OPEC Archives - Page 6 of 7 - The Automatic Earth

The boom that adorned Gulf Arab monarchies with glittering towers, swelled their sovereign funds and kept unrest largely at bay may be over after oil prices dropped by almost 50% in the last six months. The sheikhdoms have used the oil wealth to remake their region. Landmarks include man-made islands on reclaimed land, as well as financial centers, airports and ports that turned the Arabian desert into a banking and travel hub. The money was also deployed to ward off social unrest that spread through the Middle East during the Arab Spring. “The region has had 10 years of abundance,” said Simon Williams, HSBC chief economist for central and eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. “But that decade of plenty is done. The drop in oil prices will hurt performance in the near term, even if the Gulf’s buffers are powerful enough to ensure there’s no crisis.”

Brent crude, which has averaged $102 a barrel since the end of 2009, plunged to about $60 by the end of last week. The slump accelerated after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, whose top producer is Saudi Arabia, decided in November to keep output unchanged. At $65 a barrel, the six nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which hold about a third of the world’s crude reserves, would run a combined budget deficit of about 6% of gross domestic product, according to Arqaam Capital, a Dubai-based investment bank. Cheaper oil “will force a reassessment of the ambitious infrastructure investment program” in the region, Qatar National Bank said in a report. One exception is likely to be Qatar, which is spending on infrastructure to host the 2022 soccer World Cup final, QNB said. The oil-price drop has already prompted economists to cut next year’s growth estimates for Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Complex political games.

• Ready for $20 Oil? (A. Gary Shilling)

When the U.S. Federal Reserve ended its quantitative-easing program in October, it also ended the primary driver of U.S. stocks during the past six years. So long as the central bank kept flooding the markets with money, investors had little reason to worry about a broader economy limping along at 2% real growth. Now investors face more volatile markets and securities that no longer move in lock-step. At the same time, investors must cope with slower growth in China, minuscule growth in the euro area and negative growth in Japan. Such widespread sluggish demand – along with ample supplies of oil and most everything else – is the reason commodity prices are falling. They have been since early 2011, but many people failed to notice until recently, when crude oil prices nosedived.

Normally, less demand and a supply glut would lead OPEC, beginning with Saudi Arabia, to cut production. As the de facto cartel leader, the Saudis would often reduce output to prevent supply increases from driving down prices. Of course, this also cost the Saudis market share and encouraged cheating by OPEC members. Saudi leaders must grind their teeth over the last decade’s unchanged demand for OPEC oil, while all the global growth has been among non-OPEC suppliers, principally in North America. That may explain why, while Americans were enjoying their Thanksgiving turkeys, OPEC surprised the world. Pressed by the Saudis and other rich Persian Gulf producers, it refused to cut output despite a 38% drop in the price of Brent crude, the global benchmark, since June.

OPEC, in effect, is challenging other producers to a game of chicken. Sure, the wealthier producers need almost $100 a barrel to finance bloated budgets. But they also have huge cash reserves, which they figure will outlast the cheaters and the U.S. shale-oil producers when prices are low. The Saudis also seized the opportunity to damage their opponents, especially Iran and what they see as Iran-dominated Iraq, in the Syria conflict. They also want to help allies Egypt and Pakistan reduce expensive energy subsidies as prices fall.

“.. the four states where oil is more important to the local economy than Texas have a combined GSP that is only 16% of the Texas GSP.”

• Houston Suddenly Has A Very Big Problem (Feroli via ZH)

The well-known energy renaissance in the US has occurred in both the oil and natural gas sectors. Some states that are huge natural gas producers have limited oil production: Pennsylvania is the second largest gas producing state but 19th largest oil producer. The converse is also true: North Dakota is the second largest crude producer but 14th largest gas producer. However, most of the economic data as it relates to the energy sector, employment, GDP, etc, often lump together the oil and gas extraction industries. Yet oil prices have collapsed while natural gas prices have held fairly steady. To understand who is vulnerable to the decline in oil prices specifically we turn to the EIA’s state-level crude oil production data.

The first point, mentioned at the outset, is that Texas, already a giant, has become a behemoth crude producer in the past few years, and now accounts for over 40% of US production. However, there are a few states for which oil is a relatively larger sector (as measured by crude production relative to Gross State Product): North Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming, and New Mexico. For two other states, Oklahoma and Montana, crude production is important, though somewhat less so than for Texas. Note, however, that these are all pretty small states: the four states where oil is more important to the local economy than Texas have a combined GSP that is only 16% of the Texas GSP. Finally, there is one large oil producer, California, which is dwarfed by such a huge economy that its oil intensity is actually below the national average, and we would expect it, like the country as a whole, to benefit from lower oil prices.

As discussed above, Texas is unique in the country as a huge economy and a huge oil producer. When thinking about the challenges facing the Texas economy in 2015 it may be useful, as a starting point, to begin with the oil price collapse of 1986. Then, like now, crude oil prices collapsed around 50% in the space of a few short months. As noted in the introduction, the labor market response was severe and swift, with the Texas unemployment rate rising 2.0%-points in the first three months of 1986 alone. Following the hit to the labor market, the real estate market suffered a longer, slower, burn, and by the end of 1988 Texas house prices were down over 14% from their peak in early 1986 (over the same period national house prices were up just over 14%). The last act of this tragedy was a banking crisis, as several hundred Texas banks failed, with peak failures occurring in 1988 and 1989.

Chances they’ll do anything shrink by the day.

• Saudis Insist Oil Supply Cuts Are Not Needed (Independent)

Gulf states yesterday insisted that oil prices will recover without intervention from the OPEC cartel, arguing that current prices will boost global economic growth. Crude oil prices have plummeted as global demand has eased and new supplies such as US shale oil have come on to the market. The cost of benchmark Brent crude has nearly halved from $115 a barrel in June to below $60 last week. But although oil producers and explorers from Aberdeen to Alberta are struggling to operate at a profit, OPEC has refused to cut supply in order to lift prices. Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, yesterday said he was “100% not pleased” with current prices, but insisted: “I am confident the oil market will improve.” He added: “Current prices do not encourage investment, but they stimulate global economic growth, leading ultimately to an increase in global demand and a slowdown in the growth of supplies.”

Saudi Arabia, OPEC (and the world’s) largest oil exporter, has been the “swing supplier” in the past, cutting or increasing production in order to stabilise global oil prices at around $100 a barrel. The Gulf state blames the current price slump on speculators and a lack of co-operation from producers outside OPEC, and Mr Naimi said the kingdom would not act this time. “If they [non-OPEC oil producers] want to cut production they are welcome,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the 10th Arab Energy Conference in the United Arab Emirates. “Certainly Saudi Arabia is not going to cut.” Attempts to get non-OPEC producers such as Russia to sign up to output reductions before last month’s meeting of the oil cartel failed. “I don’t think we [OPEC] need to cut,” Kuwait’s oil minister told Reuters yesterday. “We gave a chance to others, they were not willing to do so.”

“It’s been a really volatile period, and frankly that’s how Saudi Arabia wants it,” [..] “This is a battle of endurance.”

• Oil Crash Wipes $11.7 Billion From Buyout Firms’ Holdings (Bloomberg)

Oil’s plunge makes energy a great investment for the coming years, according to Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman and Carlyle’s David Rubenstein. For private equity firms, it’s also been painful. More than a dozen firms – including Apollo Global , Carlyle, Warburg Pincus and Blackstone – have lost a combined $11.7 billion in 27 publicly traded oil producers since June, when crude prices reached this year’s peak before beginning their six-month slide, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Stocks of buyout firms with exposure to energy have slumped, and bond prices suggest some closely held oil producers may struggle to pay for their debt. “It’s been a really volatile period, and frankly that’s how Saudi Arabia wants it,” said Francisco Blanch, head of global commodity research at Bank of America. “This is a battle of endurance.”

Brent crude oil slumped 47% to about $61 late last week from its high this year of $115 a barrel, dragging down energy stocks, as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries sought to defend market share amid a U.S. shale expansion that’s adding to a global glut. The group, responsible for 40% of the world’s supply, will refrain from curbing output, U.A.E. Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei said on Dec. 14. Kosmos Energy, Antero Resources, EP Energy, Laredo Petroleum and SandRidge Energy, each of which is backed by a buyout firm as its largest shareholder, fell by an average of 50% in U.S. trading from oil’s peak through Dec. 19 in New York. Warburg Pincus is the top stakeholder in Kosmos, Antero and Laredo; Apollo is the largest investor in EP Energy; and Carlyle, with a partner, owns the biggest piece of SandRidge, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Apollo has $5 billion invested in energy debt and equity, including companies that are closely held. Carlyle has directed 10% of its $203 billion in assets into the industry. Blackstone, the second-biggest shareholder in Kosmos, has backed drilling projects off Ghana’s coast and in the Gulf of Mexico. The deals highlight private equity’s role in the debt-fueled shale push, as hydraulic fracturing in search of oil and gas leads to higher production. After investing billions of dollars, the firms are preparing to step in with more cash to fund development when prices stabilize.

More consequences.

• North Sea Oil Summit Announced By Aberdeen City Council (BBC)

A plan for a summit to look at the challenges facing the North Sea oil industry has been announced by Aberdeen City Council. Council leader Jenny Laing said the UK and Scottish governments, trade unions and industry bodies needed “to get round the table as soon as possible”. The Labour councillor said a “strategic plan” was required to save jobs as the price of oil continued to fall. Labour called on Nicola Sturgeon and David Cameron to attend the summit. It comes after a warning that the UK’s oil industry is in “crisis”. On Thursday, Robin Allan, chairman of the independent explorers’ association Brindex, told the BBC that the industry was “close to collapse”. He claimed almost no new projects in the North Sea were profitable with oil below $60 a barrel. However, Sir Ian Wood, another leading industry figure, said Mr Allan’s warning was “well over-the-top and far too dramatic”. Sir Ian predicted conditions would begin to recover next year.

Ms Laing said Aberdeen was the oil capital of Europe and as such it was her job, as leader of the city council, to work with the governments in Edinburgh and Westminster and the oil industry to ensure jobs in the city were protected and companies remained based there. She said: “I have today instructed Angela Scott, our chief executive, to arrange a summit between senior politicians, government officials, industry representatives, trade unions, and local politicians. “The aim will be to ensure an agreement to develop a strategic plan to ensure job losses are either avoided or kept to a minimum. “It must concern us all that the price of oil has dropped so heavily in such a short space of time and we need to agree a strategy to deal with fluctuations that undermine confidence in the North Sea.” Ms Laing said the council chief executive would write to various politicians within both the UK and Scottish governments, as well as UK Oil and Gas, other industry leaders and trade unions to encourage them to take part in the summit.

Dangerous development.

• Southwest’s Oil Swap Trade Waiver Raises CFTC Questions (Reuters)

Last month’s move by the U.S. commodities regulator to let Southwest Airlines Co keep its multibillion-dollar oil trades secret for 15 days offered the world’s biggest low-cost carrier a break it has been seeking for three years. However, the decision to grant the airline an exemption from rules calling for greater derivatives transparency raised concerns about its market impact and sparked a debate among regulators, according to people familiar with the approval process. All other swap trades except Southwest’s must be reported “as soon as technologically practicable.” The Dallas-based airline has argued that its deals are so specific that immediate disclosure could cause the market to move against it, adding tens of millions of dollars to its costs. For years, that argument was not enough to sway the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and its former chairman, Gary Gensler. One concern was that granting an exemption to just one company is unusual and could hurt others in a similar position.

Also, the waiver could set a precedent that would encourage others to seek similar special treatment, restoring a veil over bigger parts of derivative markets. The agency is already looking into problems the Mexican government is facing in its vast oil hedging program after news organizations, including Reuters, reported on the country’s trades using publicly available swaps trading data, said one person familiar with the agency’s procedures. A CFTC spokesman said Tim Massad, Gensler’s successor, had issued the waiver to Southwest after his staff had done proper analysis to confirm the company’s claims, and the relief was a lot narrower than what the company had originally requested. But the person familiar with the approval process said the decision caused “a big stink” within the agency.

Still happy?

• US Gas Prices Fall To Lowest Since May 2009 (Reuters)

The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States fell 25 cents in the past two weeks, tumbling to its lowest level in more than five-and-a-half years, according to the Lundberg survey released Sunday. Prices for regular-grade gasoline fell to $2.47 a gallon in the survey dated Dec. 19, down 25 cents since the previous survey on Dec. 5. The recent drop has taken prices down more than $1.25 a gallon since a recent peak in May of this year.

“This is mostly driven by crude oil prices, and absent a sudden spike we very well may see a drop of a few pennies more,” said the survey’s publisher, Trilby Lundberg. “That said, demand is up at these low prices.” U.S. crude futures have been sharply weaker of late, dropping for four straight weeks, as well as in 11 of the past 12 weeks. Crude prices fell 14.2% over the past two weeks, though they rose 5.1% on Friday, settling at $57.13 per barrel. The highest price within the survey area in 48 U.S. states was recorded in Long Island at $2.82 per gallon, with the lowest in Tulsa, at $2.06 per gallon.

Wonder if Russia stress tests its companies.

• Rosneft Repays $7 Billion and Says Has No Need to Buy Dollars (Bloomberg)

Rosneft repaid $7 billion in debt and said it is generating enough dollars to meet the obligations taken on to buy TNK-BP last year and become the world’s largest traded oil producer. The state-led company, hit by sanctions from the U.S. and EU limiting access to capital markets, said it has settled $24 billion this year in line with credit agreements. Rosneft has sufficient foreign currency to cover debt, Chief Executive Officer Igor Sechin said in a statement. “To service debt the company does not need to enter the currency market, because it generates enough foreign currency earnings,” Sechin said. The latest repayment doesn’t mean the end of financial pressure on Rosneft however.

The oil producer has to grapple with the slump in oil prices, sanctions that bar it from international capital markets and a Russian economy at risk of sliding into recession. Rosneft is scheduled to repay another bridge loan of $7.1 billion on Feb. 13, the first part of $19 billion in debt repayments scheduled for next year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Sechin, who denied speculation last week the company had been selling rubles to buy dollars, said today that the company may get state support from Russia’s state Wellbeing Fund. The money would be used to develop oil projects at home, he said.

“For the sake of national interests, China should deepen cooperation with Russia when such cooperation is in need.”

• China Offers Russia Help With Currency Swap Suggestion (Bloomberg)

Two Chinese ministers offered support for Russia as President Vladimir Putin seeks to shore up support for the ruble without depleting foreign-exchange reserves. China will provide help if needed and is confident Russia can overcome its economic difficulties, Foreign Minister Wang Yi was cited as saying in Bangkok in a Dec. 20 report by Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV. Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said expanding a currency swap between the two nations and making increased use of yuan for bilateral trade would have the greatest impact in aiding Russia, according to the broadcaster. The ruble strengthened 4.1% against the dollar today amid the signs of willingness by China, the world’s second-largest economy, to prop up its neighbor.

Russia, the biggest energy exporter, saw its currency tumble as much as 59% this year as crude oil prices slumped and U.S. and European sanctions hurt the economy. President Xi Jinping last month called for China to adopt “big-country diplomacy” as he laid out goals for elevating his nation’s status. “Many Chinese people still view Russia as the big brother, and the two countries are strategically important to each other,” said Jin Canrong, Associate Dean of the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, referring to the Soviet Union’s backing of Communist China in its first years. “For the sake of national interests, China should deepen cooperation with Russia when such cooperation is in need.”

Still corrupt to the bone.

• China Investigates Possible Stock-Price Manipulation (WSJ)

China is investigating possible stock-price manipulation amid the recent run-up in the country’s equity market, according to officials with direct knowledge of the matter, a move that serves as a stark reminder of the problems that have long haunted Chinese stocks. The probe launched by the China Securities Regulatory Commission comes as stocks traded in mainland China rallied to their highest level in three years on Monday despite the country’s weakening economic growth. Much of the surge, analysts and officials say, has been triggered by short-term speculators betting on looser monetary conditions as opposed to investors with long-term belief in China’s economy. The securities commission is focusing its investigation on a practice that involves groups of investors pumping up prices of certain targeted stocks. Such practices were common during the early and mid-2000s when China’s stock market boomed along with the country’s breathtaking economic growth.

The market peaked in 2007 and started to plummet a year later as the global financial crisis weighed on China’s growth. The practice, which was common in China’s previous market boom, “is making a comeback,” one of the officials said. The securities agency said on Friday that it had launched investigations into 18 stocks, but didn’t explain the reasons for the probe at the time. Most of the stocks targeted are those of small-cap companies, such as a maker of automobile tires in eastern China’s Shandong province and a government-controlled hydroelectric power company in central China’s Hunan province. Shares in larger companies are harder to manipulate because the volumes are bigger. The probes mainly focus on the “individuals and institutions” who recently bought into the stocks, and the companies themselves aren’t the target, the officials said.

“.. early trade volumes in the program launched in mid-November were completely dominated by hedge funds and banks’ proprietary trading desks ..”

• China Stock Connect Scheme Scorecard Throws Up Surprises (Reuters)

A month after China opened up its equity markets in a landmark trading link with Hong Kong, demand has been subdued and the bulk of activity has come from short-term speculative investors. The authorities had hoped mutual and pension funds and private banks would form the bedrock of the Shanghai-Hong Kong stock connect. But early trade volumes in the program launched in mid-November were completely dominated by hedge funds and banks’ proprietary trading desks, according to five traders at some of the biggest brokerages participating in the scheme. Regulatory hurdles have kept out a large swathe of the investment community – and the steady business the financial industry and regulators had hoped they would bring – despite a sizzling stock market rally on the mainland.

Market players say it could take months for long-term investors to eventually trickle into the program, as they devise ways to cope with its peculiarities. “We are not participating in the scheme yet because of the operational issues that have yet to be resolved and we prefer to access the mainland markets via exchange traded funds,” Robert Cormie, Asia CEO of BMO Private Bank, told Reuters. Edmund Yun, executive director of investment at the same wealth management firm, agreed, citing a number of prohibitive issues. These include beneficial ownership, tax and trading settlement. Hedge funds use banks’ prime brokerages, which help them more deftly manage those regulatory constraints.

Stock portfolios of hedge funds are often held by the prime brokers themselves to facilitate quick trading decisions so they are unaffected by ownership constraints. For example, under the scheme, funds wanting to sell holdings of Shanghai-listed shares have to deliver the shares to brokers a day before they are to be sold, a peculiarity that exists in no other major stock market. While regulators have looked for ways to encourage long-term funds, including fast-tracking applications for products benchmarked under the stock connect scheme, industry officials say that persuading pension funds to participate could take months.

“.. there are no such things as “aggregate demand,” or “aggregate supply,” or output and employment “as a whole.” These are statistical creations constructed by economists and statisticians ..”

• The Fallacy of Keynesian Macro-Aggregates (Ebeling)

A specter is haunting the world, the specter of two% inflationism. Whether pronounced by the U.S. Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank, or from the Bank of Japan, many monetary central planners have declared their determination to impose a certain minimum of rising prices on their societies and economies. One of the oldest of economic fallacies continues to dominate and guide the thinking of monetary policy makers: that printing money is the magic elixir for the creating of sustainable prosperity. In the eyes of those with their hands on the handle of the monetary printing press the economic system is like a balloon that, if not “fully inflated” at a desired level of output and employment, should be simply “pumped up” with the hot air of monetary “stimulus.”

The fallacy is the continuing legacy of the British economist, John Maynard Keynes, and his conception of “aggregate demand failures.” Keynes argued that the economy should be looked at in terms of series of macroeconomic aggregates: total demand for all output as a whole, total supply of all resources and goods as a whole, and the average general levels of all prices and wages for goods and services and resources potentially bought and sold on the overall market. If at the prevailing general level of wages, there is not enough “aggregate demand” for output as a whole to profitably employ all those interested and willing to work, then it is the task of the government and its central bank to assure that sufficient money spending is injected into the economy. The idea being that at rising prices for final goods and services relative to the general wage level, it again becomes profitable for businesses employ the unemployed until “full employment” is restored.

Over the decades since Keynes first formulated this idea in his 1936 book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, both his supporters and apparent critics have revised and reformulated parts of his argument and assumptions. But the general macro-aggregate framework and worldview used by economists in the context of which problems of less than full employment continue to be analyzed, nonetheless, still tends to focus on and formulate government policy in terms of the levels of and changes in output and employment for the economy as a whole. In fact, however, there are no such things as “aggregate demand,” or “aggregate supply,” or output and employment “as a whole.” These are statistical creations constructed by economists and statisticians, out of what really exists: the demands and supplies of multitudes of individual and distinct goods and services produced, and bought and sold on the various distinct markets that comprise the economic system of society.

“.. the EC wants Russia to bail out Ukraine while accusing Russia of invading Ukraine. Icing on the wonderland-cake is the Russian Ruble has plunged nearly 50% this year, but Ukraine needs money from Russia to fight Russia. Is this complete lunacy or what?”

• Europe in Wonderland Wants Russia to Bail Out Ukraine (Mish)

Ukraine’s president, speaking a day after the nation’s junk credit rating was cut further, said next year’s budget mustn’t cut corners on military spending and should account for the possibility of an invasion. “The war made us stronger, but has crushed the economy,” Poroshenko said. “There’s one article of spending that we won’t save on and that’s security. Ukraine is finalizing next year’s fiscal plan amid a new cease-fire in the conflict that’s ravaged its industrial heartland near Russia’s border. As its economy shrinks and reserves languish at a more than 10-year low, it’s also racing to secure more international aid to top up a $17 billion rescue.

Standard & Poor’s said Dec. 19 that a default may become inevitable, downgrading Ukraine’s credit score one step to CCC-. With official forecasts putting this year’s contraction at 7%, the government needs $15 billion on top of its bailout to stay afloat, according to the European Union. The European Union and the U.S. are discussing $12 billion to $15 billion in aid to Ukraine and “there needs to be a Russian contribution to the package,” Pierre Moscovici, the 28-nation bloc’s economy commissioner, said at a Bloomberg Government event this week in Washington. A decision is needed in January, he said.

Ukraine president says “War has made us stronger“. That lie is so stupid my dead grandmother knows it from the grave. The evidence is a CCC- debt rating, a step or so above above default, with default imminent. The story gets even stranger. To avoid default, Ukraine needs a “Russian contribution to the package” according to Pierre Moscovici, the economic policy commissioner for the European Commission. Europe and the US have crippling sanctions on Russia for the conflict in Ukraine, yet the EC wants Russia to bail out Ukraine while accusing Russia of invading Ukraine. Icing on the wonderland-cake is the Russian Ruble has plunged nearly 50% this year, but Ukraine needs money from Russia to fight Russia. Is this complete lunacy or what?

“Once we are shielded economically and politically, we can find the appropriate schedule for national elections, even by the end of 2015 ..”

• Greek Premier Makes Offer In Bid To Avoid Snap Elections (WSJ)

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras reached out to lawmakers Sunday, offering a set of compromises to resolve an impasse over the selection of Greece’s future head of state and to avoid snap elections early next year. Speaking in an unscheduled televised address, the Greek premier called for consensus over the government’s presidential candidate. In return, he offered to hold general elections by the end of 2015 – before the term of the current government expires – but only after Greece concluded negotiations with its international creditors and passed political and constitutional reforms. “Once we are shielded economically and politically, we can find the appropriate schedule for national elections, even by the end of 2015,” Samaras said.

“We cannot enter into a period of uncertainty as soon as we finish another one. The problems of the country cannot stagnate in a permanent election campaign.” Samaras also offered to reshuffle his cabinet to include ministers who would be appointed by other political parties, a move aimed at winning over undecided lawmakers from smaller parties in parliament. Elected to a four-year term in mid-2012, the country’s current coalition government — composed of the conservative New Democracy and the socialist Pasok parties — isn’t due to face elections again until June 2016. But it faces an uphill struggle convincing a supermajority of lawmakers to back its candidate for head of state, a largely ceremonial role.

The opposition Syriza party is blocking the election of the government’s candidate in the hopes of forcing early elections. Under Greece’s constitution, parliament has three tries to elect a president — a first vote took place last week, a second is due on Tuesday and the last tentatively scheduled for Dec. 29. If it fails, parliament would be dissolved and fresh elections called within a month. In the first two rounds, the president must be elected by a two-thirds majority of the 300 lawmakers in parliament, but that threshold falls to 180 votes in the third and final round.

” .. It has conjured up the example of a European debt conference to wipe away a portion of the debt, as happened with Germany in 1953.”

• Greece’s Radical Left Could Kill Off Austerity In The EU (Guardian)

What misery has been inflicted on Greece. One in four of its people are out of work; poverty has surged from 23% before the crash to 40.5%; and research has demonstrated how key services such as health have been hammered by cuts, even as demand has risen. No wonder the country has experienced a political polarisation that has prompted comparisons with Weimar Germany. The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn – which makes other European rightist movements look like fluffy liberals – at one point attracted up to 15% in the polls; though still a menace, its support has thankfully subsided to half that.

But unlike many other European societies – with the notable exceptions of Spain and Ireland – fury and despair with austerity has been channelled into the ranks of the populist left. After years on the fringes of Greek politics, Syriza only became a fully fledged party in 2012, and yet it won Greece’s elections to the European parliament earlier this year. The latest opinion polls give Syriza a substantial lead over the governing centre-right New Democracy party. A radical leftwing government could well assume power for the first time in the EU’s history. After years of social ruin, Syriza is offering Greeks that precious thing: hope. Although it has shifted from demanding an immediate cancellation of debt, it is demanding a negotiated solution.

It has conjured up the example of a European debt conference to wipe away a portion of the debt, as happened with Germany in 1953. Syriza’s manifesto proposes that repayment of debt could come through economic growth, rather than from budget cuts. It wants a European new deal backed up by an investment bank; an all-out war against the tax avoidance endemic in Greek society; an emergency employment programme; a raised minimum wage; and the restoration of collective bargaining. In alliance with anti-austerity forces such as Spain’s surging Podemos party, Syriza wants the EU to abandon crippling austerity policies in favour of quantitative easing and a growth-led recovery.

Getting worse.

• Rising Price Of Olive Oil Is A Pressing Matter (FT)

Never mind the shale revolution, or OPEC’s deliberations. Some oil producers are enjoying the highest prices in six years. A severe drought in Spain and a fruitfly infestation in Italy have caused a surge in the price of olive oil. The two countries normally account for just under 70% of output, and the Madrid-based International Olive Oil Council forecasts that production will drop next year by 27%. “Production in Spain is very, very short,” Rafael Pico Lapuente, director-general of Asoliva, the Spanish Olive Oil Exporters Association, said. The shortage has been pushing up wholesale prices for months. Premium-quality extra virgin olive oil rose to $4,282 a tonne last month, the highest since 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund. The civil war in Syria has also hit production there. Most Syrian output is consumed domestically, but some argue that this is providing further psychological support for prices.

Vito Martielli, analyst at Rabobank, said higher costs might further hit consumption in southern Europe, traditionally the largest market. The economic crisis in 2008 hit olive oil demand in Spain, Italy and Greece, and appetite has been waning as shoppers have turned to cheaper substitutes. Favorable weather in most parts of the world this year has meant that harvests of oilseed crops have been plentiful and prices have been falling. The price of soya oil has fallen 20% so far this year; palm oil has declined 17%, and rapeseed oil is down 5%. “We are in a situation where there are cheaper alternatives in Europe,” Mr Martielli said. The IOC expects olive oil consumption in 2015 to fall 7% to 2.8 million tonnes. Italy, the largest consumer of olive oil, is forecast to see a fall of 16% to 520,000 tonnes, Spain is expected to see a 3% decline to 515,000 tonnes, while Greece’s consumption is expected to fall 6% to 160,000 tonnes.

That’s what friends are for.

• Leaked CIA Docs Teach Operatives How To Infiltrate EU (RT)

Wikileaks has released two classified documents instructing CIA operatives how best to circumvent global security systems in international airports, including those of the EU, while on undercover missions. The first of the documents, dated September 2011, advises undercover operatives how to act during a secondary airport screening. Secondary screenings pose a risk to an agent s cover by focusing significant scrutiny on an operative via thorough searches and detailed questioning. The manual stresses the importance of having a “consistent, well-rehearsed, and plausible cover,” in addition to cultivating a fake online presence to throw interrogators off track. Meanwhile, the second document, dated January 2012, presents a detailed overview of EU Schengen Border Control procedures. The overview outlines the various electronic security measures, including the Schengen Information System (SIS) and the European fingerprint database EURODAC, used by border control and the dangers these measures may pose to agents on clandestine missions.

WikiLeaks’ chief editor Julian Assange explains that these documents show that under the Obama administration the CIA is still intent on infiltrating European Union borders and conducting clandestine operations in EU member states.” The document also demonstrates the CIA s increasing concern over the risks to operatives’ assumed identities posed by biometric databases the very same systems the US pushed for after 9/11. On Friday, WikiLeaks released a CIA report suggesting that though targeted killing programs, including drone strikes, may be effective in some cases, there is also a risk that the programs may backfire. For example, targeted strikes may prompt local populations to sympathize with insurgents or further radicalize remaining militants.

Oil Price Scenarios for 2015 and 2016

Dec 172014

December 17, 2014 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:19 am Finance Tagged with: demand, Euan Mearns, oil price, OPEC, prediction, supply 11 Responses »

Harris&Ewing F Street, Washington, DC 1935

This is another article from our friend in Aberdeen, Euan Mearns. It was first posted on Euan’s own site, Energy Matters. I earlier posted Euan’s The 2014 Oil Price Crash Explained on November 24, when the price of oil was still quite a bit higher than today. WTI ended that day at $75.74, it’s now $55.15. Here’s Euan:

A couple of weeks ago I had a post titled The 2014 Oil Price Crash Explained that was cross posted to over 20 other blogs including The Automatic Earth and Zero Hedge. In this post I use the empirical supply and demand dynamic described in that earlier post (Figure 1) to try and constrain the oil price a year from now and in 2016. The outcome is heavily dependent upon assumptions made about supply and demand and the behaviour of OPEC and the banking sector. Three different scenarios are presented with December 2015 prices ranging from $45 to $100 / bbl. Those hoping for a silver bullet forecast will be disappointed. Individuals must judge the scenarios on merit and decide for themselves which outcome, if any, is most likely.

Figure 1 The blue supply line is constrained by monthly production – price data from 1994 to 2008 and shows how supply became inelastic to demand post-2004. As demand continued to rise, prices rose exponentially to $148 / bbl in July 2008 before crashing all the way down again. The blue supply line in this chart is shown as a faint blue dashed line in all other charts to provide a frame of reference.

But first a look at the recent response of oil price dynamics to fluctuations in supply and demand.

OPEC spare capacity

Part of the key to understanding how the global oil market performs is to look at OPEC spare capacity data which gives a picture of how OPEC have provided or withheld capacity to try and retain order in the oil markets. OPEC suspending their market interventions has caused the recent oil price rout.

Figure 2 OPEC have tried to maintain order in the oil market. Rather than allow price fluctuations to control supply and demand, OPEC have aimed for a price that suits them and tried to maintain it by reducing and increasing supply in tune to fluctuations in global demand and non-OPEC supply. The picture of OPEC spare capacity therefore reflects fluctuations in the global oil market.

Over the past 10 years there have been three market cycles. Two of those have had roughly 3 years duration and amplitude of roughly 2 Mbpd (Figure 2). These sit either side of a larger cycle of 4 years duration and amplitude of 4 Mbpd caused by the 2008 financial crash. These cycles represent OPEC responding to global demand and non-OPEC supply changes. The smaller cycles may be viewed as “normal” and the larger cycle as rather extraordinary. OPEC intervention provided price stability of sorts. Without it we have price volatility that requires production to be balanced by varying demand and varying non-OPEC supply.

The spare capacity data suggests that demand / supply imbalance may last three years, requiring 18 months to work through to the mid-cycle point where over-supply turns to under-supply. It is by no means certain that the market will respond to the same time dynamic when we are now dependent upon natural production capacity wastage to occur as opposed to OPEC simply closing the spigot. But this is all I have to go on. The downturn in the current price cycle began last July and we are therefore just 6 months in. Another year of pain to go for the producers, that is unless OPEC decides to intervene.

Supply or Demand Driven Markets?

It is also difficult to discern if the current over-supply state is down to excess production capacity or a reduction in demand. Both are likely but my opinion is that the price rout is demand driven with many parts of the global economy performing badly – Japan, China and the EU to name but a few. These are about to be joined by OPEC, Russia and Canada.

The graphic below from the newly published December IEA OMR (oil market report) tends to confirm this view. 4Q14 supply is flat while demand is down. By 1Q15 a 2 Mbpd supply-demand gap is beginning to open tending to confirm the position laid out above.

Figure 2b The oil supply-demand view from the December IEA OMR.

Scenario 1

In 2015 demand falls by 2Mbpd relative to summer 2014 peak. New 2015 non-OPEC production capacity of 1.4 Mbpd (OPEC forecast) does not materialise leaving the supply curve as it is today.

This leaves the oil price around $60 a year from now (Figure 3). In the interim the price may go a lot lower as production capacity continues to rise before falling back to current level at year end; and because of short term trends driven by speculation.

