inflation of, say, 1 percent per year had occurred. (I choose 1 percent to allow for the measurement bias issue noted above, and because a slightly positive average rate of inflation reduces the risk of future episodes of sustained deflation.) Note that the proposed price-level target is a moving target, equal in the year 2003 to a value approximately 5 percent above the actual price level in 1998 and rising 1 percent per year thereafter. Because deflation implies falling prices while the target price-level rises, the failure to end deflation in a given year has the effect of increasing what I have called the price-level gap. The price-level gap is the difference between the actual price level and the price level that would have obtained if deflation had been avoided and the price stability objective achieved in the first place.

A successful effort to eliminate the price-level gap would proceed, roughly, in two stages. During the first stage, the inflation rate would exceed the long-term desired inflation rate, as the price-level gap was eliminated and the effects of previous deflation undone. Call this the reflationary phase of policy. Second, once the price-level target was reached, or nearly so, the objective for policy would become a conventional inflation target or a price-level target that increases over time at the average desired rate of inflation."

This is very powerful stuff! Mr. Bernanke knew he was breaking some new ground, at least from the mouth of a sitting policymaker. In actuality, he was drawing on some powerful academic work of Eggertsson and Woodford,⁵ which laid out the case that a price level target would likely have a more powerful effect on inflation expectations than simply an inflation target above the prevailing level of inflation (or in Japan's case, deflation). How so? A price level target pegged at the starting point of a period of deflation – or below target inflation – implies that the central bank is explicitly committed to reflation, meaning that in the short-to-intermediate term, the central bank will explicitly aim for an inflation rate that is higher than its long-term "desired" rate.

Mr. Bernanke recognized that such a policy could unmoor long-term inflation expectations, creating a deleterious rise in long-term interest rates. But in his view, this was a risk worth taking, in part because he felt that a central banker with strong communications skills could draw a distinction between (1) a one-time reflation to correct a deflated price level back up to a level that would have been achieved in the absence of deflationary sins and (2) the central bank's long-term inflation objective. But he acknowledged it would be tricky.

But his case didn't rest simply on skilled central bank communications. While he felt that generating a positive shock to short-to-intermediate inflation expectations would have the effect of reducing real interest rates (remember, the real rate is the nominal rate minus inflation expectations), he did not think that effect was assured and even if it was, he did not believe it would be sufficient to stimulate private sector aggregate demand robust enough to reduce Japan's output gap. Thus, he advocated explicit cooperation between the fiscal authority and the monetary authority, with the latter subordinating itself to the former. And you thought Krugman was radical!

While the passage on this topic⁶ in Bernanke's speech is a bit long, it is so powerful that I think it deserves a full hearing. Here it is:

"My thesis here is that cooperation between the monetary and fiscal authorities in Japan could help solve the problems that each policymaker faces on its own. Consider for example a tax cut for households and businesses that is explicitly coupled with incremental BOJ purchases of government debt – so that the tax cut is in effect financed by money creation. Moreover, assume that the Bank of Japan has made a commitment, by announcing a price-level target, to reflate the economy, so that much or all of the increase in the money stock is viewed as permanent.

Under this plan, the BOJ's balance sheet is protected by the bond conversion program,⁷ and the government's concerns about its outstanding stock of debt are mitigated because increases in its debt are purchased by the BOJ rather than sold to the private sector. Moreover, consumers and businesses should be willing to spend rather than save the bulk of their tax cut: They have extra cash on hand, but – because the BOJ purchased government debt in the amount of the tax cut – no current or future debt service burden has been created to imply increased future taxes.

Essentially, monetary and fiscal policies together have increased the nominal wealth of the household sector, which will increase nominal spending and hence prices. The health of the banking sector is irrelevant to this means of transmitting the expansionary effect of monetary policy, addressing the concern of BOJ officials about 'broken' channels of monetary transmission. This approach also responds to the reservation of BOJ officials that the Bank "lacks the tools" to reach a price-level or inflation target.

Isn't it irresponsible to recommend a tax cut, given the poor state of Japanese public finances? To the contrary, from a fiscal perspective, the policy would almost certainly be stabilizing, in the sense of reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio. The BOJ's purchases would leave the nominal quantity of debt in the hands of the public unchanged, while nominal GDP would rise owing to increased nominal spending. Indeed, nothing would help reduce Japan's fiscal woes more than healthy growth in nominal GDP and hence in tax revenues.