Figure 3 Scenario 1 December 2015. Supply capacity grows and then falls back to where it is today. Underlying ills in the global economy sees demand drop 2 Mbpd from the July 2014 peak. The price ends up at around $60 / bbl, where it is today. But in the interim may go on an excursion to lower prices followed by recovery. Note that the 2014 demand line is retained in other charts to provide a frame of reference.

In 2016, low price causes a fall in global oil production capacity of 1 Mbpd and an increase in demand of 1 M bpd. These very small adjustments see the oil price rebound to $105 / bbl by December 2016 (Figure 4). Every cloud appears to have a silver lining if you are an oil producer, but global oil production capacity is cut by 1 M bpd in the process.

Figure 4 The low price of 2015 gives the oil industry a hangover in 2016 and supply drops 1 Mbpd. At the same time consumers party and falling supply collides with rising demand sending the oil price back up to $105 / bbl by December 2016.

Scenario 2

Under Scenario 2, the oil price rout causes high cost, high debt producers to default on loans creating a new banking crisis that spills over to the main economy. Re-run of 2008/9 though perhaps worse since most banks and national government balance sheets have not recovered from prior crisis.

Demand falls by 4Mbpd relative to summer 2014 peak, but supply capacity is also cut by 1 Mbpd owing to shale and other high cost operators going out of business. In December 2015 the oil price stands at $45 / bbl (Figure 5).

Figure 5 The fall in demand experienced so far causes trauma to many global producers that default on loans with knock on to banking sector and the broader economy resulting in further falls in demand during 2015. The price rout continues but is tempered slightly by non-OPEC supply being reduced by 1 Mbpd.

The low oil price works its magic on the global economy that rebounds strongly in 2016 pushing demand up by 2 Mbpd. But the $45 oil experienced in 2015 seals the fate of another 1Mbpd production capacity that is lost. Rising demand collides with falling capacity sending the oil price soaring back to $100 / bbl by December 2016. But the world has lost 2 Mbpd oil production capacity as a result of the price rout.

Figure 6 The price rout sees supply fall by a further 1 Mbpd. But the ultra low price causes a major rebound in demand of 2 Mbpd in 2016 from an “oversold” position. The oil price recovers to $100 / bbl.

Scenario 3

OPEC blinks first and with both Qatar and Kuwait cutting production in November, there are signs that this may be possible. Much depends upon Saudi Arabia who could conceivably raise production to counter the cuts made in other Gulf States. In Scenario 3, OPEC cuts production by 2 Mbpd by December 2015. While demand falls by 2 Mbpd from the July 2014 peak. The oil price recovers to $100 / bbl by next December 2015 (Figure 7).

Figure 7 Early in 2015 OPEC succumbs to pressure from several members and cuts supply progressively for a total of 2 Mbpd over the year. The net demand fall from the July 2014 peak is cancelled by the supply cut and the price recovers to $100 by December 2015.

This effectively means re-establishing the status quo of recent years. In this scenario, it is not necessary to look beyond 2015 since OPEC have re-adopted their strategy of market stability at a price that suits all – including the high-cost producers.

Observations

Each of the scenarios see strong recovery in oil price to the region of $100 come 2016. The main differences are in the extent and duration of short term pain and in the global production capacity. Scenarios 1 and 2 sees production capacity falling by 1 to 2 Mbpd come December 2016 and this would mainly be non-OPEC capacity that is destroyed handing greater control of oil markets to OPEC. Scenario 3 sees capacity maintenance and with re-establishment of status quo and high oil price, further expansion of N America. We need to wait and see if OPEC does what OPEC says.

My estimation of probabilities goes something like this:

Scenario 1: 40%
Scenario 2: 50%
Scenario 3: 10%

So my weighted forecast for December 2015 goes like this:

($60*0.4)+($45*0.5)+($100*0.1) = $56.50

Every year around this time I have a bet on the oil price a year from now. A year ago I bet $125 and my friend $110. Rarely have we both been so badly wrong. I lost again

Ilargi: And of course Euan’s friend Roger Andrews has the first comment again:

Euan: Excellent piece of work. My weighted prediction for December 2015 is ($60*0.45)+($45*0.5)+($100*0.05) = $54.50/bbl. I’ve halved your already-low scenario 3 probability because I just don’t see OPEC – and certainly not the Saudis – cutting production first.

I think the Saudis have decided that preserving their historic market share is worth a few years of privation, particularly when they can live off their accumulated fat in the meantime. I say “a few years” because I don’t think it’s out of the question that the price slump could go on for that long.

Each of the scenarios see strong recovery in oil price to the region of $100 come 2016. Will this be the next “oil shock”?

Debt Rattle December 15 2014

Dec 152014

December 15, 2014 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:06 am Finance Tagged with: Congress, contagion, crash, Greece, Grexit, implosion, Japan, oil, OPEC, punchbowl 2 Responses »

Wyland Stanley REO taxicab, San Francisco 1924

• Santa Got Run Over By An Oil Tanker (MarketWatch)

• U.A.E. Sees OPEC Output Unchanged Even If Oil Falls to $40 (Bloomberg)

• The Oil-Price-Shock Contagion-Transmission Pathway (Zero Hedge)

• UK Energy Firms Go Under As Oil Price Tumbles (Guardian)

• Oil Bust Veterans Brace While Shale-Boom Newbies Swagger (Bloomberg)

• Warning Over Horrible End To Japan’s QE Blitz (AEP)

• Time to Take Away the Punchbowl in Japan (Bloomberg)

• Samaras Grexit Talk Summons Bond Vigilantes to Greece (Bloomberg)

• EU Finance Chief Flies Into Athens As Grexit Fears Mount (Guardian)

• The EU Must Face Up To Austerity’s Failures (Steve Keen)

• The Eurozone Crisis History Is Repeating Itself … Again (Guardian)

• Time For Bottom Fishing In The Eurozone? (CNBC)

• London House Prices Fall By More Than £30,000 In A Month (Guardian)

• Fed Vice-Chairman Fisher: ‘Boy, Was I Wrong’ About Banks’ Political Power (WSJ)

• Krugman Says Fed Is Unlikely to Raise Interest Rates in 2015 (Bloomberg)

• Congress Deals A Blow To Financial Reform (Bloomberg ed.)

• Shiller Sees Risk In New Push For First-Time Homebuyers (CNBC)

• China Economic Growth May Slow To 7.1% In 2015 – PBOC (Reuters)

• Australia’s Budget Deficit Blows Out Amid Commodity Slide (Reuters)

• The Implosion Of American Culture (PhoM)

• Why Milennials Are Stuck Living At Home With Parents (Dr. Housing Bubble)

“.. a stunning $1.6 trillion annual loss, at oil’s current $57 low ..” What about $50, $45, $40?

• Crashing Crude May Blow $1.6 Trillion Annual Hole In The Global Oil Sector (MW)

Santa Got Run Over By An Oil Tanker

Talk about an oil spill. The spectacular unhinging of crude oil prices over the past six months is weighing mightily on the U.S. stock market. And while it may be too early to abandon all hope that the market will stage a year-end Santa rally, it appears that if Father Christmas comes, there’s a good chance his sleigh will be driven by polar bears, instead of gift-laden reindeer. Indeed, the Dow Jones Industrial Average already endured a bludgeoning, registering its second-worst weekly loss in 2014, shedding 570 points, or 3.2%, on Friday. That’s just shy of the 579 points that the Dow lost during the week ending Jan. 24, earlier this year.

It’s also the second worst week for the S&P 500 this year, which was down about 58 points, over the past five trading days, or 2.83%, compared to a cumulative weekly loss of 61.7 points, or 3.14%, during the week concluding Oct. 10. But all that carnage is nothing compared to what may be in store for the oil sector as crude oil tumbles to new gut-wrenching lows on an almost daily basis. On the New York Mercantile exchange light, sweet crude oil for January delivery settled at $57.81 on Friday, its lowest settlement since May 15, 2009. Moreover, the largest energy exchange traded fund, the energy SPDR off by 14% over the past month and has lost a quarter of its value since mid-June.

The real damage, however, is yet to come. By some estimates the wreckage, particularly for the oil-services companies, may add up to a stunning $1.6 trillion annual loss, at oil’s current $57 low, predicts Eric Lascelles, RBC Global Asset Management chief economist. Since it’s a zero-sum game, that translates into a big windfall for everyone else outside of oil players. In his calculation, Lascelles includes the cumulative decline in oil prices since July and current supply estimates of 93 million barrels a day. It’s a fairly simplistic tally, but it gets the point across that the energy sector is facing a serious oil leak. Here’s a look at a graphic illustrating the zero-sum, wealth redistribution playing out as oil craters:

Setting the new price level in one fell swoop.

• U.A.E. Sees OPEC Output Unchanged Even If Oil Falls to $40 (Bloomberg)

OPEC will stand by its decision not to cut crude output even if oil prices fall as low as $40 a barrel and will wait at least three months before considering an emergency meeting, the United Arab Emirates’ energy minister said. OPEC won’t immediately change its Nov. 27 decision to keep the group’s collective output target unchanged at 30 million barrels a day, Suhail Al-Mazrouei said. Venezuela supports an OPEC meeting given the price slide, though the country hasn’t officially requested one, an official at Venezuela’s foreign ministry said Dec. 12. The group is due to meet again on June 5. “We are not going to change our minds because the prices went to $60 or to $40,” Mazrouei told Bloomberg at a conference in Dubai. “We’re not targeting a price; the market will stabilize itself.” He said current conditions don’t justify an extraordinary OPEC meeting. “We need to wait for at least a quarter” to consider an urgent session, he said.

OPEC’s 12 members pumped 30.56 million barrels a day in November, exceeding their collective target for a sixth straight month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait this month deepened discounts on shipments to Asia, feeding speculation that they’re fighting for market share amid a glut fed by surging U.S. shale production. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries supplies about 40% of the world’s oil. Brent crude, a pricing benchmark for more than half of the world’s oil, slumped 2.9% to $61.85 a barrel in London on Dec. 12, for the lowest close since July 2009. Brent has tumbled 20% since Nov. 26, the day before OPEC decided to maintain production. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude dropped 3.6% to $57.81 in New York, the least since May 2009.

The U.A.E. hasn’t been informed of any plan for an emergency meeting, Al-Mazrouei said. OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla El-Badri said, “we don’t know,” when asked at the same conference about the possibility of such a meeting. An increase of about 6 million barrels a day in non-OPEC supply, together with speculation in oil markets, triggered the recent drop in prices, El-Badri said, without specifying dates for the higher output by producers outside the group such as the U.S. and Russia. Prices will rebound soon due to changes in the global economic cycle, he said, without giving details. “We will not have a real picture about oil prices until the end of the first half of 2015,” El-Badri said. Price will have settled by the second half of next year, and OPEC will have a clear idea by then about “the required measures,” he said.

Bet you there’s tons of similar notes around.

• The Oil-Price-Shock Contagion-Transmission Pathway (Zero Hedge)

As we noted previously, counterparty risk concerns (and thus financial system fragility) are starting to rear their ugly heads. In the mid 2000s, it was massive one-way levered bets on “house prices will never go down again.” When the cracks started to appear, the mark-to-market losses in derivatives led to forced liquidations and snowballed systemically. In the mid 2010s, it is massively levered one-way asymmetric bets on “commodity prices [oil] will never go down again.” Meet WTI-structured-notes… the transmission mechanism for oil-price-shocks blowing up the financial system. Because nothing says exuberant ignorance like limited upside, unlimited downside OTC (illiquid) derivatives… Here’s BNP Paribas’ 1-Yr WTI-linked notes that collapse if oil drops below $70…

It’ll be a bloodbath. Or, it already is, but you can’t see it yet.

• UK Energy Firms Go Under As Oil Price Tumbles (Guardian)

The tumbling oil price has led to a trebling of insolvencies among UK oil and gas services companies so far this year, while £55bn of further oil projects reportedly under threat. Brent crude closed below $62 a barrel on Friday, a five-and-a-half-year low, amid fears of falling demand and oversupply as the global economy slows down. [..] On Sunday, the United Arab Emirates energy minister, Suhail Al-Mazrouei, said Opec would not cut crude output even if the price dropped as low as $40 a barrel. He told Bloomberg at a conference in Dubai: “We are not going to change our minds because the prices went to $60 or to $40. We’re not targeting a price; the market will stabilise itself.” A report due on Monday from accountancy firm Moore Stephens said 18 businesses in the UK oil and gas services sector had become insolvent in 2014 compared with just six last year. It said that although the increase was from a low base, it was significant because insolvencies in the sector had been rare over the last five years.

Jeremey Willmont at Moore Stephens said: “The fall in the oil price has translated into insolvencies in the oil and gas services sector remarkably quickly. The oil and gas services sector has enjoyed very strong trading conditions for the last 15 years, so perhaps they have not been quite so well prepared for a sustained deterioration in trading conditions as other sectors would have been. “There was a sharp drop in the oil price during the financial crisis, but the sense that oil prices could be depressed for some time is much more widespread this time around. “It is clear that oil and gas majors are already cutting costs. Both Shell and BP have recently announced cuts to investment in a number of major projects. Smaller players are also reconsidering their capital deployment. If this retrenchment continues the result will be less work for oil and gas services companies.”

A lot of these guys are in for a nasty surprise next time they go see their bankers.

• Oil Bust Veterans Brace While Shale-Boom Newbies Swagger (Bloomberg)

Autry Stephens knows the look and feel of an oil boom going bust, and he’s starting to get ready. The West Texas wildcatter, 76, has weathered four such cycles in his 52 years draining crude from the Permian basin, still the most prolific U.S. oilfield. Though the collapse in prices since June doesn’t yet have him in a panic, Stephens recognizes the signs of another downturn on the horizon. And like many bust-hardened veterans in this region – which has made and broken the fortunes of thousands – he’s talking about it like a gathering storm. The ups and downs of oil are a way of life in Midland and Odessa, Texas, dating all the way back to the Great Depression. It’s as much a part of the culture as Gulf Coast hurricanes, and residents often prepare accordingly.

“We’re going to hunker down and go into survival mode,” Stephens, founder of Endeavor Energy Resources LP, said in an interview from his Midland office, where visitors are first greeted by a statuette of a Texas Longhorn steer. “Stay alive is our mantra, until the price recovers.” Go about 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) due north and you get a very different take from the rookie oil barons in North Dakota, where crude output from the Bakken formation went from 200,000 barrels a day in 2008 to about 1.2 million today. They’re not seeing any need to take shelter, and it shows in their swagger. Rich Vestal, who’s seen his trucking business double, double again and then double one more time in the past five years, is sipping root beer out of a Styrofoam cup at the Courthouse Cafe in Williston, North Dakota.

“I would welcome a slowdown,” he says, while believing one’s not really in the works. Of all the booming U.S. oil regions set soaring by a drilling renaissance in shale rock, the Permian and Bakken basins are among the most vulnerable to oil prices that settled at $57.81 a barrel Dec. 12. With enough crude by some counts to exceed the reserves of Saudi Arabia, they’re also the most critical to the future of the U.S. shale boom. For the Texas veteran, the forecast is telling him to batten down the hatches. Up in North Dakota, oil’s new kids on the block figure there’s just a few clouds floating by. Early signs are pointing in favor of the worriers.

“The Year of Living Dangerously.”

• Warning Over Horrible End To Japan’s QE Blitz (AEP)

HSBC has warned that Japan’s barely-disguised attempt to drive down the yen is becoming dangerous and may spin out of control, leading to an exchange rate crisis next year and a worldwide currency storm. “It is entirely possible that the Yen decline becomes disorderly and swift,” said the bank, in one of the starkest criticisms so far of Japan’s radical stimulus policies. David Bloom and Paul Mackel, HSBC’s currency strategists, voiced growing concern that premier Shinzo Abe is backing away from fiscal retrenchment and may pressure the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to fund policies aimed at boosting household spending. “The temptation to drift towards increasingly generous fiscal programmes could grow. We do not expect a ‘helicopter drop’ of income into every household, but the yen would react very badly to any sign that the government is heading down a route of overt monetisation,” they wrote in a report entitled “The Year of Living Dangerously”.

The warning came as Mr Abe won a sweeping victory in Japan’s snap elections over the weekend, consolidating his power in the Diet and giving him a further mandate for deep reforms. “I promise to make Japan a country that can shine again at the centre of the world,” said Mr Abe. Japan’s recovery has faltered. Mr Abe’s Thatcherite shake-up, or Third Arrow, has yet to get off the ground, though he is now in a much stronger position to break monopolies and confront vested interests. The economy slumped back into recession in the middle of this year after a rise in the sales tax from 5pc to 8pc, a move that was clearly premature. The Abenomics experiment still depends largely on the BoJ’s asset purchases, running at 1.4pc of GDP each month, the most extreme monetary blitz ever attempted in a modern economy. Economists are deeply divided over whether this alone can overwhelm the fiscal shock, and lift the economy out a 20-year stagnation trap. HSBC said Mr Abe may succeed in driving up wages, setting off a “wage-inflation spiral”.

This may not necessarily lead to a bond rout since the Bank of Japan is effectively holding down bond yields. However, the exchange rate might take the strain instead. The worry is that this could set off a beggar-thy-neighbour devaluation process across Asia, eventually sucking in China. “The tentacle of the currency war would spread,” said the report. HSBC said China is determined to avoid joining this debasement game as it tries to wean its own economy off export-led growth, but there may be limits. The Chinese economy is slowing and is already in deep producer price deflation. Japanese exporters have been switching to a new strategy over the last six months, cutting export prices to gain market share as the yen falls, rather than pocketing the windfall as extra profit. “There are grounds to argue that China would join the currency war and devalue the yuan if currency moves elsewhere became disorderly,” it said. The warnings have raised eyebrows since HSBC has close policy ties with the Chinese authorities.

Will Kuroda dare turn on Abe?

• Time to Take Away the Punchbowl in Japan (Bloomberg)

As the world watches to see what Prime Minister Shinzo Abe does with his renewed mandate in Japan, my eyes are on Haruhiko Kuroda instead. After all, the Bank of Japan governor probably deserves about 90% of the credit for whatever success Abe’s reflation efforts have had thus far – in particular, a more than 70% rise in the benchmark Topix index. Whether the prime minister now goes further and implements the real structural reforms Japan needs depends as much on Kuroda as anyone else. Abe’s victory was not as sweeping as might appear at first glance. Amid record-low turnout, his Liberal Democratic Party ended up with a couple fewer seats than previously – although still enough for the ruling coalition to maintain its two-thirds majority in the lower house of parliament.

Not surprisingly, officials in Tokyo are talking less about politically difficult reforms and more about putting money in the hands of Japanese to spend. Analysts are expecting a rush of new fiscal stimulus early in the new year. Kuroda, too, will face pressure to one-up himself when the BOJ meets on Friday. Like addicts looking for their next fix, markets want the central bank governor to outdo his “shock-and-awe” from April 2013 and recent Halloween surprise, when he boosted bond purchases to about $700 billion annually. It’s time for Kuroda to do exactly the opposite: hold his fire and prod Abe to begin doing his part to push through his “third arrow” structural reforms. To this point, Kuroda has been a dutiful and circumspect policymaker – perhaps to a fault. Other than a brief flash of impatience with Abe’s foot-dragging in a May Wall Street Journal interview – when he said “implementation is key, and implementation should be swift” – Kuroda has held his tongue.

Yet he bears a responsibility to play the honest broker role that monetary powers have over the years – from Paul Volcker at the Federal Reserve decades ago to Raghuram Rajan at the Reserve Bank of India today. On Friday, Kuroda should tell reporters, “Now that the election is over, it’s up to Prime Minister Abe to carry out the will of the people and deregulate the economy. For now, we at the BOJ have done all we can – and are willing to do – to make Abenomics a success.” Stock traders would abhor such candor from a central bank that’s spent the last 21 months refilling the punchbowl. But a smart economist and wise tactician like Kuroda has to know this Japanese experiment will end very badly if Abe fails to encourage innovation, loosen labor markets, lower trade tariffs and cut red tape. If bond traders drive government bond yields higher and credit-rating companies pounce, the blame will fall squarely on Kuroda.

“Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras called Samaras “the prime minister of chaos” in a speech on Saturday.”

• Samaras Grexit Talk Summons Bond Vigilantes to Greece (Bloomberg)

As he enters a critical week for his premiership, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has awoken the bond market to the dangers of a political rupture in Greece. Samaras will put forward his candidate for the presidency in the first of three votes on Dec. 17 in a process that risks toppling his government. He spent the weekend trading barbs with the Syriza party that leads in the polls, setting out the consequences of letting the anti-austerity group into power, as Syriza accused him of “begging” markets to attack Greece. A bond selloff pushed the yield on the three-year notes Greece sold earlier this year up more than 60 basis points in an hour on Dec. 11 after Samaras accused the opposition of reviving concerns that Greece could be forced out of the euro. The debt, which symbolized Greece’s financial rehabilitation when it was issued earlier this year, closed the week yielding more than 10-year bonds, a signal of the growing default risk.

“The leading party could be portraying the movement as a way to scare voters,” said Yannick Naud, a money manager at Pentalpha Capital in London. “They are blaming Syriza for the move, and rightly so, and it’s probably to tell the electorate it’s our way or chaos.” Samaras triggered the worst stock market selloff in 27 years last week when he decided to bring forward the vote in parliament on a new head of state. The prime minister will be forced to call a snap election unless he can find another 25 lawmakers for the supermajority required to confirm his nominee by Dec. 29. Samaras wrote in an article in Real News that anxiety about Greece is justified and caused by Syriza. Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras called Samaras “the prime minister of chaos” in a speech on Saturday.

“The pressure from the European commission on the electoral process of a sovereign country is unbearable, and raises serious questions about the future of democracy in Europe ..“

• EU Finance Chief Flies Into Athens As Grexit Fears Mount (Guardian)

The EU’s finance commissioner, Pierre Moscovici, flies into Athens on Monday amid mounting political uncertainty following the Greek government’s abrupt decision to bring forward the presidential elections. The Frenchman’s visit comes as the country’s radical-left opposition leader, Alexis Tsipras, steps up claims that Greece is being subjected to a campaign of “frenetic fear-mongering” not only by its Prime Minister Antonis Samaras but senior European officials ahead of this week’s ballot, the first of three polls. “An operation of terror, of lies, is underway,” the leader of Syriza told supporters on Sunday. “An operation whose only aim is to sow terror among the Greek people and MPs, and to thrust the country ever deeper into the poverty and uncertainty of the memorandum,” he said referring to the EU-IMF-sponsored rescue programme to keep the debt-stricken economy afloat.

Tsipras was speaking after government leaders reiterated fears that Greece could be forced to exit the eurozone if parliament failed to elect a new head of state by 29 December. Should the ruling alliance lose the three-round race, the Greek constitution demands that general elections are called, a vote Tsipras’s party is tipped to win. “Everything is hanging by a thread … and if it is cut, it could lead the country to absolute catastrophe,” said the deputy premier, Evangelos Venizelos, whose centre-left Pasok party is junior partner in Athens’ two-party coalition. In a re-run of the drama that haunted Greece at the height of the eurozone crisis in 2012, markets have tumbled with the country’s borrowing costs soaring on the back of revived fears of a Greek exit – called Grexit – if a Syriza-led government assumes power.

Moscovici, whose two-day visit is expected to focus on discussing stalled negotiations with the nation’s troika of creditors – the European commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank – will not be meeting Tsipras. Aides described the snub as “unbelievable”. Last week, the finance commissioner said he thought Samaras “knows what he is doing” and would win his gamble of expediting the vote for a new head of state. In an interview with Kathimerini on Sunday, he described the former EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas, who is the government candidate for president, as “a good man.” But the newly installed president of the European commission Jean-Claude Juncker, who is a close friend of Samaras, has gone further, warning of the perils of the “wrong election result”. “I wouldn’t like extreme forces to come to power,” he said of the poll’s potential to trigger early general elections. “I would prefer if known faces show up.”

Although it is not the first time that the politics of fear have been invoked to ensure that the twice bailed-out Greece toes the line, the flagrant intervention of figures so directly linked to Athens’ €240bn financial rescue programme has been quick to stir angry reaction abroad. Rushing to the support of Syriza on Saturday, the Party of the European Left, the continent’s alliance of leftist groups, deplored what it said was evidence of declining levels of democracy in the EU. “The pressure from the European commission on the electoral process of a sovereign country is unbearable, and raises serious questions about the future of democracy in Europe,” Pierre Laurent, the organisation’s president said in a statement posted on the party’s website.

There’s one solution, and one only: Grexit. Not sure what Steve feels about that, though.

• The EU Must Face Up To Austerity’s Failures (Steve Keen)

The Greek stockmarket slumped further overnight as investors continue to digest Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ decision to call a snap presidential election. Greek stocks fell a further 7%, bringing the market’s loss for the year to 29%. Oliver Marc Hartwich commented in Business Spectator earlier this week that the election might “allow the radical anti-austerity forces to gain power. This would not only dash any hopes of a Greek recovery, it would also force the eurozone to make a choice between the lesser of two evils: to expel Greece from the monetary union and let it default on its debt, or to continue supporting it financially, despite an end to fiscal consolidation”. If, as appears likely, the leftist Syriza Party takes over in Greece, Hartwich lamented that “then, whatever may have been achieved on budget consolidation and reform in the meantime will not be worth much anymore.” This assumes that “whatever may have been achieved on budget consolidation and reform” was worth something in the first place.

So let’s stop assuming and check the data. Figure 1 shows Greek GDP since 1996, and it has clearly collapsed since the policy of austerity was imposed. If the Greeks feel inclined to kick out the incumbent government after a more than 25% fall in nominal GDP over the last six years, could you really blame them? Supporters of austerity, such as Hartwich, point to the tiny uptick in GDP in the last six months as a sign that austerity is working. But the original proponents of austerity actually argued that it would cause the economy to grow, not shrink. Some growth. Austerity began in February 2010 in Greece (as marked on Figure 1), and since then the economy has shrunk by almost 25%. Unemployment rose from 10% when the policy began to a peak of 27.5% — worse than the US experienced during the Great Depression. Rather than seeing the slight recovery in the last six months as signs of success, supporters of austerity should be asking why their policies failed so abjectly.

“If by the time of the third vote at the end of the December, the centre right’s candidate Stavros Dimas, a former EU commissioner, has not secured 180 votes out of 300 – unlikely as things stand – there will be an election that Syriza could win.”

• The Eurozone Crisis History Is Repeating Itself … Again (Guardian)

It’s funny how history repeats itself. The inconclusive general election in 2010 took place when the economy appeared to be on the mend and against the backdrop of a crisis in the eurozone prompted by Greece. As things stand, we could be in for a repeat performance in May 2015. Be in no doubt, what’s happening in Europe matters to Britain. The eurozone is perhaps one crisis and one deep recession away from splintering. The more TV pictures of rioting on the streets of Athens or general strikes in Italy between now and the election, the better support for Nigel Farage’s UK Independence party will hold up. Stronger support for Ukip will encourage the Conservatives to adopt a more Eurosceptic approach, hardening their stance on the concessions required for them to continue supporting Britain’s membership of the EU.

Meanwhile, a permanently weak eurozone economy will push Britain’s trade balance into the red. The economic debate in the current parliament has been about sorting out the budget deficit; the debate in the next parliament will also be about sorting out the current account deficit. Let’s start with Greece, which was where the eurozone crisis began all those years ago. The French statesman Talleyrand once said of the Bourbons that they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. The same applies to the bunch of incompetents in Brussels, Berlin and Frankfurt responsible for pushing Greece towards economic and political meltdown. Greece’s recent economic performance has been pretty good. The economy is growing, unemployment is on the decline and the debt to GDP ratio has come down a bit. Time, you might think, to cut Athens a bit of slack.

Not if you are the German government, the European commission or the European Central Bank. No, they are insisting on even more austerity and continued surveillance by the IMF. But the Greeks have had a bellyful of austerity. They have had enough of being pushed around. Predictably, support for the anti-austerity Syriza party is strong and the mood is angry. In an attempt to regain the initiative, the government in Athens brought forward the dates for the votes in parliament to elect a new president. If by the time of the third vote at the end of the December, the centre right’s candidate Stavros Dimas, a former EU commissioner, has not secured 180 votes out of 300 – unlikely as things stand – there will be an election that Syriza could win.

” .. the sorry state of the French-German couple – the stalled engine of European integration..”

• Time For Bottom Fishing In The Eurozone? (CNBC)

By taking the euro area stocks down 2.9% in the course of last Friday’s trading, markets may be signaling that recessionary and stagnant economies have set the stage for unsettling political developments throughout the monetary union. There is no safe harbor left in that troubled region. Even Germany is moving toward the eye of the storm. When you see the German Chancellor Merkel’s blistering attack on its coalition partners – the Social Democrats – for having formed the government in the federal state of Thuringia with the far Left Party (Die Linke) and the Greens, you know that German political stability is gone. In fact, she sounded like she was actively searching for a new partner when, in the same speech last Tuesday (December 9), she invited the Greens (polling at 11%) to cooperate with her center-right party CDU/CSU (polling at 41%). Germany’s current governing coalition is at odds about euro area economic policies and the economic fallout from sanctions against Russia.

More generally, it seems, Chancellor Merkel’s hostile policies toward Russia have opened ominous differences on issues of European security. It looks like a perfect deal breaker may be in the offing. And then there is Germany’s deteriorating relationship with France. Invectives and name calling are flying across the Rhine, and things are seriously amiss at the highest political level. For example, in response to Chancellor Merkel’s repeated criticisms of France’s failure to meet budget deficit targets and to implement structural reforms, the French Prime Minister Valls is saying that France is doing its reforms for its own needs rather than to please foreign governments. In other words, what France is doing, or not doing, is none of Germany’s business. That is the sorry state of the French-German couple – the stalled engine of European integration.

But asking prices are up!

• London House Prices Fall By More Than £30,000 In A Month (Guardian)

The average asking price of a home in London has tumbled by more than £30,000 over the past month, figures from property website Rightmove showed on Monday, with new sellers in all of the capital’s boroughs seemingly becoming less optimistic about the price they can achieve. Across the country, Rightmove reported the largest ever monthly fall in the price of properties coming to market, a 3.3% or nearly £9,000 decline to £258,424. Asking prices in Greater London have been falling since the summer, and the drop to an average of £570,796 from £601,180 in November, represents a 5.1% decline in sellers’ expectations over the month, the second biggest after August. Prices were down in all 32 London boroughs, with the biggest drops in Hammersmith & Fulham and Hackney, where new asking prices dropped by 7% and 6% respectively.

However despite the drop, average asking prices of homes coming onto the market across London are up by £57,000, or 11.1%, on December 2013. In Hackney, sellers are asking 22.5% more than in December last year, while in Haringey prices are 21% higher. Rightmove reported month-on-month drops everywhere except Wales, where new sellers put homes up for sale for 0.2% more than in November, at an average of £167,271. However asking prices are set to end the year up 7%, and the website said it expected further increases in the range of 4% to 5% in 2015. The falls come despite the changes to stamp duty announced in this month’s autumn statement. Estate agents have predicted the changes could lead to higher prices being paid for homes, particularly around the old “cliff edge” thresholds at which higher tax rates kicked in.

“.. we are two bad decisions away from not being an independent central bank ..”

• Fed Vice-Chairman Fisher: ‘Boy, Was I Wrong’ About Banks’ Political Power (WSJ)

Did the political influence of big Wall Street banks wane after the financial crisis? Not according to the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. Stanley Fischer gave some unscheduled remarks Friday morning at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, waxing philosophic about the global process for setting financial-system rules. Mr. Fischer suggested rules set directly by legislatures can be imperfect, lamenting the role of Wall Street banks in shaping the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law.
“I thought that when Dodd-Frank started, that the banks would not succeed in influencing it, having lost all the prestige they lost,” he told a crowd of several dozen at the Washington, D.C., think tank. “Boy, was I wrong.”

His remarks came less than a day after the House passed a spending bill that included a provision, long sought by banks, to scale back a Dodd-Frank requirement. Mr. Fischer also recalled how during his time leading the Bank of Israel, he felt keenly aware of political considerations. When his central bank colleagues asserted that the institution acted independently of the elected government, his reply was, “Yes. And we are two bad decisions away from not being an independent central bank.”

When did Krugman last get anything right? I still think he lost it in the Swedish schnapps he drank when picking up his Fauxbel.

• Krugman Says Fed Is Unlikely to Raise Interest Rates in 2015 (Bloomberg)

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman said the U.S. Federal Reserve is unlikely to raise interest rates next year as it struggles to meet its inflation target and global economic growth remains weak. “When push comes to shove they’re going to look and say: ‘It’s a pretty weak world economy out there, we don’t see any inflation, and the risk if we raise rates and turns out we were mistaken is just so huge’,” Krugman said in Dubai today. “It’s certainly a real possibility that they’ll go ahead and do it, but probably not.” Top Fed officials, including Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer and New York Fed President William C. Dudley, said this month they expect the drop in oil prices to spur domestic consumption, playing down the risk that it could push inflation further below the central bank’s 2% goal. Krugman, however, said he agrees with signals from financial markets suggesting that policy makers will delay raising borrowing costs.

U.S. Treasuries rallied, with 10-year yields falling the most since June 2012 on Dec. 12 while bond yields showed five-year inflation expectations fell to the lowest since 2010. The policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, which next meets Dec. 16-17, will take energy prices into account in its assessment of inflation and the economy. While most major central banks view inflation of about 2% as the yardstick for price stability, more than a fourth of 90 economies monitored by researcher Capital Economics Ltd. are below 1%, the most since 2009. The outlook for world economic growth may deteriorate in 2015 with risks of crises in China and the euro-area, Krugman said, as the European Central Bank fails to dodge deflation and the world’s second-biggest economy struggles to bolster domestic demand. “The two scary spots are the euro-area and China,” Krugman said in a presentation about the state of the world economy at the Arab Strategy Forum in Dubai.

It’ll take a crash for people to really understand what the swaps rule demise entails. And by then it’ll be too late by a wide margin.

• Congress Deals A Blow To Financial Reform (Bloomberg ed.)

Passing a last-minute spending bill to avoid shutting down the U.S. government might be better than another self-inflicted budget crisis, but the deal on the table is nothing to be proud of. The measure approved by the House of Representatives last night and now before the Senate carries with it a set of so-called riders, which change policy in ways that haven’t been examined or discussed. One of them is especially troublesome. It weakens the Dodd-Frank financial reforms. The rider in question removes the so-called swaps push-out rule, which was intended to reduce the risks posed by the largest U.S. banks’ trading in derivatives. Without it, regulators will have to work harder in other areas to promote stability. The rule addressed a dangerous incentive created by the pre-crash regulatory system. Various government backstops, such as deposit insurance and access to emergency loans from the Federal Reserve, have given the largest banks a great advantage in the derivatives market.

Counterparties assume that the government will help them make good on their obligations. This implicit subsidy encouraged them to build huge, interconnected trading operations. Trouble at any one of them could trigger a broader panic and necessitate a rescue. The size of the business is staggering. As of June, the top four banks – JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America – had written derivative contracts on the equivalent of more than $200 trillion in stocks, bonds and other assets. The rule told banks to move some of their derivatives out of federally insured, deposit-taking subsidiaries and to put them in other units instead. This was never going to make the financial system safe on its own. In the case of the biggest banks, all units, not just deposit-takers, enjoy government support, as the bailouts of 2008 and 2009 plainly demonstrated. In addition, pleading practical difficulties, banks had already succeeded in narrowing the scope of the requirement. Still, the swaps rule would have been helpful. Its demise gives regulators more work to do.

They’ll probably need to take further steps to reduce the value of the government subsidy, by making banks less likely to need it. How? First, by making sure that banks have ample capital, and plenty of cash on hand, to cope with sudden setbacks. Here, the regulators have made a start but need to do more. Second, by requiring derivatives trades to be routed transparently through new central counterparties and by setting up trading hubs that let investors transact directly with one another. This strengthening of the financial infrastructure is in train. Third, by monitoring the market for dangerous concentrations of risk, such as the credit-derivative positions that almost brought down insurance giant AIG and a number of large banks in 2008. Here, progress has been sluggish at best. The killing of the swaps rule needn’t be a disaster. That’s what it would be, though, if it proved to be the first step in a broader rollback of financial reform, and if regulators failed to use their other powers to better effect.

A ‘little risky’, clueless Robert? Check this for ‘deep thinking’: “Maybe neighborhoods are not as important. Or maybe there’s an urbanization trend going on.”

• Shiller Sees Risk In New Push For First-Time Homebuyers (CNBC)

Lax lending standards were widely faulted for triggering the 2008 financial crisis. If recent developments are any indication, those conditions may be making a comeback. In an effort to accelerate lending to lower- and middle-income borrowers, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are launching programs that will guarantee loans with down payments of as little as 3%. But could an ultralow down payment create a housing market boom, or could it lead to another mortgage bubble? A prominent housing market expert who made his name predicting the 2008 bust has at least some doubts. “It sounds a little risky,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller told CNBC. “Risky for the lender, and for the mortgage insurer who is going to insure” the mortgage obligations, he added.

Borrowing criteria tightened after the housing market crashed, but in recent days some of those strictures have been loosened. Lack of a big cash down payment has been cited by some as keeping many possible buyers from becoming homeowners. According to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to get a mortgage with just 3% down, borrowers must have a credit score of at least 620. They must also be able to able to prove income, assets and job status, and purchase private mortgage insurance. However, Shiller still cast doubt on whether that would be the best course of action. “Because it’s only a 3% margin, if somebody defaults and they have to sell the house, they might not get all the money back.”

Although banks have implemented tighter lending standards, a spate of new borrowing programs have been aimed at first-time and lower-income homebuyers, most of whom have stayed on the sidelines of the housing market. According to recent data from the National Association of Realtors, first-time homebuyers account for just 33% of all home purchases. That’s the lowest level in 27 years. “Maybe there’s a cultural change. Our millennials spend more time on Facebook than standing over the backyard fence and talking to the neighbor,” Shiller said, attempting to explain the drop in new homebuyers. “Maybe neighborhoods are not as important. Or maybe there’s an urbanization trend going on.”

Didn’t have the guts to go below 7%, did you?

• China Economic Growth May Slow To 7.1% In 2015 – PBOC (Reuters)

China’s economic growth could slow to 7.1% in 2015 from an expected 7.4% this year, held back by a sagging property sector, the central bank said in research report seen by Reuters on Sunday. Stronger global demand could boost exports, but not by enough to counteract the impact from weakening property investment, according to the report published on the central bank’s website. China’s exports are likely to grow 6.9% in 2015, quickening from this year’s 6.1% rise, while import growth is seen accelerating to 5.1% in 2015 from this year’s 1.9%, it said. The report warned that the Federal Reserve’s expected move to raise interest rates sometime next year could hit emerging-market economies.

Fixed-asset investment growth may slow to 12.8% in 2015 from this year’s 15.5%, while retail sales growth may quicken to 12.2% from 12%, it said. Consumer inflation may hold largely steady in 2015, at 2.2%, it said. China’s economic growth weakened to 7.3% in the third quarter, and November’s soft factory and investment figures suggest full-year growth will miss Beijing’s 7.5% target and mark the weakest expansion in 24 years. Economists who advise the government have recommended that China lower its growth target to around 7% in 2015. China’s employment situation is likely to hold up well next year due to faster expansion of the services sector, despite slower economic growth, said the report.

Oz has different worries today.

• Australia’s Budget Deficit Blows Out Amid Commodity Slide (Reuters)

Australia’s government forecast its budget deficit would balloon to A$40.4 billion ($33.2 billion) in the year to June as falling prices for key resource exports and sluggish wage growth blew a gaping hole in tax revenues. Releasing his midyear budget outlook on Monday, Treasurer Joe Hockey predicted the economy would grow by 2.5% in 2014/15 before picking up to 3.5% over the next few years, while unemployment was likely to peak at 6.5%. “While there are positive signs of the Australian economy strengthening and transitioning towards broader-based drivers of growth, there is still much work to be done and budget repair will take time,” said Hockey. Just a year into office, Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s government has suffered record low approval ratings, with the economy running into strong external headwinds.

The deficit for 2014/15 had been forecasted at A$29.8 billion in the May budget, while the 2015/16 shortfall was now put at A$31.2 billion, instead of A$17.1 billion. The release was delayed for over an hour as the government reacted to a hostage siege in the heart of Sydney’s financial district, which has diverted media coverage away from the budget update and the government’s political troubles. Hockey predicted tax receipts would be A$31 billion less than first hoped in the four years to 2017/18, due largely to a slide in the price of iron ore, Australia’s biggest export earner. The government has had to cut its forecast from A$92 a ton in May, to A$60 a ton for the foreseeable future. The government has also faced problems getting unpopular cost cutting and revenue raising measures through the Senate, which Hockey said cost another A$10.6 billion.

“The Cold War was the dialectic conditioning of the whole world ..”

• The Implosion Of American Culture (PhoM)

It was widely expressed by the mainstream media of the time that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall could not have been predicted. In hindsight, the stagnation and drop in oil prices should have been the obvious signs that a dramatic change was coming. And when the USSR began to borrow from western banks, the fix was in. Western banks is something of a misnomer, as no bank, or conglomerate of banking interests, can exist separate and independent of the larger international banking structure which has been built throughout the the 20th Century. Stagnating growth and the deflationary oil prices which began in 1986 acted as fine toothed methods of transferring wealth from the social trust within the Soviet Union, forcing banks within the USSR to borrow from western banks, which was in fact an exchange of assets amongst financial institutions.

The inevitable policy shifts towards “perestroika” were obvious and planned well in advance. The agricultural crisis within the country was designed to parallel the mass movement towards “glasnost”, or openness. When we consider the larger mandates of the CSI, Cultural and Socioeconomic Interception, the same machinations as “perestroika” and ‘glasnost” can be observed in the social fragmentation and devolution of the American middle class. Where the Soviet Union enacted policies which instigated the CSI changes within the country, it will be Americas lack of enacting policy change which will precipitate the implosion of its culture.

To understand what this means we must consider the expansion of American culture around the globe since 1944, which was the year the USD became the primary reserve currency used in global trade. As use of the dollar increased, so did the acceptance of western culture. Everything from McDonald’s burgers to Hollywood creations were exported around the world. America has followed the Soviet Union down the path of re-engineering its ideological culture. Russia has no more moved towards democracy than America has moved towards Communism. Both have shifted towards a new socialist middle ground where centralization has woven the macro economic system tighter around a supra-sovereign statehood. The Cold War was the dialectic conditioning of the whole world.

“Nearly half of those 25 years of age are living at home with parents. The rate is up to 30% for those 30 years of age.”

• Why Milennials Are Stuck Living At Home With Parents (Dr. Housing Bubble)

The Federal Reserve conducted a study on Millennials and tried to ascertain why so many of them are living at home. Is it too much student debt? Lower incomes? Or is it that home prices are simply unaffordable? The study finds that all of these factors have a big impact on why many Millennials are living at home and why the first time home buyer market is performing so badly. It also gives us insight into the shifting building demand of new construction. Many builders are focusing their energies on multi-unit structures to cater to an audience that will look for rentals or lower priced condos. There is a heavy renting trend undertaking this country. We are seeing a record numbers of young people living at home with mom and dad heading directly back into their childhood rooms to rock out the NES and attempting to pass Super Mario Brothers once again. There are major implications for housing because of this new structural change. First time home buying is down dramatically. Construction is catering to a lower income cohort. Let us look at what the Fed found in their report.

One of the interesting findings is that the trend of young adults living at home has continued on an upward slope going all the way back to 1999. Even the toxic mortgage days of Housing Bubble 1.0 didn’t really shift this figure by much. But the homeownership rate increased which means that the push came from older cohorts or young buyers that had the misfortune of buying near the top (and of course many were burned in epic fashion).

So let us look at the findings: Nearly half of those 25 years of age are living at home with parents. The rate is up to 30% for those 30 years of age. These are dramatic increases from 1999. There has been paltry data on the makeup of housing composition because some were saying that many were shacking up with roommates. That does not appear to be the case. If you were placing a bet, you would be in a good position putting your money on those 25 years of age living at home with parents. The first time home buyer market continues to perform pathetically. Of course, with investors pulling back we now have the FHFA trying to push for 3% down payment loans to get the juices flowing again. We are already at 5% down payments so this move to 3% will likely offer minimal help for younger Americans.

Debt Rattle December 11 2014

Dec 112014

December 11, 2014 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:55 am Finance Tagged with: Bush, China, CIA, Draghi, Greece, oil, OPEC, superbugs, torture, yuan 1 Response »

DPC Pine Street below Kearney after the great San Francisco earthquake and fire 1906

• Oil Plunge Rips Through Markets as Investors Seek Bottom (Bloomberg)

• Bank Of America Sees $50 Oil As OPEC Dies (AEP)

• Name That Chart! Oil Supply Or Demand Edition (Zero Hedge)

• Dow Down Triple Digits As Oil Hits Multi-Year Lows (CNBC)

• Steen Jakobsen: The US Could Bail Out Its Own Oil Sector (CNBC)

• China’s Wild Market Swings: This Is Just The Start (CNBC)

• PBOC, Traders Tussle Over Yuan (WSJ)

• Yuan Has Real Shot at IMF Blessing on Reserve Status (Bloomberg)

• How Wal-Mart Made Its Crumbling China Business Look So Good for So Long (BBG)

• ‘Known Unknown’ Dangers Are Lurking In The Stock Market (MarketWatch)

• Britons Are Living Beyond Their Means, Says Government Watchdog (Telegraph)

• Leaked EU Summit Conclusions: Draghi Left Hanging? (FT)

• Greek Left Candidate Willing To Call European Leaders’ Bluff (AEP)

• Superbugs To Kill 10 Million People A Year, Cost $100 Trillion By 2050 (BBC)

• Generation Y Have Every Right To Be Angry At Baby Boomers’ Wealth (Guardian)

• One-Fifth Of Americans Don’t Plan To Pay Off Their Debt (CNBC)

• IMF Finds Another $15 Billion Black Hole In Ukraine’s Finances (CNBC)

• Guantanamo Six ‘Will Enjoy Complete Freedom’ In Uruguay (BBC)

• CIA Torture Report May Set Off Global Prosecutions (Bloomberg)

• President George W. Bush ‘Knew Everything’ About CIA Interrogation (BBC)

“The mantra of ‘lower oil prices are good for the economy’ can only last so long until finally there’s a break in the psychology of investors ..”

• Oil Plunge Rips Through Markets as Investors Seek Bottom (Bloomberg)

Oil’s collapse is rippling through financial markets, broadening a selloff in stocks beyond energy companies and leaving investors with few havens as assets from metals to corporate debt sink. Brent crude fell below $65 for the first time since 2009 as OPEC cut its forecast for 2015 demand, raising concern over the strength of the global economy and leaving investors contemplating when oil’s plunge will reach a bottom. “As great as it feels to pump $2 gasoline at the station, it’s not a healthy environment for financial assets,” Walter Todd, chief investment officer for Greenwood Capital, said. “It’s rare to see commodity prices fall this quickly in a non-recessionary situation. You really need to see some stabilization.” The selloff sent the MSCI All-Country World Index to its biggest drop in two months. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 1.6%, Canadian stocks plunged to the lowest since February and emerging-market shares fell to an eight-month low.

Traders are almost certain that Venezuela will teeter into default as bonds plunge to a 16-year low and the cost of default protection soars to a record. A measure of risk in the U.S. junk-bond market rose the most in two months. Copper fell 1.2% and gold slipped 0.2%. Investors sought relief in Treasuries as 30-year bond yields fell to a seven-week low, and the yen capped its biggest three-day gain versus the dollar in more than a year. While oil prices have been spiraling downward since June, entering a bear market and dragging down energy shares, the pace of today’s decline spurred selling in S&P 500 groups that helped drive the benchmark gauge to an all-time high on Dec. 5. All 10 major industries in the S&P 500 slumped at least 1% today.

“There’s nothing like human emotion to take over in the short term and fear is taking over, it looks like this really is a slowdown,” Ron Weiner at RDM Financial said. “In this case it really is an oil story, it really is a global slowdown of some sort.” [..] “The mantra of ‘lower oil prices are good for the economy’ can only last so long until finally there’s a break in the psychology of investors,” Jeff Sica at Circle Squared Alternative Investments said. “You start to realize the reason why oil prices are declining is because there’s severe economic weakness that has yet to be acknowledged. It’s bringing down all commodity prices.”

“What is clear is that the world has become addicted to central bank stimulus. Bank of America said 56% of global GDP is currently supported by zero interest rates, and so are 83% of the free-floating equities on global bourses.”

• Bank Of America Sees $50 Oil As OPEC Dies (AEP)

The OPEC oil cartel no longer exists in any meaningful sense and crude prices will slump to $50 a barrel over the coming months as market forces shake out the weakest producers, Bank of America has warned. Revolutionary changes sweeping the world’s energy industry will drive down the price of liquefied natural gas (LNG), creating a “multi-year” glut and a much cheaper source of gas for Europe. Francisco Blanch, the bank’s commodity chief, said OPEC is “effectively dissolved” after it failed to stabilize prices at its last meeting. “The consequences are profound and long-lasting,“ he said. The free market will now set the global cost of oil, leading to a new era of wild price swings and disorderly trading that benefits only the Mid-East petro-states with deepest pockets such as Saudi Arabia. If so, the weaker peripheral members such as Venezuela and Nigeria are being thrown to the wolves.

The bank said in its year-end report that at least 15pc of US shale producers are losing money at current prices, and more than half will be under water if US crude falls below $55. The high-cost producers in the Permian basin will be the first to “feel the pain” and may soon have to cut back on production. The claims pit Bank of America against its arch-rival Citigroup, which insists that the US shale industry is far more resilent than widely supposed, with marginal costs for existing rigs nearer $40, and much of its output hedged on the futures markets. Bank of America said the current slump will choke off shale projects in Argentina and Mexico, and will force retrenchment in Canadian oil sands and some of Russia’s remote fields. The major oil companies will have to cut back on projects with a break-even cost below $80 for Brent crude.

[..] What is clear is that the world has become addicted to central bank stimulus. Bank of America said 56% of global GDP is currently supported by zero interest rates, and so are 83% of the free-floating equities on global bourses. Half of all government bonds in the world yield less that 1pc. Roughly 1.4bn people are experiencing negative rates in one form or another. These are astonishing figures, evidence of a 1930s-style depression, albeit one that is still contained. Nobody knows what will happen as the Fed tries to break out of the stimulus trap, including Fed officials themselves.

That’s some serious charts. “.. if it quacks like a duck, cook it.”

• Name That Chart! Oil Supply Or Demand Edition (Zero Hedge)

While the question of supply vs demand in global oil markets is merely different sides of the same coin, we hope the following “name that chart” image provides some clarifying perspective on what is really dragging oil prices lower…
Nope… they are not the same… one of these is a commodity that is crashing but is believed to be “unequivocally” good for the global economy… the other is the global economy!!

DO NOT LOOK BELOW HERE UNTIL YOU GUESS… DON’T DO IT!!!!

Answer here.

and yes, we know correlation does not imply causation’ but… if it quacks like a duck, cook it.

You decide… steady supply into globally crushed demand…

Come up for air today, dive down again tomorrow?

• Dow Down Triple Digits As Oil Hits Multi-Year Lows (CNBC)

U.S. stocks declined on Wednesday, furthering the week’s losses, as the price of crude fell to multi-year lows and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cut its demand outlook for next year. “Oil continues to be the concern. Depending on who you talk to and in what time frame on which day of the week, oil may be a leading indicator, so there may be something behind the decline other than we have a lot of oil,” said Paul Nolte, senior vice president, portfolio manager at Kingsview Asset Management. “I don’t know that for sure. I do know, historically at least, energy stocks have tended to lead the market, and that lead time is anything from three months to a year, and we’re now six months into oil under performing the overall market, so we may be in for some rough sledding,” he added.

OPEC reduced its estimate for 2015 by roughly 300,000 barrels a day, with the cartel saying the effect of the 40% drop in prices on supply and demand is uncertain. The CBOE Volatility Index, a measure of investor uncertainty known as the VIX, jumped 9.4% to 16.29. Toll Brothers edged lower after the home builder reported mixed quarterly results; Yum Brands fell after the operator of Taco Bell and other fast-food brands cut is profit outlook for the year for a second time; Costco Wholesale climbed after the warehouse-club operator posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit and GlaxoSmithKline declined after Bank of America Merrill Lynch downgraded its stock to underperform from neutral.

See:

Can The US Bail Out Its Oil Industry?

• Steen Jakobsen: The US Could Bail Out Its Own Oil Sector (CNBC)

An economist who correctly predicted the fall in oil price this year has told CNBC that the U.S. government could look to bail out its energy sector in 2015 as the commodity’s low price starts hitting the country’s economy. “The U.S. energy sector is clearly important,” Steen Jakobsen, the chief economist at Danish investment bank Saxo Bank, told CNBC Wednesday. “They are paramount to the long-term strategic issue that the U.S. will be self-dependent on oil.” Jakobsen is part of team that puts together an annual “outrageous predictions” outlook that has been running for more than a decade. He concedes that these so-called black swan scenarios are “relatively controversial” but says that they could help investors navigate any real-life turmoil that arises. His prediction on a U.S. bailout is his own personal prediction and did not make the formal list that the Copenhagen-based company published on Wednesday morning.

A large number of economists believe the drilling frenzy and huge domestic energy boom has helped the U.S. to recover since the global financial crash of 2008, contributing an estimated 0.3-0.6 percentage points to U.S. gross domestic product. but Jakobsen believes this headwind could soon become a tailwind despite gas becoming cheaper at the pump for U.S. citizens. “It will subtract 0.5% from GDP, bare minimum,” he said. “There’s a precedent here, back in the 80s we also had an oil crisis and that led to bank recoveries.” He added that oil companies are in for a “massive correction,” similar to the downtrend seen in mining stocks, explaining that exploration was getting “hugely expensive” with energy majors having little free cash flow available. The S&P 500 index has clocked gains of around 11% so far this year but the energy sector within the benchmark is currently down nearly 12%. Oil prices are trading at five-year lows with Brent futures losing around 40% in value since June.

What’s worrisome is that many have bought stocks with borrowed funds, and with apartments as collateral.

• China’s Wild Market Swings: This Is Just The Start (CNBC)

The rout in China stocks on Tuesday is a healthy bull-market correction, say strategists, however the wild swings reinforce that the market is not for the faint of heart. The benchmark Shanghai Composite lived up to its notoriously volatile reputation on Wednesday, swinging between gains and losses after the market tanked more than 5% a day earlier – its biggest single-day percentage fall in 5 years. Losses were triggered by the Chinese securities clearing house’s decision late Monday to restrict the use of lower-grade corporate debt as collateral for short-term loans obtained through repurchase agreements. The move follows a surge in margin buying that accompanied the recent stock surge. Strategists, however, don’t believe the latest regulatory move will derail broader momentum in the market that has rallied 35.5% year to date.

“The new regulations were more of a negative catalyst for profit-taking. We see Tuesday’s selloff as a healthy correction,” said Stephen Sheung, head of investment strategy at SHK Private. Sheung says a reduction in leverage is unlikely to have a large impact because on the stock market: “You only need a small amount of money to move from bank deposits or wealth management products into stocks to push the market higher.” Audrey Goh, equity strategist at Standard Chartered also sees the recent market plunge as a pause for breath. “Yesterday’s move was a reaction to the rapid appreciation in the market over the past month,” Goh said. “Sentiment wise, there may be a perception that regulators are tightening up policies. But I think they are going on the right track because historically collateral has not been tightly scrutinized – this is all part of the reform process and shouldn’t have a long-term impact on the market,” she added.

“Investors have been focusing on an almost daily deluge of downbeat economic news about China.”

• PBOC, Traders Tussle Over Yuan (WSJ)

A battle in China’s currency market has emerged in recent days: Traders are pushing the yuan weaker, while the People;s Bank of China has been attempting to guide the tightly-controlled foreign-exchange rate stronger. That tension was on show Wednesday. The yuan began trading 1.1% weaker than the level at which the central bank set the morning reference rate, marking the biggest drop since June. Daily trading is limited to 2% above or below this so-called central parity rate. A slide in the currency has accelerated this month, after the central bank cut interest rates in November. The yuan is now 2% weaker than it was at the start of the year and is on track for its first annual loss since 2009. Investors have been focusing on an almost daily deluge of downbeat economic news about China.

Reports this week showed the rate of inflation slipped to a five-year low in November, while the country’s exports fell well below expectations in the same period. A broadly stronger dollar- the result of a recovering U.S. economy -has also hurt sentiment about the yuan. Volatility in the market has picked up this week, after Beijing curbed risky lending in the bond markets, sparking heavy declines in the stock and bond markets Tuesday. Monday and Tuesday, the yuan recorded its biggest-ever two-day tumble against the dollar. Wednesday, the central parity rate was set at 6.1195 yuan to the dollar, the strongest since March 3. The yuan opened at 6.1894. China’s central bank has been fighting the market, setting the yuan’s reference exchange rate, or “fix,” stronger against the dollar.

Analysts say Beijing appears eager to prevent one-way speculation on the currency and squeeze out those betting that it will decline further. “China doesn’t want to join the currency wars and that explains the fix movement,” said Ju Wang, a currency strategist at HSBC Holdings PLC in Hong Kong, referring to some countries’ efforts to push their currencies lower so that their exporters remain competitive. “But markets see it as China will eventually be dragged into the currency war or just fundamentally, growth and exports will weaken so much that will trigger the markets’ demand for the U.S. dollar.”

Hard to deny.

• Yuan Has Real Shot at IMF Blessing on Reserve Status (Bloomberg)

For the first time, China has a real shot at getting the International Monetary Fund to endorse the yuan as a global reserve currency alongside the dollar and euro. In late 2015, the IMF will conduct its next twice-a-decade review of the basket of currencies its members can count toward their official reserves. Including the yuan in this so-called Special Drawing Rights system would allow the IMF to recognize the ascent of the world’s second-biggest economy while aiding China’s attempts to diminish the dollar’s dominance in global trade and finance. China would need to satisfy the Washington-based lender’s economic benchmarks and get the support of most of the other 187 member countries.

The Asian nation is likely to pass both tests, said Eswar Prasad, who until 2006 worked at the IMF, including spells as heads of its financial studies and China divisions. “It will certainly help China’s objective of making the renminbi a more widely-used currency,” said Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Renminbi is China’s official name for the yuan. Reserve-currency status for the yuan would make central banks, particularly those in developing economies, more eager to hold yuan assets and “diversify at the margin away from dollars,” as well as euros, yen and Swiss francs, Prasad said.

Approval hinges partly on whether the IMF reverses its 2010 decision that the yuan wasn’t “freely usable.” There’s growing evidence that the currency may now pass this test, after already qualifying on the IMF’s other condition of being a large exporter. The proportion of China’s trade that’s settled in yuan has risen to about 20%; the market for yuan-denominated Dim Sum bonds has grown to $72.9 billion from nothing in just seven years; and the government has loosened controls on foreigners’ access to its financial markets. China has also signed agreements to trade the yuan freely in cities from Hong Kong and Singapore to Frankfurt and London.

Shouldn’t investors look at bringing charges?

• How Wal-Mart Made Its Crumbling China Business Look So Good for So Long (BBG)

After years of heralding China as one of its best markets, Wal-Mart in August said its performance there was among the worst in its major countries. A management shake-up and job cuts have followed. Although the reversals seem abrupt, cracks in the foundation of Wal-Mart’s retail business in China have been developing for years, hidden by questionable accounting and unauthorized sales practices, according to employees and internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg. The practices – including bulk sales to other retailers and some sales allegedly booked when no merchandise left the shelves – made business appear strong even as retail transactions slowed and unsold inventory piled up, these people and documents say. Wal-Mart said in August that it was unhappy with inventory growth internationally. Stores in China continue to make bulk sales, sometimes unprofitably and without required management authorizations, according to employees who’ve left the company this past month.

Concerns about bulk sales, raised as far back as 2011 in an internal report, have been the subject of inquiries in China by Wal-Mart’s legal team as recently as May, according to an internal company e-mail and an employee interviewed by lawyers. The report and interviews with current and former employees say Chinese Wal-Mart stores, under pressure to meet earnings targets, resorted to temporary markups of inventory as an accounting move that can burnish profits without any added sales of merchandise. After employees “recognized inventory pricing discrepancies” in 2011, the company’s senior leadership in the U.S. and China ordered an extensive investigation that led to “various leadership changes and disciplinary actions,” strengthened compliance measures, training, and regular audits, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said in a statement.

“..stock market disasters are much more typically caused by “known unknowns” — the events that have been perking for a while, whose natures are familiar to us and yet whose exact forms and potential dangers remain unclear.”

• ‘Known Unknown’ Dangers Are Lurking In The Stock Market (MarketWatch)

As the S&P 500 Index keeps reaching new highs, investor conversations have shifted from how low it might go (October’s topic) to how high the stock market can possibly climb. When people get that excited, it’s time to think about risks. What could possibly go wrong and arrest this great bull market? Much speculation currently points to the kind of scary, exogenous, low-probability events we call black swans: an Ebola pandemic, say, or a “third world war” due to the Russia/Ukraine conflict or the ISIS threat escalating out of control. Nevertheless, while these and other black swan events may have the potential to cause catastrophic damage to the markets and society, stock market disasters are much more typically caused by “known unknowns” — the events that have been perking for a while, whose natures are familiar to us and yet whose exact forms and potential dangers remain unclear.

Take, for example, the 2008 global financial crisis: It did not happen overnight, and, looking back, there were plenty of signs and warnings, such as the subprime lending meltdown in 2007. Or, think of the dot-com bubble, which burst in 2000, several years after the first warnings of “irrational exuberance” by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in a speech given in 1996. So rather than reaching for sensational “unknown unknowns,” we are focusing on market risks we know and understand. We’ve listed a few here, starting with low probability and ending with high.

• Washington politics: As Republicans won the Senate in the mid-term elections and, thus, have full control of Congress, the government is now truly divided. Early signs indicate that political infighting between the two parties will become even more intense, a distasteful scenario to imagine. To make matters worse, another government funding deadline is looming Dec. 11. We believe that, whereas the political maneuvering may cause market volatility, it’s unlikely to pose a huge threat to the market.

• Rising interest rates: There is little argument that interest rates will go up, eventually, but it is also abundantly clear to many pundits that the rise will be a slow, grinding process rather than a spike. For the stock market, interest rates are, therefore, a long-term concern, and not likely to be an imminent threat. At the current near historic levels, equities are still far more attractive than fixed-income from a valuation standpoint, and rising interest rates will probably not tip the balance. Interest rates jumped in 2013, but the stock market, ironically, performed exceedingly well.

• Slowing growth: This is by far the No. 1 threat to markets and has flared up repeatedly. Just the anticipation of slowing growth can cause companies to slow production and consumers to temper spending, which is quickly reflected in falling stock prices. The most recent September-October market downturn, one of the worst during the past couple years, was caused by concerns about slowing growth.

No, really?!

• Britons Are Living Beyond Their Means, Says Government Watchdog (Telegraph)

Britons are living beyond their means more now than at almost any point over the past two decades, according to the head of the Government’s fiscal watchdog. Robert Chote, the chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), said real consumer spending over the past year had accelerated ahead of inflation-adjusted pay growth at its second fastest rate since the 1990s. “If you look at the relatively robust pace of growth over recent quarters, that has been reflected particularly in terms of the contribution from the consumer, of people running down saving rather than having stronger income growth,” he told the Treasury Select Committee. Mr Chote said this pace of consumption relative to earnings growth was likely to be unsustainable. “We’ve assumed that it is not plausible [that this could continue],” he said. “If you look at the last year, real consumption growth has been running further ahead of real wage growth than in almost any other year over the last 15 or 20 or so.

Therefore, in our forecast the main reason we expect the quarterly pace of growth to slow into next year is that you see consumer spending moving more into line with income growth, and being less driven by [a] decline in saving.” The OBR believes the UK economy will grow by 3pc this year, before slowing to 2.4pc in 2015 and 2.2pc in 2016. Household consumption growth is forecast to strengthen next year to 2.8pc, fuelled by a further decrease in savings. The household saving ratio is projected to fall to 5.4pc in 2015, from 6.6pc this year. However, consumer spending is expected to slow to 2.2pc in 2016 as the saving ratio stabilises. The OBR noted that consumption had grown by 2.1pc in real terms in the first three quarters of 2014, despite limited growth in real wages. Mr Chote also said that there had been a “structural deterioration” in productivity that meant British households would not enjoy the same living standards as they would have done had the financial crisis not occured. He added that rising productivity was essential for stronger pay growth.

In a separate speech, Ian McCafferty, a Bank of England policymaker, said raising interest rates now would help to “support and sustain” Britain’s recovery while ensuring prices rise smoothly in the future. Mr McCafferty said Britain’s “remarkable” recovery over the past 18 months suggested that pay growth was at a “turning point”, and that a sustained increase in wages was within sight. Speaking at the Institute of Directors on Wednesday, Mr McCafferty outlined four reasons for raising Bank Rate from its record low of 0.5pc, and warned that even small miscalculations about the degree of “spare capacity” meant the point at which the economy could start to overheat may arrive sooner than policymakers expect. He said raising rates now would ensure increases were “gradual and limited”.

“Draghi may have to deliver his quo without a eurozone quid. The text makes clear that leaders have no intention of delivering a new blueprint any time soon. According to the draft, a debate on how to proceed will be pushed off until February, and the report itself will come no sooner than June.”