Potential roles for monetary-fiscal cooperation are not limited to BOJ support of tax cuts. BOJ purchases of government debt could also support spending programs, to facilitate industrial restructuring, for example. The BOJ's purchases would mitigate the effect of the new spending on the burden of debt and future interest payments perceived by households, which should reduce the offset from decreased consumption. More generally, by replacing interest-bearing debt with money, BOJ purchases of government debt lower current deficits and interest burdens and thus the public's expectations of future tax obligations.

Of course, one can never get something for nothing; from a public finance perspective, increased monetization of government debt simply amounts to replacing other forms of taxes with an inflation tax. But, in the context of deflation-ridden Japan, generating a little bit of positive inflation (and the associated increase in nominal spending) would help achieve the goals of promoting economic recovery and putting idle resources back to work, which in turn would boost tax revenue and improve the government's fiscal position."

Powerful, powerful stuff!

And Now to the USA at Present

The United States is not presently suffering deflation in goods and services prices, although the core CPI has dipped slightly below the Fed's putative 2% "target." So the extreme measures that Krugman and Bernanke advocated for Japan do not translate fully to the United States. But they do translate a lot more than the consensus is even willing to discuss in politically correct circles.

America is in a liquidity trap, driven by private sector deleveraging borne of asset price deflation, meaning that private sector demand for credit is axiomatically flat to negative, despite a Fed funds rate pinned against zero. The only source of credit demand growth in the United States is the Treasury itself.

And until the deleveraging process runs its course, consensus agrees that there is nothing wrong with such bloated Treasury demand for credit: In a recessionary foxhole, Keynesian religion dominates all other economic religions. But not all believers are equally devout, as noted at the outset, with many against any further ramping up of Keynesian stimulus, at least without a contemporaneous move to ensure long-term fiscal responsibility, so as to prevent a deleterious increase in long-term Treasury interest rates.

So what should Washington do, if and when – and I stress "if and when"; I'm not making a forecast here! – private sector aggregate (nominal) demand growth looks like it's going to languish in Japan style for the indefinite future? The answer: Take one cup of Krugman's advice for Japan and two cups of Bernanke's advice for Japan – responsibly act irresponsibly relative to orthodoxy.

Yes, as Bernanke intoned, there are no free lunches. But no lunch doesn't work for me. Or the American people. While it is true, as Keynes intoned, that we are all dead in the long run, I see no reason to die young from orthodoxy-imposed anorexia.

"Japan's Trap," http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/japtrap.html
"Thinking About the Liquidity Trap," http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/trioshrt.html
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2002/20021121/default.htm
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2003/20030531/default.htm
Gauti Eggertsson, and Michael Woodford (2003). "The Zero Bound on Interest Rates and Optimal Monetary Policy," http://www.columbia.edu/~mw2230/BPEA.pdf
In this case, Bernanke was drawing on his own work, a no-punches-pulled academic essay from December 1999, "Japanese Monetary Policy: A Case of Self-Induced Paralysis." For the wonks amongst you that haven't read it, I strongly urge that you do so!
Elsewhere in the speech, Bernanke lays out a framework, via an interest rate swap arrangement, for the fiscal authority to assume any losses for the central bank from interest rate risks on its bond purchases, so as to bury that political red herring. As an economic matter, such losses are of no importance when looking at the consolidated balance sheet of the monetary authority and the fiscal authority: If government bond prices go down, the central bank loses money from a mark-to-market accounting perspective, but the fiscal authority makes exactly the same amount from a mark-to-market accounting perspective.

Desperately Seeking Yield...

ChuckButler — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:27:32 GMT

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In This Issue..

* Currencies rally...
* More on the BRIC's...
* New Zealand's GDP contracts..
* Bernanke gets grilled!

And Now... Today's Pfennig!

Desperately Seeking Yield...

Good day... And a Happy Friday to one and all! The end of what seemed to be a very long week... The last weekend in June, can you believe that? Next week, we'll be getting ready for the 4th of July celebrations! WOW!

Well... What a volatile week it has been in the currencies! Up, down, all around, and settling back to levels that we saw before the Fed's FOMC meeting earlier this week. Suddenly, investors are looking for yield again... Looks like they are "Desperately Seeking (not Susan) Yield! And why not? The Fed, and the Bank of Canada (BOC) have come out and said that there will be no interest rate hikes until we've turned quite a few pages on the 2010 calendar.