• Leaked EU Summit Conclusions: Draghi Left Hanging? (FT)

The dance had become so routine that we at the Brussels Blog were thinking of giving it a name, the Eurozone Two-Step. Ever since the eurozone crisis first rocked international markets nearly five years ago, European Central Bank chiefs – first Jean-Claude Trichet, then Mario Draghi – sent a very clear message to the currency union’s political leaders: we can only act if you act first. The deal was never explicit, but both sides knew what was required. The ECB’s first sovereign bond purchase programme in May 2010 came only after eurozone leaders created a new €440bn bailout fund; its €1tn in cheap loans to eurozone banks in early 2012 only came after political leaders agreed to a new “fiscal compact” of tough budget rules. But with the markets watching Frankfurt closely for signs Draghi is about to launch another bold move – US-style quantitative easing, purchasing sovereign bonds to halt fears the bloc is headed into a deflationary spiral – there are new indications one of the partners is no longer dancing.

Back in October at a eurozone summit, Draghi was able to get a little-noticed statement out of the assembled leaders committing them to another “Four Presidents Report”, a reference to the blueprint delivered in 2012 that set a path towards further centralisation of eurozone economic policy. The report helped kick-start the EU’s just-completed “banking union.” Progress on that 2012 blueprint has since stalled, however, and at his last summit press conference, then-European Council president Herman Van Rompuy said the new “Four Presidents Report” would be delivered at the December EU summit, which starts next Thursday. Many in Brussels saw this as the quid for Draghi’s quo – once the leaders agreed to another blueprint for eurozone integration, Draghi would have a free hand to launch QE.

But according to a leaked draft of the communiqué for next week’s summit, Draghi may have to deliver his quo without a eurozone quid. The text makes clear that leaders have no intention of delivering a new blueprint any time soon. According to the draft, a debate on how to proceed will be pushed off until February, and the report itself will come no sooner than June.

“There will be US-style food stamps and we will reconnect electricity to homes where it has been cut off. There will have to be debt relief because the debt is simply unpayable. We will ask Germany to renegotiate.”

• Greek Left Candidate Willing To Call European Leaders’ Bluff (AEP)

Events have rudely exposed the illusion that the Greek people will submit quietly to a decade of colonial treatment and debt servitude. As matters stand, it is more likely than not that a defiant Alexis Tsipras will be prime minister of Greece by late January. His Syriza alliance vows to overthrow the EU-IMF Troika regime, refusing to implement the key demands. A view has taken hold in EU capitals and the City of London that Mr Tsipras has resiled from these positions and will ultimately stick to the Troika Memorandum, a text of economic vandalism that pushed Greece into seven years of depression, with a 25.9pc fall in GDP, longer and deeper than Europe’s worst episodes in the 1930s. Mr Tsipras is a polished performer on the EU circuit. He can no longer be caricatured as motorbike Maoist. But the fact remains that he told Greek voters as recently as last week that his government would cease to enforce the bail-out demands “from its first day in office”.

The logical implication is that Greece will be forced out of the euro in short order, unless the EU institutions capitulate. Mr Tsipras knows this. He is gambling that EU leaders – meaning Germany’s Angela Merkel – will yield. His calculation is that they will not dare to blow up monetary union at this late stage, and over a relative pittance. Too much political capital has been invested. The EU-IMF loans have already reached €245bn (£194bn), the biggest indenture package in history. To let it fall apart would expose failure of Mrs Merkel’s EMU crisis management. Yet the reality is that Greece must repay €6.7bn to the European Central Bank in July and August. The ECB will not roll it over because that would be monetary financing of a government. The capital markets are shut. Mr Tsipras knows that he is likely to receive a call from the ECB within weeks of taking office, reminding him that Greece owes some €40bn in emergency support (ELAs) for the banking system, a threat to cut off funding as occurred in Ireland and Cyprus.

I am reliably informed that his answer to the EU authorities will be “do your worst”. “We are not going to crumble at the first hurdle,” said one of his close advisers. “A freshly elected government cannot allow itself to be intimidated by threats of Armageddon.” Markets are taking fright. The Athens bourse fell 13pc on Tuesday, the biggest one-day drop since the 1987 crash. The yield curve on three-year Greek debt has exploded by almost 300 basis points to 9.52pc in two days and is higher than 10-year yields, a violent inversion of the yield curve unseen since default scares of the EMU crisis. The Syriza roadshow in the City last month went horribly wrong. “Everybody coming out of the meeting wants to sell everything Greek,” said a leaked memo by Capital Group’s Jorg Sponer.

The reported shopping list was: a haircut for creditors; free electricity, food, shelter, and health care for all who need it; tax cuts for the all but the rich; a rise in the minimum wage and pensions to €750 a month; a moratorium on private debt payments to banks above 20pc of disposable incomes; and demand for a 62pc debt forgiveness on the grounds that this is what Germany received in 1952. “The programme is worse than communism. This will be total chaos,” said Mr Sponer. “It was a disaster,” said Prof Yanis Varoufakis from Athens University, a man tipped to play a key role in any Syriza-led government. The reality is more prosaic. “We are not going to go on a spending spree. We will aim to achieve a modest primary surplus, and we will liberalise the labour market,” he said. “Greece faces a humanitarian crisis and we will spend €1.3bn to alleviate abject poverty. There will be US-style food stamps and we will reconnect electricity to homes where it has been cut off. There will have to be debt relief because the debt is simply unpayable. We will ask Germany to renegotiate.”

Attention long overdue.

• Superbugs To Kill 10 Million People A Year, Cost $100 Trillion By 2050 (BBC)

Drug resistant infections will kill an extra 10 million people a year worldwide – more than currently die from cancer – by 2050 unless action is taken, a study says. They are currently implicated in 700,000 deaths each year. The analysis, presented by the economist Jim O’Neill, said the costs would spiral to $100tn (£63tn). He was appointed by Prime Minister David Cameron in July to head a review of antimicrobial resistance. Mr O’Neill told the BBC: “To put that in context, the annual GDP [gross domestic product] of the UK is about $3tn, so this would be the equivalent of around 35 years without the UK contribution to the global economy.” The reduction in population and the impact on ill-health would reduce world economic output by between 2% and 3.5%. The analysis was based on scenarios modelled by researchers Rand Europe and auditors KPMG.

They found that drug resistant E. coli, malaria and tuberculosis (TB) would have the biggest impact. In Europe and the United States, antimicrobial resistance causes at least 50,000 deaths each year, they said. And left unchecked, deaths would rise more than 10-fold by 2050. Mr O’Neill is best known for his economic analysis of developing nations and their growing importance in global trade. He coined the acronyms Bric (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and more recently Mint (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey). He said the impact of the would be mostly keenly felt in these countries. “In Nigeria, by 2050, more than one in four deaths would be attributable to drug resistant infections, while India would see an additional two million lives lost every year.”

The review team believes its analysis represents a significant underestimate of the potential impact of failing to tackle drug resistance, as it did not include the effects on healthcare of a world in which antibiotics no longer worked. Joint replacements, Caesarean sections, chemotherapy and transplant surgery are among many treatments that depend on antibiotics being available to prevent infections. The review team estimates that Caesarean sections currently contribute 2% to world GDP, joint replacements 0.65%, cancer drugs 0.75% and organ transplants 0.1%. This is based on the number of lives saved, and ill-health prevented in people of working age. Without effective antibiotics, these procedures would become much riskier and in many cases impossible. The review team concludes that this would cost a further $100tn by 2050.

But what are they going to do about it?

• Generation Y Have Every Right To Be Angry At Baby Boomers’ Wealth (Guardian)

A new study by the Grattan Institute on wealth across generations shows that the older Australians benefitted the most from the strong economic times of the early 2000s, and that by virtue of being effectively shut out of the housing market, members of “Generation Y” may be the first generation to be less wealthy than that of their parents. Whenever younger generations are discussed in the media, invariably comments will be made that Generation Y are unemployable, lazy, spendthrifts who need to learn discipline if they want to get ahead. They’re essentially the same comments that were made 20 years ago about Generation X and 15 or 20 years before that about the various incarnations of the baby boomer generation. Very little changes.

But a new report by the Grattan Institute’s, “The Wealth of Generations” suggests that one aspect of Generation Y is different from previous ones – they are on track to have less wealth than the generation before them. The report makes it abundantly clear that the good economic times of the late 1990s and early 2000s were of benefit mostly to older Australians, and such people “are capturing a growing share of Australia’s wealth, while the wealth of younger Australians has stagnated”. In 2003-04, households whose main earner was under 34 accounted for 6.52% of all household wealth in Australia. By 2011-12 such households only accounted for 4.52%:

The biggest eaters of the wealth pie in that time were those over 55. They now hold 58% of all wealth, up from the 51% held by such households back in 2003-04. But it is not just in the share of the pie that the younger generations lost out, their wealth has also gone down in real terms. The Grattan Institute found that households across all age groups are wealthier now than their comparative aged households were in 2003-04. All that is except for those aged 25-34 years. The wealth of households aged 45-54 years old from 2003-04 to 2011-12 grew by $163,000 (in 2012 dollar terms) – a 23% increase. Those aged 55-64 saw their wealth in that time rise $174,000 (19%), while the wealth of 65-74 year old households rose a staggering $216,000, (27%). The households of 24 to 34-year-olds however lost $10,400 in wealth – a 4% drop:

“Survey respondents who expect to pay off their debts anticipate doing so at an average age of 53. But in addition to the 18% who expect to owe money forever, another 25% expect to be in debt until at least age 61.”

• One-Fifth Of Americans Don’t Plan To Pay Off Their Debt (CNBC)

The golden years are going to feel a bit tarnished for almost one in five Americans. In a personal finance survey published today, 18% of the respondents said they expect to be in debt for the rest of their lives. That is double the percentage who expected that in May 2013, the last time the survey was conducted. Mortgage delinquencies dropped for the eleventh consecutive quarter, to 3.36%, in the third quarter of 2014, and credit card delinquency was at 1.34%, according to TransUnion. Credit card indebtedness has increased moderately since the 2013 CreditCards.com survey, Schulz said. In contrast, student loan debt rose from an aggregate of $390 billion at the end of 2005 to $966 billion at the end of 2012, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Average student loan debt topped $30,000 in six states, according to the Project on Student Debt. “We’ve all seen the student loan debt numbers, and credit card debt is increasing, and even though the job market is improving it’s certainly not humming along, and there is data about people’s salaries not growing quite as quickly as people had hoped,” said Matt Schulz, senior analyst at CreditCards.com. “You just wonder if it has all come together to create this unease.” Survey respondents who expect to pay off their debts anticipate doing so at an average age of 53. But in addition to the 18% who expect to owe money forever, another 25% expect to be in debt until at least age 61.

Older respondents are more likely to believe their debt will be with them forever. Some 31% of those over age 65 expect to be lifelong debtors, compared to 22% of those aged 50 to 64 and just 6% of millennials aged 18 to 29. “The more years you have left, the more likely you are to have a chance to get rid of that debt,” Schulz said. “I think some of that can just be chalked up to the optimism and positivity of youth,” since after all, millennials are the ones most likely to be holding student loans. Schulz speculated that perhaps some older borrowers are assuming responsibility for children’s student loans, and that is adding to their pessimism.

Corruption Inc.

• IMF Finds Another $15 Billion Black Hole In Ukraine’s Finances (CNBC)

A further $15 billion may be needed to bailout struggling Ukraine, which seems ever closer to economic disaster. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has spotted a shortfall of $15 billion on top of the $17 billion bailout loan package it has worked out for the troubled country, according to reports. This black hole is especially worrisome as the world’s economies are facing slower global growth and so the appetite to help out Ukraine may dwindle – especially as the country’s economy is such trouble. Besieged by conflict in some of its most important economic areas and the collapse of exports to Russia, Ukraine’s economy is expected to shrink by 7% this year, according to its government. Its currency reserves have shrunk, raising concerns that its central bank will not be able to keep propping up the country’s currency, the hryvnia.

If Ukraine’s currency – which has been world’s the worst-performing this year – falls even further, Ukraine could enter the dangerous territory of hyperinflation, where prices rise by more than 50% in a month. Inflation already hit 22% in November. “It is not a question of throwing a few billion bucks at the problem, the program financing as is just does not add up and very significantly,” Tim Ash, head of emerging markets research at Standard Bank, wrote in a research note. He argued that at least the government and its creditors had realized this in time to ramp up the bailout. If the bailout were to collapse, it could trigger worse problems for the recently assembled, Western-backed, government led by Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk and President Petro Poroshenko. Ukraine has become an important symbol for both Russia and the West, as relationships between them deteriorate to their worst since the Cold War.

This is how the world sees America, and Americans, these days.

• Guantanamo Six ‘Will Enjoy Complete Freedom’ In Uruguay (BBC)

Six prisoners released from the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay will enjoy complete freedom in Uruguay, the country’s defence minister says. Eleuterio Huidobro told Reuters news agency that Uruguay had not imposed or accepted any conditions when it agreed to receive the former inmates. The six men arrived in Montevideo on Sunday after being freed by the US. They spent 12 years in jail for alleged ties with al-Qaeda but were never charged. The former inmates – four Syrians, a Palestinian and a Tunisian – were taken to a military hospital for health checks. The Pentagon identified them as Abu Wael Dhiab, Ali Husain Shaaban, Ahmed Adnan Ajuri, and Abdelahdi Faraj, from Syria; Palestinian Mohammed Abdullah Taha Mattan, and Adel bin Muhammad El Ouerghi, from Tunisia. Uruguayan President Jose Mujica said they had been subjected to “an atrocious kidnapping”. Mr Huidobro told Reuters: “They will not be restricted in any way. Their status is that of refugees and immigrants.”

US President Barack Obama has pledged to close the camp in Cuba, which was opened in 2002 as a place to detain enemy combatants in America’s war on terror. About half of the 136 men still in Guantanamo have been cleared for transfer but have nowhere to go because their countries are unstable or unsafe. In Latin America, El Salvador is the only other country to have given Guantanamo prisoners sanctuary, taking two in 2012. One of the former detainees, Abdelahdi Faraj, published an open letter through his lawyer in New York thanking Mr Mujica for his decision. “Were it not for Uruguay, I would still be in the black hole in Cuba today,” he said. “I have no words to express how grateful I am for the immense trust that you, the Uruguayan people, have placed in me and the other prisoners by opening the doors to your country.” Mr Mujica was himself held for over a decade in harsh prison conditions during Uruguay’s period of military rule in the 1970s and 1980s.

“After reviewing this report, we will give consideration to reopening petitions or filing new petitions in European courts under the principles of universal jurisdiction ..”

• CIA Torture Report May Set Off Global Prosecutions (Bloomberg)

The release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s secret prisons roiled Washington Tuesday, but its real impact could be felt in courtrooms across the globe in the months and years to come. Attorneys for human rights organizations are now poring over the 525-page declassified summary of the Senate majority report to find new material that could revive long-dormant and failed civil and criminal lawsuits on behalf of those detained by the Central Intelligence Agency. While many American and international nongovernmental organizations have mounted legal challenges on behalf of people who were detained, transferred and harshly interrogated by the CIA and allied governments, these court challenges have rarely been successful. One reason is that the Justice Department under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have asserted that almost all details about the CIA program were a state secret.

And while some government reports have been released about the black sites, the Senate committee’s majority report released Tuesday is the most comprehensive and detailed document to date. “One of the tragedies about this is the attempt to find redress,” said Andrea Prasow, the deputy director of the Washington office for Human Rights Watch. “Judges have accepted the state secrets claim. Now it will be much harder to do that when we all have access to a 500-page public report that details a lot of this.” The chances of a U.S. court re-opening civil or criminal charges against U.S. officials involved with the CIA program are slim. The agency and the Justice Department have conducted their own investigations into the CIA’s program and only low-level military officials and one CIA contractor has been prosecuted.

But European courts may be a different story. Some human-rights groups are now seeking to petition European courts to renew efforts to prosecute Bush administration officials under the principle of universal jurisdiction. That principle was established in 1998, when a Spanish court indicted Augosto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile, for his role in the murder and torture of many of his political opposition. When Pinochet was traveling through the U.K. in 1998, he was arrested by order of the Spanish court. (U.K. officials released him back to Chile two years later.) “After reviewing this report, we will give consideration to reopening petitions or filing new petitions in European courts under the principles of universal jurisdiction,” said Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a group that has represented Guantanamo detainees including Majid Khan and Abu Zubaydah, two detainees who went through the CIA’s black-site prisons.

Did anyone doubt that?

• President George W. Bush ‘Knew Everything’ About CIA Interrogation (BBC)

Former US President George W Bush was “fully informed” about CIA interrogation techniques condemned in a Senate report, his vice-president says. Speaking to Fox News, Dick Cheney said Mr Bush “knew everything he needed to know” about the programme, and the report was “full of crap”. The CIA has defended its use of methods such as waterboarding on terror suspects after the 9/11 attacks. The Senate report said the agency misled politicians about the programme. But the former Republican vice-president dismissed this, saying: “The notion that the committee is trying to peddle that somehow the agency was operating on a rogue basis and that we weren’t being told – that the president wasn’t being told – is a flat-out lie.”

In the interview on Thursday, Mr Cheney said the report was “deeply flawed” and a “terrible piece of work”, although he admitted he had not read the whole document. President Bush “knew everything he needed to know, and wanted to know” about CIA interrogation, he said. “He knew the techniques … there was no effort on my part to keep it from him. “He was fully informed.” Mr Bush led the charge against the report ahead of its release on Tuesday, defending the CIA on US TV. “We’re fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA serving on our behalf,” he told CNN on Sunday. A summary of the larger classified report says that the CIA carried out “brutal” and “ineffective” interrogations of al-Qaeda suspects in the years after the 9/11 attacks on the US and misled other officials about what it was doing.

The information the CIA collected using “enhanced interrogation techniques” failed to secure information that foiled any threats, the report said. But Mr Cheney said the interrogation programme saved lives, and that the agency deserved “credit not condemnation”. “It did in fact produce actionable intelligence that was vital in the success of keeping the country safe from further attacks,” he said. The UN and human rights groups have called for the prosecution of US officials involved in the 2001-2007 programme. “As a matter of international law, the US is legally obliged to bring those responsible to justice,” Ben Emmerson, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism, said in a statement made from Geneva. He said there had been a “clear policy orchestrated at a high level”.

Debt Rattle December 10 2014

Dec 102014

December 10, 2014 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 12:36 pm Finance Tagged with: box office, China, credit, ebola, fracking, liquidity, oil, OPEC, profits, property, torture, TTIP 4 Responses »

Marjory Collins “Crowds at Pennsylvania Station, New York” Aug 1942

• China Inflation Eases To Five-Year Low (BBC)

• Popping The Chinese Stock Market Mania (Zero Hedge)

• Easy Credit Feeds Risky Margin Trades In Chinese Stocks (Reuters)

• Why Beijing’s Troubles Could Get a Lot Worse (Barron’s)

• OPEC Says 2015 Demand for Its Crude Will Be Weakest in 12 Years (Bloomberg)

• Don’t Look For Oil Glut To End Any Time Soon (CNBC)

• Oil Resumes Drop as Iran Sees $40 If There’s OPEC Discord (Bloomberg)

• “Yes, it Was a Brutal Week for the Oil & Gas Loan Sector” (WolfStreet)

• US Shale Contractors To See Net Income Cut By 25% In 2015 (Bloomberg)

• This Time Is The Same: The Fed Ignores The Shale Bubble (David Stockman)

• Thanksgiving Weekend Box Office Plunges 20% vs 2013 To 16-Year Low (Alhambra)

• Greece Lurches Back Into Crisis Mode (Bloomberg)

• Japan Threatened With Credit Rating Downgrade (CNBC)

• Citigroup Sets Aside $2.7 Billion For Legal Costs (BBC)

• This Is What 6 Years Of Central Bank Liquidity Injections Look Like (Zero Hedge)

• Big US Banks Face Capital Requirement of 4.5% on Top of Global Minimum (BBG)

• Stop Believing The Lies: America Tortured More Than ‘Some Folks’ (Guardian)

• Defeat is Victory (Dmitry Orlov)

• Rising Inequality ‘Significantly’ Curbs Growth (CNBC)

• TTIP Divides A Continent As EU Negotiators Cross The Atlantic (Guardian)

• Ebola Virus Still ‘Running Ahead Of Us’, Says WHO (BBC)

The economy allgedly grows at 7%, and official inflation is 1.4%?

• China Inflation Eases To Five-Year Low (BBC)

Inflation in China eased to a five-year low in November, suggesting continued weakness in the Asian economic giant. The inflation rate fell to 1.4% in November from 1.6% in October, which is the lowest since November 2009. The reading was also below market expectations of a 1.6% rise. Producer prices, which have been entrenched in deflation, also fell more than forecast, down 2.7% from a year ago – marking a 33rd consecutive monthly decline. Economists had predicted a fall of 2.4% after drop of 2.2% in the previous month as a cooling property market led to slowing demand for industrial goods. The figures are the latest in a string of government data that showed a deeper-than-expected slowdown in the Chinese economy.

Dariusz Kowalczyk, an economist at Credit Agricole, said the data partly reflected low commodity and food prices but also confirmed softness in domestic demand. “It will likely convince policymakers to ease their policy stance further and we continue to expect a RRR (bank reserve requirement ratio) cut in the near term, most likely this month,” he told Reuters. Last month, the country’s central bank unexpectedly cut interest rates for the first time in more than two years to spur activity. In reaction to the data, Chinese shares continued their downward trend after the Shanghai Composite fell more than 5% on Tuesday.

“On both prior occasions of such a maniacal surge in speculative accounts, the Shanghai Composite made a significant top and fell dramatically in the ensuing months.”

• Popping The Chinese Stock Market Mania (Zero Hedge)

If you are wondering what triggered the PBOC to pull the punchbowl of leveraged collateral away from the ‘wealth-creating’ stock market exuberance in China… wonder no more. The last 2 weeks saw the biggest surge in new Chinese brokerage accounts ever, with this week alone the highest since October 2010 and January 2008 with a stunning 228,000 new accounts opened. On both prior occasions of such a maniacal surge in speculative accounts, the Shanghai Composite made a significant top and fell dramatically in the ensuing months.

How oddly dis-similar the PBOC is to the Fed!! Instead of encouraging open leveraged speculation, the central bank of China appears more risk averse, recognizing the potential medium-term disastrous consequences from such boom-bust moves (and likely has no cheer-leading CNBC channel to take care of).

Oh boy: “Some might already be regretting taking those risks [..] Especially those who might have pledged their property to get in on the rally and offset the slide in house prices.”

• Easy Credit Feeds Risky Margin Trades In Chinese Stocks (Reuters)

“High leverage, low thresholds!” the website says. “(China’s) A shares are heating up; if you don’t allocate capital now, then when?” Many, it appears, are choosing now, gorging on cheap credit to ride a wild stock market rally. The website, Jinfuzi.com, will let investors borrow up to 10 times their principal with only 2,000 yuan ($323) down in order to buy stocks and futures. The peer-to-peer lender has an easy sell; Chinese benchmark indexes have posted record-smashing trading volumes in recent weeks, with average share values up over 30% in just 12 trading days. Ordinary investors, who conduct 60-80% of China’s stock trades, charged into the market after a surprise interest rate cut by Beijing on Nov. 21, and brokerages and shadow bankers have rushed in to help them trade on margin – essentially borrowed money.

“Margin trading has clearly played a big role in the recent rally, and government is worried,” wrote Oliver Barron of NSBO in a research note on Tuesday, estimating that gross margin trading purchases accounted for 164 billion yuan ($26.5 billion) on Monday, the equivalent of 17% of total turnover on Chinese bourses. There has been a steady relaxation of restrictions on margin trading in the last two years, and while in good times it allows investors to make a lot of money with only a small amount of their own cash, it also carries big risks when the market falls.

Some might already be regretting taking those risks after the Shanghai Composite Index lost over 5% on Tuesday, its largest single-day drop in five years. Especially those who might have pledged their property to get in on the rally and offset the slide in house prices. “We provide our customers with service to borrow money with their property as collateral,” said Mr. Yu, president of Qianteng Asset Management Company in Hangzhou. “We have plenty of funds on hand, which makes it easy for our customers to get money ASAP once they sign the contract.”

“In China, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of physics holds sway, whereby the mere observation of economic numbers changes their behavior.”

• Why Beijing’s Troubles Could Get a Lot Worse (Barron’s)

Few foreigners know China as intimately as Anne Stevenson-Yang does. She has spent the bulk of her professional life there since first arriving in 1985, working as a journalist, magazine publisher, and software executive, with stints in between heading up the U.S. Information Technology office and the China operations of the U.S.-China Business Council. She’s now research director of J Capital, an outfit that works for foreign investors in China doing fundamental research on local companies and tracking macroeconomic developments.

Barron’s: Investors seem far more concerned about Europe’s sinking into economic despond than slowing growth in China. Are they whistling past the graveyard?

Stevenson-Yang: I think so. China, for all its talk about economic reform, is in big trouble. The old model of relying on export growth and heavy investment to power the economy isn’t working anymore. Sure, the nation has been hugely successful over recent decades in providing its people with literacy, a decent life, basic health care, shelter, and safe cities. But starting in 2008, China sought to counter global recession with huge amounts of ill-advised investment in redundant industrial capacity and vanity infrastructure projects—you know, airports with no commercial flights, highways to nowhere, and stadiums with no teams. The country is now submerged by the tsunami of bad debt that begets further unhealthy credit growth to service this debt. The recent lowering of benchmark deposit rates by the People’s Bank of China won’t accomplish much because it won’t offer more income to households. It also gave China’s biggest banks the discretion to raise their deposit rates back up to old levels, which would give them a competitive advantage

Barron’s: How bad can the situation be when the Chinese economy grew by 7.3% in the latest quarter?

Stevenson-Yang: People are crazy if they believe any government statistics, which, of course, are largely fabricated. In China, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of physics holds sway, whereby the mere observation of economic numbers changes their behavior. For a time we started to look at numbers like electric-power production and freight traffic to get a line on actual economic growth because no one believed the gross- domestic-product figures. It didn’t take long for Beijing to figure this out and start doctoring those numbers, too. I put much stock in estimates by various economists, including some at the Conference Board, that actual Chinese GDP is probably a third lower than is officially reported. And as for the recent International Monetary Fund report calling China the world’s biggest economy on a purchasing-power-parity basis, how silly was that? China is a cheap place to live if one is willing to eat rice, cabbage, and pork, but it’s expensive as all get out once you factor in the cost of decent housing, a car, and health care.

I’d be shocked if China is currently growing at a rate above, say, 4%, and any growth at all is coming from financial services, which ultimately depend on sustained growth in the rest of the economy. Think about it: Property sales are in decline, steel production is falling, commercial long-and short-haul vehicle sales are continuing to implode, and much of the growth in GDP is coming from huge rises in inventories across the economy. We track the 400 Chinese consumer companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets, and in the third quarter, their gross revenues fell 4% from a year ago. This is hardly a vibrant economy.

Demand is way down.

• OPEC Says 2015 Demand for Its Crude Will Be Weakest in 12 Years (Bloomberg)

OPEC cut the forecast for how much crude oil it will need to provide in 2015 to the lowest in 12 years amid surging U.S. shale supplies and reduced estimates for global consumption. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries lowered its projection for 2015 by about 300,000 barrels a day, to 28.9 million a day. That’s about 1.15 million a day less than the group’s 12 members pumped last month, and the 30-million barrel target they reaffirmed at a meeting in Vienna on Nov. 27. The impact of this year’s 40% price collapse on supply and demand remains unclear, OPEC said. “The downward revision reflects the upward adjustment of non-OPEC supply as well as the downward revision in global demand,” the group’s Vienna-based research department said in its monthly oil market report.

Brent crude futures collapsed to a five-year low of $65.29 a barrel in London yesterday amid speculation that OPEC’s decision to maintain output levels despite swelling North American supplies will intensify the glut in global oil markets. Demand for OPEC’s crude will slump to 28.92 million barrels a day next year, according to the report. That’s below the 28.93 million required in 2009, and the lowest since the 27.05 million a day level needed in 2003, the group’s data show. Output from the 12 members declined by 390,000 barrels a day in November to 30.05 million a day amid lower production in Libya, according to data from analysts and media organizations referred to in the report as ‘‘secondary sources.” Libyan output dropped last month by 248,300 barrels a day to 638,000 a day. Pumping at the Sharara oil field, the country’s biggest-producing asset, and the neighboring El Feel site, was halted after Sharara was seized by gunmen, according to the International Energy Agency.

But OPEC will fight for market share, or rather its separate mebers will.

• Don’t Look For Oil Glut To End Any Time Soon (CNBC)

The global oil glut is expected to get much bigger before it’s over, keeping pressure on oil prices well into next year. Companies like ConocoPhillips and Chevron are reducing spending on new projects, but the impact of already planned increases in U.S. production into the first half of the year is likely to keep the world well supplied before the flow of new supply starts to slow in the second half of the year. Besides shale production, U.S. Gulf of Mexico production is also expected to increase with new projects coming on line. Within a year, the projects will take U.S. Gulf production from 1.3 million barrels to roughly 1.6 million barrels a day. “It’s not like the supply reaction is instantaneous. It takes time to wind these things down,” said John Kilduff of Again Capital. “I wouldn’t expect a decrease in the rate of (production) growth until next year at the earliest.”

The U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday cut its forecast for daily U.S. production by another 100,000 barrels, to 9.3 million. That follows a reduction in its forecast of 100,000 barrels per day last month. The U.S. produced 9.08 million barrels a day in the week of Nov. 28 and has been producing over 9 million barrels a day for the past month. The government’s forecast for 2015 is now below some private analysts’ assumptions that oil production can continue to grow at a higher rate of anywhere from 500,000 to more than 1 million barrels per day next year, depending on oil prices. The EIA on Monday issued a new report on U.S. oil production showing the increase in production in the three main shale plays—Bakken, Permian and Eagle Ford—is growing by more than 100,000 barrels a day in December over November, and is expected to increase at about the same rate in January.

Discord is all that’s left at OPEC. Nobody can risk the initial losses of an output cut. And nobody trusts the others.

• Oil Resumes Drop as Iran Sees $40 If There’s OPEC Discord (Bloomberg)

Brent resumed its decline as an Iranian official predicted a further slump in prices if solidarity among OPEC members falters. West Texas Intermediate in New York also erased yesterday’s gains. Futures slid as much as 1.6% in London after snapping a five-day losing streak. Crude could fall to as low as $40 a barrel amid a price war or if divisions emerge in OPEC, said an official at Iran’s oil ministry. The 12-member group, which supplies 40% of the world’s oil, may need to call an extraordinary meeting in the first quarter if the drop continues, according to Energy Aspects Ltd. Brent has collapsed 40% this year as OPEC agreed at a Nov. 27 gathering not to cut output to force a slowdown in U.S. production, which has risen to the highest level in three decades. Saudi Arabia and Iraq this month widened discounts on crude exports to their customers in Asia, bolstering speculation that group members are fighting for market share.

“With OPEC looking like a dysfunctional family, no pullback in U.S. production and a lack of geopolitical concerns, it’s all adding up to lower prices,” Michael McCarthy, a chief strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney, said by phone today. Brent for January settlement decreased as much as $1.06 to $65.78 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange and was at $66.25 at 3:12 p.m. Singapore time. The contract climbed 65 cents to $66.84 yesterday. The European benchmark crude traded at a premium of $3.12 to WTI. WTI for January delivery fell as much as $1, or 1.6%, to $62.82 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It increased 77 cents to $63.82 yesterday. The volume of all futures traded was about 2% below the 100-day average.

Oil’s collapse has left the market below equilibrium, according to Mohammad Sadegh Memarian, the head of petroleum market analysis at the oil ministry in Tehran. Iran, hobbled by economic sanctions over its nuclear program, wants to raise production to 4.8 million barrels a day once the curbs are removed, he said at a conference in Dubai yesterday. OPEC pumped 30.56 million barrels a day in November, exceeding its collective target of 30 million for a sixth straight month, a Bloomberg survey of companies, producers and analysts showed. Financially strapped members such as Iran, Iraq and Venezuela may press for discussions before the group’s next scheduled meeting on June 5, predicted Amrita Sen, the chief oil market analyst at Energy Aspects.

And more’s to come.

• “Yes, it Was a Brutal Week for the Oil & Gas Loan Sector” (WolfStreet)

Yesterday, I discussed how the plunging price of oil is wreaking havoc on leveraged loans in the energy sector. These loans are issued by junk-rated corporations already burdened by a large amount of debt. Banks that originate these loans can retain them on their balance sheets or sell them in various creative ways, including by repackaging them into synthetic structured securities, called Collateralized Loan Obligations. Earlier today, I discussed how the current generation of leveraged loans in general compares to the leveraged loans issued at the cusp of the Financial Crisis. Spoiler alert: by almost every metric, they’re bigger and crappier now than they were in 2007.