So, with investors clamoring for yield, the dollar gets taken to the woodshed... As I said earlier this week, one of these probes above 1.40, need to take hold of the figure and build on it, otherwise we're doomed to remain in the 1.35-1.40 range, and range trading is for the birds! Talk about counting flowers on the wall, and watching paint dry! UGH!

I was shocked yesterday to see but a few emails asking me more about the SDR's story that I talked about... Men, women, boys and girls, all... This is important stuff! Don't take it lightly! There's a movement underway that could end up costing you dearly, if you do not take the diversification steps...

I think it is important to know that the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are serious about replacing the dollar with a "global currency" i.e. the IMF's SDR's... And... That the BRIC's want more power on the World's stage... And why not? These countries currently have almost 3 Trillion in foreign reserves... And... A very large piece of the world's population... (Thanks for that fodder, Kevin!)

OH! And guess who was banging the drum for a "super-sovereign" currency overnight? China, that's who! So... They're Baaaaaaaaccccckkkkk! OK... This was the People's Bank of China (the Central Bank), that made this statement, along with a call for the IMF to manage part of member's foreign exchange reserves... Hmmm... OK, I just said that China wants more power on the world stage, and here they are saying that their puppet will be the IMF! OK, I took some liberty with that, but it's the way I see it!

OK... Back to what's going on in the currencies today... Hmmm... The dollar is getting taken to the woodshed to end the week, that's what's happening! And the currency leading the pack with regards to performance VS the dollar, drum roll please.... The Brazilian real... A 3 day "winning streak" has the real back to levels it saw before the Brazilian Central Bank (BCB) cut rates about 10 days ago...

The way I see it, and long time readers know this will be interesting in the least, is that investors want to invest in the BRIC countries, but there's very little liquidity there in each of those currencies, along with very little yield, except... In Brazil... Liquidity isn't what the majors enjoy, in fact it's still traded on what's called a "non-deliverable forward", which means it can only settle in dollars, with no deliverability, but... It's traded easier and less costly than the other BRIC's and... It has the highest interest rate available... So... You can see why investors are buying reals...

Having said that though... You must know about the volatility... Look at what happened this week... On Monday, we started the week with the real at 1.9750, only to see it rocket to 2.0326 in one day's trading, a near 3% move / loss in one day! Then we saw it rally back to 1.9795 the next day, and after 3 days of gains the real sits at 1.9420 this morning, thus generating a "gain" for the week! And... The other thing, is that Brazil is considered an Emerging Market... And long time readers have learned over the years that when one Emerging Market gets slammed, they all get taken to the woodshed... So... Be careful out there!

A high yield currency that far removed from the early days of trading like Brazil, but offers yield, is the New Zealand dollar / kiwi... And kiwi has been held back, although still posting a gain VS the dollar, overnight as 1st QTR GDP printed at a negative -1%, thus marking the 5th consecutive quarter of negative growth in New Zealand...

I'm probably out there on the big fat limb (to hold me up, of course!) by myself on this one, but... I personally believe that both the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) have seen the lows in their interest rates, and no further rate cuts will come from these respective Central Banks. I know, that last week, we were all hyped up about future rate hikes from the RBA in 2010, and we probably got a little ahead of ourselves with that thought... I'm probably ahead of the curve on the "end of rate cuts" talk... But that's where I like to be!

So... When the world's investors are looking for yield, they don't have to go to Brazil, or India... They can go to the old reliables... Australia and New Zealand, with a reduced fear of further rate cuts... At least that's they way I see it! And yes, I could be wrong...

And how about Gold and Silver this week? What a week on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride for precious metals... The main thing though is that they are finishing the week with a rally, and Gold which was trading at $922 on Monday, is $944.85!

And how about that grilling that Big Ben Bernanke received yesterday by legislators over the Fed's conduct in the Bank of America (BOA) takeover of Merrill Lynch... You may recall that BOA's CEO, Ken Lewis said he was "bullied" into taking over Merrill and not disclosing to his shareholder all of Merrill's losses that were on the books... Big Ben denies that he participated in any bullying... (doesn't that lead to Paulson then? Did Big Ben just throw Paulson under the bus?)... Any way... Big Ben did little to convince the legislators that the Fed didn't keep their hands out of the cookie jar... And that, my friends, may be the foot in the door that we've been looking for... Maybe, just maybe, because you never know, but with the legislators having questions about the Fed and Big Ben, they probably aren't in any mood to hand over the regulatory powers that the President wants to give them...