So here’s a chart of S&P Capital IQ’s energy-sector leveraged-loan index for the latest week, and it was such a doozie that it caused leveraged-loan focused LCD News, a unit of S&P Capital IQ, to tweet: “Yes, it Was a Brutal Week for the Oil & Gas Loan Sector.” The average bid price of first-lien oil & gas Index loans fell to 90.35 cents on the dollar for the week, from 94.90 at the November 28 close and down from 96.77 at the end of October, S&P Capital IQ’s LeveragedLoan.com reported. And yields soared: the spread to maturity implied by the average bid jumped from Libor plus 500 basis points in August to Libor plus 600 basis points at the end of November, to Libor plus 731 basis points at the end of the latest week. The US dollar Libor rate is about 0.1%, so yields jumped from 5.1% in August to 7.4% in the latest week. An exponential increase:

Note how offshore drillers (blue line) got hammered the most, though they had the lowest yields of the bunch for most of the year. Their spreads nearly doubled from 400 basis points over Libor in March to nearly 800 basis points over Libor last week. That’s a move from about 4% in March to nearly 8% now, and a big part of it within a single month. It’s really brutal out there. In the oil and gas sector, revenues are already plunging. Earnings will get hit. Earnings estimates are crashing at a rate not seen since crisis year 2009. Liquidity is drying up. And stocks got eviscerated. It’s tough out there.

And that’s just for the four biggest ones.

• US Shale Contractors To See Net Income Cut By 25% In 2015 (Bloomberg)

Oilfield contractors hired to drill wells and fracture rock to raise crude and natural gas to the surface will have to lower prices by as much as 20% to help keep their cash-strapped customers working. Ultimately, that could carve out more than $3 billion from the 2015 earnings outlined by analysts for the world’s four biggest oil-service companies – Schlumberger, Halliburton, Baker Hughes and Weatherford International. The potential losses loom just as the service providers were looking ahead to higher rates after a glut in pressure-pumping gear dragged prices down in past years. Now, crude oil prices that have fallen more than 40% since June are squeezing them once again. As they look for ways to cut costs, oil producers will be pushing for discounts wherever they can find them.

“They’re already going to confront significant cash-flow pressures with the decline in oil prices,” Bill Herbert, an analyst at Simmons in Houston, said in a phone interview. “They’re going to need all the help they can get.” The price cuts may begin to take shape as early as this month, Herbert said. Hydraulic fracturing, in which high-pressure streams of water, sand and chemicals are used to crack rock underground to allow oil and gas to flow, may see the biggest chunk of pricing discounts because it’s the largest part of the cost of drilling a new well. Earnings estimates for service companies that have been cut since last week will continue to be revised lower as analysts don’t usually reduce their forecasts in one go when the outlook for an industry worsens, James Wicklund, an analyst at Credit Suisse in Dallas, said by phone. “We’ve just gotten started.”

Lower prices and lost business will probably reduce about $14.5 billion of net income estimated for the big four service companies in 2015 by as much as 25%, or about $3.6 billion, Wicklund said. Jeff Tillery, an analyst at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. predicts roughly the same. After two years of declining service prices, providers were finally able to stop the slide this year and start pushing rates back up to help compensate for their own rising costs for fracking materials such as sand. Dave Lesar, chief executive officer of Halliburton, the top provider of fracking work, declared less than two months ago that better days were ahead. “This quarter things are clearly accelerating out of that turn and we do not see momentum slowing any time soon,” Lesar told analysts and investors Oct. 20 on a conference call.

The Fed has helped blow the bubble.

• This Time Is The Same: The Fed Ignores The Shale Bubble (David Stockman)

We are now far advanced into the third central bank generated bubble of the last two decades, but our monetary politburo has taken no notice whatsoever of its self-evident leading wave. Namely, the massive malinvestments and debt mania in the shale patch. Call them monetary bourbons. It is no exaggeration to say that inhabitants of the Eccles Building deserve every single word of Talleyrand’s famous epithet: “They learned nothing and forgot nothing.” To wit, during the last cycle they claimed to be fostering the Great Moderation and permanent full employment prosperity. It didn’t work. When the housing and credit bubble blew-up, it washed out all the phony gains from the Greenspan/Bernanke printing spree. By the time the liquidation was finished in early 2010, there were 2 million fewer payroll jobs than there had been at the turn of the century.

Never mind. The Fed simply doubled-down. Instead of expanding its balance sheet by 50%, as happened during the eight years between 2000 and 2008, it went into monetary warp drive, ballooning its made-from-thin-air liabilities by 5X in only six years. Yet even after Friday’s ballyhooed jobs report there were three million fewer full-time breadwinner jobs in November 2014 than there were in the early 2000s. That’s right. Two cycles of lunatic monetary expansion and what they have to show for it is two short-lived bursts of part-time job creation that vanish when the underlying financial bubble bursts. So, yes, our monetary central planners forget nothing. It doesn’t matter what the actual results have been.

Like the original Bourbons, the small posse of unelected academics and policy apparatchiks which control the nation’s all-powerful central bank most surely believe they have a divine right to run the printing presses as they see fit—even if it accomplishes nothing for the 99% of Americans who don’t have family offices or tickets to the hedge fund casino. Still, you would think that the purported “labor economist” who is now chair person of the joint would be at least troubled by the chart below. Even liberals like Yellen usually do acknowledge that that the chief virtue of the state is that it purportedly generates “public goods” that contribute to societal welfare—-not that it is a fount of productivity and new wealth generation. For that you need private enterprise and business driven efficiency.

20% is a big number.

• Thanksgiving Weekend Box Office Plunges 20% vs 2013 To 16-Year Low (Alhambra)

The recession-like “stimulus” of recent vintage doesn’t seem to have affected the movie business. The Thanksgiving weekend is typically devoid of tremendous or blockbuster new titles for obvious reasons. However, just like people failed to show up at the mall they also skipped the theater. As I have noted before, this is not because movies are mostly narrowly-tailored junk, as they are, but that 2014 has seen a conspicuous drop in theater revenue despite offering largely the same junk as last year. The weekend following Thanksgiving 2014 was 20% below 2013. But we also have an almost direct comparison of “blockbuster” activity as the second installment of the Hunger Games is nearly 25% behind the first in the same number of days. Having taken in about $257 million (which is still quite good) in 17 days, the first version grabbed $335 million in the same timeframe.

Revenue over the summer was already 15% below 2013 despite having about the same number of “can’t miss” titles. Every single one underperformed every expectation. The “mystery” persists as the only plausible explanation offered is that people are staying home and watching Netflix or Amazon Prime. I think that is a big part of it, but, just as online shopping takes the bite out of holiday spending in-store, that isn’t enough for me to explain the size of these declines. Both movie revenue and bricks and mortar shopping are so far far below all expectations, as especially online spending has failed tremendously to fill the gap this year.

Where else could it have gone?

• Greece Lurches Back Into Crisis Mode (Bloomberg)

Greek stocks fell more than at any point during Europe’s debt crisis today after Prime Minister Antonis Samaras gambled his political future on bringing forward a parliamentary vote on a new head of state. Greek stocks tumbled the most since 1987 and three-year yields surged in response to the prime minister’s move. Unless he can persuade 25 opposition lawmakers to support his choice, Samaras will be forced to call a parliamentary election that anti-austerity party Syriza would be favorite to win. “Investors have taken a second look at Syriza and understood that at this point in time it’s more radical than the traditional left in Greece,” said Nicholas Veron, a fellow at the Bruegel research institute in Brussels. “If Syriza takes over it won’t be a smooth ride.”

Less than a month before Samaras had hoped to lead Greece out of the bailout program that has ravaged the country for the past four years, the resistance to his policies is fueling doubts about whether he can stay the course. While Syriza has pledged to stick with the euro, its plans to roll-back Samaras’s budget cuts evoke memories of the financial chaos that threatened to bust apart the currency union in 2012. Greece’s benchmark stock index dropped 13% and the bond market signaled investors are concerned about short-term disruptions, as the yield on 3-year debt jumped 176 basis points to 8.23%, surpassing 10-year rates. “It’s possibly a good decision, but in the end it’s in the hands of the decision makers in parliament and the population,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told reporters in Brussels.

Greece’s reform program is “not yet over the hill,” he added. Samaras nominated Stavros Dimas, a 73-year-old former European Union commissioner, for the largely ceremonial post of president. Voting will begin next week, on Dec. 17, with two further rounds possible. Under Greece’s constitution, a supermajority of at least 180 lawmakers in the 300-seat chamber is needed to elect a successor to the incumbent, President Karolos Papoulias. The government has the support of just 155 lawmakers. Failure to install a candidate after three attempts would force Samaras to dissolve parliament.

Tha Japan elections are a big story this week.

• Japan Threatened With Credit Rating Downgrade (CNBC)

Japan’s “A-plus” credit rating is under threat, after Fitch Ratings placed the country’s debt on negative watch on Tuesday. The ratings agency said it could cut Japan’s rating in the first half of next year, following the government’s decision to delay a consumption tax hike to April 2017 from October 2015. “The delay implies it will be almost impossible to achieve the government’s previously-stated objective of reducing the primary budget deficit to 3.3% of GDP by the fiscal year April 2015-March 2016,” said Fitch in a report on Tuesday. Fitch estimates the proportion of Japan’s debt to the size of its gross domestic product would reach 241% by the end of this year, up from 184% at end-2008. The 57 percentage point rise in the ratio would be the second-highest over the period in the A or double-A category after Ireland, the agency noted.

If you can say a bank belongs to its shareholders, it’s teh latter who pay for the criminal activities of the traders and managers. And nowhere in there does the Justice department see a taks?

• Citigroup Sets Aside $2.7 Billion For Legal Costs (BBC)

Michael Corbat, the chief executive of US bank Citigroup, has said the firm is setting aside $2.7bn (£1.7bn) for legal costs in the fourth-quarter. Costs have risen due to US investigations into Citigroup’s behaviour in currency markets, setting the Libor rate, as well as an anti-money-laundering probe. In October, the bank was forced to restate its third-quarter results. It wrote off $600m due to the “rapidly evolving regulatory inquiries”. Mr Corbat made the remarks during a presentation at an investor conference, in which he also said that bank would write down $800m in expenses related to real estate and employee headcount. He said he expects the bank to remain “marginally profitable” during the period. Shares in Citigroup fell 2.5% after his remarks.

Lovely. And that’s without counting China.

• This Is What 6 Years Of Central Bank Liquidity Injections Look Like (Zero Hedge)

Curious how over the past 6 years we got to a point where the market is now so irreparably broken, even the BIS couldn’t take it anymore and threw up all over the the world’s central bankers? Then look no further than the following chart summarizing 6 years of global central bank liquidity injections that have made it imperative to use quotation marks every time one writes the word “market”

They’re still TBTF, so what does it matter?

• Big US Banks Face Capital Requirement of 4.5% on Top of Global Minimum (BBG)

Big U.S. banks face capital surcharges of as much as 4.5% as the Federal Reserve readies new capital rules that single out firms reliant on short-term market funding as posing the greatest systemic risk. The Fed today proposed two methods to calculate what capital surcharges eight big U.S. firms will face on top of those already levied on the world’s largest banks by international regulators. While the central bank stopped short of listing the surcharges for each firm, it said they probably will range from 1% to 4.5% based on 2013 data – exceeding the maximum of 2.5% set under global rules. The aggregate amount the eight banks need to meet the surcharges from current levels is $21 billion, Federal Reserve officials said.

While stiffer rules can lower returns for shareholders of companies that hold onto profits to build capital, the Fed said “almost all” of the firms already meet the new requirements, and all are on their way to meeting them by the end of a phase-in period that runs from 2016 to 2019. The new U.S. regulations will focus in part on how much the banks borrow from institutional investors in short-term contracts, a form of funding deemed as riskier during a crisis. “Reliance on short-term wholesale funding is among the more important determinants of the potential impact of the distress or failure of a systemically important financial firm on the broader financial system,” Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo said. “Unfortunately, the surcharge formula developed by the Basel Committee does not directly take into account reliance on short-term wholesale funding.”

In the wave of rules meant to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed has made global agreements tougher when applying them to U.S. lenders. The eight U.S. firms covered by today’s proposal are JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Bank of New York Mellon and State Street. “The U.S. once again chooses to go its own way and exceed international minimums,” Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner of Washington-based research firm Federal Financial Analytics Inc., said before today’s announcement. “If they squeeze the big banks too much, they’ll force some out of some businesses.”

America will pay a dear price for these crimes.

• Stop Believing The Lies: America Tortured More Than ‘Some Folks’ (Guardian)

The torture defenders from the CIA and the Bush administration probably won’t even make a serious attempt to say they didn’t torture anyone – just that it was effective, that there were “serious mistakes”, but that “countless lives have been saved and our Homeland is more secure” – with a capital H. This highlights the mistake of the Senate committee, in a way. Instead of focusing on the illegal nature of the torture, Senator Dianne Feinstein’s investigators worked to document torture’s ineffectiveness. The debate, now, is whether torture worked. It clearly didn’t. But the debate should be: Why the hell aren’t these torturous liars in jail?

Worse still, the CIA has still largely succeeded in stripping the landmark report of anything that could lead to accountability. The agents who were not only protected from discipline for their actions but were promoted now have their names completely redacted. So, too, are the names of the dozens of countries that helped the CIA carry out its torture regime. That includes many of the world’s worst dictators – the very men America now claims to hate, including Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.

But make no mistake: there’s still an extraordinary amount to take away from this report. If there is one tragic story, out of the many, that is emblematic of the CIA program, as its supporters defend it in the days, it’s that of Gul Ruhman. It may be two stories – it’s hard to know, so much has been redacted and the atrocities are so countless – but at least one Gul Ruhman we know was tortured at the notorious CIA black site known as the Salt Pit, chained to the floor and frozen to death. The CIA’s inspector general referred this person’s case to CIA leadership for discipline, but was overruled. Four months after the incident, the officer who gave the order that led to Rahman’s death was recommended for a $2,500 “cash reward” for his “consistently superior work”.

Footnote 32 explains why a dead prisoner ended up in CIA custody in the first place: “Gul Ruhman, another case of mistaken identity.”

“Ignorance is not just strength – it is the most awesome force in the universe. Consider this: knowledge is always limited and specific, but ignorance is infinite and completely general ..”

• Defeat is Victory (Dmitry Orlov)

America is the world’s indispensable nation, world’s (second) greatest economic power (but rising fast), and American leadership is respected throughout the world. When President Obama said so in a recent speech he gave in China, the audience did not at all laugh out loud right in his face, roll their eyes, make faces or move their heads side to side slowly while frowning.

How can you avoid recognizing the importance of such things, and the fact that they spell DEFEAT? Easy! Ignorance to the rescue! Ignorance is not just strength – it is the most awesome force in the universe. Consider this: knowledge is always limited and specific, but ignorance is infinite and completely general; knowledge is hard to convey, and travels no faster than the speed of light, but ignorance is instantaneous at all points in the known and unknown universe, including alternate universes and dimensions of whose existence we are entirely ignorant. In short, there is a limit to how much you can know, but there is no limit at all to how much you don’t know but think you do!

Here is something that you probably think you know. The American empire is an “empire of chaos.” Yes, it sort of fails somehow to achieve peace, prosperity, democracy, stability, avert humanitarian crises, or stop lots of horrible crimes. But it does achieve chaos. What’s more, it achieves a wunnerful new type of chaos just invented, called “controlled chaos.” It’s much better than the old kind; sort of like “clean coal” – which you can rub all over yourself, go ahead, try it! Yes, there are naysayers out there that say things like “You reap what you sow, and if you sow chaos, you shall reap chaos.” I guess they just don’t like chaos. To each his own. Whatever.

They have to do research to figure that out?!

• Rising Inequality ‘Significantly’ Curbs Growth (CNBC)

The chasm between the richest and poorest is at a 30-year high in developed countries, dragging down world economic growth, according to a new international report. Worsening income inequality is estimated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to have knocked nearly 9 percentage points off growth in the U.K. between 1990 and 2010, and between 6 and 7 percentage points off growth in the U.S. “This long-term trend increase in income inequality has curbed economic growth significantly,” said the OECD, which is made up of 34 major economies, in a report out Tuesday.

Looking ahead, the organization forecast that over a 25 year period, inequality would reduce growth by an average of 0.35% points per year in OECD countries. “The biggest factor for the impact of inequality on growth is the gap between lower income households and the rest of the population,” said the OECD. “These findings imply that policy must not (just) be about tackling poverty, it also needs to be about addressing lower incomes more generally.” Worst hit between 1990 and 2010 were Mexico and New Zealand, where the OECD estimated that rising inequality had knocked more than 10 percentage points off growth. “On the other hand, greater equality prior to the crisis helped increase GDP per capita in Spain, France and Ireland,” said the OECD.

We should never let this through. Once signed, it’ll be very hard to get rid off, and it benefits the wrong people.

• TTIP Divides A Continent As EU Negotiators Cross The Atlantic (Guardian)

Rarely has a trade agreement invited such hyperbole and paranoia. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – or proposed free trade pact between the US and the European Union – has triggered apocalyptic prophecies: the death of French culture; an invasion of transatlantic toxic chickens into Germany; and Britain’s cherished NHS will become a stripped-down Medicare clone. From the point of view of free-trade cheerleaders, EU carmakers will more than double their sales, Europe will be seized by a jobs and growth bonanza and city halls from Chicago to Seattle will beg European firms to build their roads and schools. The world’s biggest trading nations will have no choice but to play by the west’s rules in the new world created by TTIP. Such are some of the claims made for TTIP which is now stoking a propaganda war on a scale never seen before in the arcane world of tariffs and non-tariff trade negotiations.

“It’s the most contested acronym in Europe,” said Cecilia Malmström of Sweden, the EU trade commissioner about to take charge of the European side of the negotiations. She stepped into the fray on Sunday, her first trip to Washington since taking up her post in November. TTIP dominates her intray. Eighteen months after the launch and seven rounds of talks, everything remains up in the air. The Americans are worried. Those in Brussels running the negotiations sound crestfallen. The opposition in Europe to a transatlantic free trade area believes it has the momentum, buoyed by scare stories regularly amplified by the European media. A petition against the trade pact surpassed the 1m mark this week. It will be handed to Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission chief, in Brussels on Tuesday, as a present on his 60th birthday. “There is mistrust,” Matthew Barzun, the US ambassador in London, told the Guardian. A key EU official put it another way: “[TTIP is] more sensitive politically in Europe than in the US.”

“The risk to the world “is always there” while the outbreak continues ..”

• Ebola Virus Still ‘Running Ahead Of Us’, Says WHO (BBC)

The Ebola virus that has killed thousands in West Africa is still “running ahead” of efforts to contain it, the head of the World Health Organization has said. Director general Margaret Chan said the situation had improved in some parts of the worst-affected countries, but she warned against complacency. The risk to the world “is always there” while the outbreak continues, she said. She said the WHO and the international community failed to act quickly enough. The death toll in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone stands at 6,331. More than 17,800 people have been infected, according to the WHO. “In Liberia we are beginning to see some good progress, especially in Lofa county [close to where the outbreak first started] and the capital,” said Dr Chan.

Cases in Guinea and Sierra Leone were “less severe” than a couple of months ago, but she said “we are still seeing large numbers of cases”. Dr Chan said: “It’s not as bad as it was in September. But going forward we are now hunting the virus, chasing after the virus. Hopefully we can bring [the number of cases] down to zero.” The official figures do not show the entire picture of the outbreak. In August, the WHO said the numbers were “vastly under-estimated”, due to people not reporting illnesses and deaths from Ebola. Dr Chan said the quality of data had improved since then, but there was still further work to be done.

She said a key part of bringing the outbreak under control was ensuring communities understood Ebola. She said teams going into some areas were still being attacked by frightened communities. “When they see people in space suits coming into their village to take away their loved ones, they were very fearful. They hide their sick relatives at home, they hide dead bodies. “[This is] extremely dangerous in terms of spreading disease. So we must bring the community on our side to fight the Ebola outbreak. Community participation is a critical success factor for Ebola control. “In all the outbreaks that WHO were able to manage successfully – that was a success element and this [is] not happening in this current situation.”

Debt Rattle December 3 2014

Dec 032014

December 3, 2014 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 12:25 pm Finance Tagged with: AI, default, deficit spending, deflation, Growth, oil, olive oil, OPEC, rigs, ruble, supply and demand 2 Responses »

Harris&Ewing National Emergency War Garden Commission display, Wash. DC 1918

• New US Oil And Gas Well November Permits Tumble Nearly 40% (Reuters)

• Think Collapsing Oil Is Bullish? Think Again (MarketWatch)

• Deficit Spending And Money Printing: A German Point Of View (Salzer)

• OPEC Is Wrong To Think It Can Outlast US On Oil Prices (MarketWatch)

• Oil War Slams Venezuela, Probability of Default Soars to 84% (Wolfstreet)

• Why Oil Is Finally Declining, Which May Lead to Disaster (Lee Adler)

• The Financialization of Oil (CH Smith)

• Oil, the Ruble and Putin Are All Headed for 63. A Russian Joke (Bloomberg)

• What Low Oil Prices Mean For The Environment (Reuters)

• French Bank Tells Investors To Dump UK Assets (CNBC)

• Australia Headed Into Perfect Storm In 2015 (CNBC)

• If Deflation Is So Terrible, Why Are Spain, Greece Growing? (MarketWatch)

• Eurozone Business Activity Slumps To 16-Month Low (CNBC)

• Non-Eurozone Czech Central Banker: We Need ECB Easing Too (CNBC)

• The Gold Fairy Tale Fails Again (Barry Ritholtz)

• Stop Talking about NATO Membership for Ukraine (Spiegel)

• We Are Starting To Learn Who Owns Britain (Monbiot)

• Mediterranean Diet Keeps People ‘Genetically Young’ (BBC)

• Olive Oil Prices Soar After Bad Harvest (Guardian)

• Stephen Hawking Warns Artificial Intelligence Could End Mankind (BBC)

Putting a brave face on the desperate hope for higher prices, soon. Or else.

• New US Oil And Gas Well November Permits Tumble Nearly 40% (Reuters)

Plunging oil prices sparked a drop of almost 40% in new well permits issued across the United States in November, in a sudden pause in the growth of the U.S. shale oil and gas boom that started around 2007. Data provided exclusively to Reuters on Tuesday by industry data firm Drilling Info Inc showed 4,520 new well permits were approved last month, down from 7,227 in October. The pullback was a “very quick response” to U.S. crude prices, which settled on Tuesday at $66.88, said Allen Gilmer, chief executive officer of Drilling Info. New permits, which indicate what drilling rigs will be doing 60-90 days in the future, showed steep declines for the first time this year across the top three U.S. onshore fields: the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford in Texas and North Dakota’s Bakken shale. The Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico showed a 38% decline in new oil and gas well permits last month, while the Eagle Ford and Bakken permit counts fell 28% and 29%, respectively, the data showed.

That slide came in the same month U.S. crude oil futures fell 17% to $66.17 on Nov. 28 from $80.54 on Oct. 31. Prices are down about 40% since June. U.S. prices fell below $70 a barrel last week after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to maintain output of 30 million barrels per day. Analysts said the cartel is trying to squeeze U.S. shale oil producers out of the market. Total U.S. production reached an average of 8.9 million barrels per day in October, and is expected to surpass 9 million bpd in December, the highest in decades, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Gilmer said last month’s pullback in permits was more about holding off on drilling good locations in a low-price environment than breaking even on well economics. “I think in this case this was just a quick response, saying ‘there are enough drill sites in the inventory, let’s sit back, take a look and see what happens with prices,'” he said.

Hey, that’s my headline!

• Think Collapsing Oil Is Bullish? Think Again (MarketWatch)

The biggest story of 2014 isn’t the end of quantitative easing. It’s the unrelenting collapse in oil prices, and what that means for stock markets worldwide. The meme out there? Falling oil is bullish. After all, the more oil falls, the more consumers and companies save. I’m sorry, but there are a number of flaws with this argument. First of all, falling oil can be bullish, but collapsing oil tends to historically be very bearish. Many major corrections and bear markets have been preceded by oil in a precipitous fall. Second, people forget that several state budgets actually rely on tax revenue that is derived from oil drilling and exploration activities. If that tax revenue collapses because those companies collapse on that oil decline, what’s the response by those states? Raises taxes on, you guessed it, consumers.

Third, you might want to be careful what you wish for when it comes to falling oil prices. A good amount of many junk-debt indices is made up of energy-sector bonds. Junk-debt spreads have been widening, and should defaults occur in the energy space, that could serve as a butterfly effect for all bonds. The biggest thing that counters the “collapsing oil is bullish” meme is the behavior of defensive sectors of the stock market, which our equity sector ATAC Beta Rotation Fund BROTX, +0.68% has the ability to position all in to based on our proprietary risk trigger. If indeed falling oil were bullish, shouldn’t more cyclical areas of the market rally on that? If falling oil were bullish, shouldn’t U.S. small-cap stocks — which are heavily dependent upon domestic U.S. revenue growth — be substantially outperforming?

And that’s my line! “Why do we insist upon economic growth, if we don’t actually need the products which are additionally produced every year?” Good to see I’m not the only one writing about that.

• Deficit Spending And Money Printing: A German Point Of View (Salzer)

What we experience today is completely contrary to the German (maybe not the U.S.) understanding of the role of the Central Bank. The ECB has now assumed a role not only to protect the value of our common currency against inflation but also to take action as if it is responsible to create economic growth and full employment with instruments like money printing, zero interest rates and unlimited investments in bonds which the free market is rejecting.

We pay a high price for the chimera that we need constant economic growth and that it is a stigma if our GDP-growth is only 1.5% p.a. Can’t we accept that after 50 years of undisturbed peace and continuous prosperity we have reached a certain degree of personal satisfaction where we don’t need a new car every year, another cell-phone, additional furniture, more TV-sets, more laptops etc, etc.

Why do we insist upon economic growth, if we don’t actually need the products which are additionally produced every year? Is it really worth it to increase the already heavy burden of public debt, which our children must service someday, by accepting even more debt in a vain effort to increase public demand? Let’s instead be happy with zero GDP growth, zero inflation and zero growth of public debt! That could be a more rational solution. Why don’t we consider it?

To what extent is North Dakota spinning its numbers? ” .. the state of North Dakota says the average cost per barrel in America’s top oil-producing state is only $42 [..] In McKenzie County, which boasts 72 of the state’s 188 oil rigs, the average production cost is just $30, the state says.”

• OPEC Is Wrong To Think It Can Outlast US On Oil Prices (MarketWatch)

Give Saudi Arabia credit: Whoever sets oil-production policy for the desert kingdom has guts. Unfortunately, the sheiks have made what’s likely to become a sucker’s bet. You know this part already, but the 12-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries last week declined to cut production, sending Brent crude oil futures tumbling to their cheapest point since 2009. The Saudis appear to be spoiling for a fight, trying to find out exactly how cheap oil must be to force surging U.S. shale-oil production to seize up like an unlubricated engine. “Naimi declares price war on U.S. shale oil,” a Reuters headline shouted, referring to Saudi Arabia Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi. But there are at least three big problems with this strategy.

One, North American crude isn’t as expensive to produce as it used to be. Two, there’s more than you think in the pipeline to make it even cheaper. And third, OPEC nations, including Saudi Arabia, have squandered their edge in cheap oil supplies on welfare states rulers can’t easily cut back. In 2012, when U.S. shale burst into public consciousness, common wisdom was that it would cost at least $70 to $75 a barrel to produce. As recently as last week, saying U.S. producers could tolerate $60 oil seemed aggressive. But data from the state of North Dakota says the average cost per barrel in America’s top oil-producing state is only $42 — to make a 10% return for rig owners. In McKenzie County, which boasts 72 of the state’s 188 oil rigs, the average production cost is just $30, the state says.

Another 27 rigs are around $29. That’s part of why oil companies aren’t cutting capital spending much — and they say they can keep production rising without spending more, by getting more out of wells they have already drilled. A key example is mega-independent Devon, which produces about 200,000 of the 9 million-plus barrels the U.S. drills each day. Devon wouldn’t give an interview, but said last month that it expects production to rise 20%-25% next year with little growth in capital spending. It has room to work because its pretax cash profit margins have widened by 37% in the first nine months of this year, to almost $30 per barrel of oil equivalent. More than half its 2015 production is protected by hedges if prices stay below $91 a barrel, the company says.

Can the CIA finally take over?

• Oil War Slams Venezuela, Probability of Default Soars to 84% (Wolfstreet)

OPEC member Venezuela has one of the largest oil and natural gas proven reserves in the world. It’s the 12th largest producer in the world. It’s still one of the top suppliers of crude oil to the US. Oil produces 95% of Venezuela’s export earnings. Oil and gas account for 25% of GDP. Oil is Venezuela’s single most important product. Oil is its critical source of foreign currency with which to pay for all manner of imported consumer and industrial products. But the price of oil has plunged 35% since June. Venezuela was already in trouble before the price of oil plunged. The fracking boom in the US and the tar-sands boom in Canada have been replacing Venezuelan imports of crude to the US for years.

The Keystone pipeline, if Congress approves it, will replace costly oil trains to move Canadian tar-sands crude to US refineries, making it even more competitive with Venezuelan crude. Shipments of crude from Venezuela to the US will continue to dwindle. Venezuela’s budget deficit is 16% of GDP, the worst in the world. Inflation is running at a white-hot 63%, also the worst in the world. The economy is heavily subsidized, but now the money for the subsidies is running out. Currency controls have been instituted to shore up the Bolivar. But instead, they’re strangling what is left of the economy. Anti-government protests and riots burst on the scene earlier this year as the exasperated people couldn’t take it any longer. The scarcity of even basic consumer products such as toothpaste and toilet paper has now spread across the spectrum, including medical supplies. Next year, scarcity is going to be even worse.

Venezuelan economist Angel Garcia Banchs worries that “what’s coming to Venezuela is chaos that will probably lead to barbarity and people looting.” It doesn’t help the budget that the government sells its most valuable export commodity at heavily subsidized prices at home, based on a special though iffy deal: the people get cheap energy, and in return, hopefully, they don’t riot, or outright revolt. The hope is that the government gets to stay in power a little longer even as it is going bankrupt. Yet social spending isn’t going to get cut, promised President Nicolas Maduro on state TV on Friday. “If we had to cut anything in our budget, we would cut extravagances, we would cut our own salaries as high officials, but we will never cut one Bolivar of the money that goes to education, food, housing, the missions of our nation,” he said.

“For the biggest speculators and financiers in the world, oil was a money substitute, a hedge against the massive money printing campaigns of the Fed, the BoJ, and the ECB.”

• Why Oil Is Finally Declining, Which May Lead to Disaster (Lee Adler)

The price of oil has finally started to obey the law. What law is that? The Law of Supply and Demand. Thanks to the US fracking boom that has done this (see chart) to US production, the supply of oil worldwide has outstripped demand since 2012. So why haven’t prices fallen before this summer? And are falling oil prices now a good thing? Or not? While US production was exploding, other countries had level or declining production. Meanwhile consumption was falling in developed nations, but the developing world more than made up for that. Worldwide consumption has been steadily increasing since 2009. However, because of the US fracking boom, with the exception of 2011 supply has exceeded demand. Prices should have been declining since 2012, right? After the oil price bubble peaked in 2008, the price of oil did crash when demand dropped. That drop in demand created a huge oversupply just as the US fracking boom was in its infancy.

Then the Fed and its cohort central banks started printing money helter skelter in 2009. The results showed up not only in world stock markets but in commodities as well, particularly oil. The price of oil rose in spite of the fact that world oil production continued to outstrip demand. For the biggest speculators and financiers in the world, oil was a money substitute, a hedge against the massive money printing campaigns of the Fed, the BoJ, and the ECB. It worked for a while, and the oil market even helped in 2011 when supply fell below consumption for a year. But then the US production increase again overran world wide consumption.

Prices don’t have to sink further to cause mayhem, they only need to stay where they are now.

• The Financialization of Oil (CH Smith)

Like home mortgages, oil has been viewed as a “safe” asset. The financialization of the oil sector has followed a slightly different script but the results are the same: A weak foundation of collateral is supporting a mountain of leveraged, high-risk debt and derivatives. Oil in the ground has been treated as collateral for trillions of dollars in junk bonds, loans and derivatives of all this new debt. The 35% decline in the price of oil has reduced the underlying collateral supporting all this debt by 35%. Loans that were deemed low-risk when oil was $100/barrel are no longer low-risk with oil below $70/barrel (dead-cat bounces notwithstanding). Financialization is always based on the presumption that risk can be cancelled out by hedging bets made with counterparties.

This sounds appealing, but as I have noted many times, risk cannot be disappeared, it can only be masked or transferred to others. Relying on counterparties to pay out cannot make risk vanish; it only masks the risk of default by transferring the risk to counterparties, who then transfer it to still other counterparties, and so on. This illusory vanishing act hasn’t made risk disappear: rather, it has set up a line of dominoes waiting for one domino to topple. This one domino will proceed to take down the entire line of financial dominoes. The 35% drop in the price of oil is the first domino. All the supposedly safe, low-risk loans and bets placed on oil, made with the supreme confidence that oil would continue to trade in a band around $100/barrel, are now revealed as high-risk. [..]

The failure of one counterparty will topple the entire line of counterparty dominoes. The first domino in the oil sector has fallen, and the long line of financialized dominoes is starting to topple. Everyone who bought a supposedly low-risk bond, loan or derivative based on oil in the ground is about to discover the low risk was illusory. All those who hedged the risk with a counterparty bet are about to discover that a counterparty failure ten dominoes down the line has destroyed their hedge, and the loss is theirs to absorb. All the analysts chortling over the “equivalent of a tax break” for consumers are about to be buried by an avalanche of defaults and crushing losses

Putin is still very popular in Russia. Western media will tell you that’s because of domestic propaganda, but they themselves engage in anti-Putin propaganda over here.

• Oil, the Ruble and Putin Are All Headed for 63. A Russian Joke (Bloomberg)

Heard the one about Vladimir Putin, the oil price and the ruble’s value against the dollar? They will all hit 63 next year. That’s the joke doing the rounds of the Kremlin as the Russian government digs in to weather international sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine. According to at least five people close to Putin, pressure from the U.S. and Europe is galvanizing Russians to withstand a siege on their economy. The black humor is part of an image of defiance not seen since the Cold War. As the economy enters its first recession in more than five years, the ruble depreciates to records and money exits the country, Putin’s supporters are closing ranks and say he’s sure to run for another six-year term in 2018. “We are becoming poorer, our savings vanish, prices grow, however we see an opposite effect to the one that is wanted by people who wish to see Putin knocked down,” said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist studying the elite at the Russian Academy of Sciences. The jokes just underline their determination to stand till the end, she said.

Putin celebrates his 63rd birthday on Oct. 7. The price of Brent crude sank to a five-year low of $67.53 a barrel this week. The ruble has dropped to near 55 to the dollar from as strong as 34 less than six months ago, meaning it needs to lose another 13% to complete the joke. A friend of Putin who spoke on condition of anonymity said sanctions won’t work because the U.S. and European Union don’t understand the Russian mentality. The country endured the Leningrad siege for more than two years during World War II and will survive this too, he said. “The West is wrong in its understanding of the motivation Putin and his inner circle have,” said Evgeniy Minchenko, head of the International Institute of Political Expertise in Moscow. “They think Putin is a businessman, that money is the most important thing for him and that by pressing him and his allies financially they will break them.”

Not much so far.

• What Low Oil Prices Mean For The Environment (Reuters)

Are low oil prices good or bad for the environment? From one perspective, they’re bad: lower oil prices mean lower gas prices, which in turn encourage people to drive rather than use more environmentally friendly means of transportation. But in the case of U.S. shale oil, lower prices are good for Mother Earth, if only temporarily. Oil prices have been falling steadily since June, and given OPEC’s recent decision not to curb production, it seems they’ll remain low for a while. As Myles Udland pointed out in Business Insider last week, a lot of shale projects have break-even prices beneath the $80-per-barrel price level, but producers become less and less incentivized to start new projects as prices fall. [..] shale drilling permits fell 15% across 12 major shale formations in October, a sign that shale producers are willing to slow their rapid expansion until they can get more bang for their buck. It comes down to opportunity cost.

As Harold Hamm, an early shale pioneer who has lost $10 billion since August (let that sink in), told Bloomberg, “Nobody’s going to go out there and drill areas, exploration areas and other areas, at a loss. They’ll pull back and won’t drill it until the price recovers. That’s the way it ought to be.” Many see OPEC’s refusal to curb output as a multi-billion-dollar game of chicken with U.S. shale producers, whose booming production can be credited with the recent fall in world oil prices. Early evidence shows that it may be working—for now; fuelfix.com reported yesterday that Texas shale permits were down 50% in November. Ultimately, the case can be made that low oil prices are bad for the environment, as they encourage more oil use now, which makes investments in alternative energy less urgent. And the shale isn’t going anywhere–it’s just waiting there patiently for prices to become sufficient for new extraction projects.

“Stay away from U.K. assets into the 7 May elections ..”

• French Bank Tells Investors To Dump UK Assets (CNBC)

French bank Société Générale has told investors to steer clear of U.K. assets and sell sterling, because “zero” reform and political deadlock pose key risks to the country’s economy. “Stay away from U.K. assets into the 7 May elections,” the SocGen global asset strategy team, led by Alain Bokobza, said in the bank’s 2015 outlook. “In the U.K., 2015 will be marked by the General Election, triggering some volatility and pushing the risk premium on the FTSE 100 higher as the debate on the European Union exit gains momentum.” As such, Bokobza recommended: “Minimal exposure to U.K. assets as political deadlock and delayed tightening by the Bank of England should lead to a weakening of sterling.”

This warning comes despite the U.K.’s robust economic growth compared with the euro zone. U.K. GDP grew by 0.7% in the third quarter on the previous quarter, while the euro zone and France grew by just 0.2% and 0.3% respectively over the same period. But the French banking group insisted that U.K. assets remained risky, and had continually underperformed. “We have been underweight on U.K. assets in the last quarters, with little reason for regret. In particular, U.K. equities are underperforming all developed markets, and a lower GBP/USD is one of our strategic calls (with a 1.50 target),” the bank’s asset strategy team said. “So far there has been zero structural reform and no improvement in twin deficits or exports despite a significant devaluation of the currency. Also, the spillover effects of weak euro zone fundamentals have been underestimated. We are concerned, and therefore seek to protect our asset allocation.”

The perils of having just one main client.

• Australia Headed Into Perfect Storm In 2015 (CNBC)

Australia’s economy will undergo a crucial stress test in 2015, faced with a triple whammy from the lagged impact of plunging commodity prices, sharp declines in mining investment and renewed fiscal tightening, says Goldman Sachs. “The challenges are now widely known…but these challenges still lie mainly ahead for Australia rather than behind,” Tim Toohey, chief economist, Australia at Goldman Sachs wrote in a note on Wednesday. On top of the these headwinds, the economy also needs to contend with tighter financial conditions and lower levels of housing investment, said Toohey, factors that had previously helped to offset the slump in the mining sector. The bank expects GDP growth to average just 2.0% next year, down from an estimated 2.9% in 2014, as the economy continues to search for new growth drivers.

The decline in mining investment will continue to be a major drag on the economy, leaving commodity exports and consumption to pick up the slack, the bank said. Australia’s third quarter GDP data published on Wednesday pointed to a sluggish domestic economy, suggesting rebalancing away from mining-driven growth is taking longer than hoped. The economy expanded 2.7% on year in the three months to September, undershooting expectations for growth of 3.1%, as construction spending fell while sliding export prices hit incomes. “This GDP result concurs broadly with the perceived wisdom on the Australian economy, albeit with perhaps a little more domestic weakness than expected, said David de Garis, director and senior economist at National Australia Bank.

A perfect example of why seeing deflation only as falling prices is so completely useless and dumbing. If you refuse to look a WHY prices fall, you never learn a thing, and you will always be behind. Apart from the fact that the idea of Greece and Spain doing well can easily be refuted by 1000 other data sources, looking at one day or week or month tells you nothing. You need to look at consumer spending over at least the past few years. That would also show more respect for the 25% of the working population, and 50% of youth, who are unemployed in both countries.

• If Deflation Is So Terrible, Why Are Spain, Greece Growing? (MarketWatch)

Prices are starting to fall across the European continent. Mass unemployment, and a grinding recession are forcing companies with too much capacity to charge less for their products. Company profits will soon be collapsing, while government debt ratios threaten to spiral out of control. The threat of deflation is so worrying, the European Central Bank is expected to throw everything in its armory to prevent it, and to get prices rising again. It may even move towards full-blown quantitative easing as early as Thursday. But here’s a puzzle. The two countries with the worst deflation in Europe are Greece and Spain. And two of the countries with the best growth? Funnily enough, that also happens to be Greece and Spain. So if deflation is so terrible, how come those two are recovering fastest?

The answer is that deflation is not nearly as bad as it sometimes made out to be by mainstream economists. The real problem is debt. But if that is true, perhaps the eurozone would be better off trying to fix its debt crisis than campaigning to raise prices — especially as it probably won’t have much success with that anyway. There is no question that the eurozone is sliding inexorably towards deflation. Only last week, we learned that the inflation rate across the zone ratcheted down to 0.3% last month, from 0.4% a month earlier, and a significantly lower figure than the market expected. It has been going steadily down for some time. Consumer inflation has not hit the ECB’s target level of 2% since the start of 2013. It has been falling steadily since it peaked at 3% in late 2011

It would be rash to expect that to change any time soon. The oil price has collapsed, and other commodity prices are coming down as well. That will all feed into the inflation rate. Retail sales are still weak, and unemployment is still rising. People who have lost their job don’t spend money — and companies don’t hike prices when the shops are empty.

Super Mario to the rescue.

• Eurozone Business Activity Slumps To 16-Month Low (CNBC)

Business activity in the euro zone fell to a 16-month low in November, according to data released on Wednesday, confirming fears that the region’s economy is faltering. Final euro zone composite Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) data from Markit came in at 51.1 in November, below flash estimates of 51.4 released last month. It marks a fall from October’s final reading of 52.1. The composite reading measures both manufacturing and services activity, with the 50-point mark separating contraction from expansion. The figures could put more pressure on the ECB to increase stimulus measures ahead of its next monetary policy announcement on Thursday. There is growing pressure on the bank to start buying government bonds, although Germany has opposed the move to date.

The euro zone data was preceded by disappointing services PMI figures for Germany and France, the euro zone’s largest and second-largest economies respectively. The slowdown across the 18-country region reflected weakness in new order inflows, as new business fell for the first time since July last year. Job creation also remained near-stagnant, Markit said. Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, said there were “worrying signs” of economic performance deteriorating in the euro zone’s core countries, which, if sustained, “could drive the region back into recession.” “France remains the biggest concern, suffering an ongoing decline in business activity, but growth has also slowed to the weakest for one-and-a-half years in Germany,” he added.

“ECB easing is necessary for us, we are closely related with the euro zone and ECB easing should, in the long run, generate more demand in the euro zone, which is helpful for us ..”

• Non-Eurozone Czech Central Banker: We Need ECB Easing Too (CNBC)

As the European Central Bank’s (ECB) next policy meeting looms, the governor of the Czech central bank has insisted that further euro zone easing will have “necessary” knock-on benefits for the Czech Republic. The ECB is expected to leave monetary policy unchanged on Thursday, although there are growing calls for the bank to launch a full-blown quantitative easing package. ECB President Mario Draghi is likely to wait until the new year before deciding on sovereign bond-buying measures – a move that Czech National Bank (CNB) Governor Miroslav Singer said he supported. “It (further easing) is helpful for us. ECB easing is necessary for us, we are closely related with the euro zone and ECB easing should, in the long run, generate more demand in the euro zone, which is helpful for us,” Singer told CNBC.

Speaking from the CNB in Prague, Singer said that easing could take some time to filter through to some weaker parts of the euro zone, but added that a weaker euro would help “shield” the Czech Republic’s economy by giving some of the region’s biggest countries a boost. The Czech Republic is a member of the European Union, but doesn’t yet use the euro. Its currency is called the Czech koruna. The euro has weakened against the dollar and other currencies since the summer, falling to a two-year low against the greenback last month after Draghi hinted that the bank was prepared to undertake more stimulus. Singer added that a weaker euro had helped boost countries like Germany, which price their exports in euros. A weaker euro makes euro zone exports cheaper in the global market.

Barry shares my worries.

• The Gold Fairy Tale Fails Again (Barry Ritholtz)

Yesterday, oil rallied 4.3% and gold gained 3.6% as commodities had an up day after a long and painful fall. The fascinating aspect of the trading wasn’t the $45 pop in gold, nor the even greater%age rally in oil, but the accompanying narrative. (As of this writing, each has giving up about half of those gains). When it comes to speculating, especially in precious metals, it is all about storytelling. Over the years, I have tried to remind investors of the dangers of the narrative form (See this, this and this). Following a storyline is a recipe for losing money. Why? The spoken word emerged eons ago and narration was a convenient way to pass along information from person to person, generation to generation. Your DNA is coded to love a good yarn of heroes and villains and conflicts to resolve, preferably in a way that is both exciting and memorable. However, your genetic makeup wasn’t created with the risks and rewards of capital markets in mind. When it comes to being suckers for storytelling, I have been especially critical of the gold bugs.

Since 2011, the gold narrative has been a money loser, the secular bull market for the metal clearly over. However, gold often provides a plethora of teachable moments. I want to point out several recent gold narratives that have been dangerous to investors. One of my favorite narratives involves the SPDR Gold Shares, an exchange-traded fund. The history of this ETF is a fascinating tale, well told by Liam Pleven and Carolyn Cui of the Wall Street Journal. Since its peak in September 2011, GLD has declined 37%. As we discussed almost a year ago, the most popular gold narrative was that the Federal Reserve’s program of quantitative easing would lead to the collapse of the dollar and hyperinflation. “The problem with all of this was that even as the narrative was failing, the storytellers never changed their tale. The dollar hit three-year highs, despite QE. Inflation was nowhere to be found,” I wrote at the time.

More recently, the narrative has shifted. Switzerland was going to save gold based on a ballot proposal stipulating that the Swiss National Bank hold at least 20% of its 520-billion-franc ($538 billion) balance sheet in gold, repatriate overseas gold holdings and never sell bullion in the future. This was going to be the driver of the next leg up in gold. Except for the small fact that the “Save Our Swiss Gold” proposal was voted down, 77% to 23%, by the electorate. Why anyone believed this fairy tale in the first place is beyond me. Surveys of voters suggested that the ballot proposal was likely to fail. And yet there’s muddled thinking about gold among the bears too. Short sellers loaded up on bets that gold would plummet, a mistake in its own right since the outcome was all but foretold. When the collapse failed to materialize as the ballot initiative lost, the shorts had to cover their errant bets, sending spot prices higher (temporarily it seems).

Why do these narratives all tend to fail? For the most part, they reflect information that is already in prices. Markets are far from perfectly efficient (they are kinda- sorta-eventually-almost efficient). But they are more efficient than many seem to assume. What’s that you say? Consumers in China and India are big buyers of gold? You mean, the way they always have been? Indeed, most of the recent narratives contain information that is already reflected in prices. Yesterday, I read a breaking news article that said India’s decision to lift gold import restrictions would have a big, positive impact on prices. The problem with that narrative is that India eased import limits in May – and it moved gold prices higher by all of 0.5%.

The Germans don’t like what NATO is up to.

• Stop Talking about NATO Membership for Ukraine (Spiegel)

Just to be sure there is no misunderstanding: Vladimir Putin bears primarily responsibility for the new Cold War between the West and Russia. These days, you have to make that clear before criticizing Western policies so as not to be shoved into the pro-Putin camp. When NATO foreign ministers meet in Brussels today, the question of Ukraine’s possible future membership in the alliance is not on the agenda. It will, however, overshadow the meeting — and that is the fault of two politicians. During an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF on Sunday night, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he would like to hold a referendum on NATO membership at some point in the future. And new NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg apparently had nothing better to do than to offer Poroshenko his verbal support and to reiterate the right of every sovereign nation in Europe to apply for NATO membership.

As if that weren’t enough, Stoltenberg added in comments directed at Moscow that “no third country outside NATO can veto” its enlargement. In the current tense environment, open speculation about possible Ukrainian membership in NATO is akin to playing with fire. German Chancellor Angela Merkel proposed the former Norwegian prime minister as NATO chief because he is considered to be a far more level-headed politician than predecessor Anders Fogh Rasmussen. But since he took the helm, differences between the two have been difficult to identify. Hawkish statements made by NATO’s top military commander, Philip Breedlove, haven’t done much to ease the situation either. Why is it even necessary for NATO officers to comment so frequently about Ukraine? Since the outbreak of the crisis, the alliance has expressed the opinion that the conflict cannot be resolved through military means. If that’s true, then wouldn’t it be better if Stoltenberg, Breedlove and company kept quiet?

“David Cameron has been just as generous with our money: as he cuts essential services for the poor, he has almost doubled the public subsidy for English grouse moors, and frozen the price of shotgun licences, at a public cost of £17m a year.”

• We Are Starting To Learn Who Owns Britain (Monbiot)

Bring out the violins. The land reform programme announced last week by the Scottish government is the end of civilised life on Earth, if you believe the corporate press. In a country where 432 people own half the private rural land, all change is Stalinism. The Telegraph has published a string of dire warnings – insisting, for example, that deer stalking and grouse shooting could come to an end if business rates are introduced for sporting estates. Moved to tears yet? Yes, sporting estates – where the richest people in Britain, or oil sheikhs and oligarchs from elsewhere, shoot grouse and stags – are exempt from business rates, a present from John Major’s government in 1994. David Cameron has been just as generous with our money: as he cuts essential services for the poor, he has almost doubled the public subsidy for English grouse moors, and frozen the price of shotgun licences, at a public cost of £17m a year.

But this is small change. Let’s talk about the real money. The Westminster government claims to champion an entrepreneurial society of wealth creators and hardworking families, but the real rewards and incentives are for rent. The power and majesty of the state protects the patrimonial class. A looped and windowed democratic cloak barely covers the corrupt old body of the nation. Here peaceful protesters can still be arrested under the 1361 Justices of the Peace Act. Here the Royal Mines Act 1424 gives the crown the right to all the gold and silver in Scotland. Here the Remembrancer of the City of London sits behind the Speaker’s chair in the House of Commons to protect the entitlements of a corporation that pre-dates the Norman conquest. This is an essentially feudal nation.

It’s no coincidence that the two most regressive forms of taxation in the UK – council tax banding and the payment of farm subsidies – both favour major owners of property. The capping of council tax bands ensures that the owners of £100m flats in London pay less than the owners of £200,000 houses in Blackburn. Farm subsidies, which remain limitless as a result of the Westminster government’s lobbying, ensure that every household in Britain hands £245 a year to the richest people in the land. The single farm payment system, under which landowners are paid by the hectare, is a reinstatement of a medieval levy called feudal aid, a tax the vassals had to pay to their lords.

Sounds good, tastes good too.

• Mediterranean Diet Keeps People ‘Genetically Young’ (BBC)

Following a Mediterranean diet might be a recipe for a long life because it appears to keep people genetically younger, say US researchers. Its mix of vegetables, olive oil, fresh fish and fruits may stop our DNA code from scrambling as we age, according to a study in the British Medical Journal. Nurses who adhered to the diet had fewer signs of ageing in their cells. The researchers from Boston followed the health of nearly 5,000 nurses over more than a decade. The Mediterranean diet has been repeatedly linked to health gains, such as cutting the risk of heart disease. Although it’s not clear exactly what makes it so good, its key components – an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables as well as poultry and fish, rather than lots of red meat, butter and animal fats – all have well documented beneficial effects on the body. Foods rich in vitamins appear to provide a buffer against stress and damage of tissues and cells. And it appears from this latest study that a Mediterranean diet helps protect our DNA.

The researchers looked at tiny structures called telomeres that safeguard the ends of our chromosomes, which store our DNA code. These protective caps prevent the loss of genetic information during cell division. As we age and our cells divide, our telomeres get shorter – their structural integrity weakens, which can tell cells to stop dividing and die. Experts believe telomere length offers a window on cellular ageing. Shorter telomeres have been linked with a broad range of age-related diseases, including heart disease, and a variety of cancers. In the study, nurses who largely stuck to eating a Mediterranean diet had longer, healthier telomeres. No individual dietary component shone out as best, which the researchers say highlights the importance of having a well-rounded diet.

But then this does not help. Especially for the poor in southern Europe.

• Olive Oil Prices Soar After Bad Harvest (Guardian)

Take it easy with the salad dressing: the price of Italian olive oil has more than doubled in the past year to its highest level in a decade as the impact of drought and a fruit fly infestation has hit production. The price of extra virgin oil from Spain, the world’s biggest producer, is also up 15% year-on-year after olive trees across the Mediterranean suffered from drought and extreme heat in May and June, their peak blooming period when moisture is vital to develop a good crop. Analysts began warning that prices would rise this summer, but the cost of Italian extra virgin olive oil soared by nearly a quarter in November compared with October as the poor state of the harvest became clear, according to market analysts Mintec. Loraine Hudson at Mintec said demand could outstrip supply over the next year as Italian production would be down 35% and global production down 19% to 2.5m tonnes at a time when global consumption is rising.

“It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate ..”

• Stephen Hawking Warns Artificial Intelligence Could End Mankind (BBC)

Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain’s pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence. He told the BBC:”The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” His warning came in response to a question about a revamp of the technology he uses to communicate, which involves a basic form of AI. But others are less gloomy about AI’s prospects. The theoretical physicist, who has the motor neurone disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), is using a new system developed by Intel to speak.

Machine learning experts from the British company Swiftkey were also involved in its creation. Their technology, already employed as a smartphone keyboard app, learns how the professor thinks and suggests the words he might want to use next. Prof Hawking says the primitive forms of artificial intelligence developed so far have already proved very useful, but he fears the consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans. “It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate,” he said. “Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”

OPEC Presents: QE4 and Deflation

Nov 282014

November 28, 2014 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:58 pm Finance Tagged with: BoJ, debt, deflation, deleveraging, ECB, eurozone, Fed, Italy, Japan, oil, OPEC, QE 7 Responses »

NPC Thanksgiving turkeys for the President Nov 26 1929

Thinking plummeting oil prices are good for the economy is a mistake. They instead, as I said only yesterday in The Price Of Oil Exposes The True State Of The Economy, point out how bad the global economy is doing. QE has been able to inflate stock prices way beyond anything remotely looking fundamental, but energy prices have now deflated instead of stocks. Something had to give at some point. Turns out, central banks weren’t able to inflate oil prices on top of everything else. Stocks and bonds are much easier to artificially inflate than commodities are.

The Fed and ECB and BOJ and PBoC may of course yet try to invest in oil, they’re easily crazy enough to try, but it will be too late even if they did. In that sense, one might argue that OPEC – or rather Saudi Arabia – has gifted us QE4, but the blessings of the ‘low oil price stimulus’ will of necessity be both mixed and short-lived. Because while the lower prices may free some money for consumers, not nearly all of the freed up ‘spending space’ will end up actually being spent. So in the end that’s a net loss as far as spending goes.

The ‘OPEC Q4′ may also keep some companies from going belly up for a while longer due to falling energy costs, but the flipside is many other companies will go bust because of the lower prices, first among them energy industry firms. Moreover, as we’re already seeing, those firms’ market values are certain to plummet. And, see yesterday’s essay linked above, many of eth really large investors, banks, equity funds et al are heavily invested in oil and gas and all that comes with it. And they are about to take some major hits as well. OPEC may have gifted us QE4, but it gave us another present at the same time: deflation in overdrive.

You can’t force people to spend, not if you’re a government, not if you’re a central bank. And if you try regardless, chances are you wind up scaring people into even less spending. That’s the perfect picture of Japan right there. There’s no such thing as central bank omnipotence, and this is where that shows maybe more than anywhere else. And if you can’t force people to spend, you can’t create growth either, so that myth is thrown out with the same bathwater in one fell swoop.

Some may say and think deflation is a good thing, but I say deflation kills economies and societies. Deflation is not about lower prices, it’s about lower spending. Which will down the line lead to lower prices, but then the damage has already been done, it’s just that nobody noticed, because everyone thinks inflation and deflation are about prices, and therefore looks exclusively at prices.

It’s like a parasite can live in your body for a long time before you show symptoms of being sick, but it’s very much there the whole time. A lower gas price may sound nice, but if you don’t understand why prices fall, you risk something like that monster from Alien popping up and out.

I had started writing this when I saw a few nicely fitting articles. First, at MarketWatch, they love the notion of the stimulus effects. They even think a ‘consumer-spending explosion’ is upon us. They’re not going to like what they see. That is, not when all the numbers have gone through their third revision in 6 months or so.

OPEC Has Ushered In QE4

Welcome to the new era of QE4. As if on cue, OPEC stepped in just as monetary policy (at least the Fed’s) has dried up. Central bankers have nothing on the oil cartel that did just what everyone expected, but has still managed to crush oil prices. Protest away about the 1% getting richer and how prior QE hasn’t trickled down to those who really need it, but an oil cartel is coming to the rescue of America and others in the world right now.

It’s hard to imagine a “more wide-reaching and effective stimulus measure than to lower the cost of gas at the pump for everyone globally,” says Alpari U.K.’s Joshua Mahoney. “For this reason, we are effectively entering the era of QE4, with motorists able to allocate more of their money towards luxury items, while firms are now able to lower costs of production thus impacting the bottom line and raising profits.”

The impact of that could be “bigger than anything that has come before,” says Mahoney, who expects that theory to be tested and proved, via sales on Black Friday and the holiday season overall. In short, a consumer-spending explosion as we race to the malls on a full tank of cheap gas. Tossing in his own two cents in the wake of that OPEC decision, legendary investor Jim Rogers says it’s a “fundamental positive for anybody who uses oil, who uses energy.” Just not great if you’re from Canada, Russia or Australia, he says. Or if you’re the ECB, fretting about price deflation. Or until it starts crushing shale producers.

Bloomberg, talking about Europe, has a less cheery tone.

Eurozone Inflation Slows as Draghi Tees Up QE Debate

Eurozone inflation slowed in November to match a five-year low, prodding the European Central Bank toward expanding its unprecedented stimulus program. Consumer prices rose 0.3% from a year earlier, the EU statistics office said today. Unemployment held at 11.5% in October [..] While the slowdown is partly related to a drop in oil prices, President Mario Draghi, who may unveil more pessimistic forecasts after a meeting of policy makers on Dec. 4, says he wants to raise inflation “as fast as possible.” [..]

“The only crumb of comfort for the ECB – and it is not much – is that November’s renewed drop in inflation was entirely due to an increased year-on-year drop in energy prices,” said Howard Archer at IHS. The data are “worrying news” for the central bank, he said. Data yesterday showed Spanish consumer prices dropped 0.5% this month from a year ago, matching the fastest rate of deflation since 2009. In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, inflation slowed to the weakest since February 2010. [..]

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann, a long-running opponent to buying government bonds, today highlighted the positive consequence of low oil prices. “There’s a stimulant effect coming from the energy prices – it’s like a mini stimulus package,” he said in Berlin.

Sure, there’s a stimulant effect. But that’s not the only effect. While I’m happy to see Weidmann apparently willing to fight Draghi and his pixies over ECB QE programs, I would think he understands what the other effect is. And if he does, he should be far more worried than he lets on.

But then I stumbled upon a long special report by Gavin Jones for Reuters on Italy, and he does provide intelligent info on that other effect of plunging oil prices. Deflation. As I said, it eats societies alive. I cut two-thirds of the article, but there’s still plenty left to catch the heart of the topic. For anyone who doesn’t understand what deflation really is, or how it works, I think that is an excellent crash course.

Why Italy’s Stay-Home Shoppers Terrify The Eurozone

Italy is stuck in a rut of diminishing expectations. Numbed by years of wage freezes, and skeptical the government can improve their economic fortunes, Italians are hoarding what money they have and cutting back on basic purchases, from detergent to windows. Weak demand has led companies to lower prices in the hope of luring people back into shops. This summer, consumer prices in Italy fell on a year-on-year basis for the first time in a half-century ..

Falling prices eat into company profits and lead to pay cuts and job losses, further depressing demand. The result: Italy is being sucked into a deflationary spiral similar to the one that has afflicted Japan’s economy for much of the past two decades. That is the nightmare scenario that policymakers, led by European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi, are desperate to avoid.

The euro zone’s third-biggest economy is not alone. Deflation – or continuously falling consumer prices – is considered a risk for the whole currency bloc, and particularly countries on its southern rim. Prices have fallen for 20 months in Greece and five in Spain, for example. Both countries are suffering through deep cuts in salaries and state welfare. Yet Italy, a large economy with a huge public debt, is the country causing most worry. [..]

Like Japan, Italy has one of the world’s oldest and most rapidly aging populations – the kind of people who don’t spend. “It is young people who spend more and take risks,” says Sergio De Nardis, at thinktank Nomisma. In recent years, young people have been the hardest hit by layoffs, he says. Many have left the country to seek work elsewhere. People tend to spend more when they see a bright future. Italian confidence has steadily eroded over the past two decades … In Italy, as in Japan, the lack of economic growth has become chronic.

Underpinning economists’ worries is Italy’s biggest handicap: a huge national debt equal to 132% of national output and still growing. Rising prices make it easier for high-debt countries like Italy to pay the fixed interest rates on their bonds. And debt is usually measured as a proportion of national output, so when output grows, debt shrinks. Because output is measured in money, rising prices – inflation – boost output even if economic activity is stagnant, as in Italy. But if activity is stagnant and prices don’t rise, then the debt-to-output ratio will increase. [..]

Sebastiano Salzone, a diminutive 33-year-old from the poor southern region of Calabria, left with his wife five years ago to run the historic Cafe Fiume on Via Salaria, a traditionally busy shopping street near the center of Rome. Salzone was excited by the challenge. But after four years of grinding recession, his business is struggling to survive. “When I took over they warned me demand was weak and advised me not to raise prices. But now, I’m being forced to cut them,” he says. [..] Despite the lower prices, sales have dropped 40%, or 500 euros a day, in the last three years. [..]

For hard-pressed individuals, low and falling prices can seem a godsend; but low prices lead to business closures, lower wages and job cuts – a lethal spiral. Since Italy entered recession in 2008 it has lost 15% of its manufacturing capacity and more than 80,000 shops and businesses. Those that remain are slashing prices in a battle to survive.

Home fixtures maker Benedetto Iaquone says people are now only changing their windows when they fall apart. To hold onto his €500,000-a-year business, Iaquone says he is cutting prices. By doing so, he is helping fuel the chain of deflation from consumers to other companies.

In Italy’s largest supermarket chains, up to 40% of products are now sold below their recommended retail price, according to sector officials. “There is a constant erosion of our margins,” says Vege chief Santambrogio.

What Italy would look like after a decade of Japan-style deflation is grim to imagine. It is already among the world’s most sluggish economies, with youth unemployment at 43%. As a member of a currency bloc, Rome’s options are limited [..] Italy’s budget has to follow European Union rules.

Lasting deflation would force more companies out of business, reduce already stagnant wages and raise unemployment further [..] The inevitable rise in its public debt could eventually lead to a default and a forced exit from the euro.

Many in southern Europe say the EU should abandon its strict fiscal rules and invest heavily to create jobs. They also say Germany, the region’s strongest economy, should do more to push up its own wages and prices. Mediterranean countries need to price their products lower than Germany to make up for the fact that their goods – particularly engineered products such as cars – are less attractive. But with German inflation at a mere 0.5%, maintaining a decent price difference with Germany is forcing southern European countries into outright deflation.

Italy’s policymakers are trying to stop the drop. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi cut income tax in May by up to €80 a month for the country’s low earners. But so far the emergency measures have had little effect – partly because Italians don’t really believe in them. A survey by the Euromedia agency showed that, despite the €80 cut, 63% of Italians actually think taxes will rise in the medium-term. Early evidence suggests most Italians are saving the extra money in their paychecks. If so, it will be reminiscent of similar attempts to boost demand in Japan in the late 1990s. The Japanese hoarded the windfalls offered by the government rather than spending them.

That same process plays out, as we speak, in a lot more countries, both in Europe and in many other parts of the world: South America, Southeast Asia etc.

Deflation erodes societies, and it guts entire economies like so much fish. Deflation is already a given in Japan, and in most of not all of southern Europe. Where countries might have saved themselves if only they weren’t part of the eurozone.

If Italy had the lira or some other currency, it could devalue it by 20% or so and have a fighting chance. As things stand now, the only option is to keep going down and hope that another country with the same currency Italy has, i.e. Germany, finds some way to boost its own growth. And even if Germany would, at some point in the far future, what part of that would trickle down to Italy? So what’s Renzi’s answer? An €80 a month tax cut for people who paid few taxes to begin with.

Deflation is not lower prices. Deflation is people not spending, then stores lowering their prices because nobody’s buying, then companies firing their employees, and then going broke. Rinse and repeat. Less spending leads to lower prices leads to more unemployment leads to less spending power. If that is not clear, don’t worry; you’ll see so much of it you own’t be able to miss it.

And don’t think the US is immune. Most of the Black Friday and Christmas sales will be plastic, i.e. more debt, and more debt means less future spending power. Unless you have a smoothly growing economy, but that’s not going to happen when Europe, Japan and soon China will be in deflation.

And yes, oil at $50-60-70 a barrel will accelerate the process. But it won’t be the main underlying cause. Deflation was baked into the cake from the moment that large scale debt deleveraging became inevitable, and you can take any moment between the Reagan administration, which first started raising debt levels, to 2008 for that. And all the combined central bank stimulus measures will mean a whole lot more debt deleveraging on top of what there already was.

We’ll get back to this topic. A lot.