And... My old fave Central Banker, NOT! Big Al Greenspan was back in the news last night... I'm trying to figure out how he and I got on the same side of the ship... But, here was Big Al, my nemesis for years, talking about inflation being a concern... Let's listen in to Big Al... Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said the threat of inflation needs to be confronted because it poses a threat to economic recovery. "Excess capacity is temporarily suppressing global prices. But I see inflation as the greater future challenge," Greenspan said. "If political pressures prevent central banks from reining in their inflated balance sheets in a timely manner, statistical analysis suggests the emergence of inflation by 2012."

Of course, I think inflation will be showing its ugly face next year, not 3 years from now!

And on the data front... The Weekly Initial Jobless Claims "surprised" economists by moving back up, after falling last week... 627,000 unemployed Americans filed for unemployment claims last week... No "green shoots" here! In fact... We need to see if we can use these so-called Green Shoots that the President and Big Ben keep talking about, for ethanol... They've got to be good for something! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I must say that a reader gave me that line!

And here's Warren Buffett on Green Shoots... "I had a cataract operation on my left eye about a month ago and I thought maybe now I'll be able to see green shoots. We're not seeing them. Whether it's retailing, manufacturing, wherever. We have a big utility operation. Industrial demand is down like we've never seen it for a simple thing like electricity. So it hasn't happened yet. It will happen. I want to emphasize that. But it hasn't happened yet."

And... Then... There was this... A good story to end the week and head to the Big Finish with...

Barclays Capital Inc. (Barclays) the world's third largest currency trader, have lowered their one-year forecast for the dollar, saying foreign investors will reduce their purchases of U.S. assets... Barclays referred to the dollar's status as "safe-haven paradise lost", due to the ballooning fiscal deficit and the printing of money by the Central Bank... Barclays believes that the euro will be trading at 1.50 in a year...

Hmmm... Nothing new there for Pfennig readers, but, I always find it to be good to see others with their BIG research departments, no divisions, yeah, divisions, that's bigger than a department! Wait, get back on track, here Chuck! Yes, the Big research divisions, that finally come around to what little old me has been saying for months now... Oh! And that "little old me" has just got to crack up any one that knows me, and have seen me lately!

And one more thing... Oil is back to $71 this morning, as there has been more problems in Nigeria... Let's hope these problems go away!

Currencies today 6/26/09: A$ .8055, kiwi .6450, C$ .8710, euro 1.4085, sterling 1.6490, Swiss .9210, rand 7.9680, krone 6.4250, SEK 7.8125, forint 196.20, zloty 3.1975, koruna 18.50, yen 95.40, sing 1.4540, HKD 7.75, INR 48.21, China 6.8338, pesos 13.18, BRL 1.9420, dollar index 79.86, Oil $71.07, 10-year 3.55%, Silver $14.25, and Gold... $945.65

That's it for today... Well... Today marks the 2-year anniversary of the surgery that removed my cancer ridden femur, and replaced it with a prosthetic. Quite an ordeal, but... Here I am! Rock you like a hurricane! Oops, sorry, got carried away there! I'm so happy that's behind me now! Well... Michael Jackson has died at 50 years old... When I think of Michael Jackson, I just remember my two oldest kids, playing that Thriller album over and over again. The heat wave over us continues, but is expected to back off next week... My little buddy, Alex, turns 14 on Sunday. WOW! We began a tradition when he was quite young, of the two of us going to breakfast on his birthday. Two years ago, when I was in the hospital, my darling daughter, Dawn, brought Alex to the hospital with breakfast, so we could continue the tradition. I hope I can continue celebrating with him for many years to come. So... Happy Birthday Alex! Real long time readers might recall when Alex was 3, and would sit on my lap as I wrote the Pfennig from home, and every once in awhile the text would look like this... 9087lkndy7, and I would say, "sorry, Alex is helping me again"... Alex has already made me aware that he can get his drivers permit next year... YIKES! OK, time to head off into the sunrise... (not sunset, as I'm writing at daybreak, HAHAHAHA) The currencies are having a Fantastico Friday, so why don't we joining them?

Chuck Butler
President
EverBank World Markets
1-800-926-4922
1-314-647-3837