Debt Rattle November 28 2014

Nov 282014

November 28, 2014 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 12:06 pm Finance Tagged with: deflation, homeless children, Japan, junk bonds, oil, oligarch, OPEC, Shale, tar sands, tycoon 1 Response »

Andreas Feininger Production B-17 heavy bomber at Boeing plant, Seattle Dec 1942

• US Equity Markets In ‘Dotcom Style’ Bubble (Telegraph)

• China Has ‘Wasted’ $6.8 Trillion In Investment, Warn Beijing Researchers (FT)

• Oil Seen in New Era as OPEC Won’t Yield to US Shale (Bloomberg)

• Russian Oil Oligarch: ‘$60 And Below Is Possible’ (Reuters)

• Russian Oil Giant Battles Debt After $55 Billion Deal (Bloomberg)

• US Shale Boom Is Same As Dotcom Bubble, Says Russian Oil Executive (Telegraph)

• OPEC Policy Ensures US Shale Crash, Russian Tycoon Says (Bloomberg)

• Will OPEC Bankrupt US Shale Producers? (CNBC)

• Tar Sands Producers With World’s Cheapest Oil Face Cascading Woes (Bloomberg)

• Abe Tested by Weak Retail Sales as Japan Election Looms (Bloomberg)

• Good or Bad? Oil Slide Poses Conundrum as Japan Seeks Inflation (Bloomberg)

• Kuroda Bond Splurge Crowds Out Individual Buyers (Bloomberg)

• Eurozone November Inflation Dips To 0.3% (CNBC)

• Germany Warns Wrecking Russian Economy Would Be Perilous (Bloomberg)

• Junk Bond Carnage, One Company at a Time (WolfStreet)

• Swiss Vote Provokes ‘6,000-Year Gold Bubble’ Attack (AEP)

• Italian Unemployment Rises to Record (Bloomberg)

• France Paying For Past Mistakes: Economy Minister (CNBC)

• Venezuela Burns Through Third of New Chinese Money in a Week (Bloomberg)

• Reports of Thailand’s Revival Are Greatly Exaggerated (Bloomberg)

• America’s Youngest Outcasts (Homeless Children America.org (pdf))

Don’t worry. Won’t be long now.

• US Equity Markets In ‘Dotcom Style’ Bubble (Telegraph)

Asset values around the world are over-heating, the UK’s top professional investors’ body has warned, raising fears over a dotcom-style bubble in US stocks. Investors are concerned that prices for US stocks are dependent on central bank funding, according to a survey of professional money managers completed by the CFA Society of the UK. “US equities are looking particularly expensive since the correction in October as they have powered ahead,” said Simon Evan-Cook, senior investment manager at Premier Asset Management, which manages £3.2bn in funds. “However, valuation always gets in the way of these things, people who said tech was going to change the world back in1999 were right, they just paid too much money for it at the time and we get the impression that could be happening with US equities at the moment,” he added. The survey offers a rare insight into the thinking of the investment community, which manages billions of pounds on behalf of pension funds and households.

It revealed that 42pc of the 554 professional investors now believe that developed market equities are overvalued. The number of money managers that felt there were further gains to be made in equity markets, was just 23pc. The Dow industrials and S&P 500 finished at record levels on Wednesday night before closing for the holiday season on Thursday and Friday. The S&P 500 index gained 0.3pc, to 2,072.83, marking its 47th closing high in 2014. “Government bonds are also horrifically expensive,” said John Ventre, head of Multi-Asset, Old Mutual Global Investors which manages £17.4bn in funds. Mr Ventre added that US equity markets are also looking expensive as earnings growth is relaint on share buybacks and currently unsustainable. “Respondents continue to believe that most asset classes are overvalued. This probably reflects the concern that market values are dependent on the easy monetary conditions being employed by central banks in the face of weak global growth,” said Will Goodhart, CFA Society chief executive.

Before you know it, we’re talking real money.

• China Has ‘Wasted’ $6.8 Trillion In Investment, Warn Beijing Researchers (FT)

“Ghost cities” lined with empty apartment blocks, abandoned highways and mothballed steel mills sprawl across China’s landscape – the outcome of government stimulus measures and hyperactive construction that have generated $6.8 trillion in wasted investment since 2009, according to a report by government researchers. In 2009 and 2013 alone, “ineffective investment” came to nearly half the total invested in the Chinese economy in those years, according to research by Xu Ce of the National Development and Reform Commission, the state planning agency, and Wang Yuan from the Academy of Macroeconomic Research, a former arm of the NDRC. China is this year on track to grow at its slowest annual pace since 1990, and the report highlights growing concern in the Chinese leadership about the potential economic and social consequences if wasteful investment leaves projects abandoned and bad loans overloading the financial system.

The bulk of wasted investment went directly into industries such as steel and automobile production that received the most support from the government following the 2008 global crisis, according to the report. Mr Xu and Ms Wang said ultra-loose monetary policy, little or no oversight over government investment plans and distorted incentive structures for officials were largely to blame for the waste. “Investment efficiency has fallen dramatically [in recent years],” they say in the report. “It has become far more obvious in the wake of the global financial crisis and has caused a lot of over-investment and waste.” Beijing has in recent years sought to move from its investment-heavy, credit-dependent growth model to one that relies more on consumption and services. But slipping growth rates this year have seen it fall back on loose credit and government-mandated infrastructure investment to prop up the economy and ensure steadily rising employment.

What a curious headline. OPEC couldn’t have taken any different decision. But that’s because of the global financial situation, not shale.

• Oil Seen in New Era as OPEC Won’t Yield to US Shale (Bloomberg)

OPEC’s decision to cede no ground to rival producers underscored the price war in the crude market and the challenge to U.S. shale drillers. The 12-nation OPEC kept its output target unchanged even after the steepest slump in oil prices since the global recession, prompting speculation it has abandoned its role as a swing producer. Yesterday’s decision in Vienna propelled futures to the lowest since 2010, a level that means some shale projects may lose money. “We are entering a new era for oil prices, where the market itself will manage supply, no longer Saudi Arabia and OPEC,” said Mike Wittner, head of oil research at SocGen in New York. “It’s huge. This is a signal that they’re throwing in the towel. The markets have changed for many years to come.”

The fracking boom has driven U.S. output to the highest in three decades, contributing to a global surplus that Venezuela yesterday estimated at 2 million barrels a day, more than the production of five OPEC members. Demand for the group’s crude will fall every year until 2017 as U.S. supply expands, eroding its share of the global market to the lowest in more than a quarter century, according to the group’s own estimates. Benchmark Brent crude fell the most in more than three years after OPEC’s decision, sliding 6.7% to close at $72.58 a barrel. Futures for January settlement extended losses to $71.12 a barrel in London today, the lowest since July 2010. Prices peaked this year at $115.71 in June.

“We will produce 30 million barrels a day for the next 6 months, and we will watch to see how the market behaves,” OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla El-Badri told reporters in Vienna after the meeting. “We are not sending any signals to anybody, we just try to have a fair price.” OPEC pumped 30.97 million barrels a day in October, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The group has exceeded its current output ceiling in all but four of the 34 months since it was implemented, the data show. OPEC’s own analysts estimate production was 30.25 million last month, according to a report Nov. 12. Members will abide by the 30 million barrel-a-day target, El-Badri said yesterday. “OPEC has chosen to abdicate its role as a swing producer, leaving it to the market to decide what the oil price should be,” Harry Tchilinguirian at BNP Paribas in London, said yesterday. “It wouldn’t be surprising if Brent starts testing $70.”

That would do in his own company.

• Russian Oil Oligarch: ‘$60 And Below Is Possible’ (Reuters)

Russia’s most powerful oil official Igor Sechin said in an interview with an Austrian newspaper that oil prices could fall below $60 by mid-way through next year. Sechin, chief executive of Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil producer, also said U.S. oil production would fall after 2025 and that an oil market council should be created to monitor prices, the same day the OPEC cartel met in Vienna and left its output targets unchanged. “We expect that a fall in the price to $60 and below is possible, but only during the first half, or rather by the end of the first half (of next year),” Sechin told the Die Presse newspaper.

On Thursday, OPEC decided against production cuts to halt a slide in global oil prices, sending benchmark Brent crude plunging to a fresh four-year low below $73 a barrel. Russia is not a member of OPEC. Sechin, who met representatives from world oil powers in Vienna earlier in the week, said he believed Russia had the potential to cut between 200,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of production if prices remained low. On U.S. oil production, Sechin said: “After 2025, the production volumes will decrease, namely because of the resource base, to the extent that we know it today.” Earlier on Thursday, Rosneft said in a statement that OPEC’s decision to leave its output unchanged would not affect the work of the company.

Simialr stories can be told for most of the world’s major oil companies.

• Russian Oil Giant Battles Debt After $55 Billion Deal (Bloomberg)

Igor Sechin spent $55 billion in 2013 to buy competitor TNK-BP and create a Russian oil colossus, pumping about 5% of the world’s crude. Almost two years later and investors have written off the deal. Battered by sanctions and oil’s accelerating price crash, Rosneft has lost 38% of its market value this year in dollar terms and today the whole company, TNK-BP and all, is worth $50 billion. And buying TNK-BP has left Sechin, Rosneft’s chief executive officer and a long-time ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with a lot of debt to repay. State-controlled Rosneft owes about $60 billion to banks and bondholders, making it more indebted relative to earnings than any large oil producer apart from Brazil’s Petroleo Brasileiro SA.

“Their aggressive expansion and debt accumulation made them more vulnerable to the falling oil price and the effect of sanctions,” Oleg Popov, who helps oversee $1 billion at Allianz Investments in Moscow, said by phone. Sechin, who had pledged the combined company would be worth $120 billion, has bigger ambitions than simply creating Russia’s largest oil producer. Putin’s point man for energy has sought to build a global oil major, swapping drilling rights at home for exploration blocks from Norway to the Gulf of Mexico. He bought production projects in Venezuela and half an oil refinery in Germany. As the company’s balance sheet gets more stretched, he will find it harder to achieve those aims, providing an example of how the Ukraine crisis has harmed some of Russia’s largest companies and limited their ambitions to expand globally.

“OPEC secretary general Abdulla Salem El-Badri denied the meeting was divided and that the decision will trigger a price war that could put shale oil drillers in the US out of business. “We’re not sending any signal,” he said.”

• US Shale Boom Is Same As Dotcom Bubble, Says Russian Oil Executive (Telegraph)

The rise of US shale is similar to the dotcom boom of the late Nineties and will cause many companies to fail, one of Russia’s top oil executives has warned. Leonid Fedun, vice-president of Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer, believes that with the price of Brent crude and WTI at multi-year lows, fracking companies will struggle to make fracking profitable. These fears were given extra weight on Thursday after Opec’s members agreed to leave oil production quotas unchanged, sending oil prices plummeting. Some believe Opec, which controls the majority of the world’s oil output, is threatened by the emergence of US shale and is trying to force many American drilling companies out of business. “In 2016, when Opec completes this objective of cleaning up the American marginal market, the oil price will start growing again,” Mr Fedun told Bloomberg. He said the current oil market was similar to the rise of the technology sector more than a decade ago that saw companies’ stock prices surge before collapsing several years later.

“The shale boom is on a par with the dotcom boom. The strong players will remain, the weak ones will vanish,” added Mr Fedun, who is worth around $4bn. The price of a barrel of Brent crude oil dropped 6.7pc to $72.58 on Thursday, while WTI fell 6.3pc to $69.05. The sharp falls came after Opec’s members agreed to keep oil production levels at 30m barrels per day (bpd), following three days of talks in Vienna. The meeting ended in anger, with Venezuela’s representative, Rafael Ramirez, storming out of the secretariat after his proposal to make cuts of up to 1.5m bpd was rejected. OPEC secretary general Abdulla Salem El-Badri denied the meeting was divided and that the decision will trigger a price war that could put shale oil drillers in the US out of business. “We’re not sending any signal,” he said.

“The major strike is against the American market ..”

• OPEC Policy Ensures US Shale Crash, Russian Tycoon Says (Bloomberg)

OPEC policy on crude production will ensure a crash in the U.S. shale industry, a Russian oil tycoon said. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries kept output targets unchanged at a meeting in Vienna today even after this year’s slump in the oil price caused by surging supply from U.S shale fields. American producers risk becoming victims of their own success. At today’s prices of just over $70 a barrel, drilling is close to becoming unprofitable for some explorers, Leonid Fedun, vice president and board member at Lukoil, said in an interview in London. “In 2016, when OPEC completes this objective of cleaning up the American marginal market, the oil price will start growing again,” said Fedun, who’s made a fortune of more than $4 billion in the oil business, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “The shale boom is on a par with the dot-com boom. The strong players will remain, the weak ones will vanish.”

At the moment, some U.S. producers are surviving because they managed to hedge the prices they get for their oil at about $90 a barrel, Fedun said. When those arrangements expire, life will become much more difficult, he said. While some OPEC countries including Venezuela pushed for a reduction in output quotas at today’s meeting, Saudi Arabia, the group’s dominant member, argued for the status quo. In Russia, where Lukoil is the second-largest producer behind state-run Rosneft, the industry is much less exposed to oil’s slump, Fedun said. Companies are protected by lower costs and the slide in the ruble that lessens the impact of falling prices in local currency terms, he said. Even so, output in Russia, the biggest producer after Saudi Arabia in 2013, is likely to fall slightly next year as lower prices force producers to rein in investment, Fedun said. “The major strike is against the American market,” Fedun said.

Yes. Quite a few.

• Will OPEC Bankrupt US Shale Producers? (CNBC)

OPEC’s contentious decision to keep its production target, leaving the market with a supply glut, could trigger a wave of debt defaults by U.S. shale oil producers, warn analysts. The 12-member oil cartel on Thursday said it would stick to its output target of 30 million barrels a day, triggering a sharp decline in oil prices, with U.S. crude futures tumbling nearly $6 to $67.75 on Friday – the lowest since May 2010. Neil Beveridge, senior oil analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, told CNBC the plunge in oil prices raises the risk of bankruptcy for U.S. shale players. “While production growth is very strong [in North America], remember if you look at the debt situation for a lot of these companies, there is a lot of distressed debt,” said Beveridge. “$68 a barrel is not economical for a lot of these shale oil wells. CDS [credit default swap] spreads and yields on some of the debt are rising very quickly, because at these kinds of oil prices you are going to see producers go bankrupt,” he added.

Since 2011, U.S. energy firms have ploughed some $1.5 trillion into ramping up their operations, taking on a large share of debt to do so, according to Alliance Bernstein. Debt issued by energy companies now accounts for more than 15% of U.S. junk bond market, compared with less than 5% a decade ago. Small companies that have levered up to fund exploration and production will see their margins squeezed with bankruptcy “a distinct possibility,” Ivan Rudolph-Shabinsky, portfolio manager of credit at AllianceBernstein, wrote in a blog post this week. “Companies involved in exploration and production—known as ‘upstream operations’—are vulnerable simply because they’ve earmarked too much capital for production. While fracking has helped increase capacity, the cost of developing production capabilities isn’t likely to be fully recovered,” Rudolph-Shabinsky said.

Carnage in the tar.

• Tar Sands Producers With World’s Cheapest Oil Face Cascading Woes (Bloomberg)

Canada’s biggest energy producers now face the same prospects of shrinking budgets and declining profit as their smaller rivals as prices drop for what’s already the world’s cheapest oil. Producers including Suncor and Canadian Natural, which each fell the most in at least three years yesterday, operate in one of the most expensive places on earth to produce oil. If crude prices continue sinking following OPEC’s decision not to cut global oil supplies, Canada’s producers big and small will have to tighten their belts to prepare for declining profits. “This is a pretty big shock,” said Justin Bouchard, an analyst at Desjardins Securities in Calgary. “There’s no question there’s going to be a slowdown. Even the big guys will have to look at their capital spending plans.”

Western Canada Select, the Canadian benchmark, has lost more than a third of its value since June, in step with declines for West Texas Intermediate and the international gauge Brent. WCS traded yesterday at $55.94 a barrel, the lowest in the world. Investors reacted by sending the 69-company S&P/TSX Composite Index Energy Sector Index down 5.1%, the most since August 2011. WTI sank as much as 8.1% and Brent fell as much as 8.4% after the announcement from OPEC. Large Canadian energy producers will probably trim capital spending with WTI below $70 a barrel, which reduces cash flow about 30%, Matthew Kolodzie, a Toronto-based credit analyst at RBC Dominion Securities, said in a note yesterday. If oil falls to $60 a barrel and natural gas prices decline as well, Canadian Natural will probably have to lower spending plans by C$2 billion ($1.8 billion), Kolodzie said.
Read more …

You can’t force people to spend, not as a government, not as a central bank. There’s no such thing as omnipotence, and this is where that shows.

• Abe Tested by Weak Retail Sales as Japan Election Looms (Bloomberg)

Japan’s inflation slowed for a third month and retail sales fell more than forecast, showing the economy continues to struggle from a sales-tax increase as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe heads into an election next month. The Bank of Japan’s key price gauge increased 2.9% in October from a year earlier, equivalent to a 0.9% gain when the effects of April’s tax bump are excluded. Retail sales dropped 1.4% from September, more than a 0.5% decline forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. An unexpected increase in production points to resilience among manufacturing exporters that contrasts with the pinch on Japanese households from the weakening yen amid unprecedented monetary easing.

Abe has ordered preparations for a stimulus package as he seeks a fresh mandate for Abenomics in an election Dec. 14. “There is still no clear sign that domestic consumption is recovering after the sales-tax hike,” said Minoru Nogimori, an economist at Nomura Holdings Inc. “Fiscal stimulus would be a plus but probably won’t be large enough to provide sufficient support, given Japan’s fiscal situation.” With today’s data reinforcing forecasts for the BOJ to expand its already unprecedented monetary stimulus, two-year note yields slumped below zero% for the first time and the yen dropped – sending Japanese equities higher.

True for many nations.

• Good or Bad? Oil Slide Poses Conundrum as Japan Seeks Inflation (Bloomberg)

When a country imports almost all its energy, a slide in oil prices to a four-year low should be helpful – cutting costs for companies and households. For Japan, it may not be so simple. The reliance of the world’s third-largest economy on fossil-fuel imports has deepened since Japan shuttered its nuclear-power industry following the March 2011 Fukushima meltdowns. With the price of Dubai crude oil – a benchmark for Middle East supply to Asia – down more than a third from a June peak, that ought to mean more disposable cash for households who have been hit by an April sales-tax increase. Economy Minister Akira Amari reinforced this good-news interpretation today, telling reporters in Tokyo that cheap oil helps to offset the impact of a tumbling yen – which drives up the cost of imported goods.

Where sliding energy costs are a challenge is the campaign by policy makers to embed inflationary expectations across the economy. After 15 years of entrenched deflation, central bank Governor Haruhiko Kuroda is trying to get sustained 2% gains in consumer prices. Until wage rises are so big that they make companies push up prices, much of the onus is on import costs, so a slump in oil undercuts Kuroda’s efforts. “The declining oil prices are positive to consumers and companies, but they give Kuroda a headache as he commits on prices rather than economic growth,” Hiroaki Muto, an economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management in Tokyo. “The answer could be further monetary easing.”

Japan can’t afford to lose its domestic investor base due to Kuroda’s bond buying, it’s the only thing that kept the mad government debt situation controllable.

• Kuroda Bond Splurge Crowds Out Individual Buyers (Bloomberg)

The Bank of Japan’s record bond buying is crowding out individual buyers, narrowing the investor base for the world’s second-largest bond market. The government last month canceled sales of sovereign notes maturing in 2016 through financial companies to households because buyers would have to pay more in broker fees than they would get in interest, according to the Ministry of Finance. The BOJ’s 80 trillion yen ($677 billion) a year in debt purchases drove two-year yields below zero today for the first time on record in secondary market trading. The coupon on the latest two-year securities was 0.038%, less than half the rate in June last year, and compared with about 0.02% interest on bank deposits. “The BOJ’s massive JGB buying is hampering efforts to increase sales to individual investors,” said Toru Suehiro, a market economist in Tokyo at Mizuho Securities, one of the 23 primary dealers obliged to bid at government bond auctions.

“Diversifying the investor base is important for the stabilization of the market over the longer term but the excessive decline in yields poses a dilemma in that sense.” BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda has been driving down sovereign yields to encourage investment in riskier corporate notes and stocks. The Ministry of Finance, by contrast, needs to spur demand from a broad range of buyers as 109.72 trillion yen of debt come due this fiscal year, bigger than Indonesia’s economic output. Historical volatility on JGBs surged to the highest since August 2013 this week, adding to concerns over the impact of any exit from monetary easing. The government started sales of JGBs to households in 2003 and began offering some notes at financial companies after the privatization of Japan Post in 2007. In an attempt to get a greater number of individuals to finance the world’s largest debt burden, the ministry in January also switched to monthly sales of 10-year, floating rate bonds and fixed rate, 5-year notes, from every three months previously.

With one lower oil prices, deflation can no longer be denied. Or conquered with stimulus.

• Eurozone November Inflation Dips To 0.3% (CNBC)

Eurozone inflation fell again in November amid expectations that the European Central Bank could try to bolster the region’s economy by announcing further stimulus measures. Consumer prices rose 0.3% in November from the same period a year earlier, according to a flash estimate from Eurostat, the EU statistics office. This is down from 0.4% in October and in line with market expectations. The single currency fluctuated in morning trade on Friday amid a slew of economic news. After the inflation number the euro rose to around 1.2446 against the greenback after trading at 1.2435 beforehand. The inflation data come at a key time for the ECB, just days ahead of its next policy meeting on Thursday. The bloc has been staring down the barrel of negative growth and weak demand, with tensions in Ukraine pressuring Germany in particular. Market-watchers have been busy this week placing bets on whether Mario Draghi, president of the ECB, will announce more stimulus, even as soon as next week.

Opinions in Germany no longer rhyme. At some point Merkel will have to lower her tone.

• Germany Warns Wrecking Russian Economy Would Be Perilous (Bloomberg)

Germany wants to avoid wrecking Russia’s economy with sanctions imposed in the conflict over Ukraine, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. The economic measures are taking a toll on Russia, so the European Union doesn’t need to intensify them, Steinmeier said in a speech today in Berlin. Instead, Germany must take the lead in negotiations aimed at defusing the eight-month conflict on Europe’s eastern periphery, he said. “An economically isolated Russia, one that may face collapse, would not help improve security in Europe or in Ukraine, but would pose a danger to itself and others,” Steinmeier said. “One of the problems is that many people aren’t having a dialogue. That’s not true of the Germans.” Steinmeier echoed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s warning that the standoff with Russia over the conflict in Ukraine will be lasting.

Even as fighting flares between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces in the former Soviet republic’s east, with Europe accusing Russia of stoking the conflict, Steinmeier said the door to talks should remain open. The clash over Ukraine “won’t be over tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” Steinmeier said. “I plead as a necessary reaction not to hold senseless talks, but at the same time, not to foreclose simply on all the channels” with Russia. Germany can’t declare Russia, its “rather large neighbor,” a friend or enemy, Steinmeier said. Officials in the 28-member EU who argue for ratcheting up sanctions because they’re working suffer from a “dangerous misunderstanding.” “Can that really be our aim and purpose, to wrestle Russia economically to the ground with those instruments that we have and can sharpen?” Steinmeier said. “My single answer is: No, that’s not true and can’t be the purpose of sanctions.”

Taking America apart, one step at a time.

• Junk Bond Carnage, One Company at a Time (WolfStreet)

Storied weapons maker Colt Defense LLC is in a pickle. But it’s not the only junk-rated company in a pickle. The money is drying up. Selling even more new debt to service and pay off old debt is suddenly harder and more expensive to pull off, and holders of the old debt – your conservative-sounding bond fund, for example – are starting to grapple with the sordid meaning of “junk”: Colt announced on Wednesday that it might not be able to make its bond payment in May. [..] This scenario is starting to play out company by company, hitting the most fragile ones first, as investors are becoming at least somewhat reluctant to throw good money after bad. That reluctance has to be overcome with additional compensation in form of yield, thus a greater expense for the companies when they can least afford it.

The junk-debt-funded oil and gas shale revolution is particularly on the hot seat. Its ever-faster moving fracking treadmill of steep decline rates and costly drilling is now smacking into the plunging price of oil. Hoping that the price of oil and gas would only go up, energy companies have drilled $1.5 trillion into the ground since 2000, and they’re now shouldering a huge pile of debt – much of it junk rated. This year, energy companies have issued 15.2% of all new junk bonds. Yet, oil and gas production is only a small part of the US economy. In 2013, their junk bond issuance made up 10.3% of all junk bonds. Back in 2004, it made up 4.3%. That’s how the fracking party has been funded.

The more the price of crude drops, the deeper these companies sink into the morass. At some point, defaults will begin to cascade through the system. The total return on the Merrill Lynch High Yield Energy Index for the last three month was a loss of 5.8%, the worst performance since the fourth quarter of crisis year 2008. More broadly, the average yield of CCC or lower rated bonds, the riskiest junk out there, shot up from 8% in early July to over 10% on Tuesday, according to the BofA Merrill Lynch US High Yield Index. And the High Yield Total Return Index for these types of bonds lost 5.3% over the same period. Meanwhile the BofA Merrill Lynch US High Yield BB Index, which groups together less risky junk bonds, has barely budged with yield at a historically low 4.8%. It’s still fully suspended in the middle of a magnificent bubble.

Citigroup’s Willem Buiter is the butt of goldbugs anger today.

• Swiss Vote Provokes ‘6,000-Year Gold Bubble’ Attack (AEP)

5 million Swiss voters will decide on Sunday whether to force the Swiss National Bank to repatriate all its gold from vaults in Britain and Canada, boost its holdings of bullion to 20pc of foreign reserves and then keep the metal forever. The “Save Our Swiss Gold” referendum is a valiant attempt by Switzerland’s army of gold bugs – and the populist Swiss People’s party (SVP) – to lead the world back to the halcyon days of the international Gold Standard. It is a primordial scream against a quantitative easing and money creation a l’outrance by the leading central banks. Yet there is a snag. The Swiss National Bank (SNB) is the biggest printer of them all in relative terms, far outstripping the Bank of Japan, let alone the US Federal Reserve or the Bank of England – mere amateurs at this game. The SNB has boosted its balance sheet to a colossal 83pc of GDP in a maniacal – but fully justified – effort to stop the Swiss franc appreciating beyond 1.20 to the euro, and to head off deflation.

It vowed to print whatever is necessary to buy foreign bonds and defend the exchange rate. It has been true to its word since 2011. At one stage it was mopping up half of the entire sovereign bond issuance of the eurozone each month, a scale of action that the European Central Bank’s Mario Draghi can only dream of. During the eurozone debt crisis, Standard & Poor’s even accused the SNB of becoming a conduit for capital flight, via Switzerland, to German, Dutch and French bonds, and therefore indirectly exacerbating Euroland’s North-South rift. You have to smile when you hear Swiss gold enthusiasts complaining that these foreign bonds – bought with electronic fiat francs created out of thin air – are now losing value as the euro slides against the dollar. But then we all suffer from congnitive dissonance. The result of this buying blitz is that the SNB now has a balance sheet of 522bn francs (£345bn). Only 7.5pc of this is in gold, some 1,040 metric tonnes. It will have to buy 1,733 tonnes to reach the 20pc target mandate by 2019 if the vote passes.

Gold bulls are snorting. The world’s annual mine output is roughly 2,500 tonnes. We can all do the arithmetic. The SNB might persuade a friendly central bank to sell a few crates, but last year the central banks were net buyers. Led by Russia and other BRICS states, they bought 367 tonnes. Citigroup’s Willem Buiter has poked fun at the Swiss plan, and at metal fetishism in general, in a lascerating report entitled Gold: a six thousand year-old bubble revisited. “Making it illegal to ever sell any of the gold the central bank has now or acquires in the future would make the gold useless as an international reserve. The gold stock can never be used for foreign exchange market interventions and it cannot be used as collateral. The gold becomes useless as a store of value of any kind. Its value is therefore zero.” Mr Buiter says gold is a “fiat commodity” of almost no intrinsic value, coveted only as an asset “to the extent that enough people believe it has value as an asset”.

Go. Leave.

• Italian Unemployment Rises to Record (Bloomberg)

Italy’s unemployment rate unexpectedly rose above 13% in October, setting a new record as businesses refrain from hiring amid the country’s longest recession since World War II. The unemployment rate rose to 13.2% from a revised 12.9% the previous month, the Rome-based national statistics office Istat said in a preliminary report today. That’s the highest since the quarterly series began in 1977. The median estimate of seven economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for an unemployment rate of 12.6% in October. Youth unemployment rate for those aged 15 to 24 rose to 43.3% last month from 42.7% in September, today’s report showed.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has been battling labor unions and politicians from the opposition and within his own party to push through reforms to make the labor market more flexbile and eliminate the gap between overprotected workers with open-ended contracts and younger people with no job security. The proposed reforms are still being discussed by parliament. After the final approval, the government will have another six months to detail the measures and pass them via decrees, meaning the changes won’t be in place until next year at the earliest.

“The biggest danger we see right now is a period of window dressing where lip service is paid to grand projects and reforms ..”

• France Paying For Past Mistakes: Economy Minister (CNBC)

French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron has placed the blame for the sustained weakness in his country’s economy with previous administrations, saying the country was paying for past mistakes. “I do think that this feeling (of frustration) is clearly due to our past and we are paying for past mistakes. But first, during the last two years we have started to reform and now we have decided to accelerate these reforms and I do think that we have to deliver more, more rapidly and explain more – that’s the key point,” he told CNBC on Thursday. “That’s what we want to do and that’s what we are doing but it’s unfair that the current frustration is due to the current situation, it’s due to the past,” he said. France’s socialist government has come under fire for failing to reignite the country’s weak economic activity. More people are now unemployed in the country than ever before and the government has clashed with trade unions in its efforts to reform the labor market.

Macron said the country shouldn’t have to “pay twice”, adding: “we cannot pay for the past.” His comments come after a high-profile report in which proposals were put forward to rescue Germany and France’s economies, the largest and second-largest economies in the euro zone respectively. The economists who authored the report – Henrik Enderlein and Jean Pisani-Ferry, both professors at Germany’s Hertie School of Governance – proposed a package of reforms and initiatives designed to revive growth. They also warned in their report that both countries had no time to lose in implementing reforms. “France and Germany need to act now. And they need to act together. The biggest danger we see right now is a period of window dressing where lip service is paid to grand projects and reforms, but no real steps are taken”, ” the authors said in the 50-page report, noting both countries face elections in 2017.”

I smell default.

• Venezuela Burns Through Third of New Chinese Money in a Week (Bloomberg)

Venezuela’s international reserves declined $1.3 billion in the week after President Nicolas Maduro transfered $4 billion of Chinese loans to the central bank. The country’s reserves dropped to $22.2 billion today, according to central bank data. A collapse in global oil prices pushed Venezuela’s foreign currency holdings to an 11-year low earlier this month. Maduro on Nov. 18 ordered the Chinese loan proceeds to be moved from an off-budget fund, so that they would show up in reserves and help boost investor confidence in an economy beset by the world’s highest inflation and widest budget deficit. The following day, Venezuelan bonds rose the most in six years in intraday trading. “If the plan was to calm the bondholders, then burning through a third of that money in five working days doesn’t do it in any way,” Henkel Garcia, director of Caracas-based consultancy Econometrica, said in a telephone interview.

It’s about to get worse, not better. The weakest go first.

• Reports of Thailand’s Revival Are Greatly Exaggerated (Bloomberg)

Thailand may still be the best place in the world to get a nose job, even after its military coup last spring. But tentative signs of an economic rebound hardly resolve the deep structural problems that continue to afflict its politics, economy and society.
The Thai stock market is booming, and growth has ticked upward slightly after shrinking almost 2% in the first quarter. The country has retained its position as the world’s No. 1 destination for medical tourism, including cosmetic surgeries. At best, however, May’s coup has only stemmed the bleeding caused by months of political turmoil. The World Bank thinks the country will remain the slowest-growing economy in Southeast Asia through 2016. High household debt levels – more than 80% of gross domestic product – will continue to depress spending. While coup leaders have put some money in citizens’ pockets with millions in payments to rice and rubber farmers, household consumption is projected to grow only 1.5% next year.

The central bank’s easy-money policy has led mostly to a run-up in stock prices. Previous military-led governments in the 1980s were able to jump-start growth through heavy state-directed investment. But today’s ruling generals face a more complex challenge. It’s too late for Thailand to regain low-end manufacturing jobs, which have shifted to cheaper neighbors. To move up the value chain, the country needs to invest in education, research and development, and infrastructure – something juntas have proved no better than civilian governments at doing. Plans to spend $60 billion on transportation infrastructure during the next 10 years will help but not immediately and not enough.

“The impact of homelessness on the children, especially young children, is devastating and may lead to changes in brain architecture that can interfere with learning, emotional selfregulation, cognitive skills, and social relationships.”

• America’s Youngest Outcasts (Homeless Children America.org (pdf))

America’s Youngest Outcasts reports on child homelessness in the United States based on the most recent federal data that comprehensively counts homeless children, using more than 30 variables from over a dozen established data sets. A staggering 2.5 million children are now homeless each year in America. This historic high represents one in every 30 children in the United States. Child homelessness increased in 31 states and the District of Columbia from 2012 to 2013. Children are homeless in every city, county, and state—every part of our country. Based on a calculation using the most recent U.S. Department of Education’s count of homeless children in U.S. public schools and on 2013 U.S. Census data:

• 2,483,539 children experienced homelessness in the U.S. in 2013.
• This represents one in every 30 children in the U.S.

From 2012 to 2013, the number of children experiencing homelessness annually in the U.S.:

• Increased by 8% nationally.
• Increased in 31 states and the District of Columbia.
• Increased by 10% or more in 13 states and the District of Columbia.

Major causes of homelessness for children in the U.S. include: (1) the nation’s high poverty rate; (2) lack of affordable housing across the nation; (3) continuing impacts of the Great Recession; (4) racial disparities; (5) the challenges of single parenting; and (6) the ways in which traumatic experiences, especially domestic violence, precede and prolong homelessness for families. The impact of homelessness on the children, especially young children, is devastating and may lead to changes in brain architecture that can interfere with learning, emotional selfregulation, cognitive skills, and social relationships. The unrelenting stress experienced by the parents, most of whom are women parenting alone, may contribute to residential instability, unemployment, ineffective parenting, and poor health.

The Price Of Oil Exposes The True State Of The Economy

Nov 272014

November 27, 2014 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 6:34 pm Finance Tagged with: credit, debt, economy, oil, OPEC, prices, Shale 22 Responses »

Jack Delano Cafe at truck drivers’ service station on U.S. 1, Washington DC Jun 1940

We should be glad the price of oil has fallen the way it has (losing another 6% today as I write this). Not because it makes the gas in our cars a bit cheaper, that’s nothing compared to the other service the price slump provides. That is, it allows us to see how the economy is really doing, without the multilayered veil of propaganda, spin, fixed data and bailouts and handouts for the banking system.

It shows us the huge extent to which consumer spending is falling, how much poorer people have become as stock markets set records. It also shows us how desperate producing nations have become, who have seen a third of their often principal source of revenue fall away in a few months’ time. Nigeria was first in line to devalue its currency, others will follow suit.

OPEC today decided not to cut production, but whatever decision they would have come to, nothing would have made one iota of difference. The fact that prices only started falling again after the decision was made public shows you how senseless financial markets have become, dumbed down by easy money for which no working neurons are required.

OPEC has become a theater piece, and the real world out there is getting colder. Oil producing nations can’t afford to cut their output in some vague attempt, with very uncertain outcome, to raise prices. The only way to make up for their losses is to increase production when and where they can. And some can’t even do that.

Saudi Arabia increased production in 1986 to bring down prices. All it has to do today to achieve the same thing is to not cut production. But the Saudi’s have lost a lot of clout, along with OPEC, it’s not 1986 anymore. That is due to an extent to American shale oil, but the global financial crisis is a much more important factor.

We are only now truly even just beginning to see how hard that crisis has already hit the Chinese export miracle, and its demand for resources, a major reason behind the oil crash. The US this year imported less oil from OPEC members than it has in 30 years, while Americans drive far less miles per capita and shale has its debt-financed temporary jump. Now, all oil producers, not just shale drillers, turn into Red Queens, trying ever harder just to make up for losses.

The American shale industry, meanwhile, is a driverless truck, with brakes missing and fueled by on cheap speculative capital. The main question underlying US shale is no longer about what’s feasible to drill today, it’s about what can still be financed tomorrow. And the press are really only now waking up to the Ponzi character of the industry.

In a pretty solid piece last week, the Financial Times’ John Dizard concluded with:

Even long-time energy industry people cannot remember an overinvestment cycle lasting as long as the one in unconventional US resources. It is not just the hydrocarbon engineers who have created this bubble; there are the financial engineers who came up with new ways to pay for it.

While Reuters on November 10 (h/t Yves at NC) talked about giant equity fund KKR’s shale troubles:

KKR, which led the acquisition of oil and gas producer Samson for $7.2 billion in 2011 and has already sold almost half its acreage to cope with lower energy prices, plans to sell its North Dakota Bakken oil deposit worth less than $500 million as part of an ongoing downsizing plan.

Samson’s bonds are trading around 70 cents on the dollar, indicating that KKR and its partners’ equity in the company would probably be wiped out were the whole company to be sold now. Samson’s financial woes underscore how private equity’s love affair with North America’s shale revolution comes with risks. The stakes are especially high for KKR, which saw a $45 billion bet on natural gas prices go sour when Texas power utility Energy Future Holdings filed for bankruptcy this year.

And today, Tracy Alloway at FT mentions major banks and their energy-related losses:

Banks including Barclays and Wells Fargo are facing potentially heavy losses on an $850 million loan made to two oil and gas companies, in a sign of how the dramatic slide in the price of oil is beginning to reverberate through the wider economy. [..] if Barclays and Wells attempted to syndicate the $850m loan now, it could go for as little as 60 cents on the dollar.

That’s just one loan. At 60 cents on the dollar, a $340 million loss. Who knows how many similar, and bigger, loans are out there? Put together, these stories slowly seeping out of the juncture of energy and finance gives the good and willing listener an inkling of an idea of the losses being incurred throughout the global economy, and by the large financiers. There’s a bloodbath brewing in the shadows. Countries can see their revenues cut by a third and move on, perhaps with new leaders, but many companies can’t lose that much income and keep on going, certainly not when they’re heavily leveraged.

The Saudi’s refuse to cut output and say: let America cut. But American oil producers can’t cut even if they would want to, it would blow their debt laden enterprises out of the water, and out of existence. Besides, that energy independence thing plays a big role of course. But with prices continuing to fall, much of that industry will go belly up because credit gets withdrawn.

The amount of money lost in the ‘overinvestment cycle’ will be stupendous, and you don’t need to ask who’s going to end up paying. Pointing to past oil bubbles risks missing the point that the kind of leverage and cheap credit heaped upon shale oil and gas, as Dizard also says, is unprecedented. As Wolf Richter wrote earlier this year, the industry has bled over $100 billion in losses for three years running.

Not because they weren’t selling, but because the costs were – and are – so formidable. There’s more debt going into the ground then there’s oil coming out. Shale was a losing proposition even at $100. But that remained hidden behind the wagers backed by 0.5% loans that fed the land speculation it was based on from the start. WTI fell below $70 today. You can let your 3-year old do the math from there.

I wonder how many people will scratch their heads as they’re filling up their tanks this week and wonder how much of a mixed blessing that cheap gas is. They should. They should ask themselves how and why and how much the plummeting gas price is a reflection of the real state of the global economy, and what that says about their futures. Happy Turkey.

Debt Rattle November 27 2014

Nov 272014

November 27, 2014 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 12:02 pm Finance Tagged with: deflation, devaluation, Fed, oil, OPEC, price fixing, price war, rhinos, Shale 2 Responses »

DPC Wall Street and Trinity Church, New York 1903

• Oil Price Fall Starts To Weigh On Banks (FT)

• Oil Sinks Further As OPEC Meeting Begins (MarketWatch)

• World On Brink Of Oil Price War As OPEC Set To Keep Pumping (Telegraph)

• Oil Bust of 1986 Reminds US Drillers of Price War Risks (Bloomberg)

• Drill On: U.S. Mantra as OPEC Power Wanes in the Face of Shale (Bloomberg)

• Oil Slump Reverberates After Nigeria Currency Devaluation (Reuters)

• Seadrill Plunges on Dividend Suspension as Oil Rig Market Sours (Bloomberg)

• Tightening By Superpower Fed Trumps Mini-Stimulus In Europe And Asia (AEP)

• China’s Industrial Profits Drop Most in Two Years Amid Slowdown (Bloomberg)

• Spanish Consumer Prices Decline More Than Forecast (Bloomberg)

• Juncker Investment Plan Questioned on Capital, Leverage (Bloomberg)

• Greece Paralyzed By Major Strike, Flights Stopped (Reuters)

• After Zero Rates, Sweden Ponders Next Steps To Avoid Deflation (Reuters)

• Europe’s Economy Faces Three Major Risks: Draghi (CNBC)

• Goldman Sachs, HSBC Sued By Jeweller For Fixing Platinum Prices (Independent)

• Attack Dogs Deployed To Save South Africa’s Rhinos (Bloomberg)

A loss of $340 million on just one loan.

• Oil Price Fall Starts To Weigh On Banks (FT)

Banks including Barclays and Wells Fargo are facing potentially heavy losses on an $850 million loan made to two oil and gas companies, in a sign of how the dramatic slide in the price of oil is beginning to reverberate through the wider economy. Details of the loan emerged as delegates of Opec, the oil producers’ cartel, gathered in Vienna to address the growing glut in the supply of oil. Several Opec members have been calling for a production cut to shore up prices, but Saudi Arabia, Opec’s leader and largest producer, signalled that it would not push for a big change in the group’s output targets. Repercussions from the decline in the price of crude, which has dropped 30% since June, are spreading beyond the energy sector, hitting currencies, national budgets and energy company shares.

The price slide is having a serious impact on oil producers that rely on revenues from crude exports to balance their budgets. The Russian rouble has lost 27% of its value since mid-June, when crude began to fall, while the Norwegian krone is down 12% and on Wednesday the Nigerian naira touched a record low. Companies are also being hit, with BP’s shares down 17% since mid-June and Chevron’s down 11%. Shares in SeaDrill, one of the world’s biggest drilling rig owners, fell as much as 18% on Wednesday as it suspended dividend payments. The company has suffered from an oversupply of rigs as the majors respond to crude’s slide by cancelling projects. Now banks are also being affected, with Barclays and Wells said to face potential losses on an energy-related loan.

Earlier this year, the two banks led an $850 million “bridge loan” to help fund the merger of Sabine Oil & Gas and Forest Oil, U.S.-based oil companies. Investors, however, balked at buying the loan when it was first offered in June and slumping oil prices combined with volatile credit markets in the months since have scuppered further attempts to sell, or syndicate, the loan, according to market participants. With underwriting banks unable to offload the loan to investors they are now facing losses on the deal as the value of the two oil companies’ debt erodes. Sabine’s bonds were trading above their face value at around $105.25 in June, but have since fallen to $94.25 – firmly in “distressed” territory. Their yield – which moves inversely to price – has jumped from around 7.05% to 13.4%. Rival bankers estimate that if Barclays and Wells attempted to syndicate the $850m loan now, it could go for as little as 60 cents on the dollar.

Isn’t it fun?

• Oil Sinks Further As OPEC Meeting Looms (MarketWatch)

Oil prices extended their losses and sunk to fresh four-year lows on Thursday as expectations of a cut in OPEC oil production faded following the Saudi Arabian oil minister’s comments Wednesday. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in January traded at $72.22 a barrel, down $1.47, or 2% in the Globex electronic session. January Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange fell $1.92, or 2.5%, to $75.83 a barrel. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meets in Vienna within a few hours to decide whether its members will cut production to remove some of the glut in supply in global markets and boost oil prices. The 12-member oil cartel typically steps in to adjust output when prices move sharply due to excess or insufficient supply. It currently has an oil production ceiling of 30 million barrels a day and has been producing in excess of this level in recent months.

Crude-oil prices have plummeted this year, losing almost 30% of their value since June, mainly due to rising U.S. oil production driven by the shale boom and slowing demand growth in Asia and Europe. Analysts say that OPEC will need to cut oil production much lower than its current ceiling for prices to make a significant recovery. Today’s OPEC meeting and any decision on production cuts is likely to set the tone for oil prices for the next few months and well into 2015. Forget about an OPEC cut: Three delegates told Reuters that OPEC was unlikely to take any action after Russia said it wouldn’t cut in tandem. On Wednesday, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said he expects the market “to stabilize itself eventually,” hinting he wouldn’t push for a cut in OPEC’s production targets. “This is a very clear indication that the Saudis and OPEC will do nothing at the meeting … It is not 100% rock solid or set in stone, but it is a very clear signal,” Michael Wittner, head of oil market research at Societe Generale said. His bearish price forecasts are for $70 Brent and $65 WTI for the next two years.

“Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi said: “The market will stabilise itself eventually”. Question is where and when.

• World On Brink Of Oil Price War As OPEC Set To Keep Pumping (Telegraph)

Oil slumped on Wednesday as expectations that Opec will cut production faded following dovish remarks by cartel kingpin Saudi Arabia, which could signal the beginning of a price war. Speaking on the sidelines ahead of Thursday’s critical meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) in Vienna, Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi said: “The market will stabilise itself eventually”. His remarks were interpreted by the market as a signal that the cartel would keep its production ceiling at 30m barrels per day (bpd), which sent the price of crude lower. Brent crude – a global benchmark comprised of a blend of high-quality oil from 15 North Sea fields – fell 1.3pc to $77.30 per barrel after Mr Naimi’s comments, before recovering to trade flat at $78.29 by late afternoon. Brent crude has fallen 30pc since June. Crude traded in the US fell to as low as $74 per barrel as traders bet that Opec will allow the price to fall further amid growing signs of a global price war amid producers.

“There remains little prospect of any production cut being agreed at [Thursday’s] Opec meeting,” said brokers at Commerzbank. “Opec will merely agree to comply better with the current production target of 30m bpd. Iranian officials, traditionally seen as hawks within the cartel of mainly Middle East producers, also appeared to soften their position following an afternoon of closed door meetings with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Bijan Zanganeh, Iran’s oil minister, told reporters after leaving the talks that Iran was now “close” to the Saudi position, heading into Thursday’s final discussion at the Opec secretariat. Rafael Ramirez, Venezuela’s Opec representative, had tried to galvanise support for production cuts to restore oil prices to around $100 per barrel, after talks with senior Russian oil officials on Tuesday delivered no immediate sign of a consensus. Although Russia is not a member of Opec’s 12 nations, the country is a major oil producer and has expressed concerns over falling prices.

Major Opec nations, Russia and US shale oil drillers now appear on the brink of a price war as these three giant producing blocs fight for a greater share of global demand. Although Opec states enjoy the lowest average production costs – in some cases around $2 per barrel – they have increasingly lost ground in North America, which remains the world’s largest consumer of oil. Some Opec members now want producers outside the cartel, including Russia and the US, to shoulder some of the responsibility for balancing the market by essentially cutting their output. UAE energy minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei said on Wednesday that Opec alone was not responsible for the stability of the oil market. “This is not a crisis that requires us to panic,” he said.

“In 1986, the Saudis opened the spigot and sparked a four-month, 67% plunge that left oil just above $10 a barrel.” This time around, the Saudis will achieve that by simply not closing the spigot.

• Oil Bust of 1986 Reminds US Drillers of Price War Risks (Bloomberg)

The last time that U.S. oil drillers got caught up in a price war orchestrated by Saudi Arabia, it ended badly for the Americans. In 1986, the Saudis opened the spigot and sparked a four-month, 67% plunge that left oil just above $10 a barrel. The U.S. industry collapsed, triggering almost a quarter-century of production declines, and the Saudis regained their leading role in the world’s oil market. So while no one expects the Saudis to ramp up output now like they did then and U.S. shale oil companies are pledging to keep drilling regardless, the memory of that bust looms large for American industry executives on the eve of OPEC’s meeting tomorrow.

As the Saudis gather with officials from the 11 other OPEC nations in Vienna, analysts are split on whether the group will cut output to lift prices or leave production unchanged to fight for market share with shale drillers. “1986 was the big price collapse and the industry did not see it coming,” said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research in Winchester, Massachusetts, who has covered the oil sector for 37 years. “It put a lot of them out of business. You just don’t forget it. It’s part of the cultural memory.” The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, responsible for about 40% of the world’s output, pumped 31 million barrels a day in October, exceeding its official target of 30 million. Oil has tumbled more than 30% from a 2014 peak in June.

The more they drill, the lower prices will go. They’ll lose financing.

• Drill On: U.S. Mantra as OPEC Power Wanes in the Face of Shale (Bloomberg)

No matter what OPEC countries decide tomorrow about cutting oil output, U.S. producers already know what they’re going to do: drill on. As Saudi Arabia and its 11 fellow members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meet for what’s viewed as the cartel’s most important conclave since 2008’s worldwide financial crisis, the U.S. has the most to gain and the least to lose. For the oil industry, a significant production cut by OPEC would lift prices and profits across the board and help finance further U.S. energy innovation. And while a weaker response – or no move – would put more pressure on energy companies, the industry is increasingly insulated by burgeoning North American output. “The U.S. oil industry is going to continue on its growth track whether OPEC comes out with a cutback or not,” Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of consultant IHS. “As oil prices go down, the U.S. industry is going up the learning curve and is better capable of coping with lower prices than it would have been two or three years ago.”

The swagger of U.S. producers in the face of plunging oil prices shows the confidence they’ve gained from upending OPEC’s six decades of market dominance with technology that wrings oil from dense rock for prices as low as $40 a barrel. The shale boom has placed the U.S. oil industry in its strongest position since OPEC began flexing its pricing power in the early 1970s. Investors are taking note, pouring money back into shale producers in the past 10 days after shares fell an average 20% since July. Beyond the ability of producers to remain profitable at lower prices, the broader U.S. economy is even less susceptible to whatever course OPEC might take. A shift away from industries like steelmaking and into services such as health care has helped make the economy less reliant than ever on oil and natural gas, according to government data compiled since 1950.

Since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the first major shock brought about by OPEC coordination, the amount of oil and gas consumed in the U.S. to generate $1 of gross domestic product has fallen 64%. The U.S. in August imported an average of about 4.8 million barrels a day of crude and petroleum products, a 24% decline from 1986, the year when Saudi Arabia’s market machinations sent prices below $10 a barrel in a crushing blow to U.S. producers. As the services economy has grown, oil demand has fallen, with the U.S. burning 13% less oil in 2013 than 2005. Improvements in fuel consumption mean cars and trucks can travel further on each gallon of gasoline. The nation is 26%age points more efficient in terms of the the energy required to generate economic growth than the global average, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

” IMF data shows Nigeria, Russia and Saudi Arabia all need prices above $90 to balance their budgets.”

• Oil Slump Reverberates After Nigeria Currency Devaluation (Reuters)

The impact of sub-$80 oil prices rippled across energy-exporting emerging markets on Wednesday, with investors betting other countries will have to follow Nigeria in devaluing their currencies. Brent crude remained firmly below $80 per barrel and around a third lower from June levels after Saudi Arabia signaled it was unlikely to push for a major change in output when producers’ club OPEC meets on Thursday. Nigeria’s naira hit a record low near 178 per dollar – lower than its new target band of 160-176 per dollar – a day after the central bank devalued the currency by 8% and hiked rates by 100 basis points to conserve its reserves. Central bank governor Godwin Emefiele forecast a sustained drop in oil, saying the $73 per barrel assumed in Nigeria’s 2015 budget may be too optimistic.

“Oil remains on the back foot … it is a relevant dynamic for the rouble and for various parts of the Middle East and Africa,” said Manik Narain, emerging markets strategist at UBS in London. “We will see more pressure on local currencies there and Nigeria is an early example.” The risk that falling revenues will affect spending plans in oil-exporting countries, with unpredictable political and economic consequences, is a prime concern of investors. IMF data shows Nigeria, Russia and Saudi Arabia all need prices above $90 to balance their budgets. Sub-Saharan Africa’s other big oil producer, Angola, saw its kwanza currency trade near a record low hit on Tuesday.

These guys are getting scared.

• Seadrill Plunges on Dividend Suspension as Oil Rig Market Sours (Bloomberg)

Seadrill fell the most in six years after the offshore driller controlled by billionaire John Fredriksen suspended dividends as the slump in oil prices weakens demand for rigs. Seadrill, which hadn’t frozen or cut dividends in six years, dropped as much as 19% in Oslo trading, the most since November 2008. The stock was down 17% to 118.3 kroner at 3:58 p.m., the lowest since July 2010. “The decision to suspend the dividend has been a difficult decision for the board,” Fredriksen, chairman of Bermuda-based Seadrill, said in a statement. “However, taking into consideration the significant deterioration in the broader offshore drilling and financing markets over the past quarter, the board believes this is the right course of action.”

The plunge in crude prices since June is blowing through the oil-services industry as clients peg back spending on finding and developing fields. Transocean, one of Seadrill’s largest competitors, earlier this month wrote down the value of its fleet by $2.76 billion. Halliburton, the second-biggest oil-service company, is buying the third-largest, Baker Hughes. Seadrill, which paid owners $1 a share for the first two quarters this year, said in August that level was sustainable until at least the end of 2015. Today’s surprise decision will strengthen the company’s capital position by about $2 billion a year, the company said. “Suspending dividends entirely is the most reasonable thing to do, since the market is looking so bleak,” said Robert Andre Jensen from SpareBank 1 Markets AS. “Fredriksen’s companies are known for paying dividends, but you have to focus on your chances to survive the downturn.”

“The liquidity cycle is inflecting downwards. The odds of turbulence are rising ..”

• Tightening By Superpower Fed Trumps Mini-Stimulus In Europe And Asia (AEP)

The apparent tsunami of stimulus from central banks in Asia and Europe is a mirage. The world’s monetary authorities are on balance tightening. There may or may not be good reasons to buy equities at the current giddy heights, but reliance on the totemic powers and friendly intention of central banks should not be one of them. The US Federal Reserve matters most in a financial world that still moves to the rhythm of the 10-year US Treasury bond, and still runs on a de facto dollar standard. More than 40 currencies have dollar pegs or “dirty floats”, including China, joined to America’s hip whether they like it or not. Some $11 trillion of cross-border loans and bonds issued outside the US are denominated in dollars. The US capital markets are still a colossal $59 trillion, more than the total for Europe and Japan combined.

The Institute of International Finance says the impact of Fed action on capital flows to emerging markets is “twice as large” as moves by the European Central Bank. The Fed can hardly put off rate rises for much longer as the US economy grows at a 3.9pc clip and the jobless rate drops to a six-year low of 5.8pc. The “quit rate” tracked by labour economists as a barometer of the jobs market is suddenly surging, a clear sign that slack is vanishing and wage pressures will soon rise. The world is already turning on its axis even before the Fed pulls the trigger, as if the QE era were a memory. The dollar largesse that flooded the commodity nexus and drove the credit booms of Asia, Latin America and Africa is draining away. “The liquidity cycle is inflecting downwards. The odds of turbulence are rising,” said CrossBorder Capital, which monitors global flows.

Fresh money creation in Japan, China and the eurozone would not offset a liquidity squeeze by the Fed in a symmetric fashion even if it were happening, but it is not in fact happening on anything like an equivalent scale, and may not do so for a long time. The “happy handover” scenario is wishful thinking. China is tightening at a slower pace, but it is still tightening. The surprise rates cuts last week are less than meets the eye. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) regulates the level of credit in the economy through curbs on quantity, not by adjusting the cost of credit. These controls are still in place. It is too early to conclude that President Xi Xinping has capitulated and ordered the PBOC to reflate, pushing the day of reckoning into the future once again. The balance of evidence is that Beijing is still attempting – with great difficulty – to deflate China’s $26 trillion credit boom before it turns into a national tragedy.

” .. investment in fixed assets such as machinery expanded the least since 2001 ..”

• China’s Industrial Profits Drop Most in Two Years Amid Slowdown (Bloomberg)

Industrial profits in China fell the most in two years, underscoring the need for looser monetary conditions as the world’s second-largest economy slows. Total profits of China’s industrial enterprises fell 2.1% from a year earlier in October, the National Bureau of Statistics said today in Beijing. That compares with September’s 0.4% increase and is the biggest drop since August 2012, based on previously reported data.

The People’s Bank of China, which last week cut benchmark interest rates, refrained from selling repurchase agreements in open-market operations today for the first time since July, loosening monetary policy further. Mired by a property slump, overcapacity and factory-gate deflation, China is headed for its slowest full-year economic expansion since 1990. Data released Nov. 13 showed the economy’s slowdown deepened in October. Factory production rose 7.7% from a year earlier, the second weakest pace since 2009, while investment in fixed assets such as machinery expanded the least since 2001 from January through October. Retail sales gains also missed economists’ forecasts last month.

And it’s supposed to be doing so well?!

• Spanish Consumer Prices Decline More Than Forecast (Bloomberg)

Spanish consumer prices fell more than economists forecast in November, which may raise concerns that deflation is taking hold in the euro region’s fourth-largest economy. Prices dropped 0.5% from a year earlier, the Madrid-based National Statistics Institute said today. The decline, based on a European Union measure, was bigger than the 0.3% forecast by economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Economic growth was unchanged at 0.5% in the third quarter, INE said in a separate release, confirming its Oct. 30 estimate. Euro-area data tomorrow is forecast to show inflation in the 18-nation currency region slowed to 0.3% in November to match the least since 2009.

European Central Bank policy makers are watching for signs that additional stimulus may be needed and have expert committees examining further measures to help boost near-stagnant growth to add to long-term loans and asset-purchase programs. “The data show risks of deflation remain high for some countries,” said Diego Trivino, chief economist at Intermoney Valores in Madrid. “Price drops in Spain are forced and structural as it’s the only way it can regain competitiveness in an environment of near-zero inflation in the euro region.” Spanish bond yields fell to a record low this week along with those of most members of the 18 nation euro region after ECB President Mario Draghi stoked speculation of a new stimulus program extending to sovereign bonds.

Juncker is a windbag, and plans like this are what comes out of such bags.

• Juncker Investment Plan Questioned on Capital, Leverage (Bloomberg)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she supports the European Commission’s 315 billion-euro ($394 billion) investment plan “in principle” as businesses around Europe sounded a note of caution. “We stress that investments are important, but that it has to be clear above all where the projects of the future lie,” Merkel, who announced Germany’s own 10 billion-euro investment program earlier this month, told the Bundestag in Berlin yesterday. The investment plan unveiled by commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will use 5 billion euros in cash from the European Investment Bank and 16 billion euros in European Union guarantees. The start-up money, projected to have an impact of 15 times its size, will serve as capital for a new EIB unit that can share risk with private investors.

The fund doesn’t have sufficient capital, Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said in Madrid yesterday. He described the commission’s leverage projection as “a bit high.” It’s right to focus on measures “to raise growth prospects across Europe and the emphasis on increasing private-sector investment,” British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said in a statement. The program, called the European Fund for Strategic Investments, is set to be operational by mid-2015. It doesn’t require EU member nations to commit any new money or alter existing budget agreements. The Brussels-based commission will dedicate 8 billion euros of existing funds to backstop its guarantee.

“Using a small amount of public funds to leverage private-sector provision can be a successful way to ensure that we choose projects that drive productivity and growth,” said Markus Beyrer, director general at BusinessEurope, a lobby representing employers from 35 nations. “We hope the leverage ratios set out in the investment plan can be achievable, but we must ensure that projects taken forward are genuinely ones that would not have taken place without the new fund.” By taking on some of the risk of new projects through a first-loss liability, the investment fund aims to attract cash-rich banks and companies to support investments in energy, broadband and transport infrastructure and back risk finance for small and medium-sized companies.

Go. Leave.

• Greece Paralyzed By Major Strike, Flights Stopped (Reuters)

Greek labour unions staged a 24-hour strike on Thursday that cancelled hundreds of flights, shut public offices and severely disrupted local transport, in the first major industrial action to cripple the austerity-weary country in months. Private sector union GSEE and its public sector counterpart ADEDY called the walkout to protest against planned layoffs and pension reform demanded by European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders who have bailed out Greece twice. All Greek domestic and international flights were cancelled after air traffic controllers joined the strike. Trains and ferries also halted services. Hospitals worked on emergency staff while tax and other local public offices remained shut. “GSEE is resisting the dogmatic obsession of the government and the troika with austerity policies and tax hikes,” the union said in a statement this week.

It accused the government of trying to take the labour market back to “medieval times” and of implementing policies that are causing a “humanitarian crisis”. Thousands of Greeks were preparing to march to parliament later on Thursday as part of rallies to mark the strike. The two unions last held a general strike in April. Major protests have declined sharply since then as frustration and anger give way to a mood of despondency and resignation over a jobless rate exceeding 25% and a sharp fall in incomes. Turnout at Thursday’s rallies could provide a key measure of the opposition facing Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s conservative-led government, which is under pressure from EU/IMF lenders to impose more cutbacks to balance next year’s budget.

Yep. Krugman was here.

• After Zero Rates, Sweden Ponders Next Steps To Avoid Deflation (Reuters)

What should a central bank do next when it already has zero interest rates and arguably still faces the threat of Japanese-style deflation? If it’s the Swedish Riksbank, it should keep cutting, and do so soon, says Lars Svensson. Svensson no longer has a say; he quit as a deputy Riksbank governor last year after failing to persuade fellow board members to cut rates aggressively. Last month, they heeded his advice, lowering the repo rate to 0% and pushing back the official forecast for when the Riksbank will start tightening monetary policy again to mid-2016. After years of tense, polarized meetings that eventually led to Svensson’s resignation, a united Riksbank now sees zero rates as enough to push inflation up toward its 2% target. Svensson disagrees, saying Sweden should go into negative rates – effectively charging banks to deposit funds at the central bank – to avoid the deflation which has trapped Japan in low economic growth punctuated by periodic recessions for more than a decade.

“From this point it is unlikely that the current policy at zero is enough,” he told Reuters. “They should lower to -0.25 or even -0.50. The next meeting would be the natural time.” The Riksbank’s next policy meeting is on Dec. 15, with its decision announced the following morning. Rate-setters have not ruled out negative rates, but Riksbank Governor Stefan Ingves has rejected the comparison with Japan, pointing to expected Swedish growth this year of around 1.9%, with the economy moving up a gear again in 2015. Nevertheless, Swedish consumer prices have been flat or falling for most of the last two years on an annual basis. Underlying inflation, the Riksbank’s preferred measure which excludes interest rate effects, was 0.6% in October.

Draghi himself is a big risk.

• Europe’s Economy Faces Three Major Risks: Draghi (CNBC)

Europe’s recovery faces three risks – unemployment and a lack of productivity and structural reforms, according to the European Central Bank’s President, Mario Draghi. In a speech to be delivered to the Finnish Parliament later Thursday, Draghi concedes that the euro area economic outlook “is surrounded by a number of downside risks.” According to a transcript released ahead of the speech to Finnish lawmakers, Draghi will say that the euro zone’s “recovery will likely be dampened by high unemployment, sizeable unutilized capacity, and the necessary balance sheet adjustments….Inflation in the euro zone remains very low (and) meanwhile, we are facing continuously sluggish money and credit dynamics.”

“We have seen a weakening in the euro area’s growth momentum over the summer Also, most recent forecasts by private and public sector institutions have been revised downwards. Our expectation for a moderate recovery in the next years still remains in place, reflecting our monetary policy measures, the ongoing improvements in financial conditions, and the progress made vis-à-vis structural reforms and fiscal consolidation,” he said. His comments come amid speculation as to whether the ECB will implement a U.S.-style quantitative easing program to stimulate the euro zone economy in the face of slowing growth, disinflation and low consumer confidence – at a 9-month low in November.

Why isn’t Washington suing them?

• Goldman Sachs, HSBC Sued By Jeweller For Fixing Platinum Prices (Independent)

Goldman Sachs and HSBC are among a group of banks being sued in the US for allegedly fixing platinum and palladium prices. Modern Settings — a jeweller that buys precious metals and derivatives set on their prices — claims the banks “were privy to and shared confidential, non-public information about client purchase and sale orders that allowed them to glean information about the direction” of prices. “This unlawful behaviour allowed defendants to reap substantial profits, while non-insiders, which include plaintiffs, were injured,” lawyers acting for the company added. Separately, HSBC is facing a probe into allegations that an employee leaked confidential client information to a major hedge fund, according to reports. The leak is alleged to have taken place in March 2010, when HSBC was advising Prudential on its failed bid for AIA. A senior HSBC trader is said to have alerted a trader at hedge fund Moore Capital Management about a transaction taking place.

It’s going to take a lot more than dogs.

• Attack Dogs Deployed To Save South Africa’s Rhinos (Bloomberg)

Strapped into a black nylon harness, Venom abseils from a helicopter 100 feet to a bush clearing below. The two-year-old Belgian Shepherd’s master Marius slides down in tandem and unclips his ward. Then the dog races across the grass and tears down a man wearing a felt-stuffed bite suit. Venom is part of an army of dogs being trained as South African defense company Paramount Group’s contribution to fighting the poachers in South Africa, home to most of the world’s rhinos. Prized for their horns, which are used in Asian traditional medicine, a record 1,020 rhinos have been slaughtered in the country this year, triple the number three years ago.

The Malinois, as the breed is also known, “can work in extreme conditions,” Henry Holsthyzen, who runs Paramount’s K9 Solutions dog academy, said at a presentation of the year-old school yesterday. “It’s been proven useful in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s high energy, highly intelligent and very fast. It’s an awesome package.” Rhino horns are made of the same material as human hair or finger nails, yet is more valuable than gold by weight. Prices for a kilogram range from $65,000 to as much as $95,000 in China and Vietnam, where consumers buy them in a powdered form to ingest as a supposed cure for cancer and to try improve their libido. South Africa is trying a number of measures to end the poaching, including setting up a protection zone within the Israel-sized Kruger National Park, moving rhinos to private ranches and deploying soldiers to fight poachers.

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